Opal's Wish: Book Four of The Crystal Warriors Series (36 page)

The bag held a little something extra, she discovered. A book about crystals with an A-to-Z index that included color photos. Curious, she stretched out atop her bed to leaf through the book.

On impulse she turned to D for….

Danburite.

Well, look at that. He
was
named after a crystal. A pale pinkish crystal, with shadings that were almost clear in some places, but still with pinky striations. Hah. As if. A girly pink crystal was the absolute
last
one she’d associate with Danbur.

And it also came in lilac? Good grief. Now something like
obsidian
she could believe. Black. Beautiful. Deadly. Hadn’t she read a paranormal romance where the bad guys had used obsidian knives?

Oh, look. You could get golden danburite, too. Hmmm. The crystal in that photo looked familiar for some reason.

She read on. Danburite was a powerful healing stone according to the author. And if you placed it over your heart or under your pillow it would give you lucid dreams—whatever that meant.

Ah, here was a good bit. Danburite was supposed to provide a link to serenity and wisdom, and bring patience and peace of mind. Hah. How about the opposite? Opal hadn’t felt serene or peaceful since she’d met him.

“Danburite opens the heart and encourages love of self.” What a load of rubbish. She almost closed the book but curiosity prodded her to suspend disbelief and turn to O, where, sure enough, she found that
opals
, which she’d always presumed was precious gems, were also considered crystals. And, embarrassingly, they were a “seductive stone” associated with love and passion, desire and eroticism.

Heat scorched her cheeks. Oh, please. That was totally ridiculous! Seductive, she was not. And the only time she’d experienced passion and desire was with….

Danbur.

She pushed the thought aside and read on. Oooh. Fire opals. Pretty. What could they do?

Well, according to the author they could “enhance personal power, awaken inner fire, and protect”, though against what, exactly, wasn’t specified. They were also a symbol of hope, helped with change and progress, and magnified thoughts and feelings. Interesting gems, fire opals.

Lastly, they were supposed to “release deep-seated grief and help let go of the past”.

Whoa. That bit hit her right where it hurt.

Opal stopped reading and stared at the ceiling. Maybe the opal in her mother’s pendant was a fire opal. She should show it to Peter. He seemed to know a bit about crystals. Maybe she should start wearing the necklace.

She thumbed a few more pages and turned to S. Her eyes rounded. Holy heck.
Seraphinite
was a crystal?

Uneasy, she quickly scanned the information. Some sort of an “angel” crystal found in Siberia that promoted self-healing and… out-of-body journeys? Sheesh. Enough of this BS. Next thing she’d be trying to track down a piece of seraphinite for Sera and hoping it’d help her cure her asthma or something.

Opal snapped the book shut, leaned down, and shoved it under the bed. She didn’t want Sera getting hold of it and believing the hype.

A yawn escaped. And another. God, she was so tired. And goodness knows what she’d done to her right hand for the knuckles to be so sore and swollen.

Her eyelids grew heavier. And when the distant scream of a human being in agony throbbed through the air, she didn’t stir.

~~~

The blaring of the phone jerked her from a dream she couldn’t quite recall except that it still disturbed her. She rolled off the bed, stumbled, and careened off the wall as she sprinted downstairs for the phone. Note to self: get a phone installed in the bedroom!

She snatched at the receiver, heart thudding, hoping she hadn’t missed the call. “Hello, Opal speaking.”

“Hello, Opal. Or should I say,
Jordan
?”

She smacked the receiver back into its cradle, disconnecting the call. But that small act of defiance wouldn’t save her.

The walls closed in and the air grew heavy with menace as she waited for the phone to ring again. To distract herself, she kneaded her shoulder, probing the sore spot where she’d banged it in her race to the phone.

The ringer blared again. After six rings she knew she couldn’t put off the inevitable any longer. He’d found her. She could either stand here staring at the phone like a deer caught in headlights, praying to God he didn’t know squat about Sera, or she could wrest control from him—show him that she wouldn’t be intimidated.

Deep breath, Opal.

She snatched the receiver and spoke before he could get a word out. “Richard.” He’d insisted on being called Rick. With any luck calling him “Richard” would irritate him.

“Long time, no hear,” she drawled. Huh. There was a God after all. The absence of her stutter was proof of that. Even so she cringed inwardly at the prospect of Rick Windsor jeering at her speech impediment. Or worse, correctly guessing he was the root cause of the trauma that had caused it to manifest. Even now, the words
shut up
were a trigger that made her sick and shaky and barely able to force a sound from her throat. She couldn’t let Rick so much as suspect he held that much power over her.

Taking a deep breath and hoping she could pull this off, she kept her tone friendly and conversational as she said, “Tell you what, let’s make this your ten yearly check-in. So now you’ve checked in, do me a favor and fuck off for another ten years—decades would be even better come to think of it.”

His bark of laughter held a hint of admiration. “Well, aren’t you the feisty one.”

“You have no idea. How did you find me?”

“I have my ways.”

“What do you want, Richard? Make it quick. I haven’t got time to chat.”

He laughed again, but this time it held a sharp edge. “You’ve changed,
Jordan
. You used to be so terribly shy, so very eager to please.”

She let the silence drag on, unwilling to play his games. And finally he said, “I hear you’re attempting to revive your modeling career.”

Her mind raced, trying to figure out how’n the hell he’d gotten that information. Someone must have leaked it. It’d only been a matter of time, she supposed. Finally she said, “I am. Not that it’s any business of yours.”

“Oh, but it is. Because we had a deal,
Jordan
.”

The room spun and panic welled, threatening to catapult her back to the past. She couldn’t let that happen. Couldn’t lose it while he was on the line.

She squeezed her eyes shut, counted to three. Exhaled. And then she opened her eyes and faced down her demons, fought them and won, so that when she spoke there was no trace of fear or panic in her voice. In fact, her tone was ever so slightly bored when she said, “You mean the one where you drugged me and raped me and told me to shut the fuck up about it or you’d make me sorry?”

It was his turn to go silent. And she smiled, proud that she had uttered that trigger phrase without turning into a gibbering mess. She could do this. She could gain the upper hand.

“Some deal,” she drawled. “You listen to me, you piece of shit. I haven’t told anyone what you did.” Well, that wasn’t strictly true. She had told Desiree a little about her “ex”—enough to get across he wasn’t someone she wanted anywhere near Sera. She hadn’t mentioned names though.

“And I won’t,” she continued, “because you know what,
Richard
? You don’t matter a crap. What you did to me doesn’t define me. And I’ve moved on—unlike you, by the sounds of it. Not that I give a shit. But hey, I am a teensy bit tired of living hand to mouth so I’m grabbing this incredible opportunity I’ve been given with both hands. And I strongly suggest you shut the fuck up and deal with it.”

And with that, she slammed the receiver down, ripped the cord from the wall socket, and stomped upstairs into the bathroom. She pushed through the door so hard it bounced off the doorstop and whacked her in the same shoulder she’d banged earlier. Pain bloomed. Dammit. She’d have a nice bruise by tomorrow.

She didn’t dare check her reflection in the mirror over the sink. Doubtless she’d look deranged, ready to commit murder. She ran the cold faucet and splashed water on her face and throat. And then she stuck her head under the tap and let the water course over the base of her skull and soak her hair.

She’d hoped to freeze the conversation replaying over and over in her head but it had never been that easy to silence Rick’s voice. And now she had to cope with his smugness. His veiled threats.

Finally, when the chill became a burn, she shut off the faucet and wrung out the sopping ropes of her hair. Blindly reaching for a hand towel, she dried her face and then rubbed it over her hair and draped it across her nape to catch the drips. Good enough.

She’d straightened, and was heading from the bathroom when panic hit. She sat in a big hurry before her knees went out from under her. She’d been a fool. Rick had referred to her attempt to revive her modeling career, and odds were he meant the show in Brooklyn. But now she’d mentioned an “incredible opportunity”?

She knew how tenacious he could be. He was bound to start digging. And when he did, he’d find Sera.

God. She’d always known Rick Windsor would find out he had a daughter one day. But she wasn’t ready to face him—not least because she’d conveniently let Sera believe her father had died before she was born. If it came down to a legal battle for custody, she now had the financial means to fight him. But if things got nasty, she would be forced to admit he’d raped her. She didn’t much care what that would do to Rick’s precious mayoral aspirations, but she cared very much how it would impact on Sera.

A man’s voice floated up from downstairs. Her pulse accelerated. Adrenaline surged. And then she recognized him. Danbur. And the irrational fear that Rick had somehow had broken into her house to threaten her in person turned first to relief, and then to something else altogether. Longing. And, when she heard Sera’s piping tones and Danbur’s answering rumble of laughter, longing turned to a soul-deep ache for what might have been. Because although she didn’t understand how or why, she knew Danbur would be leaving them both. Soon.

She crawled to her feet and headed downstairs.

Danbur had Sera clinging to his back—hence the giggles. He glanced up when he heard her footsteps on the treads. In a blink his gaze turned from light, and if not carefree then something close to it, to dark and brooding. “You are upset,” he said.

“It’s nothing.” She waved a hand, trying for airy unconcern. “Just work stuff.” Holding the rail, she perched on a stair, glad she’d judged it so that she had the height advantage.

Danbur plucked Sera from his back and set her carefully on her feet. “’Tis getting late, little one, and your mother is tired. Why don’t you run a bath while I search out something for her to eat?”

Sera’s expression—all big serious eyes magnified by her glasses—showed she understood the “I need to talk to your mother in private” subtext. She blew Danbur a kiss and scampered upstairs, squeezing past Opal on the way up.

By tacit agreement they both waited until they heard the bath water running. Danbur spoke first. “You look like a horse has dragged you backward through a thorn bush. What has happened? Tell me.”

She opened her mouth to tell him it was none of his business but what came out was, “Sera’s father somehow managed to track me down. He threatened me. On the phone—not in person. But even so. It was…. Horrible. And strangely liberating.” She caught her lower lip between her teeth. Yes. That fit. Because standing up to Rick, showing him she wouldn’t be cowed by his threats, tell him to shut the fuck up and throwing his own words—words that had defined her for so long—back in his face,
had
been liberating. “Terrifying, too,” she added. But then, uncertain futures were always that.

“I understand.” Danbur mounted the stairs and sat two below her, his back to the wall, looking up at her.

She barked a wry laugh. “Do you?”

“He threatened you. You stood up to him. And now you’re scared of what he might do. And what that means for your daughter.”

“I take that back. You do get it.”

Danbur was silent for a moment. “She doesn’t know of him, does she?”

Opal shook her head. “She thinks he died.”

“And if he turns up here, demanding to see her? If he tries to take her?”

“Not happening. I’ll lop off both his hands if he so much as tries to touch her.”

“Where is he now?”

His inflectionless tone rang loud warning bells in her head. “I don’t know,” she said, which was the truth because he might be in Dallas, dabbling in his daddy’s industrial equipment company while plotting his mayoral campaign, or he might be heading her way with ruining her life all over again on his mind.

“Tell me and I will kill him.”

Her jaw dropped. She closed her mouth, swallowed, and finally managed, “Isn’t that a little… extreme?”

“After what he did to you, I think not.”

Her throat tightened, vocal chords constricting until it was difficult to swallow let alone speak. “H-H-How did y-y-you know?” Dammit, the stutter was back.

“I know you intimately, Opal.”

Heavy emphasis on the word “intimate”. She shivered, remembering that night with him, how he’d touched her body and her heart. How he’d loved her.

She gazed into his intent blue eyes and knew he would do it—kill for her if she gave the word. And, God help her, it was tempting. She even toyed with ringing Rick’s office and telling him about Sera, luring him here, and then letting Danbur take him out of the picture. It would solve a whole lot of problems, she knew. And that temptation was so seductive that she could all too easily imagine herself becoming a willing accomplice to murder if that was what it took to protect Sera from the truth.

Murder. God. What kind of woman had she become?

“Y-Y-You need to g-g-go,” she told him. “S-S-Stay away f-f-from me. A-A-And Sera. W-W-Whatever happens, s-s-stay away. A-A-And that m-m-means her b-b-birthday party, too.” A clean break. It would be best for all of them.

He stood. Stared down at her for one long moment. And then he descended the stairs and let himself out of the house.