Dangerously Charming

by Deborah Blake

  “I was just thinking,” he said.

  Jenna turned a little to face him instead of the TV across the room. Somehow they’d ended up still sitting on the same bed when they’d finished eating. He hadn’t really noticed it before, but now she seemed too close for comfort. Despite the lingering odor of cheese and sausage, he could smell the peppermint shampoo she’d used on her hair, which was mostly dry and flowed over her shoulders like a cloak. Day knew it would feel like silk if he reached out and touched it. He didn’t.

  Instead, he shifted so he was a little farther away, turning to face her too. “It’s been tough,” he admitted. “Adjusting to not being a Rider. It is all I’ve ever known, and all I’ve been for thousands of years. I don’t know how to be anything else. So in part, I was thinking about how much more useful I would have been to you a year ago, when I still was one.”

  To his immense relief, Jenna merely looked interested, instead of pitying. “I can’t imagine living for centuries, or having a career for that long, come to think of it. I’ve never had a job that lasted more than three or four years. Just never found my calling, I guess. You were lucky you had one; not everyone gets that.”

  Day hadn’t thought of things in that light. “I suppose that’s true,” he said slowly. “Although I’m not sure you could say it was a calling, exactly. More like what I was created to be. Maybe that’s what makes it so hard to lose it. But mostly I was thinking about how much my brother Alexei likes pizza.”

  Jenna’s nose crinkled in the cute way it did when she was confused. “Right. Little Babs said you have two brothers.”

  Day nodded. “Half brothers, actually, although I rarely think of them that way. We’ve been together so long, it is hard to imagine my life without them.”

  “You’re close, then?”

  “We used to be,” he said. “There was a time when we were as close as any three brothers could be.”

  CHAPTER 10

  “DID you grow up together?” Jenna asked.

  “Yes and no. As children we were often apart, living with our separate mothers. But as adults, we always had each other.” His smile slid away. “It was difficult to form lasting relationships with the kind of life we led. We spent too little time in the Otherworld to make true friends there, and in a land where everything is based on where you stand in the social order, we didn’t really fit in any convenient niche. Here in the mortal lands, well, those we met had lives too short for us to befriend them without suffering loss after loss. Eventually, we stopped trying. So we had the Baba Yagas, some of whom were very nice and some of whom . . . weren’t . . . and we had each other. It was enough, for a very long time.”

  “But not anymore?” Jenna said softly.

  Day shrugged, as if he could motion away the grief and the guilt and the fear that his longest and closest friends would never forgive him for what he’d brought down upon them all. “I haven’t spoken to either of them since it happened. At first I was healing. That took a long time. We were all in the Otherworld, waiting for our bodies to recover and our spirits to mend as much as possible, but each of us chose a different area to recuperate in. They came to see me at some point early on, but the faery who was tending to me sent them away, telling them I was too sick to see them.”

  “Were you?”

  He shrugged again, taking a long drink from the beer he’d had delivered along with the pizza. “Too sick. Too cowardly to look them in the eye. Too afraid that they’d come to tell me they never wanted to speak to me again. It didn’t matter. Neither of them ever returned to try a second time.”

  Jenna put one warm hand on his arm. “Did you ever go looking for them, once you were well?”

  Day shook his head. “No. I came through the doorway and found the cabin instead. I didn’t feel like I could face them until I had some answers. Until I’d figured out who I was now, and how to make amends.” He tried not to sound bitter, since it wasn’t truly Jenna’s fault, but he was pretty sure he didn’t succeed. “Of course, that would be easier if the universe could have left me alone to think.”

  To his surprise, Jenna didn’t take offense. Instead, she just cocked her head at him and said, “How are you supposed to find out who you are sitting around staring at four walls? Don’t you think it will be more useful to be out in the world and doing things instead?”

  Day opened another beer. “No,” he said, not quite growling. “I don’t.”

  They sat in silence for a minute while Jenna digested what he said with her usual calm.

  “I don’t know,” she said slowly. “It’s hard for me to comprehend having brothers and not doing everything possible to hold on to them. But I guess that’s just my own prejudice speaking.”

  She got up to go to the bathroom, and sat on her own bed when she came back. Perversely, Day felt the empty space next to him like a sore tooth.

  To distract himself, he said gruffly, “Your turn. What was your childhood like?”

  Jenna leaned back against the headboard behind her and closed her eyes briefly. When she opened them again, Day could see echoes of remembered pain in their depths, and he almost withdrew the question. He told himself that if he’d had to share his childhood woes, it was only fair that she share hers, but the truth was that he was also curious.

  “As you can imagine,” she said in a soft voice, “having a curse hanging over your head has quite the effect on people.” Long pale fingers played idly with the fringe on the bedspread. “My grandmother dealt with it by dedicating her life to trying to figure out how to solve the riddle. You’ve seen her notebooks. She was fierce and determined.”

  “That must be where you got it from,” Day said, only half kidding.

  Jenna sighed. “It would have to be. Neither of my parents coped with it well at all.” She looked longingly at the bottle in Day’s hand but shook her head when he offered one to her, patting her belly in explanation.

  “How not well is ‘not well’?” he asked.

  “My father drank himself to death when I was eight,” Jenna said flatly. “I don’t know what he was like before Zilya came for my brother, of course, since I wasn’t born yet. My mother always said he was a kind and gentle man, but the man I remember was mostly just quietly bitter and distant. I suppose he didn’t want to get attached to one child when he’d already lost the other. He was gone before I ever got to know him well.”

  “That doesn’t make any sense,” Day sputtered. “You’d think he would cherish the one he had left even more.”

  “Yeah, you’d think,” Jenna said. “He knew what he was getting into when he married my mom; I mean, he knew about the curse. She told me once that he was sure he could save her from it, and never forgave himself when he couldn’t.” She glanced at Day out of the corner of her eye. “Guilt can be a very destructive emotion.”

  “Huh,” he grunted, not rising to the bait. “What about your mom? Was she bitter too?”

  Jenna thought about it for a moment. “Not so much bitter as simply very, very sad. I think she mourned my brother every day after they had to give him up, right after he was born, and when my father died, something inside her just . . . broke. She went through the motions of living after that—went to work, cooked dinner, made sure my basic needs were met—but I never heard her laugh again. When I was a freshman in high school, she slipped away in her sleep one night. The coroner said it was a heart attack, but I think she died of a broken heart.”

  For a moment, Day could see fury flicker across her face, like a sudden storm in the midst of a calm afternoon, but then she made an effort to get herself under control and went on.

  “After that, I lived with my grandmother, and things were better. But you can see why I was so determined not to let that damned faery and her damned curse get passed on any further than me. And why I’m willing to do anything to keep it—and her—from destroying one more member of my family, esp
ecially this baby.” Jenna stared across the gulf between their beds, her eyes suddenly cold and her expression grim. “It stops with me, whatever it takes, up to and including my death.”

  CHAPTER 11

  STU fiddled with a pen with the hand not holding the cell phone while the private investigator he’d hired gave his report on the search for Jenna. For what he was paying the guy, Stu expected results. He wanted to get this mess cleaned up and the answers his father wanted to have ASAP. If not sooner.

  “Well?” Stu asked impatiently. The stupid PI insisted on giving all the details in a methodical and organized manner, which was starting to get on Stu’s nerves. “Did you find her or not?”

  “I found her car in a ditch in the Adirondacks,” the PI said. George something-Greek. Whatever. He came highly recommended. “She wasn’t in it.”

  Stu felt a momentary flutter of alarm. “Did you check the local hospitals?” What if she really was having his baby, and she’d been hurt?

  “Hospitals, police reports. Nothing. But it looked to me like the transmission gave out. The car was a piece of junk.” Stu thought he detected a hint of judgment in the PI’s voice. “I’m surprised a man of your stature let his girlfriend drive around in a car like that.”

  Stu scowled at his cell phone before putting it back up to his ear. “Are you serious? You think I wanted her to be seen around town in that crapmobile? It was goddamn embarrassing. But she wouldn’t let me buy her another one. I always told her it would break down someday and leave her stranded.” A tiny bit of worry shifted to satisfaction. He’d told her so. She should have listened to him.

  The PI grunted, an indeterminate sound that could have meant anything. “Her trail went cold then for a couple of days. I didn’t turn up anything in the area at all. It was like she’d just disappeared.”

  “That’s not helpful,” Stu said, tapping the pen on his desk.

  “No worries,” the PI said. “I finally got a ping on her charge card. She used it to check in at some crappy motel in Pennsylvania; as soon as the proprietor ran the card to make sure it was good, I jumped in my car and drove there to check it out. Got there in the morning in time to see her leave with some handsome blond guy on a fancy motorcycle. I’m following her now, but I’m going to need to call in some backup or risk them spotting me.”

  Fury rose up in Stu so hot and heavy that spots actually swam in front of his eyes. That bitch. She’d been lying to him the whole time. He couldn’t believe it. The nerve of her, coming to him with tears in her eyes and swearing that the baby was his, some kind of miracle, and all along she’d been cheating on him with some other guy. No doubt all that nonsense about not being interested in his money was just bullshit, trying to lull him into a false sense of security. And he’d almost believed her. Not quite, but almost. That lying bitch. Well, she’d see what happened to people who tried to pull a fast one on Stuart Wilmington Wadsworth III.

  Now he was more determined than ever to force her to take that prenatal DNA test to prove the baby wasn’t his. He’d get his father off his back and show Jenna that she had no chance in the world of getting away with ripping off him or his family.

  “This backup you need,” Stu said. “How squeamish are they?”

  There was a pause on the other end of the conversation. “Not very,” the PI said. “But we’re not going to kill anyone for you, if that’s what you’re asking.”

  “Don’t be ridiculous,” Stu spat into the phone. “I’m a Wadsworth. We don’t have people killed.” That he knew of, anyway. He wouldn’t put anything past his father. That man really liked to get his own way.

  “I need your men to pick her up and bring her to the address I’m going to give you. It’s a clinic my family has invested in heavily over the years. They owe us. Just makes sure that she gets there.”

  “And if the lady doesn’t want to go?” George asked in a neutral voice.

  “The lady doesn’t get a choice in the matter,” Stu said, still fuming. “And if her new friend gets in the way, tell your guys to feel free to make him a little less good-looking.”

  He ended the call, tossing his phone down onto the desk with a satisfying thunk. Everything was going to be fine. He had it completely under control.

  * * *

  JENNA was starting to get used to the long hours on the motorcycle. Kind of. Other than her numb butt, that is. At least she was learning to relax a little more and trust Mick to keep them upright and safe. And it wasn’t exactly a hardship to spend hours with her arms wrapped around Mick’s waist, leaning against his strong back. In some ways, she thought it was the most relaxed she’d been since she’d discovered she was pregnant, even though they were driving at high speeds down highways, occasionally passing trucks that seemed like moving mountains from her vantage point.

  Not that she wasn’t relieved when they stopped at a diner outside Charleston, West Virginia, for lunch. They’d been on the road for three and a half hours since leaving the motel, and she thought they’d covered about two hundred and thirty miles. Her stomach was grumbling, and her bottom could definitely use the break. Mick had spotted the sign right before the exit and pointed at it, then pulled off the highway when she gave him a thumbs-up. Communicating on the back of a motorcycle could be a challenge, but they’d started to figure it out.

  The diner wasn’t anything fancy; a long L-shaped building with a country-western theme that obviously catered to truckers and locals more than any folks who might be interested in ordering some kind of venti half-caff pumpkin spice latte. But the fried chicken smelled like heaven and tasted even better. It had been a quiet meal, neither of them really feeling like talking. She suspected Mick was regretting opening up so much the night before, and she just felt odd and off balance being with someone who both knew her real history and had one that was even stranger.

  She’d eaten her entire huge portion, along with all of the hand-cut fries that came with it, and a large mound of creamy coleslaw. Mick had done the same—twice. Jenna had no idea how he kept his slim waist and flat abs eating the way he did. She was about at the stage where she was going to have to find a place to stop and buy new pants. As it was, she’d given up on fastening the top button and just pulled her shirt down over it. Still, at least she had a legitimate excuse for all that eating.

  Eventually, Mick waved over their waitress, insisting on paying the lunch tab out of his dwindling supply of cash. The way he glowered at Jenna when she tried to argue made her think it might be better to let him have his way on this one.

  When they stood up, she said, “I’m going to hit the ladies’ room before we get back on the road.”

  Mick was obviously getting used to her constant need to pee, although he’d been very nice about the frequent stops, and insisted he liked the excuse to stretch his legs. “Okay,” he said. “I’ll meet you outside.” But this time he strode off without a backward look, cranky Day in ascendance again. She found charming Day a lot more pleasant, but at least Mr. Cranky was way less tempting, and that was probably a good thing, under the circumstances.

  When she came out of the bathroom, she headed back down the hallway that led into the main section of the restaurant. Two burly men in worn jeans and denim jackets hurried in her direction, their faces anxious.

  “Hey,” the taller one said as he caught sight of her. His brown hair was a little too long and he needed a shave. “Are you the lady who was having lunch with the blond guy with the fancy white motorcycle?”

  Alarm made Jenna’s heart beat like a bird inside her chest. “Yes, that’s my friend Mick. Why, is something wrong?”

  The shorter one—who still had to be at least six feet tall, and built like a tank—gazed at her with concern. “I’m sorry, lady, but a big ol’ truck just came ramming into the parking lot and smashed right into him. Someone called nine-one-one, but you better come right away. He’s in pretty rough shape; it’s not look
ing good.”

  “Oh no.” Jenna put one hand up to her mouth. She had a dozen thoughts at once: that it was her fault he was hurt, since he was following her wild-goose chase; that she had no idea how she’d finish the quest without him; that he wasn’t immortal anymore, and what would she tell little Babs if he died? Jenna had only known Mick for a short time, but already she couldn’t imagine a world without him in it.

  She started to hurry toward the front of the restaurant, but one of the men grabbed her arm and gestured in the other direction, farther toward the back of the building.

  “He’s closer to the rear of the parking lot; we can get there faster if we go out the back door by the kitchens,” he said. They moved in that direction, Jenna almost running as she burst out the exit into a small area filled with reeking garbage cans, an aged picnic table where the employees obviously sat outside and smoked on their breaks, and a few cars parked in the dubious shade of some spindly trees. There was a white van idling right outside the door, but no sign of Mick or the motorcycle, and no crowds of people looking on in horror.

  What the hell? “Where’s my friend?” she asked.

  The taller man shrugged, showing her stained teeth in an unpleasant smile. “Probably still out front waiting for you,” he said. “He’s gonna have a long wait, though, since you’re gonna take a little ride with us.”

  “No, I’m not,” Jenna said. She didn’t know what these guys had in mind, but she had a pretty strong feeling she wasn’t going to like it. Her kickboxing teacher once told the class that if you went with an abductor, your chances of survival were considerably less than if you fought back. And, frankly, the way things had been going, she was almost happy for an excuse to hit someone. She slowed her breathing and focused, just the way she’d been taught. There was no way she was going to be a victim. If she could survive an avaricious faery, no way in hell were two mere mortals going to take her down. No matter how big they were.