Midnight Rose (11 page)

“I only noticed it in the west wing,” he said, pausing to touch a bouquet of freshly cut hydrangeas the cook had brought in. “Incredible heat in that part of the house. No one could possibly sleep.” Kate forced herself to breathe and clung to the countertop to keep from puddling to the floor.

Oblivious to the tension in the air, Martha jotted the reminder in the back of the appointment book.

“Anything else?”

“That’s all.” His expression softened as he crossed to retrieve his briefcase from the chair beside her.

“What would I do without you, dear lady?”

“I shudder to think.” She adjusted her glasses, glanced at the gold watch on her petite wrist. “It’s after eight. You’d better hurry.”

“Right.” He grabbed his sunglasses from the desk below the cabinets.

“What about breakfast?” Betty sounded affronted as she set aside a skillet of fragrant pancakes and flashed him a disapproving stare from the stove. “You didn’t eat anything.” He squeezed the cook’s arm as he moved by her. “I’ll have to miss out this morning. But I bet the gardeners will help you make a dent in those.” He paused and glanced back at Kate. “Why don’t you walk out with me, Ms. O’Brien?” Heart pounding, she set aside her coffee and stepped out the back door, waiting for him to slip the sunglasses over his eyes. Then she strode ahead of him down the sidewalk, arms folded tightly over her breasts. Her entire being felt raw and discombobulated. She wanted answers, and she was damn well going to get them. But how could she possibly broach the subject of last night’s experience with him, when she wasn’t even sure he’d been in her room?

The mark on her thigh, small and faded, was still there when she’d showered this morning. She couldn’t have dreamed it. Her skin tingled at the memory of his touch. He’d done things to her she hadn’t experienced in years, and only an actual orgasm as strong as the one she’d experienced could have left her muscles sore and shaky. She was imaginative, but not that imaginative.

They rounded the corner, Gideon whistling tunelessly and Kate in sullen silence. This was too much. Too bizarre, too infuriating. She finally looked at him. “Something happened last night.” Gideon didn’t hesitate. “Really? What?” “Don’t play games with me.”

The indignation in her tone turned his head, but she couldn’t see his eyes behind the reflective lenses as he paused midway between the mansion and carriage house and caught her hand. “Nothing about this is a game, Kate.” “Then why do I feel bamboozled?” She shivered as the cool breeze lifted the loose hair from her face.

“What happened in my room last night?”

A troubled shadow crossed his features and his thumb whisked over her knuckles, back and forth, restless. “I don’t know. I’ll think about it, though, and see if I can come up with a reasonable answer.” Staring up at his face, Kate couldn’t think clearly. God, his lips were beautiful. Warm and delicious and oh, so skilled on her body. His jaw was clean-shaven, where last night the shadow of a beard had rasped her skin. The scent of soap and mint and aftershave filled her senses.

He released her hand, glanced at his watch and started walking again, leaving her behind in the grass.

“Gideon,” she exclaimed. “Damn it, I have a right to know what’s going on between us.” His laughter floated to her ears. “Me, too. I can’t wait to find out.” He disappeared inside the garage, and the sound of the Audi purring to life drowned out her curse. If he could be casual about last night’s surreal encounter, so could she. And tonight, she’d lock her bedroom door. Shut out the ghosts and ghoulies and Gideon. She started back toward the house, throat tight with anger.

Behind her the black Audi rolled to a halt, and an electric window buzzed its descent. “You’re upset with me,” he said, his voice low beneath the thrumming engine.

She stopped, whirled back to face him. “Absolutely.”

His expression was somber, unreadable. He laid an arm across the steering wheel and stared out the windshield. “Now’s not the time to discuss this, Kate. But tonight, after Jude goes to bed, sit down and talk with me. No interruptions.” “Fine,” she replied, only slightly mollified.

A smile touched his lips. “See you tonight, Ms. O’Brien.”

The day ticked by in slow-moving seconds. It exhausted Gideon to move among mortals disguised as one of them; as practiced as he was, he found himself impatient with their frivolous concerns, their slow comprehension, their inability to absorb the colors and sounds and scents of the magnificent world they lived in. Few seemed able to peer beyond the self-imposed walls that surrounded them…and Putnam, with all its God-fearing good intentions, served as a hotbed of the narrowest minds.

The sun sat like a fat, neon ball on the horizon as he traveled the road between Putnam and Sister Oaks.

He paused the Audi at a four-way stop, his eyes safely encased behind darkened lenses, and stared at the fiery orb. There was a time when he’d been as photophobic as Jude, when stepping out into the daylight meant blisters and agony and imaginative lies at the ready for the physicians who’d dealt with his various injuries. As the decades passed, it grew trickier to explain the burns.

“This isn’t a contact burn, ”the last emergency room doctor told him in 1968 . “I’d like to run some tests. ”

Gideon had slipped away the minute the physician left the room, sadly lacking in painkillers, but knowing he’d heal with inhuman speed, like always. It was the brief bouts of pain that were so devastating, so dispiriting. Two, three days of bandages and blisters and agony, then it would be over.

He’d been driven to test the daylight again and again, aching from the dearth of bone-soothing, solar warmth. After that, he began researching nutritional supplements and eventually found a strange concoction of herbs, compliments of a Haight-Asbury head shop, which bolstered his immunity to ultraviolet rays. It tortured him that he couldn’t share the supplements with his son. They couldn’t be mixed with Jude’s medication. Jude’s world would forever be dark, and thirteen short years into it, the kid was already starting to wear.

The pressure in his chest crept up toward his throat and he gripped the steering wheel, mindless of Melissa Etheridge’s husky, soul-exposed rhythm thumping from the stereo. Carefully he removed the sunglasses, squinted at the crimson half-circle simmering on the horizon. A wave of shuddering heat blasted through him and with a curse, he jammed the glasses back in place. Too soon. His eyes would pay the price for the risk he’d taken, just to have a peek at God’s fire before it disappeared and dragged the day down with it.

With a heavy sigh, he accelerated through the deserted intersection and headed toward Sister Oaks and a single, bright heat that waited to enfold him.

“What are we looking for?” Kate asked, following Jude through the darkened hallway that led to the back doors of the library.

“Photo albums.” He threw open the doors, his slim body snaking through the dark, around obstacles that would trip a child unused to the night. A single click of a floor lamp and light flooded the area in front of the fireplace. “We keep them over here.” Crouching in front of a bookshelf to the left of the hearth, he examined the leather-encased spines and pulled out a wide, black album with gold inlay. “This one has pictures of my mom.” Settling on the burgundy leather sofa beside her, Jude opened the album and plopped half of it in Kate’s lap. “That’s her when she was little.” He pointed to a faded photograph of a raven-haired toddler in an Easter bonnet who squinted at the camera before a sapling decorated with dyed eggs and ribbons. “And this is her at a dance when she was in high school.” An exotic beauty with waist-length black hair, sultry, kohl-lined eyes and a reluctant smile stared back at Kate from a Seventies-era Polaroid.

“Do you know how they met, Jude?”

“She was in one of Dad’s classes at the University of Massachusetts.”

“She liked flowers, too, huh?”

“No. She was an artist. Mrs. Shelton said my mom took the flower class because she had a crush on Dad.”

Kate thought of Gideon, his dark beauty, his sensitive hands, and pictured them on this girl’s lovely, slender body. A surge of unexpected jealousy sizzled through her. For crying out loud, this was a dead woman. Someone who’d captured his heart years ago. The photograph had to be circa 1975.

Wait a minute.

“How old is your dad?” she asked Jude, confusion knotting her thoughts.

He shrugged. “Pretty old. Thirty-four, maybe.”

Her gaze shifted back to the photo, brows raised. Jude’s mother must have been at least sixteen when it was taken. “That would make him significantly younger than your mother. Like seven or eight years younger?” “No.” He looked at her like she was crazy and flipped the page to study the next grouping of photos.

“He was way older than her. I know because once I heard him tell Mrs. Shelton that it made Mom’s parents mad when she married him.”

Impossible. She opened her mouth to argue, but then he said, “See? Here’s a picture after they got married. He’s…” He squinted at it, scratched his nose. “He sort of looks the same as he does now.” Kate peered at the image and her pulse inexplicably quickened. “His head is turned, it’s hard to tell. But Jude, if your father was older than your mother, and he’s only thirty-four now—” Before she could dissect the bizarre scenario, Gideon appeared in the doorway leading to the conservatory. “I thought I heard voices back here.” “We’re looking at old photographs,” Kate said, momentarily struck by his dark appeal. He’d removed his suit coat and his tie hung loosened around his neck. His eyes looked tired, and the usual humor that hovered around him was conspicuously absent.

He hesitated, his gaze fixed on the book in her lap. “Jude, the phlebotomist comes in the morning for your treatment. You need to clean your room and finish your homework now because you’ll be down for the count tomorrow.” “But I’m showing these pictures to Kate,” Jude said plaintively. “Can’t we finish first?” Gideon shook his head, and the slight rise of his eyebrow spoke of little room for argument.

“Fine.” In a rush of indignation, Jude snatched the album from Kate’s lap and shoved it back on the bookshelf. He started to stalk by his father, but Gideon caught his arm and gently led him back to meet his gaze.

“Leave the attitude behind when you come back down, or you can just go to bed.”

“I’m not coming back down.” He tugged free. “Just because you had a bad day doesn’t mean we did.

Until now.”

The darkness that fell across Gideon’s face as Jude left the room revealed how the boy’s words had crept beneath his skin.

Kate didn’t know what to say. She rose, smoothed her khaki shorts, and started for the door, unsure of the brooding man who hovered on the threshold.

“Where are you going?” he demanded as she tried to slip by him.

She gave him a stony look. “Out of the lion’s den, if that’s okay with you.”

“I want you to stay.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Please. I’ve thought about you all day. You don’t have to say a word…just sit by me.”

Kate read the weariness in his face, the turmoil in his black eyes. Reluctantly, she moved back into the dimly lit room while he closed the double doors leading to the music room, then the hallway doors. There was something provocative in the deliberate way he shut them in, as though turning off the outside world.

Uncertainty and anticipation shimmied in her stomach and left her restive. She purposefully chose a club chair near the corner of the sofa, distancing herself from him. “What’s wrong?” He eased down on the sofa, his fingers working to unknot his drooping tie. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that…” He released a slow breath and let his head relax against the cushion behind him. “The phlebotomist is coming tomorrow to take Jude’s blood. It’s a necessity about twice a month; helps control his hemoglobin and iron levels. Afterward he feels bad. I don’t know how much of it’s mental.

He’s tired of the needles and the poking and prodding. I haven’t seen him smile in the last few weeks…except when he’s with you.” He rolled his head toward her, the expression in his red-rimmed eyes indiscernible. “You’re good with him. He was happy when I came in. And I didn’t even ask him how his day went.” Sympathy warred with lingering indignation as Kate regarded him. She eased forward to the edge of the chair, battling the urge to reach out and push back the hair fallen across his forehead. “You can always apologize to him.” “When he’s cooled off, yes.” An ironic smile twisted his lips. “Technically, I’m getting what I deserve.

He’s a chip off the ol’ block. Hard-pressed to forgive, even harder-pressed to forget. I feel responsible for so much of his unhappiness.”

“You can’t blame yourself forever for his illness, Gideon.” His humor faded. “Why not? He inherited the defective enzyme from me, not his mother.”

“But you didn’t choose to be the carrier. And if you’d known, before your wife got pregnant…”

“How can you be so sure? You don’t know me, Kate. You don’t know what’s in my heart.”

“No,” she said softly, “but I can guess.”

Her reply seemed to rob him of his edginess. “He’s everything to me. The only thing in my life I’ve really done right. So maybe that makes me a selfish bastard. Especially when he’s in pain.” His eyelids slid closed. “Or when he looks at me like he hates me.” “All parents go through that with their kids.”

“I know. It doesn’t make it easier.”

“He’s figured out how to make you feel guilty.”

“I think I mastered doing that to myself, before he took his first step.” He opened his eyes again, slid his tie from his collar, watching her with a laziness that caught her off-guard. “You’re beautiful.” Heat sizzled a line straight to her core. “You’re changing the subject.” “I don’t want to talk about guilt anymore.”

She tried to reply; cleared her throat, tried again. “Then what?”

“Let’s talk about last night.”

Kate wasn’t ready. She stared back at him, mute and electrified.

“I’ll start.” He stretched his legs out, crossed his feet at the ankles, and laced his fingers across his lean belly. “You claim something happened between us. I assume you’re speaking of something besides the kiss we shared on the driveway.” “Right.” She exhaled a shaky breath, using every ounce of willpower to squelch the hot flush rising to her cheeks. “I dreamed you were in my room last night.” His brows shot up. “Is that right? For a chat, or…” “Stop teasing me. Did you come to my room? Tell me the truth.” He didn’t answer right away. His dark gaze fixed on the painting above the fireplace, and the longer Kate waited, the faster her pulse hummed. What was he thinking? He held a disconcerting edge tonight.Shadowed and unpredictable.

“Around here the truth is useless,” he said finally, shifting his attention back to her face. “Dreams seem more realistic than reality. Reality appears dreamlike.” “That’s a lovely introduction to an old episode of The Twilight Zone ,” she said dryly. “Rod Serling could have used you on his writing staff.”