Darknight

2. An Unexpected Visitor-1

2

An Unexpected Visitor

I didn’t know about “lost,” but Connor definitely seemed to be MIA. After I wandered into the kitchen, I found a bag of bagels in the refrigerator as promised, then extracted one and cut it in half using a knife and a cutting board I found sitting on the counter. A few crumbs indicated that Connor had apparently used it for this same purpose earlier that morning.

That kitchen was the sort of room I’d dreamed about while poring over catalogues in preparation for updating Great-Aunt Ruby’s house. Stainless-steel appliances, warm-toned granite countertops, floor of red Spanish tile. Someone had poured a lot of money into this place, and recently, judging by the style of the fixtures.

The toaster oven dinged, indicating my bagel was ready. I pulled it out and buttered it. Luckily, the butter had also been sitting out, so it was soft and spreadable. I’d just taken a bite when the front door opened and Connor came in, carrying a white paper bag and wearing an exasperated expression on his face.

Looking at him, at the clean lines of his jaw only partly obscured by stubble, at the glint of those green eyes from between the heavy dark lashes, I could feel another of those unwelcome waves of heat pass over my body. I tensed, then forced myself to glance away, to stare down at the bagel in my hand as if it were the most important thing in the world.

Maybe it was, if it could keep me from launching myself directly at him and tearing his clothes off.

“How was work, dear?” I asked, and his eyes narrowed.

“I got tied up,” he said shortly.

“Sounds like fun,” I replied. Okay, where the hell had that come from? I wasn’t supposed to be bantering with him — I was supposed to be demanding that he let me go.

“Looks as if you’ve gotten settled all right,” he said, ignoring my remark and moving past me to deposit the bag he held on the counter. “I brought us some sandwiches — if you’ll still have room after eating that bagel.”

“Oh, I will. You’ll probably go broke feeding me. I eat like a horse.”

“I somehow doubt that.”

“What, that you’ll go broke, or that I eat like a horse?”

“Both.” He opened the refrigerator and pulled out some bottled water. Just watching him do something so simple, seeing the width of his shoulders and the way his biceps strained against the dark sweater he wore, was enough to set my body throbbing. Goddess, if I couldn’t handle standing a few feet away from him, I was doomed.

I cleared my throat and forced my mind toward something that had nothing to do with having him take me right there on the kitchen floor. “Did you know this place was haunted?”

At that question he shut the refrigerator door abruptly and turned back toward me, eyebrows raised. “What?”

“It’s haunted by a ghost named Mary Mullen. Died of diphtheria, sounds like. She’s been hanging around here, trying to find her husband and her children. You’ve never seen her?”

Connor was staring at me as if he’d never seen me before. Maybe he hadn’t. Not really. “How do you know that?”

“It’s my talent. I’m surprised your spies didn’t tell you that.”

“He didn’t — I mean, no one ever mentioned it.”

I was sure the “he” in that sentence had to be his brother Damon, but I let it slide. At least Connor hadn’t bothered to deny that the Wilcoxes had been collecting information on me.

“So you talk to dead people?” he asked.

“Yes, I communicate with earthbound spirits, if that’s what you mean by ghosts,” I said primly.

Once again, he didn’t rise to the bait. “That’s interesting. And no, to answer your previous question, I’ve never seen her. No cold spots, no personal items moved around, no nothing. Not that my talent is conversing with the spirit world.”

“And what is your talent, Connor?”

A cloud seemed to pass over his face, but then he replied, his tone casual, “Nothing so spectacular, I assure you.”

“Well, it has to be pretty good, to be able to hide the fact that you’re a warlock.” It was something that had been troubling me ever since I realized he’d managed to hide his true identity from me so well. Normally, I should have sensed that he was a member of a witch clan from the very moment I met him, even if I couldn’t have known he was a Wilcox. But I’d felt nothing. He’d seemed like a civilian to me…up until the moment he bent down to give me the consort’s kiss.

Voice even, he replied, “That wasn’t me. That was Damon’s spell.”

“Damon’s quite the multi-tasker, isn’t he? Any other little tricks I should know about?”

He gave a humorless laugh. “A few. But I don’t think we need to talk about that now.”

“Fine,” I said. I could tell from his expression, the tight set to his jaw, that he wouldn’t appreciate any prodding on that subject from me. “But we do need to talk, don’t you think? I mean, last night you said we would ‘hash this over in the morning.’ Well, it’s almost noon, and you haven’t said much of anything except to tell me where the bagels are.”

Surprisingly, he said, “You’re right. Take these” —and he handed the white paper bag holding the sandwiches to me— “and I’ll get some plates and water and stuff.”

The first floor of the apartment was pretty much open-plan in style, except a few closed doors that might be a guest bath and a coat closet. The dining area sat just on the other side of the bar of granite that acted as a sort of separator from the kitchen, so I went there and settled myself in one of the heavy wooden chairs. Like the table, they were simple, almost rustic in appearance, but that didn’t fool me. I’d spent too much time shopping for furniture recently not to know that they, like almost everything else in the apartment, had not been cheap.

Connor came out of the kitchen carrying a couple of glasses and a bottle of Evian water, along with some brown earthenware plates. He set everything down at the table, then seated himself across from me. Probably just as well that he didn’t sit directly beside me; one brush of his knee against mine under the table, and I would’ve been in serious trouble.

After he sat, he busied himself with pulling the paper napkins and the sandwiches out of the bag, not really looking at me as he set a sandwich wrapped in white paper down on my plate. “I didn’t know what you’d eat, so I got you smoked turkey with provolone. Hope that’s okay.”

“It’s fine,” I said. The bagel notwithstanding, I was ravenous. Probably my body trying to make up for all the energy it had lost last night through stress and sleep deprivation.

He poured some water into my glass, then did the same with his. After that there wasn’t much left for him to do except eat. He began to unwrap his sandwich.

“Eat first, then talk?” I asked. It was pretty obvious that he really didn’t want to have this conversation.

Something that was almost but not quite a sigh escaped his lips before he set the sandwich back down on his plate. “I just want you to know that none of this was my idea.”

“I had a feeling,” I said wryly, “considering you can barely even make yourself look at me.”

This time he did glance up, and I had to hold myself steady as the eyes I had dreamed of so often met mine, and held. The muscles in his jaw visibly tightened. “I want to look at you,” he said. “It’s just…dangerous.”

So he was feeling it, too. I’d begun to wonder. “It’s all right. We’re both adults. We can control ourselves, right?”

His hesitation was obvious. At length he said, “Right. Anyway, I know how bad all this looks. Believe me. And you have every right to think the worst of me. Only…”

“Only what?”

“Did you ever stop to think that all those times you dreamed of me, I might have been dreaming of you?”

His tone wasn’t exactly pleading. Not quite. But I could sense something in him was begging me to listen to what he had to say.

“No, I didn’t,” I replied. “So…why do your brother’s dirty work for him? Why not tell him the truth?”

“I think he knew it, deep down, but didn’t want to acknowledge it. My dreams became…distorted…these past few months. I think he was trying to interfere.”

“Doing a pretty good job of it, too.”

Connor frowned then, the straight dark brows pulling together. “He was in your dreams?”

“Yes,” I said shortly. I didn’t want to go into any more detail than that.

“Well….” He reached out and drank some water, then set his glass back down. “I didn’t interfere, because I knew he wouldn’t be successful in trying to bind you to him. And then once you were here, he’d be so desperate to make sure you were at least bound to a Wilcox that he’d have me try to make the binding.”

Maybe that made some sense, but I still didn’t like it very much. I unwrapped my sandwich and forced myself to take a bite, although my appetite seemed to have deserted me. After I had sipped at my own water, I said, “But you knew I…liked…you. Why not kiss me at the Halloween dance, or down in Sedona when we met at the Day of the Dead festival?”

“We weren’t in Wilcox territory.”

Anger flared then, hot as the desire I still felt for him. Another tradition, another ritual. One might think that a prima should travel to meet her prospective consorts, rather than make so many men come to her, but I’d always been told the binding must happen on her clan’s land, so that her powers might remain within her domain. By sealing me to Connor here, in the heart of Wilcox territory, it meant that my loyalties were now supposed to lie with them, rather than with the family I had left behind.

So Connor might profess distaste for his brother’s methods, for the way I’d been brought here by force, but in the end he’d still gone along with Damon’s plan, compelling me to join myself with the Wilcox clan. Well, almost. Connor and I had made the consort bond, but it wouldn’t be complete until we slept together, and as far as I was concerned, it would be a cold day in hell before that happened.

“You’re just as bad as your brother,” I snapped, and pushed my chair back and stood. There was no place for me to go except that cramped little guest room, but I’d rather stay in there for the next ten years than spend another minute in Connor’s company.

“Angela, please — ” He reached out, his fingers wrapping around my wrist.

Warmth surged through me. Yes, let him touch you…let him take you….

“No!” I cried out loud, and wrenched my arm away.

He let go at once, wide-eyed, as if shocked himself by the reaction he must have felt within his own body. “I’m sorry — I didn’t mean to — ”

I didn’t want to hear his excuses. Ignoring his pleading look and the barely eaten food on my plate, I turned and hurried up the stairs, running for the guest room and then locking the door behind me. A whispered spell put an extra binding on the lock, but I had no idea whether it would be effective. I didn’t know what to think, here in the heart of enemy territory.

A long silence, and then I heard slow, heavy steps outside in the hallway. Connor said, sounding close enough that he must be right on the other side of the door, “I’ll leave your sandwich and water here if you want it.”

There was a faint clink, as if from setting the plate and glass down on the wooden floor. Immediately afterward, he moved away again. A minute later came the soft thud of the front door shutting.

Good. We needed some distance between us. Miles, preferably.

Why, then, did I feel so abandoned?