Heir to a Dark Inheritance - By Maisey Yates Page 0,54
request was perfectly normal. The thing was, she imagined he didn’t. He had no reference for what families did. Nothing beyond what was in movies or TV. And Alik didn’t seem like the kind of man who curled up on his couch at night for prime-time sitcoms.
Even if he had, they were hardly scripted television. Nothing about their situation followed a logical path.
“Then, let’s go out. What would you like to do?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I don’t know.”
“You must know, Alik.” It came out shorter than she’d intended, but she was feeling edgy. And her right hand felt bare. More exposed skin. Less to hide behind.
“I don’t.”
“You don’t have any ideas?” She didn’t believe him. But it was also obvious that he wasn’t willing to share his thoughts with her.
“We could just walk,” he said, “and see where we end up.”
She accepted his evasiveness. Mainly because she was too caught up in her own thoughts. In her own fears of exposure. “That sounds good to me.”
“She’s getting tired of the stroller,” Jada said, looking down at Leena, who was wiggling and pushing against her restraints.
They stopped and Alik looked down at her, frowning. “I suppose I could hold her. But she didn’t like it the last time I did that.”
“More than three weeks ago, Alik.”
That made his frown deepen. “Oh.” He bent then, swift and decisive, and freed Leena from her seat, pulling her up into his arms.
Leena’s fist curled around his shirt collar, her other hand going to the hair on the back of his neck. He grimaced when she tugged, but he didn’t reprimand her.
“All right, let’s keep walking,” he said.
She didn’t say anything as they kept walking down the busy streets, she just kept watching Alik when she was sure he wasn’t looking at her. His hold on Leena was strong, but gentle. His eyes were on their surroundings, not on his daughter.
They went through a narrow alley with cobblestones and bistro tables. People were sitting and chatting, drinking coffee and eating pastries, both of which looked like a good idea to Jada, but Alik definitely had another agenda. One he still wasn’t sharing. Which left Jada alone with her thoughts. At the moment that wasn’t necessarily a good thing because her thoughts were edgy and confused.
They passed through the alley and back out onto a busy main street, walking in the opposite direction they had been now.
“Are we going back already?” she asked.
“Back to the tower.”
“Oh.”
They crossed back through the web of streets, in the direction of the town house, cutting through an open-air market filled with flowers, racks of books and fruit. Alik didn’t spare the sights a second glance. So very typical of him. He could be so focused on whatever his internal mission was, on getting from point A to point B, that he didn’t look at the beauty that surrounded him.
And you’ve been so different the past few years? You’ve had blinders on.
Alik stopped then at a carousel, one she passed every morning, stationed out in front of the tower, enticing tourists to spend money with bright colors, glittering gems and music that sounded like it was coming from a jewelry box.
“This is where you wanted to go the whole time, isn’t it?” she asked.
He shrugged. “I had thought she might like it.”
“She’s a little small to go by herself,” she said. “But I—” she looked at Alik, at Leena, grinning in his arms “—you could take her.”
“I could?”
“Yes. You could. She’ll be fine. Look, she’s happy with you.”
He looked down at Leena and swallowed. “All right.”
He approached the man who was running the carousel and spoke to him in French, explaining the situation, Jada assumed. That was one thing about Alik, he might seem out of his element with a baby in his arms, but as a traveler, he was the man you wanted with you. He knew customs, and languages, knew where to go and what to order at restaurants. He knew opera.
There was no end to the general knowledge the man possessed. Not only that, but he’d been shot, had crossed enemy lines, had broken into a horrible prison to rescue his friend.
But put a baby in his arms and he looked like a man scared for his very life.
A curious man, her Alik.
She blinked. When had she started thinking of him that way? When had he become hers? She looked away from him, looked at tourists, the families walking on the green in front of the tower, laughing,