Abandoning her defenses and submitting to comfort was something Alice had been nearly hardwired to resist. As a child, she’d forced herself to sleep with the windows open, even in the most frigid nights of a Chicago winter, warding herself against the toxic fumes inherent to Sissy’s “business.” Although the trailer resounded with the abrasive, harsh voices of her uncles and Sissy’s customers, Alice never used a fan, radio, or television to trick her brain into the safety of solid sleep. She needed to hear a threat coming to her locked bedroom, to prepare herself for a fight or an escape. A potential fire from Sissy’s meth lab was yet another nightly reality for which she had to prepare herself. Escaping her history was proving to be a challenge.
She shivered as she stood next to the bed, and then cautiously moved through the dark room. Earlier, she’d seen Dylan hang her clothing in the bathroom. The thunderstorm had caught them in its first furious lash. They’d only arrived at the rear entrance of Castle Durand several seconds after the rain began to pour down in torrents.
Her T-shirt was still a little damp. She hauled it on nevertheless, willfully ignoring the fluffy, cozy, dry robe Dylan had bought her. Her shivers amplified as she unrolled the damp fabric over her breasts and belly. She ignored her jean shorts and sufficed with her mostly dry underwear.
When she silently exited the bathroom, she paused for a moment in the still room, listening. Everything was silent. Dylan slept on. It was for the best. He wouldn’t approve of her mission. Or at the very least, he’d insist on being there by her side while she undertook it. She vividly recalled his words during their heated lovemaking last night as the storm raged around them.
“I don’t like you being down at that camp, Alice. I can’t control what happens to you.”
“You can’t control what happens every second of my day,” she whimpered, because he’d pressed her to him, her back to his front, and was reassuring himself of her existence and safety in the most elemental way.
“Maybe not,” he rasped, running his teeth over the skin of her neck and molding her breast to his hand. “But right now I can.”
Mixed feelings of renewed arousal, irritation, and stark compassion at his concern swept through Alice at the volatile memory. She’d struggled to be independent and self-determined for her entire life. Dylan’s proprietary attitude over her nettled a little. His possessiveness also thrilled her a lot, a fact that often had warning sirens going off in her head.
But Dylan had a right to his worry, didn’t he? He’d earned it. He’d been consumed for more than half his life at the idea of finding Alan Durand’s kidnapped and assumed-dead daughter, Adelaide “Addie” Durand. Everyone else had long ago accepted that Addie had been murdered and lay in some long-forgotten makeshift grave. It was Dylan’s unwavering conviction—a stubborn refusal to concede defeat, a bullheaded determination even against horrible odds that had been born and bred in his youth in the rough, unforgiving streets of Chicago’s West Side—that had eventually led Dylan to Addie.
But Alice had no such personal ties or strong feelings toward Adelaide Durand. To her, that privileged, adorable little girl was a distant tragedy. If anything, that child was relevant primarily because of the singular effect Addie had on Dylan’s life.
That’s what Alice told herself, anyway, as she stood in that cool dark room, chilled to the bone.
She wavered on her feet, suppressing a powerful longing to get back into bed and cuddle against Dylan’s solid length. The vision of Lynn Durand’s exquisite bracelet flashed into her mind’s eye again.
Bizarre as it seemed, that bracelet was not just a random dream created by Alice’s unconscious mind. Her recollection of that bracelet was a genuine memory. Because as much as she was struggling to believe it, Dylan swore it was the absolute truth.
According to Dylan, Alice Reed and Adelaide Durand were one and the same person.
*
IT was the second time in a week that Dylan awoke in the dark room to find his arms empty. Instinct told him that it was still too early for him to escort Alice to the camp, a clandestine ritual they went through every morning before dawn. Neither of them wanted the Durand managers or the VP of human resources, Sebastian Kehoe, to know that Alice had taken up with the CEO of the company. What was between Alice and him was complicated and powerful.
And it was their business alone.
At least for now it was.
Dylan wasn’t sure how long he could keep Alice and Durand Enterprises in separate spheres. For all intents and purposes, Alice was Durand Enterprises. She just didn’t want to—or couldn’t—accept that reality as of yet.
“She’ll let you know when she’s ready to hear certain things, Dylan. She won’t ask what she doesn’t want to know. That’s nature’s way; the unconscious mind’s attempt at shielding her from the truth until she’s ready to handle it.”
It was his friend Sidney Gates’s voice that he heard in his head. Sidney was a psychiatrist, and an old friend of Alan Durand’s. He was very familiar with Addie’s—and Alice’s—history. Dylan trusted his opinion more than anyone else’s when it came to Alice’s state of mind at that point.
The problem is, Sidney had also compared Alice to an undetonated cache of explosives. No one knew for sure what would set her off at this point.