“But she can never see them again. She can never enjoy their love and support again,” he pointed out quietly.
“She has Dani,” Mirabeau insisted grimly.
“Not at the moment, she doesn’t,” Tiny said, then added quietly, “Talk to her. She’s as alone and lonely as you.”
This time Mirabeau didn’t stop him from leaving but simply watched the door close behind him while a small storm of emotion rolled through her. Alone and lonely? Where the hell had he gotten that idea? And there was a vast difference between Stephanie and her. While the girl couldn’t, or at least shouldn’t, approach her family now that she’d been turned, she at least knew they lived, could check on them from time to time and reassure herself of their happiness. However, Mirabeau’s entire family—mother, father, and three brothers—were all dead, along with the once-favored uncle who had killed them. She had no one, she thought, turning to enter the room Tiny was to use.
She had entered the bathroom before acknowledging that that wasn’t really true. She had the Argeneaus. Mirabeau had been seventeen when her family had been killed, and Lucian had taken her to stay with his sister-in-law, Marguerite, afterward. That fine lady had taken her under her wing. As if sensing that treating her like a daughter would be too painful and would simply remind her of what she’d lost, Marguerite had offered her a combination of love and friendship that an aunt might offer a niece. She had opened her home and made her welcome in her family, and Mirabeau had eventually come to be treated by the whole clan as a dear family friend and offered all the love and support she could wish…but lovely as that was, it could never replace the family she had lost and simply made Mirabeau uncomfortable. While she was always included in special celebrations like Christmas or weddings, those events always reminded Mirabeau of her own lack of family…and she supposed that was something Stephanie would have to go through as well.
Sighing, she turned on the shower and quickly stripped off her ruined clothes to step under the hot spray. She turned under the showerhead, rinsing away the worst of the muck coating her, then grabbed the hotel soap, her mind on what she could possibly say to Stephanie to help her through this. Unfortunately, there wasn’t anything anyone could really say to make it better for the girl. Even Mirabeau herself could only let her know she understood and perhaps take her under her wing as Marguerite Argeneau had done for her.
The problem was, Mirabeau wasn’t sure she was any good at that kind of thing. She hadn’t had a lot of practice. Other than Eshe and the Argeneaus, she hadn’t really opened herself up to anyone since the deaths of her family, and her opening up to the Argeneaus was wholly Marguerite’s doing. The woman was like some irresistible force. If she decided you were family, you were family, and that was that. It was futile to resist. As for Eshe, it had taken a good couple of decades of working together for her to open up and allow herself to be true friends with her. Mirabeau just didn’t like to care about people; it meant pain should you ever lose them.
She stepped out from under the shower and wrapped herself in a towel, but then simply stood there frowning, both at her own thoughts and the fact that while she had soaped and scrubbed every inch of her skin, she still didn’t feel clean. She also didn’t know how she could possibly help Stephanie. The girl was angry and resentful and hurting…much as Mirabeau had been after the loss of her family…and still probably was if she was honest with herself. She had never really healed from her loss but simply refused to acknowledge it. That being the case, she hadn’t a clue how she was supposed to draw the girl out and help her.
Tiny was giving her way too much credit in thinking she could, Mirabeau decided as she stared at the empty tub. She decided that perhaps a soak in a steaming hot bubble bath would make her feel clean. It might also relax her enough that she could come up with something to say that might help Stephanie.
Glancing around, she spotted the small hotel-sized bubble bath on the counter and grabbed it up. Mirabeau dumped almost the entire contents of the small bottle into the tub and began to run a bath. She would soak and think.
Chapter Six
Tiny returned from his hunt for food with several bags in hand. One held sandwiches, chips, and various soft drinks, the others held loads of tourist wear. There were T-shirts, tank tops, joggers, and jackets all in various sizes and all saying I NEW YORK or something else about the city. It wasn’t ideal, but he thought what he’d found was better than the clothes they were wearing and hoped the women would agree.