go back to the front of the shop.
Seventeen
Raze was waiting for her when she came out into the front. He looked at the package in her arms and his face went as dark as a thundercloud.
“Lucia,” he said, his voice low and tight. “Please—don’t do this!”
“I’m sorry, Raze.” She shook her head. “But I have to. Please try to understand.”
“Is it money you need?” he asked desperately. “Just say the word and I’ll give it to you—as much as you need.”
But there was no way Luci felt comfortable asking to borrow the amount of money the two-nosed scent salesman was offering her. She had been thinking of maybe asking the big Kindred for a tenth that much but the opportunity to earn so much more all on her own was irresistible. It would give her a chance to stand on her own two feet for once and not have to take charity from anyone.
“I’m sorry,” she said again. “But with the money he’s going to give me, I can start a whole new life for me and the kids.”
“A whole new life? But why? Where will you go?” Raze looked worried. “Will you tell me where you are?”
“Why?” Luci asked, frowning. “You made it clear you don’t want to be part of our lives, Raze. So why do you need to know where we move to?”
“Damnit, Lucia…” He ran a hand over his buzz cut hair in a very human gesture of frustration. “Because I want to be sure you’re safe! Because I don’t want anyone to hurt you!”
“Well you’re too late for that,” Luci said crisply. “But don’t worry about it—I can take care of myself. Now, if you’ll excuse me…”
She started to move past him but Raze quickly blocked her path.
“At least let me give you a ride back down to Earth,” he said. “I know it’s nighttime down there right now. I don’t want you going home alone in the dark.”
Luci frowned and raised her finger.
“Okay but on one condition—I don’t want to hear anymore about how I shouldn’t do the scent book stuff. I’m not going to spend the whole shuttle ride listening to you lecture me—I’m doing what I have to in order to survive and keep my family together and I refuse to be shamed for that.”
“All right,” he said stiffly. “I don’t think you’d agree to the scent collection if you understood the implications, but I can’t stop you and I won’t try.”
“Thank you.” Luci nodded. “Then you can take me back down to Earth. Let’s go.”
Eighteen
Raze wished he could make Lucia understand what she was about to do—wished he could put it in terms she would believe.
A female agreeing to do a scent book in the Kindred world was the same as her agreeing to pose for sexually explicit pictures in the human world. Or perhaps becoming a…what did humans call it? A stapler? A strooper? Anyway, someone who removed their clothing and danced around a tall silver pole while others watched.
Raze was quite certain that Lucia—who was normally extremely modest and chaste—wouldn’t do either of these things. Yet she was prepared to make a scent book of her own personal and private scent—the scent that he loved so much and didn’t want any other male to smell—in order to get some money.
He wished he knew why she was suddenly so desperate for cash. But she wasn’t saying much on the way home. She simply stared straight ahead as he flew the shuttle car back to where she’d parked her own vehicle.
“Thank you for the ride,” she said stiffly, acting as though they were strangers, as she exited the shuttle.
“You’re welcome,” Raze said quietly. He wanted to say more—to say that he still loved her and wanted to be with her desperately. But what good would it do when he couldn’t act on those emotions?
Still, there was something he could do.
“Lucia,” he called, before she shut the shuttle door. “Wait—just a moment.”
“Yes?” She turned and was there something like hope in her big brown eyes? A wish that he might tell her they could be together after all?
How Raze wished he could tell her that! But he couldn’t. Instead, he reached into an inner compartment of the shuttle and pulled out a thin golden circlet.
“Here,” he said and handed it to Lucia.
“What’s this? You’re giving me a crown?” She looked at it in puzzlement.
“No—a way to contact me, in case of trouble. That’s a Think-me,” Raze told her. “You only have to