Glow (Glimmer and Glow #2)(3)
But Dylan had a right to his worry, didn’t he? He’d earned it. He’d been consumed for more than half his life at the idea of finding Alan Durand’s kidnapped and assumed-dead daughter, Adelaide “Addie” Durand. Everyone else had long ago accepted that Addie had been murdered and lay in some long-forgotten makeshift grave. It was Dylan’s unwavering conviction—a stubborn refusal to concede defeat, a bullheaded determination even against horrible odds that had been born and bred in his youth in the rough, unforgiving streets of Chicago’s West Side—that had eventually led Dylan to Addie.
But Alice had no such personal ties or strong feelings toward Adelaide Durand. To her, that privileged, adorable little girl was a distant tragedy. If anything, that child was relevant primarily because of the singular effect Addie had on Dylan’s life.
That’s what Alice told herself, anyway, as she stood in that cool dark room, chilled to the bone.
She wavered on her feet, suppressing a powerful longing to get back into bed and cuddle against Dylan’s solid length. The vision of Lynn Durand’s exquisite bracelet flashed into her mind’s eye again.
Bizarre as it seemed, that bracelet was not just a random dream created by Alice’s unconscious mind. Her recollection of that bracelet was a genuine memory. Because as much as she was struggling to believe it, Dylan swore it was the absolute truth.
According to Dylan, Alice Reed and Adelaide Durand were one and the same person.
*
IT was the second time in a week that Dylan awoke in the dark room to find his arms empty. Instinct told him that it was still too early for him to escort Alice to the camp, a clandestine ritual they went through every morning before dawn. Neither of them wanted the Durand managers or the VP of human resources, Sebastian Kehoe, to know that Alice had taken up with the CEO of the company. What was between Alice and him was complicated and powerful.
And it was their business alone.
At least for now it was.
Dylan wasn’t sure how long he could keep Alice and Durand Enterprises in separate spheres. For all intents and purposes, Alice was Durand Enterprises. She just didn’t want to—or couldn’t—accept that reality as of yet.
“She’ll let you know when she’s ready to hear certain things, Dylan. She won’t ask what she doesn’t want to know. That’s nature’s way; the unconscious mind’s attempt at shielding her from the truth until she’s ready to handle it.”
It was his friend Sidney Gates’s voice that he heard in his head. Sidney was a psychiatrist, and an old friend of Alan Durand’s. He was very familiar with Addie’s—and Alice’s—history. Dylan trusted his opinion more than anyone else’s when it came to Alice’s state of mind at that point.
The problem is, Sidney had also compared Alice to an undetonated cache of explosives. No one knew for sure what would set her off at this point.
Alarmed by the thought, he reached blindly, finding his cell phone on the bedside table. He squinted at the time. No, he’d been right. It was only a few minutes past two in the morning, way too early for Alice to be up and preparing to return to the camp.
He rose from the bed with just as much haste and alarm as that first time, but on this occasion with more certainty that he knew where to find her. The knowledge didn’t quiet his worry any. He switched on a bedside lamp and hauled on some jeans.
He found Alice standing square in the middle of the empty large bedroom suite in the west hall, her fists clamped tight at her sides. Her long toned legs were naked. They looked strangely vulnerable in the bright glow of the overhead chandelier.
Tension coiled tight in his muscles. On that other night when he’d found a disoriented Alice standing in the hallway, she’d claimed to have seen a woman; a woman Dylan knew to have been dead for nearly twenty years. It was as if her long-buried, resurging memories were too foreign for her to process, so they’d leapt into the solid surroundings of her waking world, like a weird unconscious hologram effect. Or at least that’s how Sidney Gates had tried to explain it to Dylan.
It was so hard, not knowing what to expect from her from one moment to the next. He felt like he could only be certain of her when he was making love to her, when she was entirely present in the moment with him, abandoning herself to pleasure.
To him.
“Do you remember who this room belonged to now?” he asked from behind her, his voice echoing off the bare walls of the large, mostly empty suite. She’d accused him of manipulation and lying when she’d realized he’d purposefully kept her from entering this room. That was before he’d told her the truth about her identity.
He was glad when she started slightly and turned her head, meeting his stare. She looked fully alert. Since Alice had come to Castle Durand, there were a few times when she’d go still in his presence, and it’d been like the ghosts of her past flickered in her eyes.
Is that what he was to her? A ghost?
“Was it Addie Durand’s room?” she asked slowly, her low hoarse voice causing his skin to roughen.
His heart knocked against his sternum, even though he knew his appearance remained calm. No matter how hard he was trying—no matter how much he understood—he couldn’t entirely adjust to Alice’s distant, disconnected attitude about Adelaide Durand. It was . . .
Eerie.
He nodded and stepped toward her. “It was originally the nursery, and it had just been remodeled as a bedroom before Addie was taken. Addie’s ‘big girl’ bedroom,” he added with a small smile. “Are you remembering?” he asked her again cautiously.