Stone Romance (Stone Passion #2) (43 page)

“Jenna,” he breathed, his eyes searching her face, seeing more than she wanted
him to see
. But that was Rhys; he loved her. “Are you okay?”

“Of course,” she said brightly, feeling the darkness seeping in through the cracks and fighting desperately to keep it from spreading further. “I’m just tired.”

His nostrils flared but he didn’t refute her. Brushing his thumb over her lips, he looked at her with regret, “I hate to leave you.”

“I know,” she said, the smile not quite as false but still brittle. She glanced at the car where three sets of eager
young eyes watched in fascination. “But you have to go.”

“Jenna.” Longing filled his chocolate eyes but now was not the time.

Motioning towards the car with her head, she held his gaze and murmured,
“
You have to get your brothers home.”

“I want you to come with us.”

“You know I can’t; I have to go to work tomorrow and
make up all of the work I missed
,” she sighed, letting the smile fall from her face. This was Rhys; he knew her. “I plan on coming over on the weekend with Ferris. She will love having kids her age to play with and I am looking forward to seeing Melanie.”

“Jenna,” he murmured, bending his head. His lips touched hers in a light kiss and
anything she might have said
became tangled in her throat.
“Dream of me tonight.”

“Always,” she promised, opening the door to her house and disappearing inside before he could see the tears fall. Leaning against the closed door, she listened until she heard the car drive off and just like that her adventure was over. She was home.

“Mommy?”
Ferris’s small voice whispered through the darkness and Jenna opened her eyes. There was just enough
illumination
from the nightlights to let her see her daughter standing in the entry staring at her with wide eyes. Memories crashed through Jenna as she looked at Ferris and more than anything she had to hold her daughter, to make sure she was real.

“Ferris,” she breathed, dropping her bags and falling to her knees in front of her daughter. Taking Ferris by the shoulders she simply drank in the sight of her daughter for a long moment before enfolding Ferris in her arms and hugging the child until she thought her heart might break. “Oh, Ferris; I missed you.”

Little hands patted her back and Ferris returned the hug, “I missed you, too, mommy. But I had so much fun with Aunt Mellie and Vaughn and Mr. Armand. And I got to go to Florida….”

Ferris chattered on, making Jenna laugh even as tears slipped down her cheeks. They sat in the hallway for a long time because Jenna was afraid that if she moved she would wake up to discover
that everything was wrong; that this life
had all been a dream and the other life was the one she had chosen.

Leaning back, pushing Ferris’s dark hair out of her face, Jenna asked, “What are you doing awake? It’s so late?”

“One of the imps told me you were home,” she said as if having imps informing her of her mother’s whereabouts was a normal, everyday event. Shrugging her slender shoulders, she smiled, “This time they were telling me the truth.”

Jenna scowled at the thought of the imps lying to her daughter. Touching the amulet Melanie had given Ferris a lifetime ago, she asked, “Have they tried to hurt you?”

Ferris shook her head no, “Of course not; they are my friends. They have even pinky-swore never to try to injure me.”

“But you said they lie,” Jenna murmured.

“Not when they pinky swear,” Ferris countered. She looked over Jenna’s shoulder and grinned broadly, “There’s
Ajreis
. He’s my best friend. The others are okay but they like to fade away;
Ajreis
never disappears on me.”

Jenna glanced over her shoulder and saw the gray-green fellow standing there with its wide mouth full of sharp teeth and its large pointy ears twitching. It was the same type of creature that had handed her a phone a few days prior. And as he looked at her with large, muddy gray eyes that pleaded for her acceptance she found that he was so ugly he was almost cute.
Almost.

“We’d never hurt Ferris,” the little creature said, his voice scratchy and a little eerie. “My brothers and I regret what happened with Melanie and our brother Vaughn.”

“
Mmm
hm
.”
Jenna wasn’t sure what else to say. Her brows pulled together as the imp just continued to stand
there watching her with those muddy eyes. Standing up with Ferris in her arms, keeping an eye on the unpredictable imp, she made her way up the stairs to her old room. The creature followed, keeping close to Ferris as if she were precious to him. It was a scary thought.

Laying her daughter on the bed, she kissed Ferris on the forehead, “Good night,
sweetheart
.”

“Good night, mommy,”
Ferris
whispered, her eyelids heavy and a sleepy smile on her lips. “I’m glad you’re home.”

“I’m glad I’m home, too,” she whispered, brushing the dark hair from her daughter’s face.

“Love you.”

“Love you, too, baby,” Jenna whispered, sitting on the bed until Ferris fell asleep. After kissing her daughter’s forehead one more time she turned to the imp and sighed wearily. The imp obviously wasn’t going to go anywhere and had probably been standing guard over Ferris as she slept for several weeks. Maybe it wasn’t such a bad idea to move into the castle with Rhys; at least then she knew the gargoyles would keep the imps in line. Just in case. “What’s the deal?”

The imp’s long tongue slithered out and licked his lips in an oddly nervous gesture, his eyes darting to the sleeping girl on the bed. “Omari was very angry with us after the fiasco; he threatened to banish us if we did not straighten out. We have no desire to be banished. He also ordered us to protect young Ferris with our lives and we are most eager to do so; she has become most important to us.”

Strangely, that wasn’t very reassuring. “Why?”

He shrugged his scrawny shoulders, his long fingers twisting together as he glanced at Ferris again, “She is the daughter of Rhys’s mate and the niece of Vaughn’s mate.”

Jenna thought that there was probably more to it than that but she doubted she would get anything more than the imp wanted to give.
Ajreis
turned his head and met Jenna’s eyes, “Besides, we like Ferris very much; even if Omari had not demanded it we would protect her.”

“Uh huh.”
Out of all of the strange and wonderful things Jenna had experienced these past couple of weeks this conversation with an imp was perhaps the strangest. And she wasn’t quite comfortable leaving her daughter while the imp stood guard.

Sighing, she took her jacket off and let it fall to the floor. Keeping an eye on the imp, she slid onto the bed behind Ferris, wrapping her arms around her little girl and closing her eyes. Inhaling deeply, she breathed in the familiar wind-fresh scent of her daughter, painfully reminded of another little girl who smelled as sweet. Tears leaked from her eyes as she buried her nose in Ferris’s hair, needing to hold onto her daughter while memoires of another life replayed themselves in her head.

She could still remember how it felt to hold her two phantom children in her arms and she wondered if the guilt and sorrow would ever go away or if they were going to be another thing she had to pretend didn’t exist. She knew that she had asked to retain the memories she just hadn’t realized how vivid they would be once she returned home. How long was it going to take before she was able to forgive herself for making an impossible choice?

Her mind also raced with the other events of the last weeks and no matter how hard she tried she couldn’t shut off her brain and fall asleep. While she had been with Rhys it had been so easy to believe a future together was not only possible but simple to achieve. But she had a child, a job; she had responsibilities that she just couldn’t turn her back on. God, she hadn’t even been home for more than an hour and the doubts were starting to eat away at her.

She wasn’t like Melanie, able to take a leap of faith on no more than the promise of a possibility. Jenna needed more than the words whispered in the darkness; no matter how enticing those words
we
re. Of course, the gods smiled upon Lenni, gifting her with immortality because she drank the poison without question. Jenna simply couldn’t do
that, especially if she knew it was poison. It was bad enough that she was planning to imbibe a drop or two of Medusa’s blood every couple of weeks to remain young.

Did that make her a vampire? She shuddered at the thought, still not sure if it was such a great idea to be drinking blood at all. What if they were wrong about the dosage and she accidentally
O
.
D
.
ed
? Maybe it would be safer to not take the blood and simply accept Rhys’s gift when she turned forty. As long as she kept herself healthy and in shape she should still look decent and only a little bit too old for the forever young Rhys.

She could hear the imp breathing. Reluctantly, she opened her eyes and flinched when she saw the imp standing there; just standing there. “Go to sleep,
Ajreis
.”

“We need no sleep,” he said in that creepy voice of his. “We guard little Ferris with our lives and we do not sleep.”

That freaked her out until she reminded herself that the imps were also the sons of Medusa and she had adored Medusa. As long as she remembered that… she would still be freaked out. “Can you do me a favor,
Ajreis
?”

“Yes,” he answered without hesitation, surprising her. Most people preferred to know what the favor entailed before agreeing to do it.

“Can you bring me a phone?” she asked softly, needing to hear Rhys’s voice. Maybe if she heard his voice she would remember how it was to be in his arms and have far fewer doubts. If she heard his voice maybe then she would be able to go to sleep.

A moment later
Ajreis
silently put the cordless phone in her hand and she smiled, “Thanks.”

He bowed his head in acknowledgment, which was old-fashioned and disconcerting. Punching in the numbers to the Rhys’s phone, she hoped that there was someone there to pick up. As the phone rang, she watched the imp in the low light, his stillness just as eerie as his voice and his breathing but oddly comforting, in a strange, welcome to the world of mythology way. He never took his eyes from Ferris’s face and Jenna wondered how her daughter could sleep with a nightmarish creature watching her.

“Jenna,” Rhys’s voice answered the phone and the ball of stress that had been tightening in her chest eased. “I was hoping you would call.”

“I couldn’t sleep,” she murmured as the tension began to seep away once more. “I just needed to hear your voice.”

“I’m here, love,” he said softly, fervently. “I’m right here.”

Her eyes grew heavy as memories of the last couple of weeks played in her head. She wasn’t the same person as she was a few months ago; she had seen things, experienced things, few humans had. She had partied in London with a group of bored aristocrats, she had been to an orgy in Greece,
she
had talked with Medusa. She had fallen in love with a gargoyle.

After work, Jenna rode the elevator up to the fourteenth floor, nervous and giddy to be seeing Rhys again; excited to see her sister. Going into work had been difficult, especially after getting only an hour or two of dream-plagued sleep
during the night
. Her job had been deadly dull and it had been damn near impossible to concentrate on but her boss had been grateful she had returned in time to help out with last minute tax filings.

It had taken a lot of concentration to get back into the rhythm of crunching numbers but by midmorning she had gotten into the zone where she didn’t think about Rhys or her journey at all. It was as if it had never happened.

Until lunch time hit and she impulsively
called Rhys, even knowing he
wouldn’t be able to talk on the phone in his gargoyle form. Melanie had answered and she gave it her best effort to bring the phone to Rhys as he sat on the roof with his brothers. Jenna had heard the little ones chattering in their rocky voices as Melanie told her the phone was simply too small for Rhys to be able to have a conversation.