Broken Ties (12 page)

Teddy leaned forward, his hands closing over her upper arms. He’d always been able to read her like a book.

“I know you’re scared, Sid, but we aren’t going to let anything happen to you.”

“Will you promise me something?”

“It depends,” he answered warily.

“You owe me a promise for lying to me for the last four years.”

“Fine,” he grudgingly agreed. “What do you want?”

She pulled his hands into her own and held them tightly.

“Promise me that if it comes down to it, you won’t let him die for me.”

Teddy paled and shook his head. “I won’t promise you that.”

“You owe me.”

“I owe you, so I’m supposed to let you die? I’m supposed to force my brother to let you die?”

“If that’s what it comes to, yes.”

“Damn it, Sid, you can’t ask that of me. Or him.”

“I mean it, Teddy. You and I both know he would die to protect me, and I don’t want that.” She squeezed his hands. “Promise me.”

He hesitated a long moment before finally giving her a curt nod.

“I promise.” He placed a quick peck on the cheek before standing up. “I also promise it won’t come to that.”

“Didn’t anyone ever tell you not to make promises you can’t keep?”

“Sure they did,” he said with a grin. “Right before they taught Levi how to avoid kryptonite. Neither of us learned our lessons very well.”

****

Levi woke to an empty bed and a surge of panic as he realized Sidra was gone. He jerked on a pair of jeans and bounded down the stairs, calling her name.

“Sidra!” he called as he rounded the corner into the kitchen, where she stood at the stove, scrambling eggs and frying sausage.

“Good morning!” she said, a smile spreading over her face. “Sit down. Breakfast is almost done.”

“I thought you might sleep late this morning,” he told her.

“She’s been up since before daylight,” Teddy said from the breakfast nook.

Levi turned to find Philippe sitting at the table with Teddy, who smiled benevolently at him. Philippe’s scowl, on the other hand, encompassed him and Sidra equally.

“She should not be cooking for us,” Philippe interjected. “Do neither of you understand who she is?”

Sidra turned, a bowl of eggs in her hand. “I like to cook,” she told the man, “especially when there are people to enjoy it with me.”

“When we marry, you will not cook.” He sniffed disapprovingly as he ran his eyes down the pink chenille robe that covered her nightgown. “And you will not traipse around in your nightclothes.”

“For the last time, Philippe, I am not your fiancée, and we will not be marrying.”

He leaped up, the palm of his hand slamming down on the tabletop.

Levi and Teddy both surged forward, but to his credit, the man faced them without flinching.

“We will leave for Medelia today,” he announced. “You will return to your home, and you will realize and accept the truth.”

He waved his hand around the room, encompassing everything in sight and possibly the entire world beyond.

“You do not belong here. These are not your people. This is not your world.”

“It’s the only world I’ve ever known.”

“It’s the only world you remember. That is not the same thing.”

She flinched from his words, her eyes meeting Levi’s. There was no denying the truth he saw in their liquid depths. She was halfway to leaving. He was losing her already.

“Sidra,” he began, but had no idea where to go from there. He couldn’t blame her for wanting to know the life she had been snatched away from. She was a princess. What girl wouldn’t want to return to that?

“You can’t go while someone’s after you,” Teddy supplied.

Levi breathed a sigh of relief at his brother’s words. It was true. They still had no idea who was behind the attacks. The only thing they knew was they were somehow related to Medelia. His eyes met Philippe’s cold green ones, taking in the thin lips and chiseled jaw.

“He’s right,” Levi said. “She’s going nowhere while she’s still in danger.”

“Once she’s home, we can keep her safe.”

“Yeah, right,” he scoffed. “You do realize she’s here because of a massive failure to keep her safe there, don’t you?”

The thin lips grew even thinner as a hiss of anger escaped them.

“She was kidnapped at six, and it took your country two decades to find her,” Levi pressed. “I think the fact that she’s survived here for that long is proof positive we’re better equipped to keep her safe.”

“You have no idea what you’re dealing with!”

“No,” Levi said, moving toward the man, who took a quick step back. “But you do, don’t you? And so far, you haven’t been as forthcoming as a loving fiancé should be. At least, that’s my opinion. What’s yours, bro?”

Teddy had slipped up behind the retreating man, a conspiratorial gleam in his eyes as he spoke so close to Philippe’s ear that the man jumped.

“I think you’re right, big brother. It’s time to make sure we’ve gotten every bit of information out of him we can get.”

“I have no more—” His squeaking was interrupted by Sidra, who came to stand between him and Levi.

“What are you doing?” she demanded, hands on her hips, whiskey eyes flashing at him. “Teaming up to bully him? Did you practice by stealing lunch money from kindergartners? Taking candy from babies?”

She swung around to snag Teddy with her anger, and Levi let his eyes roam over her shapely derriere. She was hot as hell standing there, angry indignation holding her back rigid, hands resting on the curve of her hips. Was this what she would look like standing on the front porch calling for their children?

The thought caught him off guard, blindsiding him with the implications. Had they really come that far? For him to be thinking of towheaded kids running wild in the front yard?

He stepped back, trying to get a grip on his emotions. He couldn’t let them distract him from keeping her safe. If there came a time when he was called to make a split-second, life-and-death decision, he wanted to have a clear head. He’d been blinded by jealousy the night Teddy was shot, but he refused to have his vision muddled by emotions again.

“What do you know?” he demanded of Philippe again, ignoring Sidra’s grunt of frustration.

“I know nothing more than you do, or at least, no more than your brother,” Philippe said.

“Don’t look at me,” Teddy protested when Levi shot him an angry glare. “All I know is what her cousins told me. She’s the princess of Medelia, and she’s in danger. They didn’t give me any more details than that. They didn’t even tell me about him.”

“Did you ask them for any more information?”

“Of course I asked for more! I’m not incompetent, Levi. Whether you think I am or not.”

“I never said you were incompetent.”

“Yeah, I know. You never had to say it.”

Levi stared at his brother for a long hard moment as Teddy’s words reverberated through his mind. Was he right? Had Levi treated him like he was incompetent? Had Teddy always been the little brother, kept a step or two behind Levi for protection? Some good that had done, Levi thought bitterly, surveying the canes leaning against the wall beside him. When push came to shove, he had failed at being the protector, and his brother would pay for it for the rest of his life.

“Damn it, Levi!” Teddy knocked the canes to the ground. “Quit focusing on these damn things! So I got shot. So you hesitated, not shooting what you thought was an unarmed man. What the hell does it matter now? It’s done, and I’m getting better every day. Besides, who ever told you that you had to be my damn protector? Why have you always thought I was incapable of taking care of myself?”

Levi lifted his eyes to Teddy’s face, which was red with anger and something else he had never seen on his brother’s face. Humiliation. Teddy had always been his little brother, and he had been charged with protecting him for as long as he could remember.

The night before Teddy’s first day of kindergarten, their father had sat on the edge of Levi’s bed and talked to him about his responsibility as Teddy’s older brother.

“Son, you’re the big brother, and your mom and I are counting on you to watch out for Teddy,” his dad had said earnestly. “You’ve got to make sure he gets on the bus in the morning and off the bus in the evening. I know he’s your little brother and he bugs you here at home, but out there in the world, you’re all he’s got. You’ve got to help make sure he’s safe.”

Eight-year-old Levi had taken the admonishment to heart and had gotten in more than one tussle over the years, if not to protect Teddy then to protect the little sister who followed them. As they got older, they migrated into their expected roles, with Teddy becoming the laidback musician and Levi becoming the hardnosed workaholic. If Teddy had demanded his right to defend himself, would Levi have surrendered it willingly? Levi knew himself too well to say yes. The fact was he had always relished the role he was given. He had loved a good fight, had enjoyed being the hero, the protector, the guy everyone relied on to make things right.

He couldn’t lie to Teddy and say he was wrong about the way of things. He couldn’t say he hadn’t thought Teddy incapable of taking care of himself. He had never considered it at all, actually. He took care of Teddy, so it didn’t matter if Teddy could take care of himself. But what thirty-year-old man wanted to be taken care of by his brother? Not Teddy, for sure. He had been grown for a while now, and there was no reason for Levi to still be fighting his battles for him. No reason for Levi to shoulder all the blame for what had happened.

“I’m sorry,” Levi managed to say through a throat choked with emotion. “I’m going for a walk.”

He strode out the door, paying no heed to Sidra’s call or the sound of the ringing telephone. He needed to think, to regroup, to get used to the loosening of the guilt that had kept him in a chokehold for the last year.

Chapter Fourteen

The meadow beyond his parents’ yard was still surrounded by the split rail fence he and Teddy had helped their dad build twenty years ago. A swaybacked bay and a black-and-white paint pony his mom had recently rescued from being euthanized grazed nearby, having taken the place of the old gray mare they built the enclosure for. Under the huge live oak in the middle, Butter, the Shetland pony, stood watch. Since they’d fenced it in, the meadow had been home to at least a dozen rescue horses living out their last days in peace and comfort as his mother’s beloved pets.

The sun cut through the chill in the air, and the silence of the meadow was broken only by the occasional nicker of the horses or call of a mockingbird. One of the neighbors had a fire going, and the smell took him back to the past, to the days when he and Teddy had roamed this neighborhood on their bikes, staying out until their mother called them home at the end of the day.

He had lived in the city for thirteen years now, and although he rarely missed living here, the past year of exile had been hard on him. He hadn’t been exiled by his family, of course. His mother had begged him to come home, but he hadn’t been able to bring himself to face them. He had barely been able to face himself.

He was only here now because of Sidra, because the danger to her had outweighed his need for self-preservation. The thought of losing her, of having to face the rest of his life without her, terrified him. So perhaps self-preservation had still been a driving force behind his return.

From here, he could research her past, try to piece together who wanted her dead and why, without having her within their reach. He wanted to breathe a sigh of relief and tell himself that was the case, but he knew they had been followed at least as far as the strip mall where Philippe had found her. They would have killed her there if Philippe hadn’t knocked her to the ground. He owed the man for that even if he couldn’t stand him, and every bone in his body burned with jealousy at his supposed relationship with Sidra.

He turned to stare at the house he’d grown up in. When this was over and Sidra was safe, maybe he’d come home to Gulfview for good. The Lawrence house had been for sale for a couple years. Maybe he would buy it. If ever a house was built for a princess, it was the pretty Dutch colonial with its gambrel roof and rose-covered entryway.

He stopped short as he realized once this was over Sidra might well have her own life to return home to, a life that didn’t include him. What would he do then?

The faint sound of a car coming up the drive sent a chill up his back, and he turned toward the road as Coda started barking up a storm. A dark Land Rover drove slowly up the road, kicking up less dust than Levi had ever thought possible. He began walking toward the house, picking up his pace as the car pulled into the yard and nearly running as the driver stepped out to open the door behind him.

A tall, thin blonde exited the vehicle and surveyed the yard. Dressed in a rust-colored dress suit and brown high heels, she bore an unmistakable resemblance to Sidra. She barely acknowledged him as he trotted into the yard toward the house, but the man who stepped out the other side was not so oblivious to Levi’s presence.

“Sir, might I have a word with you?” Although the man’s voice was softer than Philippe’s and more refined than Sidra’s attacker, the accent was unmistakable.

Levi turned toward him, one eyebrow cocked as he surveyed the smaller, mustached man.

“How can I help you?”

“We are looking for our niece—” The squeak of the back door opening caught the man’s attention, and he stepped past Levi without another word. “Mr. Tanner, it’s good to see you again. I am glad to see you greatly recovered from your wounds. We have come to claim our niece and take her home.”

“I see you’ve met my brother Levi,” Teddy said coldly.

“Ah, yes, Mr. Levi Tanner. I should have known.” The man turned back to Levi with his hand outstretched. “It’s a pleasure to meet you.”

Levi grasped the man’s hand and stared deep into the insipid gray eyes. He’d made a life out of reading people, knowing what they were after, and why. Although this man said he was here for Sidra, the reason why remained to be seen. Something in his gaze told Levi it had less to do with Sidra’s wellbeing than he let on.