Linc (9 page)

He had a favourite place there, where he wanted to take her and make long, slow love in the shade as the world passed them by. There were so many other things he wanted to share with her as well. A barge ride—like the pharaohs had enjoyed—up the river. Danny would like that, too. Another unfamiliar and unwanted clench in his gut hit him at the thought.

“Are you?” he reiterated his question.

“Reason?” she seethed, closing the distance between them. “You stand there and ask me if I’m ready to listen to reason? You, who have lied about every
single
thing? Who came into
my
life simply because you decided you wanted me?”

Her entire frame trembled as she squared off against him. He admired that about her—she didn’t back down. Pleased that she understood, he nodded. Apparently a mistake.

“You arrogant bastard!” Linc almost stepped back at the fury in her tone. “How’s this for reason? Send me home and stay the fuck out of my life. It’s bad enough that you did this to me—treated me like I was a trinket on a shelf, not a person with feelings or thoughts of her own. But…but I let you near Danny, too.”

Self-loathing coated her words. She moaned with despair and flexed her hands into fists. Her eyes shot flames and he watched her strive for control. Try and fail.

“My son, who’s become attached to you. It may not even be real. If you can wipe memories, I’m sure you can plant them. So all you are to him is his coach. Not a god damn thing more!” Her chest heaved with each breath she took. “You fucked with my emotions. It’s my fault for letting you. But you
dared
to bring my son in on this.
My son!
”

Her voice was low and dangerous. He’d not realised she was so pissed. He was a god. A god who’d saved her son from certain death. Moreover, what they had between them was…amazing. This reaction was not what he’d expected.

And nothing could have prepared him for what she did next. Time seemed to crawl to a stop when she reached to her neck, yanked the pendant and chain from it, and whipped it at him. He caught it purely out of reflex.

“Send me home, and you and your
sister
keep the fuck out of our lives.”

The necklace sat icy cold in his palm. Anger welled up in him. She’d rejected him. He glanced from her to the platinum and gold cartouche pendant in his hand. The diamond hieroglyph symbols mocked him.

Let her go? Never. She belonged to him.

Chaya’s face was an unreadable mask. Even her eyes were devoid of all emotion. “Send. Me. To. My. Son.
Now.
”

He did.

For a minute after she vanished, he stood there and allowed the anger and disbelief to consume him. His roar of fury echoed throughout his home and land. He opened his eyes and clenched his fingers around the pendant until it dug into his palm.

“Well, that was interesting. Never been thrown out of a mortal’s home before.”

“Get out, Naunet.” He never even glanced in the direction the voice came from.

“Iona,” she corrected.

Now he looked at her. She wore her typical attire. A gauzy chiffon skirt, knotted at her hips. Gold beads and coins made noise as she neared. Around her left upper arm coiled a gold snake whose jewels seemed to glow. An amused smile played at the corners of her mouth.

“Get the fuck out of my house,
Iona
,” he growled in warning.

She did no such thing. In fact she strolled to his bed, hips rolling seductively, and trailed her fingers along the foot of his thick mattress. At the balcony doors, she paused and opened the glass with a wave and immediately the room was flooded with even more Acacia floral scent.

Chaya.

“What I can’t understand is why this didn’t work for you.”

Rage closed in on him and he almost lost it with her. “Leave.”

“No.”

Through a haze of red, he pinned her with his gaze. She reclined on a large chaise, one ankle rotating a foot, sending a gentle tinkling sound through the air.

“Do not test me, Naunet. It would not be wise.”

“I am as old and powerful as you, Nun. Do not think to threaten me.”

He bared his teeth in response. And her? She smiled. With a resigned groan, he sat down on a waiting chair he’d conjured. He knew her well enough to know she would give him no rest until she’d said her piece. And for beings who didn’t need sleep, there would be no escaping her.

“Get it over with, then.” A blink and he held a drink in one hand.

“Are you sure you’ve been able to control her as well as the others you’ve manipulated?”

He frowned; he’d just assumed he’d been able to press her on some things. “Why?”

“I saw the necklace was gone,” she said solemnly.

He flexed his fingers around it, unable to stop reliving the moment when she’d tossed it at him.

“You’ve changed, Nun…Linc. This woman has changed you.”

He clenched his jaw. “She is a mere mortal.”

“One you love.”

Love. A simple word with incredible power. Did he love her? The pendant digging deeper into his palm gave him his answer. No other had even got to wear his name. And no one would, aside from Chaya.

“What is your point?”

“Apologise.”

“What? For what? I saved her son’s life.”

Her eyes flashed with knowing. “Exactly. You could have taken her son from her at any time and wiped the memory of his very existence. You hate children. So ask yourself why you allowed him to stay with her.”

“She lives for her son. How could I take Danny from her?” He shook his head. “I couldn’t do that to her.” Linc finished off his drink and the cup vanished.

“Why not?”

He felt for Danny almost as much as he did Chaya. Somehow, the boy had got to him. But it was more than that. Part of what had drawn him to Chaya from the beginning was how she was with Danny, and to take him out of her life and memory would change her personality—her very soul. It would change the thing about her he had fallen in love with.

His eyes widened and he met Naunet’s gaze. For once there was no mocking in her eyes, just a softness he’d rarely seen.

“You’ve figured it out,” she said.

He ran a hand over his head and rolled his shoulders. Opening the hand around the necklace, he stared down at it. With a shimmer of light it disappeared and he got to his feet, the chair he’d occupied vanishing the moment he stood.

Naunet rose as well and approached him, her expression still serious. “Go slow, Linc. She’s more enraged on behalf of her son at the moment, but she will become so on her own behalf as well. Your woman is very strong. She’s had to be. A single mother who never even got to tell her husband he was going to be a father. She lives for her son and you threatened that. It won’t be easy.”

He nodded and walked away without a word.

Outside Chaya’s house, he felt that odd lurch in his heart again. Keeping himself invisible, he walked in, only to find it empty. No Danny and no Chaya.

Where was she? Where was Danny?

He was just about to leave when the front door opened and in walked Danny with Sara Kelly. Relief filled him and he couldn’t help the sigh that escaped him. Staring at him, Linc realised just how much Danny had come to mean to him. If
anything
had happened to him…

Not to see his smiling face at practice, watching him play a game or just enjoying being a boy and getting dirty outside… The thought made him feel sick to his stomach; he couldn’t imagine how Chaya had felt.

“Where’s mom?” Danny asked as they walked into the kitchen.

“She had something to do,” Sara replied. “She’ll be back as soon as she can. So I think it’s the two of us for dinner, or we could make something you think she’d like.”

“Like chocolate chip cookies?” Danny questioned with boyish innocence.

Sara laughed and Linc found himself smiling as well. “We could do that,” Sara said. “Come on—let’s wash up and get started.”

With one last look at the boy whom he’d begun to look upon as his own, Linc left the house and allowed his body to take him to where it needed to be. Beside Chaya.

The sight that met him tore at him like a blade cutting through his skin. He’d arrived at a cemetery. Chaya sat on the ground beside a headstone, crying her eyes out. Her low, keening moans were daggers to his heart. Linc didn’t have to look to know whose grave this was—it was her husband’s.

Despite not liking how she still clung to that part of her past, he stayed. Linc couldn’t bring himself to leave her. So he waited and watched over her while she cried. He sheltered her from the worst of the winds but not enough that she would know he was there. It was just too cold for her to be unprotected and he didn’t want her to get sick.

When she finally got up and made her way to her vehicle, her steps were slow and stilted. The urge to scoop her up in his arms and carry her slammed into him but he held himself back, forcing himself to just follow.

She drove away, face streaked with tears and eyes swollen. Uncharacteristically, Linc turned back around and made his way to the headstone. It read:

DANIEL MOORE STEVENSON

Loving husband and father

Gone to soar with the angels

Linc leant down and brushed some dried leaves from the grave. He waved a hand and added some flowers to the ones Chaya had brought, then left. This was the man who had owned her heart, had given her Danny, and whom she still loved. It was jealousy he felt that a dead man could garner such emotions from the woman he’d decided was his own.

He didn’t hate Daniel, though—he couldn’t. With a sigh, he touched the granite one last time and dematerialised into thin air, heading home.

Naunet was no longer hanging around at his house, which was good—he was not in any mood to deal with her. He had some things to think about.

* * * *

Chaya wiped away all remaining traces of her tears and took a few fortifying breaths. A final glance in the rear view mirror to ensure she didn’t look like she’d just spent the past few hours crying her eyes out and, ignoring her shaking hands, she removed the keys from the ignition and climbed out of the vehicle. The lights from the house shone through the approaching dark, casting a welcoming glow down the walk.

The door opened before she got to it and tears threatened again when she saw Danny standing there.

I can’t believe I almost lost him today.

Part of her wished Linc had taken the memory from her as well. There was nothing worse for a parent than watching a car careen out of control towards their child and not being able to do a damn thing about it.

She dug her fingers into the palms of her hands to keep from reaching out for him and holding him close. Her nails bit in deeply and she knew there would be marks left behind.

“Mom!” he cried, a huge grin on his face. “We made dinner. And cookies—chocolate chip.”

She smiled. “Chocolate chip? Those are my very favourite.”

“I know. Maybe we could have one before the meal?”

He sounded so hopeful that, considering what had happened today, she almost let him. Then she remembered that he had no memory of the incident. The mouth-watering scent of lasagne and garlic bread floated to her nose.

“Back inside,” she ordered gently before closing them in against the cold winter night.

“Hello, Mrs Stevenson,” Sara called from the kitchen, where she was assembling a salad.

“Sara, thank you so much—it smells wonderful.” There was an undercurrent of the cookies on the air as well.

“Ten minutes and it will all be ready.”

“Wonderful. I’ll be right back.”

She took another relieved look at her son, so grateful that he was alive and still with her. In her room, she sagged against the door and fought another wave of tears. Legs unable to hold her any longer, she slid down to the beige carpet.

So close. She had been so close to losing her baby. Her final link to Daniel. How her body had any tears left to shed was beyond her. It took a few attempts before she made it up to her feet again and she stumbled to her bed.

Eventually she reached her closet, where she changed into a comfortable pair of lounge pants and a sweatshirt. She moved across to her dresser, only to freeze. Lying in the middle of the smooth, varnished wooden top was the pendant Linc had given her.

And the same one she’d thrown back at him.

Linc.

A mixture of anger and the pain of loss hit her as she stared at the necklace. She was furious with him for what he’d done. Yet, at the same time, something else, deep within her soul, hated to be apart from him.

She reached out, only to stop short of actually touching the precious metal and diamond pendant. Tightening her jaw, she took a deep breath and snapped, “Get this out of my room.”

Nothing happened.

What were you expecting? That it would just vanish?
her mind sassed.

“Well it just appeared to arrive”—she glanced around the room—“so it can leave the same way for all I care!”

It still lay there when she peered over at the dresser again. Forcing all thoughts of him out of her mind, she jerked open the door and strode back up to where her son and Sara were waiting.

Dinner was cheerful. Danny asked once where Linc was and she just said he wasn’t coming. Thankfully, her son took that response with his usual aplomb and focused back on Sara. They ate cookies and ice cream for dessert and she washed dishes while Sara played a board game with Danny.

She walked her babysitter to the door and out into the night. “Thank you so much for everything, Sara. I can’t tell you how much it means to me to be able to count on you.”

In the glow from her porch light, she watched Sara’s face crumple a bit. “I really like spending time with both you and Danny.”

“I know he loves you, too. So, why the long face?” she asked while Sara did her best to get herself back under control.

“My parents have to move.” The first tears spilt over. “I don’t want to go. I’ve lived here my entire life. I’m graduating soon—I don’t want to have to go to a new town, a new school.”

“Oh sweetie,” she crooned, gathering Sara close. Personally, she hated to see her go. There was no one better with Danny and it made her worry about how she would handle working two jobs without a sitter she could trust. “It will all work out.”