“Do you think I’m making the right choice?”
Zael’s expression was mild, deliberately neutral. “Only you can answer that.”
She nodded and took a sip of the sparkling water. Zael seated himself across from her at the dining table, then attacked his culinary masterpiece with abandon.
He seemed relaxed, confident, and unrushed, but Jordana hadn’t missed the fact that at some point that day, he’d acquired a slender, gleaming sword from somewhere in the villa.
The long blade leaned against the table at his right, easily within his reach.
It didn’t look like any other kind of blade she’d seen before. The steel was inscribed with some kind of ancient-looking lettering and symbols. And the pommel bore the symbol Jordana now recognized as the Atlantean mark.
“You don’t really think you’ll need that, do you?”
Zael lifted one bulky shoulder as he shoveled another mouthful of food to his mouth. The corner of his lips quirked with unrepentant male pride. “If I do, don’t worry. I know how to use it.”
As he finished speaking, the joviality faded from his eyes. He dropped his fork, face turning lethal in an instant.
Jordana glanced behind her to the open French doors to the terrace. A man stood there, dark and grim in his black combat fatigues. Shock and disbelief—along with a piercing, desperate hope—sprang to life inside her.
She pivoted and started to rise. “Nathan?”
She had barely gasped his name before Zael was in motion.
One second, he was seated across from her at the table; the next, gone and materialized again to stand in front of her like a full-body shield. He held his Atlantean sword in a defensive angle in front of them, poised to kill.
While Zael squared off at Nathan, Nathan stood unarmed, all of his weapons holstered and sheathed, his hands held loosely at his sides.
“No.” She put her palms briefly on the Atlantean male’s shoulders, her eyes locked on Nathan in tentative, uneasy question. “It’s okay, Zael. Nathan is my … he’s with the Order.”
The tension in Zael’s big body relaxed only slightly. He didn’t lower his blade, but he didn’t move to attack either.
Nathan said nothing, his thundercloud eyes moving away from Jordana’s protector to her, standing behind Zael. His gaze was unreadable in the shadows of the terrace patio. His face remained impassive, emotionless and schooled.
More than anything, Jordana wanted to move around Zael and rush into Nathan’s arms.
Instead, she stayed the impulse, terrified of his rejection. And she was still too wounded by the way things had ended between them last night to risk another heartbreak.
In the heavy silence, Zael took a step away from Jordana. The look he turned on her said he understood that Nathan was the man she’d been thinking of earlier today. The man she’d been longing for when she spoke of the way few had considered how she wanted to live her life or where her heart might be the happiest.
Zael’s wise, ageless gaze said he recognized that this was the man she loved.
He gave her a faint, almost reverent, bow of his head. “You’ll want some privacy, no doubt. I’ll be just in the other room, if there is anything you need.”
“No,” Jordana murmured. As relieved and hopeful as she was to see Nathan standing there, she was afraid of what she might hear. Afraid for what the Order might have done to her father.
Afraid for herself, and the heart that was beating so frantically in her breast, a heedless organ that wanted to forgive Nathan and believe she meant something to him simply because he was there.
But she didn’t know why he had come, and she refused to be the trusting, naive fool after everything that had happened since she last saw him.
“No, Zael. I want you to stay,” she told him. “Anything the Order has to say to me can be said in front of you.”
Nathan exhaled a short sigh, the first crack in his iron-clad composure. “I guess I deserve that.”
Jordana held tight to her resolve, but his low voice still had the power to make something inside her melt. He glanced at Zael briefly as the Atlantean relaxed his stance with his blade, then settled back on his heels to remain, at Jordana’s request.
“Are you all right?” Nathan took a step toward her, emerging into the light of the villa’s living room. “You haven’t been hurt?”
“No. Not by Zael.” Sharp words, but she couldn’t bite them back. She steeled herself as Nathan took another few steps inside. “Where’s my father? What have you and the Order done to Martin Gates?”