“If I close my eyes and wish hard enough, will they all go away?” Chelsea asked, her voice low enough that Isabelle and Malachi were probably the only ones who heard her.
“Doubt it, sis.” Isabelle smiled gently, her tone filled with wry amusement. “Not this time.”
She blew out a hard breath and closed her eyes anyway.
“What the hell are you involved in, Chelsea?” her father exclaimed from the end of the couch, his voice angry as only a worried father sounds. “An attack in the middle of town? Someone tried to rain a war down on you, dammit, and I want to know why.”
A damned war was a good description of it. She was determined to ignore the questions, though, until heat exploded in the cut on her forehead just as the scent of alcohol reached her nose.
“Dammit, Isa.” She jerked, her eyes snapping open as she tried to pull away from the fiery burn. “That hurts.”
Isabelle lifted a dark brow with false innocence. Dammit, she’d meant for the alcohol to burn.
“Don’t ignore Dad, he nearly had a stroke on me,” Isabelle hissed down at her.
“I’m not ignoring him.” At least she wasn’t trying to. “I don’t know what happened or why, or I would have given a family report the second I stepped into the door.”
“Here.” Several damp paper towels dropped into Isabelle’s hands as Malachi returned from the kitchen. “Clean the blood from her skin first so we can get a good look at those scratches on her arm. They look pretty deep.”
They were pretty deep. Glass had rained around her when her truck took the impact of the collision.
She sat still, silent as her father, her grandfather and Arthur Holden followed Cullen into the kitchen. Marsha stood next to the coffee table, her gaze dropping to the bloodied paper towels as Isabelle dropped them to the table beside the couch.
“Stay still,” her sister admonished her as she flinched at the probing of the wounds. “These are almost deep enough to require stitches.”
“Almost doesn’t count.” Chelsea felt like pouting.
She wished they’d just stop fussing over her and let her go take a shower. She’d feel much better if she could stand beneath some warm water. The longer she lay there and endured her sister’s inspection of the cuts, the colder she felt.
As Marsha finally drew away and moved to the kitchen with her husband, Isabelle gave Chelsea a sympathetic look before drawing back, her blue eyes flicking to the kitchen again.
“It gets easier,” her sister said softly. “The symptoms ease and even out pretty quickly once you and Cullen are more certain of each other.”
Certain of each other? She’d be waiting awhile for that one to happen.
“He hates it,” Chelsea whispered back. “He wants a cure for it.” She rolled her eyes despite how bad that knowledge hurt. “Go figure.”
Isabelle shook her head, the cloud of dark hair framing her face swaying with the movement. “I don’t believe that, Chelsea. For it to be present at all, then whether he wants to admit it or not, he loves you. The emotions always go both ways when it happens.”
It. The mating. Was every Breed who married actually mated to their husband or wife? There weren’t a lot of marriages, she knew, but if the tabloids were to be believed, each one was a mating.
Giving her a warning look, Isabelle didn’t say anything more. A second later Arthur and Marsha moved back into the room and stepped to the couch once again.
It had been ten years since she’d seen them, but they’d never been close with the rest of the family. Arthur’s family had once been quite wealthy and they’d always spent most of the time on their California estate until Lauren became older. They’d been in town less than a year when Lauren and Cullen were introduced. After the Holdens lost their daughter, they’d returned to California and as far she knew, this was their first visit back.
They picked a hell of a time to visit.
“Sorry about all this.” She tried to smile as she met Marsha’s gaze. “Not exactly what you were looking for when you
came to visit, huh?”
“Oh dear, I’m just worried about you.” Marsha sighed as though tired. “You always were the rebel in the family, weren’t you?”
“The troublemaker,” Arthur murmured with an attempt at teasing humor. “No wonder your father’s hair is turning gray.”
“Yeah, that’s what he tells me all the time.” Pushing herself up, she swung her legs around and put her feet on the floor, looking up at Marsha.
There was little resemblance to the Martinez family in the other woman. She more closely resembled her mother’s side of the family, Boston bluebloods as her father once commented.