by A. S. Green
“No,” he said, gently squeezing her nape.
“But you said you didn’t know him.”
“I don’t have to. Only a queen can do what you do.”
She swallowed hard—reacting not only to the unanswered questions that had always plagued her about her birth, but also to the solid warmth of Alex’s hand.
“Do you think he’s still alive?” Then she closed her eyes, telling herself she shouldn’t care. He’d abandoned her mother and had never bothered to reach out to a sad little girl, desperate for her father’s attention.
Alex was quiet for a while, then he said, “He’d have to be a very strong individual to survive on his own all this time. I’m inclined to say he’s no longer with us, but judging by his daughter’s strength...”
Ainsley made a hmph sound. “I’m not strong at all.”
“I threw you a curve ball two days ago, and one that you took to the head. And still, you keep stepping up to the plate.”
“Has anyone ever told you that you speak in baseball metaphors a lot?”
“I like baseball,” he said, then he resumed his point. “Today you had lunch with three ba’vonn-shee males who haven’t tasted warm blood in nearly two decades, and you didn’t even flinch.”
“I kinda flinched.”
“I never saw it.”
Ainsley didn’t usually go in for flattery, but her body warmed under his praise. His honesty about her father also touched her in a profound way. He could have lied, told her he knew exactly who and where he was, just to string her along. But he didn’t.
Only once her thoughts had settled, did she look up. “Thank you.”
His eyebrows drew together. “For what?”
“For being honest. It’s a rare thing. And for not leading me on with the promise of information you don’t actually have.” She touched his arm, letting her palm linger against his bicep.
Alex looked down at her hand, then he silently raised his eyes to hers.
She gave him a small smile, suddenly self-conscious, and continued walking another ten feet before stopping at a crossroad in the main path that ran through the park.
The split to the left was narrow and flanked by a wrought-iron fence on both sides; it would provide the quickest route back to the office.
“Should we cut through here?” she asked, looking up at him. But Alex wasn’t there. She turned to find him still standing by the stream, frozen in the same place where she’d left him.
He glanced at the left-hand fork, then winced as if her suggestion caused him physical pain. “If you don’t mind, I’d rather not.”
“Why?” She looked down the path.
“Because the fence is made of iron.”
She narrowed her eyes at the fence. It seemed innocuous enough. “So?”
“Besides the loss of a queen, it’s our only weakness.”
She turned to face him again, and his body was rigid. “You mean like kryptonite?”
“That’s a good enough analogy. It’s incredibly painful, searing to the touch—debilitating after a few moments, and it would knock me unconscious after any prolonged exposure.”
She gingerly touched the ornamental finial on the corner post, but it didn’t feel strange. “It doesn’t affect me.”
“It has something to do with the electronic configuration. Queens don’t have the same liability.”
“Iron can’t be too hard to avoid, can it?” When she looked back at Alex, she sucked in a breath; his expression was dark and agonized. “What’s wrong?”
“A second ago, you said you appreciated my honesty. I wasn’t completely honest with you just then.”
“You mean iron isn’t your only weakness?”
“No.” His eyes searched hers, then he quickly looked away. “Apparently I have one other. That’s what my brothers wanted to talk to me about before I left.”
Ainsley didn’t immediately understand. Then she picked up on the same sense of regret she’d felt from him in his office that morning. “It’s me, isn’t it. That’s why you act all Jekyll and Hyde all the time. Tell me what I’m doing wrong, and I’ll stop.”
“You’re not doing anything wrong. Quite the opposite. It’s me that keeps getting things wrong.”
She walked back to the spot where he still stood. “Maybe if you’d have kissed me, you would have seen that—”
“That would have been a most unfortunate mistake.”
There it was again. Drawing her in, then spitting her out. “Why?”
He looked down at her, and one corner of his mouth pulled up, but she could see his good humor was forced. “Besides the obvious threat of a sexual harassment lawsuit?”
“Don’t make a joke. I’m being serious.”
“Fine,” he said, his mouth tightening. “My brothers want me to bond you. It’s the natural turn of events between a chieftain and a queen.”
Ainsley held her breath. “What does that mean, to bond?” The tension in his eyes told her it was something serious.
“It involves blood,” he said, “but don’t worry. I won’t succumb to that kind of weakness.”
Ainsley’s stomach turned, but at the same time there was a strange sense of loss. “So, you’re saying I can save your clan, but when it comes to you…I’m iron?”
“That works as good as any explanation. You’re a quick study.”
Ainsley pinched her lips together because she really wasn’t; there was so little of this she understood. “Tell me more about this bonding.”
Alex murmured her name like it was a warning.
“Don’t you ‘Ainsley’ me,” she said, her frustration rising. “I’ve wanted to kiss you since the first time I met you, a complete stranger. Then I nearly did it again today in your office. I don’t do that, Alex. That’s not me.”
His green eyes flared, and he gripped her upper arms, holding her in place—as if both afraid to let her go, and afraid for her to get any closer.
“I’m not an iron fence you can avoid,” she said, her voice barely above a whisper.
“I don’t have a choice.”
“Don’t you?” she asked.
His eyes dropped from hers to her lips. Then a lusty growl rumbled through him.
Ainsley’s body lurched as he pulled her against his body. His mouth crashed down on hers, and his answering kiss was so brutal, so hungry that Ainsley thought her lips might be permanently bruised. And she was not complaining.
Alex’s hand fisted in her hair and tugged her head back. She gasped and accepted the invasion of his tongue. Her fingers dug into his back, wishing she could pull him even closer.
He groaned, then—as if hearing himself—broke away, pushing against her so hard she staggered back on her heels, nearly tumbling on the gravel walkway.
Alex’s chest heaved, and he made a choking sound. “Dammit! That did not happen.”
“Alex.”
“I can’t do this to you. I won’t. I’m… I’m taking the long way back to the office. You can take the rest of the afternoon off. I’m calling you a Lyft.” He pulled his phone out of his pocket.
“But—” Ainsley cut herself off, feeling the slap of his rejection.
All her life, she’d avoided this very situation. Well, not this exact situation, of course. But she’d learned from her mother never to fall too hard. Men were only to be appreciated from a safe distance, lest they should lure you in and make you want them.
If you let that happen, they’d invariably ruin you. Just like her grandfather had abandoned her grandmother the summer before Ainsley’s mother started junior high. Just like Ainsley’s own father had left, hurt, and ruined her mother before Ainsley’d even been born.
She’d vowed never to go down that path. She would not risk repeating that family history of heartbroken women. And yet…her body longed for Alex. She could feel her longing in every cell of her body. God, she was such a fool.
“I mean it,” Alex said, closing his eyes as if the sight of her was too muc
h. “I need to be alone for a while. Go out that side entrance and wait on the sidewalk. The car will be there in less than a minute, license plate ends in five-two-one. Repeat that back to me.”
“Five-two-one.”
He nodded once. “It’ll take you home.”
13
Less than an hour later, Ainsley stood in the entry to her kitchen. Its checked curtains, Americana wallpaper border, and ceramic chickens were all so familiar, but now everything looked different—even her mother, who stood at the sink washing dishes. She was humming to herself and didn’t seem to know Ainsley was home.
Ainsley listened to her tuneless song for a few more seconds, then she expelled a breath and headed down to her mother’s room. She opened the closet and reached up onto the shelf, feeling around for the shoebox tucked in the corner.
The first time Ainsley’d found it, she’d been eleven and snooping around for where her mother might have hidden the Christmas presents. She’d needed to stand on a chair back then, and she hadn’t understood the box’s contents—just a lot of photos of a younger version of her mother with an auburn-haired man, ticket stubs, a paper napkin with doodles all over it…
Ainsley’d revisited the box when she was eighteen. By then, she’d seen her birth certificate and knew her father’s name. She matched that to a notation on the back of one of the photos: Me and Ian - Grandma’s Marathon, Duluth.
Pulling the box down, Ainsley blew the dust off the cover and carried it into the kitchen. She’d wanted to do this for a while, but talking about her father always made her mother sad. Now, there was no avoiding it. She needed answers. Alex had started her down this road, and now she needed her mother to fill in the blanks that Alex couldn’t.
She returned to the kitchen doorway. “Mom?”
Her mother yelped. The dish she was washing splashed into the sink. She whirled with her gloved hand pressed to her chest. Then, when she saw Ainsley, she closed her eyes and slumped against the counter. “Are you crazy? You about gave me a heart attack.”
“Sorry.”
“What are you doing home? Did you quit after all?” She’d been disappointed when Ainsley hadn’t given her notice.
“No.”
“Then—”
“Mom, can we not talk about work right now?”
Her mother’s eyes dropped to the box in Ainsley’s hands. “Where did you find that?”
“Your closet.”
Her mother’s gaze lifted slowly from the box to Ainsley’s face. “You’ve opened it before, haven’t you?”
“I want to hear the story again.”
“You know the story. He was my professor. I was his research assistant. I got pregnant. He lied to me, then he left.”
“That’s not enough anymore.” Ainsley walked to the kitchen table, feeling simultaneously eager and apprehensive. She needed to know if her mother knew—really knew—who and what her father was. It would help so much if she had someone she could confide in. “Tell me what he was like.”
Her mother removed her rubber gloves and draped them over the edge of the sink. She turned to stare out the window, as if praying for patience. Then, finally acquiescing, she came to sit beside Ainsley at the kitchen table.
With a sigh, she pulled the box in front of her and gingerly removed the lid.
She laid the first photo in front of Ainsley; it was one of her mother alongside the auburn-haired man, Ian Fitzpatrick. Her father. They were standing on a hill with their arms outstretched as if to say, “We made it to the top!”
“He looks strong,” Ainsley commented, while carefully watching her mother’s expression.
“Very,” she said, but her face gave nothing away.
“What did his voice sound like?”
“Deep. Sexy.” For a second, her mother’s lips curled up before falling again. “He had a bit of a Scottish accent, but it was mostly gone because he’d lived in the states for so long. I think I told you that before.”
Ainsley nodded, though she hadn’t actually remembered her mother ever telling her that. It seemed like something that would have stuck.
Ainsley picked up a movie ticket stub for Notting Hill and turned it over in her hand. Her father had touched this. “Did he have any family here?”
“He spoke of his brothers sometimes. Oh, my gosh.” Her mother lifted a dried rose from the box, so dark now it was practically black. “I haven’t thought about this in a long time. He took me to a resort in Wisconsin for a long weekend once, and the hostess went around the restaurant selling roses.”
Ainsley had a hard time picturing the scene. Her mother had never dated in Ainsley’s conscious memory, and it was weird imagining her in a romantic scene. Still, Ainsley was glad she’d had that—if only for a little while. “Did you reach out to any of his brothers after he left?”
“Huh?” Her mother dropped the rose back into the box. “Oh, no. I never met them. Right now, I can’t even remember any of their names.”
“Hmmm.” Ainsley picked up the photo of her parents at the marathon in Duluth. They had their arms around each other’s waists, and her father was looking down at her mother with obvious affection. “This is from a race, right? Was he a runner?”
Her mother slipped her reading glasses from the top of her head down onto her nose and took the photo from Ainsley to look at it more closely. “We were just there to watch, and to cheer the runners on.”
“So he wasn’t…you know…like…fast, or anything?” Ainsley asked, probing in a way that felt clumsy and embarrassingly desperate.
Her mother shifted in her seat. “That’s a strange question.” She set the photo aside. She picked up another one.
“Sorry. I guess I was just curious.”
They went through a dozen more photos, and all the while Ainsley kept searching for some sign that her mother knew whom she’d been involved with. But what question would get to the truth? “Was he…different?”
Her mother’s hand stilled and hovered over the last photo in the box. “How do you mean?”
“Just…you know…different than most men?”
Her mother bit down on the inside of her mouth, then she began to put all the photos and mementos back in the box. “Not different enough. He left, didn’t he? Just like my dad.”
Her mother got up from the table and crossed the floor to a hutch with several drawers in its lower half. She opened the bottom drawer and rifled through the contents.
“Why did you keep all these reminders, if he hurt you so much?”
Her mother returned to the table with her college yearbook in hand. She laid the book on the table and flipped through the pages until stopping in the faculty section. “Here. This is the only other picture I have of him. And to answer your question, I kept them for you. In case you someday had an interest.”
Ainsley bent over the formal portrait. It was different than the rest. Her father looked serious. A bit like Callum.
“Let me see your picture,” Ainsley said as she flipped through the pages.
Her mom pulled the book in front of her and helped her out, turning toward the back then forward a few pages. “Here.”
Ainsley leaned in to see the picture with the name Carrie Elizabeth Morris. “Wow. I’ve never seen your hair cut like that before.”
“It was a style called ‘the Rachel.’”
Ainsley fought back a smile. “You mean like from Friends?”
“Don’t laugh. It was very popular in the 90s.”
Ainsley read through the bios on the sidebar, revealing all of the students’ majors, life ambitions, favorite quotes. Her eyes caught on a line in one of the bios: Proud member of the BCB.
“What’s the BCB? Some kind of extra-curricular social club?”
“No idea,” her mother said.
Ainsley slid her finger across the page to the photograph attached to the bio. It was of a young man with sandy blond hair and an acne-scarred face. Something about his eyes looked familiar. “Jerome F. Mosley?
”
Her mother leaned over the page. “Well, now there’s a name I haven’t thought of in a long time. Jerry was a basketball player; maybe BCB was some kind of basketball club.”
“Basketball Club…Boyz?” Ainsley suggested, only half-serious.
Her mother expelled a burst of air through her nose. “Or Basketball Camp…Believers?”
Ainsley smiled. “I like my guess better. Was he a friend of yours?”
Her mother’s expression turned serious. “Hardly. Jerry was more along the lines of a stalker.”
Ainsley leaned back. “Yikes, Mom.”
Her mother waved her hand through the air like it was no big deal. “Slightly creepy, but harmless. Everyone knew he had a terrible crush on me, and he was always trailing after me, popped up whenever your father and I were together.”
“Do you think he knew about the two of you?”
“Jerry wrote me a love letter once, and I kept it for a while, thinking if he ever reported us to the administration, Ian could use it as part of his defense—that clearly Jerry was falsely accusing us in retaliation against me for me having spurned his advances.”
“Did he report you?”
Her mother gave her a sideways glance. “That’s not why your dad left.”
“Right. He left because of me.”
Her mother’s expression turned to alarm. “No. He was excited about you. He thought you’d be a boy, but he was even more excited when we had the ultrasound and they said it was a girl. He couldn’t believe it.”
She turned in her chair and took both of Ainsley’s hands in hers. “We went out to celebrate, but… I don’t know what happened, but the next day something was clearly off. He became…secretive. I could tell there was something he wasn’t telling me.”
“You mean, that he’d changed his mind about me.”
“I don’t know that, and neither do you. It wasn’t your fault he left. It was his. Only his. He started acting strange. Erratic. He’d miss classes. He kept me in the dark about a lot of things.
“And then one day he was just…gone. Not even the administration knew what happened to him.”
