Fire Bound (Sea Haven Sisters)(5)

“Your hormones are all over the place,” Judith added gently. “Sweetheart, you need to tell him. You do. You can’t keep something like this to yourself. Tell him and then talk over the best course of action to take with the children. You’ll feel so much better.”



Lissa nodded. “And then we need to put the whammy on Judith so she gets pregnant and the children can be best friends.” She nudged Lexi. “What about you? Do you foresee that man of yours giving you a gaggle of children?”



Lexi laughed. “Not a gaggle exactly, but we’ve talked about it.”



Lissa shook her head. “I’m so getting out of this madness. The next thing I know, I’ll get pregnant by proxy.” She stood up. “I’d better get on the road. It’s four hours to the airport.”



The women immediately stood and surrounded her. She could feel their warmth. Their love. She had to struggle not to cry. This was her family. She had come to love them more than she could ever have thought she would be able to. She had never shared who she was with them, nor had she introduced them to the one member of her family still alive, but they were her world. She didn’t expect to come back to them, but she was going to ensure their safety because they were everything to her.

Each and every one of them had had their lives ripped apart by violence. They had lost the ability to ever live in the world without fear. A home was supposed to be a sanctuary, yet these women knew a home could be violated at any time. She hated that for them.



She would never have the chance to fall in love with a man, but that was her choice. She would never have children, but again, she was making that choice. She knew she was making that choice for these women, all so very precious to her. They held one another in their tight circle the way they did to show solidarity, sisterhood, to show strength and love. Lissa planned on carrying that feeling of love and support with her everywhere she went.



“We’ll see you when you get back,” Lexi said, breaking the circle to hold her close. She hugged Lissa hard. “I love you. I want you back.”



“I love you too, little sister,” Lissa replied, meaning it. Feeling it. Fighting emotion when she was usually so good at pushing it down. “Take care of one another. And listen to the Prakenskiis when it comes to your security. I mean it. I’ll be upset with all of you if you don’t.”

She hugged each of them hard, turned and nearly ran from the room, out into the rising wind. The storm was closing in on Sea Haven, coming in off the ocean, and she felt that was an ominous portent of things to come in her future. Her bags were already in the car and she had to get on the road if she was going to catch her plane. She drove away from the farm, from her place of peace, and never once looked back. She didn’t dare.

The ocean raged, the relentless wind whipping the waves into a towering frenzy. Water swelled high, forming a series of walls, some a good thirty feet. The waves rushed toward shore, breaking in white foamy crests up high on the rocks and cliffs. The constant roar and boom added even more drama to the wild sprays as they shot into the sky, retreated and burst against the stacks again and again as if trying to destroy them.



“It’s a good night for it,” Lev Prakenskii informed his brothers with a quick grin as they trudged across the sand toward the relative shelter of a series of high boulders that looked as if they’d been flung onto the beach. The rocks looked out of place on the wide expanse of sand. “A perfect setting as well. Even if our women caught on, they wouldn’t be able to overhear us.”



Gavriil, the oldest brother present, nodded. “That would be why I made certain we didn’t hold this meeting anywhere near the farm.”



Overhead, clouds spun dark threads, churning and rolling continuously in rhythm with the crashing waves below. The wind shrieked and howled, tearing across the sand, flinging drops of salty water from the sea at them and kicking up the fine grains of sand to pepper the five men as they moved quickly toward the relative shelter of the boulders.



“Airiana was extremely suspicious,” Maxim reported. “Lissa is leaving tonight, and apparently they’ve always gotten together before one of her trips. She brings in a tremendous amount of money with her glassblowing and welding business, and she’s nabbed two major hotels and a castle being renovated into a hotel in Europe. The women do something to bring her better luck and safe travel. Airiana wanted me home tonight to watch the kids, but when I told her I had to go out, she moved the gathering to our house.”



“You’re in such trouble,” Stefan pointed out with a smirk. “You get home tonight and she’s going to grill you. Big-time. Airiana has a way of making you talk.”