Dragon Lord (25 page)

Audric carried the suitcases downstairs for her and loaded them into the back of the car he’d chosen to drive her. She sat stiffly in the front seat beside him as he backed the car out of the garage, staring at her hands in her lap, fighting the urge to look to see if she could get one last glimpse of Simon.

She maintained her stiff posture until they were out of sight of the house and finally leaned her head on the seatback, closing her eyes.

“I am to find a place for you in town to stay.”

Riana lifted her head to look at him blankly. “I can find my own place, thank you,” she said finally, closing her eyes again. “I’ve saved my pay.”

“We will look together,” he said firmly.

She didn’t try to argue with him. She didn’t especially want company, but it was a habit with Audric to rescue her from distress, and, truthfully, she didn’t think she was up to a search for shelter. If left to her own devices, she would simply sit down somewhere and stare at nothing, because she felt too empty to think.

Fifteen minutes later, they arrived at the boat dock and Audric pulled the car under the shelter nearby, removed her suitcases from the car, and carried them down the dock to the boat. Raina followed him like a zombie, realizing after all that she was relieved she didn’t have to try to think.

The crossing was brief even though the channel between the island and the mainland was fairly wide. On the other side, they took the car that was always left in a shed there for trips into town.

Raina dozed, wakened sometime later by the sounds of traffic. Even with the windows up and the air conditioning going, despite the early hour, the racket seemed ungodly loud.

She’d grown too accustomed to the quiet of the island. It seemed bizarre that she would have. She’d been on the island for months, true, but she’d lived in the city her entire life before that.

“Are you hungry?”

Raina glanced at him, thought it over and finally shook her head.

He frowned. “I am hungry.”

Raina managed a faint smile. “Then we should stop and eat.”

Audric stopped outside the diner he’d chosen and took a newspaper from the vending machine. “Good thought,” Raina said. “I’ll need to start job hunting right away.”

He ordered breakfast for both of them. Raina gave him a look, but she didn’t feel up to arguing. Instead, she helped herself to part of the paper, flipped to the help wanted section and began studying the possibilities. She felt vaguely nauseated when the waitress brought their plates, but she sipped at the coffee and had a few bites of bacon and toast. She couldn’t look at the eggs without feeling ill.

Audric sent her a disapproving look but forbore comment.

By the time they’d left the restaurant, Raina had circled a half dozen hopeful possibilities. She had very little interest in where she stayed beyond the price, but she quickly discovered that Audric’s idea of where she should stay and hers didn’t coincide at all.

“I can’t afford a place like this!” she hissed angrily when he’d pulled up in the parking lot of an expensive apartment complex. “Don’t stop. Just start the car again and give me the paper.”

Audric shifted in the seat to study her. “Simon is paying,” he said finally.

Raina’s head jerked up. She stared at him blankly while her face changed color three times. “No, he isn’t,” she said after battling her emotions for several moments. “I can take care of myself.”

Audric sighed impatiently. “I am ordered to take care of you.”

Raina’s jaw tightened. “And here I thought you’d come because you were my friend. Stupid of me.”

“I am your friend, Raina.”

She gave him a look.

“I am trying to be your friend.”

“I don’t work for Simon anymore. You might have to follow his orders, but I don’t. And I am not, nor was I ever, his mistress. I don’t give a shit how he usually disposes of his mistresses. He can take his money and shove it up his ass.”

Audric’s face tightened. “He has never had a mistress. He sent me to take care of you because he wanted to be sure you were alright. I came because I wanted to be sure, otherwise I would have told him to go to hell.”

Raina’s throat closed as she stared at him. The tears she’d been fearing would overcome her stung her eyes. She blinked them back with an effort, knowing if she started she wouldn’t be able to stop.

“I will arrange this for now,” he said gently. “When you are feeling better, if you do not want to stay, then go and find another place.”

Riana nodded. All she really wanted was a bed to lay down on, a room with dark shades she could lock herself into … and maybe she’d never come out.

She dozed off again while she was waiting for Audric, awakening when he opened the door on the driver’s side and got in. Starting the car, he drove around the building, staring up at it until he found what he was looking for and then parked the car and took her bags out. Telling her the apartment number, he allowed her to precede him.

Raina stood uncertainly in the middle of the living room when Audric had opened the door for her. He passed her, heading down the hallway toward the bedroom.

The apartment was fully furnished.

She couldn’t have afforded it without furnishings.

Audric returned from the bedroom after a few moments. Closing and locking the door, he took her hand and led her to the bedroom. Her shoulders slumped with weariness and the weight of her tamped emotions when she saw the king sized bed. Releasing Audric’s hand, she crawled on the bed and lay down, staring at the wall. “Are you leaving now?” she asked when he didn’t move.

“If you wish.”

She flicked a look at him. “Would you stay if asked you to?”

He swallowed audibly. “If you wish.”

Raina’s chin wobbled. She nodded, unable to speak for the hard knot in her throat. He moved to the bed and settled behind her, curling an arm around her waist. She dragged in a difficult breath, trying to hold the tears at bay.

“Cry if you need to, Raina. I will not mind holding you.”

Turning in his arms, she pressed her face to his chest gratefully and accepted the invitation, crying until she’d exhausted herself and fell asleep.

He was gone when she woke. Distressed to find herself alone, she felt like crying all over again, but she’d cried already until her head felt as if it would explode. Instead of yielding to the impulse again, she got up and went to the bathroom, standing under the hot water until she felt like she might live.

There were no towels, of course, and she hadn’t thought to get one from her suitcase. Dripping water, shivering with the cold of the apartment after the heated water, she went back into the bedroom for a towel. As she stood quickly drying herself, she heard the front door open and the rattle of plastic bags. Her heart executed a hopeful jounce in her chest. Wrapping the towel around her, she moved to the door and peered down the hallway.

Audric dropped an armload of bags on the floor and turned to leave again. As he did, he glanced toward the bedroom and did a double take as he saw her standing in the doorway. His gaze slid over her bare shoulders and down the towel that covered her from her breasts to the tops of her thighs, lingered for so long at that point that she’d begun to think she must be hanging out the bottom, and lifted one leg across the other. The movement seemed to break the spell. His gaze snapped up to meet hers again.

“I thought you’d left,” she said.

He looked away after a moment. “You needed much. I have brought all that I could think of that you would need that is not here already and I have food if you are hungry.”

Raina smiled tentatively, the first real smile she’d felt since he’d awakened her that morning. “Trying to fatten me up?”

His gaze flicked over her again, but briefly. He finally smiled back at her. “You have enough meat on your bones to please any man with eyes in his head.”

Raina blushed. “I wasn’t fishing for a compliment,” she said uncomfortably. “I’ll get dressed.”

He’d brought fast-food, she saw when she went into the dining area--burgers and fries and cola. “Yum! All my favorites!”

He looked at her a little doubtfully and Raina’s burgeoning spirits plummeted. Simon had always thought of a clever comeback whatever she said. She missed that, missed him, so much she couldn’t breathe for several moments, felt as if a tight band had squeezed around her chest and would crush her. She wanted to run from the pain, thought wildly for several moments about running and never stopping until she couldn’t feel anything anymore. But she knew there was no running from pain, no escaping it. All she could do was endure and try to forget and know that after a while it wouldn’t hurt as much.

She’d lost before. She knew the drill. At first the pain was so intense it felt as if it would consume you and for a little while you hoped it would, hoped to just die and escape it. But you didn’t and then it would dull into a heavy ache that would allow you to function and stay alive even though it dogged your days and nights and you lost track of time and place, days, weeks, months--and after a while even that would dull a little more and one day you would wake up and discover there was life after loss.

Sometime in the future she’d remember how to laugh, feel something besides pain.

She was no hungrier for lunch than she had been for breakfast, but she sat down with Audric and tried to eat enough to make him feel as if his efforts were appreciated.

“I guess you’ll need to be getting back soon?” she asked tentatively when they finally finished their meal, dreading the loss of her last link to Simon as much as she dreaded being alone, wishing she could just cling to Audric for comfort until some of the hurt went away.

Audric hadn’t seemed a lot hungrier than she was. At the question, he pushed his half eaten sandwich away.

Chapter Fifteen

Audric stared at Raina, feeling a cold sweat pop from his pores as the moment he realized he had been dreading was upon him. He had faced men armed to the teeth with blood in their eyes and murder in their hearts with less fear than he felt at that moment.

He was suddenly sorry he had eaten anything at all, for it sat like a lead ball the size of his head at the bottom of his belly and, as his belly tightened around it with nerves, he felt vaguely ill.

He had never refused an order from Simon in his life, could not consider doing so in this instance at all even if he had wanted to, and he hadn’t. Fool that he was, as hard as he knew it would be, he could no more resist the lure of spending these last days with Raina than he could have cut out his own heart. In any case, he had been too stunned when he realized what Simon was giving him to feel much beyond shock and then a tentative thrill of happiness--which had vanished the moment he came face to face with the task Simon had given him.

Simon was in his own hell and he knew that better than anyone else, knew that Simon was focused on the task at hand with the determined single-mindedness of a man drowning and clinging to the only piece of flotsam he could find. Simon had not reasoned it out, hadn’t been able to, or he would’ve known that all he was doing was giving
him
a taste of hell, as well.

Mayhap, he thought, Simon was so steeped in his own pain he had no idea how Riana felt--would feel, but
he
did. She loved Simon, not him. It did not matter that he loved her, he knew, as much as Simon could possibly love her. Her heart was given. Even if he was willing, even eager, to take the scraps from Simon’s table, she could not want him, couldn’t possibly have anything to give him.

Anger flickered inside of him as he thought of what Simon had done to him--given him the hardest task.
He
had to see her pain because Simon could not bear to see it. He had to hold her while she cried for Simon. As much as he wanted to hold her, as grateful as he was for any excuse to hold her close to him, it tortured him that she was hurt.

He dwelt on the anger for many moments until it dawned on him that he
should
be the one to bear what must be borne. He deserved to suffer as much as they were. He had thrown the two of them together. He hadn’t expected what had happened, but he had certainly expected something to happen, hoped that it would--not this, never this, but still he had played with their lives. It had not seemed callous or wrong at the time. He was doing what was best for Simon, he thought, and ultimately for the people of Schalome. He had not considered that Raina might be hurt. He had not considered that Simon would be hurt.

He had not considered that
he
would be hurt.

Getting to his feet abruptly when he saw that Raina was waiting for him to say something, he paced the floor, trying to compose a speech that would encompass all that must be said in the gentlest way possible. He had worn a path across the floor before he finally had to accept defeat. There was no way to say what he had to that would be gentle, that wouldn’t hurt her more.

No way at all.

He discovered that Raina had moved to the couch. She was watching him with wide, wary eyes.

He strode to the couch purposefully, settling beside her. After staring at her speechlessly for several moments, he got up to pace again.

“You’re making me dizzy, Audric,” Raina said finally.

He stopped again and stared at her. He’d raked his hands through his hair until it was a wild tangle. The look in his eyes was one of pure misery.

Audric settled beside again, stiff, tense. He couldn’t tell her, he realized. He couldn’t. He was as big a coward as Simon when it came to Raina. When she sighed unhappily and dropped her head to his shoulder he had to fight the urge to spring up and run out the door.

He couldn’t protect her from the outside of the apartment, though. He couldn’t watch both sides at once, couldn’t be sure that someone was not slipping into the rear while he was watching the front, or vice versa.

“I will stay a while,” he finally said gruffly, clearing his throat when he felt his voice crack.

She relaxed more fully against him and after a while, he shifted to get more comfortable and lifted his arm around her shoulders.

“I should be doing something,” she said after a while, vaguely, as if she wasn’t sure what she should be doing.