Jayne Castle - Deception Cove

Alice stilled. Something had changed quite drastically in the atmosphere. She was not at all certain where things were going.

“I understand your approach to life and business,” she said. “Why don’t you want me to admire you for it?”

“Because I want you to love me instead,” Drake said, “the way I love you.”

A great sense of warmth and wonder welled up from some place deep inside Alice. She looked into Drake’s silver eyes and saw the silver fire that burned in the depths. She touched his cheek.

“I thought you knew,” she whispered. “You’re the one who sees what others don’t see.”

“What did you think I saw?”

“That I love you,” she said. “That’s what I was going to tell you today when we left Ethel Whitcomb’s mansion. Took me a while to recognize the feeling. I’ve never been in love before.”

“Alice.”

He started to pull her into his arms.

Evidently fearing that he was about to get squashed, Houdini stirred abruptly and bounded down to the floor. He whisked across the room, heading for the open slider. At the door he paused for a cheerful chortle before dashing out onto the balcony and hopping up onto the railing. Alice caught a glimpse of his small, furry frame silhouetted against the green light of the Dead City Wall before he took off into the night.

And then she stopped thinking about Houdini because Drake was kissing her in the luminous psi-and-fire-lit night.

A long time later they lay together, stretched out on the sofa in front of the fireplace. They were both still fully clothed, although Alice’s pants and blouse were rumpled. Her initial sense of wonder had worn off. Reality came crowding back.

“What about your family?” she said quietly. “Will they accept me?”

“Accept you?” Drake laughed. “Get real. When they find out you’ve agreed to marry me, they’ll fall all over themselves in gratitude. They were afraid that I was never going to get past what Tucker did to me, that I would never find the right woman.”

Alice twisted a little in his arms. “When did you decide that I was the right woman?”

“I knew that the first night we met. Why in hell do you think I rushed you into that Marriage of Convenience the following morning?”

“What?” Alice struggled to a sitting position. “Are you telling me the MC wasn’t about protecting me from Ethel Whitcomb?”

“I told myself that it was a good strategy for keeping her away from you. And it was true, up to a point. But there were other ways of handling people like Ethel Whitcomb.” Drake tangled his fingers in Alice’s hair. “From the moment I saw you in the alley behind the theater dodging those thugs, I wanted you. When you kissed me in that parking garage after we got the MC, I figured I had a chance. After we spent our wedding night in the cove watching each other’s backs in that damn fog I knew I would do whatever was necessary to keep you close.”

“I kept telling myself not to mistake sexual attraction for love,” she whispered. “But I knew from the beginning that what I felt for you was not just physical in nature. It’s as if I’ve been waiting all my life for you to show up.”

Drake smiled. “We’ve both waited long enough. What do you say to a quick, quiet Covenant Marriage and another honeymoon on Rainshadow?”

“A third honeymoon on Rainshadow? Sure, why not?” Alice smiled. “A romantic island paradise teeming with escaped sea monsters living in flooded caves, giant mutant insects, and ancient ruins full of dangerous Alien technology—not to mention an underground labyrinth of uncharted catacombs. What could possibly go wrong?”

“We were made for each other. We can handle anything that comes along.”

A sparkling tide of knowing and a sense of profound certainty flowed through Alice.

“Yes,” she said. “Yes to everything, Drake Sebastian.”

He kissed her for a very long time. After a while he got to his feet, picked her up in his arms, and carried her into the lingering shadows of the bedroom.

HOUDINI AND THE OTHERS PLAYED THE NEW GAME OF hide-and-seek among the ruins inside the great Wall that surrounded the Dead City. The centuries-old ethereal quartz towers glowed in the night, offering virtually unlimited hiding places for dust bunnies. They raced around, darting in and out of the ancient structures until shortly before dawn.

When the first light of the new day illuminated the sky, they left the long-abandoned ruins. They dined on leftover pizza that had been discarded in a trash container in the alley behind a nearby Old Quarter restaurant. A good time was had by all.

The ruins left behind by the long-vanished Aliens held many ancient secrets. But the future on Harmony was with the humans and their games and their pizza.

IF IT HAD NOT BEEN HORRIBLY OBVIOUS THAT CHESTER Brady was already dead, Lydia Smith might have strangled him herself.

Her first assumption when she rounded the corner into the shadowy Dead City Tomb wing of Shrimpton’s House of Ancient Horrors was that Chester was pulling another scam. It had to be some bizarre con tactic designed to steal her new client prospect right out from under her nose before she could get his name on a contract.

It was so typical of the little sneak. And after all she’d done for him.

She came to a halt and stared at the leg and arm hanging limply over the side of the ancient sarcophagus. Maybe it was just a weird gag this time. After all, Chester’s sense of humor did lean toward childish pranks.

But there was something a little too realistic about the way he was slumped in the not-quite-human-shaped coffin.

“Maybe he just fainted or something,” she said, without much hope.

“Don’t think so.” Emmett London glided around her and walked forward to gaze down into the green quartz burial box. “He’s very dead. You’d better call the authorities.”

She took another cautious step forward and saw the blood. It had drained from Chester’s throat into the bottom of the coffin.

The reality of what she was staring at hit her with a numbing jolt. She could not believe it. Not Chester . He was a thief and a con artist, the kind of shady character who gave a bad name to all legitimate antiquities dealers and respectable para-archaeologists, but he was a friend, too. Sort of.

She swallowed heavily. “An ambulance?”

Emmett looked at her. Something about his gaze made her uncomfortable. Maybe it was the eerie gold-green hue. It was a little too close to the color of her pet dust bunny’s second pair of eyes, the ones it used for hunting.

“There’s no rush on the ambulance,” Emmett said. “I’d start with the police if I were you.”

Easy for him to say, Lydia thought. The problem was that the first person the cops would want to talk to would probably be her. Everyone on Ruin Row knew that she’d had a furious argument with Chester last month because the little creep had snaffled off her first potential client.

Oh, God, Chester was dead—genuinely dead . It was difficult to grasp the concept. This wasn’t another one of his convenient disappearing acts designed to keep him one step ahead of an enraged client. This time his death was for real.

She suddenly felt light-headed. This could not be happening.

Deep breaths, she thought. Take some deep breaths. She would not fall apart. She would not lose it. She was not going to crack under stress the way everyone expected her to do.

With an effort she pulled herself together.

She glanced up from Chester’s body and found Emmett London watching her. His expression was oddly thoughtful, even mildly curious in a detached sort of way. It was as if he was waiting to see how she would react, as if her response to the sight of a dead body in a sarcophagus was merely an interesting academic puzzle.