by Cait London
In the morning, her finger wore his ring; her wrist wore his bruise, The dark mark on her fragile skin sickened Nck. He hadn’t been able to control himself, punging into Silver, swept away by passion, until he collapsed, melted on her. With her scent around him, her hands gently smoothing his hair and back, he’d tumbled into sleep.
When his passions were aroused, his dark legacy had slid free; his father had hurt women, and now Nick realized his full potential for harming the woman he wanted. Silver hadn’t spoken to him all day, unable to look at him, her silvery eyes avoiding his. She’d slid into her laboratory the instant they’d arrived at his ranch, closing the door against him.
Hours later, she’d showered and shut her bedroom door behind her, a fortress wall. At three o’clock in the morning, Nick hadn’t slept, uneasy with the darkness inside him. Drawn to the woman he had hurt, Nick had to see her. He eased open the door to her darkened room, caught her scent and moved silently to stand over her bed.
He’d hurt her. Pain knifed into Nick, the realization that he had inherited his father’s ability to wound. He eased down onto her bed, took her hand gently in his and brought it to his mouth, placing his face in her palm.
“Nck?” Silver’s uneven whisper curled around him. “Why can’t you stand to look at me?”
“I’ve hurt you. I’m sorry.”
“What do you see when you look at me?”
Nick took her face within his hands, cradling it, running his thumbs lightly across her cheekbones, the gentle sweep down to her lips. “I see you. The woman who completes me. I’ve been alone for so long, and now there is you.”
Her fingers moved across his cheek, tested the moisture on his lashes. “You’re terrified you’re like your father, aren’t you? You aren’t. Not a bit. You take care of those you love, you are a gentle man, Nick.”
“You have bruises on your wrist. I put them there. This is the second time.” He shuddered, remembering the bruises his father had given other women, and his brothers.
“Is that why you can’t look at me, because you feel guilty? There were two people in that room last night, Nick, and I wanted you just as desperately. I saw the marks my nails made on your back. I wasn’t exactly sweet. I can be... very determined, single-minded, and right then—”
“You were perfect” He lifted her wrist to kiss the slight bruise and fitted his finger to it. “I should have controlled myself.”
“I want you to make love to me now.”
“There’s something I have to tell you—”
“Tell me tomorrow.”
Silver struggled out of the tangled sheets, inhaled the fresh sage-scented air from the open bedroom window and caught Nick’s wonderful scent. She crushed the pillow against her, wallowing her nose in it. In her mind, she saw him rising above her, his features honed, savage, eyes brilliant as he plunged into her—resting so deep and full within her that nothing could tear them apart—giving her what she wanted—giving her everything....
The male voices in the kitchen rumbled pleasantly as Silver eased from the bed and took her shower. Rafe and Joel were probably discussing business.
Nick hadn’t said he loved her. She could deal with that. Nick was a cautious man and uneasy with his emotions. Fine. She didn’t need an undying admission; it was enough that he needed her. She wasn’t certain if she could handle his love...that knowledge could be a commitment, and that frightened her.
Nick was tight. She hadn’t met the contract; she’d betrayed a legendary inheritance and Mamie’s trust. As she dressed, scents from the mountain stined in her, and she methodically separated the base notes, the middle notes and the top notes. The rich fabric of the Talkhief family hand been missing, a smooth, constant note, which would call for adjustment in bet liquor formula. The dawn glittering on the mountain dew, Nick’s gleaming meadow green eyes, the amber tones of his skin, stirred an image of a tiny, fluted opalescent bottle filled with tight amber liquor. Amber and green shades curled across the marketing packages. a bold green striking across the box.
Once she found the pearls, she could concentrate on tentangliag her formula and deliver a better product.
She studied the Celtic design of the ruby ring on her finger. The bold claim made a statement. Nick could be difficult, but she trusted him on a level she hadn’t shared with anyone since Jasmine. She studied the bloodied rubies. Nick had wanted her, and he’d set about securing her. While his methods of acquiring her were bold, predatory and instinctive, she could trust him. She could understand wanting something so badly—
One glance in the mirror, her Tallchief features standing out starkly in the bathroom’s shadows, and Silver closed her eyes as that familiar pain swept through her. She tossed the towel over the mirror and braced herself, preparing to meet the men in the other room, and caught the delightful scent of coffee and breakfast—bacon, biscuits and—Silver sniffed delicately—grapefruit, broiled with a topping of brown sugar. He’d heady started laundry, the machines humming pleasantly. She smiled whimsically. There were advantages to living with Nick.
The intimate twinges in her body told her that she had enjoyed more man Nick’s food. She had reveled in the heat of his lovemaking, his desperate hunger for her...as though no one else had passed before him as though no one else could ever—They were equal in their fiery desire. Silver trusted that raw sense of her power, of his raw desire to taste her, to fit himself within her body, to draw her into him. His flickering heated look down the length of their joined bodies had taken her breath away.
Both men looked up from the kitchen table as she entered the room. Nick, dressed in jeans and nothing else, studied her quietly, the other tall, slender man with black glossy hair and smoky eyes stood slowly to face her. “Hello, Glynis. You’re looking...well tended.”
Silver’s fist rose to her chest. locked there to protect it, pain searing her. “John!”
“I invited your brother here,” Nick said quietly, rising to his feet. Dressed only in his jeans, his muscles tensed, his body braced as though preparing for a blow.
“I’m working to create a signature scent for Palladin, Inc., John. This is business. I don’t have time to—” she began, and an image of her younger brother playing with her and Jasmine hit her. They’d served him tiny teacups and cookies and he’d tossed a worm onto the table, making Jasmine scream—There was that angle to his head, that sweep of cheek shared by all the Tallchiefs—by Jasmine...
Nick moved toward her, his face grim, and she stopped him with a cutting motion of her hand. She’d trusted him and he’d betrayed her—Nick’s outstretched hand came down slowly to his side, forming a fist.
“It’s not his fault. I wanted to see you, and I called Nick when you wouldn’t answer my calls or letters,” her brother stated warily. “Mom and Dad are worried, Glynis. When Nick visited last week, he invited me to come here when I could. I had to see you. Because of him, I think Mom and Dad understand better. I do.” There was that quick searching look for the sister who wasn’t there; Silver’s features reminding John of her identical twin—Jasmine.
Silver swallowed; she could feel the tugging, tangling emotions dragging her down, choking her. She gripped the back of the chair to prevent sinking into the icy bog of pain at her feet. “Last week?”
Nick’s quiet tone hit Silver like a spear, thrust into her heart. “I know about Jasmine.”
“You knew about Jasmine before we—” As a teenager, she’d trusted Jasmine to recover from the illness. As a woman, she’d trusted Nick.
John had left immediately, sadly, and she’d been unable to look at him. Now, standing beside Tallchief Lake, the brewing storm whipping at Nick’s clothing, plastering it to his powerful body, she glanced at the ring she’d discarded. A mix of Celtic curves and rich rubies, it lay upon lush, dewy grass as green as Nick’s eyes. “You had no right to enter, to open my life, Nick.”
He was pushing, prying, opening wounds she’d fought for years—“The mirrors you didn’t want,
the lack of contact with a family that clearly loves you...the pieces didn’t fit But that isn’t why I went—”
Outraged, she flung at him, “You thought you could make my life fit? Fit? Like a puzzle? You intruded into my family and dug out what you needed to know about me because I’m a puzzle to you?”
Pain tore at her, brought her curling to her knees, her arms around herself, rocking her body. She closed her eyes, keeping in the pain. Jasmine...as pale as the hospital sheets, sliding into death despate whatever Silver tried desperately to say, to do—
Nick started toward her, hesitated and braced his boot on a fallen log. “I saw the pictures of you and Jasmine together. No wonder you don’t like mirrors.”
She fought the icy chill shrouding her, the memory of Jasmine’s pale, thin face. “You wouldn’t understand.”
“I know what looking like someone can do to you. How it can eat and twist inside you.”
Despite her own pain, a flicker of Nick’s sliced through her. “You’re nothing like your father. Jasmine and I were not only twins, we were...one. We knew what each other would say before it was said. We were not only sisters, we were friends. We had dreams, Nick. We dreamed of Elizabeth’s legend, of finding her pearls and meeting our true loves.”
“You watched her die and you came apart.” He understood now how deeply Silver’s emotions ran, the fear of failure and loyalty to her sister’s memory driving her to find Elizabeth’s pearls. As a Tallchief, Silver’s instincts ran to finishing promises and completing life circles; for her sister, Silver would try to complete the quest and dreams began as girls, and in doing so, she would find peace.
“I watched my entire family die, day by day, shattering apart when she was gone. One essential piece of the whole beautiful picture could not be replaced, and I was only a reminder of the half that was missing. A well-tuned, loving family slid into a dysfunctional one. She was just seventeen, Nick. Just a girl who hadn’t lived her dreams. I tried so hard—I tried so hard to make her live—and every hour, she slid away from me. I was so angry at her for not living. My parents can’t bear to look at me, either. I see it in their faces every time, before they shield it. They’re looking for Jasmine in me...in me...and I can never replace her. The only way I could survive was to make a new me, to change my hair, my clothes, to make a new life away from them”
He placed his hands on her shoulders, shaking her gently. He was grateful to De LaFleur for helping Silver survive. “You’re trying to live for two people. Let go, sweetheart. Let them love you. You can’t feel guilty for living—”
She tore free, facing him, braced against the storm and her furious pain. “I do, damn it. Don’t you see? I lived. I lived and Jasmine died.” She hated him, glaring at him as she pushed herself to her feet, shaking with anger. His ring gleamed in the midst of the summer rain, and she scooped it up, hurling it out into the dark, fierce waves of Tallchief Lake. It could rest at the bottom with any trust she had placed in Nick. “How could you know anything?” she asked bitterly.
He looked out at the white, frothy waves, the tiny splash caused by his ring. “I know what it’s like to look in a mirror and be reminded of another person...one who had an impact on your life.”
Silver swiped away the hot tears on her face, torn by the vulnerability in Nick’s expression, the shadows written on his face. “You’re Nick, guardian of the Tallchiefs. You’re brave and you’re strong and you care about those you love. But you don’t know about this—Why did you go to my parents?”
The wind lifted his hair away from his face, honing his angular features as he looked out at the lake where her ring had fallen. “I asked your parents for pennission to marry you.”
“You what? Nick, you can’t arrange someone else’s life. I couldn’t make Jasmine live—” She was crying now, silvery eyes lashing at him, her body shaking, pain tearing at her.
He’d done that to her...torn the trusting heart right out of her. The son of Lloyd Palladin was bred to hurt. In the mist and slashing rain, the wind beating the cattails at the shoreline, Nick stuck his hands into his pockets. If he took Silver in his arms, she’d fight him and he’d hurt her.
Nick felt twice his age and twice as worn. He’d hurt Silver, who’d had enough pain. He’d wanted to help her, to understand her desperation to succeed, to take every challenge, to smooth those rough edges, never too far from the surface. He’d wanted to protect her, to marry her, to love her—
At an unexpected break in the coming storm, the misty summer air curled seductively around him, tormenting him with dreams that could never come true.
“If the Montclair pearls are anywhere, they are at the bottom of Talichief Lake,” he said quietly, giving her what he could.
Silver braced herself against the impulse to turn into Nick’s strong body, to let him comfort and shelter her. He’d said the Montclair pearls—“What do you mean, Nick?”
With a long, defeated sigh, he reached out to sweep his finger across her damp cheek. “It’s just a theory, but where you threw your ring is exactly where I think the pearls might be resting.”
Silver turned to the storm-tossed black waters, the white waves whipping across the lake. A lifetime of dreaming, of planning, had come to this one moment, and she prayed that finally Jasmine and she would be free.... She reached out to take his hand, needing the anchor of his strength. “Nick?”
He moved behind her, sheltering her from the wind, and ran his hands down her arms to circle her wrists. “Feel it, Silver. Put out your hands and close your eyes. Focus on what is beneath the water and what waits for you—”
“I don’t know if I—Nick? Would you pinch my nose?”
“Right. Have to take care of the nose. Scents would distract you.” She felt him shaking his head as he grumbled, one hand lifting to pinch her nostrils.
“Only your scent can do that.”
“Thanks,” he muttered flatly. “Ready?”
“Ready.” She wondered instantly if she was always ready when Nick was concerned, her senses leaping at the scent, or the sight of him.
He lifted her arm, and slowly Silver reached the free one, spreading her fingers, letting the scents and the rain flow between them. “You think I have Elspeth’s powers to sense things, that I’ve inherited seer and shaman talents—”
The mist tingled on her skin, much as it would have done on Elizabeth’s all those years ago—
“You’re a Tallchief. You stand and fight for what you want. There’s that predatory, hunting instinct and ties to the past, to your legacy. It’s worth a try. Let everything go, and try to feel what is out there—”
“I’m afraid I’ll fail. I’m afraid, Nick—” She’d always been alone, and now, suddenly, with Nick standing warm and alive behind her, his arm running along hers, his hand circling her wrist, closing her nose, she believed in her own strength, apart from anyone—alone and without Jasmine.... “Tell me what you know, talk to me.”
His cheek was rough against hers, damp with rain and her tears. He kissed her lashes. “You smell like sunshine. My sunshine.”
She shook her head, then rested it back against his chest. “I can’t be too close again, Nick.”
“Don’t think about that now,” he murmured slowly, his thumb caressing her wrist. “You’re trembling. What do you feel?”
She reached inside herself, rummaged through her senses. “You’re frustrated, but you’re tethering yourself and it’s difficult for you. You don’t want anything for yourself—”
Nick inhaled abruptly, and his hand tightened briefly around her wrist as he muttered, “Oh, I truly do.”
“You like holding my nose. It’s not a gift like a marble, Nick. You don’t have to be so delighted.”
“Why don’t you just get on with business?” he grumbled.
Sensations trembled along her fingers, her palm. She reached for them, spreading her fingers. “There’s more. It’s on my fingertips... like gold dust, shimmering. Scents. Essences. Moondrops fli
pping on lily pads. Silver fish gliding through green silk—dajk satin, swords of light, a rock castle, a tunnel... Nick? What’s the base note?”
“I’ve learned to translate that perfumer’s jargon—the foundation upon which I base my theory. What holds it all together? I compared two maps—one created during Elizabeth’s lifetime and the other is current. The contours are different and the lake surface is much larger today. Years ago, an avalanche opened the entrance of an underwater stream, causing it to flow into Tallchief Lake. It raised the water level. Elizabeth’s pearls could be resting in an underwater cave, or on one of the rocky ledges.”
“An underwater cave. A tunnel. They could be the same.” Silver leaned against him, needing his support as she realized how close she could be to discovering Elizabeth’s pearls. “I don’t know what to say. I’ve been so thorough. I didn’t think to examine changes in geography.”
“Let me help you find what you need.” Their fingers laced, his arms folded around her, his kiss warming her cheek.
“You already have. I would never had tried sniffing with my fingers, I mean feeling. I really felt all those things, Nick, and I would never have tried without you.” Silver found herself turning, meeting his gentle, seeking kiss. “I adore you, Nicholas Palladin.”
“Adoring is okay,” Nick whispered unsteadily. “Can I unpinch your nose? Nasal tones from you are fine, but—”
Silver felt like laughing, like crying, like loving Nick. “If I told you that I wanted you now...here, in the rain...what would you say?”
His words came slowly, firmly, as he released her nose and drew her to him. “I would be honored.”
Between them, the mist shifted and Silver found herself lost in Nick’s jade green eyes. “I’m sorry about Mamie’s rubies.”
“We’ll find them,” he said, his hands smoothing her waist and pressing possessively into her denim-covered hips. “We’ll find what you need. Now what was that about making love?”