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“Tytan.” The memory helped fill it in. As soon as the name left my lips, Crista’s gaze flew everywhere, and her lips kneaded each other to a pulp. “Hmmm. Tytan,” I repeated knowingly. “Your own maddening Cimarron, hmmm?”
Her face darkened. “Not mine.” She gazed longingly at the children, as if beholding an idyll she’d never know. “No. Not mine. I—we—” A short huff. “I mean, even if our statuses were closer, it would not be…suitable.”
“Statuses? Suitable?” I let my own gaze gain a few shadows. “Is that even a thing here anymore?” My perusal roamed the crowd, a human mixture as diverse as what I’d first seen in the Palais offices. “Your country is changing, Crista. At a very fast pace.”
She grimaced. Traced a striation in the floor with one finger. “Only some things, Lucina.”
“Lucy,” I corrected. “Or Luce. I don’t care.” We were huddled in a storm shelter, sharing protein bars and water rations. Formalities were for the business offices and marble hallways above us.
“Lucy.” Her dutiful echo was negated by a sullen shrug. “The point is the same. Even if his last name was Smythe, it would be useless. Ty and I are…quite different.”
Ty? I refrained from smirking fully. “Sometimes that’s good.”
So maybe waiting out a hurricane in a shelter wasn’t insanity. The conversation, one I didn’t see happening anywhere in the real world above, had taken a turn toward interesting—in more than a few ways. I mean, I’d just surprised myself. Okay, perhaps even shocked myself. I was the queen of the wedding pragmatists, not a matrimony groupie. That was still a good thing, right? Okay, maybe there was a little relief involved, a residual ecstasy after learning she wasn’t interested in Shiraz. But why would I try to keep pushing the situation?
Not worth dissecting. So I didn’t, instead following up with, “Opposites really do attract, girlfriend. More than you know.”
This time, her adamant head shake meant whipping her shoulders with her own ponytail. “Opposites, yes. But two people as far apart as the poles themselves?” She stared through the crowd, sighing wistfully. “I want…all this, Lucy. A crowd of children running around. Family togetherness, even in adversity. Sharing the hard times and the good…and all of the crazy.” Her lips inched up, trying out the word in her own syntax. My mouth emulated the look.
“That all sounds damn good to me.”
“I was raised with it.” She checked the reception on her phone, like I’d done every ten minutes since we got down here. And just like the last time I’d checked, not even half a bar appeared. “I am the oldest of six.”
“Whoa.”
She laughed. “A word my parents are clearly not familiar with.”
“No shit.” It deserved a hearty laugh. “Most of my life, it was just my mom and me. I always had a friend or two hanging out on the weekends, but six at a time, all the time?” Shudder. “Yeeps.”
“It was certainly…busy.” She pulled up her knees then rested her chin atop them. “And loud. And loving. And full. Abundantly full.”
I softly squeezed her shoulder. “Nothing wrong with that.”
Her smile faded. “Unless one wants it with Tytan Cimarron.”
“Why?” If Tytan was half as magnetic as his cousin, I didn’t blame her for pining for the guy. On the other hand, maybe Tytan faced the same marital obligations as Shiraz… “Oh, yikes. Does he already belong to someone else?”
Her eyes slid shut. “No.”
“Just obligated, then?”
“No.”
“Married?” Shit. That wasn’t a mess worth screwing with.
“No.”
Thank God. I was too beat to get out the whipping stick about married men—not that Crista Noble struck me as “that type” for a single second.
She finally rasped, “Tytan Cimarron belongs to no one, Lucy.”
“Psssshhh.” I waved a hand. “Maybe he says that now. But—”
“No. Not ever.” She nearly bit the words out. “He is—how do you say it?—the permanent bachelor. Yes?”
I snorted. Hard. “That’s what they said about Kanye and Clooney.”
“Who?”
