by Jillian Neal
“So,” Garrett drawled. “Are we more furious that the Realm saw my sister’s rack or that people might actually believe that you are somehow abusive when in actuality you worship the ground that she walks on?”
Turning and narrowing his eyes hatefully, Rainer spat, “You know I’m pretty much pissed to hell over it all.”
“Well, they still have those guys that got arrested this morning down in the holding cells. If you, say, want to go down there, I feel certain that the guards could be persuaded to leave you alone with them let you work out your aggressions.”
“Don’t tempt me.”
“Better yet, maybe all the Haydenshire boys should show them what we think of them picking on our baby sister.” Will sounded very intrigued.
Rainer let the thought of sinking his fists deeply into Aldus’s face work through his body. It was a very appealing idea.
“Sure, if you want go down there and beat the shit out of them, God knows they deserve it, but it isn’t going to take back what people saw this morning. Ultimately, it isn’t going to make you feel better or make Emily feel better, which I know is what you’re really worried about.” Dan’s tone held no judgment. If Rainer decided that they were all going down to the Senate to work the rental chain employees over, he’d probably agree to lend his fists, but he wanted Rainer to know what would be at the end of that vengeful journey to nowhere.
“He’s right. It won’t change what happened.” Logan spoke from a knowledge that was now engrained deeply in his soul.
“You know,” Dan offered with a sigh. “I really think that people have this idea that we want to know what goes on in other people’s lives. That we want to see what happens on their honeymoons behind closed doors. We want our imaginations confirmed.” He shook his head. “But I wonder if this time they didn’t push it too far. That isn’t what people normally wake up to when they open their Sunday paper. The backlash appears to have been extreme. Maybe things will change. Maybe the Realm will finally demand some morality in news reporting. Or demand the truth or even some facsimile of truth in their papers and on their television screens. Maybe they’ll decide that being the Crown Governor’s son doesn’t give them a chokehold on your life.”
“It wasn’t worth it!” Rainer defied.
“No, it wasn’t,” he agreed calmly. “But Rainer listen to me when I tell you that vengeance will eat you alive. Emily is in her Hummer with Fi and Adeline crying because you’re so angry at yourself. You’re out here with the only guy that you think might forgive you for what he saw in those photographs when the reality of it is that no one blames you for having sex with your wife on your honeymoon. That’s sort of the focus of the trip, after all. Emily isn’t going to be okay with this until she knows that you’ve forgiven yourself.”
“One of you has to give in or you’re just gonna keep going in circles.” Garrett echoed.
Rainer had no intention of forgiving himself today, but he did know that he should listen to wise counsel when it was given. “So you don’t hate me?” He finally gave in and let his fear take flight from his tongue. He turned his question on Will simply unable to believe that Emily’s brothers and her father didn’t think him a disgusting jerk.
Will laughed at him outright. “For what, being a good husband to my sister, or being a guy, or being the guy that we raised?”
Logan and Garrett nodding their emphatic agreement.
“Rainer, did you really think we were upset with you about what’s in those pictures?” Garrett seemed truly shocked. “We’re upset because no one should have to endure having pictures of that in the papers. Just because something shouldn’t be photographed doesn’t mean it shouldn’t happen.”
To prove his point, Garrett slapped Will on the shoulder. “Brooke let you play in the clam shack on your honeymoon did she not?”
Laughing, Will rolled his eyes. “Uh, and in the limo on the way to the airport, and in the room she got ready in during the reception. And in my old bedroom at Mom and Dad’s before the actual ceremony, and we almost got arrested in Paris because we were doing it on an elevator, and I dropped the cast and two old prigs from Britain almost got a free show.”
Everyone cracked up and Rainer found laughing to be an extremely odd sensation.
Garrett raised his hand to Will as if showing off exhibit A. “Lo, you and Ad did the horizontal mambo in Sydney, didn’t you?”
“I am only answering this because you are my best friend.” Logan scoffed. “But, hell yeah, and let’s see here on the plane on the way to Sydney.”
“We all knew what you were doing. No one thought you were talking,” Rainer quipped.
“And In the Castle in the room directly above her father’s, oh, and in a dressing room of that mall Lucas dragged us all to.” Logan concluded with a cocky grin.
“What?” Rainer was stunned.
“You got Adeline to do it in public?” Garrett didn’t appear to believe Logan in anyway.
“Ad’s not a prude, and I said a dressing room. We weren’t putting on a show, and who could turn me down?”
“Well, trust me, Danny boy had a big ole grin on his face when I got to Kauai and he rented a chalet way out for their wedding night so no one would hear ‘Oh Dan, oh Dan, oh Dan.’” Garrett sneered in a horrible interpretation of Fionna’s drawl.
Everyone cracked up. Dan rolled his eyes and shook his head. “Yeah, it sounds so much better when I get her to say that.”
Despite Garrett’s best efforts, Rainer was back in the doldrums almost immediately. “Yeah, so you all had sex on your honeymoons, but you don’t regret it now, and your wives don’t regret everything you did.”
“Yeah, well, my girlfriend was pregnant and then got shot because of me, and then she lost the baby which the entire Realm is well aware of, Rainer, so regret is something I’m very familiar with.” Dan reminded him.
“She didn’t get shot because of you.” Rainer argued.
“Yeah and Emily doesn’t regret marrying you. She doesn’t regret what you shared down in the Keyes, and together you can regret that there are sick perverts in the Realm, but that isn’t either of your faults either.”
Rolling his eyes, Rainer finally laid it on the line. “Look, I really appreciate all of you trying to cheer me up or whatever it is you’re doing. But it was my job to protect her, to keep that sacred between the two of us, and I didn’t. I didn’t keep her safe, which is the only thing in the world that matters to me, so whether it was my fault or not I still screwed up.”
Well aware that concerned glances were being shared all around him, he picked up the pace. He fought the urge to run, to have some kind of physical release. He could’ve run the length of the farm a dozen times and still been furious.
When they reached the guesthouse, Rainer realized that Emily and Fionna had been crying.
“You okay?” He brushed his hand over Emily’s shoulder. He’d been afraid to touch her for most of the day. He didn’t deserve the emotional bond.
She wrapped her arms forcefully around his waist and nuzzled her head in his neck.
Unable to stop himself, he cradled her to him. It was where she belonged, and he’d spend the rest of his life trying to make up for letting her down.
Life
~Dan Vindico~
Dan helped load the majority of boxes from Rainer and Emily’s old room into Logan’s truck and Garrett’s Highlander.
“Why don’t you and Garrett go on? I’ll ride with either Emily or Dan and Fionna in a few minutes.” Adeline urged Logan.
He looked disappointed that she didn’t want to ride with him until he realized that the cab of his truck was full of boxes.
“Easier to hide them there than in the bed.” Garrett explained. “We’re going to the storage facility to make sure no one sees the guys Dad hired to load the truck. We’ll meet you at the house in a little while.
“I think we’ll just catch a ride with someone else. I’m scared to take the Hummer or the Porsche out
at this point.” Rainer lamented.
“We’ll get them out, Rainer.” Dan let his mind work through different scenarios to make that possible.
“Will you come here for a minute?” Emily took Rainer’s hand.
“Sure,” Rainer agreed but looked like he didn’t deserve the opportunity to be alone with his wife. Dan shook his head. He was a disaster.
“Dan,” he heard Fionna call.
“Yeah, baby doll?”
She motioned for him to follow her into Logan and Adeline’s bedroom. Adeline was standing at the door waiting on him.
His heart thundered as he rushed to follow them.
Fionna’s energy was spinning in nervous jagged twists as Adeline closed the door. Dan seated himself beside her on the bed and held her hand. He tried to supply her with calm, but his nerves were much easier to access at the moment.
“Well, congratulations.” Adeline grinned at both of them.
“Thank you,” Fionna replied.
“We will have to do this at the hospital whenever you’re ready, just to make it into your official file, but I can do the same things here and at least tell you what I can read from the baby’s energy.”
Dan and Fionna nodded their understanding.
“And, I just want you to know that I would never, ever tell the press anything. I don’t know who talked to the papers, but please know it wasn’t me.”
Fionna gave her a sweet smile. “We know that Adeline. If we thought you had, we certainly wouldn’t be asking you to be our Medio.”
~Rainer Lawson~
“Please talk to me.” Emily finally begged after Rainer had watched her pace in what had been their bedroom before they’d officially become the Lawsons.
He closed his eyes in effort to keep the tears from leaking out of them. He already felt weak and hopeless. Tears would only add to the effect. “I don’t know what to say to you, Em, except how sorry I am.”
“I know that.” She pushed him down onto the bed and seated herself beside him. “I know that you blame yourself for all of this, because you always do, even though none of it was your fault.”
Rainer wanted to scream, wanted to roar, that it was his fault. It was all his fault, but he wouldn’t yell at her, not about this, not ever.
“Dad isn’t mad at you.”
“I’m mad at me! You should be mad at me!” His tone rose viciously, but he forced away his fury.
“But I’m not mad at you.” She whispered. “I’m mad at the people that did this.” She shrieked suddenly. The difference in her volume from one statement to the next was dramatic. It caught Rainer off guard.
“But you know the more I think about it, the more I just want to remember all of the great parts and forget the horrible parts. It was an amazing week, Rainer, right up until the point that they showed up and I felt that last night, and then Dad called this morning. It was awesome. I got to spend every waking moment with the guy that I somehow convinced to marry me, with my very best friend, and we had fun, and we had some amazing sex.” She grinned at him, and Rainer felt a slight chuckle echo from his lungs.
~Dan Vindico~
Willing his heart to beat in rhythm, Dan seated himself at Fionna’s head and held her hand. Adeline sat beside Fionna’s abdomen and eased her jeans past what Dan considered the promised land and pulled her shirt up to her breast line.
He watched Adeline draw deep breaths and suppress her own rhythms so she could lock onto Fionna’s more easily.
“You think you had a period after the miscarriage?” She quizzed quietly.
“Maybe,” Fionna shrugged. “If it was then it wasn’t anything like what I’m used to, but you said they might be different now, so I’m not sure. I didn’t set the cast because you said not to for the first one, but it only lasted like an hour or two.”
Adeline offered Fionna a knowing smile.
~Rainer Lawson~
“Em, baby, I loved spending the week with you, too, but I let you down. I let everyone down, and I will never forgive myself for not protecting you and keeping you safe. You’ve given me everything, and I know what that must have cost you. I let someone else take that from you and plaster it all over the news. I don’t give a damn if they apologize, or if new laws are passed, or whatever. I let you down. You, the most important person in the entire world to me!”
“Rainer, I know what happened! But you didn’t just give someone permission to print those. You had no idea that was happening. You didn’t let me down and you never could. It isn’t even in you to be able to.
“I mean I just fussed on the plane that my eyes were swollen and that I was about to be bombarded with more cameras, and somehow magically you got Pete’s flight to Paris moved and had him land us here so no one would see me. Don’t you see! You don’t always get to be in control, and sometimes really shitty things are going to happen because that’s life. But the very first opportunity you had to do something to protect me, even from my own vanity, you moved heaven and earth to give me that. You cannot always protect me, but the fact that you always want to means the world to me.”
~Dan Vindico~
“I don’t think that was a period, but we’ll find out.” Adeline turned to Dan and gave him an apologetic look.
“What?” Dan tried not to sound demanding of the woman that was going to get his precious child out of the most important woman in the world.
“I’m sorry, but would you mind sitting over there?” She pointed to a chair on the other side of the room. “It’s just I’m going to be trying to read the energy off of a little person that’s currently the size of a pea, and your energy is really, really potent, and you kind of have a lot of it. It’s hard to work around.” She tried to explain without sounding offensive.
Fionna giggled. “You’re telling me!”
“Oh, uh, yeah. I guess.” Dan leaned and kissed Fionna’s forehead and then moved to the chair. He’d wanted to be right beside her for the entire process.
Fionna gave him his smile as he fumed.
“It’s just you’re a double Predilect, so it’s kind of like trying to read four sets of rhythms at once and the one I’m interested in is the very quietest of them all.”
“It’s fine.” Dan wished she’d get on with it.
“All right, Fionna, you’ll feel me lock onto your energy and then move to the baby. Just try to relax.”
With one last nervous glance to Dan, she let her eyes close.
~Rainer Lawson~
“I just don’t want to let this ruin my memories of the most important day of my life or the most wonderful week of my entire life.” Emily continued. “It was like this huge thing that’s really just a small part of really getting to be your wife, of getting to relax with you after the playing season, and Wretchkinsides, after every thing that’s happened this year good and bad.”
Rainer was desperate to do whatever she wanted though misery and fury fought for stronghold over his soul.
“Look at me,” she whispered. He met her emerald green eyes just beginning to clear after all of her endless tears. “I want to move into our new house today, and I want to begin our life as a married couple. This is what I’ve wanted from the time I was a toddler. There aren’t many girls that get to marry the guy they’ve been in love with their whole entire life. We’re going to fight this, and I’m going to walk around town and just accept the fact that the entire Realm now knows what an amazing rack I have and how hot you are in bed. And I’m eventually going to get used to the idea that people besides you have now seen my orgasm face.” She managed before she cracked herself up.
Not certain how she’d done it, but Rainer suddenly found himself joining in her hysterical laughter.
When they quieted, she was grinning at him. She leaned to brush a kiss across his jaw. “But I’m going to hold my head up high, because I’m Mrs. Rainer Lawson, and there is nothing that makes me prouder than that.”
~Dan Vindico~
Fighting the desperate urge to stan
d and pace, Dan watched Fionna intently. Adeline’s hands were on her lower abdomen, and she was concentrating hard.
“There it is.” She whispered. Dan saw Fionna visibly relax allowing Adeline a deeper read of the baby. “Good. Try to ease your rhythms for me. I’m locked on now, so just tell me what you want to know.”
“Everything.” Dan and Fionna vowed at the same moment.
Adeline chuckled. “Always good when mom and dad are in agreement.” She slid her hands lower closer to Fionna’s mound. “The placenta is very strong. It’s actually bigger than a pea. It’s more the size of a tadpole now.”
Dan tried to envision that but found it mildly disturbing.
“You’re right at five weeks exactly. So, that wasn’t a period. That was just your body getting rid of everything it didn’t need so that you could develop this one just the way it’s supposed to be.”
Fionna gasped suddenly.
“What?” Dan leapt from the chair. Tears began flowing down her cheeks. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing.” Adeline smiled at Fionna and moved her hands again to stay locked on the baby.
“Dan, we made her on our wedding night in Kauai.”
“Her?” He swallowed back tears of his own.
Adeline nodded her agreement. “And her rhythms are almost identical to Fionna’s.”
She is a child of the land Dan could hear Tutu’s voice echo in his mind.
He couldn’t stay away any longer. He flew to the bed. Kissing her forehead, he knew he could never love anything more.
“I’m sorry.” He pulled away when he remembered that he was hindering Adeline’s read.
“It’s okay. Here, give me your hand, and try to suppress as much of your energy as you can.”
She placed his hands tenderly low on Fionna’s abdomen. “You know Fionna’s rhythms better than anyone. Right now the baby’s are almost identical, but they’re tiny and run much faster. Try to move through Fionna’s and lock onto your little girl’s.”
