A Perfect Storm

by Dane, Cameron

  Just as Sophie smiled to herself, a soft knock sounded at her door. After grabbing the robe off the foot of the bed and slipping into it, Sophie opened the door a crack. Emma stood on the other side with a coat, boots, and a few other pieces of clothing draped over her arm.

  Sophie pulled the door open the rest of the way. “Good morning.” One more glance back at the window, then to Emma’s arm, and she added, “I take it with the snow outside and the extra clothing in your hands, I’m going to be at Ravenstoke for a while.”

  “After communicating with some people on the mainland, Magnus relayed that rescue says getting you off this island is low on their to-do list. He and Lucien now believe you’ll be here at least a week.” Emma thrust her clothes-laden arm out to Sophie. “I altered a few more pieces of mine and Jade’s clothes for you last evening. You and I are almost the same shoe size, so I think with an extra layer of socks, the boots should fit. You should be all set now, no matter how the weather or temperature turns.”

  “You didn’t have to do this, Emma. Jade either.” Sophie clutched the clothing to her chest, choked up by this woman’s generous spirit. “I could have rolled up pant legs or used belts. You shouldn’t have spent your evening sewing for me.”

  “We both have extra to spare, and I make alterations and mend stuff enough that I can do it quickly.” Reaching out, Emma fingered the deep green pea coat. “I brought the coat because I thought you might like to join us outside after breakfast. Owen is wired and ready to go play in the snow. It’ll probably melt before the day is over, so he can’t bear to wait.” With a shrug and a sweet smile, Emma added, “I thought you might enjoy having some fun for a few hours.”

  “I definitely would.” Sophie smiled back. “Thank you for the invite.”

  “Okay.” Emma stepped back into the hall. “There’s plenty of food in the kitchen, and we’ll see you out back soon.”

  Sophie grasped Emma’s arm. Her face heated ridiculously, but she asked, “Has Mr. Cabot agreed to play outside too?”

  “Lucien and Magnus are working already,” Emma replied.

  Sophie slumped. “Oh.”

  The smooth skin between Emma’s brows furrowed. “Does that mean you’d rather get straight to work too?”

  Just as fast as her shoulders had dropped, Sophie picked herself back up. “Absolutely not. I look forward to getting out in the fresh air and snow.” She laid the coat and boots on a chair by the door and began sorting through the other garments. Mostly skirts and tops—clearly Emma’s wardrobe preference—but she’d added a pair of jeans too. “I will be there ready to play hard.”

  “Excellent!” Emma came to life in a way that made her seem like a teenage girl. “Owen will be so happy.” She backed down the hall, waving at Sophie. “Bye.”

  Leaning her shoulder against the doorjamb, Sophie grinned at Emma retreating down the hall. “See you soon.”

  Sophie stayed where she was for a good minute after Emma disappeared, and she let herself bask in the woman’s open nature and joy. As much as the wind had gone out of Sophie’s sail the moment she’d learned Lucien would not take time out of his schedule to play with Owen, she bounced back and accepted that this entire week did not have to revolve around the man. For all that she did not understand about the relationship between Lucien and his staff, those same mysterious employees all seemed like very nice people. And Sophie didn’t have any friends who had children yet, so getting to spend some time having fun with Owen struck at a nice place in her breast. She could indulge her inner kid for a few hours and work later.

  Feeling much lighter than she had just a few minutes ago, Sophie grabbed up a shirt and the pair of jeans before heading to the bathroom to clean up.

  “You, Mr. Cabot,” Sophie sing-songed as she peeled off her robe, “will just have to wait for later.”

  * * * *

  Lucien stared at the frozen image on his computer screen, aroused as hell just looking at the woman’s face, but growled as the laughter from the real thing lifted up to him through the open window in his study. He glared in the direction of the titillating yet innocent sound and then narrowed his stare even more at the shit-kicking smile on his assistant’s face.

  Fucker knows he pushed my last button when he opened the window too. “Are you planning to do any work this morning, asshole?” he asked Magnus. “Or are you going to waste my money and yours doing nothing but staring at a snowball fight?”

  “Right now they’re making angels,” Magnus informed Lucien as he shot him the finger. “You should come take a look at them. I know you’re doing some stoic shit thing where you’re forcing yourself away from Sophie, but Owen is down there having a hell of a lot of fun too. I know you hear him laughing. Come see him, at least.” His hip resting on the windowsill, Magnus glanced back at Lucien, his pale eyes piercing in a way that nailed Lucien in the gut. “Don’t you want to be included in at least a small part of his pleasure?”

  Guilt sat like acid in Lucien’s belly, working a hole through the lining in a way that would surely leave him with an ulcer. That same sensation pushed him out of his chair and to the window, but the steps didn’t come easy. Twin forces of insurmountable love and crushing pain consumed him whenever he looked at the boy. Christ. His hand went to his chest to control the constriction. Why can’t anything be easy anymore?

  As Lucien approached the window, Magnus pushed to one side, giving him space. Down below, in the large area behind the house, four adults and one child waved their arms and legs in repeated arcs through the snow, creating angel shapes in the white stuff. Other sets already existed on the other side of a pair of small snowmen, so this was clearly not their first attempt at the task.

  Owen and Sophie lay head to head, and every time she swung her arms upward, she stamped her angel wings into his, and Owen laughed and warned her out of his space. Sophie teased and told Owen it meant their angels were holding hands, and that now he had to be her boyfriend and they would have to go to school dances together. Owen shouted “No way! Gross!” and shot to his feet. Before Lucien could shout a warning to Sophie from above, the boy swiped up a wad of snow and dumped it in Sophie’s face. Sophie lay there sputtering—for about a second. Then she jumped up with a ball of snow in her hand, shouted, “You’ll get a face full too, kid!” and chased after Owen, to the boy’s obvious giggling delight. Cale, Emma, and Jade hopped up as well and began shouting whose side they would be on as they made snowballs of their own.

  Watching the scene, and in particular Sophie with Owen, Lucien unsuccessfully fought the smile pulling at his lips. The sight also twisted his heart with the deepest acute hurt. Sophie screamed as Owen got her in the face again, the sound infectious to Lucien in a much different, deeper, manner than the sexual desire she so easily tugged out of him. Lucien pulled away from the window, aching for a different picture with additional people, ones he knew could never be a part of his life again.

  After walking carefully across the room, Lucien dropped back into his seat. “Let’s get back to work.”

  Magnus remained standing at the window. “Why don’t you give yourself a break? Just for a little while.” Empathy darkened Magnus’s stare to deep violet. “Go down there and join in the fun.”

  “She’s not here for fun.” Lucien momentarily squeezed his eyes shut as peals of Sophie’s laughter drifted into the study. “Neither am I.”

  “Well, I’m taking a break,” Magnus declared as he moved across the study. “You stay here and scrooge it up all you want, but I’m going to go make a snowball and throw it at someone while we still have snow on the ground.” Pausing at the door, Magnus gripped the wood and studied Lucien with a hard stare. “Aside from relaxing for just a little while, you might also think about the inroads you could make with Sophie if you show her you know how to do more than glower.” He thumped the wood with his hand and said, “See you after lunch.”

  Lucien sat there gripping the arms of his chair, all the while silently calling Magnus every foul
name known to man. At the same time, the joyous shrieking in all different kinds of voices assaulted him from the window. Those voices coiled through his body, calling him to give up his game for a little while and just have some fun.

  But maybe he didn’t have to entirely let go of his plans for Sophie. As Magnus had pointed out with such irritating insight, letting Sophie see another side of him could benefit him when he next pushed her to a place that would challenge her sexual comfort. If she saw a lighter side of him, her trust would come that much easier. Yeah. Lucien got up, strode out of his study and down the hall, feeling a hell of a lot better now. This could work tremendously to my benefit.

  He traipsed down the stairs, grabbed his coat, and came astride Magnus in the solarium that opened to the back of the house. Magnus grinned, and his fucking gaze downright twinkled. The man opened his mouth, but Lucien spoke over him, muttering, “Shut it.” Lucien still had plenty of murderous looks to spare and shot one at his dearest, most annoying friend. “Don’t you goddamn speak one gloating word.”

  Magnus chuckled instead. The sound grew louder with every step they took. By the time Magnus shoved open the glass door, his guffaws thundered across the sky. Everyone outside spun in their direction and then froze in place. Shit. Sophie stared at them from a dozen feet away, and Owen grinned so big it looked like he might split his face open. Goddamn. Lucien’s heart pounded much too fast. He fucking couldn’t believe it, but he didn’t know what to do next.

  Sophie could not believe her eyes. Her throat went dry at the austere, elegantly dangerous sight of Lucien, but she did not dare trust her vision to accurately send information to her brain that Lucien had joined them outside. Nothing she’d seen in him so far indicated anything other than a man who enjoyed a certain kind of play—fun that involved mind games and adult conversations where simple sentences had multiple meanings. From what Sophie had observed in Lucien to this point, she hadn’t thought him capable of innocent, simple playing. Everything he did appeared to serve a dual purpose, with both avenues benefitting him.

  And God, none of that even took into account that this was the first time they’d come face-to-face since doing what she’d done for him at her window last night. Ho boy. I still feel him watching me. Sophie trembled. Lucien looked right at her; sparks of deep topaz warmed his penetrating stare, and Sophie’s belly fluttered. No doubt existed in Sophie’s mind that Lucien mentally stripped her out of her many layers of clothing where she stood. In his mind, he obviously had put her back in her bedroom, riding that dildo to screaming release. Her cheeks burned with the shared memory, but her sex throbbed much deeper inside, overriding the embarrassment.

  With every drawn-out second he stared, Lucien seemed to somehow chisel his face even more solidly with lines of unforgiving granite, while his gaze continued to burn. He liked what I did. It turned him on. As soon as that thought hit Sophie, another piled right on top of it. But he doesn’t like that it did.

  Only a few seconds had passed since the men had stepped outside, but it appeared as if Lucien had locked himself in place. Sophie held her breath, wondering if, when he released the rigor holding him still, he would spin around and go back inside. Just then, an enormous snowball pelted Lucien right in the face. Owen. The boy stood a handful of steps away, his green eyes wide, his lower lip sucked between his teeth, sweating out his fate.

  The ball had broken apart on contact; icy clumps of snow rolled down Lucien’s face and into the neckline of his wool coat. He scooped up a particularly large piece of slush clinging to his collar and flicked it onto the ground. His gaze then flashed, and a wicked smile—but one so very obviously, sweetly fake it stopped Sophie’s heart—appeared. Lucien shouted, “You will feel my revenge!” then charged across the space between himself and Owen. He swiped the boy off the ground and tossed Owen over his shoulder, to screeches of laughter from the kid, and flung them both into a pile of snow Cale had fashioned for the boy. Lucien twisted to take the full brunt of the fall but quickly fake-wrestled Owen into the snow. He swooped piles and piles of fluffy white flakes onto Owen, while dramatically vowing to bury him at the bottom of the mound.

  In between Owen shouting “Mommy! Mommy! Help!” the kid howled with laughter and attacked Lucien with equal washes of snow. Nearly overshadowed by the high-pitched tones from Owen, another deeper sound clawed through Sophie’s heart: Lucien’s laughter; something hearty and from his soul. Something genuine and real. It was beyond silly, but Sophie’s throat started to constrict where she stood.

  As Emma, Jade, and Cale threw themselves into the splendid fray, Sophie thought she might cry. She ducked her head down just as Magnus joined her. He murmured, “It’s a beautiful thing to see, isn’t it?”

  Without asking of whom or what he spoke, Sophie knew this big, intimidating man spoke with such gentleness about Lucien laughing and smiling. “It’s like… I don’t know… It’s stupid, but my heart is hurting inside with the joy he’s experiencing. He doesn’t do this enough, does he?” Her attention still riveted to Lucien, Sophie smiled, yet it almost felt sad as she watched Lucien gently toss Owen into the pile of snow again. “I don’t get the feeling he puts a lot of stock in simply being carefree and happy, and that today I’m witnessing something very rare for him.”

  “Very astute,” Magnus shared. She glanced up just in time to see him raise his brow at her. “You are seeing something of an anomaly.”

  “But why?”

  “Now for that”—Magnus shifted and began walking backward, still facing her—“you’ll have to find a way to gain Lucien’s trust and let him tell you himself.”

  More mysteries. Sophie growled and shot Magnus a surly look.

  Magnus barked with laughter, and it transformed his intimidating face. “That almost made you look and sound just like him.”

  “Stop insulting me”—Sophie scooped up a handful of snow and charged Magnus—“or I’ll make you pay with a face full of snow!” Winding up, she hurled her snowball straight at the big man.

  Magnus ducked just before the snowball reached him, and the solid wad of snow slammed squarely into Lucien’s back. Lucien spun and zeroed in on her. The wickedness of that smile drilled into her, making Sophie grin and shiver. She swiped up another handful of snow, screaming with the same kind of joy she’d shown with Owen, just as Lucien declared his revenge and flung a giant snowball at her.

  Oh. It. Was. On.

  * * * *

  Tears spilled down Sophie’s frozen cheeks, yet she rolled deeper into the now mushy snow anyway. “I give! I give! I give!” Breathless, exhausted from laughing, she pushed up her hands in surrender so Owen would stop tickling her. “You’re the winning king, and Lucien is your most stalwart knight.” She wiped her eyes and sucked in great gulps of breath. “I concede our castle to you.”

  “Hey!” From his position lying on the ground, Magnus shouted while shooting Sophie the stink eye. “You can’t give up our territory without a bigger fight.”

  Owen leaped over other strewn bodies to Magnus. “You cannot speak”—he sliced his plastic sword across Magnus’s neck—“or I will have my knight kill you dead again!”

  Magnus jerked dramatically, held his neck, and gurgled once more, as he’d done minutes back when Lucien had slain him the first time. All of the other “dead” laughed along with Owen. Sophie soaked in the boy’s happiness, and she absorbed Lucien’s too. He seemed a completely different man during these two hours in which he’d devoted all of his attention to playing and making Owen the center of his world. His obvious love for the boy became so instantly clear that Sophie had begun to wonder if maybe Lucien really was the child’s father. Except the boy didn’t call him Dad. Yet Sophie didn’t see how Lucien could love Owen any more if he was the kid’s father. Then again, all of these adults adored and doted on Owen. Cale had shown equal fatherly attention earlier in the day, and Magnus had behaved similarly once he’d joined them. It went without saying that Emma loved him as a mother would, but so did Jad
e. If Owen didn’t so resemble Emma, and if he hadn’t told her outright that she was his mom, Sophie would be hard-pressed to figure out to whom he belonged.

  Her body suddenly tingled all over. Sophie jerked her focus up to find Lucien studying her.

  “You look so serious all of a sudden, Miss Emerson,” Lucien said, slipping back into that too-in-control tone. “Whatever are you thinking?”

  His slide back into that calculating, twinkling stare thudded Sophie down to earth. “I was wondering how a queen without a castle survives.” With an exaggerated grimace, she pushed lightness into her tone. “Particularly when every square inch of her clothing is soggy from playing in the snow.”

  “I have pull with the king. If you play your cards right”—Lucien extended his hand, and the softly sensual teasing once again took over his voice—“I can probably get you a warm room and bed in our kingdom.”

  Two can play this game. Somehow managing to hide the trembling in her fingers, Sophie slipped her hand into Lucien’s. “As a member of royal society, I have to maintain a semblance of dignity.” Lucien’s heat radiated through their handhold, and the warmth snaked up Sophie’s arm. Not looking away from him, she whispered, feeling a bit breathless again, “If I allow you to assist me, can I count on you to be discreet?”

  “My dear Miss Emerson.” Lucien tugged her to her feet and right into his arms. His amber gaze mocked in a way that sent a deeper tremor through Sophie to her core. “You should never be so foolish as to count on my discretion.”

  Sucking in a shallow breath, Sophie made a weak attempt to pull away from Lucien.