Valley of Fire (Valley of the Moon Book 2)

by Bronwyn Archer

  It was breaking dawn over the city. Through the windows, soft pink light crept over the bay.

  “Wow, it feels like I haven’t been home in years.”

  Alexander’s spacious loft apartment in Pacific Heights was quiet and dark.

  “Where’s my dad?”

  “He moved back to Glen Ellen a few days ago. Cesar is helping him convert his garage into a studio.”

  Alexander hadn’t left my side since the police boat brought us to dry land. We’d watched Nastia loaded into an ambulance. The cops had wanted me to stick around, but once Alexander explained who I was—and how much I was worth—they agreed to let me go home and come back for an interview later.

  I’d finally get to tell them everything I knew about Victor Savitch.

  “Thank you for not calling him tonight. I don’t even want to tell him what just happened—he has a bad heart. He couldn’t handle it.”

  “You just need to go to sleep.” But I wasn’t tired. I was wired on adrenaline and profound relief—Victor was officially dead, and I was officially still alive.

  He led me in to his bedroom. For once, I wasn’t in an unfamiliar hotel room. It was his personal bedroom. It felt deeply intimate to be there with him. Would we be sharing a room again? A bed?

  “Actually, is it okay if I take a shower? I smell like ocean and I never want to smell ocean again.” He nodded and pointed to his bathroom door. I stripped off the oversized scrubs the ENT had hurriedly handed me to replace my wet clothes, and took the fastest shower I could. I dried off, combed my hair, rubbed some toothpaste around in my mouth using my finger, and then pulled the scrubs back on.

  When I emerged from the bathroom, Alexander had changed into a t-shirt and sweat pants and was sitting on the bed.

  “Feel better?” He glanced at my ridiculous outfit and laughed. “For a girl who goes shopping all the time, you are chronically short of pajamas. Let me find you something to sleep in.” The cops had retrieved my phone and my bag from the boat for me, but everything I’d worn on the plane had vanished in the chaos. Alexander disappeared into his closet while I looked around. His room was simple and elegant. The walls were pale gray and the crisp moldings along the ceiling a creamy dove white.

  “Did my dad sleep here when he was staying here?”

  “No, he stayed in the guest room. The security guy slept on the couch.”

  “At least my dad won’t need a bodyguard anymore.” He hurried out of the closet and stared at me like I was crazy.

  “Did you forget that your lovely stepmother is still at large? Do you really think Victor’s death will make her stop?”

  I winced. “I can’t do that to Eden. I know what growing up without a mother is like.”

  Even though her mother was worthless, Eden was too innocent to visit her mother in prison. I refused to put her through that.

  Unless I had no choice.

  He tossed me a t-shirt and a pair of boxers. “I asked the Pierre to overnight your clothes before I left. They should be here tomorrow. For now, this’ll have to do.”

  I stood up and slipped my hands into the waistband of the stiff hospital scrub pants. “Turn around.”

  He raised an eyebrow but did as I asked. I slid the scratchy scrubs off and pulled on his crisp white boxers and silky undershirt.

  “Okay, I’m done.” I crawled onto the bed and collapsed onto an impossibly plush pillow. The electric thrill of being on his bed jolted me. How was I supposed to sleep? “Tell me again how you did it. How you found me.”

  He sat next to me and lifted my foot into his lap. He gently stroked it as he spoke. “When I landed at SFO, I saw Maya had been calling me frantically. Which usually means you’re in trouble. She read me your text, but the police didn’t know which marina you were in. But I did—you told me how he’d asked you to meet him there after your graduation.”

  He gently massaged my bare foot. “By the time I got to the marina in Sausalito, it was chaos. They’d gotten an emergency distress signal from a boat out on the bay.”

  “That was me! I did that!”

  “So they sent one of theirs to chase it down. They made me wait onshore.” He looked at me. “It was the worst hour of my life. The worst, Lana.”

  What I’d put him through. Even running away and flying home hadn’t helped. All I did was cause trouble.

  “I’m so sorry. I’m sorry I left New York like that. I’m sorry for everything I put you through. I’m way too much trouble—you should stay far away from me.”

  He nodded and squeezed my foot. “True. I’m just a really good friend, I guess.” He winked at me. “Plus you know me—I like risky situations.”

  Friends. We were just friends. I had to remember that. We were friends and that was all we would ever be.

  “Well, thank you. And yes, you are my friend.” I took a deep breath and slid my hand into his. “My best friend.”

  He ran his finger up the bottom of my foot as his eyes burned into mine. A shiver ran through my entire body. I cleared my throat and changed the subject. “I still don’t understand how the divers spotted us in the water. It was so dark.”

  His eyes fell to my chest, where the diamond dove hung just above the neckline of his borrowed shirt.

  “I talked to the guy who’d spotted you. He said he was scanning the water, in case anyone had gone overboard, when he saw something sparkling in the water. Something that looked like metal. He must have seen this.” Alexander lifted the pendant up like he was weighing it with his hand. “He told me he would have missed you if it hadn’t caught his eye.”

  The Dove of Justice had endangered my life, and then saved it.

  Perfect justice.

  He sprawled out on his side and looked at me. “This is probably the wrong time to ask, but why did you run off on me like that?” I winced. Did it even matter anymore that his older stepsister seduced him when he was sixteen? Was that supposed to scare me?

  The parts of my brain that were still able to be frightened had gotten smaller. Experience and terror had cauterized my fear regions in my cortex.

  The thing that scared me most was not death or dying—not anymore.

  It was the idea of life without Alexander.

  “Gretchen came to see me at the hotel.” I took a deep breath. Our faces were so close. “She told me something . . . and I guess I freaked out.”

  “Told you what?”

  I hesitated. His eyes widened and then he closed his eyes. He groaned and rolled over onto his back.

  And then, like an impossible puzzle being unlocked, I solved the Alexander riddle. His whole life—the girls, the women, the older women, why he’d resorted to celibacy—it was all because of Gretchen.

  Because of what she’d done to him.

  And then there was me. I was the first age-appropriate girl he’d met in a long time. With me, he wasn’t acting out his illicit teenage affair. With me, he was just normal.

  I was his escape from that cycle.

  A thousand pounds lifted off my shoulders and I suddenly felt like I was floating. I reached for him, to reassure him, to show him I didn’t care. But his whole demeanor had changed. He stiffened and sat up on the end of bed, his back to me. He didn’t say a word.

  “Alexander? It’s okay—I don’t care! I thought I did—but I don’t.”

  “She shouldn’t have told you. I can’t believe she told you.” His voice was strained. “I’m sorry,” he said softly. He cradled his head in his hands.

  “But that’s not why I left New York!” I cried. “I don’t care what happened when you were sixteen.” I scrambled off the bed and stood in front of him but he refused to look at me. “I left because . . . she made me doubt myself! She made me doubt how I feel about you. She knows you so well, so much better than I do—”

  “She thinks she does, Lana. But she doesn’t,” he snapped.

  I knelt on the floor at his knees. He stared at his hands, squeezing them into tight fists and pressing them into his thigh
s.

  After the struggle with Victor, the struggle not to drown in the ocean, I found myself in yet another struggle—but this one felt more desperate. Something was at stake that went beyond pure survival. Another person’s soul was at stake. Something shameful had been revealed, and I had the power to absolve him—or condemn him forever.

  “This is NOT about what happened between you and your stepsister.” I took a deep breath to steady myself. I sat back on the carpet and looked up at him. I was filled with jittery adrenaline. “Can’t you even look at me?”

  He lifted his gaze and met my eyes. I swallowed hard and forced myself to go on. “From the very beginning, I thought you were helping Severine because you felt some silly obligation to a young, clueless, distant cousin. Then I dragged you on a stupid road trip. Totaled your car. I refused to believe you . . . liked me. Why would someone like you—like me? All Gretchen had to do was tell me all the things I’d been telling myself the whole time! She made me believe, just for a moment, that you were just acting like you liked me, to get back at your father, or for . . . ”

  He shook his head in disbelief. His eyes were full of pain. “Oh. For your money.”

  “Yeah—but I don’t believe that! It’s what she tried to make me think!”

  “But . . . you left.”

  I put my head on his legs and sobbed.

  “Don’t you get it? Someone like you would never like someone like me—there had to another reason you were so nice to me! It was easy to believe her. I know it sounds lame and pathetic, like I’m begging for validation. But it’s the truth, I swear. And I was wrong.” All the pent-up terror and fear and exhaustion and heartbreak welled out of me in a tidal wave of emotion. His sweatpants were soon damp with my tears.

  I wanted him to know how I felt about him, how much I loved him, but I still couldn’t say the words. “I’m so sorry I thought that about you,” I whispered. “Please forgive me.”

  “I don’t blame you, Lana. Who’d want a boyfriend like me? Someone who dated their own sister? And then made a move on their cousin? I must make you sick.”

  Boyfriend? He said boyfriend.

  “Not your sister—your stepsister. And you were so young! It’s not your fault. It’s hers.” I looked up at him pleading with my eyes. His body softened.

  “The Gretchen thing—no one else knows about it. It was the worst mistake I ever made. By a lot.”

  Tears fell down my face and I didn’t bother to wipe them. “It wasn’t your fault.”

  He reached over and took my hand. “Hey, it’s okay. I’m okay. None of it matters anymore. I thought she’d grown up, gotten less weird, but I guess I was wrong.”

  She’d hurt us both. But we had each other.

  “I know a little bit about crazy stepsisters. A lot actually.”

  He smiled and pushed my hair out of my eyes. I could see myself in a mirror hanging on a wall above his dresser. I was as white as the t-shirt I wore—except for the dark shadows under my eyes.

  “We should introduce them,” he said. He gave me a rueful smile.

  “They’d kill each other,” I said. “So we should definitely get them together.” He laughed, finally. His amber eyes were bottomless pools of light. If I looked too long, I’d drown—this time for real.

  He pulled me up from my knees and hoisted me onto the bed. We sat facing each other, our knees touching. “I want to say something else, just so we’re clear. I don’t care about your money. I have enough money, I make a lot of money. I’m really good at what I do and I work hard. I don’t need your inheritance—or Elijah’s. Gretchen wants you to think I’m just like her, but I’m not. I have zero interest in your massive, obscene pile of money—other than making sure you actually get it. And I accomplished what I set out to do.”

  “Then why are you here?” I asked. His mouth opened in surprise. I remembered how his lips had felt the last time we’d kissed in New York. My heart raced. The air between us got warmer.

  He raked his fingers through my hair. “I liked being next to you, all those hours on the road. I miss it. Because, Lana—you’re my best friend, too.”

  I’d survived Ramona and Victor and all the rest and here was Alexander and he was mine. Was I dreaming? I felt giddy and a little delirious from lack of sleep. I leaned forward and pressed him down on the bed with my hands.

  “Next to you? Is that the only position you can think of?”

  His eyebrows shot up and he gripped my waist with both hands. “What did those Russian gangsters teach you?” He flipped me onto my back and started kissing my neck. I sank my fingers into his thick hair. He pressed his mouth to mine tenderly. A terrifying, powerful emotion flickered through me like an electric shock. I started kissing him frantically, but he pulled away.

  His dimples deepened. “I’ve been thinking. I know what you need, Lana.”

  “What?”

  “Someone who can run after you on your wild adventures. Keep you from harming yourself and others.”

  I laughed, but inside I was quivering. “I can hire bodyguards to do that.”

  “Or just find a nice guy and settle down.” My breathing stilled. “Like a boyfriend.” All the extreme stress of the last twelve hours evaporated and was replaced with a heady, thrilling excitement. It tasted sweet. I let the delicious feeling sweep over me and I shivered with joy.

  I tried to keep my voice light, but I was dancing on the edge of the abyss. “What do boyfriends offer these days?” His smile faded and his expression became pensive.

  “Loyalty. Honesty. They drive you anywhere you tell them.”

  I pretended to consider that, like I was thinking it over, when inside I was screaming YES OF COURSE.

  “And as your girlfriend, what would I need to do?” I expected him to come back with one of his usual flirty remarks. Instead, his eyes darkened.

  “Not die.”

  An icy chill cartwheeled down my back. An intense, almost frightening magnetism vibrated between us. I’d lost the battle with his tractor beams ages ago; I was slowly being torn apart from the sheer magnetic force of him. The tension between us sounded like an air force jet screaming overhead that no one else could hear. My breath caught in my throat. I hadn’t slept properly in days but was so wide awake I could feel every hair on my arm.

  His lips pulled up at one side and the shadows of his dimples deepened. His eyes gleamed. I realized I loved his dimples and would do anything to see them more. I needed to make him laugh more often. No more scary adventures.

  Suddenly my cheek was slippery against his as I hugged him.

  “Cheer up, Lana.”

  I buried my face in his shoulder. “I don’t know why I’m crying. I don’t know what else to do.”

  “I know what else to do.” Then he kissed me and all words and reason and logic vaporized, along with our clothing. All that was left was an ancient instinct unlocked by the powerful chemistry between us. He teased and tormented me with his mouth, his tongue, his fingers. He refused to let me touch him until he’d made me arch my back and smother my face with a pillow to muffle my wild cries.

  Twice.

  Finally, finally he allowed me to touch him. I did to him what he’d done to me until he groaned and whispered my name and his hands slid over my back and shoulders and his fingers dug into my wrists. He gently smoothed my hair away from my face and I tried again to tell him my deep secret—that I’d loved him almost since I first saw him. I’d loved him for so long that it was strange he didn’t know.

  I held my palm to his cheek—he was no statue. He was hot to the touch, a living, breathing boy. Then he gathered me in his arms under the sheet and the heat from his skin warmed my back and flooded through my body to my chest.

  The peace and calm I’d craved for so many horrible hours crept through me until I thought I would burst with joy.

  Chapter 25

  Sinus Amoris ~ Bay of Love

  I cracked one eye open and marveled at yet another unfamiliar bedroom. It’
s hard to keep up when you wake up somewhere new every day. The clock said it was past noon.

  You are in San Francisco. Victor Savitch kidnapped you but you got away. You’re in HIS bed and you have zero clothes on.

  Victor was dead. I was alive. I was rich. And there was no more denying it—Alexander and I were maybe, possibly a thing. I spotted my t-shirt in a ball on the floor and crept out of the bed. I grabbed it and turned around.

  He was wide awake and watched me with interest.

  “If you want to scamper around naked in front of me, that’s fine, but don’t expect to ever leave this room.” I tugged his shirt over my head and crossed my arms.

  “Uh, okay.”

  “That was fun,” he said with an impish look on his face. “Not the rescuing you from the Russian mafia part—that part sucked. The part after that part.” I nodded and felt my cheeks heat up. “I’ll say this, Lana. Life is not boring with you.”

  “I will try to be more boring,” I vowed.

  He sat up and pushed the sheet down to his waist. His glossy dark hair stuck straight up and his dimpled deepened. “I’m pretty sure it’s impossible for you to ever be boring.” He crossed his arms behind his head, leaned back against the headboard, and grinned. It was one thing to be close to him in the dark, tangled under a sheet, but in the light of day, his body made my heart ache.

  I got up and wandered around his room, examining the framed photos on the wall above his dresser. In one, he was a young, grinning teenager in a gray dress military uniform. Alexander at West Point. In another photo, he was a little boy with no front teeth with his dad Peter on a boat.

  “You were adorable.”

  “Still am.”

  I rolled my eyes. “Don’t you have to go?” I asked. “Like, to work? It’s a weekday. At least I think it is.”

  “In a minute. Hey, Lana?” he asked.

  “Yeah?”

  “You never answered my question.”

  “What question?”

  “You interested in a boyfriend?” Something bloomed in my chest like a firework exploding in the night sky, filling the dark edges with color and light and heat. He grinned sheepishly at me. “I promise I’ll be better than that other guy. Kirby or whatever his name was.”