Unconditional (20 page)

Heather’s uncle arrived with two squat, round mugs of what looked like cappuccinos saving me from responding.

Heather bestowed the man with a warm smile. “Thanks, Uncle Brock.”

Uncle Brock nodded before giving me a level look. “If you need a bodyguard, I know a few guys.”

Heather smacked his sizeable gut with the back of her hand. “Oh God, Uncle Brock. She’s got paparazzi after her, not the mafia.” She turned her smirk on me. “Besides, with both The Biceps and Raph lusting after her body, I think it’s pretty well guarded.”

I kicked her under the table.

She winced and then grinned. “True though.”

Uncle Brock let out a grunt. “You’re incorrigible, Sparrow.”

“Yeah, Sparrow,” I teased Heather.

“I’ll own that,” she said before picking up her coffee, taking a sip and letting out a dramatic
ahh
.

Uncle Brock grunted again, shook his head and ambled back to the counter.

Heather smiled, returned her coffee cup to its plate and then waved her phone about. “The good news,” she said, “is tomorrow something else will be trending and this will be forgotten.”

“And the bad news?” I asked.

“I probably should have told you before now you’ve got mascara smudged all around your eyes from falling asleep last night without washing it off.”

I burst out laughing.

She slid her phone across the table to me. “Go on, see what they’re saying on the interwebs about you.”

A tight knot formed in my belly at her suggestion. I looked at her phone, its Twitter app still open,
#RaphaelJones
obvious on every tweet displayed.

I could see images of us taken outside Mackellar House that morning, tiny squares of color permanently capturing the madness and shared with the world by people I didn’t even know. People who thought it was completely and totally okay to share my life, to judge me, speculate about me. Strangers who were now condemning me, congratulating me, propositioning me.

It was, in a word, unnerving.

With a shake of my head, I pushed Heather’s phone back to her. I didn’t need that kind of emotional stimulus. I had enough to deal with.

Heather’s lips curled in a slow, warm smile. “Yeah, I figured you’d feel that way.” She swept her phone from the table and shoved it into the deep recesses of her bag. “So? What’s next? You going to tell The Biceps Raph’s beaten him to your heart or what?”

Before I could answer her—before I could tell her Brendon already knew, even if Raph didn’t and could
never
know—the Beatles started singing “I Am the Walrus” in my bag.

Pulse kicking up a notch, I scrambled to retrieve my phone.

Mom was calling me.

Hands shaking from nerves and happiness and excitement, I pulled my phone free, connected the call and rammed it to my ear. “Mom!”

You know what’s the weirdest thing about being an adult under stress and confused pressure? The second you hear your mom’s voice, no matter how independent and grown-up and self-sufficient you are, you instantly become the little kid who needs your mommy’s hugs to make everything better.

“Hey, Bear.” Mom’s softly husky voice stroked my senses across the thousands of miles separating us. “I’m missing you so much. Just wanted to make sure everything is okay over there.”

Throat thick, eyes prickling with hot tears, I nodded.

Heather nudged my shin with her foot. “She can’t see you,” she mouthed at me.

“I’m okay,” I gushed on a wobbly chuckle. “I’m missing you too.”

Mom paused. Long enough for me to know something was wrong. Mom never paused during telephone conversations. It was like she was scared the line was going to be cut and she’d never get the chance to talk to whoever was on the other end again.

My heart slammed into my throat. My stomach rolled. “What’s up, Mom?”

“Your cousin Nathan just called me. You know, the one who lives in Dallas?”

I frowned. Cousin Nathan was a grade-A jerk who thought it was hilarious to follow Mom around at family get-togethers, shaking his hands like an idiot. He thought he was being funny. I thought he was asking to have his teeth smashed in by my foot. “Okay. Why?”

“He said you’re on the internet.”

Remember that sensation I had earlier when Horn offered me a check to never have anything to do with Raph again? Yeah, I got that again.

“Something,” Mom went on, her voice laced with concern, “about two Australian men fighting over you, actually punching each other over you and one of them is from a royal family. And the other is a bodybuilder or something. He said you were in a hospital as well because the royal family guy left you behind and you got attacked by some photographers and that the bodybuilder one came and rescued you but then beat up a member of the media.” She paused again, a heartbeat of silence. “Is that correct, Bear?”

Something sucked all the air from the room. Must have, because I sure as hell couldn’t breathe. I gripped my cell, my chest one big heavy weight of holy-fuck-what-was-I-going-to-do. The last thing I’d wanted when I came to Australia was my mom to be stressed. But now, me being in some insane European-royalty-Australian-celebrity internet controversy was clearly doing that. It was stressing her out.

It sure as shit was stressing
me
out.

“Bear?” Mom repeated, worry clear in the nickname she’d used since I was too young to remember.

Heather was staring at me. Actually, she looked like she was about to leap across the table and do something to me. Maybe shake me?

Blinking, I cleared my throat. “That…that sums it up.”

“You didn’t want to tell me about it?”

I shook my head at Mom’s question. Heather pulled an exasperated face.

“No,” I said quickly into the phone. “I didn’t want you to worry.” I let out a weak laugh. “Remind me to beat the crap out of Nathan when I get home.”

Mom, God bless her, let out her own chuckle. Hers wasn’t as lame as mine though. “I can understand that. He is a bit of a douche, isn’t he?”

“
Mom
!”

She laughed again. The sound sent wonderful warm licks of happiness through me. God, I missed her, missed her stability. I know that sounds stupid, given how much time I’ve spent telling you how Parkinson’s makes us unstable, both on our feet and emotionally. But Mom—even with her tics and shakes and emotional moodiness—was the one constant in my life. A life with a bleak, lonely future.

“I want to come home,” I burst out.

It wasn’t until the words were past my lips that I realized how true they were. I wanted to go home. I wanted to be hugged by her. I wanted to shake and tremble with her and not fear pity and sympathy. I wanted to stop hiding what I had and let her brush my hair from my face and curl up on the sofa and watch cheesy Hallmark movies with me.

I wanted to be a little girl again.

On the other side of the table, Heather regarded me with sad eyes. A lump formed in my throat. Maybe I could take her with me? Mom would love her. Mom would smother her in love and hugs and make her s’mores and cookies—the real kind, the American kind—and we could show her what life in Plenty was—

“I’m not going to let you do that.”

The steel in Mom’s response caught me by surprise. I frowned, shocked. “Why not? I should be home with you, not over here being the star in some messed-up media threesome thing. Did Nathan tell you the media is implying I’m sleeping with them both?
Both
, Mom. Did he tell you Brendon had to bodily carry me away from the reporters? That Raph has a bodyguard because he can’t leave Mackellar House without people wanting to touch him?”

“Raph is the royal one, yes?”

“Raph’s sister married the future king of Delvania.”

“And Brendon is the bodybuilder?”

“He’s the gym manager. He’s studying applied sciences and he’s been working out with me every morning. His aunt has Lou Gehrig’s Disease so he knows how horrible Parkinson’s is.”

“Do you like these boys?”

Mom’s question tore a rough snort from me. “I do. Brendon is incredible, like the brother I never had. And Raph…” I stopped, scrunching up my face as I thought of Raph. “Raph is…is…”

Shaking my head, I opened my eyes. Ignoring Heather’s kind smirk, I dragged my hand—yep, shaking. Booyah!—through my hair. “None of that matters though, Mom. What matters is that I’m going to be hounded by paparazzi here, harassed and talked about. I don’t want to be here anymore. I want to—”

“Oh, Maci.” Mom’s murmur cut me off. Even though I was on the opposite side of the world, I could see her face, could see the kind disapproval on it. “This is not how we raised you. We didn’t raise you to run away from tough things, did we?”

I swallowed. The lump in my throat was hot and big and miserable. “No,” I mumbled.

Mom made one of those sighing noises only moms seem to be able to make. The kind that tells you they love you even if they’re monumentally disappointed with you. “Honey bear,” she said, “I know you think your life isn’t worth sharing with anyone now. I know you think it’s better to hold everyone at bay so they don’t get hurt by what you have, or to stop them from hurting
you
, but by doing that, you’re just robbing yourself of a life.”

Tight pain shot through me. I squeezed my eyes shut, aching all over. Aching and trembling.

“You are so young and beautiful and smart, Maci. And I am so proud of you, but you’re not doing yourself any favors shutting your heart off from the world. Do you think your dad would have wanted you to do this? Do you think he’d be happy?”

“No,” I whispered.

A soft sigh tickled my heart through the phone. “When I was diagnosed,” she said, a sigh in her voice along with a maternal steel reserved only for times of disappointed lectures, “all those years ago, I told your father to leave me. I told him to go find a new life with a new woman who wasn’t broken. I ordered him to walk away from me. I wanted him to take you and start again. I hated him for not doing it.”

Cold disbelief and shock chilled me. My mouth fell open. “Mom!”

“I did,” she went on. “I didn’t want him to stay around to watch me become something less than what I was. I didn’t want him or you to be burdened by what was happening to me. I hated that he wouldn’t leave. And I loved him, oh God, did I love him for not listening to me. He refused to give up on my life, even when I had. He refused to let me give up on living. He refused to let me wallow in my misery. He was my strength and he took the future I saw for myself—a scary, horrible, humiliating future—and turned it into something wonderful. A future of love and happiness and support and togetherness. Don’t rob yourself of that, Bear. Don’t.”

Something hot trailed down my cheek. I suspect it was a tear.

“But you loved Dad,” I said, the words a hoarse croak. “And he loved you. And he was
Dad
. He was, he still
is
, the best guy ever born. Ever.”

“He farted in his sleep, picked his nose when he didn’t think anyone was looking and never, ever put the toilet seat down,” Mom countered, gentle laughter in her voice. “And he used all those weird Australian terms and insisted we watch cricket on ESPN.
Cricket
. The most boring game in the world.”

It was my turn to laugh. Shocked as I was, I laughed. I missed my dad so much every molecule in my body hurt like fucking hell. “Mom,” I gasped for the third time. But this time it was a gasp of love.

She made a soft little snorting giggle. “It’s true. And I wouldn’t have changed him for anything. But if I’d pushed him away, I never would have lasted, Bear. I never would have watched you grow up to be the woman you are now. Although I’m worried the woman you are now may be a tad too stubborn. And foolish, if she doesn’t see what she has now for what it is.”

Throat tight, I closed my eyes. “And what is it?”

“An adventure that life—or God, if you’ll permit me—has given you,” she answered. Compassion and strength filled the statement.
Her
compassion and strength. “Grab it with both your hands, Maci, and hold on to it with such force there’s no way they can shake.”

Silence stretched between us. A heavy pressure wrapped around my chest. The lump in my throat grew thicker.

“Don’t give up on life yet, Bear,” she whispered. “Life hasn’t given up on you.”

I chewed my bottom lip, incapable of finding words.

A very unmotherly snigger, one that made me blush, bubbled through the phone connection. “You only have to look at those two Australian men to know that,” she said. “Even if you want to turn your back on it, life is coming after you. And Maci, Australian men really know how to make you feel alive. Trust me.”

And with her thoroughly dirty observation in my ear, she ended the call.

“If that was your mum telling you to stay here and enjoy your fame,” Heather said, watching me over the rim of her coffee mug, “I think I love her.”

I let out a wobbly laugh. “It—”

My cell phone burst into life in my hands. I am ashamed to say I squeaked in surprise.

I didn’t recognize the caller ID but I answered and pressed my cell to me ear. “Hello?”

“Maci Rowling?” a strange male voice rumbled through the connection. “This is Professor Watkins, the Dean of Students. I think it’s best you come into my office ASAP. We need to discuss your place here at the University of Sydney.”

Well, fuck.

Unexpected Changes

An hour later, I walked out of Dean Watkins’s office.

Wow. In the short time I’d spent sitting in the musty room full of leather-bound science tomes, the austere man’s cataract-gray stare fixed on me with unwavering focus as he read me the riot act, every plan I’d made for my time in Australia shifted.

Apparently, the university wasn’t exactly pleased with the media attention my…situation…with Raphael Jones and Brendon Osmond had caused. Apparently, they’d decided it was time I moved to the field study component of my scholarship.

Apparently—and I’m only assuming this based on the way he went bright red and stammered about for a bit when I mentioned the royal family of Delvania’s part in my accelerated timeframe—he’d pocketed a nice bribe to help get me out of Raphael’s life. When Horn had failed dealing directly with me, he’d moved onto the dean, who was now getting rid of me. I wondered if he’d get a knighthood in Delvania for a job well done.