Raintree: Inferno

by Linda Howard

  “Mr. Raintree,” one of the policemen called, beckoning Dante over.

  He gave Lorna a quick kiss on the mouth, then released her and strode over to the cop. Willy-nilly, Lorna followed, though she stopped as soon as she was able, when the compulsion was no longer tugging her forward.

  The accident scene was beginning to clear up; witnesses had given their statements, and more and more people were managing to maneuver their vehicles around the demolished Jag, the remains of the fender bender and all the rescue vehicles. Two wreckers had arrived, one to tow Dante’s Jaguar, the other to get the center car in the fender bender, because it had a ruptured radiator. Before his poor car was taken away, Dante was getting his registration and insurance card from the glove compartment, as well as the garage door opener. Given how mangled the car was, finding anything and getting to it was a major undertaking.

  From what Lorna could tell, he wasn’t upset at all about the Jaguar. He didn’t like the inconvenience, but the car itself didn’t mean anything to him. He had already made arrangements for a rental car to be waiting for him at the hotel, and one of his many employees was on the way to the accident site to pick them up. As she had always suspected, money smoothed out many of life’s bumps.

  Thinking of money prompted her to casually brush her hand against her left front pocket. Her money was still there, and her driver’s license and the tiny pair of scissors were in her right pocket. She had no idea what good those scissors would do in any truly dangerous situation, but she had them anyway.

  She noticed she was feeling much better, that the ugly, cold sensation had gone away. She turned and looked over to where the watcher had been parked. He wasn’t there any longer, and neither was his car. Coincidence, she wondered, or cause and effect?

  And wasn’t it odd that she’d had that sickening cold feeling both right before the casino fire, and right before she almost got mowed down in the crossfire of a gang shooting? Maybe she wasn’t reacting to a person at all but to something that was about to happen. Maybe that coldness was a warning. Of course, she’d also gotten the feeling right before Dante fed her a McMuffin for breakfast, but the principle could still be holding true: Warning! McMuffin ahead!

  She had almost come to terms with the claircognizance thing, because even though she’d spent a lifetime insisting she was simply good with numbers, she had always known it was more than that. She didn’t want to discover yet another talent, particularly one that seemed to be useless. A warning was all well and good if you knew what you were being warned about. Otherwise, why bother?

  “Our ride’s here,” Dante said, coming up behind her and resting his hand on the curve of her waist. “Do you want to go to the hotel with me, or go back home?”

  Home? He was referring to his house as her home? She looked up, ready to nail him on his mistake, and the words died on her lips. He was watching her with a steady, burning intent; that hadn’t been a slip of the tongue but a warning of a different kind.

  “We both know where we’re going with this,” he said. “I have a suite at the hotel, and the electricians got the power back on yesterday, so it’s functional. You can come with me to the hotel or go home, but either way, you’re going to be under me. The only difference is that going home will give you a little more time, if you need it.”

  She needed more than time, but standing on the side of the interstate wasn’t the place to have the showdown she knew was coming.

  “I haven’t decided yet whether or not to sleep with you, and I’ll make the decision on my timetable, not yours,” she said. “I’ll come to the hotel with you because I don’t want to spend another day cooped up in that house, so don’t get too cocky, Raintree.”

  The expression of intense focus faded, to be replaced by wryness. Looking down at himself, he said, “Too late.”

  TWENTY

  Lorna was too restless to just sit in Dante’s suite while he was literally all over the hotel, directing the cleaning and repairs, touring with insurance adjusters, meeting with contractors. She dogged his steps, listening but not joining in. The behind-the-scenes details of a luxury hotel were fascinating. The place was hopping, too. Rather than wait until the insurance companies ponied up, he’d brought the adjusters in to take pictures; then he got on with the repairs using his own money.

  That he was able to do so told her that he was seriously wealthy, which made his lifestyle even more of a statement about him. He didn’t have an army of servants waiting on him. He lived in a big, gorgeous home, but it wasn’t a mansion. He drove expensive cars, but he drove himself. He made his own breakfast, loaded his own dishwasher. He liked luxury but was comfortable with far less.

  When it came to the hotel, though, he was unbending. Everything had to be top notch, from the toilet paper in the bathrooms to the sheets on the beds. A room that was smoke-damaged couldn’t be cleaned and described as “good enough.” It had to be perfect. It had to be better than it had been before the fire. If the smell of smoke wouldn’t come out of the curtains, the curtains were discarded; likewise the miles of carpet.

  Lorna found out that the day before had been a madhouse, with guests being allowed to go to their rooms and retrieve their belongings. Because the destroyed casino was attached to the hotel, for liability purposes guests had to be escorted to make certain their curiosity didn’t lead them where they shouldn’t go.

  A casino existed for one reason only, and that reason was money. In a rare moment when he had time to talk, he told Lorna that over six million dollars a day had to go through the casino just for him to break even, and since the whole point of a casino was its generous profit margin, the amount of cash he actually dealt with on a daily basis was mind-boggling.

  The acre of melted and charred slot machines held thousands upon thousands of dollars, so the ruins had to have around-the-clock security until the machines could be transported and as much as possible of their contents was salvaged. About half the machines had spewed printed tickets instead of belching out quarters, which saved both time and money. The coin vaults and the master vault were fireproof, thus saving that huge amount of cash, and his cashiers in the cages had refused to evacuate until they secured the money, which had been very loyal of them but not smart: the two fatalities had been from their ranks.

  The fire marshal was wrapping up his investigation, so Dante cornered him. “Was it arson?” he demanded bluntly.

  “All indications are that it was electrical in nature, Mr. Raintree. I haven’t found any trace of accelerants at the source of the fire. The flames reached unusually high temperatures, so I was suspicious, I admit.”

  “So was I—when detectives were here questioning me immediately after the fire on Sunday night, when you hadn’t even begun your investigation. This wasn’t a crime scene.”

  The fire marshal rubbed his nose. “They didn’t tell you? A call came in about the time the fire started. Some nutcase claimed he was burning down the casino. When they tracked him down, turns out he’d been eating in one of the restaurants, and when the fire alarm went off, he pulled out his trusty cell phone and made a grab for glory. He’d had one too many adult beverages.” He shook his head. “Some people are nuts.”

  Dante met Lorna’s gaze; both were rueful. “We’d wondered what was going on. I was beginning to feel like a conspiracy theorist,” he said.

  “Weird things happen in fires. One of them is how you two are alive. You had no protection at all, but the heat and smoke didn’t get to you. Amazing.”

  “I felt as if the smoke got to us,” Dante said in a dry tone. “I thought I was coughing up my lungs.”

  “But your airways had no significant damage. I’ve seen people die who faced less smoke than you two dealt with.”

  Lorna wondered what he would think if he could see what was left of Dante’s Jaguar, since the two of them were walking around without even a bruise.

  No, that wasn’t right. Frowning, she looked at Dante, really looked. He’d had a cut on his face whe
re the impact of the air bag had literally split open the skin over his cheekbone. His cheekbone had been bruised and was swelling, and his left arm had been bruised.

  Just a few hours later, his cheek looked fine. She couldn’t see the cut at all. There was no swelling, no bruising. She knew she hadn’t imagined it, because there had been blood on his shirt, and he had gone to his suite to change; instead of the polo shirt, he now wore a white dress shirt with his jeans, the sleeves rolled up to expose his unbruised left forearm.

  She didn’t have any bruises, either. After the way she’d been slammed around, she should at least have some stiff and sore muscles, but she felt fine. What was going on?

  “That was a dead end,” he remarked after the fire marshal had left and he was inspecting the damage done to the landscaping. “The stupidity of some people is mind-boggling.”

  “I know,” she said absently, still mentally chasing the mystery of the vanishing cut. Was there any way to diplomatically ask a man, Are you human?

  But what about her own lack of bruises? She knew she was human. Was this part of his repertoire? Had he somehow kept her from being injured?

  “The cut on your face,” she blurted, too troubled to keep the words in. “What happened to it?”

  “I’m a fast healer.”

  “Don’t pull that crap on me,” she said, more annoyed than was called for. “Your cheekbone was bruised and swollen, and the skin was split open just a few hours ago. Now there isn’t a single mark.”

  He gave her expression a lightning fast assessment, then said, “Let’s go up to the suite so we can talk. There are a few things I haven’t mentioned.”

  “No joke,” she muttered as they went through the hotel offices to his private elevator, which went only to his suite. His office was on the same floor, but it was separate from the suite, on the other side of the hotel. When his chief of security had dragged her up here, he had used one of the public elevators. No wonder there hadn’t been any other people on the floor when they evacuated, she thought; the entire floor was his.

  The three-thousand-square-foot suite felt and looked like any luxury hotel suite: completely impersonal. He’d said the only time he spent the night there was if some complication kept him at the casino so late that driving home was ridiculous. The rooms were large and comfortable, but there was nothing of him there except the changes of clothing he kept for emergencies.

  It was strange, she thought, that she already knew his taste in furnishings, his color choices, artwork he had personally chosen. Some interior designer specializing in hotels, not in homes, had decorated this suite.

  He strolled down the two steps to the sunken living room and over to the windows. He had an affinity for windows, she’d noticed. He liked glass, and lots of it—but he liked being outside even more, which was why the suite had a sun-drenched balcony large enough to hold a table and chairs for alfresco dining.

  “Okay,” she said, “now tell me how bruises and cuts went away in just a few hours. And while you’re at it, tell me why I’m not bruised, too. I’m not even sore!”

  “That one’s easy,” he said, pulling a silver charm from his pocket and draping the cord over his hand so the charm lay flat on his palm. “This was in the console.”

  The little charm was some sort of bird in flight, maybe an eagle. She shook her head. “I don’t get it.”

  “It’s a protection charm. I told you about them. I keep Gideon supplied with them. He usually sends me fertility charms—”

  Lorna jerked back, making a cross with her fingers as if to ward off a vampire. “Keep that thing away from me!”

  He chuckled. “I said it’s a protection charm, not a fertility charm.”

  “You mean it’s like a rubber you hang around your neck instead of putting on your penis?”

  “Not that kind of protection. This kind prevents physical harm—or minimizes the damage.”

  “You think that’s why we weren’t injured today?”

  “I know it is. Since he’s a cop, Gideon wears one all the time. This one came in the mail on Saturday, which means he’d just made it. I don’t know why he made a protection charm instead of a fertility charm, unless he now has a diabolical plot to eventually disguise a fertility charm as a protection charm, but this one is the real deal. This close to the solstice, his gifts can get away from him, just like mine sometimes do. He must have breathed one hell of a charm,” he said admiringly. “I didn’t wear it. I just put it in the glove box and forgot about it. Normally the charms are for specific individuals, but when neither of us was injured today…I guess it must affect anyone within a certain distance. It’s the only explanation.”

  Actually, that was kind of cool. She even liked the way he’d phrased it: Breathed one hell of a charm. “Does it make you heal faster, too?”

  Dante shook his head as he slipped the charm back in his pocket. “No, that’s just part of being Raintree. When I say I’m a fast healer, I mean really, really fast. A little cut like that—it was nothing. A deeper cut might take all night.”

  “How terrible for you,” she said, scowling at him. “What other unfair advantages do you have?”

  “We live longer than most humans. Not a lot longer, but our average life expectancy is about ninety to a hundred years. They’re usually good years, too. We tend to stay really healthy. For instance, I’ve never had a cold. We’re immune to viruses. Bacterial infections can still lay us low, but viruses basically don’t recognize our cellular composition.”

  Of all the things he’d told her, not ever having a cold seemed the most wonderful. That also meant never having the flu, and—“You can’t get AIDS!”

  “That’s right. We run hotter than humans, too. My temperature is usually at or above a hundred degrees. The weather has to get really, really cold before I get uncomfortable.”

  “That’s so unfair,” she complained. “I want to be immune to colds and AIDS, too.”

  “No measles,” he murmured. “No chicken pox. No shingles. No cold sores.” His eyes were dancing with merriment. “If you really want to be Raintree and never have a stuffy nose again, there’s a way.”

  “How? Bury a chicken by the dark of the moon and run backward around a stump seven times?”

  He paused, arrested by the image. “You have the strangest imagination.”

  “Tell me! How does someone become Raintree? What’s the initiation ritual?”

  “It’s an old one. You’ve heard of it.”

  “The chicken one is the only one I know. C’mon, what is it?”

  His smile was slow and heated. “Have my baby.”

  TWENTY-ONE

  Lorna went white, then red, then white again. “That isn’t funny,” she said in a stifled tone, getting up to prowl restlessly around the room. She picked up a pillow and fluffed it, but instead of placing it back on the sofa, she stood with it clasped to her chest, her head bowed over it.

  “I’m not joking.”

  “You don’t…you shouldn’t have babies as a means to an end. People who don’t want babies for themselves should never, never have them.”

  “Agreed,” he said softly, leaving his spot by the windows and strolling toward her as unhurriedly as if he had no destination, no agenda.

  “It’s nothing to be taken lightly.” That was a dirty game of pool he was playing, saying Have my baby as if he meant it. He couldn’t mean it. They had known each other two days. That was something men said to seduce women, because hundreds of centuries ago some cunning bastard had figured out most women were pushovers for babies.

  “I’m taking this very seriously, I promise.” His tone was gentle as he touched her shoulder, curving his palm over the slope before sliding his hand over her back. She felt the heat transferring from his skin to hers, burning through her clothes. His fingertips sought out her spine, stroking downward, gently rubbing out the tension thrumming beneath her skin.

  She hadn’t known she was so tense, or that the gentle massage would turn he
r to butter. She let him urge her against him, let her head nestle into his shoulder, because everything about what he was doing felt so good. Still…She looked up at him with narrowed eyes. “Don’t think I haven’t noticed how close that hand’s getting to my butt.”

  “I’d be disappointed if you hadn’t.” A smile curved his mouth as he pressed a warm kiss, then another, to her temple.

  “Don’t let it get any lower,” she warned.

  “Are you sure?” Beginning at the waistband of her jeans, he traced a finger down the center seam—down, down, pressing lightly, while his hot palm massaged her bottom. That finger left a trail of fire in its wake, made her squirm and shudder and begin, at least ten times, to say No. He would stop if she said it; the decision to continue or not was hers—but the security of knowing that was what kept the single word unsaid. Instead, all she did was gasp with agonized anticipation, and arch, and cling—waiting, waiting, focusing entirely on the slow progression of the caress, as his hand slowly slid down to dip between her legs from behind. He pressed harder then, his fingers rubbing against her entrance through her jeans, so that the friction of the seam lightly abraded flesh that was soft and yielding.

  He had been bringing her to this point for two days, since that first kiss in his kitchen, patiently feeding the spark of desire until it became a small flame, then keeping the flame going with fleeting touches and something even harder to resist: his open desire for her. She could recognize what he was doing, see the subtle progressions, and even appreciate the mastery of his restraint. Getting into bed with her last night—and then not touching her—had been diabolically intelligent. Since the moment they’d met, he had forced her to do a lot of things, but not once had he tried to force her response. She would have shut him down cold if he had. The spark would have gone out, and she wouldn’t have let it be resurrected.

  His warm mouth moved along the line of her jaw, leisurely nipping and tasting, as if he wanted nothing more than this and had all the time in the world in which to savor her. Only the rock-hard bulge in his jeans betrayed any urgency, and she was pressed so tightly to him that she could feel every twitch, every throb, that invited her to part her legs and let him get even closer.