Kiss of Temptation: A Deadly Angels Book (30 page)

“Congratulations, honey,” Tante Lulu said when she returned, not even waiting for Gabrielle to tell her the test results. “I gotta get that hope chest done right away now.”

Later, Gabrielle couldn’t recall anything that she or Tante Lulu discussed until Tee-John eventually came to pick her up. At the door, both the nephew and the aunt hugged her warmly, and Gabrielle promised to call Tante Lulu the next day.

It took her an hour to get herself until control.

She was pregnant. Unmarried and pregnant. Well, that didn’t matter so much today. But the timing was not good, especially with Leroy about to get out of prison. He would be staying with her, at least in the beginning. Then she would have to think about how she was going to support herself and a baby, how she would be able to work.

On the other hand . . . a baby! Gabrielle put a hand over her stomach and smiled. A miracle, really.

First things first, she got up to get her cell phone and tapped in Ivak’s number. She got his voice mail.

“Ivak! This is Gabrielle. I need to talk to you. Right away. It’s important.”
You stinking liar! You no good charmer. You . . .

She no sooner ended the call than her phone rang. It was Ivak.

“Gabrielle! I just walked in. What’s wrong?”

You stinking liar! You no good charmer. You . . .
“Everything. You better get your Viking butt here right away.” She hadn’t meant to be so shrill. It just came out that way.

“Are you in danger?”

“I’m in danger of killing you if you don’t come as soon as possible.”
Good thing I don’t own a gun.

“Do you think it’s a good idea for us to be together? Oh, I’ve missed you, of course—”

“Of course!” she said sarcastically.
Then why haven’t you called?

“I don’t understand.”

“You don’t need to understand, dammit!”
I hate you, I hate you, I hate you.
She hung up on him.

And bawled her eyes out.

Twenty-Five

Time to man up . . . or is that Viking up? . . .

I
vak arrived at Gabrielle’s apartment an hour later. When he knocked repeatedly on her door and she didn’t answer, he teletransported himself inside, through the wall.

She sat on the couch glaring up at him. Her eyes were red and her nose was dripping. She grabbed for a tissue and blew her nose loudly, glaring at him the whole time.

He went down on his haunches beside her. “You’re crying.”

“He’s a genius, too.”

She knows I do not like her sarcasm. Why does she persist in that annoying habit?
Well, he had more important issues to address with her at the moment. “Can I sit beside you?”

“No.”

All right. So that’s the way this meeting is going to go.
He got up and sat in a chair next to the sofa. “Are you worried about the Lucies? Has something happened with Leroy’s case? Are you ill?”

“No, no, and no.”

I thought I knew women. Where is my legendary charm?
“You look beautiful today.”

She stared at him as if he’d grown another head. “Are you really that clueless?”

Apparently.
“What’s wrong?”

She stood . . . and wrung her hands nervously.

What in bloody hell is going on?
He stood, too.

“I’m pregnant.”

That was the last thing he’d expected to hear. “How can that be?”
She was with another man.

“That’s what I’d like to know. You told me that I couldn’t get pregnant.”

“You can’t. Not by me.”
She was with another man.
His brain was reeling with shock.

“Are you implying—”

“Who was it? Zeb?”
It must be Zeb. There was no time for any other man. Was there? This must be how Serk felt. Now I know. Oh God! I can’t think. I can’t think.

She slapped his face, hard, then turned away from him. Her shoulders were shaking with her sobs.

What? What the hell is going on?
No one . . . man or woman . . . had ever slapped him before. He fisted his hands and tried to come to some understanding about what had just happened.

The woman he loved was pregnant.

He could not make a woman pregnant.

Therefore she had to have been with another man.

Why would she be angry with him? He was the one with cause to be furious. And he was. “If Zeb weren’t already dead, I would kill him. But you can be sure his face won’t be so pretty when I’m done with him.”

She spun around to face him. Her face was splotched with tears. “Don’t you dare touch Zeb. He saved me. And that’s all he did.”

“But—”

“You are the father,” she said tightly.

“Believe me, I am sterile,” he tried to make her understand.

“I wouldn’t believe anything you said now if your tongue was notarized.”

He could be insulted by that . . . if she gave him a chance, but she was off on another tirade.

“You lied to me. I could accept your saying it was a mistake, but, no, you’re still playing Mr. Innocent. You must think I’m a dummy who believes everything a man tells her. I was angry with you before. Now I’m just disgusted. Mostly with myself.”

She walked over and opened her door. “Out! And never come back!”

Cold fury overtook him as he approached her. “You spread your legs for another man and dare to blame me? Just like a woman!”

She inhaled sharply. “I will never forgive you for that.”

Ivak found himself on the other side of the slammed door, stunned.

That night Ivak awakened to a bright presence in his cell living quarters. It was Michael. He was leaning against the bars, shaking his head at Ivak.

“What have you done?” Michael demanded angrily.

“I haven’t done anything. Well, if you mean the sex—”

“Of course I mean the sex. What did you think I meant?”

“Well, Gabrielle says that she’s pregnant, which is of course impossible. I told her so, but she kicked me out. It is impossible, right?”

Michael sank down to the end of his bed. The anger was coming off his wings in shedding feathers. “What have you done?” Michael repeated.

“I already know that I’ll be punished for the sex, but—”

“How could this have happened?” Michael seemed to be posing the question to himself. “It was not supposed to ever happen. Did you do something unusual?”

“Define unusual.”

“Idiot!” Michael got up and paced back and forth in the small cell, muttering to himself:

“Is it something in his makeup? A mistake of nature?

“Could God have intervened?

“Was this destined to happen?”

He turned to Ivak then and said, “Stay here. I’ll be right back.”

Ivak got up and dressed, figuring he’d never be able to go back to sleep now.

A short time later, Michael returned and told him, “She’s pregnant.”

Pfff! Tell me something I don’t already know.

“And it is yours, Viking.”

“No,” he protested. “That’s impossible. How could that happen?”

Michael arched his brows at him.

“I don’t mean that. I mean vangels cannot impregnate women. That’s what you always said.”

“That’s what I thought.”

Ivak’s heart thundered against his rib cage as he attempted to assimilate what he was being told. He, a vangel, was going to be father to a human child? “Will the child be a human or a vangel?”

“The boy is human.”

Boy? Ivak moaned at the intensity of emotion that one word evoked. “What should I do?”

“You’re asking me? It’s a little late for that.”

“You’re an archangel. I thought you knew everything.”

“Apparently not.”

But then Ivak recalled the manner in which he’d denied his child to Gabrielle. She would never forgive him. He took a deep breath. “I love her,” he told Michael.

“You have a strange way of showing it.”

“I should have listened to Gabrielle before overreacting.”

“That is an understatement. Does she love you?”

“She used to before—”

“Before?”

“Before I made an ass of myself.”

“Bring her to Transylvania. I wish to speak with her. And whatever you do, don’t even breathe on another woman until I understand how this could have happened.”

Ivak stiffened with affront, but Michael was already gone.

Even though it was five a.m., he called Gabrielle. And continued calling all day long. No answer. When he went to her apartment, she was not there.

Leroy was released several days later, but Gabrielle did not come to pick him up. A deliberate avoidance of him, Ivak was sure. Instead, she sent a message that Leroy relayed to him. “She doesn’t want you to contact her anymore.” Seeing the expression on Ivak’s face, Leroy laid a hand on his forearm. “Give her time.”

Leroy probably wouldn’t have been so kind if he’d known his sister was pregnant.

Ivak’s emotions reeled from anger, to regret, to shame, to confusion, back to anger. Over and over. He was like a regular popcorn of emotions, and he hated it. He couldn’t eat. He couldn’t sleep. His hands shook. He talked to himself, mostly berating his thickheadedness. He even found himself teary-eyed on occasion.

When he’d confided to Trond what was happening to him, minus the pregnancy news, Trond suggested, “Seems like you’re finding your feminine side.”

Ivak had said a foul word and hung up.

Vikar had just laughed and told him to have a beer.

So, Ivak took a leave from the prison to work on the Heaven’s End project. Maybe that would occupy his mind.

The landscape people had done a fine job of clearing away the overgrown jungle, and while it was still untamed, he could at least walk around without a machete. He was in the back courtyard after having just consulted with a contractor on the cost of a new roof, and wondered if he shouldn’t finance a third world country, instead. That’s when he noticed his first guest arriving. Tante Lulu. Carrying a big carryall.

He was afraid to ask what was inside.

“Ain’t she a beauty?” the old lady observed, staring up at the mansion.

Maybe she had cataracts.

Now that the kudzu and other vines had been removed, the mansion looked even more run down. Yeah, the building had good bones, but it would be years before it was livable, in Ivak’s opinion. Not in Michael’s, though; he’d told Ivak he could live here while the work was being done.

Yeah. Right.

“How did you get here?” he asked, taking the carryall out of her hands. It was heavy. Was she carrying bricks to repair one of his walls?

“I drove.”

Ivak’s eyes must have widened in astonishment.

“I ain’t dead yet.” Then she chuckled and added, “I drove about ten miles an hour. You shoulda heard all the horns tootin’.”

She insisted then on spreading a tablecloth she’d brought with her over a door sitting on two sawhorses. On it she placed a thermos of coffee, two china cups, two china plates, two silver forks, a long knife, and a plastic, lidded box with half of what she called her famous Peachy Praline Cobbler Cake. They ate then, and it was delicious, both the coffee and the cake. Maybe he was getting his appetite back.

That’s when she zapped him. “I hear you been some kind of idjit.”

He was going to argue, but then he said, “You could say that.”

“You doan look so good, boy.”

“I’ve been kind of down in the dumps lately,” he admitted.
Vikings throughout Valhalla . . . oops, Heaven . . . must be rolling over with laughter that I would use such words.

“Well, the good thing about being down is you cain’t fall any more.”

That is just great advice. I feel so much better now.

“Tell me zackly what happened?”

To his surprise, he did. In detail. It must be that damn feminine side Trond mentioned.

“What you said ta Gabrielle was bad,” Tante Lulu said, shaking her head at him.

“I’d take the words back if I could.”

“A team of the strongest horses cain’t take back a word once spoken.”

That is really helpful.

“You daddied that chile.”

“I know that.”
Now.

“Do you love her?”

“Yes.”

“I’m glad ta hear you admit it. I already knew, of course. Yer eyes were all over her like white on rice from the very beginning.”

“She won’t talk to me. What should I do?”
How pitiful I am becoming! Since when does a Viking ask an old lady for love advice?

“A peacock what sits on its tail is jist another turkey.”

Is she calling me a turkey? An asshole, I can accept, which is what Trond called me, but a turkey?
He gritted his teeth and asked, “Will you set up a meeting for me? Just one meeting. If that doesn’t work, I’ll give up.”
Gobble, gobble, gobble.

“Some men are born dumb and end up stupid,” Tante Lulu concluded.

That goes without saying. Now I know what it’s like to eat humble pie. And it’s damn bitter.

“Yer a Viking, You doan need no old lady to act on yer behalf.”

Huh? Bloody hell, she’s right. I need to stop moping and act like a man. I swear, Gabrielle will listen to me even if I have to kidnap her and carry her off on my longship, like so many Vikings gained mates in the past.

Too bad I don’t have a longship.

Maybe I could buy one and place it on the Mississippi.

No, a car will have to do. I’m a modern Viking.

He walked Tante Lulu out front to her lavender car and helped her onto the two cushions in front of the driver’s wheel. The seat had been pushed up as far as it could go so that her short legs could reach the pedals. “Are you sure you don’t want me to drive you home?”

“You have more important things ta do.”

Yes, he did.

“I fergot. I gotcha a present in my truck. You kin put it in yer new garden.”

“What garden?” He went around to the back of the car where she’d popped the trunk open from inside.

It was a life-size St. Jude statue.

Tante Lulu was chuckling as she drove away.

Ivak saluted St. Jude in his “garden” a short time later.

Give him an inch, and he’d take a Viking mile . . .

He stormed Gabrielle’s apartment a short time later.

She was sitting placidly by the front window, having just washed her hair. It lay long to her T-shirt–clad shoulders, wisps of it curling as it dried. Her bare toes peeked out from under her denim braies. Her face glowed with good health, probably from the pregnancy. To him, she looked so beautiful that his heart ached.

“You could have knocked,” she said.

“I did that before and you wouldn’t answer.” He sank down into a chair facing her. Since she didn’t object, he figured it was okay.

“Once. You came here once.”

Huh? Does she mean she would have let me in before this? Have I wasted all these weeks moaning and . . .
“I’m sorry.”

“Big fat hairy deal! Sorry doesn’t cut it anymore.”

So, she isn’t going to make this easy.
“I love you.”

“You have a strange way of showing it.”

She is hurt. Of course, she is hurt. I denied my child.
“You haven’t been very loving to me, either.”

“I had good reason. Your accusation was vile. You didn’t trust me.”

He said the words then that were so difficult for men to utter. “I was wrong.”

“Damn straight you were!”

Do I need to grovel? Of course I do.
“Can you forgive me?”

“Why should I?”

“Because I love you. Because I am your baby’s father. Because it is the right thing to do.”

“So, you believe me now? What convinced you?”

He could feel his face heat with color. “Michael.”

“Michael it is now. What happened to Mike?”

“Until I know what my punishment will be, I’m trying to get on his good side.”
Do I sense an opening in her anger?

“You’re being punished for my being pregnant?”

Yes! The crack is widening.
He willed himself not to smile. “I’ll be punished for the sex. The pregnancy, too. That wasn’t supposed to happen.”