Darkness Bound (12 page)

Her tummy turned and turned. Jan and Gib were coming to check up on her. They felt responsible for making sure she wasn’t falling apart at Two Chimneys and wallowing in sadness over Chris.

“What is it?” Niles took hold of her arm and turned her gently to face him. “You look so sad.”

“I’m not.” And she wasn’t. Not really. She was muddled up and trying to sort things out. She would mourn Chris forever. How could she not? But people mourned and learned to love again at the same time.

The thought startled her. She took in a sharp breath and stared up at Niles’s very blue eyes, filled with question now.

She owed him some sort of explanation for her mood. “Jan and Gib are sweet, but every time they see me they fuss about how bad it is for me to be alone.”

Niles looked thoughtful. “Maybe they’ve got some reason to believe that.”

“But they don’t,” Leigh insisted. “I’m doing so well. It’s almost as if they can’t accept—forget I started to say that. It was mean, but they do upset me. I almost feel as if I
should
be falling apart.”

“I probably don’t have any right to an opinion,” Niles said. “But for what it’s worth, you have to live your own life and you seem pretty sure of how you want to do that.”

She rubbed his arm and had a wild urge to kiss him. Unfortunately that wouldn’t be a good idea. “Thank you. Jan and Gib will get the picture eventually. Up till now they’re still trying to get me to live with them, which would be a horrible idea. Married couples need their own space. Besides, I’m a private person.”

She glanced at Niles, wondering what he would think about that statement—if anything.

“It’s natural for your sister to worry about you being okay,” he said, but he frowned at the same time. Jazzy crawled up his chest and put his head on the man’s shoulder. Niles stroked him.

“Thanks for saying that about Gib and Jan,” she told Niles. “I’m too touchy.”

“You’re thoughtful, that’s all. And there’s nothing wrong with being private. Beats the hell out of turning all clingy and needy.”

Blue went purposefully to stand near the sidecar. Evidently he also wanted to get back.

What Leigh wanted most was to keep on being with Niles. “You could give courses in how to say the right things,” she told him.

“Think so?” He looked as if he were trying not to laugh. “I know people who wouldn’t agree with you—not at all.”

“You are so easy to talk to,” Leigh blurted out. “I mean… ”

He waited for her to finish. When she didn’t, he said, “Ditto,” and rubbed a thumb quickly across her chin.

“I need a favor,” Leigh said rapidly before she could change her mind. “Would you please come to dinner this evening? I understand if you already have other plans. Or if you just don’t want to come. But I thought I’d ask—”

“Thank you,” Niles said simply. “I’d really like that.” His smile was one she would remember forever.

I
T WAS ALREADY DARK
when Leigh got back from work and the grocery store and parked in front of Two Chimneys.

She got out of the car and poked around in her pockets for the front door key.

“Leigh?”

“What?” She jumped, spun around, and came face to face with Niles outside the cottage. “Oh, you don’t know how much you scared me. I wasn’t expecting to see anyone.”

She needed to get into the habit of leaving the outside light on for when she got home late.

Niles looked chagrined. “I’m an idiot. I’m so used to moving around in the silence here, I never think about it. I’m sorry.”

It would be too easy to let him off the hook and tell him that now that she knew who had startled her she was thrilled to see him.

And right after she had spent the drive home giving herself a lecture about going very slowly with Niles—if she went at all.

She opened the trunk of her car but before she could lift out the bags of groceries, Niles had already swept them up. He wore a worried frown that made him look younger somehow.

“Thanks,” she said, locking the car, then sorting through her pockets again for the key to the house.

“Sean got called out to a fire and I was just fiddling around in my shop,” Niles said. “I need him for the job I’m on now. So I thought I’d come over and see if I could go to the store for you or help with something for dinner.”

She let him in. Jazzy rushed along beside him, his tongue hanging out the side of his mouth, panting blissfully.

Jazzy had never cared much for men. Who knew he would get to Whidbey and change personalities?

“Just dump the stuff in the kitchen,” Leigh said. “Thank you for coming to my aid—it was heavy.”

They stood in the kitchen, looking at each other, both of them clearly trying to come up with something to say.

“Give me your keys,” Niles said.

She frowned and he took both the car keys and the separate key for the door from her.

Gentle hands that could crush if he wanted them to. Once again she was too aware of how attracted she was to his power—and to how careful he was to use it wisely.

With a quick flick he slid the door key onto the same ring with those for the car and gave back the bunch. “Should be easier,” he said. “But I’ll take it off again if that’s not the way you want it.”

She grinned. “I’m still disorganized. Thanks for the help.”

Quiet fell between them again.

“I’m in the way,” Niles said hurriedly. “If you still want me to come, I’ll be back later. I thought about you and wandered right on over. That was pushy of me.”

Leigh smiled slowly. “You and I could do with a crash course in saying what we mean when we mean it. I’m just going to be fiddling around, too. I’m making lasagna, garlic bread, and a salad. Are you any good at washing salad stuff and chopping it up?”

His smile turned her heart as it had outside Sally’s shop.

“I’m the most accomplished salad stuff washer for miles around,” he said. “Wait till you see me chop. You’ll be jealous.”

She started unpacking and he took things from the other bag. That’s when she noticed a bottle sticking out of each of his large jacket pockets.

“You’ll break those against the table,” Leigh said, nodding. “Are you a closet boozer?”

Immediately, he hauled a bottle of red wine from one pocket and a bottle of white from the other. “I wasn’t sure what to get so I got one of each. I’ve got a couple more down at my place in case we need them but I didn’t want to give the wrong impression.”

“Red with lasagna,” Leigh said. “But how about we have a glass of white while we work?”

Immediately he took the bottle of white and Leigh found two glasses. She set them on the table and looked at them with a sad little squeeze of the heart. Whatever happened, she must not think of the last time she and Chris
did each thing here. There were a million last times to get through and she had to be strong.

“Bottle opener?” Niles said.

“Drawer to the left of the sink.”

She set to work, making a meat sauce from a recipe she and Jan had concocted when they were little more than kids growing up in New Orleans. They both loved it. While the sauce simmered, she sliced mozzarella cheese and opened a carton of ricotta.

Niles, she noticed, didn’t do more than sip his wine now and again, but he chopped a mean tomato and washed lettuce until it squeaked.

“We didn’t say a toast,” she said, glancing at Niles over her shoulder. He had shed his coat, hung it on the back of the cleaning cupboard door on top of Chris’s old flight jacket. A dark gray cotton shirt with a black turtleneck underneath suited him. Probably, anything would suit him, but his eyes looked even more blue tonight.

“What shall we drink to?” he asked, handing over her glass.

She said, “New beginnings,” without thinking, and felt a faint heat in her face. “That’s for me because I’m starting over. What about you?”

The quizzical way he returned her gaze made Leigh sense he knew she had tried to cover because she thought he might take the toast wrong. Or right. She looked into her glass.

“New beginnings will do for a start,” he said, clinking his glass against hers. “And possibilities, good starts, the unexpected… hope.”

Leigh had to take a breath before she said, “I second that and I’ll drink to it.”

Tension crimped her shoulders and her movements felt jerky. When she looked at Niles, he was watching her mouth. She rested the rim of her glass against her bottom lip.

His next smile was quick and as fleeting as the way he ran the tips of his fingers down the side of her face.

She put down her glass and started putting lasagna noodles into boiling water. While her back was to him, she heard him start to chop again, chop and whistle.

Leigh closed her eyes. Chris used to whistle.

“Can I use one of these wooden bowls?” Niles had taken a big salad bowl from a shelf and she nodded.

While she finished making the lasagna and getting it into the oven, Niles lighted both fireplaces. He had offered to light a fire and she had asked him to do the second one, too.

Chris had often insisted on having both fires alight when it was really cold, and he delighted in watching people’s reactions when they first came into the house.

The kitchen grew too warm.

Leigh opened a window an inch or so. The table there was the only one she had and she didn’t want her guests sweating over dinner.

A green checked tablecloth, washed enough times to make it soft, matching napkins, and the white plates with blue stripes around the rim didn’t make for an elegant setting, but everything was cozy.

She found a vase a little larger than the circus glass with room for several stems and went through the door to the side of the house. A nearby holly bush was loaded with berries and if she could make it there without falling on her face, a few sprigs would be perfect.

Careful to be quiet—she didn’t want Niles rushing to do the job for her—she closed the kitchen door again and picked her way toward the woodpile. The holly she had in mind was behind the lean-to. Pungent scents of pine, earth, and cedar filled her nose, and cold snapped at her ears.

When would she learn not to come out here without a flashlight? At least she had thought to put the long kitchen shears in her pocket and wear gloves so her hands wouldn’t get torn to shreds.

The berries seemed shiny black in the near complete darkness. A faint moon hovered behind slinking layers of cloud in mottled grays. The best pieces of any bush were always high up. She thought of gathering blackberries in summer and how the fattest, most ripe berries inevitably left her with a multitude of long, often bloody scratches.

She edged around the bush, stood on tiptoe, and reached up with her shears. It took three attempts to cut a laden twig and let it fall. Breathless, she paused before rising to her toes again and brandishing the shears.

Leigh concentrated on snagging what she wanted but couldn’t help noticing how her form threw a tall, wide shadow, and how the shears seemed at least a foot and a half long.

Still on her toes, she opened her mouth without knowing why. The shadow shears pointed down, toward her; the ones she held were straight up, the blades closed on the branch she wanted.

The moon wasn’t strong enough to throw shadows, and even if it were, it was in front of her, not behind.

Keeping very, very still, and choking silently, Leigh fought to order her thoughts. If she screamed, Niles would probably hear and come. But there would be time for who
ever was behind her to make a killing strike, then attack Niles as he came from the house.

The slightest move detached the shears from the bush. Leigh changed her grip to hold them like a knife and swung around with her arm raised.

She tried to scream but no sound came.

Between her and the lean-to, and a vast tree at the opposite end of the little building, a figure hovered. Without substance, rippling like misty white water, it curved high in the air and bent over her. Leigh could see the tree through the figure as if it and the tree were one.

A shrieking laugh tore through her head, growing higher and higher until it floated away like discordant notes played on a flute.

She dropped the shears.

With no warning, no perceptible change of position, the figure shrank and became barely taller than Leigh. Where there had been no features at all, great yellow eyes blinked at her and a mouth as wide as the big tree’s trunk stretched as if in a grin, turned up at the corners, and revealed pointed teeth.

The mouth came closer, and closer, opening wider until she knew its intention.

A thick, fleshy tongue protruded to lap her face, slither around her neck, and suck her head into the gaping jaws.

N
ILES FELT A BREEZE,
sensed its prickling cold, smelled scents from the forest.