by Cindy Gerard
As promised, Miranda and Edward, her sister’s twin babies, had been rescued by Gregory’s brother Blake. They were safe—thank God they were safe here in Texas—but as of today, they were no longer hers to protect. As of today, they were no longer hers at all.
In one of the hardest decisions of her life, she had given them up. She had given them over to the loving arms of Blake and his new bride, Josie.
It was the right thing to do, she told herself, just as she had told herself repeatedly since Blake had brought the babies to Texas. Blake and Josie loved them. They would ensure that Anna’s promise to Sara would be fulfilled.
“Promise me, Anna. Promise me,” Sara had pleaded shortly after the twins were born. “If anything happens to me...promise me you won’t let mother and father raise them. Promise me you’ll get them out of Obersbourg and find someone who will love and nurture there.”
Anna had smiled back then at her little sister’s dramatic plea. Sara had always been the actress of the two of them. The rebel. The wild little princess who thumbed her nose in the face of tradition, laughed at the rigors of royal protocol.
Bracing against a fresh wave of pain, Anna drew herself erect. It was because of Ivan Striksky that Sara would never laugh again. The final proof had arrived yesterday. Gregory had sent the damning evidence over to the diner via messenger.
She was still trying to come to grips with the words in the fax sent by the attorney who had handled the estate of Marcus Dumond, Ivan’s horse trainer. Marcus had been much more than a horse trainer, as it turned out. Anna had known he had once been Sara’s lover. She hadn’t known that Marcus was the father of the twins. And now, because Gregory had ferreted out the truth, she had proof that the car crash that had killed both Sara and Marcus had been arranged by Ivan.
The rumble of deep, masculine laughter dragged her away from her thoughts of that devastating news and back to the reason for today’s celebration. Today was the day she had agreed to officially release the twins for adoption. Today was the day she severed her last tie to Sara.
She made herself shut out the ugly string of events that had brought her here and focused on the happiness around her. Blake was a good man. Josie a good woman. Both were all smiles as they stood side by side, each of them cradling one of the babies in their arms. And while she had agonized about her decision, in the end she knew she’d had no choice. It had been Sara’s wish.
Just like she’d had no choice but to attend today’s celebration. Thank God for Harriet, she thought, as she so often had in the past months. Sensing intuitively that Anna would need to draw on all her resources to keep herself together, she had volunteered to take William to a movie today.
“Anna?”
She blinked, automatically set a smile in place even before she realized it was Josie who had walked up beside her and lightly touched her arm.
“Are you all right?”
“Fine. I’m fine.” She broadened her smile, and even though her heart was breaking, opened her arms to little Miranda when Josie held her out to her. Tears filled her eyes as Miranda reached up and tangled her little fingers in Anna’s hair.
Life was so strange, she thought, smiling down at the happily gurgling baby. When Blake had finally managed to smuggle the babies out of Europe and into Texas, he’d run into the storm of the century while driving across the state with them. Josie had spotted his car in a washed-out ravine. Blake had been unconscious, the babies crying and hungry. Josie had managed to get them all home to her farmhouse, and during Blake’s recovery, while he’d struggled to regain his memory that had been temporarily lost in the crash, they’d fallen deeply in love—with each other and with the twins.
“She’s beautiful, isn’t she?” Josie murmured, breaking into Anna’s thoughts.
“Yes,” Anna agreed softly. Relishing the warmth and the sweet scent of the baby in her arms, she held her closer. “She’s very beautiful.”
The silence that followed rang hollow with the unspoken pain of her loss.
“You will always be her aunt, Anna.” Sensitive to Anna’s regrets, Josie’s eyes, when Anna met them, were kind and reassuring. “You will always be Edward’s aunt. They’re your family. Please, don’t doubt that. We won’t ever take that away from you.”
Anna blinked hard, gave Josie a genuine smile as Blake, with Edward sleeping soundly in his arms, joined them.
“I know,” she said. “Just like I know they’ll have a far better home and life with you than if I were to take them back to Obersbourg.”
She didn’t doubt that for one moment. Even as William’s mother, she had difficulty exercising authority over how he was raised. As the twins’ aunt, her influence would be even more limited. She couldn’t bear to have happen to them what happened to Sara. She couldn’t let two sweet, precious lives be ruled by the iron fist of her father and the apathetic blind eye of her mother. If subjected to her parents’ strict code of discipline, like Sara, they might eventually rebel. Like Sara, they might turn to a wild and destructive lifestyle—like the one that had played a part in ending her life.
Her next words were spoken as much to herself as to Blake and Josie. “They have a chance for a normal life now. I have to believe that.” She stopped, braced and deliberately met Josie’s concerned gaze, then Blake’s. “I do believe that. Just like I believe Sara would have approved. You’re very special. Both of you.”
Blake’s warm brown eyes, so different from his brother Gregory’s distant blue, probed hers. “No regrets.”
She kissed Miranda lightly on the cheek and handed her back to Josie before answering with conviction. “I have many regrets in all of this—the decision to give up the twins to you is not one of them.”
Josie embraced her then, her own eyes brimming with tears.
“Oh, no.” Anna managed a shaky laugh. “Don’t you dare start. I’m lost if you cry—and this is a party, remember? Go. Go party.”
“You’re okay then?” Blake touched a hand to her arm.
“I told you. I’m fine. Now go. I saw your father looking for you.”
As she watched them walk away, a bittersweet ache in her chest, someone accidentally bumped into her, then apologized profusely. For the first time today, her smile was spontaneous. Since Gregory had brought her here to Royal, she had grown to appreciate the Texas style of gallantry, the open friendliness of its people.
She made herself focus on the gathering, recognized many of the faces, faces’ of people who knew her as Annie Grace, just a waitress at the diner. Aside from Blake and Josie, only Gregory and Harriet and the three men who had assisted him on the Alpha mission to rescue her last September—Hank Langley, Sterling Churchill, Forrest Cunningham—knew her true identity. They too, had joined the celebration. So had their wives, Callie, Susan, and Becky.
She had taken special notice of Gregory and Blake’s parents, Janine and Carson Hunt. She wasn’t certain how much Gregory’s parents knew about the twins’ situation—or about hers. She only knew that they looked at her through kind eyes that made her yearn for something she’d never received from her own parents. Carson was a robust bear of a man with crinkled brown eyes and a thick head of silver hair. Janine was lovely. Diminutive in stature, yet obviously her own woman, her blue eyes, so like Gregory’s, were warm, bold and full of life as she welcomed Edward and Miranda to the family with loving arms.
The only person noticeably absent was Gregory. True to form, since that September morning when he’d settled her into the apartment, he had made it a point to be absent if she was anywhere in the vicinity. His influence had been known in many other ways, however. It was Gregory who had expedited the adoption process by calling in some markers, taking advantage of his connections with both the bar and the bench. And it was the respect he’d earned in the community that had kept public speculation about the twins’ parentage to a minimum. There was acceptance that they now belonged to Blake and Josie—a simple fact.
It was for the best all around that he
maintained his distance from her, she knew. It saved her from answering questions for which he would eventually demand answers. Still, there was regret associated with the knowledge. Just as there was a sudden, chest-tightening anticipation when, on the heels of those thoughts, Gregory walked in the door.
Her heart clenched, as it always did, when she saw him. His dark good looks and impressive presence set him apart even m this room full of men who were unequaled among men. Above all else, though, the tension strung tight around his mouth, the intensity in his eyes held her riveted as he walked unerringly toward her.
When he took her hand in his, relayed the need for silence through a quick, firm squeeze, she was filled with a sudden, intuitive awareness that what he was about to tell her would change her life forever.
Her heart skipped several beats. “Gregory... what is it?”
She searched his face with a heightening premonition of dread as he shook his head then sought and found his brother and the men who had been in on the Alpha rescue mission. With a clipped lift of his chin, he signaled them to follow him.
Her heart plummeted to her stomach as he led her in suspended silence to a small room off the main salon. Langley, Churchill, and Sterling, along with Blake and Josie, who had handed off the twins to Gregory’s parents, followed then shut the door behind them.
“What’s happened?” Panic had become a valid and violent contender for the apprehension that clogged her throat.
After a moment’s pause, Gregory captured her gaze with the same strength as his firm grip on her hands.
“Ivan Striksky is dead.” The softness of his voice was no cushion for the shock of his announcement.
The jolt weakened her knees. With Gregory’s solemn arrival, she’d expected news of Ivan. But this...
She felt suddenly as if she’d fallen into a vacuous tunnel, where sound, shape and texture blended together in a numbing, surreal kaleidoscope of confusion.
“Dead?” she heard someone ask and knew on a peripheral level that someone was her.
A circle of concerned faces closed supportively around her. She heard Josie’s soft voice whisper her name and urge her to sit down as Hank settled a protective hand to her back.
“What...how?”
A hush filled the room as the four men and one woman who were privileged to the specifics of Anna’s true identity and her midnight flight from Obersbourg listened in stunned amazement as Gregory related what details he had managed to find out about Prince Ivan Striksky’s suicide.
Two
She was running... running through maze after maze. Long bony hands grabbed at her. Chased unrelentingly. She was so tired. Her legs wouldn’t support her. She stumbled, searched, desperate to find a light that never came. For a haven that never opened to her. Then she was trapped And the hands. Hundreds of hands grabbed at her...
Heart racing, Anna bolted wildly up in bed, wrestled with tangled sheets. Stumbling blindly to the window, she threw it open, swallowing a scream. Even in the grips of the nightmare, her concern was for William. She didn’t want to frighten him. He’d been through enough.
A reassuring rush of arid, West Texas air hit her full in the face as she braced her palms on the sill. She dragged it in—deep, hungry drafts—and willed herself toward lucidity.
Clinging desperately to the reality that was now, she reached for the presence of mind that would assure her it was over. They were safe.
Even after months of haunting her nights, when the nightmare hit, it still took Anna by surprise. Tonight it was worse than the other nights. Tonight it had grabbed her by the throat. Had her heart slamming in her chest, her breath catching. The hideous grip of it had strangled her as darkness enfolded her in cloying, suffocating isolation.
Calmer now, she opened her eyes, felt a cool breeze feather across her perspiration-drenched skin and sagged in weary relief against the open window frame. Then she made herself recount the last four months in her mind to cement the fact one more time that it was really over.
She and William were safe.
The twins were safe with Blake and Josie.
And Ivan was dead.
Ivan was dead.
She shivered and drew away from the window as the memory of his suicide and the December breeze rustling her damp nightgown combined to pebble her skin with gooseflesh. Dragging a hand through her tousled hair, she sank back down on the edge of the bed, dug her palms into the blanket at her hips and forced several steadying breaths.
It was at times like these that she wished she could drink like some of the rowdy Texans she’d grown to know and appreciate since she’d arrived in Royal. A good, stiff shot of straight-up bourbon might settle the demons that had robbed her of yet another night’s sleep.
“Face them,” she whispered into the darkness.
There is no more fear, she reminded herself staunchly and willed the residual trembling in her hands to steady. No more fear. Only decisions that needed to be made. So many decisions—
A sudden pounding on her door shot her heart straight back to her throat. She vaulted to her feet, whirled toward the sound.
“Anna...Anna are you all right?”
Gregory.
Relief was swift and draining as she rushed toward the door, not wanting to wake William who was sound asleep in the other bedroom. When she reached the small foyer, she threw the deadbolt. With both hands clutching the heavy steel door, she opened it a crack and met the dark concern in a pair of hard blue eyes shaded by the brim of a coal-black Stetson.
Since those first few days when Gregory had settled her into this small apartment, he had never again crossed the threshold. The cool message of that statement had not been lost to her. He had come to her aid when she’d needed him, but he’d made it clear as a Texas sky that he wanted no part of her life. So seeing him here now, at this hour, on the heels of the nightmare, was beyond her comprehension.
“What... what are you doing here?”
His expression was as dark as the night, his eyes as cool as chipped ice. “I was on my way home from the Club when the lights on the alarm panel in my pickup lit up like a Christmas tree.”
She sagged against the door, raked the hair away from her face as understanding dawned. When he’d first shown her the apartment, he’d told her with terse words and military precision about the silent alarm he’d installed on all the windows and doors in the event Ivan found her. The alarm was electronically linked to the Texas Cattleman’s Club that he and the rest of the Alpha team frequented to his home in Pine Valley and his personal vehicles.
“I didn’t think. I...I had a bad dream,” she confessed with reluctance. “I needed some air and threw open the window. I’m sorry. I forgot about the alarm system.”
Greg stared down at the woman who had created enough havoc in his life to mount a small uprising. He’d known when he’d answered her call for help last August that he’d been opening up a Pandora’s box full of problems. He’d been prepared for the investment of time, tactics and diplomacy. He’d had to employ plenty of both, not the least of which had been keeping Anna safe and the Alpha team apprised and on the lookout for Striksky when he’d gotten word that the prince had been on his way to the States a couple of weeks ago.
Then there was the adoption and that business with Marcus Dumond’s attorney when he’d ferreted out the truth of Striksky’s role in Sara’s death. And finally, keeping the prince’s suicide hush-hush and arranging for his body to be shipped quietly back to Asterland’s embassy last week had been as tricky as any litigation he’d ever handled. He was damn glad that was behind him and that explaining Ivan’s demise was the government of Asterland’s problem now.
So, no it wasn’t the time that bothered him. It was the emotional investment he hadn’t bargained for. It was the emotional investment that came with the highest price tag.
To cut his losses, he’d kept his distance from Anna. Hell, as much as possible, he’d kept his distance from Royal, flying to Dallas, or Housto
n and even a couple of trips to Georgia to tidy up some legal ends at the Hunt aircraft plant. Much to his friends’ dismay, he’d also kept his own counsel where Anna was concerned. Seeing her like this though—hovering on the ragged edge of a nightmare, clinging valiantly to a pride that she didn’t realize her vulnerability undercut—the cost of his bid to stay away from her climbed a little higher.
He’d been skirting her like a wolf circling a fire, avoiding all but the most necessary encounters. And even though Ivan was no longer a threat, when her alarm had sounded a few minutes ago, his heart had pumped into overdrive. He’d rammed the gas pedal on his truck to the floor and flown across town to get to her.
He could see now that she was safe. She was safe, but she was far from all right. Her green eyes were wild with residual fear. He had little doubt that if she could manage to pry her fingers off the door, they’d be trembling like leaves in a windstorm.
He’d seen her like this before—on the night the Alpha team had stolen her out of Obersbourg, then a week ago when he’d broken the news that Striksky was dead. He hadn’t been able to turn his back on her then. As much as his better judgment warned him against it, he couldn’t do it now, not and live with himself—a characteristic that may yet prove to be his fatal flaw where Anna was concerned:
Steeling himself against the urge to fold her into his arms and hold her until her trembling stopped or until he initiated something they’d both be sorry about later, he very gently pried the slim fingers that had gone white off the door. Knowing he’d regret it, he opened it wide enough to accommodate his shoulders and slipped inside.
After shutting the door behind him and disarming the alarm panel, he turned back to her. “You got any of that sissy mint tea you managed to get Harriet hooked on?”
Her lips trembled only slightly as she gave him the small smile he’d been hoping for.