Broken Dove

by Kristen Ashley

  “You would, uh…assume correctly,” I confirmed hesitantly.

  “Is mine grander?” he queried.

  At that, I got it.

  It was Apollo wanting to give me better.

  So I smiled and leaned into him. “Yeah, by, like, a lot.”

  He smiled back, pulled me closer and murmured, “This pleases me.”

  I felt all gushy because Apollo was pleased and I liked it when he was pleased.

  Damn, I was fading fast. Fading into this world. Fading into him.

  And I didn’t mind. Not even a little bit.

  It was the fact I didn’t mind that freaked me.

  That was, I didn’t mind until he announced, “As my home is agreeable to you, I’ll charge Loretta and Meeta with packing your things and we’ll move you here tomorrow morning.”

  I forgot all about fading and blinked.

  “What?”

  “Tomorrow, we shall move you here. It’s not far to get to you, my dove, but it’ll be far better to take dinner with you here and go to bed with you, also here, which means I’ll wake here as well.”

  Um…

  Move in with him.

  Tomorrow?

  Was he nuts?

  “Uh, Apollo, by tomorrow I will twice have done something crazy in front of your kids and once, hopefully, acted like a sane person though a dinner with them. That’s hardly time to move me in.”

  “You will have met them. You will be getting to know them. Thus there will no longer be reasons for you to avoid them. You like my home. I see no purpose in us continuing our current arrangement.”

  “It’s too soon,” I told him, by a miracle succeeding in not letting my voice rise in panic.

  “Too soon?” he asked, clearly perplexed.

  “Yes. Too soon for them. Too soon for you and me.”

  “Maddie, how is it too soon?”

  Yep. He was perplexed. And I was perplexed at how he could be.

  I leaned back in his arms. “I’ve only”—I lifted my hands and did air quotation marks—“known you for a week. A week is way too soon to live together.”

  “And how are we not living together now?” he asked. “We dine together. We go to bed together. We wake together.”

  Alas, this was a good point.

  Luckily, I also had a good point.

  “What about the kids?”

  “What about them?” he asked and I blinked again.

  “Apollo, you can’t seriously be suggesting I move in with two kids who I’ve said half a dozen words to.”

  “No, I’m suggesting you move in tomorrow morning when hopefully through dinner you’ve said much more.”

  I could tell he was getting impatient because his tone was sliding along the edge of sarcastic.

  So I lowered my voice to one I thought would calm him when I explained, “It’s way too soon for the children. Honey,” I hesitated then reminded him of something I knew I didn’t have to remind him of, “I look like their mother.”

  “Élan doesn’t remember her mother,” he replied instantly. “And Christophe is an Ulfr male. This means that he may not show it, but he feels deeply. His friend shared with him what you did to avenge him and he admires this. I have shared with him the loss you suffered and he sympathizes as he has suffered his own. Therefore, he’s keen to get to know you.”

  Apollo kept talking even though halfway through what he said I knew my mouth had dropped open and my eyes got big.

  When he was done speaking, I asked, “He knows I stabbed a man?”

  “Maddie, as you yourself have discovered, our world is quite different than yours and he’s a boy who wishes to grow up and be a soldier like his father. These things don’t upset him like they do you. He does indeed know you stabbed a man. He also admires it.”

  That I could let slide. Boys in my world would probably think the same thing.

  Apollo wasn’t done.

  “But in knowing about the children you lost, dove, he respects it.”

  That I couldn’t let slide.

  “How could you tell him that?” I whispered.

  Apollo’s brows shot together. “And why would I not?”

  “Because it’s mine.”

  His brow cleared and he tried to gather me closer but when I tightened my body and leaned away, he gave up and just brought his face closer.

  “Do you not think,” he began, his tone gentle, “that one day not one but both of them would put together the way it is with our worlds and wonder? Wonder why there isn’t a them in your world or if you left their twins behind? You do not know him yet, poppy, but Christophe is very bright, as is Élan. They would eventually think on these things.”

  “Okay, I’ll give you that,” I replied. “But did this have to happen now?”

  “I wish for my children to know the woman I intend to marry and I wish the same for the woman who is to be my wife. So yes, it had to happen now. There’s no reason to delay.”

  “Did you think about maybe discussing with me what about me you could or could not share with your kids or, say, anyone at this juncture or any other juncture for that matter?” I inquired.

  “What I wish to know,” he replied, but did it carefully, “is why this is a secret? Maddie, you did nothing wrong.”

  He wasn’t right about that.

  I didn’t share the ways he wasn’t right.

  I said instead, “That’s not the point.”

  “Could you please explain the point?” he asked gently.

  He was being gentle and he’d said please.

  But he wanted me to move in with him and his kids.

  Tomorrow!

  “The point is, this is moving too fast.”

  His tone was less gentle when he noted, “You say this often.”

  “Because you move too fast often.”

  “We clearly disagree on this,” he returned.

  “Apollo, it’s been a week.”

  “And again, I will state we share the same table every evening and the same bed every night. I don’t understand why it has to be in separate homes.”

  “Because there are children involved,” I hissed.

  “And this factors how?” he shot back, definitely less gentle and getting impatient again.

  But I felt my own brows rise.

  “How?”

  “That’s what I asked,” he returned. “You see, my dove, it isn’t you saying good-bye to your children and riding through the snow every night.”

  All right. Fine.

  I could see that.

  “Okay then, if that’s a pain in your ass, and I could see that it would be night after night, then I’ll sneak in the house after they go to bed.”

  He’s brows knit. “Sneak?”

  “Yes.”

  “Why would you sneak?”

  He was crazy.

  “Because, honey, I’d be arriving to crawl in your bed with you and do the nasty.”

  His jaw got hard and his arms got tight. “What we do in bed is not nasty.”

  Uh-oh.

  Obviously, he got the wrong idea about that.

  I shook my head quickly and set about righting that wrong. “No. That’s not what I meant. It’s a turn of phrase in my world.”

  He dropped his arms and took a step back. “It doesn’t surprise me that those of your world would use that word for lovemaking. However they are wrong and you are wrong for using it to refer to what we do.”

  Now I could see he was getting angry so I erased the space he put between us and placed my hand on his chest. “You’re right. I’d never thought of it like that, but you’re right and it absolutely does not define in any way what we do in bed or how I think of it.”

  “Yet you discuss sneaking into my home to avoid my children knowing you’re here and in my bed, so you must hold some scorn or guilt for what we do,” he returned.

  “No,” I shook my head again, leaning deeper into him. “Not at all. But they’re kids Apollo. Young kids. And they don’t need
to know their father has a bed partner.”

  “I won’t exactly be sharing our play second for second at the breakfast table, Madeleine,” he stated, his voice turning cold. “But to share your bed with a woman you care about is not something to be ashamed of.”

  “No, of course not, but—”

  “And I’ll not communicate that by hiding who you are to me.”

  That was nice, so nice.

  But that didn’t mean he wasn’t moving too fast.

  “That’s sweet, honey, but—”

  “And I’ll not have it communicated to my children…in any way…that the act of love between two agreeable adults is something to hide because it’s shameful.”

  “Right, I get that, sweetheart. I totally do. But—”

  “If you get it, then you move in tomorrow,” he declared.

  “Listen—”

  “Tomorrow, Madeleine,” he decreed.

  Unfortunately, he was cutting me off and being arrogant and bossy all at the same time and this was serving to piss me off.

  “Okay,” I began, “you know your children better than me, obviously, so let’s just say this is moving too fast for me.”

  “I do not understand how,” he returned.

  “Apollo,” with effort, I controlled the snap in my voice, “I haven’t had the chance to figure out what I’m going to do with my life, what with war breaking out and everything.”

  “And this requires you being in the dower house?”

  “It requires time to think.” When he opened his mouth, I hastened to add, “Alone time.”

  “Maddie, the children are with their tutors all day and I’m equally busy. You’ll have plenty of alone time.”

  “You don’t understand,” I pointed out the obvious.

  “No, I do not,” he agreed to the obvious. “What I do understand is that whatever you’re going to do with your life, you’ll be doing it as my wife, living with me and my children in this bloody house. So you’re very correct. I don’t understand why you need to be in a home ten minutes away to figure that out delaying the inevitable, that being moving in here.”

  I tried to go gentle when I stated, “It isn’t the inevitable. None of that has been decided, Apollo.”

  I didn’t go gently enough.

  I knew this when his eyes blanked, his face turned to stone and he asked, “And your choices are vast?”

  Oh boy.

  Now I was getting mad.

  “Apollo—”

  “So vast, it requires great blocks of alone time to consider all your options?”

  “What I’m saying is—”

  “And those options include options that are better than what I give to you and could give to you”—he swept out an arm then leaned into me— “if you’d bloody move in.”

  “You don’t understand me—” I started but didn’t finish.

  “No, I don’t,” he clipped. “We’ve established that.”

  “What I mean is,” I snapped. “You don’t understand me and mostly, right now, you don’t because you won’t let me bloody finish.”

  He clamped his mouth shut, crossed his arms on his chest and scowled at me.

  But when he did, I was so angry and all he’d said started crashing into my brain (because he was right, my choices weren’t vast, in fact, they were practically non-existent), I couldn’t get my head together enough to say a word.

  “So.” He threw out a hand and invited, “Speak.”

  “I need a second,” I bit out.

  “I don’t have a second, Madeleine. I have a meeting with my secretary that should have started ten minutes ago.”

  Unfortunately, that led me straight into bitchy.

  “Well, I apologize for being a drain on your time and taking you away from your schedule. If you’re that busy, please don’t let me keep you. I mean, we’re just discussing our future.”

  “According to you, my dove, we don’t have a future.”

  “That’s not what I said,” I hissed.

  “Oh yes,” he whispered. “It is.”

  Seriously?

  “Apollo—”

  He was not whispering when he said, “If you can manage it without attacking anyone, see yourself home. I’ll give your apologies to the children that you couldn’t make dinner tonight. I’ll also not be joining you later this evening. However, this will serve to give you alone time to make important decisions about your future. And when you do, please share them with me so I can make some about mine as well.”

  With that, he turned on his boot and walked away, not realizing he left me gutted.

  Or maybe he did and he just didn’t care, seeing as he was the one who’d gutted me.

  Chapter Seventeen

  Huzzah!

  I sat in the front room of the dower house, my crossed arms draped over the back of a couch, head down, cheek resting on them, staring at the light snow falling outside.

  It really was pretty. Like a movie, so perfect it was unbelievable.

  And that sucked.

  For the first time since I’d been there, I wanted to go back to my world.

  It had been four days since Apollo and I fought. And I had not seen him or heard from him in all that time. I hadn’t even seen any of the guys.

  Apparently, Apollo got the boys in our fight. Not surprising but it made things feel worse than they already did.

  And I was getting the sense from not seeing him that things were pretty bad.

  In other words, it had not been a good four days.

  At first, I was pissed at Apollo and how he’d behaved like an arrogant ass who got what he wanted and when he didn’t, he threw a macho man hissy fit. I was also pissed at him because, although I’d been anxious at the time, I missed dinner with the kids and that hurt. Because he was right, they seemed to like meeting me (and I definitely liked meeting them, if you didn’t count the part where I made a fool of myself). So, since the hard part was done, I wanted the second less-hard part to happen and I wanted that bad.

  Then, of course, seeing as he was an arrogant ass but he was also Apollo and I liked him, as one day wore into two, I started to miss him.

  Now, on day four, I knew where I stood.

  Therefore, I knew I needed to make a plan.

  That was, figure out what to do with my life in this world.

  A life without Apollo and his kids in it.

  The problem was, I had no clue what to do with that life.

  See, I really didn’t want to be a prostitute. Even if they were revered in this world, I still thought that would suck.

  And I couldn’t be a ladies maid. I knew this because I couldn’t do hair and had no clue how to iron clothes in this world.

  A barmaid seemed kind of fun, but they didn’t exactly wear nice clothes or hang with the best crowds and Lord knew, with my allure for trouble, it would find me and bars were where trouble often started seeing as alcohol was imbibed in them.

  I could probably work in a kitchen since I knew how to cook but we could just say that baking those cookies was a pain in the ass. It was worth it in the end, but they didn’t have measuring cups in this world. Or ovens that had temperature controls. I could go on. Those cookies were touch and go from the start and I considered it a miracle they worked out okay.

  I considered the option of starting my own business. They didn’t have pizza in this world and everyone liked pizza. They liked it more when it was delivered to their house and the only thing they had to do was eat it and throw away the box. But, alas, I didn’t figure pizza would stay warm being delivered in a sleigh. And starting my own business would require money, which I didn’t have.

  In other words, there really weren’t a lot of opportunities that I’d seen for women in this world. In my world, I could get by. Sure, I would have to go back on the run. But before I took off, I stole a bucketload of Apollo’s money that I’d stashed in safe places all over, so I didn’t actually have to make a living.

  Just run.

&nb
sp; And hide.

  But I couldn’t get back to my world.

  So I had a medieval history degree and department store experience in a world that was kind of living its medieval history and had no department stores.

  I was fucked.

  Apollo was right, my options were not vast. I really only had one.

  Marry him.

  And honestly, when he wasn’t being an arrogant ass, that was far from a bad choice. He came with a great house, cute kids and a pack of good friends, not to mention kickass clothes.

  He also came with tender looks, interesting conversation, laughter, the ability to make me feel cherished and unbelievably great sex.

  But now, I didn’t have any of that because he was making it clear he didn’t want me anymore.

  Yes, I was fucked.

  I sighed and it was a big one.

  The one bit of good news in the last four days was that I started my period. So I wasn’t pregnant.

  Though, it must be said, having your cycle in that world was not fun and games, seeing as their sanitary products were as medieval as the rest of the world was. I’d learned this on the journey from Fleuridia (not fun to start your period around a bunch of guys you couldn’t ask about tampons or pads and find a way to make do) and, like chamber pots, I still wasn’t used to it.

  I drew in a big breath and sighed again.

  “Miss Maddie?”

  I turned my head to see Cristiana standing in the doorway.

  The one saving grace these last four days was that Apollo left me with my girls. At first, they’d acted the same, except a little cautious because of my mood. Now, they were watchful—in a caring way, of course, seeing as that was how they were.

  But I hadn’t shared what happened and twice I’d seen Loretta open her mouth only to have Meeta give her an elbow to the ribs. So I knew they were worried.

  I also knew I should open up to them. They were my friends. Or they were becoming my friends.

  And even Captain Kirk had chats with Spock and Bones. Mostly, it was mild arguing or banter but he shared his troubles with them. He was not the man, the island. Of course, the crew of the Enterprise was always in a life or death situation and that tended to promote sharing. Still.