Page 75 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
That was Leander: controlled, calculated, dispassionate. It was the price of leadership, this careful, logical approach to decision making. He couldn’t afford to make mistakes because too many lives were at risk. Too many people counted on him.
Christian, on the other hand, was the second son. Relieved of the burden of power that came with being the Alpha heir, he’d always been the wilder of the two, relaxed and indifferent where Leander was disciplined and reserved. His wild streak had gotten him into plenty of trouble on many occasions, but possibly never as much as the trouble he knew he was in now.
September Jones, whether he liked it or not, had brought him to his knees.
With her sweetness and her smile, with her pride and her passion, with her sharp, scathing wit. Her vulnerability was incredibly alluring, as was her strength. So were all the shadows in her eyes, which drew him like a moth to the flame. A moth that knew it would be burned, but didn’t care.
It came over him then the way the day breaks—slowly, and then all at once.
He didn’t care.
He didn’t care about her past. He didn’t care about his own past. He didn’t care about what he should be thinking or feeling or doing, or all the ways in which they were both broken, or the tragedies that had broken them, or the colossal stupidity of trying to make something work between two people so different.
He just cared about her.
He wanted her and he’d walked away.
And damn it all to hell, he knew, even as she was telling him the story, she’d punished herself every second of every day over the past six years for what she’d done—that she was not only remorseful, but self-loathing—and still he’d walked away.
“You’re a bloody wanker, you know that, McLoughlin?” he muttered, running a hand through his hair. Abruptly, he stood from the desk, fished his cell phone from his shirt pocket, and began to dial, doing his best to ignore the shaking in his hands.
When he heard the automated message informing him the number was no longer in service, the shaking got just that much worse.
“Tell me again why I agreed to this?”
“Because you love me, that’s why.”
Ember sent Asher a sour sidelong glare and muttered, “Debatable.”
They stood looking at a modest walk-up with a brick façade the color of cinnamon on a quiet, tree-lined street in the Clot district, a mainly residential suburb bordering the Sagrada Família. There was a quaint café next door with a spotted dog sunning itself in an arched doorway, and two old men playing chess beneath a striped umbrella. It was tranquil and idyllic, but to Ember it might as well have been the entrance to hell.
It had taken Asher all of twenty-four hours to find her a psychiatrist, one he claimed was the best in the city. He really wasn’t kidding around.
Standing beside her now beneath the spreading arms of a blooming acacia across the street from the cinnamon walk-up, he gave her a friendly nudge with his elbow. “Go on, chicken. I’ll pick you up after and we can go for suspiros de monja.”
Suspiros de monja—literally translated as “nun’s sighs”—were a golden, crispy, cream-filled dessert made famous by the nuns of the Catalan convents. They were also a potent incentive for Ember, as they were her favorite sweet.
“If I haven’t slit my wrists by then,” she threw over her shoulder as she stepped off the curb and crossed the street. She heard Asher’s low chuckle behind her and kept walking.
The waiting room was tasteful and far more homey than the others she’d haunted. There were no thumbed-through magazines littering a crappy coffee table, no cheap chairs crowded too close together, no hideous pastel prints on the wall. And no aquarium, thank God. Aquariums always made her feel claustrophobic; she couldn’t help but imagine herself as one of the brightly colored, frantically darting fish, trapped forever inside.
The one item ubiquitous to a therapist’s office in any part of the world was there, however: the round call button on the wall. She pushed it and it illuminated, alerting whoever lurked behind the waiting room walls to her presence.
Before she could plop down onto the comfortable-looking armchair, a door on the opposite side of the room opened and a woman appeared. Dark-haired, dark-eyed, chic and sleek in a navy suit and low nude heels, she was of an indeterminate age somewhere between thirty and fifty. She wore a double strand of pearls around her neck, and Ember knew they were real by the dull, luxe sheen. So were the pearl and diamond studs in her ears, and the very large sapphire and diamond ring on her manicured hand.
Marguerite would be eating her heart out right about now.
“Señorita Jones?”
Ember nodded and the woman stepped forward with an outstretched hand and introduced herself.
“Estoy Katharine Flores. Encantado de conocerte.”
“Un placer,” said Ember as she took her hand, surprised she hadn’t introduced herself as “Doctor” Flores. In her experience, anyone with an MD wore it like a badge of honor. Or a war wound.
“You’re American?” Katharine said in English, sounding equally surprised.
Ember smiled. “And here I thought my Spanish was pretty good.”
