Leora #2
Please forgive me! Please forgive me! Please forgive me! I silently chanted as I shoved her into the room.
She had no idea the lengths I’d go to keep her safe.
But I knew.
And I reminded myself of my duty when I returned to the front room with my most placid, wifely look plastered across my face.
“Would you like some tea?” I asked Joshua as I began to clear the dishes from the room service Joshua ordered. The suite had a little kitchenette where I could easily rinse them off.
“Yes,” Joshua answered. “Make one for yourself too. We have much to talk about. Starting with our travel plans.”
It took everything I had not to let the retching sensation in my stomach make it all the way to my face. And even that wasn’t enough.
I had to turn my back to him and dropped the plates in the kitchenette’s sink to cover my disgust.
“I’ll be right back with our tea,” I said as cheerily as I could over the clatter of dishes.
I could only hope I looked a lot more composed than I felt when I finished brewing one of the bags of tea, I’d found in the cupboards above the microwave oven.
“About time.” Joshua took the cup from me without so much as a small thank you when I returned.
“I wanted to make sure it was fully steeped before I brought it out,” I explained with a serenity I didn’t feel. “So that you could drink it without having to wait.”
“Fine,” Joshua answered as if he were an aggrieved king who’d decided to accept my pitiful explanation for my tardiness.
Then, he took his usual cautious first sip of the tea, despite me assuring him it was ready to be drunk.
I’d made it “too hot,” according to him, once, and he still didn’t trust me to make it right ten years later. Before I left Canada, I’d grown used to his distrustful way of drinking the tea I served him.
But tonight, it spiked my rage.
Alban, for all his grumpiness, had been the opposite of my supposed Benefactor. A man of actual service who didn’t feel entitled to anyone waiting on him hand and foot.
Joshua only thanked me in public when others were looking on, and sometimes not even then. I’d been like a farm horse he’d expected to always be at his beck and call. As if that was the job I’d been assigned at birth.
But Alban had shown me sincere appreciation for everything, from picking him as my mate to making him coffee in the morning.
“Look at you, Leora. Do you have any idea how good you feel around my cock?” he’d told me on Christmas morning when he woke me up to take me slow and easy before the present exchange.
“It’s as if you were made for this. Made for me.
What did I do to deserve such a gift? I swear I dinnae need anything else underneath that tree. ”
Tears pricked my eyes, remembering what he’d told me—just yesterday morning. And now he was in some dungeon cell, probably deeply regretting the day we met.
“Anyway, we’ll need to visit a travel agent first thing tomorrow to see about taking the first boat back to PEI we can get,” Joshua said, pulling me out of the bittersweet memory.
I frowned. “Why a boat? A plane would be much faster. And didn’t you say your father wanted us back in Prince Edward as soon as possible?”
Joshua took another sip of tea before answering, “He did, but we need the extra time to make our story convincing. We’ll also need a separate room for Dorie.”
He frowned. “But that will cost more money than what my father gave me for just two plane tickets back.”
After subtly reminding me that I was only here because he’d agreed to let me come back to Canada with him and Dorie, Joshua cast his eyes to the hands I’d folded on top of the table.
“We’ll visit a pawnbroker tomorrow, too—someone who will give us cash in exchange for that ostentatious ring you’re wearing. ”
My ring … I clutched the hand with my precious gift from Alban on its wedding ring finger to my chest.
“Dorie and I will share a room,” I insisted. “Just as we always have.”
“We can’t do things as we always have anymore.” Joshua pursed his lips as if I was the biggest idiot in the world. “Not if we want people to actually believe that baby in your belly is mine.”
I widened my eyes as I watched him drink more of his tea. It hadn’t even occurred to me that he expected to do anything but adopt the baby and give it his name.
“We’re wolves,” I reminded him. “Everyone will be able to smell that it’s not yours—that I mated with another male.”
“Not if we have sex,” Joshua insisted in the same superior tone he used to speak of lazy helpmates who’d ended up in Hell. “Lots and lots of it. Every night until we get there. That will cover up the other male’s scent.”
I was so innocent for a woman my age. How many times had Alban told me that? But at that moment, it occurred to me that while Joshua spoke with great self-assurance, he knew little more than I had about how sex actually worked.
“You really are an idiot,” I realized out loud.
Joshua set down his now empty teacup. “What did you just say to me.”
“You’re an idiot who knows nothing,” I answered, enunciating every word so that he could hear me clearly. “Yet, you stood up on that pulpit every Wednesday, and you pretended that you were so much better than the rest of us. You’re not better, though.”
I stood up from the table to inform him, “You’re just the son of a bishop who couldn’t convince anyone who actually knew you to marry him—probably because you’re so horrible and condescending to everyone you meet.
Even the most cowed local she-wolf wouldn’t have you.
You’re exactly what Tara means when she calls something the worst. You—You, Joshua Beiler, are the worst! ”
“I’m the worst?” Joshua jumped out of his seat, too.
“You’re the one who gave birth to that toothless animal of a daughter who cost me my eye!” He turned a full palm in the direction of his eyepatch to remind me of what Dorie had done to him. “Then you two evil wenches left me to die?”
“Yes, my wonderful daughter stood up for me against you,” I answered, folding my arms over my chest. “She continued to love me and want the best for us, no matter what ideas you put about our unworthiness in her head. That’s what makes Dorie magnificent.
And you know what? It might be too late for me. But it’s not too late for her!”
I snatched up the empty cup and left Joshua at the table to choke on every word I said as I thoroughly washed it out in the sink.
Then I returned to the dining area to unplug the handset from the phone, which was sitting in the middle of the table for some reason.
“Wh—what are you doing?” Joshua asked when I walked right past him with the handset still gripped tight in my hand. He was sweating profusely, and his face was mottled and red. “Where—where are you going?”
“To apologize to my daughter for putting her through this mess,” I answered without stopping.
I trusted he wouldn’t follow me, and I was right. I made it all the way to the suite’s hallway without Joshua getting in my way.
But my heart dropped when I saw that the door I’d closed to Dorie’s room now stood wide open.
“Dorie …” A new fear filled up my chest as I rushed toward her room.
Only to find it empty. Along with both bathrooms, the small spa, and all the closets in the hotel suite.
I’d come to apologize for everything I said. But Dorie must have already snuck out of the hotel’s front door while Joshua and I were “discussing” his travel plans.
And I knew exactly where she’d gone—or where she’d tried to go, even though she was an extremely sheltered eleven-year-old girl. Alone, without any money, in Scotland’s second-largest metropolitan city.
Oh, no …
Joshua completely forgotten, I ran out of the hotel room, yelling, “Dorie! Dorie!”