Gone With the Witch (24 page)

Aiden chuckled. "They look just like—"

"Don't say it!" Storm snapped.

"Sorry." But they did look like Marvelanne.

Storm examined the picture the wedding photographer had taken of `just the triplets," when he'd insulted her for her blue hair.

"Hmm," she speculated. "Guess I
didn't
keep him from winning his prize, un-freaking-fortunately." She set it on the table between them. "So?"

"So, where are Harmony and Destiny?"

Storm took the picture and checked it, front and back. "There are no names on this."

Marvelanne forked a piece of ham. "I looked you up on the Internet"

"How could you do that without knowing—" Storm stopped and shivered.

Aiden put an arm around her. She had no choice but to face the truth. Marvelanne knew their names for a reason.

Marvelanne nodded, acknowledging their unspoken
perception. "I found Harmony's wedding pictures in a
story on the society pages. She married well, didn't she?
A castle and her own helicopter.
My stars"

Storm rose from her seat like an avenging angel. "If you
think—"

"I'm just saying ... Sit down and lose the attitude," Marvelanne said, actually sounding like a mother. "If you hadn't already told me which one you were, I'd know now. I named my triplets the only time I ever held them. The first gave me a sense of peace, so I named her Harmony.
The second gave me a sense that the future would be
doomed if 'I kept her, so 'I named her Destiny. And the last scared the hell out of me—not because 'I didn't expect a
third, which 'I didn't. Some twins you three turned out to
be. No, 'I named the last one Storm, because 'I knew that tempestuous little being would fight just for the fun of it.
You
would give anybody a run for their money."

Marvelanne looked at Aiden. "Am I right? You know
I
am "

Aiden grinned. "Destiny would say that there are runs, and there are ... runs"

Marvelanne waved his answer aside.
"Men!
Always thinking with their dicks.
'I invited you to supper last night because I needed to know which triplet you were."

"You're heartless," Aiden said. "You
knew
she was your
daughter at first sight, after twenty-seven years, and you

showed
no joy at meeting her, felt no regret for abandoning
her?"

Marvelanne poured a quart of maple syrup on her pancakes and dug into them with gusto. "I did what was best for her and her sisters."

"You did what was best for
you,"
Aiden countered.

"Call their needs a perk 'I embraced," Marvelanne said.

A little girl came to their table, ten, eleven years old at most, a Catholic school–uniformed version of a goth—at least in the makeup department—sporting a thick head of
long, paprika screw curls and a wash of freckles across her
nose. She smacked her backpack on the table so hard, coffee sloshed over the rims of their cups.

Ignoring their scramble for napkins, the minirebel
turned an insolent gaze on Marvelanne. "I told you," the
kid said. "I didn't want to come to this dump"

Aiden wondered who she was and why Marvelanne put up with her sass.

"That's why 'I didn't give you your lunch money before
I left."

Aiden put his coffee down. Good grief, what did that
mean?
Marvelanne and a rebellious kid with attitude?
Déjà
vu all over again.

Storm looked a little green.

Marvelanne dangled a fan of one-dollar bills like a flag
in front of Little Red Juvie Hood, and when the kid reached
for the bills, Marvelanne snatched them back. "Say hello to
my guests"

Red glanced their way. "Bite me," she said, turning
back to her tormentor. "What gives? You don't know from guests"

Okay, Aiden thought, Red knew Marvelanne pretty
well, and she was a good judge of character, too.

"I told you 'I had
tr
iplets," Marvelanne said, pointing her
fork Storm's way. "She's one of them"

The kid grabbed the bills and dragged the backpack off the table.
"Lucky you."
She looked at Storm for the first time.
"You
got away." The smart-mouthed kid tried to getaway, too, but Marvelanne hooked a finger in the waistband of her plaid skirt.

"Does she have a name?" Storm asked.

Marvelanne rolled her eyes. "Oh, yeah, Pepper's not a
pleasant sort, but 'I thought you might like to meet her.
She's my
other
kid."

Chapter
 
Thirty
Two

"DUH,'
Pepper said
. "
I'm here, ya know. 'I can hear you."

Helpless, Aiden watched Storm go still, stop breathing almost, her expression changing so fast from shock to joy
to hurt, he'd have missed it if he blinked. She ate Pepper
up with her gaze. "We have
another
half sister?"

"Another one?"
Marvelanne asked. "Oh, you mean the legit brat your old man had before we met?"

"That brat kept
your
triplets from living in a van on the streets not so long ago."

Marvelanne shrugged. "We all have our bad days"

"Don't let her kid you," Pepper said as she made true
eye contact with Storm, her smile wicked. "Marvelanne's having a bad life."

"Sure looks that way," Storm said.

Pepper elbowed her mother. "I think it started the day they gave her that dorky name: Marvelanne"

Marvelanne's eyes narrowed. "And look what 'I got for a
consolation prize: a potty mouth with attitude and a temper
to match her hair." Marvelanne shook the kid by her waistband like a rag doll, and Aiden saw fury build in Storm, in
her narrowing eyes and tight fists, and in the stiffness of
her body, until Marvelanne yelped, pulled her hand back, and let Pepper go.

Marvelanne made a fist and rubbed her forearm. "What the hell
? '
I feel like 'I just got electrocuted."

"Divine retribution," Aiden muttered.

Storm looked at him beneath her sunglasses. "Why,
thank you, dahling."

He caught Storm's wink and couldn't believe it. She'd stun-gunned Marvelanne with that telekinetic fury of hers. Be still, his heart ... his dragon could get zapped, too.

"Another sister," Storm said, pulling Pepper by the hand
toward their side of the booth, helping her escape a repeat
of Marvelanne's Raggedy Ann treatment. "Where do you
go to school, Pepper?"

"Around the corner.
Crappy private school."
Pepper pointed behind her with a rude thumb.
"She'd
never put a dime out for it, but my old man insists on the best."

"You're married?" Storm asked Marvelanne.

"Hell no"

"No offense, Pepper, honestly," Storm said. "But, Marve
lanne, why did you keep Pepper and not me and my sisters?"

"Your father was a loser. Pepper's father is as rich as God. He pays big bucks for child support and all
the ..
.
extras."

"Told'ja," Pepper said. "She's all heart, and she has an `extra' every other day. I've had my tonsils out twice, and wha'd'ya know, I still have tonsils. If the old man was giving her my tuition money instead of paying the school, I'd be in public school, and she'd have a better wardrobe—another of her `extras' "

"That's what 'I get for introducing you to your sister, you
damned brat?"

"Didn't cost you to introduce us, did it?" Pepper
pointed out.

Aiden hated the way Storm flinched, as if she'd been slapped, when the woman called Pepper a brat. He wanted like hell to comfort her, because she knew what it felt like

to
be talked to that way. Hadn't she said she'd mostly been called a brat or a pain in the ass growing up?

"There's the school bell," Pepper said. "I gotta go."

Storm
hooked an arm around Pepper's waist to keep her
there, took a napkin, wrote her cell phone number on it,
and stuffed it in Pepper's blazer pocket. Storm tried for a
hug but let go when the kid stiffened her spine. "Call me
if you ever need anything, or if you just wanna talk."

"Yeah, right," Pepper said, but for less than a blink, she
leaned into Storm without being coaxed, except that it happened so fast, Aiden wasn't sure it did, before Pepper
pulled forcefully away and ran ... and he did mean, she ran. She
escaped
out that door as if all of hell's demons
were chasing her.

It seemed to Aiden that her mother's browbeating
hadn't fazed or frightened Pepper anywhere near as much as Storm's kindness had.

Storm slid from the ratty booth. "Marvelanne, thanks
for the loan of your uterus
_,
. '
I guess that's something.”

“
Damn straight it is," Marvelanne said.

Aiden took Storm's hand as they walked down the
street, heading away from the coffee shop, but something
made him look back, and when he did, he thought he saw a
head of bright red curls peek out from between two buildings not far behind them.

A few minutes later, he looked again, and once more those paprika curls disappeared. Pepper, covertly following them.

Aiden stopped walking, but Storm pulled him forward
without looking back. She should know, and yet he couldn't
bring himself to scramble her rioting emotions any further by telling her. What good would it do?

After they cleared the boardwalk, he looked back, again,
and Pepper stood in plain sight little more than an arm's
length away. When they made eye contact, she mouthed the
words, "Take me with you"

Aiden hooked an arm around Storm's waist and turned her around, but Pepper had disappeared.

Chapter Thirty-three

STORM climbed into the coach first, only to get hit in the chest with Warlock. "Oh, baby, did you miss us?" She'd
never felt more comforted by her kitten, as if Warlock
shared her sadness. "Oh, his food bowl is empty, poor baby,
though 'I did mound it before we left yesterday, in case."

"Well he didn't starve
. '
I came by last night and filled it, again, before 'I went shopping."

"Then you could have taken clothes for us from here. Why did you shop?"

Aiden shrugged. "I wanted to cheer you up. Besides, there weren't any sex toys here."

Storm hugged Warlock to her neck and wilted. "I think
'I need to go shopping again."

"You're really down, aren't you?" Aiden nudged her to the sofa and sat beside her.
"Because you have a mother who sheds her skin regularly?"

"Because 'I have a sister who's miserable.
Wait until I
tell Harmony and Destiny, though 'I wish I didn't have to. We dreamed about finding our mother. Such stories the
three of us made up over the years about a wronged princess,

sad
, lonely, pining for her children.
Chumps.
But 'I have to tell them, because Pepper deserves a family."

Aiden took the passenger seat.
"Where to, next?"

"You don't have to be cheerful for me. I'm fine. You
can drive."

Aiden switched seats.
"Me driving.
That's a sure sign
you're not fine. You want I should follow the sounds in your
head?"