Shayla Black - Theirs to Cherish

“Are you fucking kidding me?” he barked into the phone.

Axel answered in a way that only made Thorpe more angry. His cheeks flamed red. He clenched his fists and looked like he might grind his teeth into dust. Holy hell, she’d never seen Thorpe that pissed off.

“Keep me posted.” He stabbed a finger at the keypad to end the call, then looked up at Sean with a bleak stare.

“What?” Sean barked as he wrapped an arm around her, already trying to brace her for the news he expected would upset her.

“In the middle of the night, someone broke into Dominion. They trashed Callie’s room and my office. Axel had a hunch, so he drove by your apartment. Searched and destroyed, too. Whoever has been after you, Callie, knows we’re all gone. They’re looking for something, probably whatever they didn’t find when they killed your family. Now they’re coming for us.”

AN hour later, Sean retrieved her backpack from the stash in the bedroom. Gently, he shoved the remnants of cereal and toast to one side, then set her ragged bag on the little table and took a deep breath. Beside him, Callie looked tense and scared.

“What is it, lovely?”

“Aren’t we sitting ducks here on the lake? We should abandon the houseboat and get far away from here.”

“Medieval lords built castles using bodies of water as part of their defense. It would be difficult to mount an attack on the water and even harder to sneak up on us. We’re hidden by boulders and mountains. No one is likely to find us without a helicopter, and even then, we’ll just look like a boat on the lake.”

“But they still might investigate it. In the past, when I’ve had someone breathing down my neck, I would change locations every day or two until I felt sure that I’d lost whoever was chasing me.”

“You haven’t done anything criminal, and I don’t want you running like you are one anymore.”

“Guilt or lack thereof has nothing to do with it,” she insisted with a wave of her hand. “Whoever is after us will hunt us down. I think we should get off the boat and leave everyone guessing by going in three separate directions—”

“No!” he and Thorpe both barked together.

Sean turned his gaze to the other man. Thorpe’s jaw clenched firm and resolute. He might not think he wanted to commit to Callie yet, but he’d fight to keep her safe. He’d even die for that cause. Because he loved her. The big lug was just too stubborn to do anything about it. At least right now. Time would tell . . .

Sean pushed the thought aside. Not the most important problem at the moment.

Except that if Thorpe broke Callie’s heart, Sean knew he’d have to work even harder to heal her. She would cry and believe that she wasn’t . . . something enough. Good, smart, pretty—whatever adjective filled in the blank and made no sense. Callie ticked all of those boxes for Sean, and if Thorpe’s pig-headed avoidance made her feel like she lacked any of those qualities, Sean would take pleasure in beating the hell out of him. Kind of a downer, really. He’d started to actually like the guy.

“Maybe this egg has something to do with your family’s murder.” Sean changed the subject. “Let’s focus on that and not make any other decisions until we inspect it. Maybe there’s something special about it besides the obvious.”

“Agreed.” Thorpe nodded.

Callie pursed her lips, then looked away with a sigh. “We have to pull our heads out of our asses. Let’s examine the egg once we get off this floating dead end. We’re wasting time, guys.”

He and Thorpe exchanged a glance, then the other man reached across the table to tangle his hand in her dark hair. “If we didn’t have more important tasks at hand, I’d devise a fitting punishment for you, pet.”

She pursed her lips. “For expressing an opinion?”

“For expressing it so disrespectfully.”

Exasperation crossed her face before she stuck out her tongue at him. The gesture was somewhere between playful and impertinent, and Sean bit back a chuckle. No one could ever accuse Callie of being boring or predictable.

Thorpe tugged harder on her hair. “So you want to do this right now? I can occupy your tongue if you can’t keep it in your mouth.”

“Oh, I’ll bet you can.” She licked her lips. “Ready when you are.”

“Why would I reward you?” He raised a brow at her, then prowled through the little galley. A few moments later, he pulled open a drawer and pulled out more clothes pins. Then with a yank on the little refrigerator door, he produced a bottle of Tabasco. “Stick your tongue out at me again, pet, and I’ll put these to good use.”

Callie gaped at him, indignant. She looked like she had a few choice words, but finally clapped her mouth shut with an angry little huff. Sean bit back another laugh. Even when she was a brat, she was adorable. But if he’d been alone with her, he would have had to nip her defiance in the bud. Thorpe’s tactics were interesting, and Sean made note of them in case he needed them for future reference. In case Thorpe wasn’t here to administer the attitude adjustment she needed.

With a sigh, she curbed her annoyance and focused on the situation again.

“I understand.” She stared at Thorpe, who merely raised an expectant brow at her. “Sir.”

“Better.” He smiled and turned Sean’s way. “Proceed.”

It was impossible not to smile back. “On it. What do you know about this egg?”

“Not a lot. My mom talked about it, of course. But I was so young. She started getting sick when I turned five. As time went on, she became quieter. Mostly, I remember her holding me and telling me how much she loved me and to never forget that.” Callie teared up, then sniffled. “Sorry. I haven’t let myself think about those times in forever.”

Thorpe stroked a hand down her spine in reassurance, then kissed the top of her head. There was no way he didn’t love her. Dumbass prick. Even when he held himself back, Thorpe’s devotion showed.

“So you don’t remember anything about the egg specifically?” Sean asked softly.

“I think she said this one was from Easter 1912 or 1913—somewhere around that time frame. Dad bought it for her from a collector in Europe shortly after they were married. I guess she’d seen one on their honeymoon and fallen in love. This one came up for sale, and Dad gave it to her as an anniversary gift or something. When I was really little, she had it on a display stand that lit up on the mantel in their bedroom. She redecorated their whole bedroom around it. The room looked very stately. But when she got really sick, Dad had everything redone. He couldn’t stand to see her lying in a bed surrounded by black.”

Sean understood that. If faced with the prospect of losing Callie, he’d want to throw away everything dark and see her in nothing but sunlight and smiles for as long as he could.

“After she died, Dad moved it to his home office,” she continued. “It sat on the corner of his desk for years. Charlotte and I weren’t allowed to touch it. Then one day, he brought it to me and said that since Mom had wanted me to have it, I could keep it in my room as long as I was responsible. I’ve been trying to pry it open since.”

“And you never succeeded?” Sean asked.

“Nope. I lied about how I gouged my finger bloody. I didn’t dare admit I’d taken a screwdriver to the egg. But I’d dreamed up this fantasy that my mother had written me a long letter or poem—something she intended me to have that she tucked inside her favorite object. It sounds silly, but when you’re doing things like getting your first period and surviving your first crush without a mother’s guidance, it’s rough.”

“I’m sure she was with you in spirit, lovely.” Sean wanted to hold her, wrap his arms around her. Hell, he wanted to carry her to bed and love her tenderly until he somehow convinced her that he meant to fill every void in her heart.

“And you’re not aware of anything else unusual about the egg?”

“Other than it being a rarity in general, no.”

“Tell me how else you’ve tried to open it.” Sean felt her eyes on him as he unzipped her backpack and peeked inside.

“Besides the screwdriver, I’ve tried soaking it in water and brute force. It’s, like, glued together or stuck. Something.”

“Hmm. The eggs were made to open. They often contained some jeweled surprise,” Thorpe pointed out.

“Right. I remember something inside the egg when I was a kid, but I can’t recall details. It was shiny and pretty. After Mom was gone, I know my dad stashed pictures of her around some of her favorite objects. Once he gave it to me, I wondered if he’d left a picture of her in here, but I never could get the damn thing open to see. That just made her feel more gone to me.” She sniffled again.

“We’ll see if we can do better.” Sean reached into Callie’s backpack and pulled out some clothes, a wig, makeup, her toiletries, a box of colored contacts. Then he encountered a wadded-up towel.

“It’s in there,” she said as she stood on her tiptoes and peeked in.

With a nod, Sean reached down to the bottom and braced his hands under the towel, then began lifting it up. It was bulky more than heavy, and he felt himself sweat a bit, knowing that he held millions of dollars and something infinitely precious to Callie in his hands.

Resting the towel on the table, they all peered over it as Sean unwrapped the bundle. An intricate black and gold design in diamond-shaped sections decorated the top half of the egg. The lower half was a smooth black lacquer with solid gold braiding edging the bottom. As he turned it in his hands, Sean held history. These had been made for the Russian tsars for fifty years. They’d been valuable even a century ago. Now that so few had survived the bloody October revolution that had changed Russia, as well as the upheaval and wars since, the object verged on priceless.