After she removed the towel from the rack and hung her clean underwear in its place, Riana turned back to the tub. It was nearly half-full—just the depth she liked it.
Stepping into the tub, she turned off the water and sat down with a groan. She hadn’t realized just how much her muscles ached until the warm water soaked into them.
Looking down, she noticed a bruise where the seatbelt dug into her and wondered if Holly had a bruise from hers as well. She sighed. What had she gotten them into? How could she ever trust her instincts again? Her instincts had almost killed them this time.
Gingerly, Riana rested her head against the back of the tub. The warm water surrounded her, easing her sore muscles, and feeling silky on her skin. She wished she could wash her hair, but knew it wouldn’t be good for the stitches even though the doctor had obviously forgotten that part of her discharge instructions.
Instead of washing her hair, Riana concentrated on the rest of her body, gently massaging the citrus-scented bath gel into her bruised body. After she finished, Riana was exhausted. Closing her eyes, she relaxed with a sigh. For the first time in a long time, she felt safe. Riana wasn’t sure she wanted to examine the reasons why.
For a moment, she allowed herself to drift on a warm cloud of security and contentment, the likes of which she couldn’t remember ever feeling in her life.
Chapter Fifteen
After nearly an hour, Gunter knocked on the bathroom door. What if Riana had fallen asleep in the tub and drowned? He berated himself for waiting so long to check on her. When she didn’t answer, he knocked again. This time he was more insistent. Instead of a few light raps, he pounded on the door, hoping to wake her if she had fallen asleep. When she still didn’t answer, he kicked the door in—her modesty be damned.
His heart nearly stopped when he saw her hand dangling limply over the side of the tub. Rushing into the room, Gunter breathed a sigh of relief when he saw her head above the water and the gentle rise and fall of her chest. She was alive, but why wasn’t she awake and railing at him for bursting in on her bath?
“Riana.” He reached out and took her hand, hoping to rouse her. “Riana, wake up.” Gently, he shook her shoulder—still no response. Reaching down, he pulled the knob and started draining the cold water out of the tub.
Any other time, he would have taken special note of the size of her generous breasts with the berry-colored tips beckoning him. However, instead of admiring them, he bent down and lifted her from the tub, her body limp in his arms. Clay, call the doctor and get your ass in here. Something’s wrong with our mate.
What’s wrong?
She’s unconscious and unresponsive. Make sure you tell the doc that when you talk with him. Gunter stared down at her slack face and brushed the hair from her cheek. He wanted to remove the bandage from her wound, but remembered the doctor saying something about keeping the bandage on for a minimum of twenty-four hours.
Hell, it had barely been ten hours since they left the doctor’s home.
His chest ached as he looked at her. When he was younger, he wouldn’t have believed in love at first sight. However, standing here, looking at the woman he knew was compatible to Clay and himself in every way, he knew he loved her already. He would also die for her, but how could he find a way to express those feelings without scaring her away?
She was human. Humans didn’t believe in love at first sight—that had been his experience. He couldn’t blame them. He hadn’t believed in it himself until a few short hours ago. How could he criticize others for their lack of belief?
“What’s going on?” Clay stepped up next to him, peering down into Riana’s face. “I thought she was taking a bath.”
“She was, right up until I thought she’d been in there too long and went to check on her.” He glanced over his shoulder at the bathroom door. “We owe Gemma a new door. I broke it down to get to her.”
“I don’t give a damn about the door and I doubt the others will either. All I care about is what’s going on with our mate.”
Gunter had to hand it to the man. Clay had made the transformation from human to shifter smoothly. Right down to the need for a mate. He felt lucky that he wouldn’t have to fight the other man for the right to mate while Clay was still so young. He supposed thirty-seven wasn’t too young for a human. For a shifter, though, forty was just reaching puberty.
Clay looked at Gunter with surprise when someone knocked on the door. “That was fast.”
“Yes it was.” Gunter frowned. It was too fast. He looked at the door with suspicion. “Who knows she’s here?”
“Probably everyone in town by now,” Clay replied with a shrug as he moved to answer the door. Gunter stood in the center of the room, putting himself between their mate and any danger.
“Answer it.” Gunter tensed, ready to shift if needed. After what Riana told them about her feelings, he wasn’t taking any chances. Even humans had intuition, though it was somewhat muted.
“Good. You’re okay,” Merrick, the sheriff, said as he pushed past Clay when he opened the door. “Apparently, one of Camulus’s staff broke into Doc Parker’s home looking for your mate and the girl.” He looked around the room. “Where’s her daughter?”
Gunter jerked his thumb toward the adjoining door on the other side of the room. “She’s in the other room.”
“Are you sure?” Merrick strode toward the connecting door, his nose twitching as he no doubt took in the girl’s scent. “Apparently, the man was Camulus’s lieutenant. It appears as though he’s taken over what’s left of the counsel as the new alpha and is attempting to build his own town somewhere else, but he needs females.”
He strode through the opened door and stopped, looking at the girl curled up on the bed. The TV was on low, playing some sort of animated movie.
“Good. Keep them here and don’t let anyone else through the door.” Merrick lowered his voice and pointed to the dresser with the TV sitting on top of it. “Help me move this in front of the door. We don’t want to make things easy on them. If anyone tries to get in this way, you’ll hear them.”
Clay hurried to help him as Gunter stood staring at the young girl. What did Camulus’s people want with these two? They were human. He turned back to look at his mate lying unconscious on the bed. Perhaps there was something to his suspicion that Riana was more than she seemed. Perhaps she was one of the lost children. But…which one?
* * * *
Clay turned to Gunter and for the first time wondered if the other man had the right to tell him what to do. After all, Gunter didn’t look like the alpha male he’d always seen until today.
Perhaps it was just the heat. He’d been told that the el calor could bring down even the most fierce of warriors. How long could Gunter remain in their mate’s proximity without making love to her? Would he eventually lose the ability to control himself? If he did, Clay knew he must be ready to take him on. It didn’t matter that Gunter was bigger and stronger. He would have to defend their mate with his life.
It wasn’t anything he wasn’t used to. After all, he’d always defended the weak, even before he’d become an Army Ranger. He’d lived his life by the same code as his father before him. Live lean and protect those who cannot protect themselves—even if it was at the cost of his own life. His father had lived and died by that creed. Clay had refused to do anything less.
After they moved the dresser in front of the door, they went into Riana’s room and did the same to protect her. Soon, the only easy and quiet way in was the door in the room that he and Gunter would take turns occupying and the windows. Clay’s first instinct was to have all of them stay in one room, but knew it was impossible.
“We called Doc Parker. We have to let him in. Riana has lost consciousness and we can’t wake her.”
“Shit. That’s just what we need. She needs to be able to call for help if she needs it and we definitely don’t need them taking her if she’s in some sort of coma. We’ll never be able to protect her at the
doctor’s house. There are too many people in and out of that place on a daily basis. We wouldn’t know who to trust.”
Clay could understand that. As much as they wanted to trust everyone living in Paradise, it was possible that the corrupt counsel still had their spies here.
“We’ll just let the doc treat her here and we’ll care for her as is our right.” Gunter stood tall as though daring Merrick to gainsay him.
“Yes.” Merrick nodded. “It is your right.” He glanced toward Gunter who placed himself between Riana and the sheriff. “However, it is my right as sheriff to suggest plans of action. I realize that you aren’t a jaguar shifter like the alpha, but I will bring him into this if I need to and he will be on my side. Don’t force my hand. You know defying the alpha is a one-way ticket out of town.”
Clay knew what Merrick said was right, but it went against the grain to allow another male to call the shots where their mate was concerned. If Clay felt that way, he could only assume that Gunter’s instincts were stronger. He was older and had awaited the arrival of their mate for decades longer than Clay had been alive.
“Whatever happens tonight, don’t let anyone in here but the alpha and his second, the doctor, Matt, Gemma or myself.” He sighed. “It’s a longer list than I really wanted, and I don’t want my mate in danger, but your mate’s daughter might need the comfort of another female if her mother doesn’t awaken soon.”
“What do you think?” Clay asked after he’d let the sheriff out of the room, locking the door behind him.
“I think we need the dresser in front of our door, too. That way it leaves only one easy way into the rooms and it will be loud. You can’t break safety glass quietly.”
“What do we do until the doctor gets here?” Clay watched as Gunter moved to the bed and pulled the blankets off their naked mate. He couldn’t help but admire her perfect body with her slightly rounded belly and her full breasts.
Shoving his hands in his pockets, Clay looked away. Good God he was the worst sort of man, lusting after a woman who couldn’t refuse his advances. What would his father have said?
“We put your shirt on her and hope to the gods that there’s something Doc Parker can do for her. If I lose her before I get the chance to court her in the way she deserves, I’ll surely go mad.”
Clay looked back, meeting Gunter’s gaze. He didn’t dare look at their mate again. The feelings she stirred within him were foreign and he had no idea how to control them. “That’s a good idea. If I see her like this for too much longer, I might lose my mind myself.”
Chapter Sixteen
Riana fought the man in her dream. She knew it was a dream, a nightmare really. She’d had it before, which was why she never wanted to research who she was and where Holly’s father could be found.
Just as he had done in every other nightmare he’d haunted, the man forced himself on her while others watched and laughed. How could something so vile, so depraved happen to such a young girl? She wasn’t positive, but she suspected that was how Holly had been conceived. Riana wasn’t sure she wanted to know the truth. Would it change her feelings for her daughter, knowing that she’d been conceived in violence, in rape?
In just about every dream she had, Riana scratched and bit, trying to get the man off her, but there was no stopping him. And just when she thought she would have to relive the violation another time, she heard someone calling her name, only it wasn’t really her name. Her name was—
“Riana, wake up! It’s just a dream. It’s a dream, sweetheart. Wake up.”
The low timbre of the male voice should scare her. Who was this lying next to her, cradling her in his arms as though he had a right to do so?
“I’m awake.” She pushed away from him. “Where am I? Who are you?” Wrenching free of his hold, Riana jumped out of the bed and turned to look at the man who had saved her from a repeat of her nightmare. “And what am I doing in this bed with you?”
For years, she’d repeatedly suffered through that violation. She never told anyone of it. She didn’t dare. Everyone already looked on her with pity. She was always the poor young woman who had no memory and a child for whom she couldn’t even produce a biological father, not to mention a man she could call dad. The last thing she wanted was their pity because she’d suffered a violation she could only remember in her worst nightmares.
“Thank the gods you woke up.” The large blond man pushed his hair out of his face and looked up at her with what appeared to be relief. “Doc Parker couldn’t understand why you wouldn’t wake up. He said your pupils were working the way they should and that you didn’t appear to have a concussion, but you wouldn’t wake up.”
“Doc Parker?” Riana frowned and put a hand to her aching head. She felt the bandage wrapped around her and remembered the stitches and the plane crash. She spun around. “Where’s Holly? Where’s my daughter?”
She remembered waking up in the doctor’s office, house, or whatever it was, and Holly had been there, but God knew her memory was faulty. Perhaps that had been a dream as well and Holly had perished in the plane with almost everyone else.
“Where’s my daughter?” She could hear the hysteria in her voice as she got louder, demanding that he tell her the truth.
“I’m right here, Mom. Geeze. You could wake the dead with all of that screeching.” Holly looked at the bed, her eyes going wide. “You work fast, don’t you?” She walked over to the desk, picked up a bottle of water, opened it, and took a long drink.
“I was staying with your mother. She slipped into some kind of coma last night. We couldn’t wake her. We called in Doc Parker and he thought it best to stay close.”
“A coma?” Holly laughed. “It wasn’t a coma. Mom doesn’t sleep once she gets one of her feelings.”
Riana frowned at Holly’s use of the word. It was almost as though her daughter didn’t believe that she felt the evil following them.
“When she doesn’t sleep for a day or two, she just passes out anywhere she feels safe like some kind of narcoleptic or something.”
Clay, that was his name, turned to her and smiled. “You felt safe with me—with us?”
“Don’t flatter yourself,” Holly said. “She would have felt safe with a Chihuahua if she didn’t feel the evil here in town. When she feels the evil, she has nightmares.”
Riana stared at her daughter, her mouth open. How did she know that?
“Don’t look so surprised, Mom. I’m a big girl now. I know things you don’t want me to know. I know that you wonder if my dad,” she paused and shook her head. “No that’s the wrong word. You wonder if my biological father is the man you dream forcing himself on you.” She grimaced with a shrug. “You get loud when you have the nightmares. Haven’t you wondered why they haven’t been lasting as long lately? That’s why I’ve been blasting my stereo at odd hours.”
“Oh, honey. I had no idea you—”
“That I put two and two together?” Holly sighed. “I’m not a baby anymore, Mom. It’s not going to scar me so much that I kill myself or anything. I’d like to know that I was conceived with love, but I’m not stupid enough to think you would ever blame me for something that isn’t my fault. I might not have been conceived in love, but I was born in love and I’ve known your love every day of my life, Mom. I love you and I know you love me. You show me that every time you drag me from one town to take me to another.”
Riana’s throat and eyes burned with unshed tears. “I don’t know what I did to deserve you.”
Holly set her bottle down, walked to Riana and hugged her. “You loved me, Mom. Even though you think the worst about the man who helped make me, you still loved me with all of your heart. That’s what you did.”
Riana held her daughter for the longest time in months. After Holly turned sixteen, she’d deemed herself too old for that kind of thing and Riana had respected her daughter’s wishes, but she missed this.
Stepping out of Riana’s embrace, Holly swiped the back of her hand over he
r face. “And if you ever tell any of my friends I said that, I’ll deny it.”
Riana wiped a tear from her daughter’s face with a smile and cupped her cheek. “Of course you will.”
“Okay,” Holly said, crossing her arms and raising a brow. “What I want to know is, what this man was doing in your bed when you’re wearing nothing but a t-shirt.” She turned toward the door to her room and gave Riana the thumbs-up sign. “You have a lot to tell me, Mother dear.”
Yes, she did have a lot to tell her daughter, beginning with the story of her memory loss and the subsequent birth of her child. She would finally have to own up to the fact that she had no idea how her child was conceived, though she had her suspicions. If Holly could deal with knowing the truth, she could do no less.
However, knowing that Holly was finally old enough to understand the truth of her conception felt as though a huge weight had been lifted from her shoulders.
Riana watched as Holly left the room to go watch more TV, no doubt, before turning to Clay with a frown. “What were you doing sleeping with me?”
It wasn’t as though she didn’t appreciate his waking her before the ultimate bad part, but he had no right just to crawl into bed with her like that. She barely knew the man, for goodness sake.
“I told your daughter the answer to that already. You seemed to have slipped into a coma. How were we to know that that was something normal for the Riana-on-the-run?” He gave her a one-shoulder shrug. “We thought you had slipped into a coma because of your concussion.”
“And that made it okay to crawl into bed with a woman who didn’t know you from Adam?”
“Adam is our…mayor. You know him?”
“Now you’re being deliberately obtuse. You know exactly what I meant. I don’t know you from the next strange man. Why would I want you in my bed?”
“Would you rather I had slept on the cold floor, or perhaps I should have stayed in the desk chair all night?”
MemoriesofParadise Page 7
