Books by Maggie Shayne (73 page)

"I'd like to see you again," she said, suddenly shy and awkward with him, which seemed strange considering all that had passed between them before.

"I think it would be impossible for me to go a night without seeing you, Tamara," he told her. "I will come to you again. . . do not doubt it." She bit her lower lip, searching his face. "I'm a grown woman. It's silly to have to sneak around this way. You know you could end this foolish notion Daniel has about you, if you wanted to. Just come to the house during the day. He'd have to realize then—"

"He would only assume I had some protection against the daylight, sweet. Nothing can change his opinion of me." He looked away from her briefly. "I have my own schedule—one that is vital to me. Should I alter that to accommodate the whims of a man determined to persecute me?"

"No, I didn't mean it like that!" She sighed, feeling deflated.

"It's just that I hate deceiving him."

"If you tell him you're seeing me, Tamara, he'll find a way to prevent it." She met his gaze again, and saw the hint of impatience vanish as he regarded her. "Let me amend that. He would try to find a way. He would not succeed."

She believed that he meant it. "I'm glad you said that," she admitted.

She knew he would kiss her. She saw the heat come into his luminous eyes in the instant before his arms imprisoned her waist. Her lips parted as his descended. The restraint he'd shown earlier dissolved the instant her arms encircled his corded neck and her body pressed to his. His lips quivered as they covered hers, and she accepted his probing tongue enthusiastically. Even with her heavy coat between them she was aware of the heat of him touching her, as if his hands touched her naked skin. He explored her mouth, and his fingers moved lightly over her nape, sending exquisite shivers down her spine.

She'd experimented with sex. In college, though she'd lived at home at Daniel's insistence, there had been plenty of opportunities and no shortage of eager tutors. Her times with men had been few, though, and inspired more by curiosity than passion. Tonight, with Eric, she wanted it. A hunger like nothing she'd known existed made a cavern inside her a vast emptiness that only he could fill. It gnawed at her mercilessly, and the longing made her groan deep in her throat.

He straightened, and she knew he saw the need in her eyes. His own closed as if he were in pain, and his arms fell away from her. "I must go," he rasped. He reached past her and threw the door wide. There was no tenderness in his touch when he pushed her through it.

She felt tears stinging her eyes when he turned and walked away.

At 7:00 a.m. she sat across the table from Daniel, nursing a strong cup of coffee and a pounding headache. "It's probably just a bug," she repeated. "I'm tired and achy. I'll spend the day in bed and be myself again by tomorrow morning."

His lips thinned and he shook his head. "I'll call in, make arrangements to work at home today. That way—"

"I don't need a baby-sitter."

"I didn't say you did. I only think I should be here, in case—"

Tamara slammed the half-filled cup onto the table, sloshing coffee over the rim, and got to her feet. "Daniel, this has to stop."

"What? Tam, I'm only concerned about you."

"I know." She pushed a hand through her hair, wishing she could ease the throbbing in her temples. She felt like a wrung-out rag this morning, and in no shape for a confrontation. "I know it's love that motivates you, Daniel—I know you care. But for God's sake, look at me. I'm not an orphaned little girl anymore." She kept her voice level, and moved around the table to press her hands to his shoulders. "You and Curtis are smothering me with all this concern. You hover over me as if I'm Little Red Riding Hood and there are wolves behind every tree."

Daniel looked at the floor. Have we been that bad?"

"Worse." She squeezed his shoulders gently. "But I love you, anyway."

He met her gaze, and slowly shook his head. "I'm sorry, Tam. It's not that I think you need watching, like a child. It's. . . it's this thing with Marquand, dammit. I'm terrified he'll try to see you again."

She let her hands fall away from him, and straightened. Eric had said he believed Daniel knew of the connection between them. Could he have been right? "Why would you think that?"

He sighed as if she were stupid. "Tamara, you're a beautiful woman! Curtis said the man was obviously attracted that night at the rink. He'd have to have been blind not to be. These creatures have a sex drive like rutting animals. Even one as old as he is."

She turned away from him, trying not to laugh. Eric was not a "creature," nor was he old. The skin of his face was smooth and tight. He moved with a grace beyond anything she'd seen before, and yet his strength was obvious. His body rippled with hard muscles and kinetic energy.

Shaking her head, she reached for her coffee. "Just how old is he?"

"Two hundred and thirty something. I've traced him to the French Revolution, when he was imprisoned and should have been beheaded in Paris. His father was, you know."

Tamara had lifted her cup to her lips, but now she choked on the sip she'd taken. Eric had told her his father was murdered in Paris! He'd said it was "political." My God, could Daniel possibly be right—no. No, that was utterly ridiculous.

But I've never seen Eric during the day.

She shoved the doubts aside. This was nonsense. Absolute nonsense.

"He's dangerous. Tam. Clever as a wizard, too. I wouldn't put it past him to use you to get to me.

And he says you're using me to get to him,
she thought. Aloud, she only said, "I'd never let that happen."

"I know. Tam. But promise you'll tell me if he tries to make contact. We have to be careful. He's evil—"

"Yes, you've told me. He's the devil himself. Okay, I'll let you know. Happy?" He studied her face before he nodded. "Go to work," she told him playfully. "He can't bother me during the day, right?"

She tried not to let his words replay in her mind, over and over again all morning. She only wanted to go back to bed and get some much-needed rest. That was impossible to do, though. She supposed she wouldn't act so impulsively if she'd had a decent amount of sleep in the past several weeks. If she'd been in a normal, relatively sane frame of mind, nothing could have convinced her to do what she suddenly decided she must do. Unfortunately, her sanity was in question, and she thought if she didn't answer the questions in her mind once and for all, it would slip away from her completely.

She had to prove to herself that Eric Marquand was not a vampire. She thought that made about as much sense as trying to prove the earth was not flat, or that the moon was not made of green cheese. Yet several hours later she sat in her pathetic excuse for a car alongside the road in front of Eric Marquand's estate.

She glanced at her watch. Only an hour or so left before sunset. Part of her wanted to put this off until tomorrow. Part of her wanted to put it off permanently. Still, she was here, and she knew if she didn't go through with this now, she never would.

Getting the address hadn't been easy. She couldn't possibly have asked Daniel or Curt without sending them both into hysterics. She couldn't show up at work and tap the DPI computers. Her security clearance wasn't high enough to get her the correct access codes. She'd spent most of the day at the county seat, scouring the records deemed "public domain." She'd struck out on birth certificates. He didn't seem to have a driver's license, or a car registered in his name. He did, however, have a deed to his home. She found the information she needed in the property tax files. His address was there, and she frowned to note it was only a few miles southeast of Daniel's house, on the northern shore of the sound.

She'd spent the entire drive back arguing with herself. Was she about to shore up her sanity, or had it already been buried in an avalanche? Would any sane person visit a man's home during the day to prove he wasn't a vampire?

Too late now, she thought, pulling her car around a bend in the road and easing it close to the wood lot on the opposite side. I'm here and I'm going in. She left the keys in the switch, and walked back to the towering wrought-iron gate. She peered between the bars and the crisscrossing pattern of vines and leaves writhing between them, all made of flattened metal. The pattern was the same as far as she could see in either direction. Beyond the fence a cobblestone driveway twisted its way toward the house. Huge trees lined the driveway, so she had to move around a bit to get a glimpse of the building beyond them.

When she did she caught her breath. The house towered at least three stories high. It was built of rough-hewn stone blocks, each one too big for three men to lift. The windows—at least, the ones she could see—were arched at the tops, and deep set. They reminded her of hooded eyes, watching but not wishing to be seen. She touched the gate and at the same instant noticed the small metal box affixed to a post just inside. A tiny red light flashed in sync with her pulse. This was no antique fence, but a high-tech security device. She drew her hand away fast, wondering how many alarms she'd set off simply by touching it. She waited and watched. No sound or movement came from within.

When she could breathe again she glanced up. The spikes at the top of each of the fence's bars looked real, and sharp. Climbing over would be impossible. But there had to be another way inside. She squared her shoulders and began walking the perimeter.

It seemed like a mile as she pressed through tangles of brush and a miniature forest, but it couldn't have been that much. The fence bowed out, and curved back toward the house in the rear. She didn't find a single flaw in it, and she bit her lip in dismay when she reached the end. The last spiked bar of black iron sank into the ground at the edge of a rocky cliff. Below, the sound roiled in white capped chaos. The wind picked up and Tamara shivered. She had to do something. Go back? After all this?

She eyed the final spear of the fence. The ground near its base didn't look too solid. Still, she thought, if she gripped the fence tightly she might be able to swing her body around to the other side. Right?

She gripped a filigree vine with her right hand, the right side of her body touching the fence. She faced the sound and the biting wind that came off it. She had to lean out, over, and twist her body in order to grip the same vine on the other side of the fence with her left hand.

Bent in this awkward, painful pose, she glanced down. Points of slick, black rock jutted sporadically from water of the same color. They appeared and disappeared with each swell. They winked at her, like supernatural, unspeakably evil eyes. Her hair whipped around her face. Her nose and cheeks burned with cold, and her eyes watered. She edged forward until her toes hung over, then drew a breath and swung her left leg out and around, slamming it down again on firm, solid earth.

She couldn't stop her gaze from slanting downward once more as she straddled the iron fence, one arm and one leg on either side while her rear end jutted into Space. A wave of dizziness, almost exactly corresponding to the waves of seawater moving below, temporarily swamped her brain. She had to close her eyes to battle it. She swallowed three times in quick succession before she dared open them again.

Grunting with the effort, she released her right hand from the outside of the fence and brought it around to cling to a bar on the inside. She clung for all she was worth. All that remained was to move her right leg around to this side now. She lifted it, drew it backward, out over the water, and jerked it in again, slamming her foot down on the ground near the edge. But the ground she stood on dissolved like sugar in hot coffee. Too near the edge, she had time to think. Her right foot scraped down over the sheer face of the cliff until the entire leg, to the thigh, made an arrow pointing to certain death on the rocks below. Her left leg lay flat, heel down, on the ground so she was almost doing a split. She still clung to the fence with her left hand. Her right had been torn free when she'd slipped so hard and so fast.

The filigree vine she gripped began slowly to cut into her fingers. They burned, and in moments they throbbed incessantly. She knew she couldn't hold on another second with each second that she held on. The muscle in the back of the thigh that lay flat to the ground felt stretched to violin-string proportions.

Frantically she dug at the stone face with her toe, knowing as she did that it was useless. She was going to die on those rocks beneath the angry black water. . . and all for the chance to prove to herself that Eric Marquand was not a vampire.

Her fingers slipped. Her thigh throbbed with pain. She slid a couple more inches. Then her toe struck a small protrusion in the cliff face. She pressed onto it, praying it would hold. It did, and she was able to lever herself higher, and get a grip on the fence with her free hand. She pulled, scraping her foot along the sheer stone, wriggling her body up until she was completely supported by the solid, snow-dusted ground. For a long moment she remained there, hands still gripping the cold iron bars, face pressed to them, as well. Her body trembled and she wished to God she'd never embarked on this crazy mission.

Fine time to change my mind, she thought. I'm certainly not leaving here the same way I came. She sighed, lifted her head and pulled herself to her feet. She'd just have to go inside, confess her lunacy to Eric and hope he wouldn't laugh her off the planet. Then she sobered. He might not find her intrusion funny at all. He might resent her snooping as much as he resented Daniel's.

She brushed snow and damp earth from her jeans, wincing and drawing her hand away. A thin smear of blood stained the denim and she turned her palm up to see spiderweb strands of scarlet trickling from the creases of her fingers. She fought the tiny shiver that raced along her spine, balled her hand into a fist and shoved it into her pocket, then strode over the snowy ground toward the rear of Eric's house. She knocked at a set of French doors similar to her own. When no response came she thumped a little harder. Still no one answered.

He wasn't home. And she was stuck in his backyard until he got home, she thought miserably.

The wind howled off the sound, battering the house and Tamara with it. Her jeans were dampened from the snow and the wet ground. Her hand was throbbing. She had no idea when he'd return, or even if he would tonight. She couldn't stand here much longer or she thought she'd suffer frostbite. No, she had to get inside. Eric could be as angry as he wanted, but she'd left herself with few options. She wasn't about to tempt the sound again by trying to leave as she'd arrived. The French doors seemed like an omen. If they'd been any other type, she would have had no options. But French doors she could open. She'd had to force her own a time or two when she'd misplaced the key.

She dipped into her coat pocket hoping to find—yes! A small silver nail file presented itself when she withdrew her fist and opened it. She turned toward the doors, and hesitated. Another gust exploded from the sound, and suddenly wet snow slanted across the sky, slicing her face like tiny shards of glass. She huddled into her coat and moved more quickly. She slipped the file between the two panels, nimbly flicked the latch and opened them.

She stepped inside and pulled the doors together behind her. She thought it wasn't much warmer here than outside, then saw the huge marble fireplace facing her, glowing with coals of a forgotten fire. She tugged off her boots, shrugged free of the coat and hurried to the promise of warmth. A stack of wood beside the hearth offered hope, and she bent to toss several chunks onto the grate, then stretched her nearly numb hands toward the heat. She stood for just a moment, absorbing the warmth as the chills stopped racing around her body. Tongues of flame lapped hungrily at the logs, snapping loudly and sending tiny showers of sparks up the chimney.

After a time she lowered her hands and glanced around her. She had the urge to rub her eyes and look again. It seemed she'd been transported backward in time. The chair behind her was a profusion of needlepoint genius. Every scrap of material on the thing had been embroidered with birds, flowers, leaves. The wooden arms and legs had scroll-like shapes at their ends. A footstool of the same design sat before it, and Tamara bent to run one fingertip reverently over the cushion. All of the furniture was of the same period. She was no expert, but she guessed it was Louis XV, and she knew it was in mint condition. Marble topped, gilded tables with angels carved into their legs were placed at intervals. Other chairs similar to the first were scattered about. The sofa. . .no, it was more like a settee, was small by today's standards. Its velvet upholstery of deep green contrasted with the intricately carved wooden arms and legs.