Being Emerald. Sylvia Ryan

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СКАЧАТЬ lack of it, had on a person’s life wasn’t possible. Laila had been living without that particular state of being for five years. A year of it had fundamentally changed him. The citizens of Sapphire and Emerald didn’t hide their true feelings regarding Ambers. How many times had their prejudice left her alone and ostracized? No wonder she’d lost it. He was one friendly face in a sea of nefarious humanity.

      A fleeting whisper caressed his consciousness. What had she been like before?

      This changed everything. He would keep her safe, try to calm her fears and soothe her suffering. And she was suffering, even though she tried exceptionally hard not to show it.

      In sleep, the ugliness of her pain vanished. She looked peaceful now. Her thick chestnut hair, gathered at the back of her head with a band, curled over her shoulder. For hours, he ran his fingertips through the heavy strands. Closing his eyes, he absorbed as much as he could of the year’s worth of touch he’d missed. He memorized the feel of her smooth skin under his work-roughened hand. Appreciated it. Having Laila Lewis sleeping in his arms was a comfort to him, too. With the exception of the time he’d examined Jordan’s amputated limb, this was the first time in an entire year he’d deliberately touched a woman. He absorbed as much as he could of the touch he’d missed.

      Was he enough of a bastard to inflict his twisted brand of care on this innocent? Laila reminded him of Journey, and she’d done well in the tightly controlled world he lived in. He didn’t really have a choice. He knew no other way and didn’t really have the inclination to change.

      He spent the night watching her sleep and mentally lambasting himself for the direction he would take her life because it wouldn’t be an easy path. As the sun rose, chasing away the shadows from the room, Laila finally stirred. Without opening her eyes, she murmured, “I’m sorry about last night. It’s been years since I cried because I missed Amber. I guess I had a lot more bottled up inside than I thought.”

      Rock brushed the pad of his thumb over her cheekbone then down, across her bottom lip.

      She peeked up at him. “Forgive me?”

      He mustered a smiled. “Forgiven.”

      “Oh.” She pushed up from his lap, suddenly looking wide-awake. “Today’s a training day.” She stood and stretched. “I need to take a shower and change.”

      “Take your time. I planned on starting with the basics today. Tomorrow our strict nine to five training schedule begins. You’ll have to wear clothes you can move in and shoes you can run in.” He perused her body for what had to be the thousandth time in the last few hours. “No skirts.”

      “What time are we leaving?”

      He unfolded his stiff body and glanced at the oversized clock hanging over the wide, arched entry to the kitchen. “About an hour?”

      “Okay.” She stopped near the front door. “But today you can only have me until two. I have an errand to run after that.” Instead of leaving through the front door as he’d expected, she turned and trudged up the stairs to the second floor.

      The second floor he’d never been to.

      He walked to the bottom of the steps, intent on saying something, but heard a door shut and water running. He stood frozen, mouth hanging open.

      When he’d gotten to Emerald, he hadn’t even wanted to look at a bedroom. He hadn’t wanted the acres of mattress spread out on either side of him as he slept. At least when he crashed on the couch, he could fool himself into thinking the cushions at his back were a soft, warm body.

      He grabbed the handrail, hesitated then walked to his downstairs bathroom and snagged two clean towels.

      As he climbed those stairs for the first time, he left a piece of his past behind. It was time to take his first steps in a new direction.

      He knocked then opened the only closed door on the landing. The big, fern-colored bathroom had a slanted ceiling with a skylight that bathed the room with morning sunlight. “I brought you some clean towels.”

      “Thank you. Do you have any shampoo? There isn’t any in the bottle.” Her vague form moved in the steam behind the pebbled shower glass.

      “Yeah. I’ll get some.” Downstairs, he rummaged around in the cabinet underneath his bathroom sink and found the items he thought she’d need.

      Back upstairs, he put the toilet paper on the tank and set the soap, shampoo and conditioner just inside the shower door.

      “Thank you,” she called.

      He straightened and looked over his shoulder. “Get used to it. I’ll be taking care of you from here on out.” He didn’t wait for her to answer or offer an opinion to that statement, just closed the door behind him.

      Rock stood on the landing at the top of the stairs. There were two doors on the right and one to the left. He went left and found the master bedroom with an attached bath. Leaning his shoulder against the doorjamb, he scanned the suite, taking in the details of a room left alone for a quarter century.

      Like the bathroom, it had skylights and high windows along the top of the vaulted ceilings. Rectangles of cheerful sunlight painted the cream-colored carpeting. A riot of white, twisted sheets lay on the foot of a chunky four-poster bed. He picked up a frame sitting on the nightstand. His stomach twisted as he studied the faded family picture of a smiling couple and two small boys in front of a Christmas tree in the downstairs great room. He tossed the photo onto the bed, stripped the sheets and brought the bundle down to the laundry room. He chucked the picture into the garbage can and threw the linens in the washer.

      Breakfast was prepared when she joined him, fresh-faced and smiling, in the same shorts and tank from the night before.

      “Eggs and potatoes okay?”

      “Yeah.” She held up a toothbrush he’d never seen before. “I used your toothbrush. I figured you could put it in the dishwasher.” He must have blanched because she tilted her head and said, “What?”

      He tried to squash his smile as he dropped the toothbrush in the dishwasher’s silverware basket.

      “What?” she asked again.

      “Not my toothbrush.”

      Her eyes widened. “Oh…girlfriend’s?”

      “No. You can have it after it’s run through the washer. It’s yours now.”

      She shrugged. “Okay.”

      Sitting next to each other at the island, Rock barely tasted his breakfast, too fascinated in the slow withdrawal of Laila’s fork from between her lips and the momentary flutter of her eyelids when she groaned her pleasure. When Laila pushed her half-eaten food away, he slid it back. “Get used to having a big breakfast. You’re going to need your energy on training days.”

      “I can’t eat all this every day. My clothes wouldn’t fit me in a week.”

      “You’re not going to have to worry about that.”

      “I still can’t eat another bite, Rock.” She jumped off the stool. “I gotta get dressed. I’ll be back.”

      “No skirts.” СКАЧАТЬ