“I know exactly where that is,” he said as he hit his directional signal.
* * *
About an hour later, Helania looked out the car window beside her, and stopped measuring the streets, the houses, the neighborhoods, against an eight-month-old memory of hers. Instead, she assessed the snowflakes that were starting to fall.
“A storm’s here,” she said.
As the Bentley’s wipers started moving back and forth, Boone cursed. “Is this the blizzard they were talking about?”
“Who was?”
“I don’t know.”
He sounded tired, but not as if he were ready to pack in the towel yet. She wasn’t sure she had much more of this endless circling in her, however. As important as it was to find the house, they were just driving around, following a series of her whims, wasting gas—and now with a storm coming?
God, she wished she could make her brain work better.
The Bentley slowed to a stop on the shoulder of the road, and Boone leaned forward, squinting at a street marker. “Manchester Avenue? Ring any bells?”
Helania glanced around and didn’t recognize a thing about the area they were in. “None. And these houses . . . all I recall is that it was a white house with a lot of bushes in front. Tall bushes, so you couldn’t see much. I don’t know. I think I’ve wasted our time.”
“It’s not a waste. Let’s keep going.”
Fifteen minutes later, the wipers were going back and forth much faster, and the snow falling in the headlights was slashing down.
“I think we should head back,” she said. “The storm’s getting worse.”
“Yeah. But there’s always tomorrow night.”
Boone turned them around, and as the tires of the powerful car gripped the accumulation that was already inching up, she was glad about the four-wheel-drive thing. “Thank you for this.”
“It was my pleasure to serve you.”
The words he spoke were offhand, but they made her think about the doggen, that house . . . the world he had grown up in.
“Are you sure you’re okay giving all of that up?” she asked. “The money, that mansion . . .”
“I’ve thought a lot about it in the last twenty-four hours, and I can say, hand on heart, that I am. I was never happy there anyway. It’s like what you said, you didn’t know any different and you’re content where you are? Well, I’ve been on the other side, and I hated it a lot of the time, so I feel lighter and freer.”
“I’m really sorry about your mahmen. You’ve had a lot of death in your life.”
“No more than anyone else over time—”
As a phone started to ring all around the car’s interior, she shot upright. “What the—”
“Sorry, Bluetooth.” He frowned. “You mind if I take this?”
“Oh, no, please do.”
Boone accepted the call and spoke into the air. “Hello, Rochelle?”
A disembodied voice flooded the cockpit. “Boone?”
“Hey,” he said as he braked at a stop sign and then kept going straight ahead. “I meant to call you back last night. Things have been . . . a little hectic on my end. You okay?”
“Are you in the car?” The voice went in and out. “The connection’s bad.”
“Must be the storm. And yes, I am.” His brows went low. “Is everything all right?”
Helania shifted in her seat. So . . . this was the female he’d almost mated. The one who had wanted to back out of the arrangement that he otherwise would have followed through on. The one who was supposedly in love with someone else.
It was hard to deny that she was preternaturally interested in hearing the voice properly. But really, being territorial made no damned sense given everything Boone had told her about the female and their relationship.
“—come see?” Rochelle was saying. “—to talk—to you.”
“You want to come see me? Sure, but—”
“Come to—your . . . -se?”
“My house?”
“Yes?” was the reedy reply. “Now?”
Boone looked at the dash. “I’m half an hour away from there. See you in thirty minutes?”
“—minutes?”
“Thirty,” he said loudly. “Thirty minutes.”
“Yes . . . thirty.”
As the call ended, he looked over. “You mind if we go back to my place? I want to fill the car up with clothes and some of my books, anyway.”
“Yes, sure.” She found herself putting her hand on her belly. “I’d like to meet Rochelle.”
“You’re really going to like her. She’s a female of worth.”
Helania forced a smile and then went back to measuring the swirling pixelation of the flakes in the bright headlights.
Given everything that was going on, she did not have the energy or composure necessary