The matching evening jacket was lying across a chair in the other room. She knew his habits, and she was certain he had taken just as much notice of her own.
“You don’t seem particularly concerned about the party tonight,” he commented as he stood behind her, his gaze going over her face, taking in the expert application of makeup.
“Should I be?” she asked, her brow arching.
“This is the first time you’ve been face-to-face with the Taites, other than Journey. I know it’s a complication you weren’t looking forward to,” Jordan said.
Her lips twisted bitterly. “True, but life is nothing if not a complication, wouldn’t you say, Jordan? Why should one more matter? Besides, they have no idea who I am, and no one at the party who matters has any idea who I am. Why should I be nervous?
Jordan leaned against the edge of the dresser, crossed his arms over his chest, and stared back at her.
“The whole Taite family will be there, Tey. Stephen and his wife, Lauren. Craig and his wife, Melisande, as well as the children. Craig’s son and heir, Royce, his daughters Alexa and Journey.”
She turned with a frown. “Isn’t that unusual? Stephen Taite had one child, Craig, but Craig has three.”
“Unusual.” His lips pursed thoughtfully though his gaze was amused. “Perhaps Craig didn’t enjoy being an only child.”
“Mother said Craig was quite determined that there be no other children to share his parents’ time with him.” She remembered this as bits and pieces of conversations with her mother emerged. “She always appeared very fondly amused by the memory. Evidently, Craig was quite possessive of not just his parents, but also any inheritance he would receive when they died.”
“What’s your point?” he asked curiously.
Did she have a point? Other than the fact that she truly wasn’t nervous and was only now realizing how very little she knew about her family. Even though their youngest daughter worked for her, Tehya refused to listen to Journey discuss them.
“No point,” she finally shrugged as Jordan continued to watch her. “I’ve just always found that rather strange, I guess.”
“Why would it seem odd or strange to you if you have no intentions of revealing yourself to them?”
Tehya propped her hands on the dresser and stared back at herself in the mirror for a long, intense moment, before dropping her eyes and turning to stare back at Jordan.
She couldn’t bear to see
the emotions in her own eyes, or the haunted dreams she had never been able to give up on.
“Mother adored her family,” she said softly, frowning as her chest tightened with the pain of everything that had been lost over the years. “That was her only dream, to find a way home. The last call she made, before Sorrel caught up with her, after her parents’ deaths, she sounded broken.”
She had been broken, Tehya amended silently. She had heard it in Francine’s voice, the agony that couldn’t be healed, the knowledge there was no home left to return to.
“Trust no one, Tehya,” she had whispered without inflection, her voice hoarse, ragged, yet lacking emotion. “Swear to me you’ll never risk the rest of the family. But when you’re old enough, Tehya. When you reach your inheritance age, swear to me. Swear you’ll claim all that is left of what should be yours. Swear it. And when you do, you’ll find him. You’ll find the son of a bitch that helped Sorrel. You’ll make him pay. Swear it, damn you!”
Tehya had sworn. She had wanted to beg her mother to do it. Francine had been thirty-three years old. She’d had only seven years to go. At forty she could have claimed the inheritance and found her own vengeance.
Her mother had lived long enough to claim enough. Within a week of her parents’ death, Sorrel’s men had found her. They had found her, they had tortured her to death, for her.
Her mother had died protecting her.
“You were her family, too.” Jordan’s voice pulled her back from her memories. “You were her daughter.”
“I was her albatross,” she whispered, the muted grief that haunted her reflected in her voice, despite her attempt to hold it back.
“She cherished you,” Jordan reminded her. “If you had been her albatross then she would have let Sorrel have you.”
“And she lived in hell to protect me.” She couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t fail. She couldn’t let the past destroy her, or her mother’s death would have been in vain.
“She made me swear I would never involve family in this.” She turned to him, praying she was making the right choice in allowing Jordan to draw them in, even to the small extent he was involving them.
And now she was pushing it by going to a party the entire family was attending. A party where everyone would be speculating about the landscaping company owner and what she was doing with one of D.C.’s favorite sons, Jordan Malone.
“You’re not calling your family begging for help,” he pointed out. “You’re meeting them as someone totally unrelated to the great-niece Stephen Taite has no idea how to locate.”