His fingertip eased over the curve of her face.
“You burn me alive, Tehya,” he said, his voice low, as he stared back at her.
She remained silent, her heart leaping in her throat, hope digging sharp claws into her tender heart.
He breathed out slowly, heavily.
“You do the same to me, Jordan,” she whispered back, her need to hear more almost a physical hunger.
His gaze flickered and darkened.
“It starts tomorrow,” he said his expression growing, not exactly distant, but no longer as soft as it had been. “The senator’s first party to introduce his son-in-law to his backers will be held at the Stanton estate.”
Her throat tightened. She didn’t want to discuss this right now.
“I’d prefer to glow just a little longer,” she told him with false amusement. “Let’s talk about this later, okay?”
When her heart wasn’t breaking because the sweet nothings hadn’t lasted long enough after the most incredible orgasm of her life.
“Tehya, we don’t have time to wait.” His fingers tightened on her face as she moved to turn away from him. “I have to know now, can you handle facing the Taites? Can you endure an introduction and pretend you don’t know them? Can you bear to walk away from your family without…”
“They’re not my family.” She had no idea if they were even likeable. She couldn’t miss what she had never had.
It was that simple. She wasn’t going to argue the point.
“Tey, look at me.” The gentleness in his tone nearly broke the fragile shell of her defenses. “Why? What’s holding you back from taking what belongs to you? Your family, and your inheritance?”
Did he sincerely want to know? Why did he want to know? God, he wasn’t supposed to switch gears like this. He was supposed to maintain some kind of consistency, wasn’t he? There was nothing worse than someone who switched gears that easily.
“Look.” She breathed out wearily. “Right now, they’re none the wiser and neither am I. Any heirs my mother had are assumed dead. I’m assumed dead. If I return, they’ll always fear I’m there to claim my inheritance. They’ll never believe otherwise. They’ll never trust me. It’s a no-win situation, Jordan, and I’m tired of fighting. I just want to rest for a while, nothing more. And returning to, or should I say, trying to enter, the bosom of my family, isn’t something I’ve put on my agenda this year.”
She was tired of fighting, she was tired of being alone, and she was tired of the shadows that refused to allow her any peace.
She was simply exhausted, and once this was over, she wanted to hide and heal the wounds gathering in her heart.
Staring back at him, she realized she wanted only to rest in his arms.
“Come here, baby.” His arms tightened around her, drawing her to him. “I’ll be there with you,” he promised. “Lean on me if you have to. But when this is over, it’s a discussion we’ll have again. This decision isn’t set in stone.”
Unfortunately, it was. She had set it in stone long ago, and she intended to keep it there.
CHAPTER 10
It was set in stone. In cement. In steel.
It was a promise she reaffirmed the next evening.
Tehya reminded herself that she had made a promise to her mother and to herself. After her grandparents’ murder, she had sworn to her mother that she would protect the rest of the family by staying away from them. That she would also protect the single secret her grandfather had given her mother unless she had no other recourse, until the threat of all danger had passed.
That secret, a set of numbers, was more than her own legacy, more than the legacy that had been stolen from Francine Taite, when Sorrel had kidnapped her. It was an inheritance set aside by Bernard Taite for his missing daughter. Cash, gold, bonds, family jewels, and a portion of Taite Industries profit per year, after Bernard Taite’s death. It was a legacy set aside by her grandfather, and Tehya couldn’t claim it until she either married, reached forty years old, or decided to return it to the overall estate for a very small portion of the whole. That inheritance was all she wanted from the Taites. As far as she was concerned, she deserved every tiny bit of it.
“Your gown will be here in about an hour.” Jordan stepped into the bedroom where she stood in front of the large, well-lit mirror, that hung on the wall behind the dresser completing her makeup. She hated vanity lighting, preferring the more natural light in the bedroom instead.
Dressed in thin shorts and a camisole top, barefoot, freshly showered and still trying to come to grips with the night before, Tehya avoided his gaze as she brushed a finishing powder over the completed accents to her face, before returning her makeup to the bag lying on the dresser.
“Fine,” she answered shortly as she checked the feature-defining job she had completed on her face. Smoky eyes, defined cheeks, the darker eye shadow highlighting and darkening the emerald green of her eyes.
Hell, she didn’t look like Teylor Johnson any more than she looked like the missing Tehya Talamosi Fitzhugh. Which was the effect she had been working for. Makeup was indeed a girl’s best friend.
Jordan paced across the room to her as she watched him carefully from the corner of her eye.
He wore black silk slacks, custom-made leather shoes, and an Egyptian cotton white shirt so expensive she was almost amused by the price. She knew the Malone’s were incredibly rich, each son provided a healthy inheritance when Erin Malone died. They rarely showed it though, which only made it more shocking when she saw proof of it.
The matching evening jacket was lying across a chair in the other room. She knew his habits, and she was certain he had taken just as much notice of her own.
“You don’t seem particularly concerned about the party tonight,” he commented as he stood behind her, his gaze going over her face, taking in the expert application of makeup.
“Should I be?” she asked, her brow arching.
“This is the first time you’ve been face-to-face with the Taites, other than Journey. I know it’s a complication you weren’t looking forward to,” Jordan said.
Her lips twisted bitterly. “True, but life is nothing if not a complication, wouldn’t you say, Jordan? Why should one more matter? Besides, they have no idea who I am, and no one at the party who matters has any idea who I am. Why should I be nervous?
Jordan leaned against the edge of the dresser, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared back at her.
“The whole Taite family will be there, Tey. Stephen and his wife, Lauren. Craig and his wife, Melisande, as well as the children. Craig’s son and heir, Royce, his daughters Alexa and Journey.”
She turned with a frown. “Isn’t that unusual? Stephen Taite had one child, Craig, but Craig has three.”
“Unusual.” His lips pursed thoughtfully though his gaze was amused. “Perhaps Craig didn’t enjoy being an only child.”
“Mother said Craig was quite determined that there be no other children to share his parents’ time with him.” She remembered this as bits and pieces of conversations with her mother emerged. “She always appeared very fondly amused by the memory. Evidently, Craig was quite possessive of not just his parents, but also any inheritance he would receive when they died.”
“What’s your point?” he asked curiously.
Did she have a point? Other than the fact that she truly wasn’t nervous and was only now realizing how very little she knew about her family. Even though their youngest daughter worked for her, Tehya refused to listen to Journey discuss them.
“No point,” she finally shrugged as Jordan continued to watch her. “I’ve just always found that rather strange, I guess.”
“Why would it seem odd or strange to you if you have no intentions of revealing yourself to them?”
Tehya propped her hands on the dresser and stared back at herself in the mirror for a long, intense moment, before dropping her eyes and turning to stare back at Jordan.
She couldn’t bear to see
the emotions in her own eyes, or the haunted dreams she had never been able to give up on.
“Mother adored her family,” she said softly, frowning as her chest tightened with the pain of everything that had been lost over the years. “That was her only dream, to find a way home. The last call she made, before Sorrel caught up with her, after her parents’ deaths, she sounded broken.”
She had been broken, Tehya amended silently. She had heard it in Francine’s voice, the agony that couldn’t be healed, the knowledge there was no home left to return to.
“Trust no one, Tehya,” she had whispered without inflection, her voice hoarse, ragged, yet lacking emotion. “Swear to me you’ll never risk the rest of the family. But when you’re old enough, Tehya. When you reach your inheritance age, swear to me. Swear you’ll claim all that is left of what should be yours. Swear it. And when you do, you’ll find him. You’ll find the son of a bitch that helped Sorrel. You’ll make him pay. Swear it, damn you!”
Tehya had sworn. She had wanted to beg her mother to do it. Francine had been thirty-three years old. She’d had only seven years to go. At forty she could have claimed the inheritance and found her own vengeance.
Her mother had lived long enough to claim enough. Within a week of her parents’ death, Sorrel’s men had found her. They had found her, they had tortured her to death, for her.
Her mother had died protecting her.
“You were her family, too.” Jordan’s voice pulled her back from her memories. “You were her daughter.”
“I was her albatross,” she whispered, the muted grief that haunted her reflected in her voice, despite her attempt to hold it back.
“She cherished you,” Jordan reminded her. “If you had been her albatross then she would have let Sorrel have you.”
“And she lived in hell to protect me.” She couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t let the past destroy her, or her mother’s death would have been in vain.
“She made me swear I would never involve family in this.” She turned to him, praying she was making the right choice in allowing Jordan to draw them in, even to the small extent he was involving them.
And now she was pushing it by going to a party the entire family was attending. A party where everyone would be speculating about the landscaping company owner and what she was doing with one of D.C.’s favorite sons, Jordan Malone.
“You’re not calling your family begging for help,” he pointed out. “You’re meeting them as someone totally unrelated to the great-niece Stephen Taite has no idea how to locate.”
And rumor was that he had searched for her for several years after her grandparents’ and mother’s deaths. She’d never understood why though.
Turning back to the mirror, she fluffed the curls that fell nearly to her hips and checked the smoky shadow that accented her eyes. She needed to break away from the sapphire blue of his gaze, from the unspoken questions that seemed to lurk there.
“Do you expect Ira Arthur and Mark Tenneyson to be there?” she asked after several moments’ silence.
“They actually have invitations.”
Tehya turned back to him in shock. “How did they manage that one?”
“Through the French Embassy.” Jordan’s lips tightened. “We’re still trying to track down the particulars of that invitation. Until we do, stay close. See if anything is mentioned about the attack on your house.”
“They know about that? So much for a life of fucking anonymity, Jordan. What the hell is going on here?”
“We’ve managed to contain most of it,” he assured her. “But you know how rumors work, Tehya. Someone will have heard about it.”
“No doubt.” She breathed out roughly. “What’s the story then?”
“Your cousin, Denver Roberts, was staying at the house when someone tried to break in. Things got out of hand and shots were fired. That simple.”
“That simple,” she breathed out roughly.
She didn’t want to think about her home. She didn’t want to think about the damage, and she didn’t want to discuss it.
“Fine.” She lifted her hand in a denial of the conversation going further. “Maybe I’ll get really lucky and no one has heard about it.”
“Tey, you’re worrying too much,” he told her somberly. “The meeting will be short, an introduction, no more. Just enough to give the men watching the Taites, as well as you, something to report back to their employers. I want to know who is pulling the junkyard dogs’ chains; and how the hell they managed to get an official invitation to a Senator’s party.”
“It’s D.C.,” she reminded him. “Invitations are traded like baseball cards.”
His head inclined in agreement. “I guess we have to find the collectors then,” he told her.
“Do we have any idea who the dogs are working for yet?” She rather liked the analogy in regards to Arthur and Tenneyson.
Jordan’s lips quirked “Not even a clue. As I said, I’m hoping they’ll lead us to them after the party. If nothing else, put us a few steps closer.”
A few steps closer.
“Well-funded, well-hidden, and well-connected,” she murmured. “We won’t know who it is unless they manage to actually take me.”
He moved quickly behind her, his gaze meeting hers in the mirror.
“Let that happen, and once you’re safe, I promise you, I’ll make damned sure you regret it.”
She heard the anger in his tone and grimaced as Jordan dared her.
“I haven’t been running for all but the first five years of my life just to let them take me, Jordan.”
“Make damned sure of it,” he growled. “The last thing I need is to lose you, Tehya.”
His choice of words had her glancing in the mirror to catch his reflection. He turned away though before she could see anything, and she had the feeling it was deliberate.
“And those words coming from the man who allowed me to walk away nine months ago,” she said calmly. “Tell me, Jordan, did you even think about me before you learned my identity had been compromised?”
She couldn’t leave well enough alone, no matter how she tried.
“I didn’t lose you,” he stated coolly as he turned back to her. “I knew how to find you, Tehya.”
Her lips tightened. “Yes, all you had to do was contact Killian.”
Another thought had her turning around to face him.
“How convenient that my phone had been tampered with just before this happened,” she stated mockingly. “Perhaps we should launch our own investigation, Jordan. Into Killian Reece and whether or not he betrayed me.”
Killian hated her because Sorrel was her father. He would have no problem turning her over to Sorrel’s enemies. As far as he was concerned, blood would tell, and he had no compunction saying it to her face.
“It’s already begun,” he promised. “But that doesn’t change our present situation so stop attempting to change the subject. Are you ready for this party, Tehya? Will you be able to handle meeting the Taites?”
“No, Jordan. I’m not. But just as with anything else in the past, it doesn’t appear as though I have a fucking choice does it?” She fought to throttle her fury.
She swung away from him and stalked across the room, intending to pass him, to move into the living room, to get away from the reality of what she could never have, as well as the realization that she was moving closer to them with every second.
“I’ve never seen you like this.” He caught her arm as she would have passed him. “You’re not focused, nor are you trusting me as you used to, Tey. What happened?”
Confusion swept over her as she glared back at him.
“What do you want from me, Jordan? How else do you expect me to be? For the first time in my life, I thought I was safe, only to learn I wasn’t. My home was invaded. I’m being thrown into a situation where my entire life once again is out of my control. Should I simply be calm and collected and expect you to take care of it all?” The
anger that burned inside her filled her voice now.
She couldn’t help it. She was moving too quickly into unfamiliar territory and was unable to get her bearings fast enough. It had been three days since she had lost the small measure of peace she had found, since the security she had unknowingly craved so desperately had been taken away from her.
“You’ve always trusted me to protect you.”
She was confused by the darkness in his tone now, by the glint of anger in his blue eyes.
“This has nothing to do with protection, Jordan,” she argued, desperate now to escape this conversation.
“What does it have to do with?” He questioned her rather than releasing her as she tried to jerk her arm from his grip. “Tell me, Tehya, since when do you believe I would allow anyone to dare to harm you.”
Jordan couldn’t explain why her belief in him was so damned important. Why he had been watching her for three days, probing at her trust, pushing her limits.
The night before he had broken through the reserve she had held against him where her body was concerned. That step had been imperative. Though he had no idea why. He couldn’t explain it to himself and prayed she didn’t demand explanations. It had forced her to probe those emotions. It had forced her out of that shell and placed him in a position to help her rebuild it.
She had lost too much, he couldn’t allow her to lose faith in him as well. When this was over, when the time came to rebuild her life, yet again, he didn’t want her shying away from her dreams.
Unfortunately, it had come with more emotion, with more pain than he had wanted to see her facing. That pain was beginning to make him want to commit murder, even as he wondered how her trust was surviving.
That ultimate trust, from a woman to her lover, was the same trust that came with the illusion of love. And with love, there always came heartbreak. God knew he didn’t want to break her heart, but that pain was preferable, he thought, to losing the dreams of her home.
“I’ve always believed in you,” she finally answered, her eyes flashing with a vulnerability that surprised him, and a glimmer of emotion he hadn’t expected to see. Not yet. A part of him went icy cold, denial snaking through his brain.