No, there was nothing there. No hint of special knowledge. No clues at all. And it only made sense. If she’d wanted to finish him off, she’d had her chance while he was sleeping.
Still, he couldn’t let his guard down. He’d been waiting for someone to arrive with murder on his mind since that dark, stormy night when he was six years old and he’d been spirited away from the rebellion in Ambria and across the countryside in search of a safe haven.
The palace had been burned and his parents killed. And most likely some of his siblings had died as well—though he didn’t know for sure. But he’d been rescued and hidden with a family in the Netherlands, the Dykstras. He’d been spared.
All that had happened twenty-five years ago, and no one had ever come to find him, neither friend nor foe. Someday he knew he would have to face his destiny. But maybe not today.
“Ayme Negri,” he said again, mulling over the name. He was still holding her hand, almost as though he was hoping to gain some comprehension of her motives just by sense of touch.
An Ambrian woman, raised in Texas. That was a new one to him.
“Say something in Ambrian,” he challenged quickly. At least he had a chance of understanding a little of the language if she didn’t get too complicated. He hadn’t spoken it since he was a child, but he still dreamed in his native tongue sometimes.
But it didn’t seem she would be willing to go along with that little test. Her eyes widened and a hint of quick anger flashed across her face.
“No,” she said firmly, her lovely chin rising. “I don’t have to prove anything to you.”
His head reared back. “Are you serious? You break into my apartment and now you’re going to take on airs?”
“I didn’t break in,” she said indignantly. “I walked in, just like everybody else you had here to your party. I…I sort of melted into a group that was arriving and no one seemed to think twice.”
She shrugged, remembering how she’d slipped into the elevator with a bunch of boisterous young city sophisticates. They seemed to accept her right to come in with them without a second thought. She’d smiled at a pretty young woman in a feathered boa and the woman had laughed.
“Look, she’s brought a baby,” she said to her escort, a handsome young man who had already had much too much to drink. “I wish I had a baby.” She turned and pouted. “Jeremy, why won’t you let me have a baby?”
“What the hell, babies for everyone,” he’d called out as the elevator doors opened, and he’d almost fallen over with the effort. “Come on. If we’re going to be handing out babies, I’m going to need another drink.”
Laughing, the group had swelled in through the door to this apartment and left her standing in the entryway. No one else had noticed her. She’d seen the host in the main room, dancing with a beautiful raven-haired woman and swaying like a man who’d either fallen in love or had too many rum drinks. She’d sighed and decided the better part of valor was to beat a hasty retreat. And that was when she’d slipped into the media room and found a drawer she could use as a bassinet for Cici.
“I don’t remember inviting you,” he noted dryly.
“I invited myself.” Her chin lifted even higher. “Just because you didn’t notice me at the time doesn’t make me a criminal.”
He was ready with a sharp retort, but he bit his tongue. This was getting him nowhere. He had to back off and start over again. If he was going to find out what was really going on, he needed to gain her trust. Making her defensive was counterproductive at best.
And he did want to know, not only because he was plain curious, but because of the Ambrian connection. There had to be a reason for it. Young Ambrian women weren’t likely to just appear on his doorstep out of the blue. In fact, it had never happened before.
“Sorry,” he said gruffly, turning away. Taking a deep breath and calming himself, he looked back and his gaze fell on the little child. There had been a period, while living in his huge adoptive family, when he’d spent a lot of time with babies. They didn’t scare him. Still, he could take or leave them. They were often just too much work.
But he knew very well what happened when one of this age was woken from a sound sleep, and the results were never very pretty.
“Listen, let’s go to the kitchen and get a cup of coffee. Then we can talk without waking up your baby.”
“Okay.” She stopped, looking back. “Shall I just leave her here?” she asked doubtfully.
Cici had been practically glued to her body ever since Sam had left her behind that rainy Texas day that seemed so long ago now. And yet it hadn’t even been a week yet. She smiled, suddenly enchanted with the way the child looked in the drawer.
“Look at the little angel. She’s sleeping like a lamb now.”
He frowned. “How old is that baby?” he asked suspiciously.
That was another question she wasn’t confident enough to answer. Sam hadn’t left behind any paperwork, not even a birth certificate.
“Her name’s Cici,” she said, stalling for time.
His glare wasn’t friendly. “Nice name. Now, how old is she?”
“About six weeks,” she said, trying to sound sure of herself and pretty much failing at it. “Maybe two months.”
He stared at her. Skepticism was too mild a term for what his gaze was revealing about his thoughts on her answer.
She smiled brightly. “Hard to remember. Time flies.”
“Right.”
She followed him out into the living room. He snagged a shirt from the hall closet as they passed it, shrugged into it but left it open. She made an abrupt turn so he wouldn’t find her staring at him, and as she did so, she caught sight of the view from the huge floor-to-ceiling picture window.
She gasped, walking toward it. It was four in the morning but the landscape was still alive with lights. Cars carried people home, a plane cruised past, lights blinking. Looking down, she was suddenly overwhelmed with a sense of detached wonder. There were so many people below, all with their own lives, going on with things as though everything was normal. But it wasn’t normal. The world had tipped on its axis a few days ago. Nothing would ever be the same again. Didn’t they know?
For just a moment, she was consumed with a longing to be one of those clueless people, riding through the night in a shiny car, going toward a future that didn’t include as much heartbreak and tragedy as she knew was waiting for her once this adventure in Britain was over.
“Wow. You can see just about all of London from here, can’t you?” She was practically pressing her nose to the glass.
“Not quite,” he said, glancing out at the lights of the city. He liked this place better than most. It was close to the building where his offices were—centrally located and perfect for running the British branch of his foster father’s multinational shipping business. “But it is a pretty spectacular view.”
“I’ll say.” She was standing tall, both hands raised, fingertips pressed to the glass to hold her balance as she leaned forward, taking it all in. She looked almost poised to fly away over the city herself.
He started to suggest that she might want to keep her hands off the window, but as he watched her, he checked himself. With her long limbs and unusual way of holding her posture, she had an unselfconscious gawkiness, like a young girl, that was actually quite winsome. But she really wasn’t all that young, and in that short skirt, her legs looked like they went on forever. So he kept quiet and enjoyed his own temporary view, until she tired of it and levered back away from the glass.
“Cities like this are kind of