realize she was being spoken to until she
saw both her father and Paolo Turati
looking at her in expectation.
“Oh, I...I’m sorry,” she stammered,
embarrassed to have been caught
drifting. Especially with Lazaro Archer
there to notice it too. “Would you repeat
that last part for me, please? I want to be
certain I get it correct.”
Her father chuckled. “Sweetheart, I
just asked if you might like to take a
short break. We’ve been going on for
hours without a rest. I’m sure we all
could use a few minutes to relax a bit.”
“Of course,” she replied, then
pivoted to translate for their smiling
host.
As she rose from the antique sofa,
both men politely stood with her. Lazaro
Archer took the opportunity to stalk out
of the salon. She watched him disappear
into the darkness outside.
“Would you like some wine?”
Turati asked her, his Italian words
infused with pride as he gestured to a
collection of bottles encased in a lighted
cabinet the length of one entire wall of
the salon. “My family owns three
vineyards, one dating back nearly a
thousand years. I would be pleased if
you would join me for a glass of my
favorite vintage.”
Melena smiled back at him. “I
would enjoy that very much, thank you.
But first, may I ask where I might find a
restroom, please?”
“Certainly,
certainly.”
Turati
snapped his fingers at the pair of
bodyguards who’d been hanging back
obediently for the duration of the night.
Continuing with Melena in Italian, he
said, “There is one just through that door
and down the passageway, my dear.
Gianni will show you—”
“No, that’s okay.” She shook her
head
at
the
approaching
guard,
unaccustomed to so much fawning and
more than capable of finding her own
way. “Thank you, but I’m sure I can find
it on my own. Will you all excuse me?”
With a reassuring glance at her
father and a nod to Turati, Melena
headed out of the salon and into the
passageway. The private restroom at the
other end was every bit as sumptuous as
the salon, with gilded trim and elegant
millwork, gleaming mirrors, and a
wealth of original art on the walls.
As she came out of the single stall a
few moments later and washed her
hands, she couldn’t help but pause to
check her reflection in the polished
glass. Her light copper hair was wind-
tossed and thickened from the humidity
of the sea. Her skin was milky beneath
the freckles that spread out over the
apples of her cheeks and marched across
the bridge of her nose. And the aura that
radiated off her was imbued with shades
of green and gold.
Hope.
Determination.
She tried not to notice the faint pink
glow that simmered beneath the stronger
colors of her psyche. Her curiosity about
Lazaro Archer had no place here. Her
awareness of him as a dark, dangerously
attractive male, even less. She’d come to
assist her father; that was all.
And
besides,
the
grim
representative from the Order had given
her no reason to think he’d even noticed
her tonight, other than as a nuisance he
was eager to relieve himself of at the
earliest opportunity.
Every time she looked at him, he’d
been cloaked in a haze of unreadable,
gunmetal gray. Coupled with his
intimidating gaze, the effect should have
been enough to make her keep a healthy
distance.
Instead, as she left the restroom,
rather than returning straight to the salon
again, Melena pivoted in the opposite
direction. Toward the aft deck, where
she’d seen him go.
He stood alone at the rail in the
dark,
a
stoic
figure,
unmoving,
forbidding. His large hands were braced
wide before him. His immense, black-
clad body leaned slightly forward as he
gazed off the stern of the yacht over the
endless blanket of rippling water
beyond.
Melena took a silent step toward
him, then hesitated.
This was probably a bad idea. She
should go back inside and focus on what
she was supposed to be doing. She had
no business with Lazaro Archer, even if
there was something she’d been wanting
to say to him all night. For much longer
than that, in fact.
But from the rigidity of his stance,
she could see that he was in no mood for
conversation. Probably least of all with
the interloper who’d shown up uninvited
and inadvertently defied his authority
over the meeting.
Her feet paused beneath her,
Melena started to pivot around to leave
him to his solitude.
“You’re doing well in there.” His
deep voice arrested her where she
stood. He didn’t bother to look at her,
and although the compliment was
completely unexpected, it came out more
like a growled accusation.
“Thanks.” Tentatively, since there
was no point in trying to avoid him now,
she crossed the deck to join him at the
railing. “I like Signor Turati. And I have
a good feeling about this meeting. I think
my father has made a true friend here
tonight.”
Lazaro grunted. “I’ll be sure to
inform Lucan Thorne that you give your
blessing.”
Melena exhaled a short sigh. “I’m
not trying to minimize the importance of
this meeting. I understand what’s at stake
—”
“No. You couldn’t possibly,” he
replied, finally swiveling his head to
look askance at her.
And oh, Lord. If she thought Lazaro
Archer was intimidating from across the
room, up close he was terrifying. His
midnight-blue eyes glittered as dark as
obsidian in the moonlight, ruthless under
the ebony slashes of his brows. His
strong nose and sharp cheekbones gave
him a ferocity no human face could carry
off, and his squared, rigid jawline
seemed hewn of granite.
Only his mouth had an element of
softness to it, though right now, as he
looked at her, his broad, sensual lips
were flattened in an irritated scowl.
“How old are you?” he demanded.
“Twenty-nine.”
> He scoffed, his dark gaze giving her
a brief once-over. Based on the fierce
ticking of a tendon in his already
ironclad jaw, she guessed he didn’t
particularly like what he saw. “You’ve
barely been out of diapers long enough
to understand how important it is to have
peace
between
the
Breed
and
humankind. You were only a child when
the veil between our world and theirs
was torn away. You didn’t wade through
the blood in the streets. You didn’t see
the death, the brutality inflicted on so
many innocents by both sides of this
war.” He blew out a curse and shook his
head slowly back and forth. “You can’t
possibly comprehend how thin the thread
is that holds back an even uglier war
now. Nor can you know the lengths to
which some people will go to rip that
thread to tatters.”
“You’re
talking
about
Opus
Nostrum,” Melena said quietly. A flicker
of surprise in those narrowing indigo
eyes now. “As my father’s personal
assistant, he trusts me completely with
all of his GNC business. I collect data
for him. I summarize reports. I attend
most of his meetings, as well as
compose the majority of his speeches.
I’m also his daughter, so of course, I’m
well aware of the attempted bombing at
the summit he attended a couple of
weeks ago. I know Opus wanted to take
a lot of lives at that event—Breed and
human. I also know the Order’s primary
objective now is to unmask the members
of Opus’s secret cabal and take the
terror group down.”
Lazaro grunted but seemed less than
impressed. “If you came out here to
recite your credentials, Miss Walsh, let
me spare you the effort.”
“You all but challenged me to tell
you,” she pointed out.
“And all you’ve done is confirm
what I already knew about you. I have a
job to do here too, and you’ve been
standing in my way all night.” He
glanced back out at the water. “I’m sure
your ample charms will find a far more
receptive audience back in the salon.”
Ample charms? Was that a cut on
the fact that she actually had curves
and a figure, or could he possibly mean
he found her even a little bit
interesting?
“I didn’t come out here to...Jesus,
never mind,” she stammered. “Forgive
me for disturbing you.” Frustrated,
Melena pushed back from the railing.
She started to pivot away, then paused.
Glanced over at him one last time, her
own anger spiking. “We’ve met, you
know. You don’t remember me.”
Why she felt stung by that she really
didn’t want to consider. When he didn’t
respond after a long moment, she
decided it was probably for the best.
God knew, she would be better off
forgetting the night she nearly died too.
She turned and headed back across
the deck.
“I remember a reckless child doing
something stupid,” he muttered from
behind her. “A silly little girl, being
somewhere she damned well didn’t
belong.”
Rather like the way he seemed to
regard her now, she thought, bristling
at the comment.
“I was seven,” Melena replied,
swinging a look over her shoulder at
him. Lazaro hadn’t moved from his
position, was still staring out at the
black water. “I was seven years old, and
you saved my life. I’d be dead if not for
you.”
“Saved you? Christ.” He exhaled
sharply, as if the idea annoyed him. “I’m
not in the habit of saving anyone.”
Something about the way he said
that, the quieting of his tone, and the
almost raw edge to his words made her
drift back toward him. She rubbed a
chill from her arms as the recollection of
her accident washed over her with fresh
terror.
“Well, you did save me. You
pulled me out of that frozen pond and
you saved my life.” He didn’t look her
way at all, hardly acknowledged she had
returned. “My family was in Boston,
visiting at your Darkhaven. A bunch of
us kids were playing outside that night,
mostly boys—your grandsons and young
nephews and my older brother, Derek.
Unlike me, they were all Breed, and as
the only girl with them besides, it took
all I had to keep up.”
Sometimes she felt as though she
were still competing, still struggling to
prove her worth in everything she did.
She realized she held others up to her
same impossible standards too. Her
parents had pointed it out to her on
numerous occasions. So had more than a
few of her exes.
Now here she was, making a point
to remind this arrogant man of the
stupidest thing she’d ever done in her
life.
Melena let out a soft sigh as she
stood next to Lazaro once more. “The
boys didn’t want me there with them at
the pond, but I followed them anyway.
They started daring each other to walk
farther and farther out onto the ice.”
“Idiots, all of them,” Lazaro
grumbled. “Winter came late that year.
The pond hadn’t yet frozen toward the
center.”
“Yes,” she agreed. “And it was
very dark that night. I didn’t realize the
ice wouldn’t hold me until I was already
too far out. I stepped onto a thin section,
and it broke away underneath me.”
The curse Lazaro uttered was ripe,
violent. But the look he finally swung on
her was oddly tender, haunted. To her
complete shock, he reached out and
grazed the pad of his thumb over her
scarred eyebrow. “You’d hit your head
on something.”
“The edge of the ice was jagged,”
she murmured, her throat going a bit dry
for the mere second his touch had
lingered on her face. When his hand was
gone, she shivered, though not from
anything close to a chill. “I went down
very quickly. God, the water was so
cold. I could hardly move my limbs. I
panicked. I couldn’t see anything. When
I tried to swim back up, I realized I was
trapped under the ice.”
Lazaro was listening intently now,
his expression impossible to read. His
aura forbid her too, the dull gray haze
blurring the edges of his broad shoulders
and strong arms, haloing his dangerously
handsome
face like a brooding cloud
against the darkness of the night that
surrounded him.
“I remember everything started to
go
black,”
Melena
said.
“And
then...there you were. In the water with
me, pulling me to the surface. You dived
into that frigid pond and searched until
you found me. Then you brought me back
to your Darkhaven.”
“You were bleeding,” he said, his
gaze returning to the scar above her left
eye.
Melena nodded. “Your Breedmate,
Ellie, helped my mother patch me up.”
Both women were gone now.
Melena’s
adoptive
mother,
Byron
Walsh’s mate, Frances, had been killed
in a senseless car accident a few years
ago. Lazaro’s kind-hearted, beautiful
Breedmate, Eleanor, had suffered a far
more brutal end. Killed just a couple of
years after Melena had met her, along
with the rest of Lazaro’s family who’d
been home at his Boston Darkhaven the
night of an horrific attack.
His gaze hardened, going distant at
the mention of his lost mate. It took
nearly all of Melena’s self-control to
keep from reaching out to offer comfort
to him now.
If she didn’t think he’d snap her
fingers off at the roots, she might have
braved it in spite of his forbidding
glower.
And yet, there was something more
in his eyes as he looked at her. As much
as she was drawn to him tonight, she
couldn’t help feeling that he was aware
of her too. Not as the hapless girl he’d
fished out of a frozen pond, not even as
the grown-up daughter of a colleague
and friend.
He was annoyed with her tonight,
no question. Given a choice, he’d
probably still prefer her gone. But
Lazaro Archer was also looking at her
the way a man looked at a woman. And
she couldn’t deny that his interest made
her pulse trip into a faster tempo.
“What
are
you
doing
here,
Melena?” His gruff question caught her
off guard.
Did she even know the answer to
that? She shrugged lamely. “I guess I
just...I don’t think I ever got the chance to thank you—”
“No.” He cocked his head slightly,
those
unsettling
eyes
narrowing
shrewdly now. “I mean, what are you
doing here at this meeting? As skilled of
an interpreter as you are, I think we both
know there’s something you’re not
saying.”
She stared at him, wondering how