Navarro's Promise - Lora Leigh [4]
Mica’s friend turned from the screens. Deep blue eyes were damp and welling with moisture, thick black lashes spiking with it as she obviously fought to hold the moisture back. There was the slightest tremble of her lips before she could contain it.
Cassie was obviously becoming more distressed by the day with the disappearance of the woman that had been a part of her life since she was a very young child.
“She’s done this before, Cassie,” Mica reminded her.
“But not for this long,” Cassie whispered, the cool calm she had adopted as a young adult disappearing to reveal a frightened young woman. “And not after such a warning.”
What could Mica say? She was never comfortable discussing the “fairy,” the ghosts that had come later or the other visions that sometimes visited Cassie.
“Give it time, Cassie, she’ll come. She’s always come back just when you thought she wouldn’t.”
“I don’t understand it.” Cassie moved quickly from her chair, those long loose curls waving around her in a manner that had Mica totally envious. “She’s never been gone this long before, Mica.”
Mica struggled to come up with something that would comfort Cassie. That was part of her job as Cassie’s part-time personal assistant. A damned fine-paying job, as she well knew. Whenever Dash Sinclair realized his daughter was becoming anxious or overloaded with work, then Mica was excused from her job as an accountant for a major news firm and flown to Sanctuary for however long Cassie needed her. Mica helped Cassie in the PR office, sometimes did minor accounting for the office and generally did all she could to take as much pressure as possible off Cassie’s shoulders.
If Mica felt bad about the fact that she was being paid to help her friend, then she tried to put it behind her. She forced herself to remember that without the Breed’s willingness to pay her, then Mica could never have afforded to help Cassie as she did. And the fact that Cassie needed someone to talk to, to confide in, had never been more apparent than it was now.
“And like you’ve said before,” Mica reminded her, “sometimes, she does things to make you work it out yourself. Maybe that’s why she’s absent longer this time. Sort of like a mother leaving a child with a babysitter so her baby doesn’t rely so heavily on her. You know?”
“Perhaps.” Cassie shrugged as she shoved her hands in the back pockets of her designer jeans.
That was a classic Cassie move. She was worried and fighting to make sense of whatever she was worrying over.
She turned to Mica again, her delicate, pretty face pulled into a confused expression. “Do you ever feel as though the world is simply spiraling out of your control?”
There was a hint of fear in her friend’s voice now, a haunted quality to her gaze that worried Mica. But, despite the worry, Mica couldn’t help but see the irony in her friend’s question.
Mica’s brows arched at the question. “Cassie, you are my best friend,” she stated with knowing emphasis. “I’m normally completely surrounded by Breeds and their hectic, dangerous lives. I’m at your beck and call at any time, whenever you need me, and often harassed by reporters anytime I’m in public. Do you think my world ever feels as though it’s already spiraled, crashed, burned and drifted into the far corners of the earth?”
It was the truth, though Mica often found it more amusing than anything else. She’d learned early to take the Breeds, their arrogance and often calculating, manipulative personalities, with a grain of salt. She was stuck with them, plain and simple, so she may as well make the best of it.
The journalists were harder to deal with, and she thanked God daily that she had found a job with the National Journal , owned by the family of Merinus Tyler Lyons, the mate of the Feline pride leader, Callan Lyons.
The National Journal was one of the few papers left still in hard copy, as well as on e-feed and satellite upload. It was also one of the few that didn’t attempt to “reveal” gossip against the Breeds as truth. Instead the paper reported and reminded