“Roland didn’t dump me. He’s just playing one of his interminable jokes,” Odessa stated too forcefully, from between clenched teeth. Briefly, she wondered if she was trying desperately to persuade herself of this truth. The woman had only confirmed her gut instinct—that the station was unsafe.
The woman shook her head, once again throwing her grey over a creamy shoulder. “Believe what you want, but don’t you be surprised if the truth hits hard. When it does, know that you’re not alone. My name’s Violette, and I’m easy to find if you ask around for me.” She leant forward. Odessa smelt apples and cinnamon and stale cigarette smoke in the woman’s hair. “You probably don’t want the advice, but don’t talk to men here. They’ll think you’re propositioning them and since you’re not in the market—yet—you don’t want to do that. When you’re ready, though, most of the girls know where to find me.”
“I’m sure I won’t be searching you out. I’m going home,” Odessa said with a lot more confidence than she felt. Unwittingly or not, the older woman had unearthed Odessa’s surfacing fears. She couldn’t take care of herself any better than a worker bee could without the queen in its hive. Why had she allowed herself to be so blinded by Roland’s charm and savoir-faire, to blindly believe he was who he claimed to be? What kind of trouble had she become entangled in?
The woman gave a small, sad smile. “If you say so. Information around here is power. Don’t forget that.”
Before Odessa could reply, Violette turned her back, walked into the surging crowd, and was lost to sight seconds later. “Well, that’s enough of that.” Odessa unconsciously puffed out a little breath, blowing her short bangs up, which promptly fell down.
“Roland, I’m going to kill you when I find you,” she muttered, wishing she had a sharp object and he was in its direct path. She gritted her teeth in frustration. It wasn’t funny that he had left her in the midst of a culture she was unfamiliar with, and to make matters unbearable, she had no money, no spare change of clothes and knew no one. She didn’t have any idea how to get hold of her brothers, who might be able to help her—if she was willing to admit she had been in the wrong in running away with Roland Baylon.
For a millisecond, she let herself entertain the reassuring notion Roland would return for her. But the idea evaporated and she quickly spiralled downward into fear and uncertainty.
If she ever found Roland, she would string him up by his toes until he begged for mercy. What would he think of that for a hearty but humourless prank? She came to the conclusion she was alone and needed help with obtaining information as to how to get off the space station, and how to obtain lodging, if nothing else. Odessa hustled off in the direction Violette had taken, deeper into the station’s maw.
After sqeezing past one alien after another, each appearing stranger than the last, and desperately searching for a hint of Violette’s dress, Odessa finally caught up with her. She pressed her fingers delicately against the woman’s upper arm to halt her.
Violette spun around, her face a study in wretched terror. “Oh,” she exclaimed, relaxing marginally upon seeing Odessa, although she remained uneasy. “It’s you.”
Odessa didn’t know why the woman had panicked at the simple touch. “Can you tell me where the Air Controller’s office is? Please?”
Violette shook her arm free. “Trust me, you don’t want to go there.”
“But I have to.” The Air Controller, according to what little she knew of the station, was the man to ask about cargo ships and where they were headed.
“Women don’t go by themselves to the Controller’s offices. Not unless they’re heavily escorted.”
“Why not? I can handle myself.”
Odessa observed Violette’s expression of grave doubt. “You have to rethink what you can do here. What’s safe for a woman on your planet isn’t on Romaydia. You can get yourself killed for asking a simple question.”
“I have to try and get to the Controller’s office anyway.”
Violette examined Odessa’s face, her eyes questioning and momentarily sharp. Before Odessa could say anything, the mask of hopelessness slipped back into place. “Why?”
Odessa swallowed. “I just need to. That’s all.”
“To find that boyfriend of yours? You won’t find him. He’s long gone off the station.”
So her motives were plainer than the nose on her face. “That too,” she replied, a little irritated. “Now, are you going to tell me?”
“If I told you, I’d be putting your life in danger. You don’t know these men. They’ll kill you to cover up their indiscretions, especially since you’re perceived as a visitor here. Visitors, especially of the female persuasion, have other uses than asking questions they have no hope of getting an answer to.”
Odessa refused to listen. She stormed off towards the edge of the public area, to the doorway where the Drifter should have been, hoping she could stop someone and ask for the information she needed. Surely someone would know where the Controller’s offices were.
Warding off the panic that had lodged near her breastbone, but determined she would get off Romaydia no matter what the consequences, she was about to turn around when strong arms grabbed her from behind. She cried out, but the sound was lost amidst a woman’s simultaneous, high-pitched laughter echoing a few feet away. By the time Odessa could cry out again, her captor had clamped his hand over her mouth and started to haul her off into a darkened corridor. Odessa fought to breathe and release herself from the tight hold, but to no avail. Apparently Violette had been right—Romaydia was no place for a single woman.
Chapter Two
Odessa thrashed about, trying to free herself from the tenacious grip of whoever was holding her. She didn’t think the man was Roland. Her attacker’s smell was that of strong tobacco, not like her fiancé’s expensive colognes. Her captor had pinned her hands painfully behind her and covered her mouth with a sickly smelling cloth. Abduction attempts weren’t part of the adventure scenario, were they? Might he be Roland after all, playing another of his tasteless jokes on her, forcing her to think he had abandoned her and then having her seized by one of his buddies?
Terror struck her as she remembered Violette’s warning. What if she was being captured by a man who wanted to take his pleasure of her? She wouldn’t be able to bear that. Adventure wasn’t about having choices taken away, but about expanding horizons.
She did the only thing she could think to do. She raised her foot and slammed her heel into her captor’s instep. He made a choking sound. He released her just enough to enable her to squirm out of his hold and wriggle around. She would show him what she thought of his underhanded tactics to get what he wanted. She would mete out the punishment he deserved.
As she turned around, a man-shaped blur whizzed by. Without warning, her captor was lifted into the air. His feet dangled at least twelve inches from the floor. For a moment, Odessa gaped in amazement at her raging rescuer before he threw his prize against the wall behind her. She cringed at the sound of flesh slamming and bone cracking against the metal decking.
“Vermin,” she thought she heard her rescuer say, before he brushed his hands against his leather-clad thighs. Magnificent thighs that made her mouth water and her brain appreciate the form of the male body, and forget the immediate danger her attacker had placed her in. The man who had assaulted her had an ugly scar marking the length of his cheek, and greasy hair and torn clothing. Odessa didn’t pause to think. She hit him in the shin with a swift, vengeful kick.
“Who are you?” she demanded.
His throat had swollen where her liberator had lifted him.
“He can’t hear you. He’s out cold,” her saviour grumbled.
So that was why the criminal hadn’t reacted to her reprimand. Flustered by what had taken place, she raked her eyes up her rescuer’s muscled chest, up biceps that deserved to be videographed with no material covering the deep, tanned skin, and up to a ruggedly handsome face. She blinked at the sudden hurt
in his whisky-coloured eyes. It was as if he had consciously shut down his emotions and left nothing but a pair of delicious eyes staring from inside an empty cornhusk. How could anyone close down the very qualities that made him human, just like that?
“Are you injured?” His voice was like a welcoming trickle of water to a woman who was cold and wanted a hot bath to warm her.
Reality stormed back like a blast of icy wind. Fear for her safety replaced her fascination with a man who must be like Roland—callous and unfeeling. Perhaps this man, who appeared to be one hundred per cent human, desired nothing less than what the man lying at her feet had wanted. Or Roland was observing her from somewhere and enjoying this practical joke at her expense. The insensitive brute. That raised the question that if he was watching, then why hadn’t he come to her rescue? Gut instinct usually served her well. Heeding Violette’s warning, which repeated like a badly formed curse in her head, she growled, “I know what you want. Don’t come near me or I’ll kick your insides out.”
His luxurious, thick eyebrows shot up. “You do? What might that be?” he asked in mock bewilderment.
“You know perfectly well.” The words she wanted to say, the evil ones, wouldn’t come. Why fuel the fire?
“You sure know how to bruise a man’s ego. I’m trying to be kind to you, and how do you return it? By threatening to kick me to hell and beyond.”
She maintained her tough stance, hoping he would simply go away. “You’ve done your good deed for the day. Why not leave it at that?” Uncertainty clawed at her mind. Could she distinguish the good from the bad, or were they both the same on Romaydia?
Her heart stopped for a millisecond as the man scowled with penetrating golden-brown eyes, which were emotionless one moment and world-weary and devastatingly lonely the next. Once again, he shut down. “I wasn’t trying to hurt you. Haven’t you had enough of that for today?”
“Um, yes,” she replied, on the edge of a gulp of air. Maybe she had been a bit too hasty to tell him the dire consequences of getting any closer. Maybe he wasn’t like Roland or the man on the dirty floor, after all.
“In case you don’t understand, I’m friend, not foe.” His voice was seductively deep, the kind a woman could fall in love with and easily hear as they made love over and over.
“I understand English perfectly well.”
He shrugged nonchalantly. “I didn’t say you didn’t.”
“But you implied I don’t.”
His slow smile infuriated her. She raised her hand to slap his cheek but he seized her hand midway.
“You’re spoiled.”
“I am not!” she replied in a scathingly condescending voice, further angered by the fact that he’d restrained her. “You have no idea who I am!”
“Some lost princess from a world I’ve never heard of?” he quizzed.
“Yes,” she ground out.
“I see. And which planet would that be?”
“I’m not at liberty to say.”
He nodded as if he understood. “Where are your guards?”
“I gave them the slip.”
“Why?”
“I want adventure,” she shot back.
He released her hand, which she slid inside her pants pocket, surprised at the heat he’d generated.
“You’ll get more than you bargained for on Romaydia. Run along now. Hurry to find your guards. If you don’t, the princess from an unnamed planet will be ravished and perhaps murdered.”
Odessa parted her lips as she searched for just the right retort.
Her rescuer went on. “If you weren’t spoiled, Miss Know-It-All, you would have the good grace to thank me for my enquiry as to your health, instead of thinking up ways to damage my person.”
Odessa really wanted to stomp on his foot now. His grin not only aggravated her but made her think of making love to him. His mesmerising, sexy mouth and glittering eyes made her breath catch. She swallowed her annoyance and managed, none too steadily, “How do I know you’re a friend?” Odessa ran her tongue over her lower lip and tried to take in a calming breath. He appeared earnest enough, but could she trust him?
He spread his hands out in front of him. “Guess you’ll just have to take my word for it, won’t you?”
“Words are cheap. I can take care of myself without your help.” Hadn’t her brothers tried to teach her self-defence? Maybe the only thing they hadn’t taught her was how to test a man on the honesty scale, a killer-gorgeous man who radiated animal magnetism. He would impair any woman’s good judgment. “Oh, my gosh,” she exclaimed, her eyes widening.
He grinned. “Having a tough time with that?”
“I, uh, oh!” She sucked in a terrified breath. “Maybe you’re one of those be men who hypnotise women and spirit them away to their lairs with the snap of a magical finger?” Roland had told her that story, but she hadn’t believed it. At the time.
Dakoda Harley, better known to his friends as Dak, found the petite woman charming, a feisty handful, and ridiculously innocent. Or was she an adept actress? Her bark was clearly worse than her bite. Her outburst had surprised him. For some reason, she was acting as if she couldn’t add two single-digit numbers together, in imitation of so many of the other women on Romaydia. Was she undercover and bungling the job? Or was she hunting for a man who would take her off this hellhole? She wasn’t so unlike other women he’d had the misfortune of encountering on other assignments. “I’ve not heard that story before. Is that one they tell on your planet to misbehaving children, princess?” he asked, suspecting she would tell him another lie.
“I, uh, was thinking you might be magic.”
He couldn’t resist breaking into loud laughter. “That’s a new one. No one’s ever called me a spirit with magic before.” The laughter died. If he’d had magic powers, he wouldn’t have let his wife die. From force of habit he surveyed the area, the grim station’s interior that had worn on his nerves hardly a month into the assignment, and the extra security that was visible to his eyes but not to the average person. Nothing struck him as out of place.
She shrugged.
He saw the indecision. She was ready to flee, he guessed. “Yes. Like this.” He raised his right hand and snapped his fingers to demonstrate his point.
Her eyes widened into large gems before she grimaced. “Nothing happened.”
“Did you expect it to?”
She pulled herself together. The top of her head hardly reached the bottom of his chin. “I was expecting something, damn it.”
The conversation was getting stranger by the moment. Maybe she wasn’t that bright after all. What kind of woman expected magic at the snap of a finger on an ugly space station? “You still didn’t tell me which planet you’re a princess on.”
She grimaced. “Earth.” She met his gaze squarely, apparently unafraid of his reaction.
“The last I heard, there are no real magicians or sorcerers who practise magic there. Has that changed since you were last there?” Harley fished for information, unable to believe he was indulging her in this conversation. Magic and sorcerers had never been part of his harsh reality, not as a child, nor as a man.
“Only in children’s fairytales.”
“Then why did you expect magic when I did this?” he asked, snapping his fingers again.
This times her eyes stayed focused on his face. “I’m not sure. As a matter of fact, I’m not certain about anything right now.” She gave a little sigh, either the femme fatale or the perfect actress.
He shook his head, marvelling at how this woman had sucked him into her world of crazy magicians and acts performed only by characters in medieval fantasies. Why would anyone want to attack her? Wasn’t it too soon for the Murrach‘s men to know that Roland Baylon had departed with great haste? Or was Murrach Pardua, the self-styled Lord of Romaydia, cognisant of what went on everywhere on his turf? The realisation made Harley uneasy. He was double-dealing and he very likely would not return home from this mission, except in a bl
ack plastic bag.
Against his better judgment, he offered an explanation for the attack, one she hadn’t asked for. “When you bumped into him earlier, he thought you were, let’s say, propositioning him. So he wanted to make good on your offer when you weren’t looking, just in case he was making a mistake and you weren’t.” He wasn’t certain that was the truth. He had arrived only moments earlier to see her being manhandled, and had no idea whether she’d deserved the attention or not. His gentlemanly instincts had kicked in.
Her sapphire eyes flashed fire and ice all at once. Her lips, pretty coral temptations begging for a kiss, opened and shut before she croaked, “Were you following me?”
He shook his head once, wishing he could squeeze her throat and churn the information he needed out of her. But he couldn’t afford the unwanted attention that action would get him, in case the station’s disorganised law happened to arrive. He could hardly use his strong-arm tactics here. He had to lure her, like a bee to a flower.
“Then how do you know what he wanted?”
“A wild guess,” he lied. “I happened to be going in the same direction as you were, so I was slightly behind you.” By chance, he had been walking through a pack of humans and aliens in the public area when he had come upon Odessa. He hadn’t known who she was, but had returned to his quarters to direct a visual search of the Romaydian archives. She was Odessa Grante, a woman who had come with Roland Baylon on his ship, the Drifter. That one fact alone was enough for his buried anger to flare up. If she was here, and Baylon wasn’t, she was probably dealing drugs or up to some illegal activity in Baylon’s stead.
He watched her mull over his statement. Her breasts, high and firm, lifted and fell with every breath she took. Grudgingly, he admitted she reminded him of his late wife, Abby, with her hair the colour of yellow autumn leaves in the sun. She was tough, yet every inch a female, but what was the truth beyond the façade?
Whispers in the Dawn Page 2
