Found and Lost by Amanda G. Stevens Page A

topic. He leaned against the front door, and seconds slipped away.
    Natalia read his thoughts and sighed. “You said you were worried about pulling it off. So I thought, you know … method acting.”
    He swallowed, but the bitter taste lingered in his throat.
    â€œClay.”
    â€œâ€˜With her father gone, anything could have happened’?”
    â€œDid I say anything that wasn’t true?”
    The thorns converged in his stomach. “How about your use of present tense?”
    She took a step closer, and the calm in her eyes flickered. “Poetic license.”
    â€œOr a little too much method.”
    â€œDo you even know what you did last night? You drove away without Khloe. You drove away from her.”
    Again.
    Her legs folded until she drifted down to the bottom step. Her arms came up to cover her bowed head. “And I can’t even think, so don’t bother telling me I’m not being fair.”
    As if he had the right to call that one, anyway. “Natalia.”
    She wasn’t crying, but she was curled so tightly on the stair, like a soft, wounded creature trying to become too small for any more wounds. Clay knelt beside her. Look up. Look at me. She didn’t move.
    Instinct swerved toward the only open path. He had nowhere else to steer. “I’ll be back in a while.”
    â€œHave Khloe with you.”
    With his shield or on it. He stood, then bent toward her. He ran one finger over her hair, lightly, so that she couldn’t feel it. So that she couldn’t see him hold the sense of her close to himself, mango and shine, satin skin, green eyes that almost believed in him. In this moment, if she knew the preciousness of those things, she might spit the knowledge back at him. Maybe he deserved no less.
    He stood over her. Say something, Nat. She sighed and turned her head toward the wall, a quiet knot of self-preservation.
    Everything crowded too close, even the ghost that had been silent for weeks this time. The Constabulary agents had awakened it with their somber, notifying faces. Hilary, her ten-year-old face waxy against the white pillow. The beeping machines. The tube down her throat. The panic in his chest when Dad pulled him away from her hospital door, when Clay came home from school to their impassive faces.
    â€œMom? Dad? Did she wake up yet?”
    He walked to the kitchen and snagged his keys and could suddenly breathe again. Escape the present, if not the past. But pushing his sister’s memory away only made room for everything else. Natalia and Khloe and the man he was still trying to be.
    He straddled the bike. Turned the key.

13
    â€œYou’re going to catch cold in those clothes. Come on upstairs and grab something dry.” Belinda, their new hostess, led Violet and Khloe through a spacious foyer with furniture that belonged in a museum. Red velvet–upholstered chairs with wooden feet, carved like the paws of some big cat. A dark wooden table. Someone had spent hours whittling leaves and flowers and vines down each table leg. A wide burgundy-carpeted staircase wound a spiral on the far side of the room. Halfway up, Khloe stretched out her arm and bumped Violet’s bracelet with her own. Violet nodded at the soft clink . They were still together.
    And nobody was going to harm Khloe or brainwash her. Not that this bottle-blonde grandmother seemed inclined to brainwash anyone, but personality and appearance couldn’t override the Christian ideas in a person’s head.
    Their chauffeur had stayed only minutes after delivering them, which was just as well. Violet stayed at least three arms’ lengths from his hulking frame and broiling gaze. Belinda sent him on his way with a travel mug of coffee and hugged him before he left, as if he were more teddy bear than grizzly.
    Subconsciously, Violet must have expected some sort of military bunker or mobster penthouse, because her first step into this house had caused a