by Nika Rhone
It wasn’t until she was standing back in the empty picture gallery that she came back to herself enough to realize someone else was there with her.
“Miss Westlake?”
The soft, Midwest-flavored voice identified her shadow. Thankfully, she was still too disconnected to feel humiliated about Daryl Raintree seeing her in this state. In fact, she was still too disconnected to feel much of anything at all.
“Miss Westlake? Amelia?”
The use of her given name was unusual enough to make her realize she hadn’t responded or even acknowledged him, but it didn’t make her care enough to want to do either. Maybe she could just stay disconnected for the rest of her life.
“Is there anything I can do for you? Anyone I can get?”
Get. Yes. Yes. “Yes,” she said again, this time making sure it was out loud. “Charles. I need to speak with Charles.” Because Charles could fix this. He approved the change in their living arrangements. He could change them back. Then everything would be fine again. She wouldn’t be stuck in this mausoleum of a house, watched and judged every second of every day.
She wouldn’t be trapped, once again, by a dragon.
“All right. Do you know where he is?”
“No.” The last she’d seen him, he was ensconced in a corner with his campaign manager, his father, and another man she hadn’t recognized but, judging from the avaricious way the other three men monopolized him, was someone with a healthy net worth and no current political affiliation. She’d immediately headed in the other direction.
Amelia was only marginally aware of Daryl’s voice as he spoke in low tones to someone via the transmitter, no doubt discreetly clipped somewhere on his tuxedo. A few moments later, she started when his hand touched her arm, and realized she’d once again failed to respond when he said her name.
“Charles was last seen heading to the second floor about twenty minutes ago.”
Where the family’s private rooms were. She nodded. “He probably went to his suite. The sitting room is set up as an office.” Perfect. She could talk to him in private, without having to pry him away from any potential campaign donors.
“Thank you, Daryl.” Her mind already structuring the best way to approach Charles about the housing debacle, Amelia headed for the small service staircase located at the end of the gallery hall, past the library that also served as Senator Davenport’s office when he was in residence. She would catch hell for using it if anyone saw, but she’d choose that over another possible confrontation with either her mother or Mrs. Davenport any day.
The stairs let out through a door in the upper hallway not far from Charles’s suite. Her own was across the hall. They were the only two suites occupied at this end of the family wing. She’d wondered at the room choice when they arrived at the beginning of the month but hadn’t questioned it. Now she wished she had. Had the decision been made all the way back then that she would be denied her own household?
The possibility was so real she had to tuck it away and ignore it. Just for now. She’d take out that nugget of betrayal and examine it later. Right now, she had to focus on getting Charles to change his mind. Somehow. Because if she couldn’t, she wasn’t certain she could live with the consequences.
****
Standing in the barely open doorway at the top of the stairs, Daryl watched Amelia hesitate in front of the door to what he presumed was Charles Davenport’s suite. Whatever impetus drove her upstairs had clearly deserted her. She looked like a porcelain doll about to crack into a million pieces.
Not my problem.
He shouldn’t have even followed her upstairs. She wasn’t his charge, wasn’t his responsibility. And even if she had been, this was clearly a matter that fell well outside the bodyguard purview. Unless someone threatened her physically, there was shit-all he could do for her.
Still, leaving wasn’t an option. When Amelia had turned and walked away from the confrontation with the two society dragons, she’d seemed in such a daze that she reminded Daryl of someone who had just taken a blow to the head. Thea had looked at Doyle in that silent communication the two sometimes shared, and Doyle signaled for Daryl to follow while Thea stepped between Mrs. Westlake and her retreating daughter, just like she always did.
So now here he was, babysitting the Princess until Thea and Lillian came to claim her.
Taking a huge breath, Amelia stepped forward and opened the door, slipping inside and closing it softly behind her. Daryl shook his head. Whatever she hoped to accomplish, there wasn’t much chance of her succeeding. She didn’t have enough fire in her gut. Oh, flashes of something showed through now and then, tiny hints that she wasn’t one-hundred-percent doormat, but how long would it be before even those faint sparks were extinguished under the smothering effects of her soon-to-be in-laws?
He gave it a year, tops.
Sooner than expected, the door to Charles’s suite opened again. As silently as she’d gone in, Amelia slipped out, closing it with the careful motion of someone either very drunk or trying very hard not to lose their shit. He’d seen that same door-closing precision from his stepmother after learning her brother had been killed in a car accident. She’d hung up the phone, carefully closed the door to her bedroom, and then proceeded to smash everything she could lay her hands on.
Amelia might not be the smashing things type, but she was very clearly at her breaking point as she stood staring at the closed door, one hand still on the antique glass knob. Whatever happened between her and her fiancé, it wasn’t good. Daryl grimaced. He sucked at the emotional crap. That was Thea’s thing. Where the hell was she, anyway?
Before he could request an ETA from Doyle, Amelia swung away from the door and walked a few steps to the center of the wide hallway and stopped, looking as though she had no idea where she was. Shit.
Abandoning the stairwell, Daryl approached with care. “Miss Westlake?”
She turned too quickly. Daryl’s hands came up to steady her when she teetered on her high heels. “Are you all right?” Her face was flushed, a vast change from the paleness that had suffused her just moments ago. From this close, her cheekbones were a little too sharp, her face a little too thin, her deep green eyes a little too shiny. Oh, hell. If she started to cry, he was seriously screwed.
He dropped his hands from her arms as though burned. Where the hell was Thea?
“I’m…” She gave a short, confused sounding laugh. “I don’t know what I am right now. I have to…” She turned in a half-circle as though orienting herself, then walked to the door opposite Charles’s and went in.
Daryl stared after her, debating his next move. He earned a very nice paycheck, but there wasn’t enough money in the world to make him willingly deal with a crying woman if there was another option. No sane man would.
Still, the instinct to check on Amelia was strong. He’d been taught from a young age that the strong always looked out for the weak, and Amelia was one of the most fragile people he knew. To leave her all alone while she was in pain was an act of unadulterated cowardice, plain and simple.
Just then, voices drifted from the servants’ stairs, and Daryl nearly buckled with relief. Okay, yes, he admitted it. When it came to tears, he was a coward.
After giving a very brief recap of what happened since Amelia left the ballroom, Daryl indicated the still open door she disappeared through and watched her two very agitated friends rush in after her.
“Can I ask what in the hell is going on?” Daryl said to Doyle as soon as the door shut.
“The very short version: Amelia found out she isn’t getting the house of her dreams, that she’s moving into the castle with her wicked monster-in-law, and good old Charles okayed it all without talking to her first.”
“Well, fuck me,” Daryl said, disgusted. A year? Hell, he’d be surprised if Amelia made it to the end of the summer before she was bulldozed entirely flat. Her own mother was bad enough, but Constance Davenport was a bitch to be reckoned with.
“Yeah, that pretty much sums it up.” Doyle glanced toward the door the women had disappeared behind. Neither of them was happy Thea was out of sight, but neither was brave enough to go in after her, either. What was it about crying women that made even the most stalwart man’s blood run cold?
“Did the girls do their usual song and dance for the dragons?”
“They tried, but Constance Davenport is a lot harder to divert than Meredith Westlake.” Doyle grimaced. “It got a little ugly there at the end. I practically had to drag Thea away before she clawed the bitch’s eyes out.”
That didn’t bode well for Amelia. Usually, whenever her mother’s tongue got too sharp and drew blood, Thea or Lillian did or said something to redirect her anger onto them. Her words couldn’t hurt them because they truly didn’t give a damn what the woman thought. Their only concern was to protect their friend, who, after all this time, still hadn’t figured out the simple task of how to protect herself.
After only a few minutes, the door opened and Thea and Lillian came out. Daryl expected Amelia to follow, but Thea closed the door, giving it a pensive look as she did, as though she could still see her friend through it and was worried.
“How is she?” Doyle moved closer so he could run his hand down Thea’s arm. Thea smiled up at him and stepped into his embrace.
Daryl repressed a snort. The two of them had been disgustingly touchy-feely ever since Doyle got that ring on her finger. Watching their hard-ass former Marine boss go all soft and squishy over his fiancée was a favorite pastime for the security staff.
“She’s…okay. I think.”
“A lot more okay than I expected her to be.” Lillian sounded a tiny bit confused.
Daryl could understand that, because the Amelia he watched float through that door like a sleepwalker had been nowhere near okay. She’d been on a dangerous edge. The kind that sometimes led people to do very rash and stupid things.
“Did she say what happened with Charles?” he asked.
Thea shook her head. “No. She just said she had a few things to think about, but she’d do that later, after the party, when she could concentrate better.”
“Then she kicked us out.” Lillian sent a baffled look at the closed mahogany door. “Can you believe it?”
“She didn’t kick us out, Miss Drama Queen,” Thea said. “She just said we should go back to the party, and she’d be down in a few minutes.”
“For Mellie, that’s the same as kicking us out.”
“She just…needed a minute alone.”
While Daryl sympathized with the slight thread of hurt underlying Thea’s tone, part of him wanted to remind her that Amelia was about to get married and move to the opposite side of the country from her friends and their emotional safety net. She would have to learn to handle her own problems sooner rather than later.
“Okay, yes, fine, whatever.” With a sweep of her hand, Lillian dismissed the issue. “So, let’s go back to the party. That should be loads of fun. Especially when Mrs. Davenport has us escorted off the property and blackballed from the rest of the week’s festivities.”
“We wouldn’t get that lucky,” Doyle muttered under his breath, grunting when Thea’s elbow connected with his ribs.
Since they probably weren’t supposed to be on the private family floor in the first place, Doyle led them back down the service stairs rather than the main staircase that would have dumped them back into the middle of the party. Thea and Lillian were already on the Davenports’ shit list. There was no need to throw another log on that particular fire.
As they mingled back into the crowd, the two men ranging behind the women like the guard dogs they were, Daryl glanced at his watch and suppressed a groan. They’d been there less than two hours. If the rest of the week dragged the way this evening was, it would be the longest ten days of his entire life, and that included the family vacation from hell when he’d been fourteen. He’d take a week trapped in a car with his bratty little sister over a week of condescending society ladies any day.
“Ho-ly hell!”
Lillian’s awed whisper made Daryl tense. Scanning for potential trouble, his eyes snagged on Amelia, who had just reentered the ballroom via the grand staircase.
“Oh my God.” Thea let out a breathy giggle. “Her mother’s going to shit flying monkeys!”
“Thea…” Doyle’s admonishment fell on deaf ears as his fiancée leaned in to whisper something in Lillian’s ear that had her chuckling evilly.
Watching Amelia walk with that oddly gliding gait that made it appear as though she were floating along on her own personal cloud, Daryl knew he was missing something crucial. “Why did she change her dress?” Because he remembered her in some silvery thing that made her look like an underfed twelve-year-old. What she had on now…
Well, she definitely wasn’t twelve.
“She’s making a statement,” Thea answered.
“Yeah.” Lillian grinned like a shark watching chum hit the water. “She’s giving her mother a great big ‘screw you’ without saying a word. It’s brilliant.”
If what the girls were saying was true, then Daryl had to agree. Sometimes knowing your own weaknesses and playing to them was the only way to win a battle. Since Amelia couldn’t stand up to her mother directly, finding an indirect route to declare war was her best alternative.
Of course, being able to win the war was another matter entirely.
He watched Amelia walk the crowd, intrigued by the subtle changes in her. Even to his “guy-eye” the light purple gown was a much better choice for her than the one she’d been wearing. The soft fabric wrapped around her body like a lover’s touch.
She’d pulled her hair down from its tight confinement as well, leaving the blonde curls loose around her shoulders. The slightly tousled look was surprisingly sexy, a description he never would have applied to Amelia before.
But it wasn’t just her appearance that was altered. It was the way she walked, the way she stood as she stopped to talk to people. There was a confidence in her posture that had been lacking before. A very definite poise and calmness.
Or maybe it was just the “screw you” he was seeing.
In any case, as Amelia circled the room, Daryl found himself readjusting his earlier assessment of her. Depending on whether or not she survived the rest of the night, she might have a chance at winning the war after all.
Chapter Three
I can do this.
Amelia struggled to hold onto her composure, staring at the dark-paneled hotel room door. She’d managed to keep the nerves at bay by sheer will until now, but everything she’d been suppressing for the past fourteen hours was bubbling up past her defenses, threatening the false calm that had gotten her this far. It was only a matter of time before she lost all control and dissolved into a total useless wreck.
And she needed to be on the other side of that door when it happened.
I can do this.
Taking a deep breath that almost seized in her throat, she knocked, first too soft, and then too loud. Flustered, she snatched her hand back and wrapped it around the strap of her purse to keep from knocking again.
Grasping the last thin threads of her composure when the door opened, Amelia managed a weak smile for Doyle. “Is Thea here? I kind of need to talk to her.”
His gaze ran over first her, then the small black tote bag at her feet before flicking down both directions of the empty hallway. Heat rose to her face at the quick conclusions he came to.
“Sure. Come on in. Here, I’ll get that.” He picked up the bag before she could. “The girls are out on the balcony plotting either a shopping spree or world domination. Daryl and I are steering clear until they decide which.”
The subtext being they wouldn’t come onto the balcony unless summoned. Amelia gave a jerky nod but couldn’t manage even a weak smile this time. “Thanks, Doyle.”
The room was a suite with bedrooms to either side, and a living room with elegant yet understated furn
iture anchoring its center. A table with the remnants of breakfast sat near the floor-to-ceiling windows. She didn’t see Daryl anywhere, but there was an open doorway that evidently led to the adjoining suite.
Taking a sharp breath, her stomach lurching painfully, Amelia dug into her purse and chewed through an antacid tablet with grim determination before she clutched the purse strap even tighter and walked out the open French doors.
I can do this.
“Mellie!”
She withstood the barrage of greetings and tight hugs, blinking fast several times when the chinks in her emotional dam showed. By the time they had her seated on one of the comfortable rattan chairs with a cup of tea beside her, Amelia had herself pretty well back together.
For most people, anyway.
Thea and Lillian weren’t most people.
“Not that we’re not happy to see you, sweetie,” Thea said, “but we weren’t exactly expecting you this morning. Is everything all right?”
“Of course.” The assurance rolled off her tongue before she realized she’d spoken.
“Really?”
“Because you don’t look like everything’s okay.” Lillian added a little “Ow!” when Thea kicked her in the ankle. “Well, she doesn’t, and I’m not going to lie about it.”
Amelia knew exactly what she looked like. Her bathroom mirror had been nothing if not brutally honest about the mauve hollows beneath her eyes makeup wouldn’t cover unless she slathered it on with a trowel.
“No, she’s right.” Feeling her stomach twitch again, Amelia reached for the tea, taking a few small sips in hopes of both settling her belly and buying herself a few more seconds. Finally, she let out a breath and put the china cup down, wincing at the loud rattle that betrayed her unsteady hand.
I can’t believe I’m really doing this.
