Eternal Hope (The Hope Series) (28 page)

“You needn’t stand on ceremony. If I don’t lend you a shirt, take one. That’s only if you want to, of course. I’m more than happy for you to sleep au naturale.”

She gave a hard laugh and poked her tongue out at him. “Says Mr. I Love You Too Much To Disrespect You.”

He’d never really thought about it that way, but she’d essentially hit the nail on the head. He gave her a scandalous smile. “Doesn’t mean I’d dream of hindering your sleep because you were uncomfortable. In the interests of comfort, if the desire ever takes you, please feel free to strip off.”

She leaned into him, producing an open-mouthed smile that curled coyly up on the right hand side. In a flash she twisted up so that she was straddling him. It took less time still for her to whip her shirt over her head and drop it down onto his chest. Her bra was simple and black, which made it sexier than trashy lingerie somehow. “I’m feeling more comfortable already.”

He hadn’t expected that. The blood fired in his veins, filling his head with a million different urges. She looked like she was a little surprised to find herself in this position, too. But now she was there, she obviously wasn’t going to move. For a moment he thought she panicked as her hands twitched, like she wanted to cover herself up, but instead she rolled back her shoulders. There was something defiant about that action, daring him to resist touching her.

He couldn’t.

He reached out and placed his hands cautiously on her hips. He positioned them over her jeans so that his index fingers and thumbs were the only part of him in contact with her bare skin. She shuddered, and Daniel squeezed his eyes shut. He sat up and buried his hands in her hair, pulling her into a rough kiss. “You’re trying to kill me, aren’t you?” he groaned against her mouth.

She tugged on his lower lip with her teeth. “Only a little.”

“
Evil
.” He scooted to the edge of the bed and stood up, lifting her with him. “I’m putting you in a cold shower.”

“Are you coming too?”

“Don’t tempt me.”

She laughed and buried her face into his neck. This was what it was supposed to feel like: easy and content, if, admittedly, a little wound tight. He walked through to the bathroom and placed her on the tiles, doing his utmost not to let his gaze linger too long on her porcelain skin. He was about to show her where the towels were when the sound of his cell phone interrupted him. He shook his head and backed out of the room. “It’ll be the others. They might want to meet. You think you can fend for yourself?”

She nodded, leaning into the shower to turn it on in a way that elongated her body, making her look graceful and slender. He really shouldn’t have encouraged her to take her clothes off. He dodged out of the room before he did something stupid, but the phone stopped ringing before he reached it.

Missed call from Grayson. Daniel hit redial and paced over to the window to look out on the world while the tone buzzed in his ear. The gentle rushing of the shower sounded in the background.

“Daniel.” Grayson always did that- answered the phone by saying his name in a brusque way that made him sound displeased.

“
Grayson
,” Daniel returned. “We’re just getting ready. Where are you?”

“Still in Montana.”

Daniel let a pause stretch out, hoping Gray would explain why on earth they weren’t in Los Angeles, but, as usual, he wasn’t forthcoming. You always had to work a little harder than normal with him. “Please tell me you’re joking.”

“Unfortunately not. Tess wouldn’t leave until Oliver came home, and guess what?”

“Oliver hasn’t come home?”

“Correct. We’ve been out all night looking for him but it’s like he vanished into thin air. Kayden’s gone too, and Cassie and Anna are ready to take off. I am not prepared to deal with a hormonal eighteen-year-old on my own, Daniel. When I was eighteen, people did not behave like they were mentally challenged, and they didn’t use language like this girl does, either.”

As if to prove the point, Tess muttered something in the background that sounded suspiciously like
tuck new.
“You’ll cope, Gray. It’s been over thirty-six hours. Oliver hasn’t called her?”

“No. And I can almost see why.”

Again, a snarled string of expletives rattled down the phone. Daniel turned from the window to find Farley hovering in the doorway wearing a towel, water beading across her bare shoulders and down her arms. She cocked her head to one side. “What’s up?” she mouthed. He didn’t get to tell her; Grayson started talking again.

“I’ve got a bad feeling about this. What do you want me to do?”

Daniel bit down on his jaw. Why did everyone look to him for guidance when things started falling apart? At no point had he signed up for a leadership role, and yet the mantle had fallen on his shoulders. It was time to take the damn thing off. “I don’t know. Whatever you think best. Try and find Kayden.”

“Kayden should be with you. He’s Farley’s protector. If you see him, send him back here?”

“Sure. I’ll arrange some rooms for when you guys arrive.” He hung up the phone and scowled. Farley hiked her towel higher under her armpits and flicked her wet hair over her shoulder.

“Was that Grayson?”

“Yeah. They’re still at the cabin. Oliver’s MIA, and Kayden’s off grid, too.”

“Did they have any news about Cliff and Brynn?” Her eyes were shadowed when she asked this. Daniel knew she was constantly worrying about them, and he didn’t have the heart repeat what everyone believed: that they were dead. Even Grayson wasn’t holding out any hope for his brother. Farley had barely spent a week with Cliff, but she’d obviously formed some sort of bond with him. Daniel pursed his lips and shook his head. “Sorry, baby. No news.”

Farley’s face fell, like she actually hoped the two men had come out of the woodwork. Her shoulders sagged a little. “We need help with this,” she said quietly. “With all of it.”

“I know.” Daniel grimaced and pressed his cell phone into his forehead, regretting his next move already. He’d never had to do this, and the prospect of calling for him was a bitter pill to swallow. “Kayden!” His voice was tight. Exasperated. “Kayden, get your ass here now!”

Farley looked at him like he’d gone mad. “You can call him like a pet dog?”

Ha! That was a joke. “Pet dogs are sometimes capable of behaving themselves and usually don’t pee on the carpet.
Kayden!
”

A clattering sound in the main room caught their attention and Daniel resentfully marched through. Kayden sat on the sofa, flicking through the TV channels with his feet up on the coffee table. He was wearing an LA Lakers basketball shirt and a pair of fluoro green board shorts.

“Hey, bro.”

Daniel gripped the back of the sofa, leaning directly into his line of sight. “Comfortable?”

Kayden grinned broadly and changed the channel. “Perfectly. Nice pad.”

“Where’s Oliver?”

“No clue.”

Daniel lunged forward and snatched hold of the remote, and the two of them played tug of war over it for a few seconds before Farley strode over and grabbed it out of their hands.

“You guys are like children. Kayden, where’s my brother?”

Kayden’s eyes travelled slowly over Farley’s half naked form. A little too slowly. A mischievous glint flashed in his eye, and Daniel leaned forward and punched him on the top of his arm. “
Focus
.”

“Difficult, but I’ll try. I’ll use more words this time. Maybe padding out the sentence will carry more meaning.” Kayden cleared his throat. “I, Kayden, messenger to the Quorum, have absolutely no clue where Oliver, your girlfriend’s brother and boyfriend to Tess, is currently located at this specific point in time.”

Brutal images flashed through Daniel’s head; most of them involved beating Kayden repeatedly until he lost consciousness, or kicking his ass directly out of the window so he missiled to the sidewalk a hundred feet below. The whispers inside him roused, like they wouldn’t mind watching that show. Regretfully, he ignored them. “Have you even looked for him?”

“Yes, I’ve looked for him. Endlessly. What do you think I’ve been doing?”

It was better not to answer that. Daniel clenched his jaw. “So what’s going on? I thought you were all-knowing.”

“Hardly. I know what I’m supposed to know. Right now I know that Oliver isn’t in Montana, and he isn’t anywhere else on this damned planet that I can pinpoint, either.”

Farley tensed, looking from one to the other. “I’m going to get dressed.” She slipped out of the room, leaving them alone. Kayden reached out and picked up the TV remote from the arm of the sofa where she’d left it.

He changed the channel yet again and focused on the TV. A chat show host was introducing some foppish-looking kid from a new movie that the teenage girls in the audience were going crazy for. Hell, even the older women seemed taken with him. This seemed to intrigue Kayden; his brow creased into confused lines. “You understand what’s going on here?”

“I have
no
idea.”

“Huh.” Kayden stabbed at the power button and the screen blinked into blackness. “He’s been unraveling- Oliver has,” he said. “I had to fix Tess up a couple of days ago. She said he had nothing to do with it but it was pretty obvious he did.”

“And you’re only telling me this now because…?”
Knowing Oliver was losing it a week ago would have been useful. He could have kept an eye on him. He could have helped him. Trust Kayden to be oblivious when it came to important information that affected the group.

“I promised Tess I wouldn’t tell. And besides, you’re
so
tight with Oliver. I thought you’d have noticed something major like erratic mood swings and unexpected outbursts of violence. Aren’t they your areas of expertise?”

“Only in the same way that deceit and betrayal are yours.” Daniel turned away, looking out of the window. A Doppler shift of sirens bled out across the city, telling a story of violence, pain and suffering that the day felt too young and ill-prepared to handle. Kayden came and stood beside him, folding his arms across his chest. He watched the city below them too, the way one might study an ant farm.

“Are you going to tell her?”

“What? That her brother’s losing it and can’t handle the power he’s hardwired into? No, not yet.”

“I didn’t mean that. I meant about what happened in London.”

Daniel froze, his palm pressed flat against the cool window. “I haven’t decided.” That wasn’t true; he was going to tell her, it was just taking time to build up the necessary courage to rehash the whole thing. Kayden apparently saw through the lie.

“You should tell her soon.”

“Whoa. A little keen there. Aren’t you worried? Don’t you think she’ll be angry?”

Kayden tucked his chin into his chest and sighed. “Sure she will. She loves you, doesn’t she? I trust her, though. I don’t think she’ll judge me quite as harshly as you.”

A stab of pain ran through Daniel’s body, surprising him with how much it still hurt. “You might be right. She probably won’t. But there’s a reason why I judged you that way.”

“I know,” Kayden said quietly. “And I’m sorry. But with everything that’s going on, you have to try and forgive me.”

“I can’t.”

Kayden’s words were barely audible. “You have to
try
.” He leaned forward so his forehead pressed against the glass. “If you don’t, this poison between us is going to cost us everything. How are we supposed to protect her if we’re constantly fighting? And she deserves to know the truth. You’re playing with fire, Daniel. Keeping things from her is a dangerous game. You need to tell her about what happened, and you need to tell her about her brother, too.”

The bitter, angry part of Daniel that had fuelled his hatred for Kayden for the last half century fumed, demanding he lash out and push him away. Who did he think he was, telling Daniel how he should handle his relationship with Farley? How dare he think he knew her better than him. How dare he try and tell him how to run his life. But the rest of him, the part still reasonable enough to see sense, overruled that volatility. It was like throwing a fire blanket over his burning body, and when the flames went out, all that was left was a sadness that ran soul-deep. Kayden wasn’t trying to be a jerk. He wasn’t taking pleasure in this. He was actually trying to help.

Letting go of all the hatred inside him didn’t feel good. It had strengthened him for so long, and without it he felt unprotected- raw and wounded. He pushed away from the window, unwilling to wallow in the moment.

“I’ll think about it.”

Farley wandered into the room, her hair in messy braids, wearing a blue summer dress that made her look fragile and too delicate. She should have been wearing body armor. “You’ll think about what?”

He shot a look at Kayden. He remained immobile, staring out of the window with his arms locked across his body. Daniel sighed.

“Trying.”