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She’d awaken in their arms, their warmth surrounding her, their promise still suspended from a chain about her neck. Everything would be okay. It was just a very bad dream.
“… just a very bad dream.”
Margot heard the faint words as shock resounded through her entire system. The chill that swept over her shook her to the core and enraged her at the same time.
This wasn’t her daughter. She looked like her, but she wasn’t the girl who had left for Spain three months before. And she wasn’t the daughter who had feared her mother’s wrath. There was no fear left in Alyssa. There was nothing left inside her. Not fear, not the dreams that always had filled her eyes, or the emotions she always had allowed to get the better of her.
Bleak, ravaged pain was all she’d seen in her daughter’s eyes.
And in that moment Margot knew a regret that sliced open her heart. This gentle, sensitive soul she’d never believed she knew how to love, had actually been the one person she truly loved, clear to her soul.
7
EIGHTEEN WEEKS LATER
The pain was like nothing she had ever known in her life. It brought her from a deep sleep, from dreams of Barcelona, of the summer sun and Shane’s and Sebastian’s touch. Whispered promises, their voices gentle, filled with passion. From the dreams that wrapped around her and gave her what little comfort could be found in the knowledge of betrayal to the agonizing, brutal waves of pain tearing through her stomach.
> “No. God. Please!” she cried out, dragging herself from the bed as she looked down, the deep, dark stain of blood covering the cotton shorts she wore and running down her legs in rivulets.
“Momma!” Lurching for the door, the agonizing pain intensifying, Alyssa stumbled into the hall, sobs tearing from her chest as the pain and the realization of this final loss swept through her. “Oh God! Momma!”
She had made it along the landing to the stairs, her parents’ suite just ahead when she collapsed, the next wave like a brutal punch to her abdomen, ripping through her with a force that sent her stumbling to the floor.
Clutching her stomach, Alyssa prayed. Whispered, desperate prayers even as she felt that life she’d gone to such lengths to protect ease from her.
She could hear her mother screaming, issuing orders with a desperation that barely registered as Alyssa felt herself being eased from the floor.
I have you, baby. The whisper barely registered, the male voice comforting as pain resonated through every particle of her body.
“Shane. Shane, help me,” she sobbed. “Please help me.”
It’s okay, Alyssa. I have you.…
“Find Sebastian,” she begged, staring up at him, her vision blurred, unable to see those beloved features. “Sebastian!”
She was screaming their names, the pain ripping through her, knowledge tearing her mind apart even as she felt as though her body were being torn apart.
She was losing their baby. The baby she’d fought to protect, whom she had married to protect. She couldn’t lose her last link to them. She couldn’t lose all she had left.
“Please…” Darkness edged her vision, moved swiftly through her, stealing her strength, her ability to understand the agony tearing at her.
But she felt them. For the first time in so long they were there, whispering through what was left of her soul.
“I love you!” she cried, sobbing in desperation, reaching out for them with everything inside her. “Please, please don’t take him. Please.…”
But she felt him leaving her. Felt the baby she’d wanted more than anything in the world leaving her, just as his fathers had left her. Easing away and taking the last of the girl she had been, ripping away the last of her dreams.
“Shane, please…,” she whispered as consciousness eased from her. “Please don’t take him … please.…”
Margot felt the tears falling from her own eyes as Davis’ bodyguard, an Army medic, worked to save Alyssa as the physician rushed into the bedroom.
Stepping from the room, her hand covering her lips, silent sobs shaking her body, Margot fought the overwhelming rage, fought to keep the vow she’d made to her daughter. That she would never, for any reason, attempt to hurt the men who had fathered that baby. The men Alyssa still loved with what little was left of her ragged heart.
How long she stood there she didn’t know. She couldn’t stop crying, couldn’t contain her own pain. When the doctor stepped from the bedroom, his expression was heavy with grief.
“She miscarried,” he sighed heavily as Margot closed her eyes and felt Davis wrap his arms around her, drawing her to him. “She was about eighteen weeks along, Margot.” His voice thickened. “The baby…” He cleared his throat. “The nurse is cleaning him up. I’m sure Alyssa will need closure. I’d like to perform a few tests, though.”
“What happened?” It was all she could do to speak, to ask the question she knew her daughter would ask.
