belonged to Blake and Josie—a simple fact.
It was for the best all around that he maintained his distance from her, she knew. It saved her from answering questions for which he would eventually demand answers. Still, there was regret associated with the knowledge. Just as there was a sudden, chest-tightening anticipation when, on the heels of those thoughts, Gregory walked in the door.
Her heart clenched, as it always did, when she saw him. His dark good looks and impressive presence set him apart even m this room full of men who were unequaled among men. Above all else, though, the tension strung tight around his mouth, the intensity in his eyes held her riveted as he walked unerringly toward her.
When he took her hand in his, relayed the need for silence through a quick, firm squeeze, she was filled with a sudden, intuitive awareness that what he was about to tell her would change her life forever.
Her heart skipped several beats. “Gregory... what is it?”
She searched his face with a heightening premonition of dread as he shook his head then sought and found his brother and the men who had been in on the Alpha rescue mission. With a clipped lift of his chin, he signaled them to follow him.
Her heart plummeted to her stomach as he led her in suspended silence to a small room off the main salon. Langley, Churchill, and Sterling, along with Blake and Josie, who had handed off the twins to Gregory’s parents, followed then shut the door behind them.
“What’s happened?” Panic had become a valid and violent contender for the apprehension that clogged her throat.
After a moment’s pause, Gregory captured her gaze with the same strength as his firm grip on her hands.
“Ivan Striksky is dead.” The softness of his voice was no cushion for the shock of his announcement.
The jolt weakened her knees. With Gregory’s solemn arrival, she’d expected news of Ivan. But this...
She felt suddenly as if she’d fallen into a vacuous tunnel, where sound, shape and texture blended together in a numbing, surreal kaleidoscope of confusion.
“Dead?” she heard someone ask and knew on a peripheral level that someone was her.
A circle of concerned faces closed supportively around her. She heard Josie’s soft voice whisper her name and urge her to sit down as Hank settled a protective hand to her back.
“What...how?”
A hush filled the room as the four men and one woman who were privileged to the specifics of Anna’s true identity and her midnight flight from Obersbourg listened in stunned amazement as Gregory related what details he had managed to find out about Prince Ivan Striksky’s suicide.
Two
She was running... running through maze after maze. Long bony hands grabbed at her. Chased unrelentingly. She was so tired. Her legs wouldn’t support her. She stumbled, searched, desperate to find a light that never came. For a haven that never opened to her. Then she was trapped And the hands. Hundreds of hands grabbed at her...
Heart racing, Anna bolted wildly up in bed, wrestled with tangled sheets. Stumbling blindly to the window, she threw it open, swallowing a scream. Even in the grips of the nightmare, her concern was for William. She didn’t want to frighten him. He’d been through enough.
A reassuring rush of arid, West Texas air hit her full in the face as she braced her palms on the sill. She dragged it in—deep, hungry drafts—and willed herself toward lucidity.
Clinging desperately to the reality that was now, she reached for the presence of mind that would assure her it was over. They were safe.
Even after months of haunting her nights, when the nightmare hit, it still took Anna by surprise. Tonight it was worse than the other nights. Tonight it had grabbed her by the throat. Had her heart slamming in her chest, her breath catching. The hideous grip of it had strangled her as darkness enfolded her in cloying, suffocating isolation.
Calmer now, she opened her eyes, felt a cool breeze feather across her perspiration-drenched skin and sagged in weary relief against the open window frame. Then she made herself recount the last four months in her mind to cement the fact one more time that it was really over.
She and William were safe.
The twins were safe with Blake and Josie.
And Ivan was dead.
Ivan was dead.
She shivered and drew away from the window as the memory of his suicide and the December breeze rustling her damp nightgown combined to pebble her skin with gooseflesh. Dragging a hand through her tousled hair, she sank back down on the edge of the bed, dug her palms into the blanket at her hips and forced several steadying breaths.
It was at times like these that she wished she could drink like some of the rowdy Texans she’d grown to know and appreciate since she’d arrived in Royal. A good, stiff shot of straight-up bourbon might settle the demons that had robbed her of yet another night’s sleep.
“Face them,” she whispered into the darkness.
There is no more fear, she reminded herself staunchly and willed the residual trembling in her hands to steady. No more fear. Only decisions that needed to be made. So many decisions—
A sudden pounding on her door shot her heart straight back to her throat. She vaulted to her feet, whirled toward the sound.
“Anna...Anna are you all right?”
Gregory.
Relief was swift and draining as she rushed toward the door, not wanting to wake William who was sound asleep in the other bedroom. When she reached the small foyer, she threw the deadbolt. With both hands clutching the heavy steel door, she opened it a crack and met the dark concern in a pair of hard blue eyes shaded by the brim of a coal-black Stetson.
Since those first few days when Gregory had settled her into this small apartment, he had never again crossed the threshold. The cool message of that statement had not been lost to her. He had come to her aid when she’d needed him, but he’d made it clear as a Texas sky that he wanted no part of her life. So seeing him here now, at this hour, on the heels of the nightmare, was beyond her comprehension.
“What... what are you doing here?”
His expression was as dark as the night, his eyes as cool as chipped ice. “I was on my way home from the Club when the lights on the alarm panel in my pickup lit up like a Christmas tree.”
She sagged against the door, raked the hair away from her face as understanding dawned. When he’d first shown her the apartment, he’d told her with terse words and military precision about the silent alarm he’d installed on all the windows and doors in the event Ivan found her. The alarm was electronically linked to the Texas Cattleman’s Club that he and the rest of the Alpha team frequented to his home in Pine Valley and his personal vehicles.
“I didn’t think. I...I had a bad dream,” she confessed with reluctance. “I needed some air and threw open the window. I’m sorry. I forgot about the alarm system.”
Greg stared down at the woman who had created enough
