“I hate you had to see that. Even more that you had to do the examination.”
“We have special physics at home for this task. Here, it will fall to all of us at one time or another. It’s part of the job, sadly.”
“You should go home, Adria.”
She blinked. Was he so exhausted he didn’t know where they were? “I am home, Beck.”
“I meant your home on Primaria.”
“What? Why?”
“You have to ask after treating victims in a mine explosion only a few weeks ago and, now, three dead with all the pieces of the puzzle not lining up. It’s not safe here.”
“I have guards looking out for me, and I have you.”
“That’s not enough with so many unexplained incidents.”
“You think they’re connected?”
“I don’t know, and therein lies the problem.”
“I’m needed here, Beck. Besides, this is my job. I can’t just leave.”
He resumed pacing. “I’ll talk to Tarus and make sure you have a guard morning and night.”
“Remus already mentioned that when he walked me home. Don’t worry about me, Beck. I’m protected.”
He crossed to her. His fingers encircled her upper arms, and he pulled her up on her toes. “I can’t help but worry. How many times have I found you out without protection?”
“Once. The other times I was with you.”
“I don’t like this, Adria. If something happened to you...”
She wanted to scream and demand he finish his thought, but she couldn’t even if she was brave enough because Beck’s mouth had descended on hers.
The kiss abruptly ended when he took a step back. She could feel the heat of his gaze when it dipped down her front lingering on the places where the thin material clung to her damp skin. Beneath his blatant appraisal, her nipples that had peaked at the first touch of his lips stood up even more.
“You’re wet,” he observed hoarsely.
“You caught me in the tub,” she returned, in a throaty voice that contained a definite rasp.
When his eyes rose to hers, the smoldering desire in the blue depths made her shiver. As did his hungry lips on hers when he hauled her up against him and kissed her breathless.
Minutes later, when the door closed behind him, she pressed her forehead against the cool metal panel. With her eyes shut tight and her body trembling with need, she cursed his self-control and his damn communicator that had buzzed, alerting him to yet another problem, and pulled him away from her arms when her welcoming, warm bed—and body—were there for the taking.
She appropriated one of her brother’s favorite curses. “Faex!”
It didn’t make her feel better.
THE NEXT MORNING, WHILE Beck stood in the construction yard going over heavy equipment utilization for phases 2 and 3 with a group of his foremen, one of them let out a long, low whistle.
“That’s one ticked-off woman heading our way. Whoever pissed in her Wheaties, I’d run for the hills if I was you.”
The group turned as one, but no one ran. When Beck saw the fury burning in her dark-green eyes–yes, green, her temper had obliterated every speck of blue–he almost regretted not doing so himself. Instead, he faced her straight on. He’d been expecting her, after all.
“You had no right,” she declared without preamble as she passed through the metal gates, flung wide as was routine at this time of day.
His men moved aside, the traitors, leaving her a clear path to his side. When she got close enough, she poked a finger in his chest.
“I cannot believe you went to Ellar and Trask. I thought we were friends,” she hissed as she jabbed him again. “Boy, was I wrong! A friend doesn’t stab another friend in the back.”
“Adria, stop this, now,” her guard called as he followed her into the yard. He was slightly winded as though he’d been running. “You have orders. This will have to wait.”
“Did you hear that, Beck? I have orders,” she repeated scathingly, the heat of her anger enough to singe the air. His men retreated another pace. “They’re sending me home, thanks to you. Ellar claims I need retraining in emergency procedures, that my behavior was sheer recklessness. Sound familiar? If not, I’ll remind you that those were your precise words to me two days ago.” She punctuated her last three words with three hard jabs to his sternum. “And my brother sent a message. He wants me home, too, where he can keep me safe while they figure out what’s behind the strange occurrences here. It’s funny, until I met you, no one had a problem with me training here.”
“Things have changed, darlin’. Three people are dead.”
“Don’t call me that,” she snapped shrilly.
“Adria, we’ve had a number of incidents that cannot be explained. Ellar and Trask are worried about you and are being cautious.”
“Just Ellar and Trask?” she demanded, a wounded look shadowing her stunning eyes. “Tell me one thing, Beck. Why did you do this? Did you change your mind about us after...?” For the first time, she seemed to take note of the other men observing their argument and lowered her voice. “If so, all you had to do was say so, not single-handedly sabotage my career.”
“It’s not as extreme as that. It’s just delayed for a short while.”
“Delayed,” she repeated, bitterness in her usually mellow tone. “Is that all?” She poked him in the yet chest again. “Spoken like a man who doesn’t know what it’s like to work toward something for years, to be told it’s impossible, to have one obstacle thrown into your path after another, and resolve to make it happen anyway, but when it’s finally within reach, to have it snatched from your grasp.”
He wasn’t sure whether she referred to her sidelined career or the other night when she’d told him how much she wanted him and asked him to end her innocence. He thought she might continue, and clue him in, but Remus chose that moment to interrupt.
“Adria, I’m sure Beck didn’t—”
“Didn’t what?” she demanded as she rounded on her guard. “Plot with Ellar to send me home because I can’t be trusted to take care of myself? Or, put him up to calling Trask, to get him on board with the plan? I’m sure he did, Remus, because I saw him discussing it with Ellar when the bodies were brought in. There isn’t any question who is to blame.”
She whirled to face him once more. Rather than poking him again, she retreated a step, and then another, distancing herself from him more than physically. “I won’t forgive you for this. I can’t. Stay out of my life, Kincaid. Friends like you I don’t need.”
More stunning in the height of her rage than he’d ever seen her, she stormed toward the gate, uttering something that sounded like unevolved brulla, and didn’t look back when she passed through it.
Remus glanced at him, clearly torn between following his charge and explaining. “My apologies, Kincaid. I tried to tell her, but in her current state, she wouldn’t listen. Tarus alerted General Trask within minutes of discovering the bodies. He ordered her home on the next supply ship, which is due in three days, and for me and my brother not to let her out of our sight until she’s on it. It was well before Ellar placed his call. Once she’s calm, I’ll make it clear–”
“No, don’t,” Beck insisted. “If she must blame someone, better me than her superior who she can’t tick off if she ever plans to graduate or her brother who she’s going home to. In this situation, I’m expendable.”
“It didn’t appear that way to me. I know Adria. She can be emotional, but only with those who mean something to her.”
If that were true, maybe he could win her forgiveness after this was over. His gaze shifted to the street where he could still make it out the rigid set of her shoulders and see the agitated swish of her dark ponytail against her white blouse.
“Once the mysteries of the deaths and the explosion are solved, and we’re farther along as a colony, she can return and be safe here. I’ll mend fences when the time comes.”
Remus looked skeptical.
“I hope you’re right, for your sake. Adria is one of the most intelligent females I know, but she is tenacious when it comes to defending a loved one or a friend, and can hold on to resentment when she feels someone is disloyal. I can’t imagine how stubborn she will be when she feels betrayed herself.”
He knew that all too well after witnessing firsthand how she’d treated Lana who she thought guilty of cruelly betraying her brother.
“I need to go after her before she bites Ellar’s head off and does more damage than she has here,” her guard added, his lengthy strides eating up ground in a pace that would quickly overtake her.
Beck recalled the deeply wounded expression on Adria’s lovely face and doubted that was possible.
Chapter Eight
Ariad, Primarian Capital City, six weeks later...
After lectures had concluded for the day—ones she’d almost fallen asleep in because she had, after all, heard them before—Adria headed home. She almost missed the surly warriors who had been her shadows for so long. Instead, she meandered through town alone. This was Ariad, where the streets were crowded with people, many of whom she knew. The rest knew her brother. Several acquaintances stopped her for a brief word, but, despite the conversation and the buzz of activity, she felt isolated, and lonely.
When she had dinner with Trask twice a week, as was their routine, she felt him watching her with concern. He called her mopey and, more than once, demanded to know what had caused her sudden change in behavior. Usually lively, talkative, and easy to laugh, she wasn’t any of those things anymore.
Lana wasn’t fooled by her excuses of being focused on her studies and had cornered her just the other day—in the literal sense.
She had stopped by after class, ostensibly to borrow a book or two from Trask’s extensive library. The truth was, she couldn’t bear to go home and face the silence. So, she’d curled up in one of his wide, high-backed chairs with a tome that held no interest for her but was better than the solitary alternative. Instead of opening the book, she gazed out the window, her thoughts drifting to a world, and a man, light-years away.
“My, how the tables have turned in such a short time.”
Though startled, she didn’t have the energy to show it and simply rolled her head to the side to look up at her brother’s mate. With Adria’s mind filled with Terra Nova and Beck, Lana had entered the room and come to stand beside her chair without her knowing.
“You look like someone shot your dog,” she observed bluntly.
“I don’t have a clue what you’re referring to.”
“No, it’s worse,” Lana replied as though she hadn’t spoken. “It’s like your heart is shattered into a million pieces. I know because you look and act the same way I did two months ago, and every day for a solid year before Trask brought me home.”
“You’re imagining things. I was simply engrossed in my book.”
She grunted in disbelief. “You haven’t even opened it.”
“I was reflecting on an interesting plot twist in the story.”
She snatched it out of her hands, stared at her pointedly as she turned it right side up then read the title on the spine. “Warrior Ethos and Combat Code.” Her blonde brows, a stark but stunning contrast to the black highlights in her fair hair, arched as she stared at her pointedly. “Now, pull my other leg.”
Automatically, Adria’s eyes dropped to the light wispy skirt that covered both legs.
Lana huffed a frustrated breath. “It’s an Earth expression that suggests I don’t believe for one minute you’re engrossed in one of Trask’s war stratagems.”
She shrugged and, instead of arguing, went back to staring out the window. Adria felt more than saw Lana crouch by her chair, graceful despite her pregnancy. Only two months along with Trask’s child, with her diminutive height, she was already showing. Adria was ecstatic for her brother and his mate, but also envious of the love they shared and the child that love had created.
“You’ve lost your spark since you’ve come home, not to mention dropping several pounds, and you’re obviously not sleeping. Even with your skin tone, the dark circles under your eyes are visible. What gives, honey?”
“I’m simply bored out of my mind from repeating coursework I’ve already passed. With perfects scores, I might add.”
“I’ll have to call BS on that one. I recognize the symptoms of heartache when I see them.”
She sighed, really not in the mood for this or anything really. “I’m fine, Lana.”
“No, you’re not, and I don’t have to guess what, or who, is behind it. You haven’t spoken of Beck since the day you came home. Calling him a brulla was telling.” She placed her hand on hers and squeezed. “He can be a stubborn jackass sometimes—he’s human and a male, so that’s going to happen—but he’s a decent, honorable man. What did he do to tick you off? You never did say.”
“It’s not important.”
“You could have fooled me with the way you came storming in here ranting about him.”
She’d had to let it go when Adria held her tongue, as stubborn as Lana was while keeping her infertility a secret from Trask for over a year. It turned out not to be true, thank the Maker. The same couldn’t be said in her case, or that of thousands of other Primarian females who would never experience the joys of motherhood Lana would.
Not having the energy, or desire, to continue the rest of the way home, she veered off the sidewalk into the park to sit in the shade of a blue aspen in full bloom. With the sun shining, a light breeze blowing, and the temperature neither too hot nor too cool, it was by far a better climate than what she’d left behind on Terra Nova.
Except for the day of the incident. It was hard to believe she’d gone from lying idly beneath a tree on a pleasant day one minute—the only pleasant day she could recall from her entire time in the colony—to making a life-or-death decision the next that would turn her very regimented, planned-to-the-nth degree life on its ear.
She gave a short, derisive laugh because, in reality, that life had been turned on its ear the day, if not the moment, she’d met Beck Kincaid.
Strains of a band warming up drew her eyes to the covered stage in the middle of the park. Her heart leapt the tiniest bit. As a child, she’d always enjoyed a concert in the park. With her interest sparked for the first time in weeks, she left her bench and moved closer. A crowd had gathered, but there were still empty seats.
As she approached a vacant section three rows in, a tall man down front caught her eye, notably so the familiar golden glints in his sandy-brown hair. His head was bent as he spoke to a fair-haired woman seated beside him. From her size and creamy complexion, Adria could tell she was human. Her smile flashed brightly when she laughed up at Beck, and she had to acknowledge she was also very pretty.
What was he doing here? And who was she?
She stopped, dropping down on the last bench in the rows surrounding the stage to observe them without being noticed. An act of self-torture, certainly, because her heart twisted when he returned the woman’s smile. It wrenched painfully when she laid her hand lightly on his cheek. Even worse, it seemed to lurch to a halt when he leaned in and kissed her temple.
Jealousy ripped through her. Beck hadn’t wasted any time pining for her.
But to be close to someone new so quickly? Perhaps he had known her on Earth?
Though she was devastated, she had to admit they looked good together, and happy.
“Adria!”
She heard her name, but didn’t turn, too engrossed in watching Beck with his woman. A wealth of questions whirled in her head. What happened to his insistence he didn’t want another relationship? Surely, he wouldn’t travel this far for a mere acquaintance—or kiss her with a familiarity that said he’d done it before, and often. Was she the reason he’d rebuffed Adria’s initial advances–such as they were?
“Adria.” The voice was closer, and louder, and still she didn’t turn. But Beck did. He glanced both ways then shifted in
his seat to look behind him. He spotted her quickly and stood at the same time she did. But when he raised his hand, a smile curving his lips, she whirled to leave.
Now, the voice calling her name was deeply resonant. It sent tingles of awareness to intimate places, but also prompted her to move more quickly down the row.
“That’s Beck Kincaid, isn’t it? It’s rude to just ignore him.”
When Adria looked up, she skidded to a halt. Eryn stood in front of her. Nearly as tall as her, the auburn-haired beauty held a dark-haired green-eyed baby girl on her hip. She also blocked her way out of the park. Even more so because the prima was right beside her. Not nearly as tall, but just as beautiful, Eva held her infant son, Kellan, in her arms.
Needing to get away from everything she couldn’t have—babies, Beck, true happiness—she spun and took off in the opposite direction.
“Adria, wait.”
She realized her mistake when the husky plea came from nearby. This path would lead her to Beck who was dodging concert goers to reach her. But she couldn’t face him not with the woman he preferred at his side. It would be impossible to put on a brave face and pretend it didn’t matter. Not now, and probably, not ever.
No matter the spectacle she created, she raked her skirts up to her knees and climbed over the seats behind her. Next, she dashed down the row, practically straddling audience members already seated and rudely bumping into several who stood waiting for the music to begin.
“What the heck is wrong with her?” she heard Eryn exclaim.
“I don’t know,” Eva replied, “But she’s sure not acting like herself, as Lana mentioned.”
They had been talking about her. Wasn’t that just great? And here she thought she was putting on a brave face to cover her misery.
Chalk up another failure on her part.
THE NEXT DAY, SHE DIDN’T bother going to class at all. Her reward for melancholy and avoidance, a visit from her big brother. Trask found her lying on the couch in the solarium, their mother’s favorite room. Adria had learned this secondhand, like everything she knew about her mother, since she was a toddler when she’d died.
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