“Dear God,” she breathed.
Thorne’s mouth tightened as if at a blow.
“They’re magnificent,” she finished and he blinked, looking suddenly uncertain.
“Did you find some clothes for Domitian?” Mrs. Dressler asked gently.
Clearing his throat, Thorne nodded and looked at his mother as he said, “Yes. That is why I came. I thought to tell you he is all set and changing.” He hesitated and then said, “I will put on some tea and wait with him in the kitchen for you ladies to finish.”
“Thank you, son,” Elizabeth Dressler said affectionately.
Sarita watched him leave, her gaze sliding from his pale golden eyes, the sleek, white cap of what she now thought might be feathers not hair, and then as he turned to leave the room, she examined the chocolate-colored wings that had folded back into place behind his back. She also saw that there was no back on his shirt below his shoulders. It had been specially made to accommodate his wings.
“Bald Eagle?” she asked softly once he’d left the room.
“Yes.” The word hissed out of Mrs. Dressler on a sigh. “My husband—” the word sounded like a curse from her lips “—apparently drugged me and harvested my eggs on our wedding night. He fertilized them with his sperm and then injected them with various concoctions of mixed DNA from animals he considered valuable. At least I think that’s what he told me.” She waved a hand irritably and added, “I was a tad distressed at the time.”
“I can imagine,” Sarita said sympathetically.
“Anyway, while I don’t pretend to understand what he did, he did mention gene splicing or something when I confronted him.” She shook her head, and then added, “He apparently drugged me again about a week after our wedding and planted one in my womb. My Thorne.”
She glanced toward the door where her son had been and then back to Sarita. “The eagle in him shows up the most because of the wings and his eyes. Ramsey always had to wear glasses, so the exceptional vision eagles are known for appealed to him. But Ramsey says there is other DNA in him too. Jellyfish because they age backward. Salamander because they can regenerate limbs, ears, even their hearts, and so on. We don’t know what all he has, or what it could mean. Ramsey wanted to test him over the years to see what DNA had taken and what effect it had, but I refused to let him anywhere near my son,” she said grimly. “I couldn’t protect all those other children he made, but I kept him from Thorne and refused to even live in the same house with him. I threatened to live in the jungle if he didn’t build a small cottage for me, Maria, and Thorne to live in, and I would have. I couldn’t bear that house after realizing the kind of monster I’d married. I think I would have killed myself long ago if not for Maria and Thorne.”
Sarita peered at Mrs. Dressler’s face. While she obviously loved and was proud of her son, she was also furious and probably hurt that the husband she’d thought loved her had done such a thing. And she was probably hurting for her son too, because the man could never have a normal life. Were he to show up on the mainland, she had no doubt he’d soon find himself in a lab somewhere, being poked, prodded, and experimented on as doctors and scientists tried to sort out just what he was.
“Here we are.”
Sarita glanced to the door as her grandmother rushed back in, and she thought about what Elizabeth had said. Maria Reyes had been kind and comforting and had been doomed to remain here the moment she’d helped bring Thorne into this world.
Of course, now that she’d seen Thorne properly, Sarita understood. She was quite sure everything Dressler had done was illegal. From harvesting his wife’s eggs without her permission to the genetic game of Scrabble he’d played with them and so on. He couldn’t risk her grandmother leaving the island and telling anyone what she’d seen.
So all these years, her grandmother had been kept here against her will, while her husband and son had thought she’d abandoned them. Sarita could have wept for her . . . for all three of them really. If her father and grandfather had known the truth, she had no doubt they would have moved heaven and earth to bring her abuela home. Not knowing the truth, though, they’d thought she’d abandoned them and had hated her for it instead.
“Do you like it?”
Sarita forced her attention to the skirt her grandmother was holding out and smiled with surprise. It was a lovely slate-blue peasant skirt. Touching the soft material, she nodded. “Yes.”
“Are you sure?” her grandmother asked and frowned down at it. “It’s probably ridiculously old-fashioned, I know, but we don’t have patterns here to make the clothes. We are lucky Ramsey brings in cloth for us at all, and—”
“Abuela,” Sarita said firmly, tugging the skirt from her and hugging her tightly. “Peasant skirts will never go out of style. It’s beautiful. I love it.”
Releasing her, she added dryly, “And I will be ever so glad to be wearing something more than—as Domitian put it—a hanky ripped into three tiny bits and pasted on.”
Her grandmother looked her over in the minuscule bikini she wore and smiled wryly. “I am surprised he complained. You are gorgeous, Chiquita.”
Sarita chuckled. “He was complaining that he found it distracting when we were trying to sort out a way off the island.”
“Now that I can believe,” she said with a grin, and then tilted her head and asked, “He is a good man, si?”
“Yes,” Sarita answered without hesitation. “He is a very good man.”
“How?” she asked at once.
Sarita blinked in surprise, but didn’t have any trouble answering. “Well, he’s strong and smart and brave. He’s considerate too. And he can cook,” she added, that was pretty important since she couldn’t. “And I think he must be the most patient man I’ve ever met, and—” Sarita paused and glanced at her grandmother uncertainly when she released a little sigh. “What’s wrong?”
“Nothing,” her grandmother said quickly.
It was Elizabeth Dressler who said, “I’m afraid your grandmother and I have allowed ourselves to dabble in fantasy a bit more than we should to relieve the boredom here. We had rather built up the hope that someday perhaps Ramsey would die, and we would be free to invite you here. We were sure once you met my Thorne, the two of you would fall in love and we could live happily here with the pair of you producing several grandbabies for us to spoil.”
“What?” Sarita gasped, her eyes wide with shock. Turning on her grandmother, she said, “You didn’t!”
“Well, Thorne thought you were pretty when he saw your picture . . . and he enjoyed your letters as much as we did,” her grandmother said defensively. “And he is a good man, Chiquita. He is so good to us, but he is so lonely. He deserves to be happy too.” She sighed and shook her head. “But if you love this Domitian then . . .” She shrugged.
“I never said I love Domitian,” Sarita squawked with alarm, feeling her cheeks heat up with embarrassment. “We hardly know each other. We only met a couple days ago on the little island. I can’t possibly love him.”
“The things you said about him suggest you know him well, and they sounded like love to me,” her grandmother said and then glanced to Elizabeth Dressler. “Did you not think so, Elizabeth?”
“Yes, I’m afraid so.”
“Si.” Her grandmother glanced back and shrugged. “But if it is not, then bueno. There is a chance still for you and Thorne.”
“Er . . .” Sarita said weakly.
“Come on, Maria,” Mrs. Dressler said, sounding amused. “Thorne was making tea. Let’s go see if it is ready and leave Sarita to dress.”
Nodding, her grandmother moved around behind the woman’s chair and wheeled her out.
Sarita watched them go and then blew out her breath and shook her head.
“Unbelievable,” she murmured. The pair had been marrying her off to Thorne in their fantasies before she’d even met them, let alone the man in question. Wow. So this was what having a grandmother was like?