Fighting Fate: Book 2 of the Warrior Chronicles (32 page)

Taryn was intrigued. She could tell from Mari’s mussed and easy demeanor that she’d slept with Shay. What she wasn’t sure was how Mari felt about it or what it meant as far as a life plan for her.

Taryn shook her head at her own folly. Swallow some water and all of a sudden sex means ‘life plan’. She could have dismissed that two months ago. Now she had to accept the truth of it because now truth was more imminent and clear than before.

“Why does sex change things?” That wasn’t the question she came here to ask, but it was the one that slipped out of her mouth.

Mari took a sip of her coffee seeming to seriously consider her rhetorical question. “I’m not sure that it does. Not unless you want it to anyway. If
you
change because of it, then it changes your life. If not, well then it’s just sex.”

“That’s what I used to think.” Taryn said glumly.

Mari raised a brow. “And now?”

“And now I never want to have sex with anyone other than Jesse ever again.”

“Is that what has you running through the woods and scowling like a Valkyrie on the battlefield, charged with taking a warrior you’d rather have remain on earth?”

Taryn grinned at the description, lightening her mood considerably.
Yes.
“Probably.” She was better able to control the urge to blurt out the absolute truth, but she still couldn’t lie worth a damn.

“What are you going to do about it?”

“I don’t know.”

Mari made an
umm
sound and took another sip of her coffee.

“Do you know what you’re going to do about Shay?”

Some of the ease left Mari and she set her mug on the table. “I’m not going to ‘do’ anything. I am going to enjoy his company while I’m here.”

“Does he know that?”

“He will. He’ll accept it too. We’ve been down this path before, he and I. He has a life here. I have a life in Scotland. We’ll see each other now and again and our son will be able to share our company without feeling he’s in the middle of a cockfight. I’d say that’s a good place to be.”

Taryn thought there was a whole lot more to Mari and the way she felt about Shay than that, but she didn’t want to push. Just because she couldn’t lie, especially to herself, didn’t mean others weren’t still fully capable of swallowing their own bullshit.

Taryn fished the small gold goddess from her parachute cargo pants pocket and set it on the table between them. Mari made jewelry based on forms from Pictish stones, Neolithic pottery shards and other bits of Celtic history. And Taryn trusted her. “I found this in the well in Glastonbury. Do you know what it is?”

Mari unbent herself and reached for the small gold figure with a reverence and awe Taryn had only seen in one other person: James Campbell. In that moment, Taryn knew she had something true believers would kill to possess. A shiver of foreboding flowed through her.

Mari held the small figure in her palm, testing its weight, turning it this way, then that, studying the runic symbols and the ogham. “This…” she said, pointing to the script, “says roughly, ‘real love transcends time’. The ogham has the symbols for tree, life and spirit, or heart. Mari pointed to a series of slash marks. “These mean completeness or wholeness or oneness. That’s a rough translation. I’d have to look at some of my old references to be sure.”

Mari looked from the figure to Taryn, capturing her with her grass-green eyes, lit with exuberance for her subject. “This is huge, Taryn. This has to be at least a thousand years old, probably more. You have to be careful with this. Even I can feel its power.” Mari’s hand closed over the small goddess, as if the desire to possess it was riding her. Then her hand opened again and the intensity of the moment was gone.

Mari looked at Taryn and smiled more like an artist in love with her craft than a mesmerized acolyte. “I have an idea that may help protect you and your discovery.”

There was no deceit in Mari. She sincerely wanted to help. Taryn had followed her heart and come to the right place. She smiled warmly at Mari and finished her coffee.

“I’m all ears.”

CHAPTER FORTY-EIGHT

“What were you thinking? How can you expect me to protect her in Lake Geneva? William’s mansion is a nightmare as far as security goes. It’s wide open to the lake. Any asshole with a long range rifle could pick her off from the water, or the surrounding rooftops.” Jesse ran his hands through his hair, pacing the length of the library where his mother, Jordon, Henry, Shay and that thorn in his side, MacBain, sat.

Every last one of them was calm and collected. He was going a little crazy.

“Watch your tone with your mother.” Jordon said, with little inflection and all steel.

Reed put a hand on Jordon’s knee, cautioning him not to be too harsh. That small gesture stopped Jesse in his tracts. He never lost it in front of them, not since he was seventeen anyway.
That
incident also happened to be at William’s monstrosity of a twenty bedroom ‘cottage’.

Jesse stopped in front of Reed and bent down to kiss her cheek. “I’m sorry, Mom. I need to be able to keep her safe and I’ve had piss-poor luck so far despite being prepared. I don’t have time to secure Uncle William’s house.” Thinking of William Bennett, Jordon’s uncle, the man so like a grandfather to him during his lifetime brought a sense of pain to Jesse. He loved the man, but he hated the man’s weekend house.

“You don’t need to secure the cottage, Jesse. Henry and I have it under control.” Jordon said.

“But I-”

Henry cut him off. “You need to stop thinking with your heart and start thinking with your head. That’s why you’re not going to be involved with the security part of this at all. You want this over. We want it over. You are going to the cottage as Taryn’s husband, not her bodyguard. Or-”

Henry’s voice was quiet as always, yet it cut through the room with the certainty of a guillotine. His light, color-shifting eyes and the set of his jaw said his word was law. Worse than that, everyone in the room seemed to be supporting Henry.

“-Or you don’t come at all.”

Jesse wasn’t used to ultimatums and this one chaffed him more than any he’d heard in his lifetime. “And just who will be in charge of her personal security?” It took every ounce of energy Jesse had to stay calm and collected. If he lost it now, he’d prove unequivocally that Henry was right.

“Lauren will be in charge on the ground. He knows her the best.” Henry paused, apparently waiting for Jesse to argue the point. He didn’t, but he was going to be having a few words in the ring with MacBain when this was finished, preferably without pads.

“Shay and his team will have boots on the ground as well. I will man the computers and I’ll have a team on the water. There will be other counter measures, but you won’t know what they are or who will be involved. We need your responses to be authentic. Taryn’s too. So that’s it.”

“So I’m supposed to be a bystander while you parade Taryn as bait?” Jesse directed his comments at Henry, his tone deceptively calm, an ocean of darkness filled with scary man-eating creatures lying just beneath the surface.

It was MacBain who answered. “Taryn is already bait. She’s been bait since the day she met you.”

The truthfulness of that statement stung. There was no getting around the fact that she’d been at risk since the moment she set eyes on him, or the fact that he hadn’t been able to keep her from it. “I suppose you being in charge of her safety was your idea?” Jesse’s tone was lethal.

“In fact it wasn’t. It was mine.” Reed said.

Jesse whipped around to face his mother. His jaw dropped. He opened his mouth to say something, anything, but the words didn’t come. All he could think of was, “Why?”

The silence in the room was palpable. His mother looked at him, her blue-green eyes calm and full of compassion. “Lauren’s love isn’t as deep as yours. Your love for Taryn blinds you. His does not.” Reed reached out and touched his hand.

“She’s my family too. I’ve gotten a second chance to get to know her, to have her in my life. Her best chance is the plan Henry has laid out. Put your ego aside and just be there for her.”

“Don’t expect me to stand by and do nothing. That’s not going to happen. Taryn won’t be going anywhere without me either, so you can forget about me staying away. The only way that’s going to happen is if I’m dead.”

Jesse steeled his jaw and turned to walk slowly, purposefully, from the room. He considered it a supreme act of will that he did so without shattering MacBain’s jaw. Had the man shown one ounce of superiority or enjoyment at Jesse’s plight, blood would have been drawn. He didn’t. If anything could be read on MacBain’s face, it was empathy.

Had he imagined Lauren’s voice saying:
I’ll take care of her.

…

So they blamed the young man. An unintended, yet welcome consequence. He was no longer trusted to provide security for Taryn and that made him angry. Angry is good. It clouds judgment, slows reaction time and makes one easier to kill. That hadn’t been in the initial plan. Now it seemed the most efficient way to proceed. Kill Taryn Campbell. Kill Mary Campbell. Kill Jesse Mohr. Leave no heir. Kill them all.

Reptilian eyes blinked closed. A small self-satisfied smile came unbidden. It was a good plan.

CHAPTER FORTY-NINE

The weekend approached with little fanfare for Taryn, and a whole lot of domestic activity for the inhabitants of Potter’s Woods. For the extended Bennett family to be gone, a whole staff of caretakers had to take their places. For people of such vast means, they were certainly hands on when it came to the day to day running of their alternative health care facility. Potter’s Woods was so much more than just that, as Taryn was beginning to learn.

Jesse was instrumental in making it a spiritual retreat as well for people of all creeds, who had an interest in organic gardening and holistic living. Taryn was also learning that Jesse, like the other members of his family, save Reed, was an artist. Not only did he design the formal gardens, the herbal topiary and the renaissance maze, he painted. The painting she’d seen of Reed, when she was first ushered into the library in the big house, was his creation. She found it irritating and endearing that there wasn’t much he couldn’t do. If she had fifty more years with him, she’d undoubtedly find something in year fifty she hadn’t known was in his repertoire.

Taryn caught herself smiling, hoping it had something to do with handcuffs and feathers. The image of her at eighty-three enjoying that kind of play did nothing to further her anger with Jesse. Yes, he’d been aloof and weird since they came back from Britain, but she was hopeful this weekend would change all that. The truth was, she couldn’t imagine spending the next fifty years of her life with anyone but him. With Jesse, life would always be interesting.

Taryn made her way through the gardens, slowing to watch a group of octogenarians performing their morning Tai Chi routine. She stopped in her tracks when she saw that it was Shannon O’Shay leading them. She wanted to dislike him, but heaven help her, that was getting harder by the day. He didn’t seem to notice her staring, but when Mari sat down next to her on the concrete bench at the entry to the meadow, he stopped moving. Thirty or so gray heads turned his way, wondering why.

“That man would stop the world turning on its axis to watch you walk by. Why are you still giving him hell?”

Mari looked at her like she’d lost her mind. “I’m not giving him hell.”

“Are you still sleeping with him?” Taryn asked, purposefully raising a brow at her new-found friend. Mari blushed.

“He’s been gone all day, most days, and cloistered most of the night with Jordon and Henry and their band of merry-muscle-laden-weapon-toting-men. When I do see him he’s buried himself in rolls of architectural plans. He’s building something. It’s just not a life with me. He’s been preoccupied with everything and everyone else.”

“Well he just left Daisy alone to instruct thirty AARP members. It looks like he’s paying attention now.”

Mari’s head whipped up and around so fast Taryn was afraid she’d just given herself whiplash. “Oh.”

“Well that’s a start.” Taryn said, before turning her attention to the sweaty man approaching them. In his biking shorts and Under Armour t-shirt melded to his damp body, Shannon O’Shay put Jason Statham to shame, and Taryn had to admit, she was a fan.

“Good morning, Shay. Nose looks like it’s healing.”

He smiled at Taryn, not offended in the least. “It is.” He reached down and picked her up off the bench, setting her aside, taking her place next to Mari. “And I’ll not be giving you another go at it anytime soon.”

“I wonder why you
let
me in the first place?”

Shay’s ready smile closed a bit. “Who says I did?”

Taryn rolled her eyes at him. “Everyone.”

“You nailed me, lass. Fair and square.” His smile widened. “But it was a one off.”

“I’m sorry, Shay. Thankful too.”

He cocked his head at her like he wasn’t sure what to believe. She bent and kissed his cheek, getting a small amount of joy from the tension riding him as she neared and from the audible expulsion of breath as she straightened again.

Taryn smiled at Mari. “Be nice. You may get lucky.” She said, holding out her hand for the package in Mari’s lap. Mari slapped it into her palm. Taryn winked at her and left to find Mary and Reed. She needed to know when to present her gifts.

…

“What was that all about?” Shay asked Mari.

“Which part?” Mari said, not looking at him.

Shay put a finger under her chin and lifted it, turning her head to face him. She didn’t resist. When she looked at him, with her big grass colored eyes, his heart squeezed in his chest. Every time she hit him with those eyes his world fell apart. “Let’s start with why she kissed me and then get to the part where you get lucky.”

“Taryn forgives you for your ‘lessons’. She even loves you a little for how you treat Reed and Jesse. She thinks I should love you too, and we should live happily ever after. She’d like it if I got busy on that road right away by taking you to my bed every night.”