Lifebound Read online

  As Tim nodded and turned away, Josh tucked the ring back into his shirt and stood. Time to get back to business.

  The show went better than Josh expected. As the rest of the team handled the biggest tricks, Josh pulled out some crowd-pleasing stunts that wouldn’t push his hip too hard.

  He felt so good, so strong. Whatever Adriana had done for him, it had worked. It worked so well he decided to turn his next 180 into a 360.

  Up over the edge of the coping, the world spun around him in a blur of wooden flooring and blue sky. It felt like flying. “Thank you, Adriana,” he whispered as he sailed down the wall of the half-pipe.

  He cut over the top for a stall and grabbed the coping in one hand and the board in the other, using the moment to check Tim’s position as he approached from the other side. The two worked the pipe at the same time, interweaving their paths carefully. Their timing had to be perfect.

  Tim descended from the other side just as Josh’s stall ended and he dropped back into the pipe in a deep crouch.

  A glint of sunlight on silk caught his eye from the side, and he glanced over toward the crowd.

  Adriana.

  She stood in the midst of a group of boys, like a flower in patch of weeds.

  And if timing was everything, Adriana was more than everything. He cut too sharply coming down the wall and ran headlong into Tim, knocking them both from their boards to tumble into the flat of the pipe.

  “Dude, are you all right?” Josh asked anxiously as he dragged himself into a seated position.

  Tim shook his head and laughed. “No worries, I’m good. What happened? You lose your mind for a minute there?”

  Tim’s hand up nearly put Josh back on the floor as his wrist protested with a sharp stab of pain. He covered his wince of discomfort with a laugh and pushed himself the rest of the way to his feet to take the pressure off his wrist.

  As he retrieved his board, he searched for Adriana once more. To his relief, she still stood there, mouthing the words, “Are you okay?”

  He gave her a grin and a thumbs up, then pointed to the top of the pipe. He had to finish the exhibition. She nodded, and he pushed off.

  He and Tim dropped in again and his focus snapped tight to the job at hand in his determination not to fall on his ass again like an amateur in front of her.

  Every trick got higher and hotter; every pass got faster. He avoided any stunts that might involve pushing his sprained wrist but brought his best game in every other way, feeling like a teenager showing off for a girl he wanted to impress.

  She had come back.

  He couldn’t stop grinning.

  Once they finished their exhibition set, he made his way down the ramp, signing autographs and talking to fans as he walked, always watching for her.

  Finally he got close enough to her to speak.

  She called out, “You take care of business. I’ll be in the shade.”

  He nodded and went back to meeting excited fans and signing whatever they pushed at him.

  Every so often, he’d glance over at the picnic table under a huge oak tree where she sat in a short dress with flowers on it, looking like a princess on vacation.

  When all the kids and even several adults had been signed and met, he broke away from the group long enough to talk to her.

  But as he crossed into the picnic area, he realized he had no idea what to say.

  From the moment Adriana had walked into the park and caught sight of him, she had been transfixed. She’d seen Josh skate with the wolfpack the last couple of days of their stay at Wiccan Haus, but the small tricks he’d shown the boys could not compare to this.

  Every time he soared over the edge of the big curved wall, her heart had stopped. She’d had no idea that extreme skateboarding could be so extreme with its crazy flips and spins and height.

  Then when the other guy had plowed into him, she took two terror-propelled steps toward him until he stood and let her know he was fine.

  He’d shaken off that awful crash like it was nothing and skated even more recklessly than before—crazy stuff that made her throat constrict and her stomach drop in sympathy every time he flew into the air.

  After the show had ended, she saw how kind he was to his fans, so glad to see each of them, happy to sign whatever hat or shirt or game they passed him, ready with a smile and a question for them.

  She even caught a couple of moms sneaking into the mix, trying to catch his attention, but every few moments, his gaze would find hers instead.

  Misery began to creep over her. She loved him so much. She wanted to be right there at his side for the rest of their lives.

  But if she stayed with him as her host, the need to touch him and to be with him would tear her apart. How long could they stand that awful state of being together but separate, especially since the night they’d really been able to touch? Even now, she could barely keep herself from leaping into his strong arms just to feel his warm skin against hers.

  Lifebound. That other option teased at her, seducing her with its promise of unlimited contact with Josh, the ultimate in togetherness, as well as the ability to live in the human world freely without being a danger to others.

  However, she’d seen him skate. She’d seen the way he loved what he did. And she knew in her heart that if he thought risking his safety would risk hers as well, he would quit. She could never take him from this sport he loved so much.

  She toyed with the idea of not telling him about the whole until death part. Then he could keep skating and enjoy life without worrying about the future. But if something happened to her, he would die too, without ever knowing why or having a choice in the matter. She couldn’t do that to him.

  More than anything, she wanted to have a choice of her own. She wanted freedom to love who she wanted and live where she wanted.

  But she couldn’t make that choice by taking Josh’s freedom from him.

  All too soon, the crowds thinned and Josh approached. She had to talk to him, but she had no idea what to say.

  The awkwardness of the moment only lasted a few seconds before Tim and the rest of the exhibition crew came wandering by to stick their noses into Josh’s business.

  “Guys, this is Adriana. Tim, Dean, Brad, and Snowball.”

  Adriana smiled. Certainly Snowball’s curly mop of whitish-blond hair gave the nickname some credibility.

  “They don’t call him Snowball because of his hair,” Josh said, “and don’t ask why if you’re eating something.”

  The guys laughed and Josh waved them all away. “Get lost. I need to talk to my girl.”

  “So I’m your girl?” Adriana said with a smile.

  “I thought you were until you dumped me.” Josh sat across from her at the table, his hands coming to rest over halfway between them.

  She leaned over the table, her hands only inches from his. “I’m so sorry about that, Josh. It’s complicated.”

  “I heard your folks are giving you a hard time.” Josh’s fingertips came within millimeters of hers. “But we can get through this. We can convince all of them that we can make this work.”

  Adriana nodded. “I missed you so badly. All I could think about was that we didn’t even try.”

  “We can do this.”

  She brushed her fingers against his. “I need to tell you what my mother told me.”

  Hours later, Josh sat as close to Adriana as he could get in the rear of the tour bus, heading back to Mobile. The exhibition had been a rousing success, the auction had raised a nice sum for the new school, and scores of fans had gone home with pictures and autographs. Josh couldn’t remember a minute of it.

  Somehow he’d smiled and said the right things, but his mind kept turning over the information Adriana’s mother had shared with her. They could be t
ogether—forever. Literally until death did they part. Adriana could touch him all she wanted and could touch anybody else too. But once they did this lifebound thing, there was no going back. They would have to stay together—close together—for the rest of their lives. And when one’s life ended, the other’s would too.

  It was a lot to take in. So much, in fact, that before they left the park, he’d excused himself to make one last crazy run down the weaving cement path they called the serpent and back up the bowl, letting his body do the thinking for him.

  When he met her at the bus again, he kissed her lightly. “Hey, everybody, Adriana’s on the tour now, so be nice.”

  She’d looked up at him with those stormy gray eyes full of questions, but he couldn’t say everything he wanted to say right there in front of everybody.

  So hours later as the bus crossed into Georgia in the darkness, he pulled her into the back. The sounds of the team’s laughter and videogame prowess faded a bit as he shut the door of the tiny bedroom.

  “So far,” he said as he sat next to her on the edge of the bed, “we’ve talked a lot about how I fit into your life. But, Adriana, think about what it will be like for you to fit into mine. This room is it for a lot of the year.” He gestured around the cramped area with its less than queen sized bed and practically nonexistent storage space. He pointed toward the front where a shout rang out. “Those guys are it too. Tour is important. I have to do it. I want to do it. Do you?

  “I can quit skating. Hell, I probably should. There’s no telling when I might take Bob’s big ramp all wrong and end up breaking my neck.”

  She stopped him with a light, quick finger to his lips.

  “You don’t quit skating. You don’t quit living and neither do I. What I want for us is a chance to choose to be happy. I’ve spent my whole life doing what everybody else wanted me to do. Now I want to do what I want to do.”

  Josh’s heart sank. With all the freedom in the world before her, Adriana wouldn’t choose to be a skater’s groupie.

  The lights from the freeway reflected into the windows, creating a sparkling lightshow that glinted on her hair. He reached up to touch it, wrapping a length of its silk around his finger, getting all he could of her while he could get it.

  “Josh, look at me.”

  His eyes met her steady gaze.

  “I just want to be with you on whatever terms we decide are best.”

  He blinked twice, unable to believe his luck. She’d take him. She’d take this crazy life he offered her. Before she changed her mind, he slipped to his knee in front of her.

  “You deserve better than this. Better than me.” He reached behind his neck to unfasten the clasp of the necklace he wore, pulling her ring free of his shirt as his heart pounded. “If you want to know my idea of the right terms, here they are. I want to love you every day and every night for the rest of our lives. This whole lifebound thing your folks dread so hard just sounds like a good idea to me. I come from a long line of people who stayed together for fifty years and never spent more than a day or went more than a couple miles apart from each other. And they were all happy until the day they died.”

  He pulled the ring off the chain and held it out to her. “Marry me, Adriana. Be my wife.”

  As he held the ring out to her, his hand shook in his desperate fear that she would turn him down.

  However, her answer to his non-question rang in his heart and in his soul with a deep joy he couldn’t contain.

  “I’ll marry you, Josh.”

  When his fingers brushed across hers to place the ring on her hand, the electricity that ran through him seemed supernatural, as if he too were becoming a lamia, drawing life from her.

  “I’m never going to let you go. You’re stuck with me, baby.” He pulled her into his arms and gave her the longest, most passionate kiss he could sustain, only pulling away when his knees began to buckle.

  The next day, Josh took Adriana to Rob and Alicia’s for dinner. “I told them pretty much everything already.”

  “Everything?” Adriana couldn’t believe her ears.

  “Well, not the juicy stuff. Just the whole part about you being a lamia.” She sat in the car in shock until he opened her door for her, offering her a very brief hand-up out of the low slung seat.

  “What in the world were you thinking? The paranormal world does not tolerate public knowledge. The Lamia Council will have a fit.”

  “What they don’t know won’t hurt them,” Josh said with a devilish grin. “Rob and Alicia aren’t telling anybody. Who is there to tell? And I had to talk to somebody.”

  The undercurrent of hurt in his voice chastised her. “Okay, I guess, but they better keep this secret like their lives depend on it. Which they do, by the way.” She almost resisted the urge to press a very feathery kiss onto his lips as she passed. “And no telling anybody else. Not even your mother.”

  “Of course not. If I told Mama, the whole world would know within a few hours.”

  “If you told Aunt Ellen what?” Rob asked as he opened the door for them.

  “About Adriana being a lamia.”

  She clouted him on the arm.

  Then he added in a louder voice, “Or about Adriana agreeing to marry me.”

  Chapter Sixteen

  “He popped the question,” Rob called back over his shoulder with a big grin on his face.

  “For real?” came a feminine squeal from the kitchen. A young woman who could only be Alicia came running around the corner wiping her hands on a towel. “Oh that’s wonderful! Josh has told us so much about you.”

  Over dinner, they kept the conversation easy and paranormal free. Adriana enjoyed watching the family interaction as the two children chattered and asked her all kinds of questions about computers and computer games.

  When the kids had finally gone to the den to play yet another round of Josh Trenton X-Treme Skate VIII, the adults had a chance to sit together on the patio and talk privately.

  “How about some dessert?” Alicia asked as the guys got settled.

  With agreement all around, she asked Adriana to give her a hand in the kitchen. As the two assembled berry parfaits, Adriana got the idea that Alicia had something she wanted to talk about.

  “Josh told us about you,” Alicia finally said. “We were freaked a little at first, but Rob saw so much craziness in the Middle East that he finally convinced me that maybe it’s the rest of the world that’s out of touch.”

  Adriana laughed and agreed.

  Alicia continued, “What I wanted to tell you is that Rob and I think you’re going to be good for Josh—from what he’s told us. It’s about time he found some roots and settled down. I’ve never heard him talk about anybody the way he talks about you.”

  “I just hope he really knows what he’s in for,” Adriana said as she spooned the last bit of whipped cream on top of the last parfait.

  “Josh said the same thing to me when I married Rob.” Alicia laughed. “And in some ways our situations are similar. There are lots of things that regular married couples do that Rob and I just can’t manage. But we love each other and that’s the most important thing. I’m on his team and he’s on mine—forever.”

  The two carried a pair of parfaits in to the kids, who were busy playing.

  As they picked up the other desserts to head back outside, Alicia said, “We knew it wouldn’t be possible to have kids the old fashioned way, so we started planning to adopt from the beginning.”

  “You were okay with that?” Adriana asked, considering what a tough choice the other woman must have faced.

  “Oh, honey, I was the one who couldn’t get pregnant. I had to have a complete hysterectomy when I was only twenty-two. It was tough at the time, but when I met Rob, he let me know really fast that we were both coming to each other
with issues.” As she elbowed open the patio door, she cast a loving glance back down the hall toward the den. “And Raoul and Eleni were meant to be ours. It’s all worked out just like it was supposed to.”

  They rejoined the men and continued their conversation. When they’d finished polishing off the last of the berries, Josh asked Adriana to help him take the dishes back to the kitchen. Eleni met them there with her bowl as well, dropping it helpfully in the dishwasher beside the others.

  “I told Raoul to bring his, but he’s still trying to land a 900 on your game, Uncle Josh.”

  “He’ll get it eventually. I did,” Josh laughed. “But not in the game. I still can’t land one in the game.”

  Eleni laughed and took a bottle of water from the refrigerator on her way out of the room.

  “Rob and Alicia are the two luckiest people I know,” Josh said as he started the dishwasher. “They found each other, and they’ve got two fabulous kids and a great life. I have been so jealous of them for so long.”

  Adriana considered just what he was saying. Josh was a multi-millionaire with a playboy lifestyle, and he was jealous of a paralyzed man who sold cars for a living.

  “Let’s do it,” she impulsively said. “Let’s find a way to be lifebound.”

  The smile that lit Josh’s face encouraged her even more. “If we do this, you’re never going to be able to get rid of me,” she warned.

  “I’m never going to let you go.” Josh stroked a finger ever so lightly down her arm. “Lifebound or not.”

  Despite the fact that her energies had been perfectly balanced by him a number of times, his touch ricocheted in her like a mini-thunderbolt, and she cinched down her pull on him as hard as she could.

  “How’s your wrist?” she asked.

  “Perfectly fine now. I’m engaged to the girl with the magic touch.”