Hers To Keep: THE QUINTESSENCE COLLECTION I

by Akeroyd, Serena

  She pouted. “I was ready. At the time.”

  He rolled his eyes. “And that really reassures me. How can we look after you if you don’t look after yourself?”

  Andrei hadn’t touched her since before the accident, but the others had. He knew they were all mad at themselves for having taken her when they’d learned from the doctor she shouldn’t have been doing anything more strenuous than lifting a coffee cup.

  He understood their self-loathing. When a woman gave the green light, it was difficult to think that she’d sabotage herself in the long run.

  Which she totally had, which meant she couldn’t be trusted.

  He reached up to thumb her bottom lip, tugging it down and away from her teeth. “You need a keeper, baby girl.”

  She smiled at him, then let out another breathy sigh. “Are you willing to apply for the job?”

  His grin was slow in coming but burned hotly nonetheless. “There are five positions on offer, and I took one when you first hired on with us.”

  She bobbed up onto tiptoe then murmured, “That’s what I like to hear.”

  Grabbing his hand, then Sawyer’s, she tugged them both. “Devon, stop fingering the lingerie. You’ve better things to finger later,” she said, sotto voce, but the delight in her tone had Andrei hiding a grin. “We need to buy sweets.”

  Andrei chuckled. How had she done this? He’d come with a heavy, fear-filled heart. Now, he felt lighter, more at ease. Happy.

  She screwed with his mind, he realized. But then, wasn’t that what happiness was?

  After the bleakness of before, the exuberance of her joy was like a beacon of light. He had no choice but to answer the call and to follow the light to her.

  “You heard the lady, guys,” he said with a wry chuckle.

  And so, sweets they went to buy.

  Thirty-One

  “You’re happy here.”

  Sascha spun around in surprise at her father’s voice. The guys had, rather disappointingly, dispersed to their various corners of the house when they’d arrived back from Harrods. Andrei had taken a call, and Devon had suffered an epiphany that required Sawyer’s help too.

  Which meant all that talk of anal had been exactly that.

  Talk.

  Still, there was no time for pouting, or even thinking of sex. Not when her father was in the vicinity.

  “Hey! You mean, England?”

  He shook his head, then after taking a step toward the breakfast counter, he hesitated. “Well, England too. But I actually meant here. With Sean, Devon, Sawyer, Kurt, and Andrei.” He grimaced. “The five dwarves.”

  “Oh.” A frown flashed over her brow. “Yeah. I am. Why?”

  He shrugged. “Nothing. I’m just happy to see it, that’s all. I never really got your job, Sascha. Didn’t always make a lot of sense to me—why you’d want to be a housewife for a bunch of people you weren’t related to.” He shrugged. “Still don’t get it, if I’m being honest, but I can see it makes you happy, and that’s what matters.”

  She’d been seeing a different side to her dad since he’d come to the UK. Whether time and distance or the divorce were behind those changes, she wasn’t sure. Sascha just knew that she liked this less arrogant side of her father.

  He wasn’t as bullish, which meant she didn’t want to scream when she was around him.

  “They make me happy,” she said carefully, well aware that the phrasing she used was off. But it was the truth. She saw no reason to lie about that. It wasn’t like she was blurting out their ‘secret.’ “They’ve all got their quirks, and they’re a pleasure to look after.”

  Her dad eyed her askance, then asked, “You got any of that cake from yesterday leftover?”

  She blinked. “Sure. Want some coffee too?”

  “If some’s going.”

  “It always is. Usually three kinds,” she teased. “How the other half live, eh?”

  He snorted. “Other half… thought I was going to have a heart attack when Kurt was talking about his ex that first night. Then Andrei saying the five million she had left was basically small fry.” He shook his head. “Different world.”

  “You got that right.” One that, by way of her relationship with them, she lived in now.

  She reached for the china cake stand and lifted the glass dome off it. Using the cake slice she grabbed from the drawer, she portioned off a big piece, and placed it on a plate she’d readied a moment ago. With that in hand, she replaced the glass dome, grabbed a fork, and placed the dish in front of her father.

  “What’s this again?” he asked as he cut off a piece with his fork.

  “It’s a cake I found when I was travelling in Spain. It’s called St. John’s cake. It’s all almonds and gorgeousness.”

  Her dad snorted. “Almonds and gorgeousness, huh? That a word?”

  “It is in my vocabulary.”

  He grinned, watched her as she poured them both a mug of coffee, then asked, “Does he treat you right?”

  Internally, she winced. “Sean? Yeah. He does.” They all did.

  “Good.” He cleared his throat. “I wasn’t too happy about you being with your boss. You know how I feel about that.”

  “I do,” she replied, then shrugged. “But it’s what I want, and I make my own decisions.”

  “I’ve been reading into his cases.”

  “You have?” she asked, brows high.

  “Yeah. I know how to work a tablet, Sascha,” he said with some disgust that had her chuckling.

  “He’s famous over here. Lots of nasty cases. He lost another victim the other day. It cut him up.”

  “I can imagine. I saw details in the paper.” He cleared his throat. “Also saw details about you being knocked over. Then, I thought, that couldn’t be, you know? My only daughter would have told me something like that. Right?” He lifted his fingers to his mouth and pinched his bottom lip. “I mean, why the hell would you keep something like that from me? I’m your goddamn father, Sascha. I have a right to know that you’re okay.”

  Sascha froze with one mug in her hand. She closed her eyes, inwardly swore at the newspapers that had only covered the fact she’d been in a crash because she was working for Sean, then decided there was nothing to do but to confess.

  Big time.

  Fuck.

  She’d been hoping to put this conversation off for a while. She knew the guys didn’t want to. Knew they wanted answers. Answers that would explain why someone had been paid to mow her and a lot of innocent pedestrians down, but that meant confronting her father about a tale he’d never meant to share.

  Considering how he preached about honesty above all else, that meant the story was a doozy. And, though it wasn’t like her to bury her head in the sand, she just… Well, at the moment, it was more than she could handle.

  Placing the mug in front of him, she returned for her own, then hiked up onto the stool opposite him.

  Time to come clean. “Yeah. I was knocked over by a car.”

  He grunted, kept his head low, gazed trained on his dish. “Why didn’t you tell me in the first place? I assume that’s how you really broke your arm? Not in a fall like you told me.”

  She pursed her lips. “Yes. But you’re not going to like what I have to say.”

  “Any world where my daughter gets hurt, I’m not going to like. Doesn’t mean I don’t want to hear it. Spill.”

  She eyed him, so gruff and braw. He was a handsome man, her dad. Still straight-backed, broad shouldered, lean-hipped. He ate what he wanted and didn’t have a paunch because he went jogging every day.

  His chestnut hair was still mostly chestnut, with salt and pepper sprinkled at his temples. He was heavily lined though. Years of scowling at the perps dragged into his precinct, she assumed.

  His nose was strong, his jaw stubborn. His eyebrows arched so he looked perpetually pissed off.

  As a kid, she’d thought he was always angry with her, until her mom had explained that he always looked like that. A
teasing remark which had made her dad grunt over his breakfast until he’d sighed happily as her mom stroked her fingers over his creased brow.

  She could remember that scene as easily as breathing. Sascha had been five, and she’d known she was loved and had known that her parents loved her. More than that, they’d loved one another.

  Such security was precious. She saw that now. Especially when compared to Andrei, whose security hadn’t been… Jesus, optimal wasn’t the word.

  “Stop gawking and get on with it, Sascha. I want to know what’s going on.”

  She pursed her lips and then came clean, “Someone paid the driver to knock me down. It was only happenstance that it didn’t work out that way. I saw a kid run into the road, and I got knocked over when I went to grab him. But later on, the driver went to the cops and told them he’d been paid to hurt me.”

  Her father’s scowl deepened, and he pushed his plate away. “Ex-boyfriend?”

  “No. We don’t know who.” She stared down at her mug and let both fingers of her good, and bad, hand curl around its warmth. Suddenly feeling very cold inside, she carried on, “Sean investigated, pulled some strings, but all he’s been able to find out is that I was adopted at birth.”

  Silence fell at her words, a silence so deep it felt like a chasm had opened up between her and her father.

  She peered over at him, saw the desolation on his face, and swallowed. Hard.

  “Your mother never wanted you to know.”

  “It doesn’t matter to me,” she immediately said, her good hand snapping out, reaching for his. But he pulled away.

  Pain lashed at her.

  “She didn’t want you to know for your own good,” he said robotically. “Then, it never mattered, because you were ours.”

  “Of course, I was. I still am.”

  His jaw worked, and his green eyes blazed with fire. “He must have pulled a hell of a lot of strings to have found that out.”

  She shrugged, surprisingly at ease with his fury. “There was a lot going on. He was thorough.”

  “That’s more than fucking thorough.” His nostrils flared.

  “Who are my birth parents?” she asked softly. A part of her wanted to know, but another part genuinely wasn’t interested. He was her father, and Natasha had been the best mother a child could wish for. Sascha’s only regret was that her mom wasn’t around. Not to explain this, but because Sascha missed her. Dreadfully. Regret had her throat closing as she whispered, “Sean and the others seem to think they’re the reason I’ve been targeted. That it’s something to do with my past.”

  Henry went to shake his head, then he gritted his jaw. “Your birth parents were murdered, Sascha. When you were barely a few months old.”

  His words choked her. “Murdered?”

  He nodded. Grimly. The coffee cup scraped against the marble counter as he fiddled with the handle. “I’m not going to lie. When your mom told me the real story, I thought she was nuts. It sounded like something out of an Agatha Christie novel. And she was scared. So scared that she wouldn’t be able to keep you safe. In the end, that’s pretty much why I believed her.”

  “Explain,” Sascha urged softly.

  He ran his finger around the rim of his cup. “Where to start?” he asked, more to himself than her she figured.

  “At the beginning. Why was mom a citizen here?”

  He cocked a brow. “That’s the easy part. She was born near Moscow, but her family moved here when she was still a baby. England was her home.”

  “Why did she have an American accent?” she demanded.

  “She faked it. Didn’t want you to know about her past.” A chuckle escaped him, and she sensed it surprised him. “You should have heard it at first. Sounded like something from South Park.” He shook his head. “She got better over time.”

  “So, she was Russian by birth but an English citizen?” Sascha prompted, wanting to stay on track because she needed answers.

  “Yeah. So, your birth father was this Lord or something. An Earl, I think. Well, Nat trained as a nurse here, and started working for this Earl. She liked him. Said the man played spectacular chess.

  “He was really old though, and he pissed off his family by marrying his nursemaid who was about forty years his junior. That was why they hired your mom; he’d married one of his carers. Anyway, it caused a stink, but they humored him I think because they thought he wouldn’t last that long and, if I remember rightly, Nat said the inheritance was indentured. It wasn’t like her marrying him meant she’d get half his fortune. It’s not like that over here with estates. At least, not as far as I’m aware.”

  She nodded. “I understand.” She’d read way too much Jane Austen not to.

  Indentured estates passed onto blood heirs. Not upstart women who married into the family.

  “So, everything was okay until your birth mom announced she was pregnant. Your birth father fell sick, and she did too. By the sounds of it, she almost lost you a few times, but she managed to carry you to term. She died as a result of birthing complications though. Your mom said it was murder. That the complications happened ‘for a reason.’” He tagged quote marks around that, using his fingers to get the point home.

  Stunned into silence, Sascha just sat there and absorbed the story she’d never wanted to hear.

  Pain? Was that what she was feeling?

  She wasn’t sure.

  It felt like a very, very bad cramp. It started in her stomach and was taking over her torso until she wanted to curl up to stem the pain.

  She didn’t know the people who had birthed her, whose genetics made up her own, and yet, the emotional numbness that spread through her was like the same poison that had murdered those people who were her parents by blood.

  Her dad cleared his throat. “Your birth father realized what was happening too late to save your mother but was in time to save you. He had your records wiped clean; I have no idea how. But obviously, he had money, so that helped.

  “By this point, he suspected his other carer was having an affair with his daughter-in-law, and that they were working together to hurt them. Natasha said that after your birth mother died, he knew you wouldn’t be safe. He liked her, and she said they’d connected a lot because he asked her to play chess with him.

  “When things grew desperate and he knew he was dying, he arranged with Natasha to care for you, arranged residency for you both in the States, gave her money to come to America, and told her to never let you know who your family was.”

  She swallowed, trying desperately not to puke. “It would be useful, for Sean’s investigation, if we knew my original surname.” Her words were raspy as she continued, “If Natasha told you, that is.”

  “She did. You were baptized here. That should still be on public record at the church, I imagine… Lady Eloisa Jacobie.” He shot her a pained look that held a curious hint of defiance considering his next words. “That’s your real name, Sascha.”

  Her mouth trembled as she processed the tale he’d just spun. But that was the problem. It wasn’t a tale. It was real. That was her past. Her history.

  She got to her feet and did the only thing she could do at that moment.

  Run.

  Loved By Them

  Thirty-Two

  The keys were in her hand before she knew what was happening.

  From the kitchen, there was silence. Her father wasn’t shouting after her. Wasn’t even calling her name. He’d dropped the bombshell of the century moments before, and was seemingly content for her to just run off.

  It shouldn’t have stung. It really shouldn’t have, not when she was the one running away, but it did.

  A frenzy was whipping and stirring in her head with the force of a twister. It was nothing to the migraines she’d been enduring since she’d been hit by a damn car, but she feared she’d reached her breaking point.

  Sascha Dubois was made of strong stuff, but after learning the truth of her heritage, enough was enough.

&
nbsp; Though she wanted to slam the door to the five-story Kensington villa, Sascha knew it would have the men who lived within its hallowed walls flocking to her.

  Not only were those men her employers, they were more. They were her lovers.

  She loved them, and as far as she could figure out, they loved her. Some had told her, others were watchful of their tongues. But love didn’t have to be spoken to be felt. To be shown.

  That thought was grounding, and that sensation brought with it relief because in the whole amount of crazy that was going down, they were there to keep her balanced.

  The rest of her life might as well have been up in the air, but they weren’t. They were solid.

  Real.

  Still, for all her strength, her hands and knees were shaking as she almost fell down the five steps that led to the front door.

  Normally, the grand entrance, even after all these months of living here, had the power to stun her with its magnificence, but that was of no interest to her now as she staggered down the steps. Her Cadillac was her final destination.

  It was a beacon of normalcy in this swanky zip code. A bright bolt of retro pizazz amid the exclusive sports cars and high-end sedans. It stuck out like a sore thumb, so when she looked at it, she couldn’t fail to see the man standing beside it too.

  Devon.

  Her bright bolt of mathematical pizazz.

  He was slouched against the car, resting his arms on the roof. They were folded there, and he’d pressed his chin to them to prop his head up as he watched her scurry towards him.

  She came to an abrupt halt at the sight of him beside her vehicle. Of course, that had to be in the middle of the road, didn’t it?

  A car purred to a stop in front of her; the driver glaring at her then tooting his horn as she started in surprise, realizing the dumbass place she’d decided to put on the brakes was in the center of the goddamn street.

  Apparently, she had a death wish where cars were concerned.

  Mouthing sorry, she ducked in between the cars to hit the sidewalk, then carried on walking toward her Caddy.