Chapter 19
IT HAS BEEN TWENTY YEARS SINCE THE INFAMOUSLOCKWOODKIDNAPPING.EMERYLOCKWOOD IS NOW PRESIDENT OFLOCKWOODINDUSTRIES, THE COMPANY HIS FATHERELLIOT AND HIS UNCLERAND CREATED MANY YEARS AGO.DESPITE THE NUMEROUS SOCIAL FUNCTIONSELLIOT ANDMIRANDA ATTEND,EMERY HAS REMAINED RECLUSIVE, KEEPING WELL OUT OF THE PUBLIC EYE.
—New York Times, January 7, 2010
Emery’s parents’ mansion was packed. Expensive foreign cars lined the mile-long walk from the gate to the house, and valets in tailored suits bustled about the arriving guests. Japanese lanterns lit the grounds. A big brass band filled the air with old school jazz inside the ballroom. Everywhere people danced and laughed. The shimmer of jewels and expensive costumes made the room sparkle and shine. He wanted to enjoy the occasion. He hadn’t come to a costume party since he was a boy. But his heart wasn’t in it tonight.
He glanced across the ballroom to where Sophie was. Her ashen cheeks and haunted eyes wounded him just as much as her silence toward him all evening. She seemed to have withdrawn into herself, silencing her only guardian against whatever had upset her before they left his home. Her face was pale, almost sheet white, and she kept nibbling her lower lip in anxiety. Something had set her to this mood and had disrupted the sweet, sensual creature he’d made love to only an hour before. She’d been so wonderful then, teasing him as they’d dressed. The moment between them had been charged with electricity he’d never felt before with a woman. She soothed him, teased him, and lit a fire in his blood at the same time. She was everything he could want or need in a woman…in a wife.
The realization hit him like an avalanche, knocking him sideways. Christ. He cared about her. No…He loved her and wanted to spend the rest of his life with her. His own thoughts shocked him. As a child he’d never imagined sharing his life with anyone except his brother, but now he couldn’t imagine another moment without Sophie. Of course it was too soon to talk about that sort of thing with her. She was bright and independent. Hell, she might not want to get caught in a long term relationship with him. She had her entire life ahead of her, and he’d spent most of his hiding in the shadows. But he couldn’t let her go, not this one. She was everything to him.
After losing Fenn, he’d lost his sense of direction, like a painter losing his sight. Losing his other half had torn him apart, unmade him, until he was nothing but a speck of dust in the creator’s mind. Without Fenn, there was no Emery, but Sophie had restored him to the ranks of the living when he hadn’t even realized he’d been dead. She’d breathed life into him. She’d taught him to love, to laugh, to trust his heart again.
A sudden need to see her, to touch her, filled him at that moment. He scanned the crowd, finding her dancing with his father, the worried expression still lingering on her features. Her head was cocked at a small angle as she listened to whatever it was that his father was saying and she laughed. A pretty blush stained her cheeks, the sparkle of life temporarily restored.
“I hope you plan to keep her, Emery. She’s a special girl.” His mother’s voice made him start. He turned to find her standing there smiling up at him. He opened his arms and she hugged him, pressing a kiss to his cheek. It was getting easier and easier to let his mother through his crumbling guarded walls. Maybe someday they could be as close as they’d once been before…He didn’t want to think about the past. He wanted to look forward. Fenn was his past. Sophie was his future.
“I want to keep her, Mother. I do. I will make her mine.”
“A woman wants to know when she’s loved, Emery. That one doesn’t want money or jewels. She wants your heart. Can you give her that?” Miranda asked. The tragedy of losing Fenn had left a stark melancholy in her eyes that broke his heart, and that old guilt still ate away at him deep inside.
“Mother, I need to tell you about Fenn. What happened that night…?” His voice broke. She shushed him.
“I know what happened. You got separated…and he didn’t make it. Your father and I don’t blame you. Emery, I miss Fenn with every breath I take, but I am so thankful you survived.So thankful.” Tears filled her eyes and she brushed her hand over his cheek. The motherly stroke made the awful ache in his chest deepen.
“Look at us,” his mother chided. “This is a time for happiness. Now go steal that girl of yours back before your father woos her away from you.” His mother smiled, eyes still bright with tears. She patted his arm and turned away to speak to her other guests. He started to walk forward when someone bumped into him.
“Emery! So you decided to come after all.” His cousin Brant, dressed in black pants and a black shirt, slid his black mask off his face.
“Yeah, I figured I should.” Emery didn’t want to stop and chat, but it seemed Brant did.
“And your lovely little conquest? Where is she? Don’t tell me the bloom’s off that particular rose so soon.” Brant’s tone was teasing, but his eyes were anything but. The hardness there gave Emery momentary pause.
“She’s here.” He didn’t elaborate. For whatever reason, Brant wanted to throw him off and he wouldn’t allow his cousin to play mind games.
“Ahh…still taken with her? Well…have a lovely night, cousin.” Brant slid his mask back down over his face and vanished into the crowd of bodies.
His phone buzzed in his pocket. He would have ignored it but he never put his phone on vibrate. He slid a hand into his pocket and pulled out a cell phone. He frowned. It was not his phone. His wasgone. The hairs on the back of his neck rose and something pitched south in his stomach.
The caller ID read unknown. “What the hell?” He answered it. “Who is this?” he growled.
An all too familiar voice came through the line. “Hello Emery,” Antonio D’Angelo said.
“You piece of shit—” he started.
“Now, now, Emery. Is that any way to treat an old friend?”
“You burned down my stables, you killed my brother, you beat up my friend, and you tried to blow me to hell. I don’t think you’re running for friend of the year.”
Antonio laughed, pleasure evident in the sound, and it made Emery’s blood boil.
“Always so mouthy. I had such a delight in beating it out of you. But I do hate to correct you. As much as I wish I killed Fenn, I did not.”
“What?” Emery’s answer was a breathless gasp. His brain seemed to fill with a steady fog.
“Need I say it again? I was not there the night you escaped. My men were, but not me. I discovered your brother wasn’t dead only a few days ago. I’m surprised your little reporter hasn’t told you. She knows Fenn is alive. She and that hacker friend of yours have been keeping secrets from you, it seems.”
Emery’s heart stuttered to a rigid stop. The noise of the room faded to a distant buzz, his head cloudy with confusion.
