Triple Infinity (11 page)

A
nger had replaced the shock and fear that had flooded Shiv when she first saw Charles. “How did you find me?”

Charles strode past her, walking into the library, eyes scanning the room. “And here it is. Vincent called to tell m
e about the large order. He had your name attached to it, and he wondered if we were working together again.”

Charles circled the room, looking at the to-scale outlines on the floor. He stopped and looked at Shiv. “You haven’t been easy to find. Impossible, as a matter of fact.”

Shiv stood at the doorway of the library, arms crossed. “There was a reason for that. Why are you even here?”

He looked down at the tile scatt
ered across the floor, crinkling his nose. “Not my taste, but it might be respectable.”

“Why are you here, Charles?”

“Honestly, I was going to tell you it was to make sure you were taken care of, but as it seems you are already being attended to by the brute across the hall, I guess I don’t need to lie about that.”

“So then,
the real reason. Why would you come halfway across the country to find me?”

He walked across the room and stood in front of Shiv, looming, inches fro
m her face. “Since I’m obviously not going to get a lay out of the deal, I’ll cut to the chase. I’m really here to warn you off, bitch. You know the commissioned mosaic world is very small, and it’s my livelihood. You can have this hole-in-wall. But I don’t want to hear about you moving into my territory.”

Shiv exhaled
a laugh. She closed her eyes and her hand went to her forehead, rubbing it in disbelief. Her eyes cracked at him. “Is that all?” She shook her head. “Hell. That’s all you have to say to me after how you left me? Wow...”

He took a step back from her, clearly befuddled at her reaction. He didn’t answer.

“Really, Charles. You don’t need to worry about your business at all.” She waved her hand in the air, dismissing his concerns, and turned to walk through the front hall, opening the front door. She stopped, holding the door open, and swung her arm wide, ushering him out. “I have no desire to sink your business or your life. But you need to leave right now, before I change my mind on those fronts.”

Charles
paused at the entrance to the library, watching her, assessing her. He looked back over his shoulder at floor, taking in the goddess in white, now almost fully formed by the tiny tiles. Without another word, only a look of derision at Shiv, he walked past her and out the door.

She
slowly closed the thick wooden door behind him, and the final click of the latch echoed in the hall. Her head bowed as she stood at the back of the door, holding onto the handle for several minutes.

When she finally took a deep breath and looked up,
she saw Triaten leaning against the frame of the entrance to the study, watching her.

“You heard all of that?”

“Yes. I wasn’t about to sacrifice your safety for your privacy.”

“I had no say in the matter?”

Triaten shrugged, but not apologetic. It was just a fact to him.

She leaned
, her back against the front door, her head raised to the ceiling. “You got any whiskey around here?” she asked, eyes fixed on the high ceiling, two stories up.

Triaten
disappeared down the hallway to the kitchen. Back with an unopened bottle and two glasses, he noted Shiv hadn’t moved a sliver in the minutes he was gone.

He nudged a glass into her hand, and that got her attention. She looked at him, pushed herself from the door, and took the bottle out of his hand.

“Thanks.” Shiv walked across the foyer and stopped at the door to the library to look back at Triaten. “Now leave me alone.”

With that, she put the whiskey under
an arm, and slid the heavy door closed. Rafe whimpered next to Triaten’s leg.

~~~

The banging at 4 a.m. woke Triaten up, not that he usually slept that long. Midnight to 4 a.m. — 5 a.m. if he felt lazy. 

It was hammering, and it was shattering. He followed the sound to the main level, and realized that the sound probably wasn’t carrying back to the ranch’s far wings. At least it wouldn’t wake anyone else.

The scene that greeted him when he pulled open the door to the library was manic. Shiv was hammering away at tiles that had been set in the floor, smashing wildly over and over. Glass shards and concrete chunks were flying, and Shiv knelt in the middle of the maelstrom, causing it.

Triaten ran into the room
and grabbed her wrist in mid-swing. Startled, her face flew to him. Dark hair escaped wild, half out of her ponytail. Cement had smeared on her cheeks, and her skin glowed red from anger or alcohol, Triaten couldn’t tell. Her eyes were crazy.

She jerked her arm away
, but Triaten didn’t let go. So she turned on him, struggling to her feet as she beat on him with her free fist, all the while trying to pull her hammering arm free. The beating on his naked chest didn’t faze Triaten, but when her body started convulsing violently against him, he dropped her wrist and wrapped his arms full around her, picking her up off the floor.

Shiv managed to still fight him for another ninety seconds, before her body ran limp and her head curled into his chest. The hammer dropped to the floor. Minutes passed, and Triaten didn’t set her down. He didn’t want
a resurgence now that she had, hopefully, come back in the realm of sanity.

Eventually, Triaten could feel the warm wet on his chest, and was satisfied that Shiv had moved from crazy to crying. Crying was a better option. He set her down on wobbly feet an
d pulled back from her, his hands on her shoulders for support.

He bent down so he was eye level with her. “Tell me.”

Shiv’s eyes darted, looking for a way out. Almost immediately, she resigned, and wiped her sopping cheeks with her hands, dried concrete still spotted on her nails and the back of her hands.

She turned under his grip
and shuffled through the mess to epicenter of her storm. She pointed down at the broken tiles.

“I made it and didn’t e
ven know I did it. I turned around and it was there.” Her voice cracked, barely getting the words past her lips.

Triaten looked down at the tiles. Even with the smashing, he could tell Shiv had started work on the goddess in red, and in her arms, there were the remnants of what looked like a baby.

Confused, Triaten stepped forward, slipping his arm loosely around Shiv’s waist. She was swaying, and he didn’t know if she was near collapse. There hadn’t been a baby in Shiv’s original drawings.

“It’s a baby,
” she whispered.

Triaten prodded her. “What’s going on?”

She crumpled then, but Triaten caught her before her weight hit the floor full of glass shards. He half-carried her to the leather chair.

She took a big breath and leaned back in the chair, her eyes not leaving the half-destroyed
mosaic of a baby.

“I know you heard what an asshole Charles is?” Her voice was monotone, and she didn’t wai
t for Triaten to reply. “That isn’t even the tip of it.”

Knees bent,
Triaten balanced on his heels in front of her, watching her intently.

“You remember he is married? I got pregnant. Told him. He wanted it aborted, I said no. We were in my apartment. He beat me, knocked me out. When I woke up, I was alone and in a pool of blood. They almost didn’t get to me in time to save me.” She drew a steadying breath, the need for it belying her flat tone.

“The baby was long dead by the time I got to the hospital. There was blunt force trauma to my belly. I still don’t know what he did — kick me, maybe hit me with a chair.”

Eve
ry muscle in Triaten’s body clenched, but he kept his voice soft. “The bastard left you?”

“Yes.” She shook her head in disbelief. “God
— how could I love someone like that? How could I let him do that to me? He had never hit me before, but when he started, I was in shock and didn’t know what to do. I should have –” she swallowed a sudden sob as tears filled her eyes, “I didn’t protect my baby.”

She leaned forward, burying her face in her hands. Her shoulder,
her back, shook with deep sobs.

Triaten had no words for this. All he could do was set his hands on the back of her shoulders and wonder if it was too much, or too little.

Eventually, Shiv drew a shuddered breath and looked up at him. Her eyes were bright red, but her cheeks were regaining normal color.  

“Today was the first time you’ve seen him?” Triaten asked.

She pulled the front edge of her shirt up and wiped her eyes. “I hoped to never see him again. After I learned –” she interrupted herself. “After I got out of the hospital, I stayed at a hotel for a month. I couldn’t go back to the apartment. I had the landlady gather up some clothes and files and told her to donate the rest. And then I didn’t know where to go. So I came here.”

Triaten stood up and bent over to slide his arm under Shiv’s knees and wrap his other around her back. He picked her up before she could push him away.

“Triaten, I can walk.”

“You’re not going to continue to walk across glass shards in your bare feet.”

“You are.”

Triaten didn’t even bother to shrug. Cut feet were like mosquito bites to him,
itchy for five minutes, and then they healed up almost immediately. He paused at the entrance to the library, flicking the light switch off.

Shiv squirmed in his arms. “I can walk upstairs.”

Triaten didn’t put her down. If anything, his arms tightened around her.

Facing the
inevitable, Shiv relented to being carried, and laid her head on Triaten’s bare shoulder.

In her room, Triaten set her down on her bed. He turned to leave, but her voice, soft and hesitant
, stopped him.

“Triaten...I know this, between us, is nothing. But...”

“But?”

“Can you stay? Stay and just be here? I just need a friend.”

Without reluctance, Triaten crawled into bed with her and wrapped his arms around her once more. Face in his chest, she curled her body into him, trying to disappear into his mass. Triaten pulled the binder from her hair and smoothed it out. She was asleep within a minute.

“Yo
u’re still here.” Her voice muffled against Triaten’s chest. She didn’t move, just as she hadn’t the whole rest of the night.

Triaten’s hand went to her head, stroking her hair. It had been light out for an hour, and at this time of year, that meant it was after eight. “Yep.”

“I just thought at some point you would have left.”

“Did you want me to?”

A long pause stretched.

“No.”

They were both still for a spell, neither breaking the tangle they were in on the bed.

“You’re so toasty.”

Triaten smiled above her head.

She shifted in his arms. “Wow. And really hard.”

Triaten’s chest rumbled with a chuckle. “It’s how we wake up, love.”

“I know, but you’re usually inside of me when you’re that big. It’s just so...striking.”

“Feeling better?”

She looked
at him, her chin nestled in the divot down the middle of his chest. “Thanks for staying. The last person I slept the whole night through with was Skye. We almost always slept in the same bed. I had always thought it was because we just had each other.”

She tilted her head back down and talked into Tria
ten’s chest. Her fingers began absently playing with the ridges of muscle along his stomach. “It took me a long time, well after she was gone, to figure out she had been protecting me all those years, as well.”

Triaten reached down to stop her hand. He was near bursting as it was, and her fingers, right above his boxers, dancing along his skin, weren’t helping the matter. He should have gotten up when he had the chance earlier, but Shiv was so peaceful, he didn’t want to upset the balance. Triaten’s mind raced. Baseball. Construction. Smelly socks. Anything but the thought of the blood pulsating to his groin.

“You’re Skye’s biggest regret, I think. When she got her memory back, you were one of the first things she mentioned.”

Shiv’s body tightened. She didn’t answer.

Triaten let Shiv’s hand go and rolled flat to his back, his one arm still under her.

She
didn’t let him go so easily. She rolled on top of him, straddling him, her hands on his chest. “Where do you think you’re going?”

“Really, Shiv, I’m just trying to be a gentleman, and leave you before I explode all over you.”

Her lips went down to his chest, tracking a line up to his neck. “So stay and explode in me.”

Triaten grabbed her shoulders and propped her up so he could see her eyes. “Shiv, you know you don’t owe me anything.”

A mischievous dimple appeared to the right of her half-smile. “I know. I’m just not going to waste a perfectly good hard-on.” She grabbed his wrists and pulled his hands off her shoulders. Pinning his arms to the bed on either side of his face, she then went back to his neck, barraging the skin with slow, succulent kisses.

Triaten wriggled his hands free, and attacked Shiv’s body, stripping her down. In no time his hands were wrapped ar
ound the smooth skin of her backside.

She pulled up on him,
stopping, and Triaten almost groaned.

Her head hovered over his, her eyes suddenly somber. “Before we do this. It doesn’t mean a thing?”

Triaten didn’t need to think. His jealousy was palpable yesterday when Charles had shown up. He hadn’t wanted the guy anywhere near Shiv, and it wasn’t just protectiveness. He was a fool if he tried to ignore that it meant something.

His words were gruff. “For me? Hell, yea it does
— you?”

She nodded, even though her trepidation was obvious.

“You sure?”

“I am.” Her voice was solid.

Triaten reached up and grabbed the back of her neck, bringing her down hard on his lips, just as he entered her, holding her back steady with his other hand.

He p
lunged into her from below, not breaking contact with her mouth. Her hips writhed over him, but he kept the assaults into her steady, not willing to give up the last semblance of control he had over himself.

She came, delicious agony screaming into his mouth, and Tri
aten gratefully released with a shattering shudder.

She collapsed on him, her body still quaking while it rose up and down on his chest.

Her head under his chin, Triaten frowned at the ceiling.

What the hell had he just done?

~~~

The call came in late that afternoon.

Triaten was out with the construction crew on the back of the new left wing, and Shiv was working on the mosaic. Triaten had cleaned and removed all of the red-gowned goddess holding the baby while Shiv showered. He left the white-gowned goddess, she was mostly done, and Triaten could see no errant traces of Shiv’s over-active subconscious attached to the figure.

A blank slate greeted Shiv when she walked into the room, and the grateful look she gave Triaten was reward in itself for his quick work.

“You really are a fixer, aren’t you?” she asked him, wonderment on her face.

Triaten just shrugged.

Bent over architectural plans, cold wind nipping at his neck, Triaten pulled away from the crew, surprised, when Stewart walked over to him with the phone. Stewart rarely set foot out of the kitchen, and walking across errant two-by-fours and nails scattering the mucky ground was definitely out of place for him.

It was Aiden. He was back with Skye.

After filling in Aiden on Shiv’s arrival in Brigton, Triaten promised he’d bring her down to Aiden’s house right away. As he walked toward the house to collect Shiv, Triaten ignored the twinge in his gut. He wondered how long it would be before Skye figured out that he and Shiv had gotten close.

As they rode down the mountainside in Triaten’s jeep, which had been picked up from Joe’s and driven
up to the ranch by one of his horse groomers days ago, he saw a new side of Shiv.

He’d seen her scared, happy, angry, thoughtful, hesitant, and laughing, but he
’d never seen her nervous. She twitched when she was nervous, picking invisible specs off her jeans and shirt. Her feet wouldn’t stop tapping, and she twirled dark strands of hair tightly around her finger, letting it unravel, and then twirling again. Triaten tried several times to start up a mundane conversation with her. But it was clear she couldn’t hold a thought in her head.

They turned into Aiden’s long drive,
and the deep ruts on the tight road bumped, making Shiv give up the hair twirling and grab the handle above the window.

“I didn’t talk to Skye, but Aiden said their trip went really well. He said Skye was tired, but that she’d be ecstatic you were here.”

“Hmm,” Shiv afforded his comment a small head nod.

Triaten stopped the jeep,
and put it into park. They were halfway up Aiden’s drive, still cloistered by thick groves of tall pines. He turned to Shiv.

“Are you ready? Ready to see her? If not we can back up and wait a little while.”

Shiv waffled for a long moment. She didn’t look confident in her choice, once made, but nonetheless committed. “No, I need to see her. I need to before it’s too late.”

Triaten’s eyebrow rose in question as he looked at Shiv. “Before it’s too late for what?”

But she didn’t answer. She was already looking out the window again, mind far off, feet shaking, hand tapping awkwardly on her thigh.

They pulled into the clearing where Aiden and Skye’s house stood. Skye
paced like a caged cougar on the long front porch. Aiden leaned against the railing, relaxed, watching her. 

Skye caught sight
of the jeep and flew down the porch stairs and across the clearing, meeting the jeep halfway to the house. Tears were streaming down her face as she opened the passenger door before Triaten even had it in park.

She looked like she was about
to dive in at Shiv and smother her, but instead she stopped, staring at her through the thick curtain of wetness in her eyes.

“Shiv...” her voice cho
ked as she put her hand out to her sister, touching her arm lightly, almost as if she couldn’t believe Shiv sat right in front of her.

Frozen for a moment, Shiv sat dumbly until the touch on her arm. Slowly, she swung her legs out of
the car, backing Skye up as she stood.

Skye gave her an inch before she could stand it no more
, and threw her arms around her sister. A touch taller than Shiv, Skye had her head wrapped in one arm, the other gripped tightly around her waist. Skye’s eyes were squeezed tight, but it didn’t stop the tears from falling down behind Shiv, onto the edge of the jeep.

“I’m so sorry, I’m so sorry,” Skye muttered, haltingly, over and over again.

Shiv was caught, a deer in headlights look on her face, until Aiden stepped forward and squeezed his wife’s shoulder. He squeezed it three more times, increasingly more insistent, until she finally took the hint and released Shiv from the smother.

Skye shuffled a step
back, allowing Shiv space to step away from the jeep. But before Shiv had even taken two steps, Skye grabbed her hand and twisted their arms together. She wasn’t letting her sister go anywhere.

Aiden smiled down at his wife, and then turned his attention to Shiv. “Hi, I’m Aiden, your sister’s husband.”

He held his hand out to shake, but Shiv’s right arm was captive in Skye’s death grip. So she awkwardly turned her left hand outward and shook his hand.

Triaten made his way around the jeep and greeted Aiden, then bent over to squeeze the part of Skye that
wasn’t attached to Shiv.

Skye was busy wiping her face
with her right hand, so moments passed before she realized an ill silence hung over the group.

Triaten stepped in. “Why don’t you two go inside to talk. It’s chilly out here.”

Beaming, Skye started to the house, dragging Shiv along with her, crunching through the red and gold leaves blanketing the ground.

The door closed behind the two women.

Triaten and Aiden stayed by the jeep.

Triaten walked around
to the front of the jeep and hoisted himself up to sit on the hood. Feet on the bumper, he leaned forward on his knees as he stared at the closed door to the house.

Aiden joined his friend, leaning against the jeep’s grill, legs crossed. He pointed with his thumb before he folded his arms across his chest.  “I hope that goes well.”

“Me too,” Triaten said, not believing in the slightest it was. “Did you see Shiv’s face?”

Aiden nodded. “Yes, unfortunately. I just hope Skye pauses for a moment to see it too. She’s just so happy Shiv’s here.”

Aiden looked around the clearing surrounding his house. The needles on the evergreens had started to turn winter-dull, and the leafless aspens stood out starkly, bare white twigs against the forest.

“We missed fall completely, didn’t we?”

“Pretty much. The leaves came down fast this year.”

“Have you heard from Charlotte?”

“No.” The lie came out quickly. Too quickly.

Aiden gave Triaten an assessing glance. “Do we need to be worried about her?”

Triaten shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

Satisfied, Aiden nodded. “Did we miss much around here?”

Triaten knew Aiden was really asking about the elders, and what they were up to. “They finally got DeLisio and Shafar together to figure out that land at the border of Algeria and Morocco. The both of them are at the ranch. And the elders are pretty consumed by that, right now.”

Aiden nodded. “That’s good. That area has been a hotbed of unrest for too long. Too many innocents.”

Both of their eyes shifted to the movement through the picture window in the living room. Shiv and Skye were clearly yelling at each other, circling, arms flailing, fingers pointing. They moved out of view.

Aiden cringed and looked at Triaten. “What’s she like?”

“Shiv? She’s a good one.”

Aiden nodded and looked back at the
trees. “How has that been working — the negotiations at the ranch?”

“Pretty good. The
y think I’m just a caretaker, so don’t think twice about me nosing about. It’s helped for guiding the talks.”

“Any progress?”

“They’re close to a deal. And actually, I have to go off tonight to take care of the roadblock,” Triaten said casually. “While I was waiting for Shiv to get ready to come down here, I talked to Horace — the only thing holding the deal back right now is a partner of DeLisio’s.”

“A partner?”

“Yes, apparently he’s entangled with a Malefic named Genevieve. You ever heard of her?”

Aiden scanned his mind. “No. What family is she of? A
purebred Malefic?”

“Not sure.” Triaten shrugged. “Malefics have been popping out of the woodwork like termites, lately.”