Page 149 of Powerhouse: Boxed Set
I was so mired in my thoughts, Tiernan’s scarred face and sun-bleached jade eyes in the forefront of my mind, that I didn’t notice the car pulling into a palatial driveaway until it was too late.
The impact wasn’t as terrible as it could have been, the car crawling forward as the gates yawned open, but it was enough to send my body rolling up the hood of the car to crashhardagainst the windshield.
My breath exploded from between my lips, lungs clenched so tightly no oxygen remained in the tissues. The right side of my body throbbed dully as I lay still, desperately trying to drag in air.
Indistinct noises filled my ears beneath the roar of blood rushing through them and then someone was gently peeling me off the windshield, helping me to sit up on the hood.
“Bianca?” a familiar voice cried out, drawing closer.
The person in front of me, probably the driver, swam in my vision, then was replaced by the newcomer.
“Bianca.” I squeezed my eyes shut, then tried to refocus. Elias’s handsome face rearranged itself like a kaleidoscope in my vision. “Holy shit, are you okay?”
“Um….” I hummed, trying to take stock of my pounding head and throbbing side. There was nothing too damaging, just a knock that would leave me bruised and a ringing in my brain that was already starting to mellow. “I think so.”
“What the hell were you doing? We could have killed you,” he demanded, squeezing my shoulders like he wanted to shake me.
“Out for a run,” I mumbled, blinking slowly as I checked in with my body. “I needed some air.”
“You need more than air,” a cool, elegant voice inserted. “Clearly you don’t have a lick of sense if you go barreling around the streets without looking where you are going. It would have served you right if you were more seriously injured.” Then a pause. “Though it would have been inconvenient to get the car detailed if you bled all over it.”
“Aunt Caroline, what the hell?” Elias almost growled, stepping slightly to my side as if to block me from the woman.
Everything in me halted.
Breath, pain, heartbeat.
Caroline.
Caroline Constantine?
I turned my head slowly, almost scared to finally land eyes on the woman my father had married, the woman he wouldn’t leave for my mother no matter how much he claimed to love Aida.
What breath I’d collected into my ravaged lungs leaked out my mouth like a puncture wound when my gaze met the glacial blues eyes of the Constantine matriarch.
She was, in short, utterly exquisite.
Her pale blonde hair was collected into a chic chignon at the back of her neck, not a lock out of place, showcasing a high, elegant forehead hardly creased despite her middle age. I knew with the trained eye of an art lover that her features, classically beautiful, were perfectly symmetrical on an oval face that could have been staring out at me from a Rembrandt or Da Vinci painting. Dressed in an ivory suit that brought out the pale shade of blue in her gaze, she looked every inch the Queen of Bishop’s Landing.
I was so in awe of her grace that it took me a moment to see the faint sneer tucked in her cold expression, eyes slightly narrowed, mouth pressed into a tight line but curled disdainfully at the edges.
She thought I was beneath her, hardly worthy of notice unless it was to call out my stupidity.
Embarrassment flamed through me.
It might have been odd, wanting to make a good first impression on the woman who had monopolized my father’s time, my mother’s rival, but I did. Lane had always spoken highly of his wife when I pressed for information about her, especially about how she had been back in the days when they’d first met and fallen in love.
She brought me peace, then, too, he’d said wistfully, holding me close.I think she became so obsessed with keeping that peace, she lost sight of what it once meant.Peace isn’t power and prestige. It’s about happiness. About protecting and cherishing our loved ones. Our world.
A shiver rippled through me and I realized I had been quiet too long. Fixing a crooked smile between my cheeks, I extended my hand to Caroline. “Hello, Mrs. Constantine. I’m sorry to have to meet you this way. I’m Bianca, a friend of Elias’ from school.”
Something flickered across the frozen pond of her eyes, then went flat. She looked at Elias with a slightly raised brow that didn’t indent her smooth forehead. She didn’t shake my hand, and finally, I dropped it. “This is the girl you told me about.”
Elias almost winced then nodded.
Caroline fixed me with her thousand-yard stare, eyes moving from my sweat-soaked hair pulled into a sloppy ponytail to the curves of my body tucked away in clinging spandex. She made me feel like the Texas white trash I hadn’t been in months.
“BiancaBelcante,” she confirmed finally.
