Amy's Advantage Read Free Page B

all the trust issues Ellen
had with these people. If this man was any indication of what an Ilyrian male
was like, no wonder her sister had been less than happy that they had made an
appearance after an absence of over twenty-five years.
    “Just who the hell are you and what do you really want?”
     
    Jordyn could feel the pull of muscles in the outer corners
of his eyes as he stared down at the beautiful puzzle in front of him. To him,
it was painfully clear that his commanders didn’t have the full story when it
came to this woman, who had a habit of brushing her deep red curls off her face
whenever she got nervous, not seeming to notice that they simply fell back into
place within seconds.
    Dark circles underlined her clear green eyes—clear as the
Ilyrian sea green eyes. She pushed a wayward curl back out of her face and
continued to stare up at him.
    Officially, he should have been on his way back to Colorado.
Though one of the highest ranking officers in the Ilyrian military, he still
followed the commands of the Royal Heads of House he served. Amdyn Kilth, the
eldest and the firstborn of the First House, was in charge of this arm of the
mission to recover the Mystic daughters who had disappeared into this world
when Magdalyne took all four of her children and escaped through an unmanned
portal during an enemy attack.
    According to the last message he’d received from Amdyn, the
final two daughters they’d sought had been found and were at that moment
returning with their mates to Colorado, and from there, back to Ilyria. After
so many years, it should have brought him only peace that the last of
Magdalyne’s daughters had finally been found. He should have been feeling
nothing but relief at being assured all four women with the Mystic bloodline
necessary for the survival of his world were on their way back to Ilyria. It
absolutely should have.
    It didn’t.
    And the reason it didn’t was staring up at him with wary
emerald eyes that pulled on him in a way he wasn’t ready to accept. But he
couldn’t let it go either.
    The woman wasn’t being honest with him. He knew things
weren’t adding up from the incident on the River Walk, but he was already out
of time. Tonight, Esraina and Ellyna had been found and returned to their
rightful mates, Connyn and Amdyn. The prophecy was well on its way to being
fulfilled and Amdyn wanted all personnel heading back to Colorado to start
clearing out of this world immediately.
    But every honed sense he possessed was screaming at him that
this woman in front of him was hiding something. Something that was very, very
important.
    She shoved another curl away from her face, tucking it
behind her ear this time, and asked, “Are you going to answer me or just stand
there staring at me?”
    The curl she had just tucked away sprang forward again and
he had an unexpected urge to reach out and touch the rebellious ringlet. Dark
streaks of fiery red strands wound through all her curls, and in the
low-wattage light of the hotel lamps, her hair glowed as if it had been set to
a slow-burning blaze. But touching her the first time had been a mistake.
Touching her now would border on extreme idiocy.
    “Well?” she pushed, impatiently crossing her arms under her
breasts and drawing his attention to the deepened cleavage visible from the
neckline of her sweater.
    Slowly, he dragged his gaze up from her breasts to the fire
sparking out of her eyes.
    “I think,” he said pointedly, “the better question is, who
are you and what were you doing with Ellyna and Esraina?”
    The woman paled just enough to emphasize a scattering of
light freckles over her nose and cheeks, yet she didn’t back down. In fact, she
leaned slightly forward, leading with her chin. “If you’re talking about Ellen
and Aurora, they’re my friends. They were watching my daughter while I did some
quick shopping.”
    A scene from tonight’s incident flashed through his mind. At
the time, it hadn’t seemed quite