Page 26 of Unshakable

Chapter Nine

“No.” Toula said flatly. “Absolutely not.”

Henri leaned over the table inside the diner they’d first conversed in, not far from the dentist’s office where she worked. Another lunch date, another tense conversation.

“Why on earth not?”

“I’m not going to take your money,” she declared despite feeling his honesty along with his offer. He meant well, but she knew how these kinds of arrangements went.

She would owe him something, somewhere, sometime.

“You’re not taking my money,” he explained with the patience of a saint. “I’m investing my funds in the education and protection of your family.”

She didn’t like the idea no matter how he couched the verbiage. This seemed like an attempt to control her situation, like every man she’d ever known. “We already know there’s nothing man-made to repel this eventual attack on Chloe. Security systems and weapons are useless. I don’t want the girls to grow up in a security-driven, militaristic environment.”

“Don’t mistake me for Michael,” he warned, and she quieted, knowing the difference full well as he continued. “That’s not what I’m offering. You said the best thing you could do is teach and train Chloe, and the other girls to an extent, to defend themselves by understanding their power and the situation. Your words, not mine. Are they still true?”

Flustered, she looked around the room, surprised when no one seemed to be paying attention to their spat. “Yes, of course. Pass on my knowledge to her as best I can. Do for her what no one did for me.”

“And I agree. Her foundation and knowledge are the single most important things. You can’t teach her those things if you’re working full time and worried about bills. You have much more significant things to do with your time than schedule dental appointments.”

He made a solid argument, one she’d made in her own mind many times. If she didn’t have to work, she could focus on what needed to be done. “I won’t be beholden to you, or anyone. You know I don’t want to be manipulated.”

“You won’t be, I swear.” He held up his hand like a Boy Scout. “We know your petition has been granted. We still don’t know how your prayer will be answered. Your answer might be me, right here, right now.”

Nodding as tension spread across her shoulders, she waited for him to continue, knowing if she spurned him now, she might dismiss any good she’d done with the prayer.

“If I’m the answer to your prayer, let me do this, as part of a larger strategy. You would have the time and resources to properly school her and the others as you see fit, and as only you can. If I’m not the answer to your prayer, this is still the best path to take. Tell me I’m wrong.”

She sighed. “What does this bargain mean between you and me? What kind of arrangement will we have?”

After a long silence, a warm smile bloomed across his ageless, handsome face. “We are good friends, Toula, more than good friends. We have a common enemy, and we care for each other, as the past few days have shown. Let me be the conduit through which you achieve your greatest victory. We know Chloe is important, which makes you important, as you impart your knowledge and wisdom to her. I can give you the gift of time, which costs me little.”

“And you ask nothing in return?” The wary tone of her voice displayed her distrust in men. In her nearly forty years, her luck with men of divine talents, and plain old human men, had done her no favors. “There will always be something, Henri.”

“I swear there will not. I have no demands to make. You have nothing to give me and everything to give these children. Still, unless and until we undertake this arrangement, we won’t know for certain.”

“What if I say you can never, ever meet the girls?”

He shrugged, even though the idea of meeting them must have at least played out in his mind. “Then I will never meet them. I am the one man you can trust.”

“Do you want a romantic relationship?”

He shook his head. “Yes, but I am no fool, Toula. I will follow where you lead. You are not obligated to do anything for me, or be anything to me, if you do not wish. I can take no for an answer. I can also take a yes today and a no tomorrow.”

“And this is not you grasping at redemption?” she asked quietly, decisively, her last line of defense. Was he using this opportunity in a selfish attempt to redeem his own soul?

“I don’t even know if redemption is possible for our kind,” he admitted. “Just because we have divine threads woven in us doesn’t mean we’re any closer to heaven. If redemption comes, it comes. I’m not chasing a rumor. I never have. Either my soul is redeemable or it’s reincarnatable.”

As her resistance crumbled, she reeled with the possibilities his offer could produce. “I could homeschool them, at least Chloe and Delphine.”

“You could. You can get Delphine help with her speech and send Alease to the best schools. You can make the house all it used to be in its glory days.”

“And what would I tell my daughter?” she wondered aloud. Beatrix could pick apart an unsound argument in a heartbeat, so full of icy logic. Once Toula started working together with Henri this way, she’d ask a million questions.

Henri smiled as if he understood Beatrix all too well. “All she needs to know is you’ve received an inheritance from a distant relative. I’ll handle the trust, the mortgage, even her education. I can handle her and her questions.”

Tears rushed Toula’s vision, blurring the man before her. Relieving the pressure from her life made her head spin. “You give too much.”

“Which may not even be enough,” he argued softly, holding her hands tightly. “All of it may never be enough. We know this yet don’t we have to try?”

Of course they did. “Being this generous doesn’t derail your life, change your plans for the future?”

“No,” he answered simply, trying to hide a smile. He couldn’t hide the humor he felt, bottled inside to spare her any embarrassment.

Her expenses, while significant to her, were but a grain of sand to him, she supposed. Accumulating wealth over a long life paid larger dividends than most humans understood.

“All right,” she agreed, exhaling all her doubts. Helen had called her ‘unshakable’ and she wanted to feel that way now, as they planned.

Henri sat back and smiled, pleased with himself. “I really thought we’d argue longer. I have further remarks prepared.”

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