the ring had been planted on the dead girl’s hand.
And the dead girl … who was she? Kingsley had barely glanced at the newspaper article Søren had uncovered. A young runaway from Quebec coming to America for a better life. What did she run from? An abusive father? A broken heart? Poverty? Or was she running to something, or someone? Whatever reason, she deserved better than to die like that, her body so torn up by the rock that had killed her they’d had to carry her away in two bags. It seemed too convenient to imagine the girl had been the victim of a simple accident, falling from the cliff to her death. He and Søren had had to abandon the hermitage where they’d had their assignations. Perhaps the girl had taken refuge there in the winter and Marie-Laure had met her on one of her long walks. Had his sister befriended the girl? Had they shared confidences? Did Marie-Laure tell the girl all about her marital troubles? The husband who wouldn’t touch her? Did Marie-Laure lure her to the edge of the cliff and push her to her death? Her shock at seeing him and Søren kissing seemed genuine at the time. Kingsley had wanted her to see them together, had timed his confrontation with Søren in the hopes Marie-Laure would discover them in some state of passion or undress. Then she would know the truth without either of them having to tell her. Then she could see how much Søren loved Kingsley, not her. Then she would understand the truth and move on.
Foolish boys they were. Children playing dangerous games after dark, as Søren had said. So foolishly wrapped up in lust for each other they never even noticed that Marie-Laure was playing her own dangerous game with them.
Now Nora could end up like that runaway on the snowy ground. And that left Kingsley with no choice but to do now what he merely fantasized about thirty years ago.
He would see his sister dead.
The phone rang and Kingsley answered it in an instant.
“Report.”
“I miss you, monsieur,” came a rich, honeyed voice on the other end of the line. “How is that for a report?”
Kingsley sighed as he felt tension releasing from his body like air from a popped balloon.
“Jules, you’re breaking the rules,” he teased. Hearing her voice, her laugh, was everything he needed and the last thing he wanted.
“You can punish me for it when I come home. I know you told me not to call until you said I could, but I had to hear your voice. It’s been a week.”
“A very long week, my Jewel. And it’s only getting longer.”
Kingsley ran a hand through his hair and wished it was Juliette’s hand on him. Søren had destroyed him during their night together. He needed Juliette’s touch to restore him again. But that would have to wait.
“Let me come home. Let me take care of you. It’s my place.”
“You have to take care of yourself now. It’s not safe here.” He wanted to say more, to tell her the truth of what had happened. The risk was too great, however. No woman in the world submitted more beautifully in the bedroom and acted so independently outside of it. If she knew how bad it had gotten, she’d be on the next flight back to the city, his orders be damned. “You can come home when it is safe. No sooner.”
“Is it going to be like this from now on?”
“Oui,” he said without apology.
“Have you told le prêtre?”
“Non. He has too much on his mind now.”
“You try to protect us all,” Juliette said, and he heard the love in her voice—the love and the exasperation. “You must let someone take care of you. Let me take care of you.”
“I’m fine. I am. We all are.”
“Is he? Did Nora come back?”
Kingsley swallowed. He hated lying to his Juliette. She was as much his confessor as Søren was Nora’s.
“He’s been better. And non, she is not back yet. Juliette …” He paused to gather his words. With so many lies he had to give her some truth. “Søren and I, we were together.”
He heard that musical laugh of hers all the way from Haiti.
“No wonder you sound so tired.”
“It’s part of it, oui.” He laughed, too, but the laugh quickly died. “My Jewel, you know—”
“I know,” she said quickly and simply and without the slightest hint of judgment or fear in her voice. “I know you love him. I know he loves you, too.”
“He loves me? From your lips to God’s ears. He loves only her.”
“You forget we love more than one person. You do, she does, he does … I do.”
“You’ve fallen in love already?”
“Bien sûr. You’ll have to share me now.”
“As long as I have you at night.”
He pictured her now, his Juliette, standing on the balcony staring at the ocean, her statuesque beauty, her dark skin glowing in the fading evening sunlight. They’d met on a beach at the edge of the ocean, and he couldn’t see rising water without thinking of her. He’d never forget the first time he saw her. Some children on vacation had been pelting a native bird’s nest with stones. Juliette decided to give them a taste of their own medicine. A grown woman throwing rocks at the spoiled scions of white American tourists. He’d been doomed from the start.
“Every night, my love. All my nights are yours.”
Kingsley heard the front bell at the door and voices in the hall—Griffin and a woman’s voice. A woman’s voice he’d never heard before.
“I must go. No rest for the wicked,” he said.
“Mon roi,” she whispered, and Kingsley’s heart clenched at the name she called him only in their most private moments. “Please, be safe. I need you.”
A thousand times she’d whispered that to him … breathed it across silk sheets as she crawled to him, moaned it into his ear as he entered her. But those words had a new meaning now that had nothing to do with passion anymore.
“I need you, too,” he said. “I need you to do as I tell you. Stay there. Stay safe. You’ll be home soon.”
“Promise?”
He paused before answering. He could promise her nothing now, should promise her nothing.
“I promise.” Sometimes a needful lie was less a sin than the truth.
He hung up the phone and forced thoughts of Juliette from his mind. No time for emotion or sentimentality. No time for love, not when he had a job to do. And while no one on earth admired or adored women more than Kingsley, a battlefield was no place for them and he could not deny that his world had turned into a war zone. He and Søren would find a way to get Nora back. And her fiancé, Wesley, who was young but certainly no coward. Any man who braved the bed of Nora Sutherlin and the wrath of le prêtre could be called many things, but not a coward.
