Tempered (A Daughters of the People Novel) (Daughters of the People Series) (18 page)

Aaron followed
Colin onto the plane, dropped into the seat the bodyguard pointed out, and
stared out the plane’s window at the tarmac. Lali would love San Francisco, the
bustle of the crowds, the rolling hills, the Golden Gate Bridge, and Fran
Kesselman would love the precocious four year old. More, she’d love the fact
that he was dating someone who could give her grandchildren.

His mother had
never liked Jeanne. Cultural differences, he’d always thought, but now that
Hawthorne and Lali were part of his life, he understood why. His girls would
love him. Jeanne never had.

Fingers snapped
in front of his face. “Mr. Kesselman,” Brigid said in a sharp voice. “We need
you to pay attention.”

“I was.” Not
really, but whatever. Wasn’t that what she and Colin were there for? “What’s
wrong?”

She sat back in
her seat and fastened her seatbelt. “Plane’s about to take off.”

“Right.” His
gaze wandered while he fidgeted with his seatbelt. Colin had taken the aisle
seat, Brigid the window seat across from Aaron. He stretched out his legs,
frowned when she didn’t have to move hers to make room for his. “What are we
doing in first class?”

“Security.”

Colin’s voice
was a low rumble. He sat erect and alert with his hands splayed across huge,
muscled thighs. It was the most relaxed Aaron had ever seen the other man. He
glanced between the two bodyguards. “I didn’t buy a first class ticket.”

“Hawthorne told
me you were intelligent.” Brigid crossed her long legs at the knee and smoothed
out a crease in the loose, black slacks she wore. “I’m beginning to have my
doubts.”

What a hoot.

Outside the
window, the tarmac rushed past. The plane took off, accelerating upward, and
his gut clenched and fell. The blue autumn sky filled his view. Had Lali
stopped crying yet? Did she understand that he’d be back as soon as he could?

Fingers snapped,
startling Aaron out of his gloomy reverie. He eyed Brigid speculatively. “You
do that again, you might draw back a nub.”

“You need to be
aware of your surroundings.”

“And you need to
keep the finger snapping down. I’m not a…”

Puppy
. Shit. He
rubbed tired fingers over his eyes. If Hawthorne hadn’t pushed him, he would’ve
put off this trip, nagging mother or not. Then he wouldn’t be sitting here
missing Lali, afraid to even think about Hawthorne, with a cold-eyed bodyguard
to his left and a demanding one sitting across from him. He could be at home,
taking Lali to the library, chatting with Charlotte while their two girls made
Thanksgiving crafts. They could all walk into town and have lunch at the café
on Main Street, and then he and Lali would go home and pretend to rake leaves
with Hawthorne and…

Out of the
corner of his eye, he noticed Brigid’s hand inching forward. “Don’t even think
about it,” he said.

She leaned back
in her seat, a satisfied gleam in her eyes. “If you don’t want me to do that,
all you have to do is pay attention.”

“Gimme a break.
We’re in first class at ten thousand feet. What could happen here?”

“The man behind
you could be a plant,” she said promptly. “He made it on board with a knife
strapped to his ankle.”

“Airport
security my ass,” Colin muttered under his breath.

Aaron lowered
his voice and leaned forward. “Wait. How did you know about the knife?”

“The way he
walks.” She arched an eyebrow at him. “You missed it?”

“I wasn’t paying
attention.” And wouldn’t have known what to look for even if he had. “What kind
of knife?”

A trim flight
attendant in her early twenties stopped beside them, interrupting what Aaron
suspected might have been a long-winded description. “Is everyone comfortable?”

“We’re fine,”
Colin said.

“Of course.” The
attendant’s eyes slid down the long, fit length of Colin’s body in a quick
assessment that even Aaron caught. “Ring if you need me.”

When she moved
away, Aaron said, “Do you get that a lot?”

“Sometimes.”

“Ever take
advantage?”

“Never.”

The flatly
spoken word surprised Aaron. “Seriously? Hot women throw themselves at you and
you, what? Ignore them?”

“Women are a
distraction.”

“Really? Hmm.
Hadn’t noticed.”

Which was an
out-and-out lie. Hawthorne drove him to distraction from the time he woke in
the morning to the time he fell into bed with her at night, and pretty much
every moment in between. She was driving him to distraction now and they
weren’t even in the same state together.

Aaron settled
back into his seat and observed his babysitters. They both held themselves like
warriors, with tense gazes that saw everything without their eyes seeming to
move. Both were fit and obviously active, quick reflexes, no-nonsense
attitudes.

And neither had
a last name.

He caught
Brigid’s gaze. “Are you a Daughter?”

“Yes.”

“Immortal?”

Her head turned
toward him, reminding him eerily of the way Hawthorne focused whenever she
encountered a problem. “I am.”

Hmm
. “How old are
you?”

“Six hundred and
forty eight. Would you like my résumé?”

What would it
say? He turned the possibilities over in his mind. Have sword, will travel,
plus first-hand knowledge of history? Like he could believe that, his promise
to Hawthorne to be more open notwithstanding. Was everyone in Tellowee crazy,
or did they just bring it out for him? “Just curious. What about you, Colin?
Are you immortal?”

“No.”

“Why not?”

Colin shot him
an impatient glare. “Hawthorne should’ve already explained why.”

Aaaaand, yet
another person who believed that. If he had a nickel… “Humor me.”

“Sons are only
born to mortal Daughters, which you should know.”

So why are you
bothering me with it?
Aaron filled in, and ignored Colin’s dig. “How old are you?”

“Twenty-two.”

“Ah.” Well,
Aaron hadn’t been expecting that. Colin carried himself well, not with the
lanky confidence of a kid, but with the sureness of a man who knew how to
handle himself. A memory flashed into Aaron’s mind of another young man who
carried himself the same way. “Do you know Levi?”

“We went to
school together.” Colin stood abruptly and buttoned the jacket of his black
suit. “Time for a sweep.”

He strode away
without glancing back, his long strides eating up the distance down the center
aisle.

Aaron turned to
Brigid. “What did I say?”

“Colin’s not a
talker.”

He waited for
her to elaborate, and blew out an exasperated breath when she remained
stubbornly silent. “He’s not the only one,” he muttered.

“We’re not here
to entertain you.”

“Never thought
you were.”

God, no
. They were
there because Hawthorne didn’t trust him to look out for himself. His mood went
from gloomy to sour in a heartbeat. If that’s the way she felt, why had she
asked him to stay? Why not get rid of him in one fell swoop, send him on his
merry way back to San Francisco, and be done with him once and for all?
Oh,
no
. Not Hawthorne. Stubborn woman. She wanted him in her bed, so she sent
bodyguards to protect him from an imagined threat.

Only, she hadn’t
treated it as imaginary. He fumbled for his carry on and pulled out his
sketchpad, flipping to an empty page. A few minutes later, Hawthorne’s
sprite-like face stared back at him. Dark shadows under her eyes. She’d been
slipping out of bed before he woke in the mornings. Tense lines around her
mouth, her lips pressed together firmly. The changes were so minute, no one
else would notice them. He should have, though, her lover, the man who might
actually hold her heart.

He flipped the
page and began another sketch, this one of Isolde, based on the snapshot held
in his mind from their one meeting. Cold, empty. Colin resumed his seat, and
Aaron ignored him, concentrating on the portrait coming to life under his
pencil. He shaded in glossy black hair, a touch of silver. Faint lines around
her eyes, the hard slash of her mouth. Not a mean woman, as Lali insisted, or
not that Aaron had gathered, but a determined one. A woman with a purpose,
ambition, fortitude. That was the impression he’d gotten of Hawthorne’s niece.

If that’s what
the two women were to one another. He rubbed a knuckle across the furrow
between his eyebrows.
If, if
. Hadn’t he promised himself he wouldn’t
obsess over Hawthorne’s past anymore? Hadn’t he promised her that he’d be open
to it and wouldn’t jump to any more conclusions until she’d had a chance to
explain? That left him with only one option: To take everything she said at
face value until evidence arose to the contrary.

That had always
been his first instinct with her, and he’d ignored it and fallen back on
skepticism, hurting her not once but twice with his inability to believe her.

If he loved her,
he had to trust her, just like she had to trust him.

Did he love her?

The tight
pressure around his heart said so, as did the need in his gut, the empty ache
of his arms from her absence. She’d asked him to trust her.

He wanted to, so
badly.

They would sort
it out when he got home. He flipped to a clean page and began a sketch of Lali
in her Halloween costume with wooden sword raised high and a fierce look on her
cherubic face.

The plane
touched down at the San Francisco International Airport while Aaron was in the
middle of a study of his bodyguards. He glanced over the quick sketches of
various poses and body parts, the alert postures, the flat intensity of their
eyes. They would be good reference material for the next time he needed to
portray a character that held his cards close to his chest.

As soon as Aaron
tucked his sketchbook and pencil into his carry on, Colin hustled him off the
plane at a fast clip.

“Bodyguards in
movies always go at the client’s pace,” Aaron grumbled.

“One, movies aren’t
real, and two, Hawthorne is our client. If anything happens to you, we’ll lose
more than our jobs.”

Aaron tightened
the grip on his bag and threw a grumpy glare at his youngest babysitter. “She
wouldn’t really cut your head off, would she?”

Brigid slid up
to Aaron’s other side and grabbed his arm. “We’ve got a problem. Bobby’s been
kidnapped.”

“Bobby who?”
Aaron said.

Colin muttered a
curse under his breath and tightened his grip on Aaron’s elbow. “Signal ahead.
Three minutes to a go.”

Colin and Brigid
picked up the pace, walking Aaron at a near jog through the remainder of the
airport while Brigid pressed a hand to her ear and spoke quietly. The terminal
was crowded, jammed with people heading out early for next week’s holiday or
hopping a short commuter flight to a nearby city. Colin and Brigid strong-armed
their way through the crowd, barking at anyone who got in the way as they
pulled Aaron along between them.

Three minutes
later, they were outside, racing toward a black SUV nearly identical to the one
that had dropped them off at the airport in Atlanta. Colin opened the back
door, shoved Aaron in, and slid in behind him. The driver cut in front of a
taxi, away from the airport, leaving Brigid on the sidewalk. Within minutes,
they were on the freeway, bracketed by rush hour traffic.

Aaron sat up and
was promptly pushed back down into the soft leather seat. “Cut it out!”

“Stay low,” Colin
barked. He turned and glanced out the rear window, and kept one hand on Aaron’s
shoulder, pinning him in place. “Until we know what’s going on, we have to
assume you’re a target, too.”

“I thought
that’s why you were tagging along.”

“Didn’t
Hawthorne explain anything to you?”

Aaron winced at
the exasperation in Colin’s voice. She’d tried a couple of times. He hadn’t been
a very receptive listener. “She said something about Isolde and the Eternal
Order. That’s all I really know.”

Colin whistled
out a breath. “Isolde holds a seat on the Council of Seven, a seat Hawthorne
should by rights have filled when it came empty. She passed it on to Isolde
instead.”

“What’s the
Council of Seven?”

“The People’s
ruling body. Sort of. It’s complicated.”

“I gathered.
What does all that have to do with me?”

“Short version,
Hawthorne’s really old, really wealthy, and really powerful. It makes anyone
connected to her a target.” Colin shifted in the seat, easing his grip on
Aaron’s shoulder. “You’re sharing her bed.”

“We’re supposed
to be working together. How could anybody possibly know we’re lovers?”

“The way you
treat Lali. Your smell...”