Chapter Twenty Four

"Do you think she believed you?" Lacey pressed anxiously after Danny ended his call to Jo. It was difficult to discern what he was thinking based on his facial expression. In fact, he seemed rather stoic at that moment, even perhaps a bit dejected.

He turned briefly to place his cell phone on the nearby nightstand. "She seemed like she did. She agreed to the test but she didn't sound too happy about it."

"I'll bet she's not happy. You're about to blow her lie apart." When Danny said nothing in reply to that, Lacey noted the telltale flickering behind his eyes, his only betrayal of the internal anguish he was feeling right then. She reached over to touch his bare shoulder in a gesture of comfort. "Are you okay?"

Rather than answering that directly, Danny forced a smile. "Shouldn't I be asking you that question? I'm not the one who just got my ass handed back to me by my mom. Are you sure you don't want me to take you back?"

Lacey shuddered when she recalled the screaming rant her mother had delivered to her only ten minutes before Danny had placed his call to Jo. She had deliberately put off talking to her mother as long as possible, content to lounge about in Danny's borrowed underwear with an equally half-naked Danny until Danny himself had prodded her into doing otherwise. After they finished lunch, a lazy round of lovemaking and a steamy shower together that Lacey insisted was needed absolutely needed to fortify her courage, she finally put an end to her procrastination and made the call.

Judy Porter had been less than thrilled to learn that her teenage daughter was planning to stay overnight in New York with her ex-not ex-boyfriend. Judy had also been rather indignant over the fact that it had taken Lacey the better part of the day before she had informed Judy of her plans. Before that, she had been going out of her mind with worry for her errant daughter. And, while Lacey felt guilty over having caused her already stressed mother yet more undue stress, she was much too concerned with Danny to yield to her mother's bullying to return home, no matter how much trouble it caused her in the long run.

"Don't worry about my mom," she reassured him, "I'll handle her when we get back to Green Grove. She'll be fine. I want to know what you're thinking right now."

Danny scooted back against the headboard of the bed and drew his knees to his chest. He was silent for a few seconds after that, as if he was planning his next words with extreme care. Finally, he said, "Listen, I know that you believe Jo is a manipulative bitch-,"

"-She is," Lacey inserted without qualm.

"But," Danny stressed with a pointed glare, "I don't think she's capable of something like this. She can be petulant and petty when she's angry and maybe a little spiteful on occasion but she's not cruel. And lying about something like this...that would be cruel, Lacey. It's not her."

While she was in firm disagreement with every word he'd just said, Lacey could still sympathize with him for feeling the way he did. She shifted next to him on the bed and laid her head against his shoulder. "You're struggling with this."

He made a scoffing sound at her murmured insight. "You think? She's my best friend, Lacey! She's been my best friend all of my life! Hell, she's been my best friend in two freaking lifetimes!"

"And she did this to you once before," she reminded him gently.

"Yeah, when she was terrified and alone and after I had just murdered the father of her baby right in front of her," he muttered.

Lacey snapped upright, her brows knitting together in an incredulous frown at his words. "Why does it sound like you're defending her right now?"

"I'm not defending her." The denial was weak, however, and Danny knew it. More importantly, Lacey knew it. Her scowl deepened.

"We're talking about a woman who murdered the woman you loved and your unborn child in cold blood," she reminded him brutally, "Yes, centuries of time have passed since then but she hasn't changed! She still looks at me now the same way she looked at me then, Danny."

"And how's that?" he wondered aloud softly.

"Like I'm a threat. And if there's one thing I remember about Ankhesenamun, it is that she is at her most dangerous when she feels threatened."

"But that was then," Danny argued, "We're not those same people anymore."

"Aren't we?" Lacey challenged.

He snapped his mouth shut when he realized he had no counter to her words, unable to deny the stark similarities between the lives they led now and the one they had shared in the past. "I just have a hard time believing that we've been given this second chance just so when can repeat the exact same mistakes all over again," he muttered finally.

"I think this is our chance to learn from them," Lacey considered softly. She reached over to stroke his tousled hair back from his forehead. "I know this is hard for you. You've had a lot to take in and in a very short time frame," she soothed, "But none of this is your fault. She abused your trust. She is the one who lied."

"If she's lying."

Her fingers stilled against his temple. "After everything that's happened, do you honestly think she's not?"

"I'm saying we don't have all of the facts. Not yet."

Lacey pulled her hand away completely and regarded him with a stony expression. "You want it to be true, don't you?"

Sensing that she was angry with him, Danny immediately retreated to the defensive. He scowled at her. "Of course, I don't want it to be true that she's lying to me, Lace! God! Can you not understand that?"

"That's not what I'm asking. I want to know if you want Jo's baby to be yours?" Lacey demanded flatly.

Danny gaped at her. "What?"

"You heard me."

"You're being ridiculous."

Lacey stiffened with gathering affront. She crossed her arms in challenge. "I don't think I am." At that point, Danny rolled from the bed with a disgusted snort. Frustrated further, Lacey said at his back, "It's a valid question!"

He pivoted to confront her. "No, it's not! You were there when I found out the truth about Jo's pregnancy! Did I seem happy to you?"

"No," Lacey conceded quietly, "You were terrified."

"I'm still terrified!" Danny said as he began to pace the hotel room restlessly, "A baby is the last thing I wanted. I don't even know what it means to have a family, let alone what it takes to be a father! I don't know even know what the hell I'm doing!"

"But you want it," Lacey concluded gently with dawned understanding, "You want this baby."

He came to kneel beside the bed then and gathered Lacey's hands in his own, his eyes silently pleading with her to understand. "All of my life, my father has been mildly supportive and distant at best," he explained, "My mother died when I was practically a baby. Her parents want nothing to do with me. My own aunt despises me. Everything I know about family is what Jo taught me.

"Whenever I got arrested, she was my first phone call. When I woke up in the hospital groggy and strung out, she was the first face I saw. When I was feeling alone or scared or confused, she was the person I talked to about my deepest, personal feelings. I can't just write that off, Lacey!"

Though her heart was pounding with a myriad of emotions during his fervent monologue, Lacey schooled herself to remain calm. Nonetheless, she tugged her fingers from his desperate grasp and asked with as much poise as she could muster, "Do you love her?"

"I've told you before. I love her and I love the baby," he admitted gruffly, "But I'm not in love with her and what I feel for her doesn't even begin to touch what I feel for you."

"And what do you feel for me?"

"You're my world, Lacey. You're everything. You drive everything I do and you always have." As Lacey started to relax with his ardent avowal, Danny's next words reintroduced the tension to her shoulders. "But you should know that...um...when I thought you and I were done that I...that Jo and I..."

"Please don't tell me you slept with her," Lacey groaned in longsuffering, "God, don't tell me that, Danny."

"No! I kissed her. That's all. We kissed."

"You kissed?"

"Once," he rushed to clarify, "And it was a mistake. She thought it meant something but all it did was confirm for that I wasn't over you."

"So why are you telling me?"

"If we're going to be together, there can't be any lies between us, Lacey," he said, "It was never like that between us before and it can't be like that now."

"Before I just meekly accepted the fact that you had a life with Ankhesenamun and I was on the periphery of that life but not this time. Not again. I won't be your 'side ho,' Danny."

"My what?" he choked, half in laughter, half in horrified disbelief.

"You know exactly what I mean."

"That's not what's happening right now. In that first life, I was obligated to Ankhesenamun. I was married to her."

"You're obligated to Jo now. That baby makes you obligated."

"So, do you believe Jo is lying because that's the truth or because that's what you need to believe?" Danny challenged softly.

Those his words were quiet and free of accusation, Lacey took offense at them regardless. "I believe she's lying because she is!"

"Lacey, come on-,"

"-Either she's faking her pregnancy completely or she's passing off another man's child as yours."

"Well, she's not faking the pregnancy, that's for sure."

At that precise instant, Lacey had to check the impulse to slap him. She glared at Danny with narrowed eyes. "Is that your roundabout way of confessing that you've seen her naked?" she accused tautly.

"Swimming," he clarified meaningfully, "We have a pool and I've seen her in her bathing suit." Lacey wilted in relief at his admission and the reaction saddened Danny a little. "My God, Lacey, do you not trust me at all?" he asked her mournfully."

"I'm trying to."

"Trying," he echoed in mild disgust, "That's the best you can do? Then, if you don't trust me, what the hell was this afternoon all about? Why did you come back here with me, why did you sleep with me at all when that's how you feel?"

"I love you, Danny. You know that. That's why I'm here."

"Love doesn't go very far when there's no trust, Lacey."

"Do you blame me?" she flared, "I trusted you with my heart over three thousand years ago and you broke it. Not only that, I ended up dead for my trouble! I've trusted you in this life too and it's been one gut punch after another! You'll have to forgive me for being cautious!"

"You think I turn your life upside down," Danny concluded glumly.

"You do." But when he started to roll to his feet in defeat and walk away, she added, "And that's not always a bad thing." He looked up at her with hopeful eyes. "I like how you throw my world into so much chaos," she told him fervidly, "For the most part, it's a good chaos. I just wish you didn't always come with so much baggage," she finished with an ironic laugh.

He emitted a short bark of laughter as well. "Yeah, me too." All too soon, however, the lingering traces of mirth faded from his features leaving him solemn and pensive once more. "So you really think Jo is lying about the baby?"

"I'm positive."

"I hear what you're saying but...it doesn't make sense to me," Danny muttered, more to himself than to Lacey, "I know her. She's dated a few times but she's never been serious about anyone, except me apparently. If she had slept with someone, I would have known about it. We talked about everything."

"What about after the two of you got together?"

"It was rocky for a little bit between us," Danny admitted, "And maybe a little before that too, when I got sent away to school. I guess things were tense between us back then too. I guess we weren't as close as we had been before."

"So then, it's possible that she met a guy in that time and he's the real father of her baby."

"But who could that be?" he wondered aloud, "We've practically spent every day together for weeks now. I haven't heard her talking to anyone or heard of anyone coming around the house lately."

As he spoke, Lacey found herself thinking back on the day she had first overheard Jo discussing her pregnancy and the intensity of her clandestine conversation with Archie Yates. In that instant, when it all clicked together, she mentally kicked herself for not making the realization sooner. In her haste to share her theory, she blurted out rather tactlessly, "What about Archie?"

"What about him?"

"Could he be the father?"

Danny couldn't quite swallow back his snort of amusement. "I'm sorry but...what? You think Archie is the father of Jo's baby?"

"Why not? Why are you laughing at me right now? It's a valid suspicion! Danny, stop laughing!"

"If you knew them, you would know how ridiculous that theory is," he chortled, "Archie and Jo tolerate each other at best. They hate each other. They've never gotten along, not in the entire time Archie and I have been friends."

"And yet, Archie was the one who knew about her pregnancy," Lacey reminded him, "He was the only one who knew."

Danny straightened, all traces of mirth disappearing from his features abruptly. "No. It's not true."

"You didn't see them together that day, Danny," Lacey insisted, "That day Archie came to see her at the hospital. There was something going on. I definitely didn't get the impression that they hated each other."

"I said no!" he flared with an uncharacteristic burst of anger, "Would you drop it already?"

Lacey snapped to attention, surprised by the harshness in his tone. "I thought we were considering potential fathers here. So why are you yelling at me?"

"Not Archie okay!"

"Why not Archie?"

"I already told you."

"No, you said you thought Archie and Jo hated each other," Lacey pointed out stubbornly, "That doesn't explain the reason she told Archie that she was pregnant or why he felt the need to leave school in the middle of the semester to come and see her. You don't do that for people you hate, Danny."

"It's not Archie okay!" he reiterated more fiercely than ever before, "Why are you pushing this?"

"A better question would be why aren't you pushing it?" Lacey retorted.

"He's my friend," Danny argued, "I know we're not in the best place right now but we're going to work that out. He's my friend, Lacey! He wouldn't do something like this."

"You mean sleep with Jo behind your back?"

"I mean lie to me about that baby being mine! He wouldn't do that to me. I don't want to believe that everyone in my life is betraying me!"

Lacey jerked her head in a consenting nod, her demeanor becoming a little less militant following his explanation. "Okay. Maybe he doesn't know about it."

"You think she's lying to him too?"

"It's a possibility."

Danny flopped down into the bed once more and threw his forearm over his eyes. "This just gets more and more convoluted by the second. My best friend is possibly lying to me about the paternity of our baby and the real father might just be my other best friend."

Lacey stretched out beside him, her mood equally morose. "History repeats itself."

"I just don't understand why this is happening," he muttered, "Why give me the chance to have everything I lost only to put me in the same exact position that caused me to lose it in the first place?"

"No one ever said fate wasn't ironic."

He swung up to face her then, propping himself up onto his elbow as he stared down at her with a pensive frown. "I'm serious. Why do you think all of this is happening again, Lacey?"

"Who knows? All I know is that you and I never finished our story in that first life. Maybe this is our opportunity to do that."

"Even if it's not a happy ending?" Danny considered sadly.

"I guess that's a possibility."

Clearly dissatisfied by that answer, Danny resumed his earlier position. "Well, if that's true," he considered, "It sucks. The whole thing sucks."

"Agreed."

He angled an earnest look over at Lacey. "I can't accept that. I don't want it to end for us the way it did the first time. I don't want us to end at all."

"Neither do I."

"So what do we do? Because, right now, the future seems pretty damned bleak right now."

"You sound like you think we've already been written to fail."

"That's honestly how it feels," Danny sighed glumly.

"What? Like the gods have spoken or something?" Lacey scoffed, "I told you once, a long time ago, that I didn't believe in that kind of thing. Do you remember?"

Danny smiled fondly at the recollection. "Yeah, I do. I also remember thinking that you were putting yourself in danger with such thinking." His smile faded away as he added, "I think I might have been right about that."

"I didn't die because the gods willed it. I died because your sister was a homicidal lunatic."

"And I died because I was wounded in battle," he told her, "You and I never had a chance to speak again. I never got to tell you what was really in my heart and what I wanted for us."

"What was that?" But she already knew. The answer was reflected plainly in his eyes.

"I wanted to make a life with you. I wanted to marry you and have babies with you," Danny told her intently. He took her by surprise when he suddenly reared up over her and pressed his lips to hers in a fervent kiss. "I still want all of those things," he said in a fierce whisper.

"You don't mean now, do you?" she asked, only half joking.

However, Danny took the question quite seriously. "Why not? I'm sure we could find someone in the city to marry us," he considered, "We could do it tonight." He favored her with an impish smile as his hands began a meandering trek underneath the soft cotton of her wrinkled t-shirt. "As for babies...well, we could start on making one of those right now..."

To his astonishment, Lacey rolled from beneath him before he could kiss her and then scooted away from him entirely and presented him with her back. Danny frowned his confusion. "What's wrong, Lace? What did I say?"

It took a few moments but Lacey finally gathered to courage to face him again because she knew that what she was about to say was going to hurt him terribly. "Danny, you know that I love you..."

"But," he prodded when she trailed off into anxious silence, "I get the feeling there's a 'but' in there."

She forced herself to meet his eyes then. "I think it's too soon to talk about marriage and children," she said, "It's too fast."

Danny blinked at her, obviously finding that notion ridiculous. "Too fast? Lacey we've loved each other in two different lifetimes! We're way beyond casual dating at this point!"

"I'm not suggesting that," she interjected quickly, "What you and I have together is much deeper than casual dating. We belong together. I believe that with my entire soul. But...I still live at home with my mother. I haven't finished school yet. I haven't even begun to live my life or even figure out who I want to be. Neither have you."

"Can't we figure it out together?"

Lacey released a low grunt of frustration at the mild reproof she sensed in this tone. "That's not what I meant. I'm not trying to shut you out of anything."

"Then what do you mean?" Danny demanded, equally frustrated.

"Just what I said! It's too soon for marriage and babies! I can't be a mom right now, Danny! I'm not even twenty years old yet!"

"You weren't twenty the first time we talked about marriage and children either."

"That was a different time and different circumstances," she muttered in argument, "It's not fair to bring it up now."

Danny sighed at the aggravation in her voice. "Lacey, if you're worried about money, you gotta know that's not a problem. I'll take care of you. I'll give you whatever you need."

"Because that worked out so well the first time!"

He drew back from her with a deep scowl. "What in hell is that supposed to mean?"

"It means I left my family and my home on your dime to live in your palace and that decision left me vulnerable to your crazy sister!" Lacey ranted at him, "I'll be damned if I make the same mistake twice!"

"That won't happen again," he vowed, "I'll protect you this time."

"You couldn't protect me the first time and you were a king. What makes this time so different?"

Danny winced at that brutal reminder. "Are you saying that you don't want to marry me?"

Lacey inevitably softened at the hurt in his words. "I'm saying that I want to do this on my own terms," she clarified, "I want to be with you. I want to have a family with you but I also want to go to nursing school. I want to travel the world. I want to discover who I am before I become a wife and mother."

Although he remained silent and respectfully listened to her point of view, it was clear from the way he averted his face and tightened his jaw that her words had caused him pain. Disheartened by the realization and hoping to soothe the sting of her confession, Lacey scooted closer and framed his face in her hands, silently cajoling him to look at her. He would not. She persisted nonetheless.

"Danny, please don't be this way," she pleaded, "I'm not rejecting you."

"Right."

"I'm not!" she insisted firmly in response to the doubt she heard in his mumbled reply, "I do want to marry you. I do want to have a family with you...just not right now." A measure of tension eased from his shoulders after that but he still would not meet her eyes. "Please try to understand." Lacey leaned forward to nuzzle against his cheek, placing soft, nibbling kisses across the line of his jaw. "Please..."

After a few seconds of uncertainty, he finally consented with a begrudging, "Okay."

Lacey smiled against his skin. "Is that an 'okay' as in you understand and you're not angry?" she prodded hopefully.

"It's an 'okay' as in I'm trying to understand," Danny stressed.

With a billowing sigh of relief, Lacey pressed a sound kiss to the corner of his mouth. "That's good enough for now."

"Great." He shrugged out of her hold then and shifted to his feet, his expression still solemn and somewhat remote. "We should probably get out of here and grab some dinner."

The inscrutable shift in his mood made Lacey understandably anxious. "I thought we were going to spend the day here in the city."

"We are. But that doesn't mean when have to stay confined to my hotel room the whole time."

"Well, I like your hotel room." Lacey crawled to the edge of the bed with a naughty raise of her eyebrows and reached out to snag hold of his wrist and tug him closer. "I also like what we do in your hotel room, particularly this bed."

To her everlasting relief, he didn't pull away from her but instead favored her with a beguiling smile as he gently sifted his fingers through the hair at her temples. "I like that too but we can't stay in bed all day. There's a great big city out there just waiting to be explored."

If he expected Lacey to respond to that suggestion with unrestrained enthusiasm then Danny was immensely disappointed when she stiffened and announced rather implacably, "I'm not leaving this hotel room."

"What?" Danny balked incredulously, "Why?"

"Look at me!" she cried, as if that were explanation enough, "I'm a mess. I can't be seen in public like this!"

Danny bit back an amused smile. "You look beautiful."

That compliment did little more than incur Lacey's unimpressed eye roll. "I'm hideous and you know it." She began ticking off her arguments on her fingers. "My hair looks like a rat's nest because it hasn't seen a flat iron since this morning. Plus, all I have to wear is what I had on this morning. I don't even have a change of underwear! Not everyone in this room was planning to stay in town overnight. Plus-plus, it will be dark in a few hours. All the more reason to stay in bed."

When her tirade was done, Danny bent low to brush a smiling kiss across her pouting mouth. "Your hair is perfect. I can get you more clothes and underwear. And lastly, this is New York City, babe, the city that never sleeps. It was meant to be enjoyed at night."

Three hours later, Danny had proved as good as his word and Lacey not only had fresh clothing and underwear but had been afforded with a personal stylist for her hair. Afterwards, she and Danny finally left on what they belatedly realized would be their first official date as a couple. Danny insisted that they make their way over to Chinatown so that they could sample the selection of food the street vendors had to offer while they shopped.

Lacey quickly learned that Danny hadn't been exaggerating when he said that New York never sleeps. She found herself enthralled with the sights and sounds that surrounded her, "oohing" and 'ahhing" at the plethora of curios and creations each tiny shop had to offer. She was so preoccupied with perusing souvenirs and Danny just as preoccupied with perusing her that night of them noticed the two men who had been shadowing their every step since they had left the hotel. Oblivious, they strolled along the crowded walk together, enjoying a shared box of lemon fried chicken bites and each other as they did so.

The moment felt so perfect that Danny felt compelled to completely put to rest the disagreement they'd had earlier in his hotel room. "So, I've been thinking about what you said," he remarked in a rare moment of silence between them, "and I can wait, Lacey. If you need to find yourself or figure out who you are or whatever it is...I can wait."

Filled with gratitude at his willingness to understand and accept her terms, Lacey offered him an appreciative smile before stopping to kiss him right there in the middle of everything, impervious to the bottleneck of pedestrian traffic she caused when she did so. "I love you," she breathed when they finally came up for air, "You have no idea how much I do."

Danny grinned at her. "I'm not opposed to you showing me." Her intention to accept his silent invitation to kiss him again was aborted by the grumbling New Yorkers who elbowed past them in annoyance and demanded that they take their PDA elsewhere. While Lacey cringed in embarrassment, however, Danny quickly scanned their surroundings for a more secluded place to makeout. When he spotted a narrow alley way not too far from where they stood he caught hold of Lacey's hand and began leading her there, tossing away their trash along the way.

"Where are we going?" she laughed, a little intrigued by his covert behavior.

He hesitated to tell her his intentions right away because he suspected if she knew what he had in mind that she would put up a fuss about it...and he was right. The instant Lacey realized that he intended to lead her into a "dirty, dark, unsanitary" alley, she became stubbornly resistant. Danny then had no other choice but to attempt to seduce her over to the idea with a kiss. It took a few moments but eventually Lacey began kissing him back and, all too soon, their playful exchange turned passionate. However, when Danny started tentatively exploring the bare skin beneath her shirt, Lacey abruptly regained her head and swatted his hands away.

"Not here," she hissed in admonishment, "People can still see us."

His eyes glassy with desire and need, Danny urgently coaxed her deeper into the alley with the obvious intention of finishing what they had begun and more. Once they were safely out of sight, they fell into each other's arms once again, kissing wildly as if they were starved for it. Somehow they ended up far from the crowd, just beneath a wrought iron fire escape with Lacey pressed between the brick facade of the building and Danny's thrusting body. They were so wrapped up in the heady sensations they were feeling and creating that neither of them realized they were no longer alone in the alley until Danny felt the ring of cold steel press to the base of his neck.

"If she screams, I'll blow your head off," their assailant warned them in raspy tone.

Lacey whimpered in terror at the threat but valiantly stifled her urge to call for help. Not too far from them, she could still hear the low hum of the crowd from the street, close enough to offer aid them but not enough to keep them from being shot. She trembled and gripped the front of Danny's shirt, too afraid to even look up and make eye contact with their attacker. Sensing her fear, Danny did his best to control his own as to not alarm Lacey further.

"My wallet is in my back pocket," he informed the gunman, "There's about six hundred dollars in cash in there and a credit card. You can have it all. Just take it and let us go."

"I don't want your wallet," the man hissed in his ear, "I want you."

Those were the last words Danny heard before his head exploded with pain and the world around him went dark.