The woman, though, that was another matter. She’d not only looked stunned when Audric had grabbed her and kissed her, she’d looked as confused as she was rattled and he didn’t think that was because she’d discovered they were watching the entire byplay.
He studied over that for a while, wondering if he was only trying to convince himself the woman wasn’t warming Audric’s bed, or if there was actually a possibility that Audric hadn’t managed to coax her in to it yet.
Not that it mattered. He wouldn’t touch her himself even if she hadn’t.
He just needed a woman, not that one.
It wouldn’t be wise, at all, to consider her because such an arrangement could get very uncomfortable very fast. She might get the idea that there was more to it than just lust and then they’d be looking for someone else to help Tedra around the house.
Not that that was his problem, but he didn’t actually want her. He didn’t see what the attraction was, for Audric, or any of the others for that matter.
They were just as randy as he was for any woman, he thought derisively, and for the same reason. The sad truth was, none of them had had much in the way of female companionship since they’d been exiled. It hadn’t been something that mattered a great deal to him, but he was well aware that it had been a hardship for the others. They’d chosen this world because it was the most like their own that they could find that was also inhabited with beings much like them.
And they’d discovered they still didn’t ‘blend’ with the natives. The Earth people were a smaller race, but not that much smaller. Except for the eyes, outwardly there was very little difference. He still wasn’t entirely certain why they didn’t seem to blend in, but he supposed it must be that the humans, whether they were aware of it or not, sensed they weren’t the same.
And, that being the case, they’d had to be very cautious about going among them. None of them, including him, wanted to have to look for another place once they’d settled. It was bad enough not being able to go home, bad enough living among aliens on an alien world, but it at least had some similarities to their home. They might not have that much if they had to leave and look for another place.
He stopped walking when he abruptly realized he’d gone, by force of habit, to the place he’d always gone to feel close to Evangeline. Turning, he stared out at the sea. He didn’t try to summon his memories of her. He hadn’t been able to since ….
The loneliness returned full force, though--not the pain of loss. That had dulled, become a distant ache. He’d felt so empty for so long he wasn’t even sure anymore when it had stopped grinding at his guts.
She’d left him, he decided. She’d come to him for years, wanting, hoping that he’d avenge her death, and he’d failed her in that like he’d failed to protect her. He’d allowed himself to be so wrapped up in his loss he had lost sight of what still mattered.
Revenge. Justice. He’d abandoned his people without giving a thought for what they were suffering--also because of him. Because he’d been too selfish to consider anyone’s welfare but his own.
He had to go home, he realized. What he’d lost was gone and he was never going to get it back, but Schalome was still there, suffering because he had abandoned the people to Jaelen. And Evangeline had never gotten justice, never would if he didn’t see to it.
Conflicting emotions welled inside of him the moment he accepted that he’d denied his destiny as long as he could. Homesickness warred with a reluctance to return to the place where he’d known the heights of happiness and the absolute depths of despair. The need for revenge warred with a need to know true peace.
I am weary of being alone, Evie. If I do this for you, if I avenge your death, will you give me peace, beloved? Will you let me go?
* * * *
By the following morning, Raina had had time to consider everything that had happened the night before--over and over while she was trying sleep.
It had occurred to her that she’d allowed her temper to gain the upper hand. It didn’t matter that she was tired and hungry and aggravated, and she still didn’t know why Mrs. Higgenbottom had gotten so bent out of shape, she should’ve handled it better. Mrs. Higgenbottom wasn’t her boss. Simon Draken was since he owned everything, but the housekeeper was still her supervisor.
If she didn’t figure out some way to get on the woman’s good side, she was going to be out of a job. The day before, she’d almost been ready to let it go. The thought had occurred to her to just walk out. She wasn’t cut out for this kind of work. She’d thought it would be easy. She knew how clean. What was complicated about that?
But it was obviously more complicated than she’d realized. Mrs. Higgenbottom had lost her temper and if there was anything Raina had learned in the short time she’d been at the place, the woman was inclined to be unflappable.
She supposed it didn’t really matter why Mrs. Higgenbottom was so stuffy about who got served first--undoubtedly it was some custom from where ever the men were from--she was going to have to figure it out.
She just wished she’d known before she’d taken the job that she was going to be expected to serve the meals. She’d never lied when she applied for a job. She would’ve told Mrs. Higgenbottom that she didn’t have any experience in waiting tables.
Actually, she had had some--all bad. Her first working years had been spent waiting tables. She’d bounced from one restaurant to another for several years before she’d realized waiting tables was not only never going to get her anywhere, she wasn’t any damned good at it. She was too absentminded to remember everything she’d been expected to keep up with--who ordered what, what the daily special was, what sides came with this dish, etc., etc.--and then on top of that, she wasn’t the most coordinated person in the world. The first day she’d waited tables, she’d poured four tall glasses of iced tea all over two men and their dates because she couldn’t balance four glasses on a tray in the palm of her hand, and then remove one.
Luckily for Mr. Draken and the Quints, Mrs. Higgenbottom hadn’t expected her to try to balance the tray on the palm of her hand or they would’ve been wearing their soup.
Two meals a day, Mrs. Higgenbottom had said. They ‘broke their fast’ in the morning with a breakfast buffet--strange way to refer to breakfast--so she didn’t have to worry about bad memory, lack of coordination, and not being able to unglue her eyes to see because she’d never been a morning person. She didn’t come fully awake until around nine or ten o’clock, and she doubted they ate breakfast that late.
A sharp rap on the door roused her enough to sit up in bed just as Mrs. Higgenbottom opened the door. Instead of looking at her, the woman stared down her nose at the tray Raina had set outside the night before when she’d finished eating. “You will start on the front parlor this morning. It you want to eat before you get started, you should be downstairs within the next twenty minutes. Bring the tray to the kitchen.”
Raina lay back down when the woman left.
Twenty more minutes of sleep!
She’d already rolled over to go back to sleep when it dawned on her that if she skipped breakfast, she was going to be starving come lunch time, and she wouldn’t get to eat until she’d served lunch.
“Damn it!” she muttered, rolling off the bed and staggering into the bathroom.
The shower roused her enough to open her eyes a sliver. She wasn’t much more awake, though, when she headed out of the bathroom to get dressed.
Audric was standing at the closet, stark naked.
That opened her eyes. It jump started her heart, too.
She stared at him in disbelief for many moments, trying to crank her brain into gear, wondering, since it was virtually a replay of the scene the first day, if she was only dreaming it.
“Audric?”
He looked disconcerted. “You were in the shower. I thought I could change before you got out,” he said with a shrug.
“Don’t talk to me in … whatever language that is this early in the mo
rning. I can’t handle it,” Raina said tiredly.
Moving to her suitcase, she grabbed some clothes and went back into the bathroom to dress. Thankfully, he’d dressed and left before she got out again. She managed to wolf down a few bites of breakfast before Mrs. Higgenbottom shooed her out of the kitchen. It was mid-morning before she came awake enough to mentally review the morning visit with any objectivity.
She supposed, since she was sleeping in his room, he might have the idea that it was still his room. And she completely understood that he needed his clothes to change. And if he was sleeping on one of the couches he wouldn’t want to move his clothes, especially since this arrangement was supposed to be temporary.
But for some odd reason, she had a feeling there was something going on that she was missing--like maybe it wasn’t just because of the inconvenience of moving them that Audric had left his clothes in the room. Unless they knew where he was sleeping, it was bound to look as if he was occupying the room with her.
And then there was the kiss the night before. Simon had said he’d done it to distract her from the argument with Hatchet-face. She’d been too bemused by everything to really question it at the time, mostly because she turned into a slobbering moron the moment she discovered she was anywhere around Simon, but also because Audric had really dazzled her.
He was a damned good kisser. She considered herself a connoisseur of kisses. She’d kissed a lot of guys, or been kissed, and most of them were pretty so-so. Some were down right nasty. Some irritating. Some boring. Some ok, and every once in a great while, some were pretty damned good. On scale of one to ten, though, Audric was a definite fifteen. She’d had guys kiss her pussy that didn’t get her that hot, that fast.
And pretty much all she’d been able to think about since he’d kissed her was if he’d do it again and if it’d be that good the second time. And if he could kiss like that, just how good was he in the sack?
She’d thought about that when she wasn’t wondering if Simon could kiss even half that good and what he’d be like in the sack.
Which was why she was only just now getting around to realizing just how bizarre that episode had been.
She could understand everything right up to the point Audric had grabbed her and kissed her. She’d been arguing with Hatchet-face, getting madder and madder, and old Higgenbottom had been getting angrier and angrier, and she supposed both of them had been getting louder, which explained why the argument had drawn attention. It didn’t explain why all of them had piled into the kitchen.
They’d expected a show--that was the only explanation that made any sense.
She’d suspected, at first, that the ‘show’ had to do with that kiss. She still wasn’t sure it hadn’t, because she couldn’t really remember what sort of expressions any of their audience had had on their faces.
Except Simon.
Simon had looked like he wanted to kiss her himself, and at the same time as if he wanted to throttle her--and not with his tongue.
If he’d been surprised to find Audric kissing her, if any of them had been, she’d missed that part, and she didn’t know when they’d arrived. They might have been standing there when Audric had started kissing her.
As much as she’d enjoyed that kiss, now that she’d had time to gain a little perspective, it seemed like a really lame excuse. Kissing her to distract her?
Besides seeming lame, it was really depressing.
On the other hand, if he’d kissed her because he knew they were there and had wanted to make it look like something was going on between them, then that wasn’t depressing or lame, and it pissed her off.
Trying to shake the sense that had come over her the night before, that there’d been more to it than a man seizing the opportunity to do something he’d been looking for an excuse to do, she studied over it again.
And she still got the impression that all of them had sailed into the kitchen because they’d expected … something, maybe not what had happened, but something.
And then all of them had left when Higgenbottom had started bawling, except Audric had dashed back into the kitchen, snatched her up like he was some sort of caveman and hauled her upstairs--and he hadn’t wanted to let her go down again to eat.
They couldn’t honestly have thought the old woman was in any danger, could they? She didn’t like Higgenbottom, and she’d been pretty ticked off about the woman manhandling her, but she was an old woman. She wouldn’t have clobbered the old bat.
Of course they didn’t know that, and Higgenbottom had said she’d been with Simon since he was a baby. Obviously, they’d all known her for years and years, because Audric had said they’d been living here for five years.
She thought that was what he had meant, although that was another puzzle, because none of them looked to be older than their late twenties. That would mean they would have been in their early twenties, or maybe not even that old, when they’d moved into the house.
That was hard to swallow.
She dismissed it as a puzzle for another time, though, bringing her mind back to the kitchen escapade. Abruptly, she remembered Simon had said that Audric was worried she would get hurt, not the old woman.
That was when she remembered that, just before Audric had grabbed her, she’d noticed Mrs. Higgenbottom was wearing contacts, colored contacts, because her eyes, the real color, was the same as Audric’s, Simon’s--all of the men’s.
* * * *
Raina had no more idea why it was that she felt so guilty watching Simon than she did as to why she was drawn to watch him to start with. Since her curiosity had driven her to find out where Simon went when he left the house, though, and she’d discovered he always walked out to stand on the beach and stare out to sea she hadn’t been able to resist watching him when he left the house if she was able to reach a window where she could watch him.
There was just something about the way he stood so still for so long that did something to her, that created a yearning inside of her that she couldn’t completely understand. His back was as ramrod stiff as ever, his shoulders erect, not slumped with dejection, but she still felt that she could sense loneliness and pain in him. And that drew her almost as much, though in a vastly different way, as her absolute fascination with the aura of power that surrounded him, and the less exalted, but equally distracting, lust she felt every time he came within her vicinity.
She had never been around a man that had that kind of effect on her, that she had only to look at to feel the urge to hump something--preferably him--as if she’d just shot up with some potent aphrodisiac. And the strange thing about it was that she wasn’t entirely sure of what it was about him that made her feel that way. He was handsome and had a body that had a serious pant factor, but the other men were handsome and built well, too--Audric was gorgeous and he really turned her on, but she didn’t feel like she was going to melt just from looking at him. Her brain didn’t take a holiday every time she looked at his mouth--or his eyes--or his hands. She didn’t feel weak kneed and faint and clumsy and stupid whenever he passed through the room.
It was almost as scary, the way he made her feel, as it was enthralling and she could never decide whether she most wanted to run from him, or toward him.
Mostly, though, if she could command her feet to move at all, she ran from him, afraid he’d see the really embarrassing effect he had on her.
She had a bad feeling, though, that he knew how he effected her and that was why he always scowled when he got a glimpse of her because he hadn’t looked at her once as if he welcomed her mindless adoration. He hadn’t even looked vaguely interested until he’d seen Audric kissing her and she didn’t flatter herself that she’d actually figured that much into the lust factor--mostly because all of them had the glazed look men got on their faces when they watched a porn.
“Raina!”
Raina nearly jumped out of her skin at the sudden intrusion into her thoughts.
“Get your cleaning supplies and come. Now! Quick
ly!” Mrs. Higgenbottom said sharply, turning away before Raina had a chance to scowl at her for scaring the pee out of her. The urgency in the woman’s voice communicated, however, and she scrambled to her feet, tossed everything into her tray, and hurried after the woman.
The housekeeper was nearly at the top of the stairs before Raina reached the foyer.
The woman might look as old as time, but she moved fast, Raina thought with surprise. Grabbing the handrail with her free hand, she hurried to catch up, stumbling about halfway up and nearly sprawling out on the stairs. Fortunately, she had a firm grip on the balustrade because she almost never managed to negotiate the entire staircase without stumbling at least once.
Damned treads! There was something about the height of the steps, or the depth of the treads that didn’t go well with the height of her step or the length of her foot because she always stubbed a toe on at least one riser going up, and caught her heel on at least one step going down, sometimes more than one.
She didn’t know how the men, with their great big feet, managed to go up and down the stairs without rolling to the bottom.
The door to Simon’s suite was standing open when Raina reached the upper landing. Raina’s heart instantly stepped up its pace. Since it was already fluttering a bit frantically from her near fall, the racing pulse had her panting.
Or maybe it was the idea of entering Simon’s private sanctum?
Mrs. Higgenbottom stepped into the doorway. “Quickly now! We must get the rooms cleaned before he comes back!”
Raina frowned but hurried down the hallway. She’d been at the mansion for weeks and she still couldn’t get used to the strange way everybody acted. She supposed it was because she’d never been a ‘domestic’ before, had never even met anyone who had been--cleaning ladies, yes--but not a ‘domestic’. It seemed really weird, though, to be so frantic to dash into the man’s rooms and clean the place up while he was out.
As if they were magical pixies or something!
It wasn’t as if the man didn’t know he had servants in the house.
And Ms. Higgenbottom, she knew, wasn’t as awestricken with the man as she was, couldn’t be if she’d known him all his life--wasn’t afraid of him--so why the almost panicked way she ran around serving him and trying to keep from being seen serving him?
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