by Inara Scott
She interrupted him with laughter, grim at first and then with increasing hysteria. For some reason this seemed to strike her as funny. She flung out her hand to indicate the shelter as her shoulder blades shook with laughter. “You think this is all for your benefit? Your benefit. That’s a good one. Oh, you have no idea, Mr. Jameson. No idea!”
“Calm down,” Garrett said.
She ignored him, managing to squeak out between peals of laughter, “Coming to Miami. Starving. Staying at a shelter. Mosquitoes. Yes, you’re right. It is all for your benefit. Ha! How did you guess? How… could… you… possibly… have… guessed?”
Garrett frowned. “You’re not well. Are you taking drugs?”
She sobered at that. “Oh for goodness sake, Garrett, do I really seem like an addict?”
He had to admit she didn’t. Her eyes were clear, she was obviously not high, and her face, though thin, looked healthy. He shook his head. “Still, you shouldn’t be staying here. Jesus, Kaia, don’t you know how dangerous these places are? Can’t you get an apartment?”
Kaia wiped the tears from the corners of her eyes. “Oh yes, I just love the view from the fourth floor. And my cot. I’m very partial to my cot.”
“Be serious,” he said. “I realize they do the best they can here, but the fact is, this is a very tough neighborhood. Did you know there was a shooting down the block a few nights ago?”
“I did, actually, and it was almost a mile from here. I have a friend who’s a police officer who takes our safety very seriously.” She threw back her hair and continued before he could respond. “Look, it’s very kind of you to worry about me, but I don’t have a penny to my name. You know that better than anyone.”
“Don’t you have anyone who can help? Family? Friends?”
Kaia rounded on him, hands on hips. “You know, I’d love to understand why people ask that question. You think perhaps I forgot to ask someone for help and your asking will jog my memory?” Without waiting for a response, she continued, “I already told you, I have no family. No friends. The answer is no.”
She gestured toward the door where the security guard, having finished his smoke and apparently turned his attention back to his job, gave Garrett a baleful eye. “Can I go to bed now? Alfred gets testy when I come back after ten, and it’s almost that now.”
“You shouldn’t be staying here.” Garrett knew he was repeating himself but couldn’t seem to get past the image of Kaia sleeping on a cot in a room full of people. He could almost picture their faces, hear the fear and frustration from the parents, and the boredom and anxiety in the children.
“This is where I live,” Kaia said.
She started to push past him, and he grabbed her around the waist. Deliberately, he shook off the images in his mind, focusing instead on the feeling of his fingers slipping under the edge of her tank top and resting against the warm skin at the top of her skirt.
“No,” he said. “You don’t.”
The dark pink flesh of her lips was like a talisman and he focused on it, letting it fill his brain. He pictured the woman he had known before, with the gold dress and diamond earrings, lying on smooth satin sheets at the Avalon. That woman had not slept on a cot at the Good Samaritan Mission. He would bet his life on it. How was he supposed to imagine her here now?
“It isn’t you,” he said.
She tipped her face toward his, her eyes at once sad and inviting. “Sometimes life changes us,” she whispered. “This is what I am now.”
There was something mysterious in her statement, something important that he was missing, but the words didn’t fully register in his brain. All he knew was that he needed to kiss her. He needed to taste her, to figure out who she was and why she filled him with this desperate, aching need.
He dove into the kiss and felt her lips part beneath his. She was wet and open, soft and deeply hungry. Their lips slid across each other. Her tongue licked against his, drew him in, and sucked gently. They teased and taunted in a power play of sensation and then dove in again, letting their bodies submit where their minds could not.
Helpless to resist the growing need, he pushed on, harder. He caressed her mouth, turned from aggressor to seducer and back, and she followed every step. He trailed his hands across her back, pressed her body against his, and slid his hands under her shirt to touch the bare flesh below. The remembered feel of her body was too much. She moaned softly into his mouth and he shuddered, wanting to drive into her with all the reckless abandon they’d shared back at the Avalon.
“You need some help, Ms. Verde?” the guard called.
The voice was surprisingly close. When Garrett lifted his head, he saw the man had walked off the porch and was standing only a few feet away, baton in his hand. Garrett’s breath came in short pants as he struggled to regain control over his body.
Kaia took the opportunity to pull away. She fixed a brilliant but unsteady smile on her face. “We’re fine, Alfred,” she said. “Just having a hard time saying good night.”
The guard nodded. “That’s all right, but you know the rules. No men on this side of the building. No men past the door. You might want to speed up that good-bye.”
Garrett straightened. Alfred’s presence was a flush of cold water to his overheated brain. He narrowed his brows and scrutinized the man again, realizing with surprise that his earlier assessment might have been inaccurate. Right now, Alfred looked anything but idle or uninterested in Kaia’s welfare, as he tapped the baton against his right hand in a deliberate I-know-how-to-use-this-weapon gesture.
Garrett made a quick decision. “Kaia, go get your things.”
She cocked her head. “What? What are you talking about? Perhaps you didn’t hear me. I don’t have any money.” She emphasized each of the last few words slowly and deliberately. “I can’t afford a hotel.”
“We aren’t going to a hotel.”
“Then why am I getting my things?”
“I’m taking you home with me.”
§
Kaia didn’t have to fake her look of utter astonishment that followed Garrett’s bald pronouncement. She also didn’t have to fake the panic that came next. “Going home with you?” she sputtered. “To your apartment?”
Though his expression was difficult to read, Kaia had the impression that Garrett was as surprised as she was by the statement he had made. Just as quickly, his air of smooth authority returned. “No,” he said. “I don’t think that’s wise. On the other hand, I do want you somewhere I can keep an eye on you. So that means”—there was the barest hint of hesitation before he completed the thought—“the Manor.”
“The Manor?”
“My grandmother’s house. It’s not far from Miami.”
It was all happening too fast. Her heart was still racing from his horrible, perfect kisses, the ones that reminded her exactly why she had lost control with him once before. Somehow, when he touched her, everything inside her body turned hot and cold at the same time, and her rational mind dissolved. And how was she supposed to react to this... this... pronouncement? She didn’t even know if it was good or bad.
In general, she was finding it surprisingly easy to act out her role as Kaia Verde—a human woman with a history of being controlled and smothered. She figured it came from her years of dealing with Zafira. Kaia the Human turned out to be strikingly similar to Kaia the Faerie. Perhaps a little more independent. A little less obsessed with her looks. And a little more concerned with the lives of the beings around her.
Garrett had presented her with an altogether different sort of dilemma. What would Kaia the Human do now? Or perhaps more importantly—what should Kaia the Faerie do to get Garrett the Human to fall in love with her?
She crossed her arms over her chest and made a quick decision. Kaia the Human had worked too hard to stake out her own piece of independence. She wasn’t going to yield so easily. Even if Kaia the Faerie was dying to get into Garrett’s bed.
“Look, I appreciate the offer, I
really do, but I’m staying here.”
“Perhaps I wasn’t clear. It’s not an offer.” Garrett checked his watch. “It’s late. Portia will be annoyed as it is. If you want to get anything before we go, you better do it quickly.”
Kaia flung out her arms in frustration. “You aren’t listening to me. I’m not going.”
“If you want to stay in Miami and keep working for Rachel, you’ll come.”
“How am I supposed to get to work every day? You said the Manor is outside Miami. Are you going to buy me a car, too?”
Garrett sighed. “I’ll drive you. My niece is staying at the Manor until Tuesday, so I thought I might need to be there anyway. After that we’ll work something out.”
“Why? Why are you doing this?”
“You aren’t staying here,” he said flatly. “That’s simply not an option. And I’m not paying to put you up in a hotel. You’ve cost me enough already. So my options are to have you at my place or at the Manor. If I take you to my place, it will invite all manner of speculation and gossip, not to mention that I’ll have to worry about you walking out with my silver. If I take you to the Manor, on the other hand, you’ll be overseen by one of the most terrifying creatures known to mankind.”
Kaia shivered as she imagined the Black Ladies stepping forward, their strange, harmonic voices full of anticipation at the thought of disfiguring a faerie. What could humanity have that rivaled them? “What do you mean? Who guards the Manor?”
Garrett grinned. “My grandmother, of course.”
§
The Manor was at least forty minutes from Miami, though Kaia didn’t know the roads well enough to tell how long the drive might be during the week. The farther from the city they got, the darker it became, and the road narrowed to two winding lanes divided by a double yellow line.
Garrett switched off the air conditioning and rolled down the windows. Warm, moist air filled the car. Kaia leaned her head against the seatback and closed her eyes, trying not to think about the huge, male body at her side. After collecting her tiny armful of belongings and throwing them into the trunk of his small black car, Garrett paid her little attention, checking his voice mail and leaving some messages without so much as another look in her direction.
They drove down miles of a dark, silent road that was flanked on either side by enormous old palms, and though her nervousness about Garrett and his dragon of a grandmother increased, the farther they got from Miami a deeper part of Kaia slowly unwound. In the eleven days since she had stepped through the Gate into the Everglades, Kaia had learned to exist in an environment with few hints of the natural world. Good Sam, Rachel’s Roses, and Miami had become familiar, even comforting places. Yet they were still jarring somewhere close to her soul. Though she could not see what surrounded her on either side of the road, the very thought that it was not more buildings or concrete was an enormous relief.
“Are you going to tell me where we’re going?” she finally asked.
“I told you. We’re going to my grandmother’s place.”
“Forgive me for not being up on my Miami business tycoon family history, but I’m afraid that doesn’t really mean much to me.”
He sighed. “My grandmother bought this place back in the seventies, a few years before I went to live with her. She had just opened her second or third hotel and the money had started rolling in. I suppose you could call it a symbol, her message to the world that she had arrived. After a while she absorbed the lots around her so she’d have more room. When I was young, they raised horses on the property. Now she just keeps a few for riding.”
“Does she still ride?”
“She never rode,” Garrett said.
As Kaia puzzled over his words, they turned down a stone driveway and stopped at a sculpted iron fence. Garrett punched a series of buttons on a keypad. The gate retracted and they sailed through. The wind ruffled Garrett’s sun-kissed hair. A few stars were out but there was no sign of the moon. Only the lights of the dashboard illuminated his face, sending his already square-cut jaw and prominent cheekbones into high relief.
Rachel’s comment earlier that night about Garrett being a mix of businessman and satyr had an eerie ring of truth. He did have the cool, savage beauty of a satyr, though he—unlike a satyr—seemed to have a firmly developed moral code. Real satyrs rarely bothered with ethics. Luckily, their faerie side kept them focused on relatively harmless pleasures—most notably, music, art, and sex. Despite his stunning looks, Garrett held the weight of responsibility far too heavily on his broad shoulders to truly resemble a satyr. If she were seeking to make a comparison with one of the Fey, it would be more accurate to think of an elf—an austere creature of superior intelligence and cutting wit.
Kaia almost laughed aloud at the thought of comparing Garrett to an elf. Tall, with an ethereal beauty in their silky hair and sculpted features, elves were doubtless male, and could even couple with a woman to produce a child. But there was always an ambiguity to the sexuality of an elf. There was no ambiguity about Garrett. From his air of authority and power to the raw sensuality that flowed irresistibly through his chiseled form, Garrett Jameson was all man.
Definitely more like a satyr.
“Hopefully, Portia won’t wake up when we get in. She gets even grumpier than usual when she’s woken up. I learned that lesson when I was in high school.”
“You came in late a lot?” Kaia said.
She wasn’t sure how to read the strange, humorless smile Garrett flashed her, or the way he squared his shoulders as he drove to the apex of a circular drive in front of an enormous white house.
The bulk of the house was shrouded in shadows, but when they pulled up in front lights turned on, illuminating a wide porch with rocking chairs along the length and a set of double entry doors set off by smooth columns on either side.
The night air caressed Kaia’s skin as frogs and cicadas called in the background. Garrett opened her door and offered his hand. “As often as I could.”
They stood for a moment and gazed at the house.
“It looks very old,” Kaia said.
“It’s from the twenties. A genuine Redland Pioneer family home complete with Dade County pine floors. At least, that’s true for the front of the house. Portia added about fifteen thousand square feet over the years, in no particular order, so it’s a bit of a maze. There are ten bedrooms, six with adjoining sitting rooms and baths, two dining rooms, an entertainment room, a library, and full ballroom. The house sits on forty acres with pond, stable, servant quarters, and miles of riding trails. There’s an avocado grove on the back twenty acres Portia still harvests every year.” His voice had the tone and cadence of a bored tour guide.
“It sounds very impressive,” Kaia offered.
“It’s obnoxious,” he said.
Kaia peeked at him from the corner of her eye. His face was cold and hard. He put one hand in his pocket and ran the other through his hair, his posture deliberately relaxed.
“I suppose you could say that,” she said. “You could also say it’s beautiful.”
“It’s necessary. They do corporate retreats here. Portia entertains all sorts of diplomats and politicians. We bring our international partners to the Manor when we’re ready to close a deal.”
“And you hate it.”
The smile dropped off his face. He stared at the house and shrugged. “It’s just a house,” he said evenly. “How could anyone hate a house?”
Chapter Seventeen
Sunlight streamed through a tall, multi-paned window as Kaia rubbed her eyes and slowly sat up in bed. She surveyed the room around her, still finding it difficult to believe she’d been transplanted in one fell swoop from her cot at Good Sam to this luxurious mansion. They’d wandered down what seemed like endless halls of polished wood floors before Garrett had left her here, in the bedroom he had described as the “sanatorium.”
Though she hadn’t understood what he meant by that name last night, in the morning sun the w
hite walls, white eyelet curtains and matching bedspread, and thick white sheepskin rug left no doubt that he was right. A lamp beside the bed had a white shade decorated with bleached white shells. The only hint of color came from the dark oak of the four-poster bed and matching dresser in the corner.
“Nice move, Faerie,” a voice cackled in her ear. “It’s a big step up from the cot, isn’t it?”
Kaia swatted aimlessly in the air near her head. “Why do you have to bother me first thing in the morning?” she groaned. “Can’t you at least let me have some coffee first?”
The imp easily avoided her hand and sat down on the bed next to her, patting the lightweight down comforter. “Four-hundred thread count, at least. Very comfy. I’m not sure how you’re going to get past Grandma, though. That’s going to be a neat trick.”
“Have you seen her?” Kaia asked. “Is she as… difficult as he makes her sound?”
The imp paused and scratched his head. “Let’s just say she reminds me a little of Zafira. When she’s in a good mood.”
Kaia dropped back into bed. “I’m screwed.”
“But comfy,” the imp reminded her.
She smiled. “Very comfy.”
“So you must be Garrett’s… friend,” a disapproving voice called from the doorway.
The imp disappeared under the bed in one quick motion. Kaia sprang to her feet. If this woman was anything like Zafira, she didn’t want to meet her lying down.
Garrett’s dragon had thick white hair pulled back into a perfect French twist. She was tall, with a rigid posture only marred by a slight rounding of age in her back and shoulders. Though her face had a few wrinkles, her skin was an unblemished shade of peach, as if she had never been touched by harsh sunlight. “Dear God, put something on, girl.”
Of course, Kaia had forgotten she had fallen asleep wearing nothing but her tank top and tiny string bikini underwear. Kaia’s face flamed and she grabbed the sheet from the bed to throw around her waist.
“Um, yes, hi, I’m Kaia Verde. You must be Garrett’s grandmother.” She stepped forward with her hand outstretched.
