Chapter Seventeen

The next morning, Paige got out of bed, pulled a plaid shirt over her white tank top, and went into the kitchen. She got out her muffin tins and made blueberry muffins. While they were cooking, she poked her head in the fridge to see what she could make to drink. Most days they just drank water for breakfast when there weren’t any guests around, but today she was thinking of making something.

When she looked in the second crisper, she found a bag of oranges that hadn’t even been taken out of the shopping bag yet. Paige gasped. She could hardly remember the last time she’d had fresh oranges. Opening the bag, she found a plastic juicer inside. They had to be for her. It wasn’t on their menu to serve real orange juice.

Whipping out a knife, she immediately started cutting, squeezing, pouring, and smiling.

After she’d squeezed two or three, she saw that her wristband was blinking. There was a message from Harrison. He had gone to the city and would be back later.

Paige felt slightly deflated. He wasn’t going to drink the fresh orange juice, or eat the muffins. He had left to sell part of Excalibur. She had been planning on convincing him to forget about it when they had breakfast together, but he had already gone. Now there was nothing she could do to stop him.

She finished squeezing the juice and put some in the fridge for Harrison. Then she took the muffins out of the oven and arranged a tray of food to take into the conservatory. Even though the room was a drafty nightmare in the winter, now that summer had come, it was a miniature paradise and smelled like roses. In the warm weather, she ate every meal there.

As she ate, she made a list of the things that needed to be done that day. Thing number one was to fill the reservoir in the conservatory. It had a sprinkler system, but she had to fill it with water that collected elsewhere when it rained. Then she could start her housework and tidy up the mess she’d made at breakfast. Hopefully, by lunchtime, Harrison would be back.

She got her pitcher can and poured water from the drum in the yard into the reservoir. Then she began her rounds. In the conservatory, she noticed that Harrison had planted all the empty spaces with strawberries. In the garden, she noticed a new cherry tree. Though, she didn’t know it was a cherry tree on sight and had to look it up on her wristband. The information page said it was supposed to be able to grow cherries the size of golf balls, but she didn’t know if it would be able to since it was planted so far north.

While watering the daisies, something caught her eye in the window of Harrison’s bathroom. Something moved. She looked out at the hangar to see if Harrison had come home. The pickup truck was gone and the hangar doors were closed, an undeniable sign that Harrison had come home, but still… she was edgy. She couldn’t see inside the window from that distance, especially with the sunlight reflecting across the glass, so she went in for a closer look. Cupping her hands around her eyes, she stuck her face right up to the window and peered inside, thinking that she wouldn’t be able to see anything.

Inside, she saw a man standing with his back to the window and a towel wrapped around his waist. He was facing the mirror and shaving. His black wet hair was dripping on his shoulders and down his back.

Paige backed away, nursing her embarrassment. She reasoned that she hadn’t seen anything. There was nothing to be ashamed of. But what had she been thinking going up to Harrison’s bathroom window and looking inside? What intruder was she expecting to find in Harrison's bathroom that she thought a breach in basic manners was necessary? She sighed. She looked because she was terrified that Zaphier had come back while Harrison was gone. It was irrational. If he showed up, the first place he'd go wouldn't be the bathroom... probably.

Even if that had been her reasoning, it didn’t soothe the shame swirling within her. It wasn’t like she hadn’t seen Harrison without his shirt before. He always had a great back, tanned and smooth, she reflected grimly. It was always there, under his clothes.

Paige put her hand to her forehead. Things were getting out of control.

A vehicle was coming down their road. The trail of dust couldn’t be missed. It came down their driveway and halted in front of their door. Paige walked around the house and met it.

Osric got out of the driver’s seat and came around to talk to her. “Where’s Harrison?”

“In the bath,” she answered.

“Get him out,” Osric said briskly. “I need to talk to him.”

“Okay,” Paige said hesitantly before she led him into the house.

After leaving Osric too agitated to even sit down, she knocked on Harrison's bedroom door. No answer. She opened the door and went in. He was probably in the connecting bathroom and it wasn’t like he hadn’t stormed in on her when she was grooming before. She knocked on the bathroom door.

He opened the door and came out. The towel he was wearing was gone. Instead, he was wearing a pair of black boxer briefs.

“What?” he asked as he towel-dried his hair—looking completely unruffled. Was he really completely unruffled? She remembered his awkwardness when he caught her shaving her legs. There was no way he felt as calm as he looked, but there was no time to confirm it now.

“Osric’s here,” she said breathlessly. “He’s waiting to talk to you.”

Harrison nodded. “I’ll get dressed.”

Paige ducked her head and moved to leave when Harrison suddenly grabbed her arm. “You look pink. Does seeing me like this make you nervous?”

“Probably not,” she said as she evaded his gaze by looking over his head.

He smirked in a jerkish way that Paige, unfortunately, found adorable before he let her go.

“Please get him a glass of ice water while he waits,” he instructed briskly. “I might be longer than a minute.”

Paige went out and did as she was told.

Osric looked on the verge of a hissy fit right there in the living room. She handed him his water. “Thanks,” he said, as he took out the ice cubes and crushed them furiously between his teeth. When they were gone and Harrison still hadn’t come out, he poured the rest of the liquid over his head with absolutely no regard for whether or not he splashed the furniture or soaked the carpet.

“Ah! Refreshing,” Osric said—obviously still aggravated.

Paige grunted. She took Osric’s glass and went into the kitchen to get a towel to clean up the mess when she saw Harrison pass her on his way into the dining room.

Harrison didn’t have a chance to say ‘hi’ before Osric lit in on him. Paige could hear him in the kitchen. “Why didn’t you tell me that Armand Fox was your brother? It would have made things a lot simpler.”

“Yeah, he’s my brother, but I don’t know what he has to do with this. He’s been out of touch with my family for over a decade.”

“So, you didn't know he works for Zaphier's father?” Osric asked angrily.

“No, I didn’t.” Harrison was defensive.

Paige ducked her head and took up a perch beside the open door so she could hear what they were saying. She knew Armand. She knew him before she'd had her memory wipe. He was Mr. Rawson’s helocarrier pilot. Paige had seen him hundreds of times, but she had rarely spoken to him because her father was only the gardener. Armand was one of the highest-ranked people on staff. Paige had seen him dining at the Rawson table because he was interesting and exotic. Paige had never thought to put him and Harrison together as brothers, but she felt stupid not having done it. They were both helocarrier pilots with the last name of Fox.

The thing was that Armand was excruciatingly attractive in an adult way that had nothing to do with her when she was still living with her father. Zaphier was attractive in a way a teenager could enjoy because his cheeks were dimpled and his blue eyes looked unassuming and friendly. Armand was the opposite. His dark eyes looked like they had seen everything so completely that he saw straight through a girl like Paige as though she were made of glass. He seemed like the type of man who knew how to break things.

Paige glanced at Harrison, and suddenly she saw him in a completely different light. Was that why she had a hard time giving Harrison all the love he wanted? Was it because he reminded her of his brother who set off her warning bells?

“You’re a helocarrier pilot, right?” Osric asked, sitting down on one of the sofas. “Have you ever researched helocarriers owned by famous people?”

“Why would I do something like that?” Harrison answered briskly.

“Because the one owned by Zaphier’s family is remarkable. It’s not powered by natural gas or electric battery cells or anything normal. You know power has always been mankind’s favorite foible. It’s powered by a ruptor. It can run for a sixty-hour flight without needing to touch down and then it only needs to rest for two hours before doing it all over again. Have you ever heard of anything like that before?”

“Mmhmm,” Harrison hummed disinterestedly. After seeing Excalibur, she thought that he would be more than interested in new helocarrier technology, but he sounded bored to death. “Let me guess,” he said after a minute. “Armand has been trying to make a new one and he’s failed.”

“Yeah,” Osric answered, astounded. “How did you know that?”

“Wild guess,” Harrison said, sounding even more bored than before. “You see, my father invented the ruptor and when Armand left home, he took the only successful test product my father had. When you put all those pieces together, it sounds like the photoshoot may have just been a ruse to get Zaphier up here to see if my father had another one. I mean, I know the scenery up here is fantastic, but nothing that can’t be artificially generated.”

“Was Zaphier prowling around your hangar?”

Paige thought about it. Zaphier was in the hangar! He came in one morning and woke them up. Had he looked for the ruptor when he was there?

Harrison sounded cool. “He was in there, but he wouldn’t have found anything.”

“Why not?”

“I already told you. My father only made one and Armand stole it.”

Osric sounded surprised at Harrison’s mellow tone. “Aren’t you angry?”

“Sorry. It’s hard to rake up any enthusiasm. All that happened a long time ago. My father never talked to me about it, but I think he was sorrier to lose Armand than the ruptor. Eventually, he stopped working on helocarriers, and as far as I know, he took his secret methods to his grave.”

“He never told you about it?”

“No. He kept his work to himself. It was just as well, when I was that young, I wouldn't have understood it if he had, but if that’s why Zaphier and Fallon came here, it would have been better if they’d just asked for it directly rather than…” Harrison spoke like he was coming to a realization. “…trying to get Paige to look for it. For Pete’s sake! Do you know how many requests I have had from Sleeping Beauty Inc. to sell her back to them? Like twenty. First, they were only doubling how much they would pay for her, and now the cost is getting into the millions. It’s idiotic. I’ve stopped answering them. Should we just contact Zaphier and tell him that I don’t have another bloody ruptor?”

Osric sounded weary. “If only they would believe you.”

“They wouldn’t?”

“Those people live and breathe lies. They lie so often, they can’t even imagine that someone else could be telling the truth. What worries me is that they may have just been coming here to get a feel for the place so they would know what the risks were for when they came back. Not everything can be figured out by satellite.”

“Listen, I know my father’s work. I have lived practically my whole life in his garage. There is nothing even hinting about the construction of a ruptor. There are no plans, no notes, and no strange material—nothing. Believe me, I’ve looked. If they rip the place to pieces they won’t find anything. So, what do I have to do to stop them from getting excited?”

“I don’t know. Let me think.” A couple of minutes passed where the only sounds Paige heard were Osric’s footsteps as he beat down the carpet. “Okay,” he said, stopping abruptly. “Solution number one—you make up some grayprints and tell them that they were your father’s plans and hand them over to Zaphier with great reluctance when he shows up. But that will only buy you time once they try them out and realize that they aren’t your father’s because they don’t work. Solution number two——you ditch this place and let them ransack it. Your place will be trashed, but you and Paige will be safe. Wait, that won't work either because they'll think you took the ruptor with you and come after you. Solution number three—you sell Paige back to Zaphier.”

Harrison interrupted. “Why the hell would I do that?”

“I think they’ll send her back to you,” Osric said patiently.

“What do you mean?”

Osric sniffed. “I think if you sell her, she’ll come back a week later saying that she ran away from Zaphier because she wants to be with you. In the time she’s gone, they will have briefed her on what exactly she’s supposed to find. Then when she reports that she can’t find it, they’ll sell her back to Sleeping Beauty Inc. and then you can buy her back from them.”

“What a crappy idea! I’m not selling Paige.”

“I’m not saying it would be forever. I’m just saying that it would be a fast way to prove what they are really up to. Not just with this issue that has just come up, but with Princess Elizabella, too. If they got Paige to smuggle once, then maybe they’ll ask her to do it again. Then we could get proof.”

Paige’s heart was up in her throat as she listened.

“Look, I’d really like to help you with Princess Elizabella’s case. I’m doing my best, but you can’t ask me to sell Paige back to Zaphier. I won’t do it.”

“All right, but just to warn you—if you don’t fork Paige over to him, he’ll probably go after Narissa to do his dirty work,” Osric said darkly. “If you don’t sell, I’ll wager that Narissa will be poking around here in two shakes.”

There was a moment before Harrison answered. “Does Wystan know that?”

“How can he know that when I’ve only pieced it together now? Do you think he’d be able to resist millions upon millions of dollars for Narissa? Or do you think he’d be tough like you and refuse?”

Harrison was silent.

“Just to let you know, they’ll probably let their bid get pretty high up there before they change to Narissa. It’s not that Paige herself is valuable. It’s that the ruptor technology is so valuable that once they figure out how to make them, the price for her will seem like pocket change. This is the kind of scheme that has made the Rawson family its money.”

“Are you going?” Harrison asked.

“Yeah. I want to talk to Wystan, but I should probably warn you. They may also ask to rent Paige. You can think about whether or not you want to allow that.”

“Renting her out is just as bad.”

“Well, if we don’t give them an avenue where they think they’re getting what they want, they may get violent.”

“I know, but I’m being honest. My father took whatever he knew to his grave.”

“And so will you,” Osric said ominously, “unless we do something about it. Later, Harrison.”

Paige hid behind the counter in the kitchen just as Harrison and Osric passed her. She had to think about this, too.