by Raye Morgan
“Your brother is back,” she told Mykal as she pushed open the door and made her way into the room. “Do you trust him?”
His eyes widened in surprise. “Kylos? Why, did he make a pass at you?”
“I can handle passes from men like Kylos,” she said scornfully as she set up his eating situation. “What I want to know is, do you have reason to suspect him of ulterior motives?”
He shook his head, not sure what she was getting at. “For what?”
She shrugged. “I don’t know. He just seems a little devious.”
“Devious.” He grinned and picked up a fork. “Kylos always has ulterior motives. And he’s very often devious. So you’re right on both counts. Watch your step around him.” And he began to eat the omelet. Very quickly, his time was taken up by sounds of epicurean pleasure.
She watched him for a moment, glad he seemed to enjoy the food. But she was worried about Kylos. She didn’t trust him. Still, she really didn’t have any evidence of anything substantive, did she? If she tried to tell him her intelligence work training had developed antennae that had always proven uncannily accurate, he would begin asking questions she didn’t want to answer.
“So do you have anything you can pin on him right now?” Mykal asked her.
“No,” she said at last. “If feelings don’t count, I’ve got nothing.”
“Feelings, huh?” He pushed away his half-eaten meal and hummed a few bars of a song, looking off into the distance as though trying to remember something.
She felt herself flushing. She remembered it all only too well. She remembered what a great tenor voice he had and how he loved to sing. He’d sung love songs to her. He’d sung comic songs to make her laugh. All at once, she was dying to hear that beautiful voice again, hear it in full voice. She turned her face away so he wouldn’t see that her eyes were misting over.
He began to drift off to sleep. This time he didn’t seem to need her hand to hold. She assumed that meant whatever he was taking that made him artificially drowsy had mostly worn off.
She’d pulled a comforter out of the closet and she used it now, curling up on the little couch again after turning down the lights. Just as she was falling asleep, she heard a sound and looked up quickly, just catching a glimpse of Kylos in the doorway before he disappeared. That startled her, but she was too tired to worry about it.
“Tomorrow,” she promised herself. “Tomorrow I’ll have it out with him.” And her eyes closed two seconds later.
Mykal was on his own, walking in the garden. He felt as if he’d escaped from some sort of tender trap, a silken-threads sort of imprisonment, where they tortured you with kindness. He’d slipped out at dawn without waking Janis, found his father’s old walking stick in the hall closet and now he was free.
Not that he was going anywhere. In fact, now that the adrenaline of sneaking out had died down, he was beginning to feel the pain again. Also the weakness. Not to mention the cold wind. He wouldn’t be able to go much farther. He stopped beside what had once been his favorite pond. It was empty now and he lowered himself carefully to sit on the bench that sat close by. He felt sad to see the bare concrete form without water, and without the colorful koi that had splashed about here when he’d been younger. He frowned, wondering why Kylos was letting the place go this way. He would have to speak to him about it.
But right now, he didn’t want to dwell on that. He’d come out here to try and get his head straight. He had to think and decide what he wanted to do with his life, before others made that decision for him. The way things were going, it looked like he just might be the lost prince. Wow. Wonderful. What was that going to do for him? He took a deep breath and frowned. That and a half-crown coin might get him a pint at the local pub.
Hey. He smiled wryly to himself. Maybe it actually would. Maybe people did give princes free food and drink just for showing up at their place. If so, it might actually be worth something.
But he had to get serious and be practical. Did he really want to become a prince and go to live in the castle with the rest of the royal family? Offhand, he didn’t think he was suited for the job. It seemed superfluous. He had half a mind to tell them to take their royal crown and… Well, if he did turn it down, he probably wouldn’t be quite that rude about it. But he was tempted just to say no.
And yet, he didn’t want to be too impulsive. What if there were more to it? What if he could step in and find an important job to do? What if being royal could really put him into a position where he could make a difference?
Probably a pipe dream. Still, this was all sort of interesting, being tapped as a possible lost prince and all. It wasn’t quite as good as being a war hero, of course, but it was something. He’d been told he’d done some pretty good things in the war, and he hoped that was true. But what good did it do if you couldn’t remember it?
When you got right down to it, it all seemed so pointless. He’d never wanted to be a prince. Most of his childhood had been spent wanting desperately to be a football star. As that dream died, others took its place. He wanted to be a fireman. Then an astronaut. And finally he’d settled on architecture. He’d had a thriving business, but the war had loomed and he remembered thinking being a spy would be great fun. They told him that was exactly what he’d become, though he didn’t remember it at all.
But a prince? No, that had never been on his horizon and he wasn’t really sure what royalty did beside stand around and look important. Was it really a full-time job? Or were you allowed to follow other pursuits on the side? Someone would have to explain all these little details to him at some point, and then he would make the final determination whether he would submit to the royal rigmarole or not.
Still, it wasn’t really filling his mind with eager thoughts. In some ways, it seemed almost irrelevant. His own two lost years were more of an obsession. That was what he couldn’t stop thinking about. Where had he been? What had he done? Whom had he offended? Whom had he made love to?
Two years. A lot could happen in that amount of time. He could remember how excited he’d been to begin his military career. He’d prepared himself in every way he could think of. He’d worked out and read books and agonized over his own belief system. He’d filled out the paperwork.
And then—nothing. It was as though he’d walked through a door into another world and stayed there for two years. Now he was back and he wanted to retrieve what he’d lost.
Loss. The word resonated with him. Yes, that was what he was feeling, why he was so restless and dissatisfied. He felt loss—and not just of time and experience. He felt a deep, dark, aching loss in his soul. He needed someone. Something was missing.
He started to stand and the pain hit him like a knife in the back. Gasping, he fell back down onto the bench. For the moment, pain was all there was.
Janis was muttering to herself as she hurried through the house toward the backyard. She’d overslept and then she’d had to deal with a little bit of morning sickness, something she hadn’t had until recently. Now she didn’t know where Mykal was and she was furious with herself.
“If I’m going to make a fool of myself hanging around here, I might at least do a good job of keeping tabs on the man,” she muttered aloud. “What is the point if I’m not even vigilant?”
She’d woken up, pulled together her clothes and dashed through the house finding absolutely nobody. He had to be outside. She was out the door and into a garden that must have been beautiful once, but had gone a bit too much to seed lately. And then she saw Kylos and Griswold on either side of Mykal, bringing him back to the house.
She gasped. He looked terrible, drawn and pale. The two men were holding all his weight and practically carrying him along. Her heart was in her throat as she ran out to meet them.
“What happened?” she cried.
Kylos gave her a murd
erous look. “I guess his pain medication wore off and he decided to go gallivanting around,” he said coldly. “Too bad you can’t be bothered to make sure he’s medicated.”
“No,” Mykal murmured, shaking his head. “I don’t want any pain medication.”
“What you want and what you need are two different things,” Kylos told him sternly.
The house phone began to ring, adding to the sense of frenzy.
“Oh,” Janis said, reluctant to leave them but knowing there was no one else to answer the phone in the house. These three were definitely occupied. “Shall I…?”
“If you please, miss,” Griswold said, staggering under Mykal’s weight. “I’m afraid I’m tied up at the moment.”
“If you wouldn’t mind,” Kylos added through clenched teeth, his eyes shooting daggers.
“Of course.” She threw a pained glance at Mykal and a glare back at Kylos and ran into the house and then headed for the study, picking it up in the nick of time.
“Hello,” she said breathlessly, looking back to see where they were taking Mykal. “This is the Marten residence.”
“This is Queen Pellea,” the musical voice on the other end announced in a friendly manner. “I’d like to speak to Mykal, please.”
“Oh.” Janis stood as though struck dumb. It was the queen. She’d never spoken to a queen before. “Oh, my goodness.”
“Is he available?” Her voice rose as she began to intuit that something might be amiss. “What’s wrong? Has something happened to him? Please, fill me in right away.”
Janis could hear the emotional connection in her voice and for some reason, it touched her heart and caused all her own emotions to come pouring out. Suddenly, she found herself talking to the queen as though she’d known her all her life.
“Oh, Your Royal Highness,” she said, not sure if she had the right address but too upset to care. Looking around again, she could see that the men were taking him back into the bedroom. She needed to get to him. She needed to help.
“I’ve been trying to keep him quiet,” she said quickly, “but you can’t believe how hard it is. I just woke up to find he’s been out running around in the yard and of course now he’s collapsed and…and…”
“Okay,” Pellea said briskly. “We’re moving up the timetable. I’m sending someone over as soon as possible with an ambulance. I want him here at the castle where we can keep an eye on him.”
“Oh.” She swallowed. She supposed that was probably for the best, but it seemed sudden.
“What is your name, dear?”
She drew in her breath sharply. She had so many names to sift through before deciding what name to give. There was her natural name, Janis Gorgonio, a name that would send up red flags anywhere it was mentioned. Then there was Marten, her married name. And Davos, her mother’s name, the one she had mostly gone by all her life in order to avoid people knowing she was born a part of the Gorgonio mob family.
“Uh…Janis. Janis Davos.”
“And you are…?”
“I’m helping. I’m sort of an assistant. Trying to keep him calm. I know any sort of movement can be so dangerous for him.” Her voice was shaking with her fear for his safety and she stopped for a moment, embarrassed. “He doesn’t want to take anything that will make him drowsy, so I’m just trying to keep him from hurting himself.”
“Really?” The queen’s voice was all sympathy. “How long have you known him?”
“Uh… Actually…”
Janis drew in a shuddering breath. She couldn’t lie to the queen! “It’s sort of a strange situation. You see, he has this amnesia thing and so he doesn’t remember me. But we knew each other quite well and…”
“Say no more,” Pellea said as though she understood everything that was still unspoken. “I get the picture and I trust you. I can hear your honesty in your voice. I want you to come to the castle with him.”
“Oh, Your Highness…” That was something she hadn’t expected.
“And call me Pellea. I know we’re going to be good friends.”
Call me Pellea. This was the Queen of Ambria talking to her like this. She was touched and grateful. “Oh, I hope so.”
“I’ll get the medics ready to roll. Someone will call when they are on their way.”
“Thank you so much.”
She rang off and turned to go to Mykal, but Kylos was standing just a few feet away, glaring at her and her heart jumped.
“So you knew him before, did you? I knew there was something fishy about you. Why keep it a secret? What’s your angle?”
Mentally, she shook herself. It wasn’t easy making the transition from the queen’s kind generosity to Kylos’s feral animosity.
She looked toward the bedroom. She really wanted to go in and see about Mykal. “It’s a long story and I…”
He grabbed her arm, fingers digging in. “You’re a lying little thief, aren’t you?”
She looked up into his face. She had the urge to send him sprawling again, but she resisted it. “No. No, I swear, I didn’t really lie, I just let you think things that weren’t true.”
“Oh, really! I’m afraid the subtlety of that distinction is somewhat lost on me, darling.” He squeezed her flesh painfully. “I want an explanation and I want it now.”
Giving him back as fierce a glare as he was giving her, she began to peel his fingers off her arm, one at a time. “I have to check on your brother first. Then I’ll fill you in on the background to this. I swear.”
He grabbed her chin in his other hand, holding it roughly. “You’d better keep that promise. I’ll give you exactly ten minutes and if you don’t meet me back here, I’ll tell Mykal what a lying little rat you are.”
And then, to her surprise, he let her go. As she hurried back to the bedroom, she couldn’t help but wonder at his motives. He must want to know her story awfully badly to bargain with her like this. And the way he’d said it implied he wasn’t planning to kick her out—at least not yet.
But was he going to tell Mykal? Maybe yes, maybe no.
Mykal looked drained but recovering his strength. He gave her a crooked smile as she came in and began fussing around him. “Who was on the phone?” he asked as she poured him a glass of water.
She flashed him a brilliant smile. “The queen. She wants you there at the castle as soon as possible.”
“Oh.” He grimaced, looking unhappy. “And what if I decide not to go?”
“What?” She stared at him, aghast. “Why wouldn’t you want to go?”
He met her gaze for a long moment and finally he confessed. “I’m not sure I want to be a prince,” he said.
CHAPTER SIX
JANIS caught herself and held back the cry of dismay that came quickly to her lips. “But…” She swallowed hard. “Mykal, if you are one of the royal DeAngelis family, you can’t pretend you’re not. The DNA doesn’t lie. If the final judgment says you’re a prince, you’re a prince. You don’t get to pick and choose, do you?”
“Imprisoned by my bloodline. Is that the way it goes?”
She bit her lip, thinking how that statement could apply to her as well as to him. She’d been trapped by her family’s past and she’d worked hard to put it behind her, only to have it crop up again and again.
But that background was criminal and she’d known it could ruin her chances of a decent life. This was so different. His true ancestry could transform his life into something so wonderful. But obviously, that wasn’t the way he was looking at it.
“I’ll make the decision on what I want to do with my future,” he said simply. “I don’t have to accept a life I don’t want.”
“But here in Ambria…”
“That’s just it. I don’t have to stay here in Ambria
. The rest of the world doesn’t give a damn about princes from Ambria. I can go somewhere else.”
He was right, of course. This was his decision and if he didn’t want to be a prince, what right did anyone have to make him do it anyway? None.
In some ways, she was torn. If he accepted the royal position, she knew he would be lost to her forever. Even if he didn’t she didn’t have much hope with him. But everything in her yearned for his success and happiness, and she had a feeling he shouldn’t pass up this chance.
“Fair enough,” she said at last. “But I would just say one thing. They have wonderful medical care at the castle and that is what you need right now. It wouldn’t hurt to get opinions from the best physicians in the country.” She sighed. “And Queen Pellea seemed so nice.” She gave him a halfhearted grin. “And anyway, since they want you, why not at least give them a shot at convincing you? It can’t hurt. If it’s not meant to be, you’ll find a way to turn it down gracefully, I’m sure of it.”
He stared at her and she couldn’t tell if he’d really been listening. She bent down to fluff his pillows and he reached up and sank his fingers into her hair, letting go easily as she straightened again, watching her hair pour out of his grasp as though it were liquid gold. She looked at him, wide-eyed. He’d loved playing with her hair in the past. Did he remember, even a little bit? The feel of his touch made her shiver.
“I cannot begin to express to you how much I hate this,” he said absently, as though half his attention was still on her hair.
“Hate what?” she asked quickly.
“Not being able to get around by myself.” His gaze met hers. “Depending on other people just to walk in the yard.”
“Have some patience,” she said, shaking her head. “You came in here on a gurney not even fifteen hours ago. You can’t get up and dance. Not yet.”
