by Abigail Owen
He kept on putting groceries away, acutely aware that Lila was watching him. After a moment of silence, she turned and left the room. Ramsey blew out a breath he hadn't realized he'd been holding. Years ago, Lila would’ve called him on that statement. Part of him had hoped she would this time.
Once he’d finished organizing, Ramsey got busy making one of the only dishes he knew how – spaghetti with meat sauce – and mentally formulated his plan of attack on Lila’s mental defenses.
A few hours later, after dinner had been prepared and eaten and the dishes all washed and put away, Ramsey and Lila got comfortable on the couch in the den. North by Northwest was one of Ramsey's favorite movies, and it usually held his attention. You couldn’t go wrong with Hitchcock and Cary Grant. But tonight, as they sat there in the dark together, the only thing he could think about was the girl beside him. She was gorgeous even in the flickering light of the TV.
The couch was more like a loveseat, and Lila had tried to stay on her own side, not touching. Ramsey had pretended to relax and let his body settle into the middle. He’d pressed up against her, shoulder to thigh. Lila had just about shot to her feet in agitation, but she’d stayed seated, squished as much into the side as she could. She was probably cramping up holding herself in that awkward position. Ramsey casually stretched his arm across the back.
She’d glared at him. “What’re you doing?”
He raised his eyebrows. “Getting comfy. This isn’t exactly roomie. Am I crushing you?”
Lila leaned over and saw that he was still touching the other side. With a little huff, she said, “No. I’m fine.”
Hiding a grin, Ramsey turned his attention back to the screen. From the corner of his eye, he watched every breath she made, every reaction to the scenes on the screen, every little shift. He reveled in the feel of her slim body pressed up along his side. However, while he’d succeeded in his plan to make her uncomfortable, he hadn’t banked on the fact that he’d get rather uncomfortable himself. He’d never let himself get physically close to her, and now his body was reacting strongly. Ramsey shifted a little bit, trying to relieve some of his tension.
Finally, about halfway through the movie, he couldn't take it any longer. "I think I'm going to bed," he said gruffly. He stood up and started heading for the stairs.
"You never go to bed this early," Lila commented.
Ramsey paused and rested his hand on the banister. "Must be jetlagged."
Lila gave him a confused glance before returning her full attention to the movie. "All right. Good night."
Feeling deflated, Ramsey turned and headed up the stairs.
…Keep trying. It took sixty years to build up those walls of hers. You won’t break them down overnight.
*****
A week later, Ramsey awoke to the smell of fresh-brewed coffee. He dragged a hand over his haggard face, pleased with himself for making it through one more night. That was eight more nights than he'd imagined he could survive. And he was still no further along with Lila. But stubbornness was as much a part of his nature as it was of hers. And Lila was too important for him to give up on. He’d win her trust and affection again. He just had to figure out how.
After he took a quick shower and got dressed, he made his way downstairs to find Lila at the kitchen table digging into a plate of fluffy scrambled eggs. She nodded at the pan on the stove. "Help yourself."
"Looks good. We have any bacon to go with it?"
"I haven't fried any up, but there's some in the fridge."
“No, that’s okay,” he said. He scooped some eggs on a plate and then sat down at the table beside her.
"You’ve been awfully grumpy in the mornings. Anything wrong?" Lila asked in between bites.
Ramsey only grunted in reply, and Lila just shrugged and kept eating her breakfast. After they cleared the table, she disappeared upstairs. Ramsey took advantage of her absence to hop on the computer and do some searching. An idea had been swirling around in his head since finding Lila in the dungeon.
In Northern California, where Ramsey had found Lila, Maddox had taken advantage of the natural cave formations to start his network of prisons and underground buildings. Now that the installation had been discovered, Ramsey guessed that Maddox had moved his people to a similar place somewhere else in the world. He'd been researching which areas, particularly in North America, might have comparable geography.
"I'm going on a hike," Lila announced, interrupting his search.
Ramsey looked up from the screen and frowned. "Give me a second and I'll come with you."
"You don't have to."
"I wouldn't mind a hike,” he insisted. “Besides, you shouldn't go out alone. What if Maddox kidnaps you again?”
Lila rolled her eyes and sighed. As much as she wanted to rebel against having a constant shadow – especially if that shadow was Ramsey – she knew he was right. She'd always said how characters in books or movies who were in danger, but then proceeded to wander off and get caught anyway, were total idiots. He knew she wouldn't be that girl if she could help it.
"You sure you're interested in a hike?" she asked.
"Sure." He kept his expression carefully neutral. “I’m going stir crazy too, you know.”
"All right. I'll meet you outside when you're ready."
About five minutes later, Ramsey appeared in the front yard where Lila was waiting. The day was overcast and a little bit chilly. She looked adorable in her red parka, with a matching cap pulled down over her blonde hair.
"Ready to go. What's your plan?"
"No plan. I figured we’d just wander where the wind takes us." Lila gestured to the surrounding hilltops.
"I'm game," Ramsey said. "Lead on McDuff."
Chapter 26
They walked in comfortable silence for quite a way with no rhyme or reason to their wanderings, turning down lanes wherever their whims took them. Even with the gray skies, the landscape was truly spectacular. No wonder so many artists and writers had been drawn to this area of England for so many years. The views were nothing short of inspiring.
"It’s so beautiful here," Lila murmured. “So different from what I’ve been looking at the last year or so.”
“Yeah?” Ramsey asked. “We haven’t talked much about your time away. Tell me what you were up to.”
Lila gave him a sideways glance. “You really want to know?”
“Of course.”
“Well…” Lila paused and gathered her thoughts. Ramsey kicked a rock down the road as he waited for her to speak. “We went to Louisiana first,” she began. “Marcus wanted to update the entire clan about everything that’d happened at the castle.”
Ramsey nodded.
“We spent quite a bit of time there initially. You know how much I love meeting new people." Lila rolled her eyes expressively.
Ramsey chuckled. While Lila wasn't shy necessarily, she took a while to warm up to people. In fact, Ramsey still wasn't sure why she’d seemed to take an instant liking to him when they’d first met.
"They have a very large group. Believe it or not they live in the swamp. I mean right in the middle of it."
"What was that like?"
"Wet," Lila said in such a dry voice that Ramsey laughed out loud. She wrinkled her nose. “Seriously. Louisiana is humid to begin with. But throw in living in the middle of the swamp, and… well… you get the picture.”
"I can imagine."
"I will say that there are incredible trees in the swamp. Marcus said they were cypress trees. Tall and thick, but the amazing thing was their roots…they came right up out of the water, almost as if you could see the bottom of the tree with the dirt cleared away. They fanned out in these intricate shapes, like fingers splaying down into the pools of swamp water.
"I've seen them in pictures," Ramsey said. "But never in person. They do look really interesting."
Lila nodded. "And the Spanish moss that hangs from the trees in great grey-green curtains. It's actually a little bit
spooky.”
“What about the alligators?” Ramsey asked.
Lila laughed. “One of Marcus’s men can shift into an alligator. He’s massive in that form. None of the other real gators go near our camp. Apparently they’re territorial. Although one little female sticks around. I think she hopes Beau will make an honest gator of her.”
Ramsey grinned, though he noticed the “our camp” statement. Lila had obviously become quite attached to her new friends. The question was, how attached? Especially to Marcus.
"So where’d you go after Louisiana?" he asked.
"First we traveled around the United States, starting in the South, making our way north and then heading west from there. We don't have a tracker likes Sheila, but through rumors and some amount of luck, we were able to meet up with a couple of different clans of Svatura. We told them about everything that Ellie had showed Marcus. I would share with them my own history with the Vyusher and with Selene."
"Did they believe you?" Ramsey asked.
Lila shrugged. "Most of the time. A couple of the groups required a little convincing. Pretty much none of them wanted to join us or get involved in any way. But at least they won't stand against us."
"So it sounds as if you were successful," Ramsey said.
"In the States we were, for the most part. But once we started traveling further south, we had a harder time."
Ramsey bent down, picked up a stone, and tossed it down a slope. "Where were you when you were captured?"
Lila didn’t answer immediately. She stopped walking, and Ramsey followed her lead. They looked out on the rolling hills, some points peaking to mountains, with tendrils of mist curling around everything. Below in the valley, the blue of the lake couldn’t be eclipsed by even the gloomy skies. Everything was lushly green with the darker shades of the trees looking like deep shadows against the lighter emerald of the grass. Lila could just imagine sinking into the soft, inviting lawns.
"Nowhere like this place," she finally murmured. "We were in São Paulo, Brazil. We’d had our first meeting with the large Brazilian tribe that Maddox had already reached.”
Ramsey caught the bitterness in Lila's voice. "I take it the meeting didn't go well?"
"You could say that." Lila shook her head at the memory. "As soon as they realized that we stood with the Vyusher, they had their teleporter pick us up and drop us right back in the middle of the city.”
"Hmmmm… I bet that was frustrating."
Lila only responded with a slow nod.
"So what was São Paulo like? I've always wanted to visit, especially at Carnival."
Lila’s eyes twinkled. "It's an incredible city, full of color and sound and life in many different forms. Marcus said he's been there in the middle of Carnival. He said it’s like Mardi Gras but on a whole different level."
"We'll have to go sometime," Ramsey murmured.
She gave him a demure look. "I think that would be fun."
"You and Marcus seem to have gotten close."
Lila was silent for a moment. "He reminds me a lot of Alex. And he told me once that he’d had a little sister a lot like me. She died a long time ago."
Ramsey wasn't sure what to think about that. Was she telling him that Marcus was like a big brother to her? God, he hoped so. The thought of her being so close to another man made him sick to his stomach.
"So what about you?" Lila asked.
"What about me?"
"What did you get up to while I was gone?"
"I got a lot of schoolwork done," Ramsey said. He just barely kept the wry note out of his voice. There was little else he had to do.
"Have you picked a major yet?"
He was about to answer when something landed on the top of his head. He looked up, in case it had been a bird flying above him. There weren’t any in the sky, but he did feel another raindrop splash his face.
“Ummm… Lila?"
"What?" She looked directly into his eyes, and Ramsey forgot for a moment what he was going to say. He had an uncontrollable urge to tuck a stray lock of hair back behind her ear.
He gave himself a little mental shake. "Did you happen to bring an umbrella on this little walk?" he asked. They had to be at least three or four miles from home at this point, and they hadn't seen any other houses on their walk so far.
Lila made a face. "I didn't think about it. I should have… this is England." She looked up at the darkening clouds. "I guess we should turn back for home."
They turned and started walking back at a slightly faster clip. Another few raindrops splashed down. Big fat ones.
"I think we’re about to get wet," Ramsey muttered.
Just as he said that, the sky released its deluge. Ramsey and Lila took off at a run. The cold rain was like little needles as it hit their skin. Ramsey heard Lila giggle beside him.
"What on earth are you laughing at?" he called as they ran.
She just giggled again, and Ramsey saw childish glee written all over her face. Despite the cold, her enjoyment of the sudden downpour was infectious. Ramsey just started chuckling when something hard whacked into his head.
"Ouch!”
"What – ow!” Lila exclaimed. They looked at each other.
"Hail," Ramsey said. Lila groaned and they ran faster.
Then the ice balls started coming down in earnest. "We've got to find shelter!" Lila shouted. As they ran, they kept an eye out for a place where they could hide from the weather. Finally, Ramsey spotted a rock overhang beside a cluster of trees.
“Over there!”
Once they were safe from the pelting of ice, they practically fell over, clutching their stomachs as they tried to catch their breath. Ramsey heard a snigger and looked over to see Lila with her hand clamped over her mouth, her eyes dancing with merriment. She tried to hold it in, but hilarity bubbled up and out of her. After a moment of incredulous silence, Ramsey felt his own laughter rising up inside him. It started out as a dry chuckle, and then he found that once he'd started, he couldn't stop. Together they laughed until their sides hurt. It felt good to laugh together like this.
Without thinking, Ramsey reached out and tucked that stray strand of Lila's wet hair behind her ear. "Who walks around in England without an umbrella?" He grinned at her.
And just like that, they were in each other's arms. Their mouths sought each other with a kind of heady desperation. This wasn’t a tender coming together, but a fierce need that had them clinging to each other. As though she wanted to burrow inside his skin, Lila ripped open the buttons of his shirt and splayed her fingers over the taut muscles of his stomach. Her touch was not timid or shy, but bold and hungry.
Ramsey groaned against her lips. He knew that she could feel how aroused he was. He pulled back and framed her face with his hands. “I want you,” he said, in a voice raw with desire.
A flash of doubt lit her eyes. Before she could reply, he was kissing her again.
A moment later Lila pulled back slightly, passion in her eyes. “What do you want?”
“I want you… in my arms, in my bed, in my—” Ramsey had been about to say ‘in his life’ when she cut him off.
“I don’t think …” Lila frowned.
“You think too much,” he murmured. This time he placed a tenderly sweet kiss on her lips. He put his mouth to her ear. “Let’s go home and set each other on fire,” he whispered before he nipped at her earlobe.
Lila shivered, and he could feel the desire moving through her. Ramsey pulled back enough to look into her eyes.
Lila gulped. And then she nodded.
“Take me home.”
Chapter 27
Ramsey and Lila tumbled through the door in their haste. But the second they were inside, Lila let out a horrified gasp and instinctively moved into a defensive crouch. Ramsey jumped in front of her, ready to hurl the ball of flame already formed in his hand.
"Show yourself!" Lila demanded.
"Don't shoot," a timid voice called from the direction of the kitc
hen.
Immediately Lila stood up and Ramsey’s flames subsided. "Delia?" Lila asked.
"Is it safe to come out?" Adelaide asked.
"Yeah. Come on out," Ramsey called.
Lila ran to her sister and gave her a giant hug. "Don't get me wrong. I'm thrilled to see you… but what are you doing here?"
Adelaide looked at her with a combination of desperation and sadness. "We need to talk… I need to talk. I need your advice."
Lila had never seen Adelaide so frazzled. Her normally serene sister's emotions were clearly all over the place.
"Of course. I'm always here for you." Lila gave Ramsey a meaningful look, and he nodded his understanding.
"I'll leave you two girls alone," he said and headed upstairs.
Lila grabbed Adelaide by the hand and led her to the couch. "Okay, Delia. Talk to me," she said once they were settled.
Adelaide was quiet for a little while. She opened her mouth a couple of times as if she wanted to say something but couldn't get the words out. Lila waited patiently, trying not to pressure her sister into talking before she was ready.
"I'm really worried that I’m losing Nate," Adelaide finally said.
Lila sat back, shock written across her face. Whatever she'd thought Adelaide would say, it hadn't been that. "Okay," she said in as matter-of-fact a voice as she could muster. "Tell me why."
The look of relief and gratefulness passed over Adelaide's face. "I knew you wouldn't judge me or blow off my fears."
"You've never been one to worry without cause. So, of course, I'm going to take you seriously." She reached out and gave Adelaide's hand a squeeze.
"I think it started when Talia woke up," Adelaide began. "The only person she’ll allow near her is Nate. And sometimes Griffin."
"And this bothers you?" Lila asked.
Adelaide shook her head. "Not really. I was happy Nate was able to help. But then he started… acting funny. At first, it was small things. He’d miss dinner, or he'd miss a day of class…."
Lila could feel the waves of despair radiating from her sister. She looked down and noticed that Adelaide’s hands were shaking, and Lila’s stomach clenched.