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She had been hungry, though there had been food in the kitchen. She had been thirsty, and there was water available. But her mother hadn’t been there, and she had been a good girl. She didn’t climb and she didn’t try to cook. And her mother hadn’t contacted the neighbor to watch Ria that weekend because the neighbor had been ill. Ria’s mother had had secrets, and she had taught Ria how to stay alone if she needed to.
“Mom was just supposed to be gone for a few hours,” she said softly. “I was to be good until she returned.”
“And she didn’t return?”
Ria shook her head. “Dane arrived. He stepped into the bedroom, and the moment I saw him, I knew my fears that my mother wasn’t returning were true.”
She remembered that as clearly as she remembered yesterday. Staring back at him as he stepped into the room, his expression lined with sorrow as he moved to the bed, picked her up and carried her from the apartment.
She shook her head. “I’d drank water from the bathroom tap. I could reach it.” She shrugged. “There had been some cheese, a bit of fruit in the fridge and I’d eaten it. And I slept. Huddled in my mother’s bed.”
For three days, alone. Mercury stared back at her, hearing a child’s horror in the too calm words that the adult spoke.
“The Vanderales took good care of me.” She cleared her throat. “They found a foster family to take me in. And when that didn’t work out, they found a better one. We finally struck it lucky the third time, but I was already in my teens. They compensated the families for taking care of me. Dane would often take me shopping for the clothes I needed and school supplies. He brought me Christmas presents, and sometimes, I’d spend an odd weekend here and there on the Vanderale estate w
hen they were there.”
But she had never had a family of her own. She’d been shuttled from one place to the other, and he had a feeling a few of those places hadn’t been happy ones.
“How did you come to work for them?” He watched her, piecing the information Jonas had on her together with what she said.
She shrugged. “I was on the estate one weekend when I was sixteen. I’d been driving Leo insane. I was always being a brat.” She lowered her head. Mercury guessed she had always been looking for attention, looking for a place to fit in. “Anyway, he pushed me into his office, sat me down at a desk and told me that if I could find the puzzle in the papers there, then he would teach me to ride one of the horses on the estate. That was what I was begging for.” She smiled. “I thought he didn’t think I could do it. Five minutes later, I found the code he had me looking for, but I had also broken the code.”
“And did he teach you to ride?”
Her gaze slid away from his. “Eventually, yes. Leo always keeps his word.”
But he hadn’t taught her to ride that day, he guessed.
“I went back to my foster family that week and I was placed in special classes. When I turned eighteen, Leo had my own apartment waiting for me, and a job, as well as training. I’ve been there ever since.”
And she had always been alone.
“That was when Dane started sneaking into my bedroom,” she sighed. “He would leave things on my pillow. A trinket. Tickets to a movie or concert. Vouchers to a clothing store. But it was usually about the same time that I caught the evidence of his recklessness.” She flashed a smile, one that told him she had enjoyed the game as much as Dane had. “He bribes me now, to keep me from going to the Leo. Leo likes to rage at him for endangering himself. And he rages at me for not telling on him,” she finished mockingly.
Leo wouldn’t be raging at her again, Mercury promised himself. He would make certain Dane, as well as Leo, clearly understood that Ria was no longer the other man’s keeper.
“You never married?”
She shook her head, lowering it once more, letting her hair hide her expression as she worked. Or pretended to work. He could sense her uncertainty flowing around her now.
“Did you have many lovers?”
She shrugged. “A few,” she answered, still not looking at him.
“No one that stayed?” he asked gently.
Her chin lifted. Pride glittered in her eyes now, her expression tightening as she glared back at him.
“I don’t need a man to complete me,” she informed him as she moved to her feet and walked around the desk to the file table. “I had dates for whatever functions required one, and if I decided I wanted a lover, I knew how to find one.”
“I don’t doubt that for a moment, Ria,” he murmured. “I wonder though why you rarely wanted one.”
She frowned. “And what makes you draw that conclusion?”
He flicked his fingers to her outfit. “You have a gorgeous body but you dress like someone’s maiden aunt. You pin your hair up in that tight little bun and whenever you work you wear glasses that come from the last century rather than having corrective surgery done. You dress to hide.”
And the light of battle glittered in her eyes.
