He frowned. “Sorry. That’s my father talking.”
For a moment, he expected her to argue—something about how his dad didn’t really think mortal blood was bad. But she said nothing, just nodded as she played with a bit of fringe on the pillow. After a moment, she looked up, her gaze steady despite misty eyes. “I didn’t even know I was a Halfling until I was seven,” she said. She blinked, and a single tear ran down her cheek. “My mom died right after I was born, and my dad was never very tied into the whole Council thing. Still isn’t.”
“What happened?”
“She was on a mission,” Izzy said. She swiped the tear away. “She was trying to save a dozen mortal children. There’d been a school bus accident, and she...well, she got them to safety. But then there was an explosion. And my mom...” She sniffed, then rubbed the back of her hand under her nose, looking all of seven years old and just as innocent. “My mom was killed.”
“I’m sorry,” he said. He wanted to put an arm around her, to pull her close and comfort her, but that was a foolish urge. Izzy Frost didn’t even like him. And Mordi wasn’t about to offer himself only to get slapped away for it. Not when he was already on such shaky ground.
Beside him, she was taking deep breaths, pulling herself together. “It’s okay,” she said. “Sometimes I like to just sit and think about it, picturing my mom as this great hero, you know?”
“Not really,” he admitted. “My parents were hardly heroic.”
Her eyes softened, and her mouth curved into a smile. “Well, I’d just as soon my mom hadn’t been a hero if that would have meant she’d have been around for me more.”
Mordi made a buzzing noise. “Nope. Sorry. Thanks for playing. No parents there for Mordi, heroic or not.”
She frowned. “Not even your mother?”
He knew what she meant:
Didn’t you at least have someone around to counter all the havoc caused by your psycho dad
?
“My mom ... well, she ...” He trailed off, considering telling her simply that his mother was dead. But that wasn’t the case, and he didn’t want to start off with a pile of lies. Not with her. Not anymore than he had to.
“My mom wanted nothing to do with me,” he finally said. “As soon as she learned the truth about my dad—that he was a Protector, I mean, not that he was Outcast—she told him to get lost. And then, when my powers started to show up, she got rid of me, too.”
“Got rid of you?” Izzy’s voice rose, her tone scandalized.
Mordi nodded. “She managed to track down my dad. Left me with him. I was seven.”
“Of course you were. That’s when Halfling powers really start to show up.”
“Yeah, well, I thought mine were a curse. After all, if my powers had never surfaced, maybe my mom would have wanted me. She didn’t. I saw her only once more, when I was twelve. She called me a freak.”
“Your dad wanted you, though.”
“My dad wanted someone to do his bidding. And he hated the fact that I was a Halfling. But I was all he had, and so he sucked it up. When he found out he had another son—
a full
Protector...” He waved his hands as if he could somehow wave away the memory. “Well, let’s just say that my place in the hierarchy dropped faster than you can say ‘favored son.’ ”
She leaned forward, pressing a soft hand on his pants-covered knee. “I’m sorry.”
As much as he wanted her touch, he didn’t want anyone feeling sorry for him, much less her. He shifted, pulling his leg out from under her hand as he stood up. Isole clasped her hands in her lap, her gaze shifting toward the window.
Mordi opened his mouth to apologize, and then closed it again. They’d almost connected, and he’d blown it. Now the silence hung between them like a dense fog, and he cast about for something to say, finding nothing.
When she turned back to him, he thought he saw a hint of color in her cheeks, and he felt like even more of an ass for pulling away and embarrassing her.
“At least things should improve between you two now,” she said.
He shook his head, squinting at her as he frowned.
“Why?” he asked when it became clear that she didn’t intend to elaborate.
“Well...” It was her turn to frown, and he noticed the little creases on her forehead, the tiny V above her nose. Isole Frost was positively adorable, and Mordi could contentedly stare at her all night.
“Never mind,” she said. A shadow crossed her face, and he realized where she’d been going—the relationship could improve because Hieronymous was turning good. Soon it would be all wine and roses, not hard liquor and thorns.
Mordi knew better, but for the moment, Izzy seemed to be buying the crap that Hieronymous was selling. Inexplicable, really. The girl seemed so intelligent and insightful.
“Izzy—”
She held up a hand. “We’re a lot alike,” she said, apparently relying on non sequiturs to change the subject.
“How so?”
“Both raised by fathers who wanted us in their world, not the Protector world.”
“Your father didn’t want you to join the Council?”
“Oh, no, I didn’t mean that. He was fine with that when the time came. But he never went out of his way about the whole Protector thing. He knew it existed, of course, and he told me where to find information. And he let Zephron visit me and hire a coach so I’d at least have a shot at passing my Halfling exams. But...” She trailed off with a shrug.
“But he didn’t nurture your talents.”
“Not by a long shot.”
“My father nurtured mine,” Mordi said. “He was determined that I’d be the heir to his empire. Not that he had an empire, mind you. And with every mistake I made, it was as if I’d stuck a knife in his heart and twisted. He hated that I was a Halfling.” Mordi shrugged. “Naturally, I hated it, too.”
“And now?”
“Now it’s not so bad.” He moved to sit on the couch, making a huge leap of faith by sitting right next to her. Then he took an even bigger one and reached out to stroke her bare arm. She jerked away, and he let his hand drop, defeated, then cleared his throat. “I enjoy my work. I believe in it. And, hey,” he added with a self-deprecating shrug, “I get to work with people like you.”
For a moment she didn’t react; then her blue eyes warmed and a hint of a grin touched her mouth. She brushed her fingertips over her arm in exactly the manner he’d been intending. “I’m sorry,” she whispered, color rising in her cheeks. “It’s really best not to touch. Not without warning. And not if you want to keep... well... your secrets.”
“Right,” he said. “I wasn’t thinking.” So she was an empath
and
a mind reader—a woman who could discover every secret of his heart. She was the kind of woman who should positively terrify him, and yet all he felt was relief that she hadn’t pushed him away because she didn’t like
him
. She’d pushed him away so that she wouldn’t take his thoughts.
In response, he reached to touch her again, and this time she didn’t flinch. He brushed his fingertips over her cotton-clad shoulder, then traced the shirt’s neckline, careful to touch only the fabric and not the smooth flesh beneath. He traced a path down her shirt to her jeans, then drew a line with his fingertip to her knee. Her eyes were closed, and a faint smile played at her lips. When she looked at him, he kissed his fingertips and blew the kiss to her. She caught it in her palm and pressed it to her cheek.
“Thank you,” she whispered.
They sat that way for a moment, and then her clock chimed the quarter hour. The spell was broken.
She cleared her throat. “You really did work for your father, though, right? I mean, everyone knows you were a mole, but before that, you worked for your dad.”
“Guilty,” he said.
“But now you don’t.”
“Right.”
“What changed?”
He didn’t answer right away. First he considered what to say; considered how to summarize a lifetime of being the disappointment, juxtaposed against an ever-growing revelation slowed only by his own inability to find inner strength. He
had
found it, though. In the end he’d found the courage to not only walk away, but to betray his father in the name of doing good.
Finally, he said simply to Izzy, “I changed.”
“You realized what your father wanted was wrong, and you walked away from it. Your whole perspective changed, and you along with it.”
“Something like that.”
She nodded slowly, as if pondering some deep mystery. “Was it hard?”
“Yeah.” A knife twisted in his stomach.
“But you still managed.”
Did she not trust him? He met her eyes dead-on, and nodded. “I managed.”
“Then is it really so hard to believe that your father might have changed, too?”
Her words hit him with the force of a blow, violent and unexpected. He sucked in air, then gave her the only answer he knew. The only
truth
he knew. “Yes, Isole. It is.”
Surprisingly enough, Mordi didn’t spend any more time trying to convince her that Hieronymous was pulling a fast one. Who knows? Maybe she’d managed to sway him with her argument. After all, if Mordi could come over to the good side, then why not his father?
She breathed deep, trying to pick up the scent of his thoughts, but all she picked up on were fluttery bits of attraction. She blushed and focused on her tea, fighting both guilt and flattery—pleased that he liked her, especially since the feeling was mutual; embarrassed for feeling like an emotional voyeur, looking in where other women couldn’t see.
With supreme effort, she managed to ignore that scent of attraction. She told herself it didn’t matter anyway, she wasn’t influenced by it. Women all over the world were astute enough to tell when a man liked them. She just had a tiny little advantage.
What she
didn’t
have an advantage in was the down-and-dirty interpersonal stuff. So she found Mordichai Black attractive. So he found her attractive. What was she supposed to do now? Especially since she shouldn’t be doing anything at all. This man could mean big trouble for her. Her head knew that.
Unfortunately, the rest of her was having a hard time getting with the program.
Mordi turned to her, a question in his eyes.
“What?”
“So, how did you know it was me? The cat? Or were you really planning on doing ...
that
... to a kitten?”
She laughed, remembering the expression on his face when he’d shifted back to human form. “Touch, remember? You might have been a kitten, but you were still you—and I got a Technicolor view of your thoughts. Surprised the heck out of me, but I think I recovered nicely.”
He quirked a brow. “Isn’t that against the rules?”
She lifted an eyebrow. “One, I was caught off guard. Two, is a man who broke into my apartment by pretending to be a cat really going to throw some rule back in my face?” She held her breath, hoping she didn’t look as nervous as she felt. Because while she was totally in the right
here
, where her father was concerned she was way, way, way out on a limb.
Mordi, however, didn’t seem to be thinking about anything else, and looked suitably abashed. “I had planned to ply you with Indian food,” he said. “But I ended up giving it to a homeless person.”
She laughed, and he shrugged, and the atmosphere in the room shifted: her wariness disappeared, replaced once again by a deep sense of well-being. She felt immediately comfortable with this man. Too comfortable.
“Could we go out?” he asked. “I’d like to take you to dinner.”
She wanted to, she wanted to, she wanted to
. “I’ve already eaten,” she said, the voice of reason and responsibility.
“Oh.”
She heard the disappointment in his voice and felt like a raving bitch. “I could ... I mean, I have some cookies here, if you’d like some.”
What was she doing? She should be trying to discourage him, not keeping him hanging around. He was going to ask more questions. They’d both opened up about their fathers, but he more than Izzy. Now he was going to want to know more about hers. Tit for tat and all that.
Would he be able to tell if she was lying? Or, if not lying, not exactly giving him the full story?
Sweet Hera, she was an idiot. The man looked good in a suit, challenged her, and made her laugh—and suddenly she was falling all over herself?
Damn.
In the end, though, he didn’t ask her any personal questions. He just sat next to her on the couch and they watched an
X-Men
video. She suggested the old Christopher Reeves video
Superman II
, but he soundly nixed that idea. So they ended up watching Hugh Jackman and gang (hardly an unpleasant way to pass the time), laughing at some stuff, marveling at the perception of other things. Was the screenwriter perhaps a Protector? they wondered.
Two hours later, Mordi stood up to go, the picture of a perfect gentleman. He hadn’t tried a thing, and Izzy wasn’t sure whether to be pleased or disappointed.
At the door, though, he paused. “Listen, Isole...”
She nodded, silently encouraging him.
“The next session, with my father, it’s Friday?”
“Right.”
“Afterward, maybe we could grab a bite? I feel like I owe you dinner.”
“You don’t. I’d already eaten, and we didn’t have plans or anything—so you really didn’t give away my meal.”
“All right, then. I think we should talk about the committee. Discuss the various members and make sure we agree with where they each stand, and come up with a game plan about how we can help them see the value in the renegotiated treaty.”
“Have you been practicing that, or did it just come to you?”
“Sorry. I can’t reveal that.”
She laughed.
“Seriously, Izzy. I’d like to see you Friday night.”
She licked her lips. This time, at least, she had an easy out. “I’m sorry. I’ve already got plans.”
“Oh.” She saw the displeased shift in his features, realized that he assumed she had a date.
“No, no.” She rushed to correct his impression, even though she knew she should keep her mouth shut. An assumed boyfriend was as good a defense as anything against interest from a new man. She paused, thought about it, then pressed on. “My father’s getting an award. I’m going to the ceremony.”