Tormented by Darkness (2 page)

She scribbled the address down and laid the pen back on the countertop. “Anything in particular?”

“You pick. I trust you.”

“Okay. I’ll stop by your house then.”

“Thanks, Rhiannon.”

“Sure thing.”

Disconnecting, she edged past her brother’s watchful gaze and retreated into the cooler where she pulled an array of muted salmon, yellow, white, and tangerine blooms. Halfway out the door once more, a pot of lavender lisianthus caught her eye, and she plucked six long-stems. She bustled back into her work area and dropped the selection into holding tanks of water.

“Mick Farrell, huh? You’re going by his house?” Dáire’s voice teased as he once again assumed his relaxed position in the chair. “Bet he’d give you a birthday present worth remembering.”

“Dáire!” Goddess help her, she wanted to scold. But that infuriating gleam to her brother’s eyes made it impossible to be offended. His intricate tattoos danced with silent amusement, and she found herself merely shaking her head, bemused.

“Oh, come on, you aren’t a prude no matter how you try to mimic our saintly sister, Brigid.”

That got Rhiannon chuckling. “Would you stop? Mick Farrell doesn’t know I exist beyond my ability to fill his flower orders. He’s not giving me any birthday present, darling brother.”

He lifted one dark eyebrow, and a smirk played at the corner of his mouth. “But you want him to.”

“Hush.” Turning, she reached into a high cabinet for a block of floral foam, glad Dáire couldn’t see the heat that rushed to her cheeks. “His stepfather died. I’m just helping out a good customer.”

“Uh huh. And what about that basket?” He inclined his head toward the one she’d finished.

“Damn! I forgot, I was supposed to get that out the door. Can you do it for me? It goes up to the hospital, room 207, Mrs. Jentzen.”

The low laugh that issued from her brother’s throat as he swung out of the chair and unraveled his rangy frame mocked her. “Keep telling yourself that, Rhi.” He rapped a closed fist over his heart with a mischievous wink. “Remember, I can sense you as easily as you sense me.”

Still smirking, he grabbed the basket and sauntered out the front door. As bells tinkled in his wake, Rhiannon stared at the lump of foam on the table before her. Helping out a good customer—
Yeah, keep telling yourself that, Rhi.

If she said it enough, maybe she could actually avoid falling for Mick further and thwart the curse all together.

****

Mick opened another heavy trunk lid and glanced down at bits and pieces of his stepfather’s boyhood. Yearbooks, snapshots, a moth-eaten blue robe that had once been navy, medals from ’Nam all tumbled in a muddled heap that documented the years before Steve Prescott entered his life and filled all the holes that had been missing. He thumped the lid closed. Dust wafted through the musty attic. He couldn’t do this now.

He’d thought losing his mother was hard. But losing the only father he’d known, the stranger who taught Mick what it meant to be a man, made his mother’s passing seem like child’s play. Five days ago, Steve had been at the golf course. The next morning, when Mick stopped to pick him up for their weekly breakfast together, Mick found him still in his bed. Instead of sound asleep, however, his stepfather had been dead.

Massive coronary embolism, the autopsy revealed. Didn’t feel a thing, the coroner assured.

None of it balmed Mick’s sense of loss. He’d worked gut-wrenching homicide cases, investigated eviscerated children, hell, he’d even ended life. Yet all the death that came with his job didn’t hold a candle to this.

Torn between wanting to escape the nearness of everything Steve Prescott, and wanting to immerse himself in all that remained of the man, Mick opened the trunk again. He eased out a tattered set of Army fatigues and set them on the dusty floor by his knees. PRESCOTT stood out against the faded camo, the nametag printed in bold, unweathered black.

Yellowed papers beneath documented Steve’s time in the service, described the medals poking out between the rest of the clutter. He gingerly picked them up and flipped through them, a sense of pride blooming. Steve had never spoken about ’Nam. No surprise really. But these tidbits revealed what had made the man.

Men like Steve Prescott were hard to come by anymore. Men who knew the meaning of duty, understood honor, and lived by their word.

Mick had done his damnedest to meet that daunting creed. There were parts of him, however, that failed miserably. Parts that had seen too much darkness in this world to ever escape the taint. Parts that had witnessed one too many children butchered in back alleys and watched one too many killers walk free on technicalities.

He sighed as he set the papers aside.

Reaching into the trunk again, he pulled out another stack of loose papers with fraying edges. A smile touched his face as he recognized his mother’s handwriting between the creased lines where the paper had once been folded. Little notes she’d put in his lunchbox when Steve cast aside his Army regalia and took up with the Union.

Those too he set on the floor to go through later. Some he’d keep. Some he’d frame. But when he moved his house into this one, he wouldn’t have room for every memento his parents had diligently packed away.

And there was also the matter of Steve’s daughter, Allison. That bitch would be here soon, eager to get her filthy paws on things that didn’t belong to her. The only use she’d ever had for her father was the support he sent and the occasional bill he paid when she guilted him.

Bending into the trunk, Mick withdrew a leather-bound Bible and an old journal. He set the Bible aside and opened the hardback notebook, looking down on entries made during the war. Definitely reading for later. He leaned over the accumulated pile to set the journal closer to the stairs where he wouldn’t forget it. But as he made to set it on the ground, it slipped out of his hands. Loose papers tumbled free, stirring up more dust as they fell to the floor. Muttering, Mick grabbed them up, opened the journal, then paused as he got a good look at what he held.

Not writing—not English at least. Elaborate runes decorated the pages, line after line, corner to corner. And the paper…Well, it wasn’t. Thicker, covered with a waxy substance, even in the dim light, Mick could make out the significant age.

Odd, to say the least.

Frowning, he sat down Indian style and brought the stack of drawings into his lap. At the top of the first page, elaborate Celtic scrollwork decorated the margin. Nothing was legible though. Where in the hell had Steve found this?

As he turned to the second page, the doorbell rang. Mick glanced at his watch—5:30. Damn, how had he lost so much time?

Another thought rose, conflicting with all the rest of his fraying emotions. Rhiannon McLaine was standing on his doorstep. His heart kicked, the way it always did when he parked in front of her flower shop. She was bringing the flowers, but he’d fantasized one too many times about her showing up at his door.

He’d rejected the fantasy equally as often. That woman was too damn good-hearted for someone like him.

The doorbell issued another sharp peal. Mick stuffed the loose papers inside the journal, dropped it back into the trunk, and hurried to the stairs. Rhiannon might be here, but in an hour and a half so would half the town. Thank God, he’d had the good sense to hire a caterer. His brain was such mush he’d nearly forgotten food was expected at a wake as well.

He jogged down the stairs, through the wood-paneled living room, and into the marbled front hall. Shaking hands fumbled with the handle, but on his second attempt, Mick managed to pull the door open.

Rhiannon stood on the columned front porch, her beautifully tattooed face framed between two enormous flower arrangements. She smiled, and all the depression, all the heartache, all the death, slid from Mick’s shoulders.

“Hi, Mick.”

Oh, God, she was so alive. He’d give anything just to feel that life, that heartfelt warmth, in his arms. Just for a minute. Long enough he could convince himself he still walked amongst the living. That he hadn’t died too, the morning he’d found his stepfather.

Chapter Two

“Here, let me help.” Mick reached for one of the arrangements in Rhiannon’s hands, his smile strained, void of its usual hidden secrets.

Concern pulled her brows into a slight frown as she angled one arm forward, allowing him to take a weighty pottery vase. But as his warm fingertips grazed her elbow, a shockwave rolled through Rhiannon, awakening the darker half of her soul. The sublime scent of sweet amber and patchouli engulfed her. She breathed it in until her head felt dizzy and her body threatened to sway into the nearby closeness of his broad chest. It was all she could do to summon a nod and swallow down the rising tide of sudden, unexpected awareness of Mick. Unlike anytime before, his very nearness bore down on her like heavy weights.

Weights that threatened to crush her under the power of dark desire.

“I, ah…” She swallowed again, forced an unsteady smile, and avoided those mesmerizing dark eyes. “I’ll just set this inside the door and go get the other one.” If she didn’t move now, didn’t do something to escape this overwhelming poison of her demonic blood, she’d forget why she was here. Why she needed to avoid Mick Farrell, no matter how delicious the temptation.

Before she could put the planter on the floor inside his door, he swept it out of her arms. “I’ll wait here.”

Damn. Not what she needed.

She turned for the driveway and her SUV. As she walked, she focused on breathing.
In. Out. Deep and easy. Slow and controlled.
But the mantra did nothing to override awareness. The very air churned with his energy, making it impossible to ignore the feel of his stare boring into her back.

Goddess be, she shouldn’t have come here. Not tonight, with the sabot so near. The last time Mick had walked into her flower shop, she’d been tempted. But that stirring of want was nothing compared to this, and she had only her father to blame for the festering yearning. Her father and the demonic blood he passed to his eight children so many centuries ago.

Momentarily shielded from Mick’s observation beneath her cargo door, Rhiannon sucked in air like she might never have another breath and shut her eyes to the torment. Sure, this attraction had been building—how could it not when once a week, for the last year or so, Mick Farrell waltzed into her shop and flirted his handsome head off? He’d even brought her coffee now and then, but in all fairness that hadn’t been because he meant anything by it. She’d just allowed herself to be taunted. To fall into the trap he wove so easily around so many other women. Plain and simple, honest cop that he might be, Mick was a ladies man, and any attention he’d given her was nothing more than he gave any other woman.

So why couldn’t she get the rest of her soul to understand the logic her brain recognized?

With shaking hands, she scooped up the third arrangement and braced for the next few minutes. She could survive this without making a fool of herself, and without yielding to the callings of her father’s incubus blood. All she needed to do was set the arrangements where Mick wanted them, take a few seconds to tweak any cock-eyed blooms, express her condolences, then leave. Nothing she hadn’t done a hundred times before.

Ancestors, give me strength.

She reached over her head, shut the cargo hatch, and headed for the open front door once more. On the porch, Mick’s soulful dark stare latched onto her gaze, setting off tingles throughout her body.

He backed away from the entry, inclining his head down the long hall toward the rear of the house. “The living room’s back here.”

As she followed, she became aware of the slight hunch to his shoulders. The proud and erect way he usually carried himself bent beneath the hand of grief. His stride was shorter, his gait diminished. Compassion bubbled through the darker aspects of her spirit, choking down misplaced desire. Mick was hurting.

He set the two planters he carried on the hearth of the brick fireplace, one at each end, framing the ornate blue and white urn. Absently, he gestured at a dark walnut baby grand. “You can set that one over there.”

On the polished wood? He had to be kidding. Frowning, Rhiannon glanced around for a better option. Though she didn’t play, she couldn’t tolerate the idea of damaging such an elegant instrument. Someone had cared about the piano once. Maybe not Mick, but someone he was close to.

Sighting a more appropriate metal planter stand that currently held a dead spider plant, Rhiannon exchanged the bright floral array for the withered and dried basket of leaves.

“That works too. I’m really not any good at this. Thanks, Rhiannon, for bringing them by. I’ve just been so busy.”

As Rhiannon turned around to tell him she didn’t mind delivering the flowers, Mick pushed a weary hand through his thick dark hair. He stared at the sealed urn. It was then she got a good look at him. Though his light denim jeans were clean, his collared, short-sleeved shirt sported veins of wrinkles. Every time she’d seen him before, his short hair had been styled. Trim and tidy like the rest of him. Today, however—well, that surely wasn’t the first time he’d shoveled a hand through his hair. Little rebellious clumps stuck out at odd angles, and one thick lock belligerently dangled over his forehead.

The deep creases around the corners of his eyes, and the dark circles beneath that shadowed his already fathomless stare, tugged at her heart. He hadn’t shaved, not in a good day or two. She’d bet he hadn’t done much to take care of himself at all.

The sight of his disorganized state spoke to the chaotic nature of his emotions, and sympathy grabbed her in a chokehold. The way he gazed at his stepfather’s sealed remains clawed at her heart. Death had never really affected her. Maybe because she’d become immune after dozens of centuries of loss. Maybe because she had brought death upon others periodically throughout her lifetime. Whatever the reason, she couldn’t say, but the sight of Mick’s obvious grief lanced through her like knives. She let out a sigh. “Mick, have you eaten anything?”