Solar Storm (12 page)

The ghost of a smile crossed the man’s lip. He pulled a thin strip of plastic from the back of the pad. “Hold out your wrist, please.”

When she did, he snapped the clear plastic over it. The strip curled around her wrist like a bracelet. As soon as the two ends met, the plastic dissolved and she felt a light mist descend onto her skin.
 

“Okay, once his cuff is in place, he will not be able to access any transport or order a ship piloted within the injunction distance. If he does, he will be picked up and charged with violation of the order.”

Relief rolled through her. She didn’t need to hide anymore. She was free.

“Are we done here?” Kelwin demanded, and stepped away from her.

Confused, she looked up at him. His face was set like granite, no warmth in his eyes as he looked at the clerk.
 

“I think so.” She looked at the clerk for confirmation. He nodded. “Good, we just need to get the cargo unload—”
 

He turned and walked off. No explanation. Nothing. Just started to walk toward the door. Her heart stuttered as the bottom fell out of her stomach.
 

“Kelwin? Where are you going?”

He didn’t reply, just kept walking, and she had her answer. He’d given her his name for protection, but he didn’t intend to claim her as his wife. A tear welled up and rolled down her cheek to splash onto the deck-plating at her feet.

She barely felt the clerk catch her as she collapsed, screaming after her husband.

“Kelwin!”

Chapter Eleven

Six months later

Nerys was in hell. She sat at a table tucked away in the corner of the expansive—and expensive—Darkside Restaurant on the Uvarian Four orbital platform. Deep in the bowels of the station, it had a stunning view of the desert wasteland below, well away from the triple suns. They were the system’s primary tourist attraction, but she hadn’t come to see them.
 

After months on the roads running cargo and avoiding any and all contact, she was sick and tired of damn sunlight, from any sun. Her skin was so golden now she doubted it would ever regain its original pale hue.

The ice was gone, melted into the vivid blue fluid in her glass. She hadn’t a hope in hell of pronouncing the name, but the bartender assured her it was the strongest stuff they had.
 

Lifting the glass, she knocked back what was left in the bottom and tried to remember how many she’d had. Four, or maybe five? Could even be pushing six now. She didn’t know and decided she didn’t care. She had a week until her next run was scheduled and neither bribery nor threats had rustled up even a small job to fill her time. Without work to occupy her mind, all she wanted to do was crawl into a hole and forget the last six months of her life had ever happened.
 

Wanted to forget how much of a cock-up she’d made of everything. Forget that she hadn’t told Kelwin the truth. Forget that her father had tried to have her declared insane and reduced to mere property.
His
property. If Kelwin hadn’t been there…

Her glass slipped from her nerveless fingers and clunked down on the table louder than she’d intended. The metallic clack caused the diners at the tables nearby to turn in surprise. Similar expressions of resignation crossed their features as they took in her golden skin and turned away. She could read their body language as they ignored her. Just another drunk sailor.
 

She studied the glass as if it was at fault for its lack of alcohol. Perhaps another one would do the trick? Lifting a hand, she waved erratically in the air for the waiter to bring her another. If that one didn’t grant her the unconsciousness she craved, then she’d finally give in and start taking the sleeping pills the port doc had given her during her annual medical last month. She’d do anything to avoid slipping into sleep, only to snap awake convinced her father was back and had taken Kelwin from her. Consciousness quashed the specter of her father but left her to face the crushing realization that Kelwin was already gone. She’d driven him away.
 

She needed oblivion. No, she needed the man she loved…but that was never going to happen. Not now. Not ever.
 

Her heart throbbed painfully as an image of Kelwin formed in her mind. She clenched her fist on the table, the knuckles white as she tried to breathe through the pain.
Focus on the breaths, not the pain. Blank mind, think of nothing. Breathe…in, out…in, out.

She loved him. Even though she’d tried to convince herself otherwise, she’d loved him since before their wedding day over ten years ago. Looking up, she blew out a shaky breath and used the back of her hand to dash at the tears in her eyes.

He’d given her freedom and walked away. More than that, when she’d dragged herself back to the
Lady
she’d found a notification on her comm channel from his bank. He’d given her unlimited access to his account, but of the man himself there was no sign. He’d saved her without a hint of emotion on his face. He couldn’t even bring himself to look back, not even when she collapsed in the clerk’s arms, screaming his name.

She tipped the glass up again, waiting for the last azure drop of alcohol to roll down the inside and onto her waiting tongue.
 

She loved him, and she’d lost him. Drunken forgetfulness was the best she could hope for.

A glass clunked down on the table in front of her. Irritation surged through her as she looked up, mouth open to give the waiter a piece of her mind. She didn’t get further than the hand.
 

It was a male hand, with strong fingers that gripped around the rim of the glass. Long-boned and dark-skinned—with a smattering of hair across the back—it was a hand she recognized. Hands like that had haunted her dreams for months.
 

Her breath caught as she followed the hand into a wrist and the wrist up to a strong forearm, then beyond until she met Kelwin’s bright blue eyes.
 

“Do you want this? Or shall we get out of here, Mrs. Sayeed?”

Despite the joy that filled her heart at his mere presence and the near-overwhelming desire to leap to her feet and rush into his arms, Nerys did neither. Survival instincts kicked in as wariness threaded itself through every fiber of her being. Just because he’d come back didn’t mean squat. Didn’t mean he’d suddenly decided he loved her or wanted to claim her as his wife. For all she knew he could be back to kick her while she was down.
 

Lifting her chin, she leaned back in her chair and surveyed him with a cool gaze. Damn, he looked good. Sharply dressed, clean. He’d even shaved, just a hint of dark shadow on his cheeks. The need to reach out and touch assaulted her. Memory filled in the gaps. How that slight stubble felt against her skin, of his cologne as it wrapped around her even as he took her into his arms—

She quashed the memories and looked at him directly. “And why would I want to do that,
Mr.
Sayeed?”

His expression tightened, anger and something else—something closer to pain—flitted over his features. Surprise joined the wariness as he glanced down, looking like an unsure schoolboy. When he looked back up, the anger was gone, his expression open and honest.
 

“Because I’d like to talk to you. Try and sort this“—He motioned between them—“this between us, out. Please?”

“You’ve lost weight.”

Kelwin winced at the inane comment. Women could be sensitive about their weight, and a man already on thin ice was better off staying away from such a subject. Still, it was something to break the awful silence that had crowded into the lift with them as if it were a living, breathing person.
 

Standing opposite with her arms folded—defensive body language if ever he’d seen it—Nerys finally looked at him. It wasn’t a good look. It was the kind of look that said he was on a level with something nasty she wanted to scrape off her shoe.
 

“I’m flattered you noticed.” He didn’t miss the sarcasm in her tone as she looked away to study the control station of the lift as though its buttons were the most fascinating thing this side of the Novarian expanse.
 

“Of course I noticed. You’re my wife.”

Arching a fine blonde eyebrow, she leveled him with a look that could have frozen suns. She’d gone back to her natural blonde, the first thing he’d noticed when he’d seen her. It suited her, but he daren’t say so. The mood she was in—the stony silence as she’d followed him from the restaurant—she’d probably string him up by his balls.
 

“Oh, okay, so
now
you want to remember that. How good of you.”

If he’d thought having her ignore him for most of the ride up to his suite was bad, then facing the full force of her fury—even for a few seconds—was worse. The chime of the door announced their arrival and saved him. As soon as the doors opened, she swept past him into the luxury suite beyond.
 

He leaned against the metal wall and ran a hand through his hair. He could deal with her anger. He had no choice. He’d earned it when he’d walked away from her at the dock. But what reached down his throat and grabbed his heart in a death grip was the loss of hope in her eyes. It was the look of a woman who had given up, who expected nothing but hurt from others.
 

How could he blame her? Now that he knew the truth, her life story read like a counselor’s nightmare. Separated from her outspoken mother as a child, she’d been brought up in a gilded cage, but not as a little princess. By all reports, Cordon had been a downright bastard to his family, punishing them for the slightest infraction, real or imagined.
 

Then, when she was old enough, her father had begun to sell her to the highest bidder. Not physically, at least, not until Cordon had married her off to Kelwin himself. Before him, there had been three other engagements. Saps chosen with care from the outer systems, lured in by her beauty and innocence. All had lost a fortune when McQuaid had broken the agreements on mere technicalities and kept the bride payments before moving onto a new system and fresh victims, trusting the lack of communication between sectors so his little game wouldn’t be discovered. Kel doubted the asshole had even told Nerys—just taken the money and used her young age as an excuse to stop anything going too far before they could run.

Pushing away from the wall, he followed her into the suite. After speaking to all three former suitors and finally the McQuaids’ former nanny, he finally knew the truth. A truth he should have known from the beginning, either by listening to Nerys or his own instincts.

Nerys McQuaid had been as innocent as the men her father had deceived. And the instant she’d found out the truth, she’d walked away from it all to lead an honest life. Kel was an ass for suspecting otherwise.
 

He found her standing under one of the overhead canopies, but her eyes weren’t on the magnificent triple sunrise above. Instead, she looked at the modern art sculpture on a side table. A mass of wires and disjointed shapes, it made no sense at all to him. Perhaps he just wasn’t “modern” enough to appreciate it.
 

“I left you access to my credit line. Didn’t you get the notification?”

Why didn’t you use the money? Why go back to sailing when you could have lived a life of luxury?

She shrugged, still turned away from him. Every line of her slender body—encased in a simple top and cargo pants—screamed her desire to flee, to get away from him.
 

“I didn’t…don’t want your money. I never did.”

His breath left his lungs in a surprised rush. He’d been worried that the message hadn’t gotten through. That on top of everything, she thought he’d abandoned her completely without a way to support herself, that she’d had to take her rickety ship and go back to sailing. So much so he’d had an associate run a trace through the systems to confirm that the message had been opened by someone on the
Lady
. It had, but there had been no query with his bank and nothing had been taken out.

She’d known about the money and she hadn’t taken a cent.
 

“What do you want, Nerys?” His voice was little more than a whisper as he approached her. His heart ached for her pain. First her father, and then him. They’d both been absolute assholes. He had to make this right. Tell her that she wasn’t alone…that he loved her and always had.
 

“I want a divorce.”

Four little words—not the three he wanted to hear—but the four he knew he deserved and worse. His heart thumped painfully, a knot closing his throat. He loved her, but all she wanted from him was her freedom.
 

“I don’t want a settlement…” Her voice thickened as she lowered her head. Feeling a complete shit, he reached for her. She moved, sliding out of reach to turn and face him. Tears ran unchecked down her cheeks, and the utter misery in her eyes made him feel as if he’d been punched in the gut. “I won’t claim anything from you. I just want to get on with my life.”

“Alone?”

He couldn’t help it—the question slipped from his lips before he could stop it. The thought that she’d found someone else—of her in some other man’s bed—set his blood simmering. Gratefully, he took refuge in it. Anger was easier to deal with than misery and the fact that the woman he loved may now hate him.