Touching down in Denver, my thoughts were on Louisa. The mysteries surrounding my life as well as the possible contents of the lockbox were momentarily forgotten. All that mattered was getting to the medical center and seeing my best friend.
Sterling reassuringly reached for my hand resting on my jean-clad legs. After our shower, we’d both changed into casual clothes, me in a t-shirt with jeans and a jean jacket and Sterling in dark blue jeans and a white button-down shirt. With his sleeves rolled up and shirt unbuttoned, he was back to his model status, not the CEO of a worldwide real estate company.
“It’s the middle of the night,” he said. “Aren’t you exhausted?”
I shrugged. “I’m too excited. I can’t believe it’s finally time for Kennedy to be born.”
“Any news?” he asked, tilting his head toward my phone.
“No. I just sent a text to Winnie, to let her know we’re here. From what I’ve heard, labor can last for hours.” I tried to read the thoughts swirling through Sterling’s dark stare. “Are you worried about last week?”
“No, like I said, we’ve been watching them. I’m concerned for everyone’s health, but the doctor we had at Winnie’s checked Louisa out before we sent her to the medical center. And then they released her. It should all be fine.” He took a deep breath. “Winnie has stayed true to our story. Jason and Louisa aren’t fully certain of everything that happened but know they’re being protected. I’m more concerned that they think my motives are more altruistic than they are.”
The tips of my lips moved upward as I cupped his recently shaved cheek with the palm of my free hand and let my fingers skim over the smooth skin. “You’re my knight in shining armor.”
“No, sunshine. My armor is black as coal.”
“That’s not true, Sterling.”
We both lurched forward as the plane came to a stop. Out the window the sky was dark, yet the lights of the private airport illuminated the tarmac and hangars.
“Would you tell me something if I asked?”
Small creases formed around his eyes. “I won’t lie to you, Araneae. However, there are also things I won’t discuss.”
I nodded as we undid our seat belts, stood, and I began to walk forward.
“Wait,” he said, stopping my onward progress, “until the Sparrows are off the plane.”
I’d almost forgotten about the men in the room in front of us.
Wrapping his arm around my waist, Sterling pulled me close, surrounding me in his clean, spicy scent. His voice was a low whisper. “Whatever you want to ask, do it now, before there are others to hear.”
Looking up at the granite features forming—the expression he wore when around others was taking over—I smiled at the way I was beginning to understand the very complicated man before me.
“Jana’s story...” I said. “I was just wondering how many of the others, the people hopelessly devoted to you, those who bend to your schedule, and show up at the penthouse without question. How many of them have similar stories?”
“Like I said about Jana, those aren’t my stories to tell.”
He didn’t answer.
I pressed my hand against his chest over the buttons of his shirt. “You can do your best to convince me that you’re not a knight, but you are. You’re not perfect.” I grinned. “Sometimes you’re a real asshole.”
“So I’ve been told.”
“That doesn’t negate the fact that you’re also good. I hope one day you’ll see that.”
Before Sterling could respond, the partition opened and Patrick nodded toward the door to the outside. “We’re all set. The car is waiting,” Patrick said.
As Sterling reached for my hand, the one on his chest, I said, “Thank you for not fighting me about this trip. I know you’d rather have us all in Chicago behind the infrared technology.”
Letting go of my hand, he placed his in the small of my back. Straightening his broad shoulders, he led me toward the door and steps. Nodding at Keaton, Millie, and Marianne, his dark eyes scanned the tarmac. A few steps ahead of us, Patrick was doing the same, searching beyond the lights of the airstrip for what could be hidden in the darkness.
Our steps quickened as we made our way to the car.
Once we were inside the back seat with one of the large men from earlier driving and Patrick as copilot, Sterling sighed and whispered in his deep tenor, “I would much rather be home.”
That one statement would be all that was uttered while in the presence of this new man. Since I hadn’t been introduced, it meant that Sterling wanted me to stay quiet. I hadn’t cared for all of his rules in the beginning, yet with time, they’d settled in.
What seemed ridiculous a month ago was now common practice.
Fear of his punishment no longer lurked in the recesses of my consciousness. I’d come to realize that I liked some of them too much for them to be considered deterrents. It was more than consequences that influenced my willingness to concede to his rules. It was trust and respect for Sterling’s mission.
I now accepted that without question.
In doing so, it made him mine, and I liked that thought too.
Sterling protected what was his. He’d brought me into a world that played by different rules. He’d also shown me the man behind the mask. Currently, his features were hard and unrelenting. This was the face the world saw.
In the last month, I received the gift of seeing whom the world didn’t. I knew the man who was loving and compassionate, the man who carried the weight of Chicago on his shoulders and yet could emit so much passion it radiated like lasers from his dark eyes.
Sighing, I leaned back. As the car moved through the night, I let my mind do what it had been doing for most of the plane ride: think about Louisa. Ten years replayed in my head, meeting her at St. Mary of the Forest, attending the same college, becoming what I’d suspect it would be like to be sisters.
The winter I arrived in Colorado, the second semester had already begun. Completely alone, I wasn’t sure who I could trust. Prior to my arrival, the school had been told the story of my parents’ death in an automobile accident, Phillip and Debbie Hawkins. There was a counselor there as well as the headmistress of the school, both of whom took me under their wings, reassuring me that I would be safe and looked after.
I recalled not knowing how any of it would work.
Everything was foreign and unknown.
I tried to do as Josey had said and be strong, but at sixteen and alone, I wasn’t sure how to do it. I knew there were others who at sixteen were far worse off than being placed in an elite boarding school. Josey had warned me that if I were found, my future would be unsure.
Life in a private school in the mountains of Colorado was starkly different than my life in Mount Pleasant, Illinois. Gone was the community, the homes of my friends and their families, even their pets. The cat I’d had since I was young passed away at the ripe old age of thirteen. He’d been a great cat; however, I was certain had he been alive, I wouldn’t have been able to bring him to Colorado.
The commute to and from class was now a walk instead of a drive. My home that I’d shared with Josey and Byron was also gone, simply a memory of what life had been. With the exception of the one picture and the charm bracelet, that life was as if it had never existed. Even my name was different.
Every now and then, I’d recall the way my mother helped me with my homework, patient and diligent, and the way she’d taught me to sew. It was my father who helped me with my math. While Josey nurtured my creativity in all things, Byron instilled my love of numbers. Those memories would bring a smile to my face and a tear to my eye.
The first few days at St. Mary’s were some of the loneliest of my entire life.
Each student—it was an all-girls school—had her own dorm room. My home went from a three-bedroom ranch in suburbia to a single room containing a desk, bed, closet, and dresser. I’d arrived with no possessions except the clothes on my back. The room I’d been assigned had the basic needs, sheets, pillows, and blankets on the bed, and towels and washcloths for the communal bathroom.
The second day, instead of attending classes, Mrs. Shepherd, the counselor I’d met the day before, took me into Denver to shop for my needed supplies. Somehow, according to Josey, Byron had set up a trust fund in my new name that allowed me spending money. I wasn’t confident in what I had to spend, only that Mrs. Shepherd assured me that I was able to purchase what I needed.
Perhaps that was part of my reasoning for refusing Sterling’s order, the one that came in the empty box, the one to move to Chicago with nothing. I’d done that before, made a move without bringing tangible memories. Yes, the clothes and cosmetics he’d supplied were luxurious. Nevertheless, I couldn’t and wouldn’t lose everything again.
It was the third day at St. Mary’s as I sat eating breakfast in the cafeteria that I met Louisa. She and two other girls our age sat down with me at my otherwise-empty table and introduced themselves. I was taken aback, so shocked and lonely that at first, I forgot how to respond beyond polite answers. As time passed, we found more and more things we had in common. By spring break that year, Louisa invited me to go on vacation with her family. I’d already met her parents and sister during the times they’d come to campus and take Louisa out to eat or times she’d go home for a night.
The years in my mind blur as I think about how the Nelsons took me in and gave me what I’d lost—at least a bit of it—of a family. If it hadn’t been for the Nelsons, I couldn’t imagine how I would have turned out. Entering an all-girls school at sixteen years of age, knowing no one, and having no one was undoubtedly the scariest moment of my life.
A grin came to my face as I turned toward Sterling.
Sterling Sparrow was intimidating and domineering, yet he wasn’t scary, not to me.
I had to wonder how all the pieces of my multiple lives prepared me for where I was today, for being Araneae McCrie.