“Yes,” Anna agreed softly. Relishing the warmth and the sweet scent of the baby in her arms, she held her closer. “She’s very beautiful.”
The silence that followed rang hollow with the unspoken pain of her loss.
“You will always be her aunt, Anna.” Sensitive to Anna’s regrets, Josie’s eyes, when Anna met them, were kind and reassuring. “You will always be Edward’s aunt. They’re your family. Please, don’t doubt that. We won’t ever take that away from you.”
Anna blinked hard, gave Josie a genuine smile as Blake, with Edward sleeping soundly in his arms, joined them.
“I know,” she said. “Just like I know they’ll have a far better home and life with you than if I were to take them back to Obersbourg.”
She didn’t doubt that for one moment. Even as William’s mother, she had difficulty exercising authority over how he was raised. As the twins’ aunt, her influence would be even more limited. She couldn’t bear to have happen to them what happened to Sara. She couldn’t let two sweet, precious lives be ruled by the iron fist of her father and the apathetic blind eye of her mother. If subjected to her parents’ strict code of discipline, like Sara, they might eventually rebel. Like Sara, they might turn to a wild and destructive lifestyle—like the one that had played a part in ending her life.
Her next words were spoken as much to herself as to Blake and Josie. “They have a chance for a normal life now. I have to believe that.” She stopped, braced and deliberately met Josie’s concerned gaze, then Blake’s. “I do believe that. Just like I believe Sara would have approved. You’re very special. Both of you.”
Blake’s warm brown eyes, so different from his brother Gregory’s distant blue, probed hers. “No regrets.”
She kissed Miranda lightly on the cheek and handed her back to Josie before answering with conviction. “I have many regrets in all of this—the decision to give up the twins to you is not one of them.”
Josie embraced her then, her own eyes brimming with tears.
“Oh, no.” Anna managed a shaky laugh. “Don’t you dare start. I’m lost if you cry—and this is a party, remember? Go. Go party.”
“You’re okay then?” Blake touched a hand to her arm.
“I told you. I’m fine. Now go. I saw your father looking for you.”
As she watched them walk away, a bittersweet ache in her chest, someone accidentally bumped into her, then apologized profusely. For the first time today, her smile was spontaneous. Since Gregory had brought her here to Royal, she had grown to appreciate the Texas style of gallantry, the open friendliness of its people.
She made herself focus on the gathering, recognized many of the faces, faces’ of people who knew her as Annie Grace, just a waitress at the diner. Aside from Blake and Josie, only Gregory and Harriet and the three men who had assisted him on the Alpha mission to rescue her last September—Hank Langley, Sterling Churchill, Forrest Cunningham—knew her true identity. They too, had joined the celebration. So had their wives, Callie, Susan, and Becky.
She had taken special notice of Gregory and Blake’s parents, Janine and Carson Hunt. She wasn’t certain how much Gregory’s parents knew about the twins’ situation—or about hers. She only knew that they looked at her through kind eyes that made her yearn for something she’d never received from her own parents. Carson was a robust bear of a man with crinkled brown eyes and a thick head of silver hair. Janine was lovely. Diminutive in stature, yet obviously her own woman, her blue eyes, so like Gregory’s, were warm, bold and full of life as she welcomed Edward and Miranda to the family with loving arms.
The only person noticeably absent was Gregory. True to form, since that September morning when he’d settled her into the apartment, he had made it a point to be absent if she was anywhere in the vicinity. His influence had been known in many other ways, however. It was Gregory who had expedited the adoption process by calling in some markers, taking advantage of his connections with both the bar and the bench. And it was the respect he’d earned in the community that had kept public speculation about the twins’ parentage to a minimum. There was acceptance that they now belonged to Blake and Josie—a simple fact.
It was for the best all around that he maintained his distance from her, she knew. It saved her from answering questions for which he would eventually demand answers. Still, there was regret associated with the knowledge. Just as there was a sudden, chest-tightening anticipation when, on the heels of those thoughts, Gregory walked in the door.
Her heart clenched, as it always did, when she saw him. His dark good looks and impressive presence set him apart even m this room full of men who were unequaled among men. Above all else, though, the tension strung tight around his mouth, the intensity in his eyes held her riveted as he walked unerringly toward her.
When he took her hand in his, relayed the need for silence through a quick, firm squeeze, she was filled with a sudden, intuitive awareness that what he was about to tell her would change her life forever.
Her heart skipped several beats. “Gregory... what is it?”
She searched his face with a heightening premonition of dread as he shook his head then sought and found his brother and the men who had been in on the Alpha rescue mission. With a clipped lift of his chin, he signaled them to follow him.
Her heart plummeted to her stomach as he led her in suspended silence to a small room off the main salon. Langley, Churchill, and Sterling, along with Blake and Josie, who had handed off the twins to Gregory’s parents, followed then shut the door behind them.
“What’s happened?” Panic had become a valid and violent contender for the apprehension that clogged her throat.
After a moment’s pause, Gregory captured her gaze with the same strength as his firm grip on her hands.
“Ivan Striksky is dead.” The softness of his voice was no cushion for the shock of his announcement.
The jolt weakened her knees. With Gregory’s solemn arrival, she’d expected news of Ivan. But this...
She felt suddenly as if she’d fallen into a vacuous tunnel, where sound, shape and texture blended together in a numbing, surreal kaleidoscope of confusion.
“Dead?” she heard someone ask and knew on a peripheral level that someone was her.
A circle of concerned faces closed supportively around her. She heard Josie’s soft voice whisper her name and urge her to sit down as Hank settled a protective hand to her back.
“What...how?”
A hush filled the room as the four men and one woman who were privileged to the specifics of Anna’s true identity and her midnight flight from Obersbourg listened in stunned amazement as Gregory related what details he had managed to find out about Prince Ivan Striksky’s suicide.
Two
She was running... running through maze after maze. Long bony hands grabbed at her. Chased unrelentingly. She was so tired. Her legs wouldn’t support her. She stumbled, searched, desperate to find a light that never came. For a haven that never opened to her. Then she was trapped And the hands. Hundreds of hands grabbed at her...
Heart racing, Anna bolted wildly up in bed, wrestled with tangled sheets. Stumbling blindly to the window, she threw it open, swallowing a scream. Even in the grips of the nightmare, her concern was for William. She didn’t want to frighten him. He’d been through enough.
A reassuring rush of arid, West Texas air hit her full in the face as she braced her palms on the sill. She dragged it in—deep, hungry drafts—and willed herself toward lucidity.
Clinging desperately to the reality that was now, she reached for the presence of mind that would assure her it was over. They were safe.
Even after months of haunting