Gods and Mortals: Fourteen Free Urban Fantasy & Paranormal Novels Featuring Thor, Loki, Greek Gods, Native American Spirits, Vampires, Werewolves, & More (50 page)

Of course, I might have been a little biased.

Tutto Mare was located at the edge of Newport Center, yet another Southern California homage to commerce. The restaurant was modern yet somehow still warm, its airy spaces and clean lines offset by expanses of burnished copper and smooth travertine. My sister and her husband Nathan already waited for us there, and we exchanged the obligatory greetings and hugs before the hostess gathered us all up and seated us at a large table at the far end of the main dining room.

We settled ourselves with my father at the head of the table, Nathan at the foot, and my sister and I sharing one side while Traci had the other to herself. My stomach was beginning to tell me it was not happy with the nuts and twigs it had received earlier, so I decided a nice big swordfish steak was probably the way to go. The waiter came and took our drink orders; as much as I would have liked a glass of wine, I had a long drive home after this and decided to stick with mineral water.

Finally we all had our beverages, and the talk around the table quieted down a bit. My father cleared his throat and said, “We’re here for Christa’s birthday” — and he raised his glass toward me — “but I also have some very important news for you all.”

I shot a mystified look at Lisa, and she raised her shoulders. At least she didn’t know anything more than I did.

For some reason my father reached over and took Traci’s hand in his. “I just wanted you here so I could tell all of you the happy news.” Grinning, he announced, “Traci and I are going to have a baby.”

A
n awful silence fell
. My stomach, which had already been doing some interesting gyrations as it tried to digest the wood chips from my lunch earlier, flip-flopped. My father continued to grin, but Traci’s smile began to look a little pasted on.

I blurted out the first thing that popped into my mind. “Aren’t you too old for that?”

If I’d thought the silence that followed my father’s pronouncement was bad, the one that resulted from my ill-considered question was positively hideous.

Finally Traci said, shooting me one of the most evil glares I’ve ever received, “I’m only thirty-nine.”

“Oh,” I said. “Right.” Okay, she might only be thirty-nine, but my father was going to be fifty-seven in May, which meant he’d be the ripe old age of seventy-five when he got around to sending this kid off to college.

“So when are you due?” my sister Lisa asked, in what I thought of as her sparkly real-estate agent’s voice. I could tell from a certain tautness in her jaw line that she wasn’t exactly thrilled with this particular piece of information, either, but unlike me Lisa hadn’t contracted a sudden case of foot-in-mouth disease.

“The end of June,” Traci said promptly. “We wanted to wait until we were sure and that everything was progressing normally until we told everyone.”

If it really had been that touch-and-go, I questioned the wisdom of their jetting off to Hawaii for the past ten days, but whatever. Maybe Traci had wanted to get in one last round of vacationing before she was stuck in Newport Beach with nothing to do but watch her waistline expand and drop large amounts of cash at trendy maternity boutiques.

I wanted to ask,
Does Mom know?
but realized that question would be even less welcome than the whole age gaffe. Probably I should have realized that this particular disaster might occur at any given time, since Traci was so much younger than my father. Honestly, as the years went on and they never discussed having kids, I’d just assumed Traci didn’t want any.

But obviously she had wanted them, or at least had gotten it into her head that a baby was the latest accessory she needed to make her life complete. I’d rather think that than consider the possibility of my father really wanting more kids. Because if that were the case, then I’d begin to wonder if there was something deficient in all of us, something he’d wanted from a child but hadn’t yet gotten. We were all bright and attractive (well, the jury was out on Jeff on the first part of that statement, even though he cleaned up pretty well), but none of us was exactly a genius or a prodigy. However, if my father had hoped that Traci’s genetic contribution would bring him a Nobel laureate or the next Bill Gates, I had a feeling he was going to be sadly disappointed.

While all these thoughts were passing through my head, I found myself getting angrier and angrier. How dare they, anyway? Wasn’t this world over-populated enough? Had my father even stopped to think that he was the age where he should be expecting his first grandchild, not his fourth child? And bringing it up like this, at a dinner that was supposed to be for my birthday. Very nice. Thanks so much.

“Do you know what you’re having?” Nathan asked. He shot a considering glance in my direction, as if he’d started to guess the reason for my continuing silence. Despite the fact that he was a mortgage broker, he was actually a fairly nice guy who displayed flashes of intuition I wouldn’t have thought possible in someone who’d been misguided enough to marry my sister.

Traci gave a simpering little laugh. “Well, I had an amnio because, well, I am past thirty-five. But Stephen and I decided we wanted it to be a surprise, so we asked them not to share that part of the results with us.”

“I suppose it’s more fun that way,” Lisa put in. Her smile was starting to look a little tight around the edges. I wondered suddenly whether she and Nathan had been trying to get pregnant as well, with no luck. She’d always said she didn’t want to start a family until she was at least thirty, but she’d hit the big three-oh this past October. If they really had been trying with no success, I could see why Lisa’s expression reminded me more of someone who was grimacing in pain than actually grinning.

For the first time my father seemed to detect a notable lack of enthusiasm on my part. His gaze settled on me, his hazel eyes looking concerned. “You’re very quiet, Christa.”

“Sorry,” I said, gulping at my mineral water. At that moment I really regretted not ordering a glass of wine. “I guess I was just thinking.”

“About?” It was his psychologist’s voice, neutral, gently probing.

I really hated it when my father pulled that stuff on us. We were his kids, after all, not his clients, or the groupies who paid big bucks for the seminars he gave one weekend a month on personal growth and family dynamics. “So are you going to cut Mom off when the baby comes?”

“I hardly think this is the time to discuss that, Christa. Your mother already knew the situation with Jeff couldn’t continue indefinitely.”

Okay, maybe they’d already hashed through that particular point. I’d often thought to myself that my mother needed to give Jeff more of a push, make him realize he couldn’t live with her forever. However, now that it looked as if there might be a definite end point to the support my father was willing to pay for him, I found myself rushing to his defense. My brother, who lately had been a source of some impatience for me, suddenly seemed in definite need of a protector.

“Who’s to say Jeff isn’t just acting out because his father took off to marry someone almost half his age?” I snapped, then realized I had gone way too far.

“Christa!” my father and sister exclaimed almost at once.

Lisa looked really angry. Now, she wasn’t a huge fan of Traci, although she was willing to make nice and play “happy family” just because that’s what people are supposed to do. But I had broken the cardinal rule. I had brought up the divorce when we’d all agreed to tiptoe around that point. Worse, I had made it quite clear that I thought the breakup of my parents’ marriage was mostly my father’s fault.

Oddly, though, I didn’t feel guilty. I guess I should have — here we were supposed to be having a celebratory family dinner, and instead I’d turned it into a scene. Well, all right, not quite a scene. Most of the conversation had been carried on in normal tones, so unless the people around us were actively eavesdropping, they probably couldn’t hear what was being said. However, I flushed with righteous indignation. It felt good to have finally said what I thought instead of biting my lip and avoiding a confrontation.

The weird thing was that Traci shot me a strangely triumphant look, as if my outburst was exactly what she wanted. Why? So I could alienate my father? Maybe she thought having him on the outs with his first family would give her more power in the relationship, power that could only be increased by having a baby. I knew she merely tolerated us, just as we only tolerated her. We didn’t have anything in common, and no reason to like one another except that my father had decided — in a fit of insanity — to marry her.

But as much as I would have liked to push the matter, the sad fact was that I really didn’t want to upset my father any more than I probably already had. Despite my continuing irritation with Traci and the feeling that something had gone subtly wrong with the universe ever since my parents split up, I really did love him. He’d been a good father, there for our concerts and plays and awards ceremonies, taking us to the park on the weekend, gamely trying to build a playhouse for us in the backyard even though he had less mechanical ability than I did.

Sometimes things just don’t work out between people
, I thought.
That doesn’t necessarily make them bad.

“I’m sorry,” I said at length, knowing they needed to hear the words even if I didn’t really mean them. “I guess you caught me by surprise.” And then, because my father still looked troubled, I added, “Probably just low blood sugar.”

“Curse of the nuts and twigs,” he said, the beginnings of a smile lifting at his mouth.

Lisa glanced from him to me, eyebrows pulled together in puzzlement, and then she gave a sudden relieved laugh. “Oh, lunch with Mom, right?”

“Unfortunately, yes,” I replied, and a little of the tension went out of the air.

Nathan essayed a smile. Traci looked as if she could have cheerfully strangled the lot of us, but because we’d managed to avoid a meltdown, she had to shoehorn a cheerful expression onto her features. It was actually sort of funny to watch her twist her tight-skinned face — never capable of much movement at the best of times — into something approximating good humor.

By way of an olive branch, I asked Traci which room they were considering converting into a nursery, and she was off and running. The second guest bedroom had already been selected, she informed me, and the painters were coming next week. As she went into details that mattered probably only to her and my father (and his interest was debatable; I thought I saw his eyes start to glaze over as she launched into a discussion of layette tables), I patted myself on the back for skillfully maneuvering the conversation into safer territory. Then the food came, and the rest of the meal passed without incident.

A few times, though, I saw a hurt look come and go in my sister’s eyes, and wondered if she’d ever tell me the truth about how she felt regarding this new addition to our family. Probably not. Some sisters shared that kind of closeness, but not the us. We tended to keep our secrets from one another.

I figured it was just as well. Even if Lisa were the kind of sister I could have confided in, I think I would have had a hard time explaining to her how I ended up dating the Devil.

T
he evening felt interminable
, but in reality I was back on the freeway and heading north by nine o’clock. The rain had begun to fall again, unevenly and in fits and starts. For some stretches the road was almost dry, and in others water hit my windshield with such intensity that I had to ratchet up the wipers a notch or two. I almost welcomed the rain, since it made me concentrate on my driving and not the unwelcome news my father and Traci had dumped on us.

As we left the restaurant, there was another round of congratulations. I think my voice sounded almost normal as I said it would be fun to go shopping for those cute little baby booties and all the other paraphernalia an infant needs. But on the way back to my father’s house from the restaurant, I couldn’t think of anything else to say, and I just stared out at the rain and wished I could transport myself back home instantly. If Luke had been with me, I probably could have.

He wasn’t there, though, and, weird as it seemed, I almost missed him. I supposed it was just because when I was around him he made me feel as if his entire attention was focused entirely on me. This dinner, even though it supposedly was in honor of my birthday, had been pretty much hijacked by talk of the baby and Traci’s plans for him/her. As the middle child, I was sort of used to being overlooked, but something about the whole evening just rankled. I tried to tell myself I was being selfish, and probably I was tired and PMS-y to boot, but I knew it was more than that.

Maybe I’d just fix myself a nice hot bath when I got home. I’d never been much of a bath-type girl, more from lack of time than anything else, but I tried to treat myself once a month or so if the spirit moved me. My apartment’s single bathroom had both a tiled shower stall and an actual tub, and I dutifully scrubbed out the tub every other week even though I hardly ever used it. I had some bath salts and candles, and I could turn up the stereo in the living room so I’d still be able to hear it down the hall.

The more I thought about it, the more the bath sounded like a good plan. Time to pamper myself, time to relax, time to try to forget all the craziness that had dominated my life for the past week. Then I could get a good night’s sleep and wake up the next day with a fresh outlook on life.

I parked my car in the garage, and hurried around to the front of the building and up the stairs. The rain had let off a bit, but I still felt a few drops hit my face and hands. I wanted to be safely under cover before it let loose again.

After scrabbling for my keys, since once again they’d migrated to the bottom of my purse, I unlocked the deadbolt and let myself in.

Luke looked up from his place on the couch and smiled at me. “Good evening.”

I let out a little scream and dropped my keychain. Blushing furiously, I bent down to retrieve it and hoped the dim light of the one lamp he’d switched on hid my flushed cheeks.
Cool reaction, Christa
, I scolded myself. Then again, it’s a little startling to think you’re coming home to an empty house and instead to open the door and find the Devil sitting on your couch.

“How the hell did you get in there?” I asked.

“Don’t you remember that comment I made about doors opening for me?”

Crossing my arms, I retorted, “Yeah, well, in this part of the world we call that breaking and entering.”

As usual, his only response was a smile. “I wanted to see you.”

“Okay, so you’re seeing me.” To cover my confusion, I hurried through the living room and set my purse down on the floor next to the side table in the dining room.

“You sound upset.” His voice was very close; obviously he’d followed me.

“Of course I’m upset,” I replied, turning to face him, my arms crossed protectively across my chest. “I just got home and found the Devil sitting in my living room.”

“It’s more than that.”

Eyes narrowing, I glared at him. “Oh, I suppose you already know all about what happened at dinner with my father, Mr. Omniscient.”

“I know some of it.” The look he gave me seemed almost pitying. “But I don’t know how you feel about the situation.”

“Oh, I should think that’s pretty obvious!” I snapped.

Without comment, Luke extended his hand. A glass of pale wine suddenly appeared in his palm, and he placed it in my own hand and wrapped my fingers around the stem. “It sounds as if you could use this.”

I hated to admit it, but he was right. I didn’t bother to sip at the wine; I lifted the glass to my lips and took a healthy swallow. It figured that he’d given me the pinot grigio I’d almost ordered at dinner and then decided to pass up.