Kiss Across Worlds (Kiss Across Time Book 7) Read online

  That was why she had waited four years to file the divorce. She had suspected that filing would trigger Kristijan into hitting back the only way he knew how. Every day since filing the papers, she had watched over her shoulder, expecting Remi to be there behind her, sent to deal with her at Kristijan’s orders.

  How did she still have the capacity to worry about the man who had once been her husband in more than name? Remi had warped him, changed him into the cruel, ruthless man he was now.

  She blinked, feeling the sting of tears. She turned away abruptly, so he wouldn’t see them. He would be scathing if he did and she didn’t want to deal with Kristijan at his sarcastic best right now. “I’m going to lie down until dinner,” she said flatly. “Can you tell the cook I’ll eat at the usual time?”

  “I will.”

  She fled, back to the suite that was hers, put aside for her bimonthly visits. The door had a lock and she used it every night, although she doubted Kristijan knew, or even cared that it was barred to him. He had Remi, after all.

  * * * * *

  Neven sank back down onto the bench at the foot of the bed once the door was closed. He was shaking.

  The anger pouring from her! The resentment and fury in every sentence was almost an assault. Kristijan had made her that way.

  Neven went back into the closet and picked up the suit jacket he had been wearing and fished out his cellphone. He sat on the bench once more and tapped out a fast text message to Veris.

  need everything you know about London-Kristijan’s wife. She’s HERE!

  He didn’t expect an answer, yet he got one almost immediately.

  Soonest, guaranteed. Play mean for now. Fits K and will give u time.

  The swift assurance unwound some of the tension in Neven’s chest and head. He was developing a headache, a result of all the strange and unexpected reactions and emotions swirling around him.

  Play mean.

  Veris had nailed Kristijan’s relationship with London neatly through the bull’s eye. The conversation Neven had just had with London had been a minefield of potential explosions. Every time he had given her a perfectly normal response, she had become agitated. Every time he had channeled the frosty, dry tone he’d used with Remi to such effect, she had relaxed.

  The iciness was what both of them were used to.

  What kind of a bastard was Kristijan? Yes, he was a ruthless businessman, only even the most extreme drug lords in the world doted on their families, while their families tended to love them with open adoration.

  London was Kristijan’s wife, Remi was his lover. They both were accustomed to coldness. Sarcasm. What had happened to form Kristijan in that way? What would make him treat the people he supposedly cared for like that?

  The door opened again. Remi, this time. The vampire trod lightly towards the bed. “She walked down the hall with the usual amount of steam trailing her. You fooled her nicely.”

  “Thanks,” Neven replied.

  Remi smiled. “That’s just how he would have said it.”

  “Even more thanks.” Neven put the phone into the pocket on his shirt. “Do you know English, Remi?”

  Remi wrinkled his nose. “Why?”

  Neven shifted back to English. “It’ll reduce the chance of someone overhearing us and hearing the wrong things.”

  “I hate English,” Remi said, in English. “Rotten, clipped off, on-the-nose, barbaric-sounding language.” Yet his accent was absent, when he used it.

  Neven stared at him, startled. “You sound English.” In fact, he sounded just as London had done—rich, privileged and upper crust.

  “I should hope so,” Remi said. “I passed as an Earl for most of the Regency.” He glanced at Neven. “They were ruthless about dealing with fakes, too.”

  Neven ignored the implied threat. “Tell me about London…that’s really her name?”

  “London McCallum,” Remi said. “It’s her name. A family name or something.” He dumped the handbag London had left on the chair and sat.

  “And no one calls her Elle? Not even Kristijan?”

  Remi laughed a single dry note. “Not if they want to keep their balls intact.” He crossed his arms. It looked casual, although Neven wondered if it was defensive instead. What was it about London that he was shielding against?

  “You met her in London in 2011,” Remi said. “Not long after I turned you—”

  “You turned Kristijan?”

  Remi’s gaze was steady. “All you have to do is ask.”

  Confusion touched Neven. He reached for the defensive crutch that Veris had suggested. He reached for meanness. “Can’t stand the heat, Remi?” he shot back.

  “Body heat…mmm. It’s been a while,” Remi admitted. “Horizontally, that is.” His gaze didn’t waver.

  Neven felt as though his entire body was flushing. He was aware of the warmth running through him. It was normal body temperature, yet it felt too hot.

  He hoisted the defensive shield once more and sought the most sarcastic response he could think of. “It’ll be a good while longer before you do.”

  “Kristijan liked sex.”

  “I’m not Kristijan, so while the door is closed you’d best remember that.”

  “You are repressed, aren’t you? All that human baggage.”

  Neven shook his head. “I prefer my sex mixed with genuine feelings. Otherwise, it could be a plank I’m fucking.”

  “There’s a lumber shed out the back,” Remi replied.

  “I’ll bear that in mind. Enough. Tell me about London. I have to deal with her. I need details.”

  “What makes you think I have them to give? London and I are not best buddies.”

  “I noticed.” Neven considered Remi once more. The vampire’s arms were still crossed. “You were with Neven when he met London. You let him marry her, anyway?”

  Remi’s jaw flexed. For a moment, Neven thought he would change subjects or refuse to discuss it. Then he said quietly; “Kristijan wanted to make me writhe. That’s why he married her.” Then he looked away.

  “He didn’t love her?”

  “He was besotted. She bowled him over and he would not stop talking about her. I got sick of it and told him that maybe he should marry her and get her out of his system.” Remi’s gaze shifted back to Neven then away again.

  “That’s what he did, then,” Neven concluded. “I should be surprised, only I’m fast becoming desensitized to anything he did.”

  Remi did look at him then. “He’s kept her dangling for four years. It took two years for her to truly understand his nature and move out, but not before he broke her.”

  Neven drew in a breath. “How did he do that?”

  “He told her what he was. He told her about me.” Remi shrugged. “He told her the children she wanted would never happen.”

  Neven swallowed back the vile taste in his mouth. “She went back to England, then,” he concluded.

  “Not before asking him for a divorce,” Remi said. “He beat her into unconsciousness, then told her he would not stand for being publicly humiliated.”

  Neven had to consciously remember to breathe. He felt sick. “And she calls you a monster….”

  Remi grinned. “I am a monster.”

  “She said something about coming back here all the time. He made her do that?”

  “To make sure everyone in the village and his men believed she was still his.” Remi shrugged and stood up, as if he was sick of the conversation. “Two weeks, every two months. That was the deal, or he would cut off her support.”

  “She doesn’t strike me as the type of woman to accept support.”

  Remi shrugged again. “She didn’t have a choice. Constantly travelling like that…it’s not as though she can keep up with a regular job.”

  “No income but his…” Neven grimaced. “That’s why she came straight in here, to smooth over filing for divorce. She was…she must have been terrified.”

  Remi turned to look at him. “You have
a lot to learn about London, if you think she was terrified. She might have been, once. It has morphed into pure hatred now.”

  “Kristijan still wanted her here, even though she hated him?”

  “That made it even better. It meant that the only thing bringing her back was his control over her life.” Remi’s tone was flat.

  Neven frowned. “You and Kristijan were lovers. How can you talk about him so…dispassionately?”

  “We’re monsters, remember?” Remi’s tone was indifferent.

  Neven pulled out his phone again and sent another text to Veris, giving him London’s full name and nationality. Then he tried to separate the facts of what Remi had told him from the horror they generated. “There are too many layers, too many subtleties involved. I should tell her who I am. That I’m not her Kristijan. It will make things easier. She will be able to relax, too.”

  “The last thing you want is for London to look relaxed and happy,” Remi shot back. “It would look out of character and make the men suspicious. You want this shipment stopped, don’t you?”

  Neven drew in a breath and let it out, controlling and venting his stress. “Yes,” he said flatly, thinking of Aran.

  “The only way you do that is if the world thinks you are Kristijan.”

  “Therefore, I must let her hate me,” Neven finished.

  “Yes,” Remi said, with relish.

  Chapter Eight

  “As far as we can figure out,” Veris said, handing Neven the coffee he had requested, “the two met in 2011. Kristijan’s English status lists him as refugee from the Kosovo war, so she would have felt a connection.”

  “Why?” Neven asked, as he relaxed back on one of the sofas. Taylor was opposite him, next to Veris. Alex was prowling along the windows, studying all the documentation. He, out of everyone in the big house on Martha’s Vineyard, was more systematic about absorbing the details. Rafe and Sydney and Liberty were not there. They were probably back in Spain. Location jumping—leap-frogging, as Aran called it—made it possible for all of them to move around the world in the blink of an eye. Right now, everyone in the house in Božidarko thought Kristijan was in his study, for that was where Neven had jumped from. He had studied the space behind the desk carefully because he would have to jump back there, too.

  “London McCallum—she never did change her name to Zoric—was an only child,” Alex said, from his place by the windows. “Her parents both died in the Underground terrorist bombings in 2005. She was seventeen at the time.”

  Veris shook his head. “If Kristijan is the complete asshole you say he is, then she would have been putty in his hands if he played the refugee card properly.”

  He was besotted with her. Remi’s refined English accent and dry tone whispered in his mind.

  “I don’t think it was one sided,” Neven said. “Not at the beginning, at least.”

  “No? Well, it doesn’t matter anyway. She hates him now. That will make things easier for you.” Veris shrugged.

  No one seemed to care that a woman could be made to feel so miserable and helpless by another person. Even Veris was dismissing her situation.

  “She is a human, Veris,” Neven said. “It would be nice if you keep that in mind.”

  Everyone was looking at Neven, surprised.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Veris said. No anger rang in his voice. “It would help you get through this if you didn’t think of her as human, is all I meant. You have to keep the end objective in mind.” He picked up Taylor’s hand.

  Stopping the shipment. Saving Aran.

  Taylor’s jaw worked. She said nothing, though.

  “I haven’t forgotten,” Neven told Veris. “Is there anything else on London?”

  “I’ll send it when we do. That’s the broad strokes we could find in the few hours we’ve had. Brody jumped over to England as soon as you texted. He’s going through records on the ground. He did say she volunteers at a group home in Chelsea for mentally challenged adults. She likes caring for people, in other words. Kristijan has probably used that against her for years, to keep her pinned down.”

  “How can one man be so evil?” Neven wondered aloud.

  “It’s just a matter of degree and perspective,” Veris replied, surprising him by actually answering the question. “We are right now planning on snuffing out millions of lives just by changing the future so we can live. That makes us the same as him. Maybe even worse than him. If I let myself think about that for too long, I start hating myself. I think of Aran instead.”

  “You’re saying that Kristijan did everything he did, was the way he was, because he cared?”

  “Even crazy people think they’re perfectly sane and reasonable,” Alex said, coming over to the sofa Neven was sitting on. He perched on the arm. “If you can figure out what was driving him, the rest will fall into place.”

  “I don’t know that I will have the time to do that. I’ve still got to convince Remi to do things my way, to halt the shipment.”

  “I’m surprised he’s even considering it, to tell the truth,” Veris said. “Your instinct to tell him you are Neven was on the money. I wouldn’t have called it that way, myself. Just keep moving forward, one step at a time.”

  Neven nodded. “And what do I do with London? I mean, about her being a jumper and Elle in the future? Remi says I shouldn’t even tell her I’m Neven, not Kristijan, because it will change her behavior around him and alert the men that something is not right.”

  Alex crossed his arms. “While you’re Kristijan, you can’t tell her what she is. You’re setting up the starting end of a time-loop just by being there and that’s enough.”

  “Yes, let it play out naturally,” Veris added.

  Neven thought of the tense, fury-filled conversation he’d had with her. “There’s nothing natural about their relationship,” he said. His gut stirred. “Perhaps it would be better to push her back to England, after all. Who knows what is going to happen in the next few days? She’s innocent, unprepared for any of it.”

  “Not that innocent,” Taylor said shortly.

  Neven looked at her, surprised. It was the first time she had spoken since he had arrived.

  Taylor frowned. “She married him. She keeps returning to Serbia, even knowing what he was and knowing about Remi. A purely innocent, moral woman would have found a way to sever her connection to such a man.”

  “Oh, harsh,”Alex said, smiling.

  “Kristijan didn’t make it easy for her,” Neven pointed out.

  “Maybe,” Taylor said. “I’m not saying she’s as bent and evil as Kristijan, only that she’s hiding something.”

  “Maybe she still loves him, anyway,” Alex said. “That would bring her back, over and over, wouldn’t it?”

  “No one could possibly love Kristijan,” Neven said quickly.

  “Not even Remi?” Alex asked.

  Neven shook his head. “He wasn’t even upset when I said Kristijan was probably dead.”

  “They were together for decades,” Alex said softly. “Love looks different, on different people, yet it has an effect on even the most malicious of them.”

  Veris shook his head. “Your faith in the ultimate goodness of human nature is stronger than mine, Alexander. Neven, you can’t send London back to Britain. It’s not what Kristijan would do. He wants her there in Serbia where the world can see his doting wife, which affirms his power over her. She has to stay, for now.”

  Neven sighed and got to his feet. He put the empty coffee cup back on the table. “Anything else, before I jump back?”

  “We’ll text and email, if we do,” Alex assured him. “It’s about four in the afternoon over there, yes?”

  Neven glanced through the clear section of the French doors. The mid-morning sunlight would have been disorienting, except that he had been leap-frogging for years now and had got used to instantly adjusting to local time. “Four, yes,” he said. “London is in her room. God knows where Remi is. He’s a force unto himself.”<
br />
  “Who was ruling the roost for at least two weeks, while Kristijan was missing,” Veris added. “You need to watch him, Neven. I know his type. I don’t care how long-term their relationship was, De Sauveterre would have no hesitation dealing with anyone who gets in the way of his ambitions.”

  Neven thought again of how cool Remi had been when Neven had told him he thought Kristijan was dead. “You may be right,” Neven said. “Time to get back, though. I can’t stay locked in that study forever.”

  He gathered himself and jumped. The translation during a leap-frog was rougher than with lateral or timeline-crossing jumps. It took greater concentration and energy to move his body as well as his mind. Leap-frogs could deplete his energy quickly, if he did too many of them at once.

  The effort to halt the shipment, though, would tax everyone. He couldn’t complain about the stress of being Kristijan, not when Taylor looked as though she might topple over with worry at any second.

  He arrived right behind the big leather office chair at Kristijan’s desk. The door was closed, the room was empty and for the first time Neven felt as though he could relax since arriving here four hours ago. The late afternoon sunlight filtered through lace curtains that looked a lot like the ones he remembered in the house he’d lived in with his parents, before the war destroyed everything.

  Neven moved around the desk and over to the door. The chairs that everyone had been sitting in earlier had been neatly stacked to one side, leaving the big, multi-hued carpet in front of the desk bare.

  He pulled the door open. It was time to find Remi and decide how best to halt the shipment.

  Remi was seated on one of the two upright chairs in a small waiting area. Neven wondered if he was waiting, except that every tense line and bowed curve of his body said otherwise. He was hunched over as if he was in pain, gripping his head with white-knuckled fingers.

  Neven couldn’t quite see his expression under his hand, which was shading his face. At the sight of him, though, Neven’s heart gave a little jump and squeeze. For just that one split-second of time, Remi looked like a man writhing with agony.

  At the sound of the door opening, Remi straightened up with a snap. His face fell into a neutral expression as he looked up. His eyes narrowed. “I thought you might have fallen asleep in there,” he said dryly.