by Jane Kindred
“Protein and comfort,” he said to me as he paid for them.
I took the cinnamon roll. “Thank you for not getting me a salad after seeing me naked.”
Ares laughed and then frowned in disapproval. “I see I’m going to have to seduce you again after all, once your friend is on the mend. Just on principle.”
* * * * *
When we returned to the waiting room, Aristos informed us that they’d moved Cole at last to the ICU. I wanted to see him, but the nurse at the station in the ICU shook her head.
“I’m sorry. Visiting hours are over.”
I turned to Ares. “I can sleep in the waiting room so I’ll be here when he wakes up tomorrow. You don’t need to stay.”
The nurse interrupted. “I’m sorry, miss, but it’s very unlikely Mr. Milner will wake up in the morning. He’s in a coma.” She said it with the same disinterest as “visiting hours are over”, but her compassion apparently kicked in at the look on my face. “The best thing for you to do right now is to go home and get some rest, hon. You can come back tomorrow and check in on him. He’s not going anywhere, and he’s in good hands with Dr. Jahagirdar.”
I nodded dully and Ares took my arm, thanking the nurse, and led me out.
* * * * *
I was numb as we drove back through the dark shadows of redwoods toward the Strand. Aristos was at the wheel, while Ares sat behind me in the backseat. “I really appreciate you coming all the way out here,” I said. “You didn’t have to. We hardly know each other.”
“You’re family,” said Aristos. “I mean the greater family, of course, not blood relations. But there aren’t many of us Meliae, and we look out for one another.”
“Meliae. Aravella used that word. I thought you were dryads. Or…hamadryads.”
“Meliae is the Greek name of our race,” said Ares. “In mythology, they were dryads born of the blood of Ouranos’s castration by Kronos, when it fell upon and impregnated the Earth. Their trees were ash, as ours are. Or were—the Strands now occupy the redwoods here, thanks to Justus’s ambitious exodus from his homeland.”
I remembered something Lukas had said. “I thought we couldn’t travel very far from our trees. How is it you can travel all the way from Greece?”
“The rådande are of a slightly different breed. The Scandinavian species of the genus, if you will.” Ares laced his arms over the seat back. “Our family has no such restriction to our Grove, though it can be uncomfortable to stay away for long periods of time. Living here was challenging for Aravella.”
“Why did she do it? Stay here, I mean? Especially after Lukas…” I swallowed, glancing at Aristos’s profile, his mouth tight as he stared straight ahead.
“Koste,” said Ares firmly. “The agreement forbade her from taking him away from the Strand Grove. And there was always speculation as to whether he would suffer as one of the rådande or have the freedom of movement that our family has. It’s not something one wants to test.”
I could see his point. “But Lukas said she was looking for a loophole.”
“She explored possibilities, yes. She hoped to be able to transplant Koste’s tree, to take it with her to our Grove. While he’s still young, it would be less dangerous. The sapling would take to the soil better than an established tree, such as those that Justus and Ulla brought with them from Halmstadt.”
I was quiet for a moment, thinking about Konstantin, and danger. Who else besides Lukas might have been driving the silver Fiat? And had the driver really meant to run him down?
“The accident today was a hit-and-run,” I said. “I think Konstantin may have been the target.”
Ares leaned forward sharply. “Who would want to hurt the boy? Why?”
“I don’t know. Aravella told me she was afraid for him. She believed someone had pushed him down the lighthouse stairs. I thought she was being overprotective, but now…” I didn’t want to speculate that it could be Lukas. He’d expressed alarm, after all, that Karolina was apparently giving Konstantin sleeping pills. If he was behind the attempts to harm his own child, he wouldn’t have admitted to believing he’d been drugged by her himself years ago. Unless he was trying to throw me off his trail by implicating Karolina.
“He stands to inherit the Strand,” Ares mused. “Although perhaps not now.” It came back to me again. A feathering of unease traced up my spine. I seemed to be the only one who stood to gain if Aravella and Konstantin were out of the way. I, and Lukas.
We’d arrived back at the manor. I thanked them both again as Aristos pulled into the drive.
“Think nothing of it,” said Ares. He got out to open my door for me and steadied me when I was a bit wobbly as I stood.
Aristos nodded to me. “I hope you have good news in the morning about your friend.”
“Thanks,” I said. “He asked if you were available,” I remembered with a yawn. Aristos’s eyebrows rose, and I blushed. “Sorry, I don’t know why I said that. I guess I do need to get some sleep.”
Unexpectedly, Aristos smiled. “No, I’m flattered. I’m not available,” he added firmly. “But I’m flattered.”
“You shouldn’t sleep alone,” said Ares as we headed into the house. I eyed him with disbelief, and he shook his head. “There’s nothing prurient about that. I’m worried about you.” He walked me to my room and lingered in the doorway. “I think I should stay with you.”
“Ares—”
“Don’t argue, Millie.” He stepped in and closed the door. “I’m going to keep my clothes on. I’m not going to touch you at all, except if you need holding while you sleep. You’re welcome to keep your clothes on as well. But you are not sleeping alone.”
I was too tired to argue. And sleeping in his arms suddenly sounded like just what I needed. Ares stretched out on the bed, his long, lean, muscular body forming a solid bolster of support when I lay down, like a sandbag wall against a stormy pier. I wasn’t used to feeling protected or looked out for. Ares might be everything I normally detested in men—self-assured arrogance and entitlement, focused on conquest, paternalistic toward women when he wasn’t using his charm to get what he wanted from one—but he managed to use those qualities with a grace and skill that completely sucked me into his game and made me not really care that I was falling for it.
* * * * *
When I woke in the morning, Ares’s arms were wrapped around me. Even as I snuggled against him, I felt guilty for indulging in the luxury of being taken care of. My whole life I’d spent caring for myself—both physically and emotionally. I’d learned early on that no one else was going to, that people would only let me down, and that a woman who relied on a man for comfort and protection was a fool brainwashed by the patriarchy who would only find herself a prisoner of it sooner or later. But it felt damned good to lie here in that illusion for the moment. Why shouldn’t Ares protect me if someone here meant me harm? Why shouldn’t I let him?
The illusion fizzled out with the sound of a knock and a voice from the other side of my door. “Millie?” Lukas cracked open the door and peered around it. The look of concern on his face swiftly turned to fury. “Are you fucking kidding me?” He hissed the words as he stepped inside and swiftly shut the door. “Right across the hall from my child?” He was addressing Ares. “Your sister’s child!”
Ares drew me closer into the comfortable snare of his arms. “Why would he mind? Does he believe there’s something going on between you and Millie? So soon after Aravella’s death?”
Lukas advanced on Ares, and I sat up and pulled away from Ares’s arms, swinging my feet over the side of the bed to confront Lukas myself, but the room swam around me, and I gripped the edge of the mattress.
Ares rose up on his elbow and put a hand on my shoulder to steady me. “Slowly, Millie. Are you all right?”
Lukas paused. “Why wouldn’t she be all right?”
“Sh
e has a concussion. That’s why I stayed with her.”
“Stop talking about me,” I snapped, and then clutched my forehead against a blinding wave of pain.
An anxious call from Konstantin came from across the hallway. “Pappa?”
Ares glanced at Lukas. “If you’re concerned about appearances, Strand, I suggest you see to your son while I see to Millie.” With one last glare in Ares’s direction, Lukas whirled and went out. “How’s your head?” Ares moved up beside me. “Bad?”
“Only when I move.”
With his hands on either side of my face, he turned me toward him, examining my eyes as if he were a doctor. “I wish I could keep you from doing so, then. But I know you want to get back to see your friend today. Shall I drive you?”
“That’s not necessary.”
“Really. Are you going to drive yourself?” He raised an eyebrow. “Will you let Lukas drive you?” He sighed when I didn’t answer. “I can have Aristos take you if you don’t trust my motives.”
“It isn’t that—”
The sudden descent of his lips to mine made my protest irrelevant, and I melted under his kiss as though I were chocolate on his tongue. He was excellent at making me forget myself. It wasn’t until I made a slight whimper of pain that he released me and examined my face once more with concern.
“Well, perhaps my motives are suspect after all,” he said with a sly glance as he let go of me. “But I will meet you out front to drive you to Fortuna in an hour.” He rose. “I suppose I’d better make myself scarce while Lukas is occupying Koste, lest the boy gather that his cousin has engaged in—what do you Americans call it?—hanky-panky with his uncle.”
I cringed at the way that sounded. “Koste doesn’t know I’m his cousin.”
Ares gave me a significant look. “So I gathered.”
* * * * *
I managed to avoid Lukas before heading out again, slipping into the shower and then down to the kitchen for a quick bite after I’d dressed. Karolina gave me a thin-lipped nod when I grabbed a muffin from the sideboard. The presentation didn’t have her usual flare, though the muffin—tart and sweet, and topped with a sliver of Meyer lemon—was as good as anything I’d come to expect from her. From her look, I suspected Lukas must have confronted her about Konstantin’s special meals, and she’d rightly assumed his suspicions had come from me.
Ares waited for me as promised, and I climbed in beside him, shivering in the damp autumn morning air. Thick clouds hovered low like a bank of San Francisco fog as we wound up the highway through the trees. By the time we reached Fortuna, it had begun to rain.
Ares held his coat over my head while we dashed across the parking lot to the door of the hospital. “Your head seems better,” he remarked, watching me shake the rain from my hair once we were inside.
“I took one of my pills,” I admitted. “Guess it’s kind of dulled the pain as well, as an added bonus.”
“You needed it because of your worry for your friend.”
I nodded, not trusting my voice, and Ares took my hand, heading for the ICU.
Cole’s parents, Robert and Rita, were there with his sister Lois when we arrived at his room, and it was clear from the looks on their faces as they sat around Cole’s bed that his condition was grave. If I hadn’t taken a pill before coming, I knew I’d have lost it at the sight of his shaved and bandaged head and the breathing tube down his throat. Ares’s hand squeezed my fingers before he let go and left me at the doorway.
“Millie, sweetheart.” Rita rose when she saw me and came forward to give me a hug that was heartbreaking in its intensity. “Thank God you’re okay. You weren’t hurt?”
I shook my head. “Just a bump on the head.” I glanced at Cole after Robert and Lois had hugged me in turn. “They wouldn’t let me see him last night when he got out of surgery. They told me to go home.”
“But you’re family, dear,” said Rita, sitting back on the edge of her son’s bed.
“Well, not really.”
“We’ll put you on the list,” she insisted.
They were all staring at me expectantly. “I’m so sorry about this,” I said, my voice unsteady.
Rita squeezed my arm. “It’s not your fault.”
“But he wouldn’t have been here if it weren’t for me. My phone wasn’t working, and he drove up here to check on me.”
“What are you doing up here, anyway?” asked Lois, her voice a bit accusing where her mother’s wasn’t.
“I have an in-home position working with a patient recovering from a bad tibia fracture. Cole saved his life yesterday. He pushed the boy out of the path of the car.”
“Kid sounds accident prone,” said Lois. I didn’t dare suggest it wasn’t an accident. “Seems like you should have been looking out for him, not Cole.”
“Lois,” Robert admonished her sharply, but before she could form a retort, a nurse appeared at the door with a look of disapproval.
“ICU patients are limited to two visitors at a time,” she informed us.
“She’s family,” said Rita.
“It’s okay,” I said. “Cole needs you guys with him. I’m not helping anything. The hospital has my number if you need me.”
I gave Rita a quick hug and slipped out, guilty at my relief at the reprieve from having to see Cole that way, knowing it was because of me. As I walked toward the waiting area where Ares sat, my phone buzzed with a message from Lukas.
We need to talk.
No, we really don’t, I typed back.
Aravella’s death has been ruled a homicide.
Chapter Nineteen
Ares had received the same news. We drove back to the Strand in silence, only the rhythm of the windshield wipers marking the tension between us.
When the car pulled onto the unpaved drive that led to the estate from the highway just past Jerusalem, I spoke at last. “You think it was me.”
Ares threw me a hard glance. “Should I think it was you?” After a moment, he stopped the car, rain scattering in the headlights, the thump of the wipers keeping time with the idling engine. “I do not think it was you. I think it was Lukas Strand. But I confess I can’t help but think it was your presence here that led him to act with violence toward my sister.”
“She brought me here, Ares. I knew nothing of any of this until she found me and brought me here.”
“So you agree with me that it was Lukas.”
“No. He would never have hurt her. I can’t believe that.” Never mind that I had only just come to this conclusion myself on the drive from Fortuna. I’d thought of every aspect of him I knew—the Lukas I believed I’d known eight years ago and the Lukas I’d come to know since my arrival at the Strand. He’d hated Aravella with the same passion with which I had to believe he’d once loved her. Or tried to. The couple I’d seen in the photo album at Lumi’s wasn’t a couple in a marriage of convenience, nor a couple indifferent toward one another, or even at one another’s throats. What they’d done together had required absolute trust, and they’d once had it for each other.
But loving her or hating her, Lukas Strand wasn’t a man who would raise his hand in violence to a woman. He had preferred to play the tortured hero, stuck in a loveless relationship, stuck with a child he wasn’t sure was his own—stuck with his desires for a woman he wasn’t supposed to want. Ares had insisted I accept that Lukas desired me, and everything he’d done told me he did, even if he hated himself for it. And Lukas, even when I’d known him years ago, outside all this family drama and its fantastic origins, loved to hate himself.
Ares nudged me from my introspection. “Then who was it, Millie? Who could have dragged Aravella into the lighthouse and shoved her out that window, if not Lukas?”
I studied his sleek, angry profile. He looked more like a wild cat than a tree. “Could one of the Meliae take someone with when shifting
into a hollow?”
The idea seemed to unnerve him, as if it had never occurred to him before. “I suppose so. If one were very determined.”
“And how far can you leap from one hollow to another? Is there a limit to the distance?”
Ares thought for a moment. “Barring an ocean in between, I suppose infinitely. Physical contact is necessary for the initial transformation, but once you’ve shifted, you can jump from one hollow to another in close proximity, or farther, with concentration.”
“What if someone else at the house jumped with Aravella, straight into the tower, instead of going up the stairs?”
“Someone else. You mean Signe or Clara?”
“Anyone who’s rådande or Meliae. Roger seems to be. He was at the Grove. I’m not sure about Karolina, but I don’t trust her.” I met his eyes as he studied me. “You know I was asleep in the cottage at the time.”
“Yes. So I heard.”
“Before I fell asleep, I’d eaten food Karolina had prepared that I believe had a sedative in it.”
“You were drugged?”
“I think so. I can’t prove it.”
“Does the sheriff’s department know of this?”
I shook my head. “I didn’t make the connection between how deeply I’d slept until it happened again, and then I tested my theory, and it seemed to hold up. But it wasn’t meant for me, Ares. It was Koste’s food.”
His eyes narrowed. “Koste’s?”
“Did Aravella ever talk about his ‘episodes’?”
“The fugues, you mean.”
I nodded. “And sleepwalking. I think they were brought on by the same thing.”
Ares stared ahead into the rain a moment before he put the car in drive once more. “Vella thought someone was trying to hurt him. I assumed she meant Lukas.”
“Lukas would never hurt his son.” I was certain of it now. The driver of the silver Fiat yesterday couldn’t have been him.
