“But it doesn’t have to be Dan’s!” Xander said acerbically. Then, to soften the point, he added, “But there’s no need to lose it. Keep it if you want. Why not?” It wouldn’t bother him if she did. It was Dan he was concerned about, not her.
“Yes, I would want to do that. I couldn’t risk—” She broke off.
“Risk what, Laurel?” There was an edge in his voice, he could hear it.
She looked at him straightly. “Risk being entirely in your power.”
His eyes narrowed. “That’s a loaded comment.”
Her expression tightened. “I’ve been on the receiving end of your anger. I still would be if you didn’t want to not upset Dan! So, no, I never want to be in your power, Xander. You hung me out to dry seven years ago.”
“With good reason!” Xander shot back.
Her eyes flashed, he could see it. “With no good reason! You made it clear to me, Xander, that none of the crew could be to blame, because they were all security vetted and totally loyal to the Xenakis family, and anyway, why would they put a bracelet they’d stolen into my suitcase? And you made it crystal clear that the saintly Olympia couldn’t possibly have been trying to frame me.”
“What reason would she have had to do that?” Xander demanded.
Where the hell had this come from? One moment he was telling her he had to put in time in Athens, and the next they were rehashing the tired old tale of her innocence in the face of irrefutable evidence to the contrary.
“To get rid of me, of course!” She was keeping her voice low, and drawing away from him. “She made it clear to me that I was de trop. That she was your intended bride and I was just your last bit of bachelor fun and games, and now my time was up. Helped on the way by her planting her bracelet on me, then running to you that it was missing. And—bingo!—the next thing, I was being personally chucked off your yacht, and cursed by you to kingdom come! And you still are cursing me—” She broke off.
Two flags of colour were flaring across her cheeks, but there was more than familiar anger in her face. She was biting her lip, turning aside. Xander stared after her, emotions scything. Hell and damnation, could they really not get through a conversation without everything kicking off again?
Belatedly—and gratefully—he realised that the group around the lambs was on the move. Dan was coming up to them.
“Those lambs are just mega, mega cute!” he exclaimed. “When they’re drinking the milk, their tails go round and round!”
“They do, don’t they?” Laurel smiled down at him. The flags of colour in her cheeks were fading, her expression easing.
“We’re seeing the baby chicks next,” said Dan. “Come on!” He caught her hand, pulling her after the knot of children and other parents following the farm staff towards a barn entrance. Xander followed as well. He was calming down, but emotion was still slicing through him. He’d said they must set all the ugliness between them aside, yet here it was again.
As they went into the barn and up to the pen where the baby chickens were, irradiated with warm red light, and Dan loosed Laurel’s hand to go up and look with the other children, Xander’s hand caught at hers instead, simply to stay her. She whipped it free instantly. He felt annoyance at her immediate repudiation. But let it pass.
“Laurel, we mustn’t let this happen. Flaring up again as we just did. It’s got to stop.”
She looked at him, mouth tight. “How can it? When you think what you think of me?” Something moved in her eyes. “Xander, why,whydo you refuse even the possibility that it was Olympia framing me? Why believe her, not me.”
He drew a breath. “I’d known her for years, Laurel. Her parents were—are—friends of mine. She would never have stooped to such a thing.”
He saw her eyes harden. “But I would, is that it? You knew that about me, did you?”
“I didn’tnotknow it about you. We’d been together three weeks, that’s all.”
Even as he spoke, though, he felt protest rise. Yes, he’d only known Laurel a handful of weeks, but nothing about her in that time had given him to suppose she might stoop to taking Olympia’s valuable bracelet. He had made to search Laurel’s suitcase only because he’d felt that to exclude her from scrutiny would be unfair to the crew, whose quarters had been searched by his steward. When he’d seen the glitter of the bracelet in the folds of Laurel’s clothes, it had been like a savage punch to the solar plexus.
I never expected it, never.
Shock—so much more than shock—had cut through him. Black rage had followed after, which he had loosed on her, hard, icy and condemning. Refusing to believe her protestations of innocence. As he still did…
Before his eyes, he saw her expression change. There was something new in it, something he hadn’t seen before.
Defeat.
“Have it your way,” she said tiredly. “I don’t care any more. Why should I? Nothing will make you think differently.”
She walked off, going up to Dan, lightly resting her hands on his shoulders as they gazed at the tiny yellow fluffballs milling around, avidly pecking at the feed scattered into their pen.
Xander looked after her. The angry, bitter emotions had ebbed, but something else had taken their place. But he didn’t know what. Only that he didn’t want to feel that bitter anger.
