Page 47

CHAPTER 47

Only Béatrice’s shivering sob broke the stillness in the house.

With a soft word, Maarja freed herself from Nate’s grip and hurried to Béatrice’s side, but when she tried to put her arm around the white-faced woman, Béatrice shrank back as if Maarja had somehow acquired the patina of heartlessness from her association with the Arundels.

Maarja sort of understood. “Mom,” she called.

Even without sight, Octavia had read the situation, for she was already on her way. She slid her arm around Béatrice’s shoulders and whispered encouragement as she led her toward the kitchen.

Alex was on her feet, leaning against her desk, white around the lips. She, too, had been too recently involved in violence, and this scene had brought back the horror. “Was that man drunk?”

“No.” Dante stared after his cousin. “Something else.”

“Meth?” Connor suggested. “It’s got to be something aggressive for him to speak to you like that.”

Dante grunted, then nodded to Connor and Owen. “Glad you two made it. Any more light on our little financial issue?”

“No,” Owen said. “When Connor woke up, we got in the car and I drove. Took us an hour and twenty minutes to go thirty-eight miles. He slept like a baby.”

“Those Taylor Swift songs you were singing weren’t lullabies!” Connor groused.

“You could have driven!” Owen said.

“I could have!”

Maarja met Dante’s gaze. The little tiff had brought a relaxation to the crowd, and slowly movement returned as everyone returned to their tasks.

“And fallen asleep at the wheel! No, thank you!” Owen was clearly cranky.

Dante intervened in the quarrel. “So no?”

The couple stared at him blankly.

He expanded his question. “No more light on our little financial issues?”

“Not the main one.” Connor lifted his briefcase. “I’ll get on it right away. The good news is, two others have been revealed. One straight-out confession. One finger-pointer who when I advised him I’d be able to trace the money trail, admitted guilt. Before the week is out, I expect a few others to be called to my attention.” He smiled with every appearance of real enjoyment. “Good times.”

Octavia had returned. She waited for the end of the discussion, introduced herself to Connor and Owen, took them into the kitchen for refreshments, and came back alone. “Owen, the dear boy, observed the state Béatrice is in and assumed control of the kitchen. Tonight he’s calling out for pizza and he’ll create something for snacks for our worker bees. Connor commandeered a corner of the table and went right to work. What a lovely couple! Dante, I do like your family.”

“Wait until you meet the rest of them before you pass judgment,” Dante advised.

She laughed. “You can pick your nose but you can’t pick your relatives. Words to live by!”

“I do know.” His voice was compassionate as he asked, “How is Béatrice?”

Octavia sobered. “She’s in such a state. I never imagined a woman could collapse so completely. What in the past has happened to her? Is it what I think?”

“I’m afraid so.” He led her to chairs set against the wall, showed her the seat, and sat beside her. Maarja followed. “My father was not a man to admire. Not in any way.”

A confirmation of what Maarja had suspected.

“Your father? My poor dear Béatrice!” Octavia turned her face toward the kitchen. “You and Jack seem nothing alike.”

“Béatrice collapsed after he impregnated her. She had to be institutionalized, and he bitterly despised her for weakness, for making a fuss over something he considered his right.”

Octavia and Maarja shuddered in unison.

Dante continued, “He took the baby away from her, donated a huge sum to an orphanage, and placed Jack in their care.”

Maarja ventured a guess. “He dumped Jack because he was afraid his son would inherit her hysteria, and he didn’t want it to infect his life?”

Dante nodded, and for Octavia’s sake, he said aloud, “You sum it up well. He despised nothing as much as frailty, and frailty in a son could not be borne. It wasn’t until after my father was killed and my mother had regained her health that she brought Jack back into the family, and we saw how very much he resembled Benoit.”

Maarja’s memory flashed with a glimpse of Brat Benoit, he with the golden mane of hair and cold green eyes. “Your father would never have made a scene the way Jack did.”

“You remember my father?” Dante asked in surprise.

“Not…really. Only that he sat so still, like a figure frozen in ice. Except for his eyes, and they burned like…” Maarja stared at nothing.

“Like golden coals, alive with the hate that fed his soul,” Dante said.

She glanced at him, startled at how well he knew her thoughts. “Yes. I only looked at him once. I wanted to run, but Mama said…” she closed her eyes “…to stay…” Her eyes snapped open again, and she repeated, “Dante, your father would never have made a scene the way Jack did.”

“No.” Dante’s expression mirrored the one he’d worn as Jack marched out. “Perhaps there’s more of Béatrice in him than we realized.” But Maarja could tell he doubted that.

Octavia patted his arm to get his attention. “Béatrice is afraid to ask, because it goes against your order as the Arundel leader, but she wants to leave before the wedding. To escape what’s coming. She fears…what’s coming.” She didn’t approve of Dante’s patriarchal position and she couldn’t comprehend, this fierce woman who’d faced so much, why Béatrice feared this plan to out their villain. But Octavia didn’t judge Béatrice; she understood not all people were warriors.

Dante granted permission. “Of course, she can go. Perhaps back to British Columbia?”

“She’d like that, I think. She has spoken with such rapture about the whales and the wildlife!” Octavia’s face took on a wistful cast. “She describes them so well I can almost see them.”

“An Alaskan cruise,” Dante decided. “One of the National Geographic cruises. Béatrice will be out of danger, in among people who appreciate what she loves.”

Maarja relaxed a tension she didn’t realize she felt. Yes. Béatrice would be safe on a ship.

Dante took Octavia’s hand. “You look worried. Is everything okay?”

As if he lent her a feeling of safety, Octavia scooched her chair closer to him. “So many people in my house and outside my house! They’re all doing things. I didn’t hire them, and some of them are taking over the jobs like cleaning up the flower beds, the things my friends and neighbors volunteered to do to prepare for the wedding. Why are they here?”

Maarja liked that, given the chance, Octavia felt comfortable enough to task Dante with her concerns herself.

“If we’re going to be ready for the ceremony, we’ve got to bring in professionals.” He was like a boulder that stood against the everlasting crash of the waves, strong and sensible. “Are they assuming too much? Pushing your friends out of the way? I can speak to them.”

“No, it’s simply that…new appliances, Dante?” Octavia gestured toward the kitchen. “For a wedding?”

“The caterers require the best to create a reception we can all enjoy. Surely you didn’t think that when we brought our event to your doorstep, we would expect you and Alex to handle everything by yourselves?” Dante put his arm around her. “What kind of son-in-law would do such a lousy thing?”

Most of them , Maarja thought.

Octavia beamed. “Son-in-law. How lovely! Your family will be absorbed into ours. Now I don’t want you to wear yourself out.”

“I’m good at delegating, I’m used to being busy, and I know you probably don’t like this, but we must have security for the wedding.” He used his practical voice. “When dealing with the Arundels, there’s no use using temporary measures.”

Octavia screwed up her face and began to speak.

He talked over top of her. “When we’re married and head off on our honeymoon—”

“Our honeymoon?” Maarja asked.

He met her gaze while he talked to Octavia. “You’ll have permanent security in place. Octavia, I’m sad to say, becoming a relative of mine involves some risk. I can’t have Maarja worried about you or Alex.” Dante had gone into full charming mode. “If you have any other concerns, you’re to come to me immediately. Nate will usher you in.”

Nate rumbled an agreement.

Octavia said, “Thank you, Dante, that’s all very reassuring, and you are certainly full of the blarney.”

Maarja grinned. Mom could spot sweet talk when she heard it.

Octavia walked briskly away, then returned to say, “I meant to say, thank you for bringing in such a comprehensive physical therapist for Alex. I hadn’t realized how angry she is about Serene and her treachery. She seems to be handling the pain and problems in her body better than her rage. Although…” Octavia paused to think. “I should have remembered.” She wandered off, leaving Dante and Maarja watching her.

“You have a great mom,” Dante said.

“She is. You had a great mom, too. It’s something we have in common.” She put a comforting hand on his arm.

He put his hand over hers and walked toward his office.

Nate opened the doors, and as they walked in, he shut them behind them.

She felt like a queen. A queen of…what? A consort of the king of the underworld? “Did you think on what I said?” she asked.

“About whether or not we will have children? Can have children?” He led her to the massively comfortable chair behind his desk and pushed the seat under her butt. “I’ve thought of little else.”

She sat and put her hands on the padded chair arms. She examined the stacks of papers, the computer screens, the pens and keyboards and trackballs. “You get busy when you’re thinking.”

“Fall down eight times, get up nine.”

She liked his philosophy. And his determination. And his thoughtfulness.

“Did you think of what I said?” he asked.

“When?”

He tilted his head toward the door. “There. When Jack challenged you.”

It’s simple. I’m in love with her.

“Yes. I…” She discovered in herself a huge streak of cowardice. She couldn’t work up the nerve to say it back to him. She, who had taken a huge hurdle with him, balked at completing the race.

On the other hand, he watched her with a half smile, as if he saw something in her hesitant discomfort and the blush that lit her nose and made her ears hot.

She plunged into a conversation that had nothing to do with fertility or future or…love. “Why are you throwing so many workers into what is a potential crime scene? When every one of them could be an assassin?”

“I consulted with your Saint Rees. He agreed with my plan. He and his crew are watching. Observing.” He glanced out the window at the crew trimming the bushes. “We’re hoping to lure the killer with the appearance of carelessness. Let him onto the premises among the other laborers. Tempt him by the chance to do the deed early.”

“I thought the wedding—”

“Do you imagine I want our wedding to be ruined by a killer?” Dante pushed his face close to hers. “Do you really think I would use you as a front to flush out the son of a bitch who wants to take me down?”

Obviously she wasn’t the only one who could ask difficult questions. “I think we do what we have to do.”

“Using the wedding is your idea, Maarja.”

“If it works, I’m glad for that.”

“Remember—we can see the finish line. We won’t stop now until it’s over.”

She slowly nodded, comprehending and yet wanting it all laid out. “If some construction guy points a knife at my throat?”

“Take him down, Maarja.” He sat with his hip on his desk, to all appearances relaxed and confident.

The way Dante viewed her… As if he expected her to save herself. To save them both.

She could do that. She had practiced her self-defense moves until she knew them as well as she knew how to breathe.

He continued, “Then we’ll be married by your mom the way she wants it to be—all peace and love and forever. That will do for us. That is who we are. We are not enemies. We are lovers until the end of time.”

She kept trying to inject modern life and reality into their lives.

Dante kept taking them back to the fogs of myth, the memories of a time before where love created life and justice was won by courage.

She was starting to like his way of looking at life. And him.

From the practical standpoint of getting shot or stabbed or framed, from the moment she ran into the flames to rescue Mrs. Arundel, she had known she’d steered herself into perilous waters.

Yet the physical danger she’d faced was nothing compared to the emotional complications. Her feelings for Dante veered from one extreme to another. He annoyed and attracted her. He exuded menace; people were rightfully afraid of him, yet because of her actions, he’d extended the umbrella of his protection over her. He also believed, apparently in all sincerity, he had a right to her. As if she were a possession he owned.

No. Wait, that wasn’t right. As if she was part of him…and he was a part of her.

She had never in her life imagined she would have the courage to be paired with any partner, much less a powerful man who believed in destiny.

Of course, how could she have foreseen that the old fears for her own safety would fail in comparison to the turmoil of emotions that now dominated her mind and heart?