Chapter 9
“Oh fuck,” Caleb muttered the moment he opened the door to his motel room and saw Talia standing outside.
“Lovely to see you again, too, Caleb.” She gave him a sweetly insincere smile as she brushed past him and into the room beyond. “Where is he?” she demanded when she saw the room was empty apart from two beds, a TV, and a dresser to put clothes in. Which the two occupants of the room obviously hadn’t bothered to use when there were clothes strewn over both beds.
Stazzi had proved extremely helpful in assisting Talia to get off Androcco. The princess had arranged for the royal helicopter to fly Talia to the mainland and a car to be waiting there to drive her to the main airport, all to coincide with the flight Talia had booked herself to Florida. Stazzi had also spoken to Alexandre on his cell phone and learned the location of where the Knight brothers were staying.
Talia’s passport, in the name of Tilda Kent, thankfully had no red alert attached to it. Which it wouldn’t, when it wasn’t the authorities who were looking for her, but this man Antipov.
The flight to Florida had seemed never-ending, even though Talia had tried to sleep for part of it. Her nervousness had only returned once she reached the States and organized a rental car so she could drive herself to this motel.
“Well?” she challenged Caleb as he continued to eye her warily.
Ethan’s twin didn’t answer that challenge. “You’ve grown into a beautiful woman, Talia.”
Her brows rose. “I thought you were married, with children.”
“I am married, very happily, and Lena and I have one child. A little girl.” He smiled widely. “Doesn’t stop me from seeing exactly why Ethan is determined to settle this matter with your father once and for all.”
“By sneaking off Androcco while I was asleep, like a bloody thief in the night, so he could leave me behind?” Talia was still spoiling for a fight, if not with Ethan, then his twin was the next best thing.
Caleb sobered. “By keeping you safe, yes. He isn’t going to be happy you’ve circumvented that intention.”
“Tough,” Talia snapped without apology as she started to pace the room. “I asked where Ethan is.”
“And I heard you.” He nodded. “I just think it would be a good idea for you to relax a little, maybe for the two of us to grab a drink in the coffee shop down the street, before I answer any of your questions.”
“I drank enough coffee on the plane, thanks.”
“That accounts for why you’re pacing up and down like a caged tiger.”
“I’m pacing up and down because you aren’t answering my questions!”
Caleb sat on the bottom of one of the beds. “I’m happy to wait until you calm down.”
She glared her frustration as she remembered that Caleb had always been the most quietly serious of the Knight brothers. Not because he couldn’t be as arrogantly infuriating as the rest of them, but, Talia suspected, because of the PTSD he suffered as a result of being kept prisoner and tortured by Afghanistan rebels. Something else she hadn’t known until last night.
All the fight went out of her under Caleb’s steady and deliberate gaze, and she sank down onto the bottom of the other bed like a deflated balloon. “I really need to know where Ethan is.” She needed to know Ethan was safe too.
Her imagination had been working overtime on the long flight over here, and every time she fell asleep, she woke herself up again after dreaming of Ethan lying dead in a pool of blood. She was now tired and very cranky, as Caleb had pointed out in a more polite manner.
“He’s at the Antipov estate, keeping watch with Asher.”
It felt as if Talia’s stomach had flipped over inside her at the mention of the man who was holding her father prisoner.
“Gabriel and Alexandre left some time ago to take over from them.” Caleb glanced down at his wristwatch. “They should be back in the next ten minutes or so.”
Talia’s stomach turned another somersault. “Isn’t that dangerous? What if they’re seen?”
Caleb stood up and crossed the room to grab a bottle of water from the mini fridge. “Drink.” He held the bottle out to her. “Now take a few deep breaths,” he instructed once she had taken a large swallow of the bottled water. “Better?”
“Much,” she acknowledged ruefully. “Ethan and I spent the night together on Androcco, and then he left me there without so much as a word.” Tears stung her eyes and blurred her vision. She was too strung out to even attempt to hang on to any of her pride.
Caleb sat down beside her and placed his arm about her shoulders. “Ethan only wants to protect you. We all do. And if you give us a chance, that’s exactly what we’ll do.”
“I know.” She drew in a shuddering breath as the tears began to fall down her cheeks. “I’m so tired of living this way, Caleb. So very, very tired.” She buried her face against his chest as she began to cry in earnest.
“What the fuck is going on here?”
Talia closed her eyes briefly before lifting her head from Caleb’s chest and glancing across the room. Ethan stood silhouetted in the doorway, much as he had that first night in Majorca, except this time he had his clothes on. Asher stood just behind him.
“Whoa, this is going to be interesting.” Asher had a big grin on his face as he pushed his way past Ethan and entered the motel room. “Hi, Talia, long time no see.” He gave her a wave before leaning back against the dressing table, arms folded across his powerful chest.
“Stop behaving like an ass, Asher,” Caleb dismissed irritably, making no effort to remove his arm from about Talia’s shaking shoulders. “You might want to try taking your head out of your ass too,” he advised—warned—his twin. “And give careful thought to what your next comment is going to be.”
A red haze had come down over Ethan’s eyes the moment he opened the door to the motel room. Not only was Talia here, when she should have been safely on Androcco, but she was snuggled up in his brother’s arms as if it was exactly where she wanted to be.
Mine had been the word that ripped through his brain. As Caleb had already commented, it had prevented him from logical thought.
Talia hadn’t even seen Caleb for the past three years, and the fact his brother had his arms about her now was more indicative of Talia being upset than what Ethan’s suspicious mind had imagined. Caleb was happily married to Lena; other women simply didn’t exist for him.
Head up my ass about described it, Ethan acknowledged self-derisively. “Can Talia and I have the room, please?” He looked at his two brothers.
“No problem.” Caleb gave Talia a reassuring smile before standing up. “With me, Asher. Now.”
“You know, you used to be a lot more fun than this,” Ash told Ethan on his way to the door Caleb was pointedly holding open so they both could leave.
“I used to be a lot of things,” Ethan growled. “This is me now. Get used to it.” He waited until his two brothers had left and he had closed the door behind them before turning back to Talia. “You shouldn’t have come here.”
Tired, cranky, and pissed off. Talia mentally amended her earlier inward description of her current mood.
She stood, feeling at far too much of a disadvantage with Ethan towering over her. She was still that foot shorter than him, of course, but if they were going to have another argument, then she was going to do it standing on her own two feet. “I told you I would go where I choose when I choose, and the two of us spending the night together didn’t change that.”
“I never thought it would,” he snapped, eyes narrowed. “Because Natalya Krechenko is a fucking law unto herself.”
Talia flinched at his deliberate use of her real name. As she was meant to? “I want to talk to Gabriel.”
“Why?”
“Because he’s always the one in charge,” she challenged.
Ethan gave a hard grin. “Usually that would be the case, yes.”
“But not this time?”
“No,” he confirmed with satisfaction. “My problem, my mission.”
“I am not anyone’s problem!”
He gave a derisive shake of his head. “You’ve been nothing but a problem for me since the moment I first met you.”
Talia felt as if he had slapped her. Which, verbally, he had. “Have you seen my father?”
“Yes.”
“I— Is he okay?”
Ethan nodded. “Sunning himself and drinking cocktails beneath a parasol beside Antipov’s pool, the last time I saw him.”
Talia tensed. “What?”
“I think we may have misunderstood that situation,” he drawled. “Ivan seems to be Antipov’s guest rather than a prisoner.”
That didn’t make any sense to Talia. Her father would never have voluntarily disappeared without telling her. He… They…
What did she really know about her father? What had she ever known about him? The first almost twenty-one years of her life had been a lie. The last three had been spent running from one luxurious rented house or villa to another, changing her name constantly. The only constant had been her father. And then even he had disappeared.
She’d learned more about Ivan in the past three days than she had known about him in the previous twenty-four years.
Ivan?
Yes, Ivan, because the man Talia had believed her father to be was a myth. And Talia had no idea what Ivan Krechenko was capable of doing or not doing.
She raised her chin. “I need to talk to Ivan.”
Ethan’s eyes were narrowed. “Why?”
“Because if I’ve brought all of you over here on a wild-goose chase, then I need to hear that from his own lips.” She drew in a shuddering breath. “I need to hear that from him, Ethan,” she repeated quietly.
Ethan wished there was something he could say that would take the shadows from Talia’s eyes. Wished he hadn’t behaved like a complete ass the moment he saw Talia in Caleb’s arms. Damn it, what he really wished for was to remove the fucking great chasm that had opened up between himself and Talia.
A chasm he knew he was solely responsible for.
The night with Talia had been the most memorable one of his entire thirty-six years. They should have woken up together this morning, made slow and leisurely love again. Spent the day together, doing nothing but kissing and making love, if that was what the two of them decided they wanted to do.
Instead, Ethan had left and Talia had woken up alone.
She had every right to be furious with him right now, even if his actions had been for the best as he saw them.
He nodded abruptly. “I think we can arrange that.”
“How?”
He shrugged. “I’m guessing the easiest way would be to drive up to the security gates at the front of the property and ask the two guards there to let us in.”
Talia gave a choked laugh. “Can we do that?”
“I don’t see why not.” Ethan frowned. “But I’m not letting you go in there alone.” If Talia was going into the lion’s den, then he was going in with her.
Merely driving up to the front gates of Antipov’s estate seemed anticlimactic to Talia after the stress and tension of the last two weeks. At the same time, it was such an audacious thing to do, it just might work.
The conversation she now wanted to have with her father was long overdue.
“I really think you must have been dropped on your head as a baby.” Gabriel snapped his impatience with that plan once Ethan and Talia had joined him and the prince at their position on a hill overlooking the Antipov estate. “Because I can’t think of any other explanation for your having imagined for a moment a plan like that is going to work.”
Ethan glanced over to where Talia had a pair of powerful binoculars aimed in the direction of the back of the low ranch house where the swimming pool was situated. Ivan was still there, according to Alexandre, Antipov too, the two men dressed in swim trunks and chatting and dozing as they lay on loungers under the shade of those parasols.
Ethan shrugged. “She wants to talk to her father.”
“And do you always give her what she wants?”
“Don’t you always give Angel what she wants?”
Gabriel narrowed his eyes. “Within reason.”
“This seems reasonable to me.”
His brother looked at him searchingly for several seconds. “She’s your Angel?”
A nerve pulsed in Ethan’s cheek. “Yes.”
“Fair enough.” Gabriel offered no further argument. “You’re going in with her, right?”
“Oh yes.”
“I’ll have the sights of my rifle aimed at the back of the house, so try to keep Antipov and Krechenko out there if you can. Any sign of trouble and I’m taking them down, along with anyone else who gets in the way.”
“You can’t just kill them!” Talia had heard the tail end of their conversation.
Gabriel raised dark brows. “If my brother or you look to be in danger, I am going to shoot to disable, not kill. I doubt Antipov or your father would want to report the shooting to the authorities if they were only wounded. I also believe my wife and children would object to my spending time in a US jail for killing someone.”
Talia’s rapidly beating heart calmed down somewhat. She’d also felt a warmth in her chest when Gabriel said, or you. Caleb was right, the Knight brothers would all protect her. She had no idea what she had done to earn their protection, but she was grateful for it nonetheless.
Belatedly, she threw her arms about Gabriel and gave him a fierce hug.
“What’s this for?” He stood stiffly in her arms
“I didn’t say hello properly when I got here.” She looked up at him. “It’s good to see you again, Gabriel.”
“You too.” He gave her back a couple of awkward pats. “Could you get your woman off me now, Ethan?” he requested several seconds later, hug time obviously over.
Talia gave a choked laugh as she released Gabriel and stepped back. “I’m not his woman.” She gave Ethan a sideways glance. The bite mark on his throat was clearly visible. “Not right now, at least.”
Ethan had no idea what she meant by that remark, but he sincerely hoped it meant she might be his woman again at some time in the future. Preferably the near future.
But for now, they had a visit to make.
“Are you as nervous as I am?”
Ethan gave Talia a brief glance as he drove them the short distance to the high gates leading into the Antipov estate. “We don’t have to do this, if you would rather not.”
“What’s the alternative?”
He couldn’t think of one. His brothers had been watching the estate since they arrived thirty hours ago. Counting the guards. Watching the comings and goings of visitors. The behavior of Antipov and Krechenko. They had done all that they could from outside the estate.
“Exactly.” Talia nodded, staring straight ahead, her hands tightly gripped together on her thighs as they approached the gates.
As expected, two men stood on the other side of those gates, the cut of their suits telling Ethan both men carried a concealed weapon. Ethan hadn’t bothered. What was the point when he knew he and Talia would both be searched before they were allowed anywhere near Antipov? Besides, once those gates were opened, his feet and hands were enough of a weapon to lay those two men out if they even looked at Talia the wrong way.
He parked the car in front of the gates before releasing his seatbelt and turning to open the door.
Talia reached out and grasped Ethan’s arm as she realized he was getting out of the car. “Shouldn’t I be the one to speak to them?”
“Not yet.” Ethan turned his narrow-eyed gaze back on the two men, their stance telling him they were ready to draw their weapons if they felt it necessary. “Wait here for the moment,” he instructed as he finished climbing out of the car.
“Ethan!”
He bent down to look at her. “Yes?”
“Be careful.” Talia cursed herself for how inadequate that sounded when Ethan was going out there, alone, to face two armed men—she had seen enough armed guards in her lifetime to know when someone was carrying a concealed weapon.
He gave her a grin. “I always am.”
Even so, Talia watched closely as Ethan approached and spoke to the two men, her expression defiant as they both glanced her way in response to something Ethan said to them, before one of them stepped away to talk on his cell phone. A few seconds later, he was back at the gates and saying something briefly to Ethan.
The triumphant expression on Ethan’s face as he walked back to the car, and the gates starting to open behind him, told Talia that they had gotten what they came here for.
The two of them were to be allowed onto the Antipov estate.