Page 28 of Seduction Under the Southern Stars
“Zoe,” Elora scolds.
“I’m just making conversation,” she protests.
Suddenly, I don’t want to say. Not because of Sophia, but because I can feel how Elora has stiffened next to me. I don’t want to lie, though, because I’m sure she’ll be able to tell.
In the end, I opt for the truth, pared down so it hopefully won’t upset her. “I lived with a girl in Germany for a while, but she didn’t want to move when I left, which was fair enough, so we broke up.”
“What was her name?” Elora asks.
“Sophia,” I say reluctantly.
She nods, concentrating on her chili.
I look up and catch Joel’s eye. A slight frown draws his brows together. He and Fraser still seem very protective of their sister. There’s a story here, running beneath the surface like a riptide, which explains Elora’s vulnerability and obvious anxiety. Something happened while I was away.
And I’m determined to get to the bottom of it before the night’s out.
*
Elora
I feel a little queasy. It’s only now that I realize Linc was probably right, and he didn’t go out with girls while he was at Greenfield. There were girls at the school, and some of them were part of our friend group, but I don’t remember him being paired with any of them. At the time, I never had to be jealous. Now, though, it makes my stomach flip to think of him with someone else.
But what did I expect? He’s a gorgeous, healthy young man; he would never have been single while we were apart.
“So, Linc, you used to go to Greenfield, right?” Hallie asks him.
He nods. “I was a troubled teenager.”
“For that read total miscreant,” Joel says.
“He was,” I confirm. “He used to smuggle cigarettes and alcohol into the dorms.”
He gives a short laugh. “That was only in the early days.” He has another bite of chili and coughs. “Jesus fucking Christ.”
Glad my father’s not here to listen to his language, I gesture at the pot of sour cream on the coffee table. “Help yourself to more if you need to cool it down.”
Still coughing, he leans forward and spoons some more onto the chili. His shirt sleeve stretches across his back and clings to his biceps as he does so, and my gaze snags on his taut, muscular body. I’m finding it difficult to tear my gaze away from him.
“Do you have fond memories of being there?” Hallie asks.
He leans back. “Oh yeah, I loved it, eventually. Atticus was very strict, and that was tough in the beginning. I was an angry young man, and I was determined to punish him and the other teachers for thinking they knew what was best for me. I spent those first few weeks like Steve McQueen in The Great Escape, longing for freedom. And then one day, I realized I was looking forward to the next trek into the mountains, the next rugby match, the next lesson. These guys helped.” He gestures around the room, at me, Joel, and Fraser. “And I made a lot of friends there.”
“I’m still in touch with Henry West,” Joel says, referring to one of the guys who started around the same time as Linc. “He’d like to catch up with you while you’re here, if you have the time.”
“Yeah, I’d like that. He was one of the good guys,” Linc replies.
“Henry runs his own company now making devices to help people walk again,” I tell him and the girls.
“He was always going to do something amazing,” Linc says. “He was a whizz on the computer. I made them crash, and he fixed them for me.”
He stretches out his long legs in the faded jeans, crossing them at the ankles. I’ve never been into feet before, but his are bare and oddly attractive, clean and with neatly tended nails. His hands are the same, light-brown, large and strong, with short, neat nails. My gaze falls on the Futhark runes that snake up the inside of his forearm. Immortality. I wonder whether part of the reason he chose that word is because so much of his life has seemed impermanent—from his life with his birth family, to his time with us, to the way he’s moved around so much since he was eighteen. Maybe his tattoos are like roots anchoring him in time. Stamps in his passport. Each one reminds him of a moment in his journey through life that he has enjoyed and cherishes.
Does he have something that reminds him of Sophia? I wonder what she was like. And Mona, who he slept with when he first got to Cairo? I looked it up—Mona is a popular Egyptian girls’ name. Was she Egyptian then? I picture her like Cleopatra, with long, dark hair and makeup like Zoe’s. Was he terribly in love with her? Did she break his heart?
“Lora?”
I blink and realize everyone’s looking at me. Linc’s smiling—he must have asked me a question. “Huh?” I say. “Sorry?”
