Children of Destiny Books 1-3 (Texas: Children of Destiny Book 9)

by Ann Major

  Every word Nick spoke was tearing her apart.

  “Amy, I love Triple just as much as you do. That’s all I’m trying to say. Why is that so wrong?”

  A dark, overpowering emotion filled her. “Because...your love was the most destructive force I’ve ever encountered. Because...” Because you went from me to my sister. Because you got her pregnant…and now she can’t ever have another child.

  Sunlight glistened in the swirling surf. Amy stopped herself, stunned. The answer had been on the tip of her tongue.

  She whirled away. She couldn’t explain—ever. She owed Nicholas Browning nothing.

  “Triple needs me,” Nick said. “You’re asking me to neglect my own son, and that’s something I won’t do—even for you.”

  She clenched her hands tightly together. She agreed in part, and it upset her that she could agree with him about something so important. Triple was starved for a man’s attention. Why hadn’t she anticipated that as Triple grew up he would want a father? It was just that she had been so busy going to school, being a mother, and getting ahead in her career that she hadn’t taken the time for men.

  “You need a man in your life, too,” Nick said softly. “I think you crave a man’s affection and love just as desperately as Triple does. Amy, you spoil everyone you love. Why won’t you let me spoil you?”

  He started to touch her. She had been looking at the beach. With a moan she jerked away. “No!”

  He stood stock-still, his handsome face dark with hurt.

  A muted cry of pain sprang from her soul, only to die on her lips.

  His hair blew carelessly across his dark brow; his blue eyes were bleak with pain.

  Oh, why did he have to be built like a god? With an almost physical ache she remembered what it was to know his hands on her, his lips caressing hers.

  A part of her felt like weeping hysterically. Never had she been more tempted to give in to the powerful feelings he evoked.

  She must not think of him like that, she told herself angrily.

  “Yes,” she whispered, “I do need a man, but it can’t be you. Never you. You belong to a past I have to bury forever. All I’ll ever want from you is a...a divorce.”

  The word seemed to echo in the hushed silence. His dark face turned ashen, and Amy’s blood froze in her veins. What had she said? Her heart throbbed dully with numb stupefied pain.

  “A divorce! The hell you say!” Nick whispered. His eyes narrowed to slits of cold blue steel as he lunged for her and snapped her against his hard body as if she were nothing. “That’s the last thing you’ll ever get from me.”

  “How can you stop me?”

  “Don’t ask a question like that unless you want the answer,” he said roughly, winding his hands in her hair, and yanking her head back so abruptly that a shower of hairpins rained onto the stairs.

  She fought to twist away from his hands that tugged at her hair, from his mouth that descended toward hers. “Can’t you see, I have to get on with my own life,” she pleaded, frantic. “It’s time I gave Triple a father. It’s time I found a real husband.”

  “You have a real husband.” A bitter, uncontrolled fury swept over Nick, and he forced her body harder against his own. “Is this real enough for you?” he mumbled thickly. His callused hands positioned her female body intimately against his own hardening male shape.

  She gasped as she realized the extent of his arousal. For the briefest second his gaze skimmed the pleading softness of her white face, the terror in her huge eyes and trembling mouth. Tenderness flickered across his face and was gone. Then she shut her eyes helplessly as his lips claimed hers in a hard kiss.

  With his mouth and body he made her his. Hotly he fused their lips together, their bodies, their souls until there was no part of her that did not belong to him. No part of her that did not yearn for him. He kissed her lips, her face, her earlobes, her slender throat, until she was panting and breathless. She was filled with the scent and taste of him. Her blood turned to fire. She felt dizzy, drugged.

  “Mom! Dad!” Triple shouted impatiently from the pool.

  Slowly, reluctantly, Nick released her. He raked his hands through his hair to smooth it. He fought to control his ragged breathing.

  She should be furious. Instead she was nearly fainting with desire as she sagged wearily against the railing and let the cool ocean breezes fan the long, mussed black waves of her hair.

  “Mom!”

  Amy couldn’t look at Nick. She could feel her pulse pounding in her throat. She felt bruised, shamed. Wanton. Her every impulse directed her to escape quickly.

  “Come back and watch him,” Nick said quietly. “I swear I won’t bother you again if you do.” There was a note of desperate hopelessness in his low, hoarse voice. “Just for a minute,” he said. “Whatever I did a moment ago, there’s still nothing wrong about a little boy loving both his parents. There’s nothing wrong with us taking pride in his accomplishments together. It’s something he needs. It’s something I want very much to give him.”

  Hearing it put like that, no matter how much she wanted to, Amy could not say no.

  “All right,” she agreed softly.

  “Thank you.” Nick took her hand and pressed it tightly in his as he led her inside. “And Amy?”

  “What?” The single word was barely audible.

  “No divorce.” Passion blazed from his eyes. “Never, between us.”

  She walked blindly through the glass doors. The small boat was skimming up and down across turquoise waters in a series of zigzag maneuvers, executing one successful tack after the other, but Amy did not see it.

  “Watch this, Mom!” Triple shouted. She tried, but her vision was too blurred. “I never would have learned it without Dad. Gosh, it’s great having Dad home, isn’t it?”

  She felt Nick’s eyes on her, watching her, waiting for her answer.

  Her vision went even blurrier. Her throat was as dry as dust.

  “What happened to your hair, Mom?”

  “The wind,” she muttered even as she felt the telltale color staining her cheeks.

  Triple cocked his head inquisitively. “I like it,” he said. “It makes you look pretty. I think you’re just as glad Dad’s home as I am.”

  Father and son were both looking at her. She tried to speak, but she couldn’t. Some emotion that she did not want and would not name had entered her heart, crushing her with its intensity, suffocating her, consuming her in its flame.

  *

  After that morning at the pool, Amy worked very hard to avoid Nick, but he worked just as hard to make that impossible. He made her feel that she was fighting a war of wills in her own home, a war that she was losing. Although this far Lorrie had avoided him, he had won her father’s, her son’s, and Apolonia’s allegiances. Thus, if Nick was not working directly on her, one of his confederates was. They loved Nick as passionately as she was determined to despise him, and they wanted him to stay—permanently. They did not understand why he couldn’t, and she could not explain. They did not understand that hers was a house of carefully guarded secrets, and it was too dangerous to have Nick around trying to unlock its mysteries. He had to go, and quickly.

  One evening after work Amy became upset when she caught Nick browsing through her photograph albums. He was in the den, his head bent over an open page. The cabinet doors behind him stood ajar, and the shelves were empty. One glance at the orderly stacks of loose pictures and the mountain of albums littering the sofa and carpet made Amy’s blood run cold. He had been going through them all!

  Wondering what he was about, she tiptoed stealthily into the room and peered over his shoulder.

  Dear Lord! A painful sigh escaped her as she glimpsed an all-too-familiar enlargement of Jack and Lorrie and herself. That picture alone instantly brought back the fateful summer that had almost ruined the lives of everyone Amy loved.

  Amy’s breath caught at the sight of Lorrie in her gold bikini. Jack and Lorrie were locked in a torri
d embrace while anxious big-sister Amy looked on. It was funny how much older and more sophisticated than Amy the glamorous Lorrie, who’d only been sixteen at the time, looked. Nick had snapped the picture and given it to Amy, and across the bottom edge he’d scrawled playfully, “Bet you’re frowning ‘cause you want to be kissed like that! Anytime...”

  Amy fought against a flash of bitter memories. Oh, how she wished she’d been strong enough to resist dating him. Maybe... t had been her fault, everything that happened.

  Amy grabbed the album from him and shut it. The last thing she wanted to remember was that summer.

  “I should have torn that picture up!” she muttered angrily.

  Nick’s blue gaze lifted to hers. His rough masculine features filled her vision, leaving room for little else. He seemed suddenly too close, his intense eyes reading her much too easily, and alarm made her heart flutter. If only she’d gone to her room and left him alone.

  “You don’t really think by slamming that album shut you can forget that summer, do you?” Nick sounded amazingly calm as he made the low challenge.

  “You have no business snooping among my things.” She grabbed the album and replaced it in the back of the cabinet.

  Nick regarded her with lazy indulgence rather than anger. “Triple wanted to show me these albums.”

  “He doesn’t seem to be around at the moment.”

  Nick shrugged. “I think he got bored. He’s playing chess with Sam.”

  “And you didn’t?”

  “No. But then I like looking at pictures of you.” He lifted a single photograph of her on a wind surf board and studied it. “You look good in a bikini.” The smoldering heat of his eyes engulfed her.

  She flushed hotly and tried to grab the snapshot, but he quickly pocketed it next to his heart. His gaze seemed to strip her clothes from her body. Shaken, she dug her fingers tightly into the soft upholstery of the couch.

  He was watching her, something flickering in his keen look. “I had forgotten about Lorrie and Jack.”

  “So had I,” she lied warily, still not looking at him.

  “You didn’t like them dating,” Nick persisted.

  “Lorrie was so young,” Amy replied too quickly. “Besides, she wasn’t serious about Jack.”

  “That was your theory. You thought they were too young for each other. I realized later you were right about that, but she was special to Jack. He never got over her. Sometimes I wonder about Lorrie. She’s never married...”

  Amy felt sick. “Th-they were a bad combination,” she stammered. “Each seemed to bring out the wildness in the other.”

  “And is that so bad?” Nick queried softly. “That’s the way you’ve always affected me.” He smiled at her.

  She felt her pulse quicken with unwanted excitement. Her low voice was shaky. “Why must you always turn everything into a seductive remark of some sort?”

  “I would think the answer was obvious,” he murmured. “Because I want to seduce you. If you’d only let me, maybe I’d stop.”

  “Thank you, but no thank you,” she retorted.

  He flashed her one of his charming white grins. “Back to Jack and Lorrie, then.”

  “I don’t want to get back to them.”

  “But I do.” He grinned. “I never felt responsible for my younger brother the way you felt for your sister. Jack always thought he could handle anything that came along.”

  “So he thought.”

  “Yes... Maybe I should have done things differently, but I let him live his own life his own way,” Nick said gravely. “You never believed Lorrie should do that. You were always in a state of panic that she would get in too deep, that she would get into some relationship she couldn’t cope with. She went a little wild there at the end of the summer, but at least now she’s all grown up, and you don’t have to worry about her anymore.”

  “Y-yes.” Amy gazed out the window, pretending an indifference to the subject she was far from feeling.

  Nick swung a lazy glance to her. “Then why are you so upset every time her name is mentioned?”

  Her teeth clenched together. “I’m not—upset.”

  He swore under his breath. “Liar.”

  He came to her, and she felt his hands grip her bare arms lightly, then more firmly. He turned her around, and his eyes probed into hers. She felt drained.

  “If Lorrie’s part of what’s wrong between us,” he said, “why can’t we talk about it? I don’t think she liked us dating. She’s hardly spoken to me since I came. Don’t you think it’s time we were honest with each other for a change—about everything?”

  Amy felt frightened. She and Lorrie had utterly deceived him. It was too late for honesty; far too late.

  “Do you really think anything you could do or say at this point could make any difference anyway?” she whispered.

  “Damn!” His voice was low and angry. Amy always deliberately shut him out. His grip tightened on her arms. When she stiffened from his rough touch, he let her go.

  “We are going to talk about it.”

  “No!”

  “Lorrie didn’t say something about that last night, did she? She didn’t twist things around so that you blamed me? She promised me... She did say something! I can see it in your eyes. Surely you don’t blame me for what happened?”

  He asked these questions so guiltlessly, Amy felt a sickening feeling of nausea. Did he really blame Lorrie for his own weakness of character?

  There was nothing she could say. Terror was scrawled across her white face. She stood poised at the doorway to run.

  His voice followed after her. “What in the hell are you so afraid of? The truth isn’t something to fear. It’s something to face. Run while you can, because that’s a liberty I won’t allow you much longer. I’m not leaving Los Angeles until I find out what’s going on. Six-and-a-half years ago I was too proud to fight for you when you rejected me. I’d never been in love before, never been hurt like that. I couldn’t handle it. Not after the way I’d been raised. It was like a repeat of the past when I’d loved my father and mother and they couldn’t love me the way I wanted. When you didn’t come to Berkeley—when you were so cold over the phone when I asked you why—I thought the hell with her. If she doesn’t want me, I don’t want her, either. Because I didn’t know about Triple, I let you guard your silence. But no more. You spoiled Lorrie. That’s part of why she did what she did. She was pretty and pampered, and that’s a lethal combination when a girl sets out to seduce a man. Maybe we should confront Lorrie together.”

  “No! She’s suffered enough at your hands.”

  “What the hell’s that supposed to mean? I never did a damn thing but try to help her.”

  His last words were shouted to an empty room. Amy had run away.

  *

  It was four o’clock in the morning. Nick’s questions about Lorrie and the past had been so disturbing that Amy hadn’t been able to sleep. She had stolen down to the pool to swim.

  Moonlight silvered the darkened warm waters of the pool as Amy tossed her filmy cover-up on the tiled floor and stepped into the shallow end. She hadn’t turned on the pool lights or the overhead lights because she didn’t want anyone to know she was there.

  Sparkling waters closed over her. She began to swim an endless number of slow, languid laps, and slowly she felt the tension drain out of her. She finished the last lap in the shallow end.

  Amy kept seeing Nick’s face. He’d looked so sincere so unafraid, as though he’d had nothing to hide. She kept hearing his words. The truth isn’t something to fear. It’s something to face.

  A terrible, unspeakable question had formed in her mind. Perhaps it had always been there, she thought.

  Had Lorrie lied in some way about Nick, about everything? The one time Amy had doubted Lorrie’s story and had almost gone to Nick, Lorrie had run away and almost died. Her nearly lifeless body had been discovered in the surf. Amy had never dared to question her sister again.

  Bu
t had she lied?

  Lorrie had told little white lies as a child occasionally, lies like the one to Nick about her age all those years ago. But they’d been silly little fibs. Surely she hadn’t told a lie about anything so important.

  Had she?

  Amy felt numb. Cold logic told her she’d never even given Nick a chance to defend himself. Because she’d been so upset, because she’d always protected her sister, Amy had accepted Lorrie’s story as gospel.

  Stepping out of the pool to retrieve her towel, Amy became aware of a tall, darkened shadow in the doorway.

  A scream bubbled from her throat.

  “Hush,” whispered Nick’s raspy voice through the velvet darkness. “There’s no reason to be afraid. It’s me.”

  There was every reason to be afraid.

  She wrapped the thick towel around her body protectively. “W-what are you doing here?”

  “I thought I heard something, so I came outside to check.”

  “Well, now that you know who it is, you can leave.”

  He chuckled. “Now that I know who it is, I’m determined to stay.”

  “Nick!”

  He moved silently toward her. The moonlight made silver ribbons in his golden hair.

  “Why won’t you go and leave me alone?”

  “I’ve won over everyone but you,” he murmured.

  “And?”

  “It’s time I won you,” he said softly.

  “That’s something you’ll never do.” Amy scampered lightly to the far end of the pool even as he came after her. “I don’t want you.”

  “Yes, you do,” he murmured softly, beguilingly. “Tonight I’m going to prove it to you.”

  “If you dare to force—”

  “Oh, I won’t need force.”

  “If you think you can just turn on the charm and have everything your way, you’re wrong.”

  He laughed. “Am I?”

  She shrieked at the shock of her wet skin pressed against ice-cold glass and steel. She had reached the farthest glass wall, and there was nowhere to run.