“Lizzie is her bodyguard.”
“As I am your mother’s bodyguard, and now yours.” Caleb dialed a number, Zusane’s number, and handed the phone to Jacqueline.
Of course. He would remember. He always remembered her duty to Zusane—and his duty, too.
Resentfully, Jacqueline took it and waited, one bare foot on top of the other. She half hoped Zusane wouldn’t answer, because knowing what she now knew, she would have to thank her mother for rescuing her from certain death, and Jacqueline was lousy at those seriously emotional conversations. At the same time, she hoped Zusane did answer, because if she didn’t talk to her now, Caleb wouldn’t forget, and he’d make her call later. She’d still have to try to thank Zusane, and she didn’t need that sword of Damocles hanging over her head.
She waited through six rings, and when Zusane’s voice mail picked up, she flashed a grim smile at Caleb. “Hi, Mom, it’s Jacqueline. I just wanted to check and see how it was going with you and report in on how it’s going with me. If you’re interested, I mean.”
“Okay, that was unnecessary,” Caleb said.
“Also, Caleb told me about—” Caleb’s level stare made her break off. His level stare, and the sure knowledge she couldn’t live with her cowardice if she didn’t thank her mother in real time. “Well. Never mind that. Just call me when you get a chance. Hope you’re having fun! Bye!” She slammed down the phone and said, “You don’t have to glare like that. I wasn’t really going to do it.”
He pulled underwear out of the drawer. “I’m going to shower now.”
As always, when they spoke of Zusane, Jacqueline felt awkward, resentful, clumsy, like the only freak in the world who didn’t worship at the altar of the wonderful Zusane. She did love her mother. She just didn’t like her very much, and of that, Caleb made his disapproval clear.
They hadn’t settled the question of who would sleep where, and as she watched him stalk away, she considered barricading him into the bathroom. Maybe shoving the dresser in front of the door . . . Of course, since the door opened inward, that wouldn’t help much . . . but it would be funny to see the look on his face when he tried to come out.
Then the phone rang. She jumped at it, grabbed it, said, “Mom?”
“Hello, darling.” Music played in the background, and the sound of party chatter filtered through the receiver. “I was trying to get to my cell and just missed your call. Are you settling into your new role as psychic for the Chosen Ones?”
In a rush, Jacqueline remembered all her grievances with her mother. “Mom, why didn’t you tell me if I was the seer, I was the only one?”
“Didn’t I, darling? I thought I had.” Zusane’s voice was warm, rich, accented . . . amused.
“You know very well you didn’t.”
“I have such a bad memory for these things.” Jacqueline could almost see her patting her well-coiffed blond head. “Have you had a vision yet?”
“No, I have not!”
Zusane’s voice sharpened. “You had better try.”
“I don’t want to try. I don’t want this kind of responsibility!”
“I know you don’t, Jacqueline Lee, but if you didn’t want to be the seer, you should have gone to Harvard.” Zusane sounded the way she always did when they discussed Jacqueline’s future. Pinched, superior, impatient.
“Or Yale,” Jacqueline said sarcastically.
“Or Yale,” Zusane agreed. “Or any reputable Ivy League college. I could have gotten you into any of them, and instead, you chose Vanderbilt University.”
“That’s not exactly a little red schoolhouse. It’s ranked in the top twenty universities in the US!”
“But you didn’t stay in college. Instead you went tearing off—”
The injustice of that made Jacqueline speak slowly, distinctly. “I had my reasons.”
But Zusane was in a full-blown Eastern European rage. “If you’d gone back to school, you would have had an alternative to being a psychic. You could support yourself.”
“I was supporting myself in California.”
“You were wasting time in California!”
“Wasting time? I was wasting time?” Jacqueline stammered with indignation. “What about you? You’re an intelligent woman who’s too lazy to do anything but get married time after time. And when you divorce, you make that stupid joke about what a great housekeeper you were, because when you got a divorce you always kept the house.”
“I like that joke.” Zusane had the nerve to sound hurt.
Jacqueline seized the advantage. “Now you’re at a party somewhere in . . . Where are you?”
“We’re having a little gathering here in Manhattan, just a few close friends before I fly off with my new beau to the party in Turkey.”
“And who is he?” Jacqueline found herself tapping her toe.
“You wouldn’t know him.”
“I wouldn’t know him?” Jacqueline couldn’t believe that. “Why would I not know him? All your beaus are famous.”
“Osgood is different. He keeps a low profile.”
Jacqueline didn’t like the way Zusane’s voice got quiet and guarded, as if she had something to hide. “Mother, what are you up to?”
Zusane’s tone returned to normal. “I’m divorced. I can do whatever I want, can’t I?” To someone at the party, she said, “Thank you, darling. Champagne is exactly what I wanted.”
“No, you can’t do whatever you want.” As she scolded, Jacqueline wondered how she always managed to feel like the parent in this relationship.
Whoever it was must have moved away, because Zusane used that quiet, guarded voice again. “Anyway, darling, don’t worry about your visions. They’re going to come whether you want them to or not.”
With a chill, Jacqueline remembered her vivid rescue from the Dumpster, and realized she wasn’t supposed to be bickering with Zusane. She was supposed to be thanking her. Awkwardly, she said, “Mother, I talked to Caleb, and he told me about, um, how you saved me when I was a baby—”
“That naughty boy. I told him to keep that to himself.” Zusane sounded truly annoyed.
“I’m glad he didn’t, because I want to say thank you—”
“Don’t be silly, dear. I did it for me as much as for you. I mean, I knew I couldn’t be the seer forever!”
“I can always trust you to put things in perspective!” Selfish. Her mother was bone-deep selfish, and Jacqueline should never forget it.
But Zusane truly hated to have her good deeds exposed, and hated more to be thanked, so perhaps Jacqueline should remember that. . . .
The bathroom door opened.
Jacqueline turned to glare at Caleb—and forgot her irritation. In fact, she forgot Zusane altogether.
Because he wore a black T-shirt and black midthigh boxer briefs. He was damp, tanned, and muscled, and looked as tempting as good chocolate.
The sight of him knocked the breath out of Jacqueline, and her Wow was soundless and awed.
Meanwhile, Zusane babbled in her ear. “Darling, I have to go. We’re taking Osgood’s plane to Turkey. He’s got an island.” She sounded charmed. “Nothing vulgar. Just a little island. He invited a dozen of us to spend some time sunbathing on his beach. We should be there tomorrow sometime. I simply can’t wait!”
“Yeah. Have a good time.”
“So you’re not mad at me anymore for my little memory glitch?”
Reluctantly, Jacqueline brought her attention back to the call. “Mother, I don’t want this job.”
“You should have thought of that before you stepped into the chalk circle.”
“If I had known all the circumstances—”
“This is a case of ‘let the buyer beware.’ In this case, you’re the buyer.” Zusane lectured briskly, efficiently. “Now the Chosen Ones are depending on you, and darling, there’s never been a time when the fate of the Chosen Ones and everything they stand for was in more jeopardy.”
Jacqueline squeezed the phone so hard, h
er knuckles hurt. “Thanks, Mother. As if I weren’t feeling enough pressure.”
“Well, darling, ask yourself—why did you step into the circle?”
“I don’t know!”
“Of course you do. You just don’t want to admit it. You have always avoided the hard issues, Jacqueline. It’s time to face them.” Satisfaction bled into Zusane’s voice. “Really. You have no choice.”
Jacqueline heard a man asking Zusane a question, although she couldn’t quite make out the words. Heard her mother laugh breathlessly and say to him, “It’s nobody, darling.” Into the phone, she said, “That’s all I have time for.” A pause, and in a low voice, she said, “Good-bye, good-bye. I love you!”
Jacqueline couldn’t believe that her mother had called her a nobody, then dared tell her she loved her. The phone went dead while she held it; then she said, “Yeah. I love you, too.” And she flung the receiver on the bed as hard as she could.
Chapter 15
“Looks as if you managed to get hold of your mother.” Caleb walked over, picked up the receiver, and put it on the cradle. He wished he’d been in the room for the conversation, but in the end, he couldn’t change the outcome of the relationship between mother and daughter. They’d been fighting for as long as he remembered.
“She’s impossible.”
“She always has been.”
“Why have you stayed with her all these years?” she asked explosively. “There are lots of rich people you could protect who aren’t as . . . as frustrating as she is.”
“You’re not the only person whose life she has saved.” He watched as Jacqueline digested that comment. “Which side do you want?”
She blinked at him. “What?”
“Which side of the bed do you want?”
He could see her trying to put together an argument about sleeping with him. But she was tired. She couldn’t put the words together. And she looked at him, really looked at him, in his briefs and tee, and he saw that spark of appreciation. Then she looked down at herself, enveloped in the yards of white cotton, started laughing, and flopped down on the far side of the bed. “It’s not like you could be interested when I’m dressed like this.”
The one thing he could always depend on with Jacqueline was an absolute lack of conceit. Part of that was being raised by Zusane, the most glamorous woman in the world. Part of that was his fault. . . . He’d convinced her she was resistible, and someday he was going to have to tell her the truth.
But right now, it was convenient for her to think that the sight of her in his mother’s nightgown didn’t turn him on—and if she was going to keep that illusion, he’d better get into bed before she noticed he was carrying an unregistered weapon. Lifting the covers on the other side, he climbed in, and waited while she rumbled around, getting under the covers, punching the pillow, sighing deeply.
When she had settled herself, he asked, “Did you thank your mother?”
“I tried!” she flashed.
“Good. You’ll be glad.”
With a huff, she flipped on her side away from him.
Caleb lay there, propped up on the pillows, his arms behind his head, and listened to Jacqueline’s breathing. She wanted to stay irritated with him; instead she went to sleep right away, tired out from the travel, from their fight, from her decision to join the Chosen Ones and witnessing Zusane’s dreadful vision. She’d seen the wreckage of the building she’d visited since she was a child, faced the deaths of men and women she’d known her whole life, and confronted a reality she had spent years trying to escape—she had to somehow let loose her psychic talent, or the Others would score a great win. Like a plague of locusts, they would spread their evil and nothing could stop them.
She said she didn’t care.
He knew better.
The first time he’d seen Jacqueline, he’d been nine. He’d watched Zusane crawl out of the Dumpster, a skinny, red-faced, filthy, squalling infant in her arms, and knew he and the baby had something in common. Zusane had rescued her, much as she’d rescued him—but he had had his mother to care for him. This child had only Zusane—and Zusane knew one thing. She knew how to love a child.
She clutched the baby to her heart and headed toward her penthouse on Central Park. He ran alongside, fending off street people and baring his teeth at anyone who recognized the already famous Zusane.
When they reached her home, Zusane told him to lock and bar the door.
She acted as if someone was after her—or the child.
She gave him money, told him to be careful, and sent him to buy diapers and formula. When he returned, to his amazement, the glamorous Zusane had bathed the child, wrapped her in a heated blanket, and stood cradling the limp little body against her chest. She coaxed the infant to eat, changed her diaper, fed her again, insisted she be kept warm.
Where had the frivolous, worldly Zusane learned to care for a baby?
She told him she intended to keep the abandoned infant as her own, that her name was Jacqueline Lee, and uncurled the little hand to show him, for the first time, the distinctive mark of the eye.
She told him the baby would need to be protected from people who would do her harm, and that when he grew up, he could be Jacqueline’s bodyguard.
Zusane had never kept her promise. Until today.
Oh. And one other time ...
Chapter 16
Winter, two years ago
C aleb woke with a start. It was still early, just past ten. The warm Bermuda night sang with the wash of waves on the beach and the breeze in the palms. The full moon shone through his window, and the island scents were rich with flowers and sea spray.
Yet something was wrong.
He heard it again, the noise that had brought him out of his first hour of sound sleep—the creak of a floorboard on the lanai.
Pistol at the ready, he was out of the bed in a flash. Clad in his shorts, he opened the door of his bungalow.
Zusane stood there, swaying gracelessly, clutching a bathrobe around her chest.
Caleb had seen the signs before—the unfocused eyes, the strain in her husky voice, the jerky lack of coordination.
She’d had a vision.
Reaching out, he yanked her into his room and shut the door. Hands on her shoulders, he sat her in a chair and poured her a brandy. Shoving it in Zusane’s hand, he knelt before her. “What is it? What did you see?” Because if she had managed to fight her way through the post-vision exhaustion and come to him, it must be dire.
“I don’t know why, I don’t know how, but Jacqueline is in danger.”
He came to his feet, flicked on the light by his bed, put a call through to Jacqueline’s cell phone. It went right to voice mail. But ever since Jacqueline had gone to college, she had seldom answered calls from her mother and never from him. Not that he’d tried too often, but Zusane occasionally showed her maternal feelings and wanted to check up on her daughter.
He knew the truth, although he never told Zusane. Zusane embarrassed Jacqueline. Jacqueline desperately wanted to be ordinary, and Zusane was too flamboyant for ordinary.
Gathering his black T-shirt, black jeans, and bulletproof vest, he headed into the bathroom. He dressed, shaved, and was back out in five minutes.
Zusane looked better, not as pale, but still drawn with worry. “I’ve arranged for Peter’s corporate jet to take you to Nashville.”
“Right.” Jacqueline was a freshman at Vanderbilt University.
“I would go with you, but Peter wouldn’t understand.”
Caleb wrapped his holster around his chest, checked to make sure his pistol was clean and loaded, and slid it inside.
“If it weren’t my honeymoon, I would be there for the child.”
Caleb hated Zusane’s honeymoons. They were boring as hell and embarrassing to watch, and knowing how the marriage would end, he always felt a bit of pity for the guys she married. They were invariably rich, powerful men, the kind who were used to making the decisions and walking away
from the relationships.
Not with Zusane.
But the grooms didn’t want to hear that. They were always desperately in love, enthralled by whatever acrobatic feats Zusane performed in bed, and they didn’t realize that she rather despised the men she captured with such transparent arts. For Zusane, marriage was the beginning of the end.
“Is this danger deadly?” Caleb asked.