gruesome possibilities she conjured up every time she thought of her parents out there. Captive. Subjected to God only knew what.
In her worst nightmares, she imagined her mother alone. Separated from her husband, terrified and not knowing if he lived or died.
Beau’s grasp on her tightened, his head lowering to the top of her head as if sensing the terrifying direction of her thoughts and he was shielding her in some small—but welcome—manner.
“I’d appreciate it if you and Ramie remained until we return,” Beau said to his brother. “There’s a lot we need to talk about, but first I have to ensure that Ari is okay and that she doesn’t have a brain bleed.”
Ramie’s eyes widened and she glanced first at her husband and then at Beau, silent question in her expression.
“Psychic bleed. A bad one,” Beau said shortly. “Much worse than what you and Caleb have suffered in the past.”
Ari’s forehead wrinkled in confusion. Did Caleb also possess psychic abilities? Was it something the Devereaux family shared and was that why her father had seemed to know so much about them?
Ramie’s features immediately creased in concern but she remained silent, still studying Ari, who was firmly nestled in Beau’s arms. She seemed to be much more interested in the fact that Beau was carrying Ari, which made Ari even more self-conscious. Her fingers curled into Beau’s chest in a silent plea for them to go.
Beau simply turned and headed for the foyer. The doctor strode ahead of him to open the door and when Beau got to the opening, he paused briefly and turned his head to look over his shoulder, presenting his profile to Ari, his firm jaw and strong cheekbone. His teeth seemed clenched, whether in determination or worry. Perhaps a combination of the two.
“Start digging, Zack. We need all the info we can get like yesterday. I’ll be back as soon as possible unless Ari requires hospitalization.”
“On it,” Zack said.
Ari made a strangled sound of protest even as Beau walked swiftly to the waiting vehicle.
“I don’t need a hospital,” she insisted as he settled her into the backseat. “What I need is to find my parents. That should be our priority.”
He put a finger to her lips, effectively stanching any further protest.
“You come first,” he stated, his tone brooking no argument. “Without you, we have no bargaining power, no leverage and you can kiss your parents goodbye. Because if you die then the people who abducted your parents no longer have any reason to keep them alive. You need to understand that. I know it’s hard to hear but you have to face facts. You matter, Ari, and it’s only going to piss me off if you say you don’t. I am not willing to trade your life for your parents. Period. And I’m damn sure not going to let you do something rash, irrational or hasty. You came to me for help so we do things my way. Got it?”
Rage and helplessness bubbled up, singeing her nerve endings and ratcheting up her pulse. Her breaths were rapid and labored as she sought to control the overwhelming fury caused by his abrasive words and his thoughts regarding the two most important people in Ari’s life.
“Goddamn it,” Beau swore. “You’re bleeding again. Ari, you have to get your thoughts under control and calm down. You can be pissed at me all you want, but I’m going to keep you alive and healthy, and I’m also going to get your parents back. You need to stop fighting me and believe in what I’ve promised you.”
She swiped at her nose with the back of her hand, smearing blood on her cheek in the process. Her head pounded, the pain intensifying from an already unbearable level. She closed her eyes and put her palms to her temples, pressing inward.
Beau swore again, violently, but when he wiped at the blood on her face, his touch was infinitely gentle, a direct contradiction to his black mood and fury.
“Lie down and try to get comfortable. I’ll make sure Doctor Carey gives you something for pain when you get to the clinic.”
She nodded, the slight movement sending shards of pain splintering through her skull. Maybe she did need medical help. This was new territory for her and she had no idea if this was a normal result of using her powers or not because she’d never tested them.
“I hurt,” she said quietly, conveying in those two words a wealth of emotion she could no longer suppress.
Beau cupped her face ever so gently in his palms and leaned in to press his forehead to hers. Like the kiss he’d pressed to her wound earlier, there was nothing sexual about the gesture and yet it was so intimate. Poignant. With those two touches, his mouth and now merely resting his forehead against hers and their breaths mingling, her heart swelled in her chest and she was nearly overcome with how reverent every touch, every action was that came from him.
“I know, honey,” Beau said just as quietly. “I can’t even imagine the pain you must be in and how exhausted, worried and sick at heart you must be. But do this for me. Take care of you first, okay? Let Doctor Carey at least ease your physical pain. The emotional pain will be much harder to bear, but you’re strong, Ari. You have me. From this point forward, consider me your constant shadow. You will never be out of my eyesight unless I have men I absolutely trust surrounding you. You are not alone. And you will get through this.”
Tears burned her eyelids and she blinked rapidly even though the slightest movement sent a jolt of pain through her head, echoing and re-echoing through her fragmented mind. Overcome and unable to possibly put to words what was in her heart, she instead curled her fingers around his hands cradling her face and she pulled them against her chest so he could feel the thud of her heartbeat. So he’d know the effect his solemn vow had on her.
He surprised her by brushing his lips, like the soft tip of a feather, over her brow and then drew back in a swift, jerky motion as if pulling himself back into awareness and the reality of the moment. He frowned but then seemed to make a concerted effort to school his features, but Ari couldn’t help but feel as though he’d rejected her in some way.
She turned, as had he, so he couldn’t see the flash of hurt in her eyes that she was sure was evident. Her parents had forever told her that her eyes always reflected her every emotion, her every thought. They’d laughingly told her she was utterly transparent and that it was a good thing she was inherently honest, because it was impossible for her to tell a lie and not be caught out.
She sighed, the flutter of warmth in her chest turning to a dull ache as she leaned over on her uninjured side across the backseat of the SUV. Frowning, she lifted her head when the door by her head opened and then gentle hands carefully lifted her head and a pillow was slid underneath her neck so she wasn’t lying at an awkward angle.
Hot and cold. Beau Devereaux was a puzzle she couldn’t decipher, and she wasn’t sure she wanted to. One minute he was exceedingly tender, protective, demanding when it came to her care and well-being. The next he was stiff, withdrawn and looked as if he regretted so much as touching her.
She was too mentally and physically exhausted and drained to figure out the riddle of Beau’s dual personality. She closed her eyes, reaching for something warm and comforting, anything to ward off the sharp pain and the dull roar in her ears and the constant fear and worry for her family.
It suddenly struck her, that without her parents, she was utterly alone in the world. Her parents had lost their parents at a relatively young age. Her mother had been working her way through college when she’d met Ari’s father. He was ten years older, had already amassed a fortune and he’d swept her mother off her feet in a whirlwind romance that had resulted in their marriage in a matter of months.
She had no grandparents. No aunts, uncles, cousins. There was simply no one but her and her mother and father. It was why they were so close. Her father had always said that their family was all he could ever ask for, more than he’d ever hoped for, and considered his wife and his daughter the two most precious gifts in his life.
Her eyes squeezed shut even tighter as sadness overwhelmed her. Then she immediately castigated herse
lf for the feeling of loss that had fallen over her. She wouldn’t give up hope. Hope was all she had and when she gave that up, she was well and truly lost.
She clung tenaciously to the promise Beau had given her more than once. Her father had chosen him. To a man who trusted no one, it had to mean something that he would entrust his daughter’s safety to the Devereauxs.
Had he known of Ramie’s psychic powers? Had that been why he’d been certain that Ari would be well received by Beau or Caleb? But no, Ramie and Caleb hadn’t been together that long. And her father had exacted her promise three years earlier, when she’d graduated from college an entire year early.
A frown tugged at the corners of her mouth even though her eyes remained closed. What was her father’s connection to the Devereauxs? Beau didn’t appear to know her father and if Caleb did, he hadn’t acknowledged it in any way, nor had he looked at her with any sign of warmth, such as would surely be the case if her father was a friend or acquaintance of his. Unless Caleb had no liking for her father, but no, that couldn’t be right either, because her father would never trust this man with her safety if there was any discord between them.
She sighed, her head hurting more as she sorted through her chaotic thoughts. A warm trickle slid over her lips and she immediately lifted her hand to wipe the blood away in hopes that Beau wouldn’t see it. Her eyes fluttered open only to see, to her surprise, that Beau was in the passenger seat of the SUV and Doctor Carey was driving. And Beau was looking directly at her, a deep frown furrowing his forehead.
“What the hell are you torturing yourself with this time?” he demanded, though he kept his voice low, perhaps in deference to her headache.
“I was just trying to sort out everything,” she murmured, sliding the sleeve of the thin T-shirt she wore once more over her nose to remove the remainder of the blood smear.
So much for changing into clothing that wasn’t bloodied in an attempt not to draw attention to herself.
“That is for me to do,” he said in a firm voice, fitting his piercing gaze to her as if willing her to yield to his unspoken command to let it go.
How could she simply “let it go”? How could she just stand idly by, hiding, while someone else—a stranger—headed the search for her parents? And why weren’t they calling in the police? There were too many questions unanswered. Questions she hadn’t asked Beau. Hadn’t had time to ask, she acknowledged.
Everything had happened so quickly. Her visit to his office and then everything had gone to hell. Literally. They hadn’t had a single moment to sit down and focus on the matter of her missing parents. Beau hadn’t had the opportunity to question her or even ascertain simple facts like her parents’ names, their address, any of their background and history.
What seemed an eternity to Ari was in fact only a few short hours, and furthermore less than twenty-four hours had elapsed since her parents simply disappeared.
God, had it only been yesterday? She automatically glanced at her wrist where her watch—a gift from her mother—had always been, but it was gone now, and Ari didn’t even know when, where or how it had been wrenched from her wrist.
“What time is it?” Ari asked faintly, staring at Beau in question.
His brow furrowed, his expression blatantly questioning, as though he thought it the last question she’d ask. And maybe it did seem ridiculous when so much else was far more important. But for Ari, a lifetime had passed and suddenly it was all-important to know just how long it had been since she’d last seen her parents.
“It’s almost three,” Beau said in a gentle voice, as if speaking to a half-wit or someone who was poised to jump off a bridge and any wrong word would send her plummeting right over the edge.
God, her brains were scrambled. To have such idiotic, ridiculous thoughts when her situation—her parents’ situation—was so dire was . . . insane. Maybe she was crazy. Perhaps she’d simply snapped when she’d unleashed her powers after them lying dormant for nearly a lifetime.
Maybe it had caused her brain to short-circuit and the nerve endings were simply fried.
She heard an odd noise, and to her further humiliation, she realized it had been her. Laughing. A shaky hysterical-sounding shrill giggle, for God’s sake.
Beau gave up any attempt not to look concerned. He turned to Doctor Carey, a grim expression on his face, and said, “Step on it. She needs care now.”
“I’m okay,” she said faintly. “I was just realizing that though it seems like a lifetime has passed, it’s not even been twenty-four hours yet since I last saw my parents.”
“You are not okay,” he said in a tone that sounded suspiciously like a growl.
Did people actually growl? Oh God, there she went again. Ridiculous, random thoughts spiking through her mind, almost as if her brain was trying to protect her, wrap her in a protective bubble of mundane, senseless thoughts so she didn’t have to dwell on the awful reality of her situation.
Her hand automatically went to her nose just to see if she was bleeding again. Beau, damn the man, never missed anything, and his gaze was sharp as he too looked to see if there was any sign of blood.
To her relief, her hand came away with only remnants of already dried blood from earlier and nothing fresh. Too bad the pain hadn’t ebbed like the blood had. She put her palm to her forehead, pressing inward as if to someway ease the overwhelming pressure. The top of her head literally felt like someone was trying to pop it like a pimple and that at any moment it would simply give way and explode from the top.
“Tell me about your mother,” Beau said softly. “Is she as beautiful as you are?”
She stared back at Beau in bewilderment for a moment before she realized what he was doing. He was distracting her from the chaos swirling in her mind and trying to center her thoughts on something good. And then his choice of words sank in, and something in her chest softened, warmth spreading soothingly through her veins.
Her smile was automatic, as it always was when she thought of her mom. For a brief second, an image of her mother, smiling and beautiful, flashed in her mind, temporarily giving her a respite from the pain and darkness that had seemed to permanently settle in the deepest recesses of her soul.
“She’s the most beautiful woman in the world,” Ari whispered. “Warm. Loving. Always smiling and happy. And the way my father looks at her. Like she lights up his entire world. And the way she smiles at him when he looks at her that way. Theirs is a love I thought only existed in romance novels, but I’ve lived with the reality of two people who love each other with all their heart and soul, who both love me. Unconditionally.”
“Who do you get your eyes from? They’re such an unusual color. Or rather colors plural,” he amended. “I’ve never seen anyone with eyes like yours.”
She stared at him, momentarily without words. Then she frowned, drawing on the image of her mother and her father. She sent Beau a puzzled look because she’d never considered where her eyes had come from or who she’d inherited the unusual kaleidoscope of colors from.
“Neither,” she said honestly. “I assume perhaps one of my grandparents, but I don’t know. They died—both sets—before my parents were even married. And they were both only children. No family. Kindred spirits, my father always said. Two halves of a whole, alone in the world until finally finding one another.”
She ducked her head self-consciously because spoken aloud by her and not said in the reverent tone with which her father spoke of his wife, it seemed contrived. Something she’d made up or some lame attempt at poetry.
Beau surprised her. “That’s a beautiful sentiment. It’s too bad more people don’t feel that way about the person they choose to spend their life with. Or at least a portion of it.”
She frowned at the last part. “You don’t believe in forever?”
He shrugged. “I guess I’ve just never met someone who made me want forever.”
His matter-of-factness didn’t surprise her. He was a man after all. They often didn??
?t think in the same ways women thought. She shouldn’t have even wasted a frown over his brisk, no-nonsense view of relationships. She had quickly learned that her father was . . . well, he was one of a kind and not because he was her father and she put him on a pedestal as some daddy’s girls did.
She saw the adoration in his eyes every time he looked at his wife. Saw how openly affectionate he was with her when he was grim and cold to the rest of the world. She’d never realized how other people viewed her father until she was older and was more cognizant of the differences between her father, when he was home with his “girls,” as he termed them affectionately, and when he was outside their sanctuary.
But he also didn’t give one damn who knew that he was, in effect, at his wife’s feet. While it might seem that he was the dominating force in their relationship, Ari knew for a fact that her mother held all the power and that everything her father did was for her mother. And for Ari.
“Feeling better?”
Her frown of concentration disappeared at Beau’s question and her lips softened into a smile, one of thanks for even the brief memory of all the good things in her life. And in fact, the pain and pressure in her head had lessened. It was still there. Still quite painful, but it no longer felt like it would explode at any second or that she was a ticking time bomb primed to go off.
“Yes, thank you,” she said in a husky voice, laced with emotion. “I needed that moment of happiness. It gave me a much-needed boost of hope. Because without hope, I have nothing.”
To her surprise, the vehicle came to a stop. She hadn’t even registered them slowing and turning into the parking lot of a one-story building that sported the name of a medical clinic.
Beau didn’t move immediately, however. He focused his gaze on Ari, his entire being radiating seriousness and . . . sincerity.
“You do have something, Ari. And I don’t want you to ever forget it. You have me now. And you have the full power and resources available to DSS.”
Ari held her breath, his last words fading, unheard, because all she’d registered was the fact that he’d told her she had him. And she wondered if he really knew and comprehended what a statement like that meant to someone like her.
Someone who believed in miracles and happily ever afters, even in the face of seemingly hopeless obstacles.
Ever the optimist. She could literally hear her father’s teasing voice and her mother scolding him for even suggesting such a trait wasn’t a good one.
And then Beau was opening the door, and this time, she didn’t utter a single protest when he protectively cradled her in his arms and swiftly took her into one of the side entrances marked “Employees Only.”
Apparently the rules didn’t apply to men like Beau. Her smile was rueful even as she shivered at the chill present in the medical clinic. She hated the smell. The sterile antiseptic odor and even the subtle smell of sickness and illness, death and desolation. This was a place of complete opposing factors. People who came here either got good news, or they received life-changing bad news. She couldn’t help but feel sorrow for those who fell in the realm of the bad.
Beau carried her into a room where a CT scanner was centered in the middle, and she looked at it in panic, because it was for all practical purposes a tube, an enclosed tube into which they slid you in and where walls closed tightly around you.
Her respiration ratcheted up and she held her hand to her nose just in case her sudden bout of stress initiated another bleed. Beau was already freaked out enough over her. There was no reason to give him even more reason to be unreasonable.
The doctor directed Beau to lay Ari down on the table and position her just so. Then he kindly patted her on the arm.
“Would you prefer for Beau to stay with you? Some of my patients fear enclosed spaces and avoid claustrophobic situations. I can put a protective garment over him that will prevent any harm coming to him. Our first priority is ensuring your comfort and more importantly we need you to relax and obey our directives as we give them. Can you handle that?”
“No. Yes. I mean I’ll be fine,” Ari said quickly although she wanted nothing more than for Beau to remain. But she refused to put Beau at further risk because of her. He’d already been shot at—twice. Wrecked and forced off the freeway in an overturned vehicle. Enough was enough and it was time to put her big-girl panties on and act like the independent woman she’d worked so hard to become since graduating college and going out on her own in the workforce, not that her father was at all happy with her choices. But it had been her mother’s gentle but steady hand that had caused her father to back down and allow Ari freedoms she hadn’t been granted until the last few years.
“I can handle this. I’m okay. Really. I don’t want to put Beau at any further risk. He’s risked enough for me to day.”
“And you’re terrified of enclosed spaces,” Beau said tersely. “I’m staying.”
She looked at him astonishment. “How could you possibly know that?”
“Honey, you didn’t see your absolute look of terror and utter discomfort the minute you laid eyes on the scanner. I’m not leaving you alone to endure it when it will be hell for you. So don’t even try to argue. Because this is one argument you will not win.”
“Fine,” she grumbled. “But if you get radiation poisoning or whatever it is you get from these X-ray machines, it’s your own damn fault and I refuse to feel guilty if you get cancer and die.”
Beau’s lips quirked into a smile. “Why, Ari, you’re beginning to make me think you care,” he teased.
Her expression went utterly solemn. “I do care, Beau. I care too much. I wish I could be selfish and do whatever it took to get my parents back no matter the cost to others’ lives or the injuries they could sustain, but that’s not who I am. It’s not the kind of person I’ve ever been and it’s not who I want to become.”
It was becoming an increasing habit for him to press his lips anywhere but her mouth, almost as if he were guarding against the possibility of creating too much intimacy between him and a client, but in Ari’s mind, those tender moments meant far more to her than if he had kissed her on the mouth.
She closed her eyes as he briefly feathered a kiss over her furrowed forehead.
“Now, we’ve wasted too much time on senseless arguing and we need to get you suited up and me as well, because as I said, I’m going to be here every step of the way. If you get scared just say my name. I’ll be right here.”
“Thank you, Beau. You know and I know you’ve gone above and beyond what you’d normally do for a client. So thank you. It means a lot to have your support, your promise to find my parents and your promise to protect me from the people who are after me.”
“You’ve already thanked me and it was more than enough,” he said softly. “Now let’s get you checked out so Doctor Carey can ease my concerns over your condition.”
FIFTEEN
BEAU shouldered his way into the house, carrying Ari’s limp body firmly against his chest. As requested, Caleb and Ramie were still there, lounging in the living room, though Ramie looked to be asleep, nestled in the crook of Caleb’s shoulder, her hair partially obscuring her face.
Beau cocked one inquisitive eyebrow in Caleb’s direction. The brothers had