“I was sifting through your memories when you were talking to Drina about the fact that you have no one on your list that has been in your life more than ten or eleven years,” Lucian said. “You ran over the list in your head as you talked and were recalling everyone from childhood on,” he informed her.
Sherry wasn’t surprised that he’d sifted through her thoughts, and she knew she had run quickly through the list of people in her life.
“From the memories that slid through your head, you have your mother—Lynne Harlow Carne’s—eye shape and lips,” Lucian said. “But everything else—your eye color, skin color, your nose, the shape of your face . . .” He shook his head. “Nothing like your mother, and nothing like the man you knew as your father, Richard Carne, either.”
Sherry felt the breath slip out of her. What he said was true. He wasn’t the first to comment on it. She had none of her father’s traits. Her parents had both been fair and blue-eyed, where she was dark-haired and dark-eyed and her skin was more a buff beige than the ivory they’d both had. And while she had her mother’s large doe eyes and full lips, her nose was almost Roman in its straightness and her face was oval instead of long and thin. She was also short and curvy in comparison to her tall, svelte parents. Her aunt Vi had even once commented on it and joked that she was a changeling.
Sherry shook her head, forcing those thoughts out. They were crazy. Madness. It couldn’t be true. Heck, if her father was an immortal—
“I’m not immortal,” she said abruptly, sure that disproved the theory.
“You wouldn’t be,” Basha said quietly. “As I’ve recently learned, the child takes on the mother’s nature. If she is immortal, the child will be. If she is Edentate, the child will be. And if she is mortal—”
“The child will be,” Sherry finished for her. “But if my mother was the life mate of an immortal, why wouldn’t he have turned my mother and made her one too?”
“She wasn’t his life mate,” Lucian said with certainty.
“Or, maybe she was, but he’d already used his one turn and couldn’t turn her,” Basil said quickly, giving Lucian a look that made it obvious he thought he was being insensitive.
Lucian scowled in response. “You are not saving her feelings by suggesting there was a relationship that did not exist. You are merely dragging it out for her. She will come to these conclusions herself eventually.” He turned to Sherry then and said, “While he may have cared for your mother in some small way, she was not his life mate. If she were, he would have been incapable of staying away from her.”
“But if you’re right and he’s been in my life all these years, then he didn’t stay away,” Sherry pointed out. “Maybe he was her life mate and—”
“He stayed in your life, not your mother’s,” Lucian interrupted.
“She was there too,” Sherry said quickly.
“She was also married to and sleeping with her mortal husband,” Lucian said grimly. “A life mate could not stand by and suffer that.”
Sherry scowled now and shook her head. “Well, this is all stupid speculation anyway. My parents were married a full year before I was born. My mother was not the type to be unfaithful. And she would have told me if my dad wasn’t my father.”
“Are you sure about that?” Lucian asked, obviously not agreeing with her.
“It would explain your father’s absence in your life,” Basil pointed out gently. “If he knew you weren’t really his child . . .”
Sherry simply stared at him with dismay for a moment, and then lurched to her feet and stumbled past Stephanie’s legs to hurry to the hall leading to the bedrooms. She was suddenly desperate to be alone.
Thirteen
“Let her go. She wants to be alone.”
Basil tore his gaze from Sherry’s retreating back to scowl down at his brother’s restraining hand on his wrist. Her stricken face at the possibility that Richard Carne might not be her father had set him back a bit, and he’d been slow to follow. But now he wanted desperately to go to her and help her through this.
“Take your hand off me, or I shall remove it for you, brother,” Basil said coldly.
Lucian considered him briefly and then shrugged and released him. The moment he did, Basil slipped around the coffee table and made his way to the bedroom he had shared with Sherry last night. His gaze scanned the empty room quickly as he entered. The sheets were tousled, their night clothes from the evening before strewn everywhere, but she was nowhere in sight. However, the door to the bathroom was closed.
Pushing the bedroom door closed, he crossed the room and then hesitated and pressed an ear to the door. All he could hear was her heartbeat and breathing.
“Sherry?” he called softly. “Are you okay?”
There was a brief silence and then, “Yes.”
Basil reached for the handle and found the door was locked. Releasing it, he asked, “Can I come in?”
“No.”
“Sherry—” he began worriedly.