winding mountain roads of the Italian Alps and they’d crashed into a cliff wall, dying instantly. In the aftermath, his sister had left behind two darling little twin girls, both of whom had been devastated by the death of their mother, despite the fact that she’d left them with nannies most of the time, even before her death.
The twins, Elsa and Ellora, were beautiful, sweet, and very sensitive. Also, overly observant. In the aftermath of their sister’s death, the four siblings, himself included, had stoically faced the world’s press at the funeral, not saying anything to the reporters or showing any emotion that the photographers could capture.
The small girls hadn’t understood their stoicism and had simply imitated their aunt and uncles, not showing emotion as they watched their mother and father’s funeral procession. Afterwards, they’d refused to speak until Gaelen’s older brother, Amit, brought in an expert child psychologist. Doctor Harper Ross was a beautiful, intelligent, and intuitive woman who had explained that the girls were only a symptom of what was happening in the family. All of the siblings were pretending that their sister’s death hadn’t happened, moving along with their responsibilities, and not showing a crack in the strength of the ruling family of Izara. The girls were emulating their Aunt Talia and their three uncles, Amit, Gaelen, and Tarin.
The twins finally admitted that their last words their mother spoke to them were, “You’re going to kill me with your chattering!” Orella had stormed away. Hence, the reason the small girls had stopped speaking. They’d been terrified of killing someone else.
The combination of their mother’s hurtful words, plus their confusion over the lack of visible grieving, had left the two small girls confused and scared.
As soon as the aunt and uncles started talking to the girls about their grief, talking about the life of their older sister, the twins had started to come out of their shell. It had been a slow, painful process for all of them, but over the past year, Elsa and Ellora were starting to heal. It was still a wound in his soul whenever he thought about Orella and the waste of her life, but he was starting to put those issues into perspective.
With a sigh, he turned away from the view. It was over, he told himself. It was time to move on. Not to forget Orella, but to move on. He hadn’t realized how many feelings were churning inside of him until he’d met Savannah. Her smiles had lightened his heart and he’d laughed! Damn, he hadn’t realized how long it had been since he’d genuinely laughed until she’d brought him that ridiculous drink the other night.
Turning out the light, he slipped between the sheets. But instead of falling asleep as he should, Gaelen stared up at the ceiling, thinking about how many ways he would make love to Savannah.
Chapter 4
Gaelen walked briskly down the hallway towards Savannah’s apartment the following morning. That bastard, Santo, had pushed their morning meeting back to the afternoon. He’d offered some lame excuse, but Gaelen suspected that the bastard just didn’t want to face him this morning.
Pushing away his frustration over the delay, Gaelen stopped in front of Savannah’s doorway and knocked. When there was no response, he became worried. Had her head injury not healed enough? Should he have insisted that she stay with him again last night? Or had his clumsiness last night hurt her more than he’d realized?
Damn it, she should have called him if there was a problem! And damn, he should have taken better care of her. Every instinct inside of him had rebelled at leaving her here last night, so why hadn’t he simply hauled her back to his car, then driven away so that she’d been safe?!
“She’s not there,” someone called out.
Gaelen spun around, searching for the speaker. When he spotted a woman, heavily pregnant with a child on her hip and another walking beside her, holding her hand, he was startled.
“I’m sorry?”
The woman hitched the toddler higher on her hip impatiently. “She’s not there,” the woman repeated. “She left early this morning. She has a job over at a diner somewhere in the fancy part of town.”
With that, the woman moved off down the hallway, the boy walking beside her turned his head to look back at him while he followed his mother.
Gaelen muttered a curse, wishing that he could help the woman as well. Here he was, furious that Savannah lived in this place, and yet