Because You Are Mine Part VIII: Because I Am Yours

BECAUSE YOU ARE MINE

PART VIII

BECAUSE I AM YOURS

Beth Kery

Contents

Title Page

Copyright

About the Author

Also by Beth Kery

About the Book

Chapter Fifteen

Chapter Sixteen

Special Excerpt

Beth Kery lives in Chicago where she juggles the demands of her career, her love of the city and the arts and a busy family life. Her writing today reflects her passion for all of the above. She is the bestselling author of over thirty books and novellas. She also writes under the pen name Bethany Kane. You can read more about Beth, her books and upcoming projects at
www.bethkery.com
or follow her on Twitter @bethkery.

Also by Beth Kery

Wicked Burn

Daring Time

Sweet Restraint

Paradise Rules

Release

Explosive

One Night of Passion series writing as Bethany Kane

Addicted To You

Bound To You (e-novella)

Captured By You (e-novella)

Exposed To You

Secrets are exposed, love is challenged, and the future is compromised, when Francesca and Ian face an inevitable decision that will change their lives for ever as international bestselling author Beth Kery’s
Because You Are Mine
comes to a spellbinding conclusion…

Because You Are Mine,
Part Eight
Because I Am Yours

From the moment Ian and Francesca first met, the attraction was mutual – a purely, exquisitely physical charge that ignited between them. It couldn’t be ignored – only indulged, evolving into a bond of pleasurable subjugation. But Francesca’s open sensuality left her wanting more. Getting it from a man as mysterious and resolute as Ian was a challenge she never anticipated.

Francesca knows there’s only one way for them to move forward – to follow Ian to London and show him that she doesn’t want him to suffer alone. But when Ian’s past and inner torment is revealed, he experiences a nearly unbearable volcanic mix of emotions for the woman who has dared to love him, despite his inner demons. After exposing Francesca to the limits of his anguish, he wonders if he’s lost her for ever. Can he bend enough to compromise to true intimacy…and something called love?

Chapter Fifteen

Davie offered to come with her to London, but Francesca flatly refused. When she’d told Davie about her plans, she’d been purposefully vague and misleading, saying that she’d learned from Mrs. Hanson that Ian was having a family crisis in London and she’d decided to go there to offer support.

In truth, she didn’t want Davie to realize she’d undertaken such a foolish plan without having a clue as to what she was going to do when she alighted from the plane at Heathrow. The only thing she knew is that whatever Ian was doing in London, it caused him anguish, and that he’d chosen to protect others in his life from that pain.

He would be furious at her, if, by some miracle, she ever actually located him. Yet she couldn’t stand the idea of him suffering alone in any way, and she had become utterly convinced that these “emergency” visits to London related to the spiritual demons that plagued him.

Besides, if what was in London was destined to destroy whatever they might have together in the future, wasn’t it best just to find out now instead of delaying the inevitable?

Ian had called her during the flight from O’Hare to Heathrow, she noticed as she deplaned. This had been what she’d hoped for, considering she really had no plan of action once she arrived in London. However, when she tried to return his call, she got his voice mail.

Discouraged, she lingered in the airport, exchanging currency, picking up her luggage, hoping for some kind of miracle revelation as to the location of Ian’s apartment or his whereabouts. When nothing came to her, and she still hadn’t successfully made contact with Ian, she got into a taxi and told the driver the only place she’d ever connected to Ian and his London trips.

“The Genomics Research and Treatment Institute,” she told the driver, referring to the hospital and research facility for schizophrenia that she’d read about on Ian’s tablet. She recalled how Dr. Epstein had mentioned “the Institute.” Could she be referring to the Genomics Research and Treatment Institute? What other clues did she have to his possible location?

Forty minutes later, the cabdriver pulled up to the ultramodern glass-enclosed entrance to the facility, which was housed on beautifully landscaped grounds within a wooded park. In the far distance, she glimpsed several pairs of people walking in a lush green meadow, one of the pair always wearing white. Were they nurses or attendants with patients?

Uncertainty hit her like a blow now that she sat there in the back of the cab. What in the world was she doing? What madness had made her jump on a plane and come to a hospital in a remote part of London, where she knew no one and had no reason to be present?

The driver was giving her a questioning look.

“Would you mind waiting for me?” she asked him nervously as she handed him payment.

“I can wait ten minutes, tops,” he said brusquely.

“Thank you,” she said. If this trip ended up being a dead end, she’d know soon enough.

She blinked when she entered the lobby a moment later. It wasn’t precisely like the Noble Enterprises lobby in Chicago, but there were similarities—the elegant, warm woods, pink-beige marble, and neutral-toned furnishings.

“May I help you?” a young woman sitting behind a circular desk asked her when she approached.

For a few seconds, Francesca just stood there speechless. Then something hit her brain, and she said the thought before she’d fully processed it.

“Yes. I’d like to see Dr. Epstein, please.”

Her heart seized in her chest for a split second that stretched surreally long as she stared at the woman’s blank expression.

“Certainly. Who shall I tell Dr. Epstein is visiting?”

She exhaled in a burst of relief and immediately experienced a subsequent wave of anxiety. “Francesca Arno. I’m a friend of Ian Noble’s.”

The woman’s eyes widened at that.

“Right away Ms. Arno,” she said, picking up the phone.

She waited on pins and needles as the receptionist spoke to several people, the last Dr. Epstein herself. What could the doctor be thinking, being told that a complete stranger who said she was a friend of Ian Noble had shown up at the Institute asking for her? Unfortunately, Francesca couldn’t glean much from the one-sided conversation she overheard. The receptionist set down the phone.

“Dr. Epstein says she’ll come to the lobby to get you herself. May I offer you any refreshment while you wait?”

“No, thank you,” Francesca said. She didn’t think anything would stay in her stomach, it was frothing so much. She pointed at a comfortable seating area just behind her. “I’ll just sit and wait.”

The receptionist nodded once cordially and returned to her paperwork. It was five minutes before Dr. Epstein appeared in the lobby—five long, tortuous minutes. Francesca shot up from her chair like she was on springs when she recognized the doctor, now wearing a white lab coat over a sophisticated dark green dress. An elegant woman walked next to her, her clothing casual but obviously of the highest quality and taste. Francesca got a fleeting impression that although Dr. Epstein’s companion was older—in her seventies, perhaps—she was brimming with vibrant health.

“Francesca Arno?” Dr. Epstein queried as she approached. She extended her hand, and Francesca took it.

“Yes, I’m sorry to pounce on you unexpectedly like this, but—”

“Any friend of Ian’s is welcome.” The doctor’s tone was warm, but was that curiosity or puzzlement she saw shadow her features as she studied Francesca. “I understand you haven’t yet met Ian’s grandmother? Francesca Arno, the Countess Stratham, Anne Noble.”

Francesca glanced in shock at the attractive elderly woman. For a horrified moment, she wondered if she was supposed to bow or something to a countess? Surely there was some etiquette that she didn’t know, and her gauche Americanness would be showcased right from the start?

Thank goodness the countess noticed her discomfort before she began to stutter like a fool.

“Please, call me Anne,” Ian’s grandmother said warmly, extending her hand. Francesca looked into eyes that immediately called Ian to mind—cobalt blue, sharp, and incisive.

“I guess I did come to the right place,” Francesca muttered as she shook Anne’s soft hand.

“You weren’t sure?” Anne asked.

“No, not entirely. I was . . . looking for Ian.”

“Of course you were,” Anne said matter-of-factly, ratcheting up Francesca’s anxiety and confusion. “He mentioned your name to me, although I didn’t realize you’d be coming to London. Ian is out for a walk on the grounds at present, so I came to greet you in his stead.”

“So Ian
is
here?” Francesca asked, her voice ringing with shock.

Anne and Dr. Epstein exchanged a glance.

“You didn’t
know
he was?” Anne asked.

Francesca experienced a sinking sensation as she shook her head to the negative.

“But you must have known about my daughter being here, at the very least?”

“Your . . . daughter?” Francesca asked, her head spinning. The glass-enclosed entrance suddenly seemed too bright, casting a surreal brilliance onto everything. Hadn’t Mrs. Hanson said that Ian’s grandparents had only one child?

“Yes, my daughter, Helen. Ian’s mother. Ian is taking a walk with her right now. Thanks to Julia’s and the Institute’s hard work,” Anne gave a warm sideways glance to the doctor, “Helen is having an amazingly lucid period. James, Ian, and I couldn’t be more thrilled.”

“We must take things one day at a time . . . one hour,” Dr. Epstein cautioned.

Both women glanced at Francesca. Anne reached out and touched her elbow. “You’re very pale, dear. I think it would be best if we let this young lady sit down somewhere comfortable, don’t you Dr. Epstein?”

“Absolutely. We’ll take her to my office. I have some orange juice there; perhaps you’re blood sugar is a bit low? Should I send for food?”

“No . . . no, I’m all right. Ian’s mother is still
alive
?” Francesca croaked, her brain fixated on that single piece of news.

A shadow passed across Anne’s face. “Yes. Today she is.”

“But Mrs. Hanson . . . she told me Ian’s mother had died years ago.”

Anne sighed. “Yes, that is what Eleanor believes.” It took Francesca a few seconds due to her bewilderment to realize Eleanor was Mrs. Hanson’s given name. “James and I made the decision once Helen was returned home to England that it would be perhaps . . . best? Easiest?” Anne mused, her expression heartbreakingly sad as she tried to find the right words for a decision made decades ago, during a time of stress and anxiety. “For those who had known and loved Helen before she became ill to remember her like she was rather than to see how this cursed disease had ravaged her, taking away her identity . . . her very soul. Perhaps it was wrong of us to do. Perhaps it wasn’t. Ian certainly didn’t agree with our decision.”

“Well . . . he was only ten years old when Helen was returned to England, isn’t that right?” Francesca asked.

“Nearly,” Anne replied. “But we didn’t tell Ian his mother was alive and being cared for in an institution in East Sussex until he was twenty—old enough to comprehend why we’d made the decision in order to protect him. Ian, like almost everyone else, thought his mother had died.”

The silence rang in Francesca’s ears.

“Ian must have been furious when he found out,” she said before she could edit herself.

“Oh, he was,” Anne said dryly, not taken aback in the slightest by Francesca’s bluntness. “It was not a good time for Ian, James, and me. Ian barely spoke to us for almost a year while he was in school in the states. But we did eventually come to terms, and our relationship was mended.” She waved her hand in a vague sense around the elegant entryway. “And then Ian had this facility built, and the three of us worked together to develop it, finding some common ground. The Institute has been a place of healing for our relationship with our grandson as well as for Helen,” she said, giving Dr. Epstein a grateful smile, even though her eyes remained sad.

Anne seemed to rally and tightened her hold on Francesca’s elbow, urging her to walk alongside her. “I can see that you’re shocked by this news. I think it’d be best if Ian was the one to talk with you further about the matter, given the . . . unusual circumstances.”

“Ian and Helen will arrive at the morning room following their walk,” Dr. Epstein mentioned to Anne.

“We’ll go there, then,” Anne told Francesca, suddenly brisk and purposeful, as they walked to a bank of elevators. “James is already there. I’ll be able to introduce you to Ian’s grandfather.”

Too stunned to argue, Francesca followed along, her brain seemingly vibrating with the news that Helen Noble was still alive and apparently being treated at this facility, her heart squeezing in anguish for Ian.

They took the elevator to a lower level. When the door opened, Dr. Epstein bid them good-bye, saying she must return to her lab.

“She’s a brilliant scientist,” Anne told Francesca confidentially as they made their way down a hallway that ended in a light-filled, many-windowed room. A few patients shuffled past them, casting curious glances at Francesca. “Now that the human genome has been decoded, Dr. Epstein and her colleagues have been using the information to come up with better medications for schizophrenia. Ian funds all of her work. It’s truly been groundbreaking. A medication that Dr. Epstein developed has been recently approved by the European Medicines Agency, and she recommended Helen be put on it. There have been some ups and downs with the treatment so far, but just this week, there have been some dramatic improvements. Ian is so happy. Helen often didn’t recognize Ian, her father, and me, her psychosis was so severe, but
now
 . . . what a difference. She’s even been allowed a pass to go out onto the grounds, something that hasn’t been possible ever since she first arrived here six years ago.”

“That’s wonderful,” Francesca said, glancing around as they entered what Dr. Epstein had called the morning room. Many large windows overlooked a lovely wooded area and meadow. Patients, attendants, and perhaps family members were scattered across the comfortable room, some playing board games, others talking and enjoying the view. Francesca supposed the patients here were some of the luckier ones whose symptoms were more controlled. They appeared to be very high functioning and moved in and out of the room of their own volition, without attendants escorting them.

A robust-looking older man stood when they approached him. His tall, fit form reminded her of Ian.

“Francesca Arno, I’d like you to meet my husband, James,” Anne said.

“A pleasure to meet you,” James said, taking her hand. “Ian mentioned your name to us yesterday—something we took note of, as it’s a rarity for him to mention a woman, much to Anne’s and my disappointment,” James said, a twinkle in his brown eyes. “We were with Dr. Epstein when she got the call that you were here. We didn’t realize you would be coming to England.”

“That’s because I came on the spur of the moment.”

“Ian doesn’t know you’re here?” James asked, looking politely confused.

“No,” Francesca said. Perhaps James noticed her anxiety over that fact, because he patted her shoulder kindly, his gaze transferring to the windows overlooking the meadow. “Well, he’ll know soon enough. I see Helen and him approaching.
Dear God
—”

James’s fingers tightened momentarily on her shoulder. Francesca had glanced out the window when he’d spoken, following James’s gaze. She started as well at what she saw. Ian was walking next to a fragile-looking woman wearing a blue dress that hung loosely on her painfully thin figure. As James had been speaking, the woman had abruptly swung around, her fist striking Ian in the abdomen. She’d stumbled and started to fall, but Ian had caught her against him. His attempts to stabilize his mother were interrupted, however, by Helen’s struggling as if she suddenly feared for her own life at Ian’s hands.

“Call Dr. Epstein,” James said sharply to one of the attendants who had also noticed what was happening out the window. James and three other attendants started for the door that led to the meadow in order to assist Ian.