“He will determine that the stone is fake,” Rafe reminded her as he stood, then helped her up beside him.
“Yes, but by the time he does, we’ll have reunited with your brothers, who understand this magic better than we do. Now, where are my coins?”
They found them scattered on the ground near the door, abandoned, as Mariah suspected they would be, likely left for Hector Velez to retrieve, along with Mariah’s bruised and battered body. Well, Velez would at least get half of what he expected. She returned the coins to the velvet bag and hid with Rafe behind an air-conditioning unit until, an hour later, two men arrived on the roof. Quickly, they retrieved the coins and then looked for Mariah. Rafe’s magic ensured that she was not found, and, after making a quick phone call to their boss, Velez’s men left.
“Do you think they’ll keep after you?” Rafe asked.
“They have what they want. Getting me as a punching bag would only have been icing on the cake. Let’s bail out. My name is bog water in the treasure-hunting game now anyway.”
Rafe arched a brow. He was becoming quite accustomed to the vernacular of the twenty-first century, but some expressions still eluded him.
“In other words,” she said, grabbing his hand, “let’s get out of here.”
With that, he could not agree more.
***
They rendezvoused with Ben and Cat at an airstrip not far from the hotel. Ben had had a helicopter ready to go, prepared to follow if Farrow Pryce had decided to take Mariah with him as some form of collateral or as an extra prize. Luckily, the wannabe magician had decided she was totally expendable. While Mariah ached from her flight across the roof, her primary pain came from Rafe’s expression whenever she grunted or hissed from residual soreness.
She’d reassured him that he’d had no choice but make Pryce’s magic look real, but his frown remained. She strongly suspected his feelings for her ran deeper than mere caring, and for that, she felt exponentially worse.
Ben flew them to Dallas, where they traded up to a private jet that delivered them to Florida. They arrived at the Chandler property in St. Augustine sometime after sunrise, so Mariah carried Rogan’s marker inside a courier bag Cat had given her, wholly aware that while Rafe had disappeared from sight, his self-recriminations and regrets had not.
From the expressions of the people in the lobby, she guessed she looked scary, with her bloodshot eyes and dirty clothes. She longed for a bath and a couple of hours’ sleep before she had to confront her inability to make the man who’d saved her yet again solid and whole.
“He’s not here,” Cat said shortly after talking to the front desk, and just as Mariah’s foot was about to cross the threshold into the elevator.
Ben grabbed Mariah’s elbow and pulled her out before the sliding doors shut.
“Who’s not here?” she asked, annoyed.
“Paschal. We’d asked the hotel staff to keep an eye on him and Gemma after they arrived,” Cat admitted, then exchanged a worried look with Ben. “They left before dawn.”
“They’d only just arrived,” Ben said. “Where did they go?”
Cat’s mouth thinned. “They wanted a ride down to the pier.”
“The island? Damn.”
“Why damn?” Mariah asked, completely confused. She couldn’t imagine why Paschal Rousseau or Paxton Forsyth or whatever his name was would leave this luxurious, completed hotel for a reportedly sparse, unfinished one on an island off the coast, especially when he knew that his long-lost youngest brother was on his way. Rafe had risked life and limb, both his and hers, to attend this reunion, unhampered by her drama with the coins or Farrow Pryce. The least his brother could have done after searching for sixty years was to exercise some patience.
“There are things on that island that Gemma Von Roan doesn’t need to be near,” Ben said, tugging Mariah toward the exit.
She pulled out of his grasp. “Hang on,” she insisted. “I’m dead on my feet, Ben. Swear to God, I don’t want to do anything to mess up this Forsyth family blowout, but I’ve got to get some sleep.”
The closer Rafe got to reuniting with his family without her being able to free him entirely, the closer she got to throwing up. She needed a soak. She owed Rafe some serious soul searching, at the very least. And for that, she needed to be alone.
“I have to make sure he’s okay,” Ben insisted.
She placed a hand on his shoulder and then did the same to Cat. “You guys go on. I swear, I’ll join you as soon as Rafe is, you know, solid.”
Ben looked at Cat with reluctance, but Cat nodded and took him by the hand. “We’ll call you if anything isn’t right. Stay safe.”
Mariah patted the bag and pressed the elevator button. “I can’t seem to do anything but, since Rafe came into my life.”
After a moment’s hesitation, Ben and Cat left, and a minute later the elevator dinged and Mariah practically threw herself inside. Though Rafe could usually speak to her even while in the phantom state, he’d remained quiet since sunrise. He’d gone through as much as she had in the past twenty-four hours. He deserved a good nap before meeting his brothers, too.
She noticed the opulence of the suite long enough to decide that Alexa Chandler had exquisite taste. She could only imagine what the woman was going to do with a castle. For Mariah’s part, though, all she required of a room right now was an unlimited supply of hot water.
She headed straight into the bathroom, turned on the faucets, then stripped out of her clothes, brushed out her hair and used the complimentary toothbrush to scrub away the last of the gritty taste in her mouth before she eased her aching muscles into the steaming water and turned on the jets.
So much had happened since she’d succumbed to her whim to fly to Germany and try to beat Ben out of some unknown treasure. For the first time in ten years, that particular chip had completely dissolved off her shoulder. Ben wasn’t such a bad guy. He just wasn’t for her. He had a family he cared about—a father he was willing to sacrifice everything for, including a chance for a real relationship with a great woman.
Catalina Reyes struck Mariah as patient, but Mariah couldn’t see her waiting forever for Ben to make a permanent commitment. Funny how she could sympathize when she’d never in her life made as much as a pinkie promise to anyone except herself.
She squeezed two travel-size bottles of lavender-scented bath gel into the water, which was now level with her stomach. The hot water and the soothing perfume of the liquid soap helped her ease back into the curved porcelain. Her mind drifted to Australia, where this whole mess had started.
If there was ever one thing her mother and father had both given her in spades, it was distance. Even when she’d lived with one or the other, she’d never quite fit in. But she’d always been connected to them, even after she ran away. Suddenly inspired, she leaned across the bubbles floating atop the scalding water and reached for the phone.
Once the hotel operator answered, she asked, “Can you put a call through to Sydney, Australia, please? The Jasper Museum. Thank you.”
Mariah’s chest tightened with every ring. She had to steady her hands just to push the buttons for her mother’s extension. It was after seven o’clock at night down under, but as she guessed, her mum was still in her office and answered the call absently.
“Hey, Mum.”
“Mariah? Is that you? Darling, what’s wrong?”
A thick lump formed in her esophagus. “Do I only call you when something’s wrong?”
“What do you think?” Dinah asked. “Last time you called was to wish me a happy birthday six months ago.”
“Actually, it was my birthday,” Mariah countered with a nervous laugh. “But since you did all the work, I figured you deserved a bit of credit.”
The cadence of Mariah’s speech instantly changed, picking up the inflections and rhythms of her homeland.
“When are you coming home? It’s been too long since we’ve had a proper visit.”
Mariah nodded, her throat constricting. Had her mother ever said anything so motherly, and yet so unexpected? Did she ask this question as a matter of course, or because she truly wanted to see her only daughter?
“That’s not a bad idea,” Mariah answered. “Maybe a trip home is just what I need.”
Her mother hesitated. Mariah’s eyes suddenly stung with humiliation.
“Are you in trouble again?” Dinah asked. “With the law, I mean?”
Mariah laughed, though somehow the sound nearly came out like a sob. “Nah,” she replied. “I can’t say I wasn’t in some trouble recently, but I got it all worked out. Well, the law part anyway. Mum, what do you know about Gypsies?”
It was almost automatic, engaging Dinah on a professional level, where it was safer than digging into the emotions they both protected so fiercely.
“What Gypsies, sweetheart?”
“Eighteenth-century. London or thereabouts. Germany, maybe. I heard tell recently of a colony of sorts called Valoren. I was wondering what you knew.”
She should have made this phone call weeks ago. On the other hand, she might not have stumbled onto Rafe if she had. Angst aside, she did not regret knowing him or making love to him or even battling Farrow Pryce with him. She regretted only being unable to break his Gypsy curse.
“Hold on,” her mother said, and even though they were half a world away, she could hear her mother’s fingers flying over the keyboard of her computer. She had access to databases that ordinary people simply didn’t have—scholarly collections that the general public wouldn’t much care about. If not for her mother’s work at the museum, Mariah would never have met Ben. Seventeen and angry and anxious to not only spread her wings, but to do so in a way that would scandalize her mother, she’d left without so much as a note.
And yet, a decade later, the woman still took her calls.
“I see only one reference here,” Dinah announced. “A scholarly article written by a Paschal Rousseau. Valoren was a secret enclave of banished Gypsies. Pervasive magical mythology. Why? Planning to steal something from there?”
“Already did,” she answered.
“You don’t sound happy about it,” her mother observed wryly.
Mariah allowed a tiny smile. She could have done without falling off a cliff, but otherwise, things hadn’t worked out so badly, had they? Except for Rafe needing what she wasn’t sure she was capable of providing.
“It’s been a load of trouble, as usual, but it could work out.”
“It will,” her mother said with a lighthearted laugh. “With you, Mariah, it always does.”
“How can you say that? I’m a thief, Mum. I don’t even make my living stealing for myself. I do it for other people. I don’t give a damn about what I take or whom it hurts. I just—”
“
Survive
, darling. That’s what you do. I’m not going to condone your lifestyle. You and your like are the bane of the existence of curators like me. But I’ve been telling myself all these years that at least you were happy. Living an exciting life, not trapped on some dusty desert ranch in the middle of the Northern Territory, pregnant and penned in…”
“Like you were,” Mariah filled in.
Mariah’s mother cleared her throat.”Yeah, like I was. I know you and your brothers paid a hefty price for my leaving, but I had to go. I thought marrying your father would be one great adventure. I’d have access to digs in parts of Australia that few have been able to explore at their leisure. And for a while, I was the happiest woman north of Alice Springs. But, honey, it wasn’t enough, and I—”
“You don’t have to explain, Mum.”
“Maybe I do,” she contradicted. “Maybe if I explained, you would stop running and would find what will really make you happy. Before you make the mistakes I did. Trying to be someone you’re not.”
Mariah’s eyes stung. She must have splashed herself with a soap bubble. Or else she was breaking through barriers in her heart that she’d erected so long ago. She’d never thought about being a mother herself, but she supposed her childhood was a prime example of how not to parent. Maybe she could pull off the whole nurturing thing someday if she had the right man to balance out her imperfections.
Someone patient. Kind. Honorable. Someone who would encourage their children to explore the world and be honest and authentic about who they really were.
Someone like Rafe.
A sob broke through from her chest, unwelcome and unbidden.
“Mariah, sweetheart, you tell me what’s wrong right now.”
She couldn’t do this, could she? Open up to a woman she’d distrusted for so long? Was this what Ben meant about letting people in? About putting family ties above all others, even when her mother had not?
“I’m messing it all up, Mum,” she confessed, deciding she no longer had the strength to hold on to her resentments from the past. “He respects me for exactly who am. He doesn’t compare me to his wife or want me to be like her. I’m the only one who does that, and I’m not sure why. He wants me for me.”
“His
wife
?”
Mariah swiped away the tears she now acknowledged were streaming down her face. “She’s dead. It was a long time ago. But I’m pushing him away. I may have already lost him.”
Her mother’s laugh was something between a bark and a cry of relief. “Sweetheart, you’re the expert at finding things that other people have hidden and protected. Use your own talents on yourself. Whomever you’ve lost, you’ll find—if you want to badly enough?”
Twenty Four
Rafe emerged from the stone to find Mariah asleep in a chair near the window, dressed in a fluffy white robe, a telephone cradled in her lap. A tray of food sat beside her, heartily picked over, though Rafe did manage to snag what he now knew to be called a french fry. Even cold, the delicacy pleased his palate. After draining the last of Mariah’s beer—now warm and more familiar than the questionable American preference for serving the beverage cold—he grazed his fingers over her cheek until she woke.
“Hi,” she said, struggling to sit when she must still be sore from their encounter the night before. “When did you, um, wake up?”
‘Just a moment ago,” he said. “I might have suspected I’d finally died, I slept so soundly. I dreamed of you.”
She snatched a half-filled glass of water and drained it in one long gulp. “I hope I was doing something fun.”