It was too soon to be feeling this keyed up, and it didn't bode well for how the rest of the day was going to go.
"I was kidding."
He stared hard at Alice. Her face was serious, her eyebrows pointed downward, and her mouth rested in a thin line. She really was upset. Somehow, the fact that she'd been making a joke and not serious about wanting to go with Draco eased his tension. Not a lot but a smidgen, at least.
"It turned out her investigation was being funded by a charity organization that was really a front for a group that was out to get Draco and Wendy. They blew up the house while Draco and Wendy were there. He got Wendy out. Lael's mother didn't make it. Later on, Draco found Lael and it didn't take him long to realize we were family."
"Kid looks just like you." Ace nodded. "I know."
The sunlight hit Alice's eyes. "He ran away."
"Because she was nuts. Because he was different and didn't understand why that was.
Because he was scared."
"Besides the dreams, he seems pretty put together."
Ace shrugged. "None of us can really control what we dream about."
She cleared her throat and looked out the window. "I think you might have been onto something earlier, about it being personal, this attack on me."
"You said that before. Do you want to explain a little further?" Please.
"I had dreams as a child, very disturbing dreams about machines killing me."
Ace had not been expecting that. He tried to keep his expression neutral. "That's kind of a funny dream for a child to have. No monsters under the bed?"
"No." Her laugh sounded humorless. "My mother's second cousin lost his arm in a factory accident at work. He got caught in a press. It was a terrible experience. He would walk around in shirts where half of the shirt would hang down because there was no arm in it." She swallowed.
"I was little. I had no compassion, just fear."
"How old were you?"
She turned to stare him square in the eyes. "I was three."
Ace's mind whirled. Her recount was too close to be a coincidence, too odd that she's dreamed this scenario as a little girl, and now it was happening to her. "When did the dreams stop?"
"Around my seventh birthday, my mother took me to a doctor. He sat me down and told me how machines couldn't hurt me. I don't remember the gist of the whole thing, but somehow it worked." She shuddered. "Maybe because it was finally someone other than my mother telling me about it."
"And the doctor? What happened to him?"
"He died about twenty years ago from a heart attack. I remember because we had to drive twenty minutes farther down the road to another pediatrician and the new doctor's office smelled like lemon disinfectant. It used to make me sneeze."
Ace nodded. "That's why you clean with those ‘green’ disinfectants. I've seen it on your show."
"Wow." Her smile was wide. "You really are a fan."
"Um..." He half-sighed, half-chuckled. Damn, he felt really uncool at the moment. "I think it's clear here, Alice, that someone who knew about those dreams is behind this."
She sighed and closed her eyes, leaning against the headrest. "I was afraid you were going to say that."
"You had to have realized that when this began." She was too smart to have been so dense about this.
She nodded and opened her eyes. For a moment, they glistened with unshed tears. She appeared to struggle for composure, and he reached out to stroke the side of her cheek. Her skin was so soft, like cotton under his fingertips. She smiled and closed her eyes again. One large tear fell and before he could stop himself he unhooked her seatbelt and tugged her over the center console and into his arms.
She clung to his shirt as she silently sobbed. "I never cry." He nodded as he kissed the top of her head. "I know.”
“How do you know?"
"You're too tough a woman to resort to hysterics. Even somebody as dense as me can see that."
She laughed even as she sobbed. "I've cried more in the last two days than I have in years."
"I won't tell."
"Oh, Ace." She pulled back, regarded him, her big brown eyes huge. "My family is so fucked up."
Wiping the tears from her cheeks with his thumbs, he kissed the top of her nose. "We need to go see your mom, don't we?"
"Unfortunately. But it's going to take time to get there. Maybe we should call instead. It's hours on a plane."
"Where does she live?"
She sniffed and wiped her nose. "Florida."
"We'll be there in no time." He handed her the blindfold. "Put this on. I'll take the car back home and then we'll fly there."
"You have a plane?"
"Powers, Inc. has one. But I have something better than that. I have me."
Besides, it would give him a reason to hold her close for a little while longer without her getting uncomfortable about being vulnerable. Just a little more time until he had to give her up and pretend he hadn't held the object of his personal fantasy in his arms. Just a little more time until he solved her problem and she forgot him forever.
Chapter Six
Alice hadn't been home in six years. Well, she didn't really consider her mother's house home, she amended the thought as they touched down on the ground. She hadn't been raised in this particular place. Her mother had moved to Florida about a decade ago, which meant Alice had been living on her own for six years when the woman who'd raised her moved here.
Sarasota was beautiful, and she could understand why any number of people would love to live there. But not her mother. Alice doubted the woman, in her entire existence, had ever enjoyed the beach. It was possible her mother didn't own a bathing suit even.
In fact, Dora Styles treated the whole house as if she had simply uprooted her life in West Virginia and dropped it into Sarasota. The same garden elves that had decorated her front yard still stood guard on this one. She was sure the Christmas lights that hung from the gutters had been ripped from her childhood home and restrung here. Even the welcome mat with the cat licking its paw had to be twenty years old. It was bizarre to Alice. As if someone had taken her entire childhood and dropped it down on the west coast of Florida.
"This is it?"
Yes, this was it. "That's right. My mother lives here."
But not Alice because Alice had never even been asked to visit, let alone invited to move in.
Maybe it was unreasonable to think she should have been. She had, after all, been on her own for a long time and seemingly independent. Alice, however, had always known that the slight on her mother's part was intentional.
Dora never missed an opportunity to tell her daughter in words or deeds how completely she disliked being her mother.
Alice sighed as she straightened her clothes and looked at Ace. For the last several hours, he had held her in his arms. When they'd hit a patch of bad weather, he'd held her tightly and moved higher, above the clouds. She hated flying, and yet, she'd loved doing it with Ace. His body was warm and hard. God, was it hard.
His tenderness had disarmed her in a way she hadn't expected. "Should we have called first?"
She shook her head. "No, she's home."
"I'm surprised the press isn't here hounding her, considering they're looking for you."
"She doesn't acknowledge me publicly."
She watched as he blinked, digesting what she'd said. "So she's an idiot."
He didn't ask that as question, just stated it as if it had to be absolute truth that someone would have to be an idiot to not acknowledge her. "You and Draco don't tell people you're brothers."
He shook his head. "We do, if someone asks. We don't like people knowing at work."
"I see." She nodded. She actually did see how that would work. "Someone can say something to you about Draco that way without them realizing you have a direct line to him."
He sighed and put his arm around her. Before she could think better of it, she leaned into him.
"Draco doesn't like people kno
wing about his family because they inevitably get targeted. It used to be that I was his soft underbelly, now its Wendy and Lael too.
People talk at work. It gets to the wrong people."
Making herself pull out of Ace's warm embrace, she stepped forward onto the front porch.
"Do you hug all your clients, Mr. Hudson?"
The Guardian who was rapidly getting under her skin and through her self- erected walls had the gall to laugh at her. "No, and I don't pinch their asses either or dry their tears, Ms. Styles."
Her cheeks heated and she knew she was definitely red faced. Turning her back on Ace, she knocked on the door using the unicorn-shaped doorknocker. Again, another throwback to her childhood. She shook her head. Her mother never threw out anything. Except, apparently, her.
The door swung open and there she was: her mother. Alice held her breath. Her mother never aged. She'd appeared fifty when she was thirty-five and she continued to look the same age, no matter how old she got. Her mother had gone grey early and not done anything to hide the lack of color. It made Alice feel nutty to think about it. She was thirty-five years old—older than Ace, she would guess, which bothered her remotely and shouldn't, because it wasn't like they were dating—and if she went grey she'd run to the hairdresser every week, if need be, to get her hair colored.
One thing had changed: her mother wore shorts. In all of Alice's years, she had never seen her mother's bare legs.
"I wondered if you would show up here to hide from the photographers."
Alice cleared her throat. She had no idea what to say. Other than her bi-weekly, ten-minute conversation, she never spoke to her mother.
"I'm not here to hide."
Her mother looked her up and down...slowly, so, Alice imagined, she could make sure Alice recognized the look. "You're thinner than you seem on TV."
Deciding to ignore the first part and focus on the second, she finally spoke. "You watch me on television?"
"I've seen you on those commercials."
"Aha." Alice ran a hand through her hair. "Um, Mom, this is Ace Hudson. Ace, my mother, Dora Styles."
Ace stepped forward and extended his hand. "Mrs. Styles."
Her mother stared at Ace's hand like it was a foreign object. "You're one of those Guardians that are always flying over New York City.”
“Yep, that's me."
Alice wanted to argue. Guardians were not always flying over New York City. In truth, it was a treat to get to see them, a rarity. You could tell their differences based on their personal traits too. Draco always wore black; Zee had a gold cape; and Ace...well...he had the long, blond hair. Ace seemed not to be bothered by what she'd said and after he dropped his hand to his side he kept his smile plastered on his face.
"Why do you have your hair like that? Are you some kind of freak?”
“I guess you could say I'm a bit of an oddball."
Why is he so calm? Alice hadn't been back in her mother's presence for more than a few minutes, and already, she wanted to scream. Ace acted as if her mother's insult was no big deal.
He was a steady rock her mother wouldn't be able to budge.
Finally able to smile, Alice stepped past her mother and into the house, noting she still hadn't been asked to enter.
Her mother spoke to her back. "If you're not here to hide, then what brought you?"
Alice stopped moving, looked around at the plaid furniture she'd had as a child that now decorated the living room in another house. "Well, Mom, the thing is—”
“Wow, something smells wonderful in here," Ace said.
Alice sniffed the air. That was true, and she recognized the smell immediately: pot roast. She
never made it herself because it was the one thing she'd never been able to make as well as her mother had. Some kind of mental block. A cooking stumbling point she could not cross over, and the very thought of it made her mad as hell.
"It's my pot roast." Her mother strutted in her cut off jean shorts to the kitchen. "Alice can't make it."
Ace met Alice's gaze with a questioning look.
"I can't. I absolutely can't do it as well as she can," she whispered.
"All right." He too spoke in a whisper. "Can she make Chicken Francais like you can, though?"
"I doubt she's ever tried. She'd say it's too fancy."
He caressed the side of her face as they walked into the kitchen. Her skin tingled where he'd touched it. Whatever else she could say about Ace, she would happily admit that her real life superhuman was a sexual force of nature. His touch alone could make her melt and had—several times.
She stepped into the kitchen and stopped, listening to the conversation Ace engaged her mother in.
"How long have you lived here?"
Her mother laughed. "I don't suppose Alice would have told you that. She probably has better things to do than to talk about me."
"Now, Dora, you and I both know Alice values privacy. It's hard to get her to tell me what time it is, let alone to talk about her family."
Was that true? Was it hard to get her to speak about herself? She had never thought it was....
Her mother nodded as she opened the oven door to look at the pot roast. The smell of Alice's favorite childhood meal wafted into the room and made her stomach growl loudly. She rubbed it as Ace glanced over at her and winked.
A wink? Was he kidding around? Was she not hard to talk to? She opened her mouth and closed it again.
Her mother kept speaking. "She hides things well, especially things she doesn't want people to know."
"I bet she does. Lots of childhood memories she'd rather no one hear?"
"No." Her mother's face fell. "She was an excellent child. Never did anything wrong."
Why did her mother sound so bitter about that? Wasn't that what parents wanted from their children? Alice wanted to scream. Shaking, she clasped her hands behind her back so it wouldn't be so obvious. Ace was up to something.
"There is one thing, though. The nightmares." Her mother blinked. "About the machines?"
Ace's tone was dead serious now. "Those are the ones."
Her mother arched an eyebrow and Alice shuddered. She remembered that look from her childhood. It usually made her hide in her room.
"You're sneaky, aren't you?"
Ace nodded. "I'm not going to pretend I don't know what you're talking about. Yes, I'm sneaky. You immediately discounted me because I'm a Guardian and because I have long hair. I got you to let your guard down."
"Why are you asking me about Alice's freaky dreams? She saw her uncle lose his arm. It happens. Children have nightmares. It doesn't make me a bad mother."
"I never suggested it did."
Alice couldn't take any more. "Mother," she shouted. Both Dora and Ace turned with equally surprised looks on their faces. "You're a smart woman. You saw what happened to me on television and what's happening with this lunatic. I'm only alive because of Ace."
Oh God, had her voice just broke? Ace stepped forward and she held up her hand to stop his advance. She couldn't show weakness in front of her mother. Or, at the very least, any more weakness than she already had.
"Someone knows about the dreams. I don't think you hired this man to kill me. It would cost a lot of money—and you never take any from me—plus, you would have to admit you were my mother to someone who didn't know. So tell me, who knew about the dreams?"
Her mother sighed. "No one outside the family except the doctor knew." That didn't surprise Alice. Not one bit.
Ace interrupted. "Did you hire The Mask to come after your daughter?" Alice exhaled a loud breath. No, her mother hadn't done that.
"I most certainly did not."
Ace nodded, walking to Alice's side. He didn't touch her, which was a smart move because if anyone tried to handle her while she felt this out of control she would explode.
"Who else knew?"
Her mother exhaled. "My brother." Alice closed her eyes. "Grayson."
"Alice?" Ace's voice
made her open her eyes to look at him. He narrowed his blue eyes as he stared into hers. "Grayson is your uncle. The man who hired me, the one who met me by the elevators and brought me to you."
"He's Uncle Gray.”
“Damn it."
Ace tapped his foot on the floor. She looked down at it. Ace was such a put together person.
The foot moving seemed a completely unconscious gesture.
"What's wrong? This is a good thing. We needed to know who knew."
"I can't talk to you right now." He spoke the words through gritted teeth and Alice's eyes got wide. Ace stormed through the door to the front yard, evidently expecting her to follow. She would. There were things, however, she had to do to first.
Shaking her head, she sighed. "Why do you hate me?"
Her mother looked up from her roast, eyes wide. Then she burst out laughing. "Wow, you've finally grown a backbone."
"I've always had one." She wasn't going to let her mother insult her way out of this. "Answer the question."
"It's not that I hate you, Alice. I simply don't feel we have very much in common. You have your life—and it seems, from all accounts, to be a good one. It's got nothing to do with my own."
Alice wanted to pound on something. "You're my mother."
"I am and I raised you up as well as I knew how. You turned out well." She did? That was a strange compliment from her mother. Maybe the first she'd ever gotten. Her mother walked to a drawer and pulled out a note card. "I was going to mail this to you."
She took it from her mom's outstretched hand. "What is it?”
“Read it."
Alice stared at the card, realization dawning on her as she read the words. "This is your pot roast recipe."
"It is. Practice making it and you'll get it just like you got all the other ones." She wasn't sure what to say. "Thank you."
"You're welcome." Her mother stared at the door where Ace had exited. "If you're banging that long-haired boy make sure you use protection."
Alice gasped. "Mother!"