Beautiful Beast (Gypsy Heroes #3)(119)

I know I am never going back to that life. It is clear what I need to do. No turf war. Not while I am alive. Carefully, I weigh all the options open to me, all the situations that could arise. Each one of them calls for a true truce. We’ve had an uneasy truce for too long.

In the distance I can see a yacht. People are sunning themselves on the deck. A woman is standing in a bikini, a hand shading her eyes against the afternoon sun.

She starts waving to me. I stop and turn to look at the beach. I could have gone farther, but I can see Lily standing at the water’s edge. I cannot see her face, but I can tell by the tense and fixed way she is standing that she is worried about me. I turn around and start to swim back toward her. As soon as I am standing on the sand she runs to me. She does not say anything, just hugs me tightly.

‘I’m so sorry. I’ll never put my phone on silent mode again,’ she almost sobs.

I lift her out of the water and lay her on the sand. The sea has rejuvenated me but has made her tense and frightened. Her eyes are wide and bright. I place my wet palms on the insides of her thighs—they are warm and gritty with sand—and part them. The sun shines down on us, warming my back. Droplets of sea fall on her face; it is already a lovely shade of gold. Her nipples taste salty when I bite them. She pulls at my hips and screams for more. I force more of me into her. Our coupling is frantic, urgent and wild. There are no sea breezes, but watched by the sea, the sun and the rocks it is the perfect f*ck.

Afterwards, we dress and go up the steps hand in hand. I have never felt closer to another human being. Then Dominic calls and I know that once again I will be wiping blood from my body.





Lily

Evening descends and from every corner night fragrances rise. Every living thing, the grass, the trees, the flowers, the people all bring into the leisure of night their own scent.

And that crowd of odors surrounds us as we sit in the open-air restaurant that Jake has brought me to. I raise my glass of wine and take a sip. It is perfectly chilled. I lick the beads of condensation off the glass. They have their own taste. I look up and he is staring at me. I blush.

‘Tell me about your childhood,’ I say to cover my sudden gaucheness.

‘Until my father…died, I was happy. We never had much money because he was an incurable gambler. I remember that my mother kept debts with everyone, even with the butcher who provided her with the cheapest cuts of meat, but even so we were truly a happy family.’

I look at him with surprise. How accepting he is that his father was a gambler. There is no condemnation, no anger, no feeling that he has been deprived. Only a strange and impressive loyalty to family.

‘What about you? What was your childhood like?’ he asks.

I had it all down pat—an alcoholic father, a downtrodden mother, everything, the whole shebang, at the tips of my fingers—but I found I couldn’t say the words. I didn’t want to lie to him! I blinked in surprise. What the hell? I was going to f*ck up my first assignment. Make him suspicious.

‘I’ll tell you about my family another time,’ I say, and wanting to distract him I reach out and touch his fingers. Immediately, they move to clasp mine.

I look at our entwined fingers and an old, tired ache of once when I was insane breaks into me and eats at my bones. Its return makes me angry. How pathetic. Sentimental fool. There is no one here I can call my own. This man will never be mine. He will never share my pain. I am here to do a job. I am here to crush him, not to long for him as one does a beloved. I am here to save other people’s sons and brothers from dying unnecessarily because of men like him. I look up at him.


‘Are you all right?’ he asks.

This time I won’t allow myself to dissolve in my own grief. This time I will recognize myself. It is simple. It is beautiful. I am not lost. I am strong. I can do this. I smile. Harden my heart and speak.

‘I’m fine. You want to know about my family? Let me tell you about them. My father was an alcoholic. I’m not sure if he is still alive. And my mother was a downtrodden, weak woman. She let him beat her and me. When I was fifteen I ran away.’

‘I’m sorry,’ he says softly, and begins to stroke the inside of my wrist. The movement is gentle and tender, and suddenly I feel like bursting into tears.

‘I’m so sorry I asked,’ he says.

I look at him. There is an expression of such caring tenderness in his face. Oh, the irony. He thinks I am upset to remember my past. That makes me feel worse. I shake my head. ‘It’s OK. You said you wanted to come here to think. Have you managed to?’

His eyes darken. ‘Yeah, but I’m afraid my plans have been rather turned on their heads.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘My brother, Dominic, you haven’t met him yet, have you?’

I shake my head.

‘He’s a bit of a hothead. He got drunk and went to one of the Pilkingtons’ clubs and challenged Billy Joe Pilkington to a bare knuckle fight.’

‘God! But how does a drunken dare affect your plans?’

‘Billy Joe Pilkington is an animal. If he fights my brother he will do serious damage to him. I cannot allow that. I am the head of this family and they are my responsibility. I will fight on behalf of the Eden family. Maybe that will be the end of this silly feud.’

I stare at him aghast. ‘That’s just barbaric. Nobody fights to settle a dispute anymore. This is the twenty-first century.’