Chapter 5 #2
“Oh yes. Don’t worry, Linus will find him.”
“But why is this man Koslov following you in the first place?” Fawn crossed the room to sit next to him on the couch. “You were just the innocent victim.”
“Honestly?” Declan grimaced. “I’m guessing that honor needs to be satisfied, and Koslov probably considers me the easiest target to take out so that his bratva know he’s avenged the death of his brother.”
“What?” she gasped.
He shrugged. “If he attempted to get to Nikolai or any member of his family or the bratva, Koslov wouldn’t just be killed, he would die a very painful death as an example to others.
Same goes for if he attacked any member of the Wynter family.
I’m obviously neither of those things and so… expendable.”
“Not to me!” Fawn burst out before giving herself time to censor her words. Heat bloomed in her cheeks. “I mean…”
“Yes, what do you mean?” Declan prompted gruffly.
Nothing she was willing to share with him!
She gave an impatient shake of her head. “Could River be in any danger because the two of us are temporarily sharing an apartment?”
Uh-oh, she could see by the dark scowl on Declan’s brow and the thinning of his lips that he didn’t like her talking of her living arrangement with another man.
She mulled that response over for several seconds before making a decision. “I think I need to tell you a little more about my and River’s…relationship.”
Declan turned so that his arm was now resting along the back of the couch behind Fawn, the leg nearest to her bent up and resting on the couch cushion next to her. He was focused totally on Fawn. “What about it?”
“First, I need to know if he could be in danger because of my being here with you,” she demanded.
Declan considered the idea before reaching the conclusion that yes, Fawn was now in danger because she was working with Declan, so this River guy could be in danger for the same reason.
The connection Fawn had to River was the stumbling block to the need Declan felt to kiss Fawn.
He’d been fighting this attraction to her for the last four days, since the first time he met Fawn. But that desire had become almost unbearable now that the two of them were living together in his apartment.
Declan was now totally aware, every hour, every damn minute , of the increasingly desperate ache he felt to hold and kiss Fawn. To make love to her. Even the cold shower he’d taken earlier had done nothing to dampen—excuse the pun—the desire he felt to make love to Fawn.
But, having once been a person who had suffered through the humiliation of being cheated on, Declan would never intrude on another person’s relationship. Even one he considered to be unhealthy.
He grimaced. “Because of your association with me, and if Koslov finds out where you actually live and who with, then yes, there is a possibility River could be in danger.”
Fawn stood up, her expression anxious. “Then we have to get him away from our apartment. Right now!”
Declan sat forward to grasp hold of her wrist. “I already arranged for a team to be sent there once you’d told me the two of you lived together. The guys at Wynter Security have agreed to put a twenty-four-seven two-man rotation on River until Koslov has been apprehended.”
Her eyes widened. “You did that for River?”
He sighed. “Much as it pains me, yes.”
Fawn looked puzzled. “Why would it pain you to protect an innocent man?”
“Because it’s who and what River is to you that’s now preventing me from—” He broke off.
“From what?” She eyed him quizzically.
A nerve pulsed in his jaw. “Just from.”
Fawn studied him again before speaking. “You’re sure River is safe?”
“My men will ensure that he is and that he remains so until this situation has been contained.”
“What does ‘contained’ mean? Or do I not want to know?”
He shrugged. “That will depend on what Koslov’s future intentions are.”
“But River is safe?”
“Yes.”
“Then there are a couple of things you really do need to know about him and me,” she acknowledged. “If I’ve understood the situation correctly, the sooner the better,” she added with a blush.
Declan tensed. “Yes?”
“I’ll start with the fact that my parents met at university and stayed together afterward.
They weren’t married, nor did they have any intention of ever being so.
That was too much establishment oversight for them.
” Fawn smiled. “They thought of themselves as free spirits, shying away from any responsibility or rules.”
“Isn’t having a child, by definition, a responsibility?”
“Not the way my parents brought me up.” Fawn chuckled affectionately.
“We lived on a barge and traveled up and down the waterways of England, Wales, and Scotland from one year’s end to the next, never stopping in one place long enough to call home.
The times we did stop were so that my parents could take up temporary work for a few weeks and earn enough money to keep us for the next few months when we moved on to another location. ”
“Unusual.”
She nodded. “To say the least. Our lifestyle, because we never really settled in one place long enough for me to attend formal education, meant I was homeschooled. Which really means I’m self-taught, because my parents were pretty haphazard when it came to providing that schooling.
There was always something more fun to do than studying books.
” The affection in her voice was obvious as she spoke of her irresponsible parents, despite their nomadic lifestyle.
“I’m pretty sure having a second child wasn’t planned because the barge was already pretty crowded with the three of us on it, but lo and behold, a few years later, I was presented with a little brother.
They named him River,” Fawn added pointedly.
Declan’s brows rose. “River is your younger brother, not your live-in boyfriend or husband?”
“Yes.”
Declan thought he was a bit old to stand up and do a little victory dance, and he probably wasn’t in any condition to do one either, but he damn well felt like doing it.
River was Fawn’s brother , not her lover.
“Fawn and River?” he teased lightly to cover how pleased he was to learn of their familial connection.
She shrugged. “Chosen by our born-too-late-to-be-hippy-dippy parents,” she acknowledged, again with an open and affectionate smile.
“I didn’t care what our names were or how crowded the barge now was, I was just thrilled to have a little brother.
Someone nearer to my own age I could spend time with.
The barge could get a little lonely at times without someone to play with.
We both tried coming up with different names for ourselves, once we were old enough to realize that no one else was called River, except for the actor my mother swears she didn’t even know about, and I’ve never met anyone else called Fawn either. ”
“Makes you both unique.”
She grimaced. “Children don’t really want to be unique; they just want to fit in. Which was something the two of us never did.”
“Where are your parents now?”
Fawn sobered. “They died from carbon monoxide poisoning a few years ago. My father had installed a small oil heater on the barge. Obviously not efficiently enough, because it leaked toxic fumes. It killed them both one night as they slept.”
“Dear God…”
She nodded. “River and I were already sharing an apartment in London by then. I was just about to complete my nursing course and River was just about to start one in engineering. Which meant that neither of us was on the barge with them.”
“Thank God,” Declan muttered.
She shuddered. “I couldn’t have borne it if I had lost River that night too. As it was, we didn’t learn about our parents’ deaths until late the following morning, when the police finally tracked down their next of kin and came knocking on our door.” Her frown was one of remembered pain and grief.
“I’m so sorry you had to go through that.”
She nodded. “Packing up their things a few weeks later was the hardest thing we’ve ever had to do.
We gave their clothes, books, and other recyclable things to a charity shop.
We packed the more personal things—paperwork, journals, old birthday cards we’d made for them—into a couple of boxes.
We sold the barge, obviously. That was hard, when it had been our home for so many years.
” She swallowed. “We’ve never even looked in the boxes again since, but we can’t bring ourselves to get rid of them either. Maybe one day.” She gave a shaky smile.
“I really am sorry,” Declan repeated sincerely.
“But shouldn’t River have finished at university now too?
” From the little he had heard of the conversation between brother and sister—yes—it had sounded as if Fawn was the one who had taken responsibility for both of them after they were left parentless.
“He deferred starting the course after our parents died. The pain of losing both of them so suddenly was so acute that the two of us barely made it through that first year without them. There was a little money from selling the barge—with the boiler removed—but nothing else. Money didn’t mean anything to our parents.
Then…” She broke off, shaking her head. “Long story short, River never actually started his engineering course. He mainly works shifts in bars and coffee shops.”
“A little aimless, though, isn’t it?”
“As I said, River does what he can, when he can,” she bristled. “As long as we still have each other, none of that other stuff matters. Losing our parents so suddenly was traumatic enough to last us both a lifetime.”
“I can understand that,” he confirmed bleakly.
Fawn looked at him searchingly for several long minutes. “Who did you lose suddenly?”