Harcourt had searched Adele’s room himself, looking for clues about her current whereabouts. When he found her stash of birth control pills, he’d almost become ill. Did she need to risk ruining her entire life by tarnishing her reputation with the likes of that boy?
Obviously she didn’t care what anyone—especially her father—thought. At least her mother hadn’t lived to see Adele treading such a dangerous path.
“May I see your papers, sir?”
The question startled him. He’d been so lost in thought that he hadn’t noticed the line ahead of him had finally disappeared.
“I’m sorry.” He held out his passport. “I’m afraid the long trip has left me a bit foggy.”
In short order, Harcourt had his passport tucked safely in his pocket and his luggage in hand. Ordinarily, he would have contacted the Dame’s butler to arrange for a car, but not this time. Sneaking into town uninvited and unannounced, he would have to find his own way to a suitable hotel.
Once he was settled in, he’d hunt for his daughter. If he could find Adele and derail her plans for destruction, they’d be on the next plane to London. With luck, their brief presence here in Seattle would go unnoticed. If the Talions needed a target, he could throw Wes their way.
And if Adele wouldn’t listen—or worse yet, if he was already too late—he would return to the UK alone and disavow any knowledge of her affairs. He’d grieve for her passing as any good father should, but he wouldn’t die for her.
That was simply too much to ask.
He stepped outside and headed for the long line of waiting taxis. One driver was already opening the trunk for Harcourt’s luggage. He surrendered it with great relief.
It was the first thing that had gone right in days. As he climbed into the backseat of the cab, he prayed it wouldn’t be the last.
Chapter 13
“Let’s take a walk.”
Kerry was already heading for the door, leaving Piper no choice but to follow the Dame out to the rose garden. Both women paused to stare up at the bright blue of the Seattle sky. Nothing like soaking up a little sunshine to soothe the soul, especially in a city known for its gray days.
Kerry took the lead as they wandered through the garden. Piper drew in a deep breath, inhaling the intoxicating scent of a dark red rose. Both of them carefully skirted the blackened circle where the bomb had exploded. It was hard to ignore the spot completely, festooned as it was with strips of yellow crime scene tape. But eventually the damage to the garden would fade.
The memories wouldn’t. Not completely.
Despite Grey’s resilient Talion physiology, he had almost died when he’d been bashed into the wall by the explosion. Piper could still see him flying through the air, out of control, until he bounced off the brick wall and landed unmoving on the ground. He’d healed, but it had been a close call. Too close.
“He’s fine, Piper.”
Kerry stood beside her, looking at the clumps of charred grass. Had she read Piper’s thoughts? Kerry had that ability, but as far as Piper knew, she’d never used it on her. Kerry glanced up at her and shook her head.
“No, I’m not reading your thoughts. Given the expression on your face, it wasn’t hard to guess what you were thinking about.” Kerry wrapped her arms around herself, looking chilled despite the warm weather.
Piper picked up a piece of burned grass. “I keep seeing it over and over again in my head. I have to remind myself that he’s all right. Or at least he is for now.”
Kerry made a wide turn around the crime scene. “Let’s go try out the new swing. I had it installed in memory of Dame Judith. I looked at all kinds of fancy benches, but as soon as I saw this swing, I knew it was perfect.”
They sat down, and Piper used her longer legs to set the swing in motion. It was surprising how soothing she found the gentle sway. For several minutes, they sat in silence, enjoying the heady combination of roses and sunshine.
Finally, Kerry spoke. “So tell me, what do you think of my new Chief Talion?”
Piper’s jaw dropped. Before she could come up with an appropriate answer, Kerry giggled.
“What?” Piper asked, trying not to sound defensive.
Kerry quickly erased most of her grin. “I should say that I wanted to know what you thought of him in his professional capacity—but that would be a lie.”
She turned and leaned against the arm of the swing, then crossed her legs on the seat. “Come on, Piper. Dish.”
“Are you asking as my employer or as my—friend?”
God, she’d come so close to letting the word “sister” slip out. Now was not the time for any more great revelations. That she and Grey were lovers was enough of a bombshell for one day.
“Definitely as your friend.”
“It’s all happened so quickly,” Piper began. “From that first day, he’s been impossible to ignore. There’s just something about those blue eyes and solemn expression. I kept wanting to find ways to mess with that solid control he has on his emotions.”
She tipped her head back to stare up at a passing cloud. “Maybe we would have ended up involved anyway, but seeing him almost die made the attraction even stronger. I feel everything more intensely when he’s around. Safer for sure, but it’s like all of my emotions are running on high.”
She risked a look at Kerry. “Am I making any sense?”
“You sound like me not that long ago.” Kerry looked toward the house. “It was as if I got dumped in the deep end of the pool with no swimming lessons. You’ve heard about the night of the fire. Ranulf was there, helping me get people out, although I didn’t actually meet him until later. It was Sandor who first approached me. He was supposed to ease me into the world of the Kyth.”
“I take it that things didn’t work out as planned.”
“It depends on whose plans you’re talking about.” Kerry picked at a hole in her jeans. “Sandor was supposed to finesse me, and Ranulf was to protect me. At least that’s what the two of them thought. However, Dame Judith suspected from the beginning that I shared her talents. She decided to throw both of her strongest Talions at me in hopes one of them would end up my Consort.”
Piper had already heard some of the story. For a short time, the two men had been in fierce competition for Kerry’s attention. “Well, it obviously worked. Was Judith surprised that you’d pick a Viking barbarian over a Cary Grant?”
“No more than Ranulf was.” Kerry’s expression quickly turned pensive. “Yes, it worked out, but at a cost. We lost Judith way too soon. Sandor was almost consumed with the need to protect me not just from the rogue, but from Ranulf as well. Sandor thought him too unstable to be trusted. Having to kill another Talion hurt both of them in ways we’ll never understand.”
“They seem to be doing all right now.”
Kerry kicked at the dirt. “Better anyway. Finding Lena and then the kids has made a world of difference for Sandor. Actually, for all of us. None of us have any blood family left, and the kids have helped fill that gap. From what Ranulf tells me, training Sean has proven as much fun for the three men as it is for Sean. They’ll eventually add Kenny to the mix, too.”
Piper winced at the comment about blood kin. Maybe she’d been wrong, and now was the time to tell Kerry. The longer she waited, the harder it would be to admit the truth or explain why she hid it. Before she could decide, Kerry reached over and put her hand on Piper’s wrist.
“Okay, what’s up? As handsome as my Chief Talion is, I don’t think he’s responsible for the sudden panic on your face. Your pulse is going a mile a minute, and your hands are shaking.”
Before Piper could come up with an answer, the man in question stepped out of the house. He hesitated briefly to give Kerry—or maybe Piper herself—time to wave him over. Piper drank in the sight of him. What was it about the man that called to her so strongly?
She suspected much of it was the calm façade he showed to the world. Her childhood had been tumultuous because her mother had never
found the fairytale happiness that she’d been searching for. The least little disappointment, and the two of them would be off to some new place to start over.
Grey had a temper but kept it under ruthless control, at least most of the time. She flushed with the memory of when she’d pushed him past his limits. He’d been angry, sure, but the war they’d waged had become a seduction that she wouldn’t forget.
“Piper, you’re drooling.” Kerry winked at her before turning her attention back to Grey.
Piper was actually raising her hand to wipe her mouth when she realized what she was doing and stopped. Please, God, don’t let Grey have heard what Kerry said. No such luck. There was a definite smirk on his face as he tossed her a neatly folded handkerchief.
“Jerk!”
Damn the man, even his chuckle was sexy. But his gesture, silly as it was, gave her the courage to take the first step. She rose to her feet, needing to be closer to him when she dropped her own little bombshell on them. “Look, there’s something you both need to hear, something I should’ve told you before now.”
Grey obviously sensed her growing distress. All the humor drained from his expression.
“What’s wrong, Piper?”
“Nothing’s wrong. Not exactly.” She braced herself and forced the words out. “Okay, here goes. Grey ordered a complete background check on me, but I want you to hear the truth from me, not some stranger.”
Kerry gave Grey a puzzled look. “Is that true, Grey? Why would you have Piper investigated again? I know Sandor did a check on her when she was hired.”
“Yes, he did, but there were too many gaps in the report.” He edged closer to Piper, but kept his eyes focused on Kerry. “Piper works directly with you, so I ordered the PI to dig deeper.”
Piper presented no threat to Kerry, but he’d had no way to know that for certain. While she didn’t appreciate strangers rooting around in her past, she couldn’t fault Grey for doing his job. From the way the Dame was frowning, Kerry didn’t agree.
“Kerry, Grey was just protecting you, not attacking me.” She managed a small smile. “That wasn’t my initial reaction, but it’s the truth.”
Now Kerry’s frown was aimed at her. “So I’m guessing that what the report will reveal has you all tied up in knots.”
Piper took a deep breath. “Earlier, you said that none of you have any blood relatives. Well, that isn’t exactly true. Not for you anyway. You have a sister—a half sister, to be more accurate.”
“What? There’s no record of my having a sister.” Kerry jumped to her feet, looking around as if she expected someone to pop out from behind the bushes.
Piper wished she could take it all back. No, that was a lie. One way or another, Kerry needed to hear this as much as Piper needed to say it.
“Let me explain, Kerry. Please.” She waited for permission before starting again.
When Kerry didn’t respond, Grey took control of the situation. “Okay, both of you look like hell right now. Sit down.”
He pushed enough authority into his voice that they both obeyed without question. He was right, though. She was pretty shaky and Kerry was probably feeling the same. They settled on opposite ends of the swing.
Grey positioned himself directly in front of them, making sure neither one tried to escape. “Now talk.”
Bless him, that man loved to give orders. Right now she appreciated his take-charge attitude. She leaned her head against the back of the swing, grateful for its support—and Grey’s.
“After my mom died, I was going through her things and came across a locked box I’d never seen before. Inside, she left me a letter about my father. Explaining what he was, what I am.”
She pinned her gaze on Grey’s hands, which were alight with swirls of energy. Despite his stoic expression, his emotions were definitely running high. “He left right after I was born, so I don’t remember him at all. From what I now know about our people, I would guess he was at least half Kyth, probably more. Whether he knew what he was, I’ll never know.
“Anyway, according to Mom, she got scared when he started developing these weird powers. One night, he lost his temper and set the couch on fire with just a touch. She thought he was a danger to us, not to mention himself. That was the last direct contact she had with him.”
Kerry spoke for the first time. “You were their only child?”
Piper nodded. “Yes. As soon as the divorce was final, Mom took me and ran. We moved around a lot when I was young. She was always searching for the gold at the end of the rainbow. But looking back, I suspect she also worried that my father might want to establish a relationship with me, not that he ever did.”
She sat in silence for a few seconds, feeling the pain that still lingered. Slowly, she gathered her wits and her courage, and continued. “I guess I took after Mom, but then I’m probably only a quarter Kyth. She left me instructions that if I ever noticed myself developing any of those same weird powers, I should find my father. She said he’d remarried and had another child, but I have no idea how she even knew that much.”
Piper looked up, trying to gauge Grey’s reaction. He gave her a brief nod of encouragement, urging her to lay it all out on the table. “If I couldn’t find him or didn’t want to, I was to contact the Grand Dame of the Kyth and ask for help.”
Grey jerked as if she’d shoved him. “But if she was human, how did she know about the Grand Dame and her people?”
“I have no idea. I also don’t know why she never told me any of this herself. Maybe she couldn’t deal with the guilt of hiding me from my father. She was probably crossing her fingers that I didn’t inherit any of his abilities.”
She wrapped her arms around her body, feeling cold and alone. “Anyway, I decided, powers or not, that I wanted to track down my father. I used part of my inheritance and hired someone to search for him.”
She tried to smile at Grey but wasn’t sure how successful she was. “It will be interesting to see if your guy was any more successful than mine.”
Grey nodded. “He didn’t find your father?”
“He couldn’t. My father and his second wife died under mysterious circumstances about twenty-five years ago. With no other known family, my sister was put up for adoption. It took him a while to get a lead on what happened to her because the adoption was handled privately, maybe even illegally. No court records, no nothing. Even the law firm’s records were destroyed in a fire.”
Kerry finally spoke. “All of that fits with what Sandor dug up about my past. But how did you manage to trace me if all the records were gone?”
“Luck, pure and simple. The investigator found a paralegal who had worked for the law firm. Turns out she’d secretly kept copies of the shady adoptions her bosses had handled. Too much money exchanged hands for them to all be legit. When the offices were burned to the ground and the partners died within weeks of each other, she stashed the files in a safety deposit box and laid low.”
“My guy guilted her into giving him the name of your adoptive parents. From there, it was just a matter of time before he traced you here to Seattle. Imagine my surprise when he gave me your phone number and it was the same one I had for the Grand Dame.”
For a few minutes there was nothing but strained silence in the garden. Even the street traffic was muted. It felt as if her story had whisked them of out of the real world and into another dimension that held just three people who had no idea how they’d gotten there and no idea of what to say.
Finally, Piper couldn’t stand it anymore. “Look, I know this is a lot to take in. Grey, I’m sure you’ll want to compare what I’ve told you to your investigator’s report.”
Now it was time to make herself scarce. Rising to her feet, Piper looked at her sister. “I have to leave for school in a few minutes. I understand if you’d like me to clean out my desk before I go.”
The tears streaming down Kerry’s face matched her own. Maybe she should have kept her mouth shut and just quietly disappeared. “I�
�m sorry to have hurt you, Kerry. I wanted to get to know you first, to decide whether you had room in your life for a sister you’d never even heard of. You’ve already had so many changes in the past year.”
She headed toward the house. Before she’d gone more than a handful of steps, she crashed into a barrier that stopped her cold. Instinctively, she struggled to break free before finally surrendering to her invisible prison. She’d heard about Kerry’s ability to immobilize those around her, but she’d never expected to experience it herself.
Kerry’s voice rang out over the garden. “I did not give you leave to depart, Miss Ryan.”
Damn, Kerry could really sound as imperious as a Grand Dame ought to. Bracing herself, Piper backed up a couple of a steps before finally turning to face her ruler. But it was her sister who stood there, her dark eyes sparking with flames and what looked like happiness.
“I should have told you sooner.” Piper whispered.
“You could have told me sooner.” Kerry said at exactly the same time.
Piper didn’t hesitate. She ran straight into Kerry’s outstretched arms.
Grey stood back and watched the two women blast past those first awkward moments and collide in a messy explosion of hugs. Toss in a distressing number of tears and giggles, and a wise man knew to stand back and let them muddle through their reunion without interference.
He’d imagined all kinds of possible secrets Piper might have had, but being Kerry’s long-lost sister hadn’t been one of them. But now that he knew, it amazed him that he hadn’t seen the similarities before now. Yeah, Piper was a head taller than her younger sibling, but they had the same dark eyes, sharp intelligence, and fearless nature.
He watched as they retreated back to the swing to talk. They both had to know that Piper’s startling revelation could have serious repercussions among their people, but all of that could be dealt with later. For now, he’d stand guard while his Dame and his woman adjusted to the sudden change in their relationship.
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