Aphrodite's Secret (22 page)

Hieronymous turned back, and immediately hurled his orb at the ground in front of Jason. The impact released a burst of white fog, sickly sweet, like apples simmering in brown sugar.

Jason tried to continue on, tried to get to Hieronymous, but his muscles wouldn’t work. His legs couldn’t support him; he fell backward against the cavern wall, hanging on to a rocky outcropping for dear life.

“Dear boy,” Hieronymous asked, striding toward him over Clyde’s crumpled form. “Did you really think you could defeat me? With my intellect? With my resources?” He shook his head. “How silly.”

He bent over to retrieve Jason’s knife. “It pains me to do this, of course. I get no pleasure in disposing of one of my own blood.”

“Davy,” Jason said, forcing out the word as his fingers dug into the wall behind him in an attempt to stay upright.

“The boy will survive my procedure, I assure you.” Hieronymous’s shoulder lifted just slightly. “He will, of course, have a somewhat altered brain, but that simply can’t be helped. You, however . ..” He trailed off, hatred kindling in his eyes. “You could have been everything to me, and yet you chose to slap me in the face. You,
son
, will not survive.”

Jason tried to will his muscles to move, but they would not. Hieronymous threw the knife. As the deadly blade headed straight for Jason’s heart, a dozen regrets danced through his head. He closed his eyes, thoughts of Lane and Davy filling his last moments. And then—

Nothing.

He opened his eyes, his brow furrowed.

The knife clattered to the floor across the room, and Boreas’s arm—long and elastic—was snapping back. The young Protector had shot his arm out, slingshot style, and knocked the blade clear. Now, on his hand’s return journey, Boreas grabbed the back of Jason’s wetsuit and pulled him back into the tunnel.

As Hieronymous looked on, dumbfounded, Boreas took Jason in his arms and bounced both of them across the chamber toward the water in its center.

“Davy,” Jason said, his voice a weak protest.

“Lane has him!” Boreas whispered. “I answered her page.”

Relief flooded Jason. Davy was safe.

No thanks to him, of course.

With the bitter taste of failure still clinging to Jason’s tongue, Boreas dove them into the water. The last thing Jason saw before the current took him, was Hieronymous’s dumbstruck face—and the vow of vengeance burning in his eyes.

Mordichai stared at the monitor, his mouth slightly agape.
Son
? Hieronymous had called Jason son?

All these years, he’d thought he was the only one, the heir-apparent to Hieronymous’s definite fortune and dubious fame. Now, to find out that he had a brother, and a full Protector at that...

A twinge of jealousy prickled him, tempered by an odd sense of melancholy. Mordi stared, transfixed, at the monitor. Only moments before it had revealed his sibling, the man Hieronymous wanted for his heir. Not Mordi. Never Mordi.

Or maybe ...

Now that Jason was so clearly out of the picture, perhaps Mordi’s stock had gone up. In Hieronymous’s eyes, maybe a loyal halfling son was better than a traitorous pureblood.
Interesting
.

He tapped his lip, wondering. What had he lost by not knowing of Jason’s existence? More important, what might he gain in the future?

Lane couldn’t stop hugging Davy. Couldn’t stop looking in his eyes. Couldn’t stop running her fingers through his baby-fine hair.

He was back. She’d gotten her baby back!

She was so wrapped up in Davy that she didn’t notice the tripwire she’d scooted backward against and managed to pull taut. Davy’s shriek alerted her, but by then, of course, it was too late; she and he were dangling upside down from a palm tree, caught in an old-fashioned hunter’s net.

Not a great situation, to say the least. Even worse, from her new vantage point she could clearly see a camera mounted among the palm tree’s coconuts.

Hieronymous was watching. Which meant he’d be coming soon.

“Mommy!”

“I know, sweetie. We need to get out of here.” Lane tugged at the ropes with her hands, but they held fast. She needed something to cut them with, but she didn’t have anything. She’d jumped into the water wearing only her bathing suit, a T-shirt, and a tiny waist pack with her keys, driver’s license, a tube of Blistex, a pair of fingernail clippers, and some Coppertone. The pager had been clipped to the waist pack’s strap, but now she could see it on the ground below her, half buried in the soft sand.

Great. This didn’t leave her a whole lot of options.

She cocked her head, running the inventory through her mind one more time. Was there anything to cut with? Yes. “Davy, honey, can you reach my pack?”

She was half-sitting on him, probably squashing him, but she could feel him nod, then felt his little hands searching her. After a second, she heard her pack’s zipper. “You want the clippers, Mommy?”

“That’s right.” She reached down blindly. “Can you hand them to me?”

He couldn’t. His arms were too short. And he certainly couldn’t throw them. Lane couldn’t catch on her best days, and she wasn’t about to try while hanging upside down and backward.

“Want me to start clipping, Mom?”

“You better believe it,” she said. Then, while her son clipped, Lane did the only thing she could do. She waited.

By the time Jason emerged in the shallow water of an island lagoon, Hieronymous’s drug had worn off, and Jason’s body was his own again. He was half-tempted to turn right back around, to take his father on again, but then he caught sight of the beach. Upon it, Lane and Davy were suspended from a coconut tree.

“Jason!” she called. “There’s a camera! Hieronymous! Is he coming? Do you see him?”

Jason didn’t, but that didn’t mean the man wasn’t right behind him. Under the circumstances, Hieronymous was probably starting to comb the whole island for him—and now probably his son.

Familiar fear rose in his throat. They were all in danger now. And though he’d wanted his family back, he sure as hell hadn’t wanted them all trapped together in a fishbowl.

With Boreas at his heels he raced forward, thrilling at the way his muscles again responded to his commands. His mind sorted through the fastest way to get his family down.

As it turned out, that wasn’t a problem. Right as he approached the net split, and Lane and Davy tumbled to the ground. Davy immediately broke out in peals of laughter, but Lane just lay there. Jason was pretty sure his heart stopped the second she hit the ground.

“Lane?” he asked.

She groaned, rolling onto her side. “Ouch,” she said.

He was next to her in an instant. “Are you okay?”

She nodded. “I’m fine. Soft sand.”

Davy watched Jason through narrowed eyes for a moment, then scooted closer to his mother. It didn’t trouble Jason. There’d be time enough for father-son bonding later. Right now, he was too relieved that everyone was safe to think about anything else.

Clutching her arm, he pulled Lane to her feet. The urge to throttle her was almost as strong as the urge to kiss her, to hold her tight—to never,
ever
, let her out of his sight again.

He pushed back, still holding her, but needing to see Lane’s eyes. What would he have done if Hieronymous had captured her? Or worse? “What the hell are you doing here? Do you know how stupid—” The words were out of his mouth before he had time to think.

The expression on her face shifted from one of relief to one of irritation, even anger. Automatically he stepped back, increasing the space between them even as he continued to hold her arms.

No use. She jerked free, then took Davy’s arm and led the boy to Boreas. “Get him to the boat,” she said. The young Protector nodded, led Davy to the edge of the water.

The kid didn’t look too happy. He kept looking back at Jason and Lane. “Mommy? Are you coming?”

“I’m right behind you, sweetie.”

Davy aimed a glare at Jason. “With
him
?”

“That’s right. It’s okay. Trust me.” She turned to Jason. “But as for you, where the hell do you get off? Did you really expect me to just twiddle my thumbs while you rushed off to rescue my son?”

He urged her toward the water. “I expected you to
follow the plan
,” he explained, his voice less harsh. She was safe, and his initial wave of fear had crested.

“The plan where you answered my pages and told me what was going on?” she asked. She looked ready to explode; then she sighed. “Okay, maybe it was stupid of me to come ... but I was all alone, Jason. I thought Davy needed help. Hell, I thought
you
needed help.”

They were in the water now. He cut through the waves with ease, one arm on Lane’s elbow as he towed her forward. She glared at him, but didn’t resist.

“You swam to shore?” he asked, surprised.

She nodded.

“That was brave,” he said. It wasn’t exactly an apology, but it was the best he could manage under the circumstances.

“Damn straight it was.”

There was a pause; then he grinned, and she grinned back.

“I
am
sorry,” she said. “I had to get Davy. I didn’t know what had happened to you. I never meant to get caught.”

“No one ever does,” he agreed, thinking about his past And then there was this time. Boreas had done good.

“Yes, but he’s
my
son, and I wasn’t going to stand by when I could do something to help. He needed his mother.”

Jason tugged her closer. “He’s my son, too.”

“By blood, maybe, but you didn’t raise him. You didn’t change his diapers. You didn’t watch ‘Barney’ over and over until you swore you were going to take out a contract on that dinosaur’s life.”

“Don’t you think I wanted to? Don’t you think I spent every day that I was trapped in that aquarium dying inside?”

Tears began to stream down her face, mingling with the water of the ocean, and Jason’s insides crumpled. He didn’t want to see Lane cry. He hated feeling helpless, but he didn’t have any idea how to stop the flood.

“I’m sorry I got Davy and me trapped,” she said between sniffles. “But I had to come. I had to get Davy.”

Jason sighed, her words cutting a hole in his heart. He understood. “No, it’s my fault. I shouldn’t have expected you to stay put. And, all things considered, I definitely shouldn’t have expected you to trust
me
to find him.”

She tilted her head back as he pulled her through the water, her eyes wide with surprise. “Don’t say that. I
did
trust you.”

He shook his head. “Well, it’s a moot point, since the boy rescued himself.”

“He’s a smart kid,” Lane agreed. She licked her lips. “A lot smarter than me. I guess I didn’t do much of anything except almost get us caught.”

She twisted around in his arms to point back at the tree with the camera. “Why
didn’t
we get caught?” she continued. “Not that I’m complaining, but Davy and I were in that net for a while.” She frowned, floating alongside Jason as he continued to tug her toward the boat.

He shook his head. “I don’t know. Maybe that camera was turned off. Maybe Hieronymous was too busy licking his wounds after he tangled with me and Boreas. Maybe Jupiter is aligned with Mars.”

At that, Lane actually laughed. “That must be it.”

Jason found himself pondering her earlier words, how she’d been hard on herself. “You’ve done a great job, you know.” He nodded toward his boat, where Davy was climbing up the ladder. “Of being a mom, I mean.”

A new tear slid down her cheek, and Lane stopped him from swimming. She pulled close to kiss him on the cheek.

The gesture was simple, but the effect on him was not. Heat spread through his body, and he was overwhelmed with a desire to kiss away her worries and her fears. Hell, he wanted her to kiss away his own.

“Thank you for that,” she said. “And thank you for bringing me here.”

He brushed his lips across her hair. “You’re welcome,” he said; then he pulled her close. And as they hung there, suspended in the warm water, their legs rubbing as he slowly treaded water, he realized that he couldn’t live the lie she wanted.

He loved this woman. Dammit all, he always would. Whether she wanted him to or not. He didn’t want to pretend to be her friend—not if it meant he could never be her lover again. He didn’t want to be a part-time daddy, and he didn’t want to work his way slowly back up the ladder into her good graces. He wanted his family back. He wanted Lane.

And one way or another, he was going to get her.

“Davy, there’s something I want to tell you. And there’s someone I want you to meet.” Lane’s voice filtered up the stairwell of the boat, and Jason’s stomach descended to somewhere in the vicinity of his knees.

He and Davy had already met, of course. Sort of. On the beach, his son had aimed those distrustful stares his way. And when Lane and Jason reached the boat, Davy had squirmed and squealed and basically said that Jason was the spawn of the Devil. He’d gone on to say that, even though Jason had been nice, Mommy shouldn’t be cavorting with such spawn. The kid had actually said “cavorting.” What a clever little guy.

Fortunately, Lane had run interference. “Jason’s not the man who took you from Sea World,” she’d said. “That was a shape shifter who looked like him.”

“Oh.” The boy had frowned. “A shape shifter. You mean like how Mr. Mordichai can change into a dog?”

Jason and Lane had exchanged looks. “A
lot
like that, actually,” Jason had finally said.

Davy had turned interrogative for a few minutes until at last he was convinced Jason hadn’t kidnapped him. Only then had they moved on to Lane’s fear that Hieronymous was going to follow.

Boreas had actually helped with that. “Regulations,” he said, clearing his throat. “Hieronymous will assume we’re following them. Which means he’ll assume we’ve got backup.”

Jason nodded in agreement. “He’ll focus on securing his island and removing all evidence. By the time he realizes we came on our own and there’s no arrest to be made, we’ll be safe.”

It had satisfied Lane, for the time being, so she’d taken Davy belowdeck, insisting that he needed a meal and a nap. That had been three hours ago. Now, apparently, naptime was over. It was time for “introductions.”