Nightwing (3 page)

Must be the light, Willie decided, bending over the dresser to rub a finger across the glass. The long summer twilight filled the bedroom with lavender shadows. She could see her bedside clock and the time in the mirror: six-fifty.

Dr. Raven wouldn’t be here until eight-thirty, but Whit would be along any minute. She’d mix the dumplings, put them in the fridge and make the daiquiris. Strawberry, her favorite and Whit’s. It was cooling off some, she thought as she headed downstairs. Surely by eight-thirty she’d be able to cook the dumplings without fainting from heat prostration. Or hunger.

When Dr. Raven had called to accept the invitation she’d extended through Whit, he’d chosen the time. She’d wondered about the late hour until he’d said he worked the graveyard shift in the emergency room at Stonebridge General. He usually slept until six and had to be on the floor by eleven.

Sweat popped on Willie’s upper lip as she turned the chicken down and tried to decide if she should install central air conditioning. The ceiling fans were usually enough, but on days like this the sun porch she’d converted into an office was like a blast furnace. She weighed the pros and cons while she stirred the dumplings, dumped ice into the blender and answered the yellow wall phone when it rang.

“Don’t hold supper for me,” Whit said, his voice dipped with annoyance. “My goddamn car shot craps on the turnpike.”

“Your brand-new Beemer?” Willie tucked the receiver between her shoulder and jaw, stretching the long cord across the kitchen to the refrigerator. “What happened?”

“The warranty expired. I’m waiting for a tow truck. Do you want to change the meeting with Raven?”

“And cook tarragon chicken again in this heat?” Willie plucked a pint of cleaned and hulled strawberries off a shelf and pushed the door shut with her hip. “No way.”

“I thought you were making fried chicken.”

“I was until I found Granma’s recipe.”

“Where? She never wrote down a recipe in her life.”

“She lied,” Willie said with a grin. “I found it in one of her quilt-pattern notebooks, along with a birthday card you made her in fourth grade and a letter to the editor of
The Stoneridge Chronicle
I don’t think she ever mailed.”

“Sneaky old woman,” Whit said with an affectionate chuckle. “How many of those quilt notebooks did you and Mother find?”

“The official count is twenty-two, but I keep finding more tucked away here and there.”

“Keep looking until you find her chocolate cake recipe. You sure you don’t want to reschedule?”

“Positive. I want this over with.”

“Okay. Your choice. You’re the big three-oh now. Just be careful. Call me tomorrow and let me know how it went.”

“Yes, Whit.” Willie rolled her eyes and dropped strawberries into the blender. “First thing.”

“Okay, Will. Love you.”

“You, too. Bye.”

Willie hung up the phone and turned on the blender, humming “Margaritaville” by Jimmy Buffett. With a daiquiri in one hand and a bowl of salad in the other, she went outside to light the candles in the luminarias, small pastel bags weighted with sand that edged the low terrace wall.

It was nearly dark. The sky was plowed with long furrows of pink cloud, and the sea murmured faintly beyond the dunes. She ate her salad sans dressing with her fingers, watched the windows in her friend Frank Chou’s little blue saltbox house begin to glow, and figured she ought to turn on the porch light.

She did, plus a lamp in the living room, the carriage lamps flanking the dining room French doors, and the floodlight above the kitchen sink as she rinsed her bowl. Over the hiss of the water she heard the thrum of a powerful engine, the crunch of tires on the gravel driveway. She grabbed a dishtowel and hurried to the front door in time to see Dr. Jonathan Raven stretch out of a red Corvette convertible.

He was much younger than Willie had expected, mid-thirties, tops, and the handsomest man she’d laid eyes on since Hugh Jackman’s last movie. His hair was dark and long, curling just below the collar of his white oxford-cloth shirt. The sleeves were rolled and his shirttails were tucked into jeans that were nicely faded and snug in all the best places. In the second before the headlights shut off automatically, she noticed his top three shirt buttons were undone. She also noticed the determination in the set of his jaw and the gleam of covetousness in his narrowed gaze.

None of which showed on his face when Willie flipped the towel over her shoulder and pushed through the screen door. He smiled as he came up the steps and stopped in front of her. He was very tall. Six-two, maybe six-three. He couldn’t help his height, or her lack of it. Still, at five foot four, maybe four and a half if she stretched on her toes, Willie could jolly well keep him the hell out of her house.

“Hello, Miss Evans. Nice
of you to invite me.”

“Thank you for coming. Dr. Raven.” She lifted her hand toward the corner where the porch turned around the house. “Hot as it is, I thought we’d have dinner on the terrace.”

“Fine. I like the heat.” He smiled as she led him down the steps onto the terrace and shot him a what-are-you-nuts look over her shoulder. “Hospitals are cold as morgues.”

“And just about as pleasant,” Willie replied.

He laughed. He had a great voice, a deep, rich baritone that made Willie’s stomach flutter.

“Would you like a drink?”

“Just water, thanks. But please, you go ahead.”

When she came back with another daiquiri and ice water with a twist of lemon, he was sitting in one of the padded white iron chairs at the table, elbows on the arms, fingers laced across his midriff. He wore a large, heavy-looking ring on his left hand. Willie thought the stone was an opal, set in silver and flanked by two small diamonds. An interesting ring for a man, she thought, watching it shimmer and his hair gleam blue as a raven’s wing in the soft glow of the luminarias.

Very punny, Willie, she thought, smiling as she put the glass down in front of him. He murmured thanks and sipped.

“Your brother hasn’t arrived yet?”

“He had to cancel. After I sweated off five pounds making enough tarragon chicken to feed an army.”

“Good.” He smiled. “More for me.”

“Shall I serve now?”

“Finish your drink. I’m not ravenous. Not yet.” His smile widened. “I haven’t been awake long enough.”

A snatch of warm breeze rustled the luminarias. The candle wicks and Jonathan Raven’s dark eyes flickered. So did Willie’s pulse.

“Let’s start with the salad, shall we?”

“If you wish.”

Willie wished, all right. She wished she’d held her ground with Whit and nixed this meeting. She’d had men to dinner before. Doctors, lawyers, even a couple of real Indian chiefs, but her hands shook as she spooned the dumplings on top of the chicken. Maybe because this was personal, not business.

She tried to put a professional spin on the meal, serving it in brisk, well-timed stages, making pleasant, impersonal small talk in between courses. It worked well until Raven finished his coffee and key lime pie, leaned back in his chair and said in his rich, lush voice, “You have a beautiful first name. May I call you Willow?”

Willie could think of better choices. Like
darling
or
sweetheart,
but she said, “I’d prefer Miss Evans.”

“All right.” He laid his napkin next to his plate and laced his fingers across his midriff again. “How much?”

“You don’t have enough money to buy Beaches, Dr. Raven.”

“You’re wrong. Miss Evans. How about two million dollars, for starters?”

“Good heavens.” Willie blinked at him, stunned. “The assessed value is only two hundred and thirty thousand.”

“It’s worth far more than that to me. Shall we say—four million?”

“Beaches is not for sale. Dr. Raven.” Willie rose to her feet. “At any price.”

He didn’t take her hint that dinner and the negotiations were over. He just sat looking at her, his head tilted at a curious angle, a bemused half smile lifting one corner of his mouth. What a mouth. As lush and sexy as his voice.

“Everyone has a price, Miss Evans. Name yours.”

“You’re not listening, Dr. Raven. I just said—”

Only Willie hadn’t a clue what she’d just said. Perplexed, she blinked at her half-finished daiquiri and pushed it away. Another of Granma’s cautions was no cold drinks in summer, though she’d swilled iced coffee on the qt when she thought Willie wasn’t looking. Especially when she ironed.

“My last offer,” Raven said, “was five million.”

Think what you could do with all that money, whispered a voice in Willie’s head. Move the Evans Agency to Manhattan ... lease a whole floor on Madison Avenue... prove to your father you’re not a little girl anymore... find a stylist with skill enough to tame that wild Irish mop—

“No fair, Willie!” Frank Chou called out of the darkness beyond the terrace. “I can smell key lime pie a mile away.”

The voice in Willie’s head snapped off, so suddenly she had to grip the edge of the table to keep her knees from buckling. She blinked at Raven, who was stretching to his feet with a scowl on his face.

“Oops.” Frank stepped past the ring of luminarias, a sheepish smile on his face, his hands in the pockets of his cut-offs. “I didn’t know you had a guest.”

“Dr. Jonathan Raven, Frank Chou,” Willie said. I’ll get Whit for this, she thought.

“Nice to meet you, Doctor.” Frank stepped forward, pulling his right hand out of his pocket.

“A pleasure, Mr. Chou. The key lime pie is excellent.” Raven shook his hand, and then glanced at Willie. “If you’re free tomorrow evening, Miss Evans, I’d like very much to take you to dinner.”

It was tempting—Raven was tempting—but he wasn’t interested in her. Just in Beaches. He hadn’t said so, but he didn’t have to. The cool distance he kept said it for him.

“I think you’d better ask my attorney, Dr. Raven,” Willie said. “He likes French cuisine, by the way.”

“He’s not my type, but I’ll give him a call.” He smiled again, this time with an arched, dark eyebrow. “Thank you for dinner, Miss Evans. Good evening to you both.”

He walked across the sandy lawn rather than up the steps and along the porch. Willie watched him go, his white shirt shimmering in the warm summer darkness. She watched until the headlights came on, swooping around in a half circle as Raven backed up the car. When the Corvette purred away down the driveway, Willie rounded on Frank.

“The next time I see Whit, I’m going to smash his cell phone over his head.”

“Won’t do any good, Willie. He'll just buy another one.”

“Then I’ll smash yours over your head. How’s that?”

“C’mon, Will, lighten up. We love you.”

“Love me, Frank.” Willie stacked the dishes on a tray and glared at him. “But don’t smother me.”

“You mean it?” His dark eyes lit up and he wagged his eyebrows. “At last?”

She laughed. Frank grinned, picked up the tray and carried it into the kitchen. Willie stayed behind to blow out the luminarias, and got enough sand in her eyes to make them water like crazy.

Which is exactly what she thought she was when she looked up and saw a man standing on the porch, gazing down the driveway toward the thin ribbon of road that wound along the beach toward Stonebridge. A man wearing breeches and knee-high boots, a vest and a shirt with full sleeves billowing in the offshore breeze— transparent sleeves she could see through.

Willie’s heart leapt and raced in her throat. She shut her eyes, counted to three, wiped the tears away and opened them. There was no one there, just the shadow of the porch swing rocking back and forth and squeaking in the wind.

“No more daiquiris tonight,” she said firmly.

Then she ducked into the house, shut off the terrace lights and locked the French doors behind her.

Chapter 3

Raven felt the locks click as if he’d turned them with his own fingers. He wanted to throw back his head and howl, but gripped the wheel instead and punched the accelerator.

The red Corvette slithered through an S-curve as neatly and quickly as a snake. Raven hated snakes. He’d bent them to his purpose from time to time, but he always killed them after. Usually hacked them to bits from tail to head. Slowly.

He had to get rid of the meal he’d swallowed. Even cooked, and so minute they’d be hard to detect with the most powerful microscope, the traces of animal blood in the food were enough to send his system raging. He despised puking on the roadside, but there was no choice. He had to halt the blood madness now, while he still could. It was that or wheel the car around and lure Willow—no, Miss
Evans
—from the house, rip out her throat and hand it to her.

The bitch. The silly little carrot-headed bitch.

The warning red tinge was already pulsing at the corners of his vision. He took his foot off the gas, eased the Corvette onto the sandy shoulder and kicked the door open. It sailed through the warm summer night, whistling, and landed, kicking up sand as it bounced end over end, forty yards up the dunes on the other side of the road.

The steering wheel was still in his hands—only he was standing beside the car. He tossed it onto the seat and ran for a small copse of scraggly pines, fell on his knees, hands buried to his wrists in the sand, and emptied his stomach. He scraped sand over the mess like a cat, crawled out of the trees and sprawled on his back on the beach, one arm flung over his eyes. If he’d been able to, he would have wept.

It always took a long time for the residue of the blood madness to fade. He was already late for his shift in ER, but he’d see to it that no one would notice or even remember.

Guilt used to come to him easily. Now he had to reach for it, remind himself he was a doctor, that he’d taken an oath of responsibility. When guilt failed him completely, amorality would consume him, destroy everything he’d once been and yearned to be again before he forgot how. If he’d been able to, he would have prayed, but prayer was forbidden to him.

He could only lower his arm and let the moon bathe his face. The pale light was a balm to him. He was Luna’s child now, more than he’d ever been.