Tonight and Always

by Linda Lael Miller

  "I'm afraid I've run out of green makeup," she confided, as though sharing a secret, noticing that the elder sister was just as interested as the younger one, though not so willing to trust. "I used it all up on Halloween."

  "For what it's worth, I think you look terrific, even without the greasepaint," Max offered quietly as Kristina straightened again, tugging self-consciously at the hem of her white angora sweater. Her tailored wool slacks matched perfectly and her only jewelry was a polished sterling medallion on a long chain.

  "Thanks," she said and blushed. It was such a small compliment, and yet she felt as moved as if Max had knelt at her feet, like a knight pledging fealty to his queen. "Is everybody hungry?"

  The girls nodded shyly, and Max helped them out of their coats. Kristina summoned their names from her memory—the little one was Bree, short for Sabrina, and the eldest was Eliette.

  Kristina had set the glass-topped table next to the breakfast bar, instead of the formal one in the dining room. She wanted Max and his children to be comfortable, rather than impressed.

  Bree and Eliette were well behaved during the meal, though it was soon apparent that tortellini in pesto sauce was not their favorite dish. Max didn't urge them to eat, but it was all Kristina could do to keep from offering them sugared cereal, pizza, or hamburgers. Whatever it was that kids liked—she hadn't had enough experience with them to know.

  Max seemed to sense her concern; at one point, while they were talking about a recent development in local politics, he touched her arm lightly and said, "Relax, Kristina. They won't starve."

  The remark took the pressure off; Kristina let out a mental breath and stopped worrying. Max was right; his daughters were well nourished and would no doubt survive one scanty meal.

  "May we be excused, please?" Eliette asked, her expression sweet as she took in both Kristina and her father in a single glance.

  Max deferred to Kristina with a slight inclination of his head.

  "Of course," Kristina said.

  "Sit quietly," Max told his daughters with another nod, this time toward the family room sofa. "An in-depth report on any goofing off will be faxed to Santa the minute I get to work tomorrow morning."

  Eliette smiled coyly at this threat, but Bree looked impressed.

  Kristina and Max finished their meal in peace, chatting cordially, and then cleared the table together. Once Kristina had convinced Max that the dishes could wait until morning, she approached the two little girls, perched side by side on the couch. Eliette was paging through a travel magazine, while Bree peered over her shoulder, her tiny brow furrowed with concentration.

  "I have something I'd like to show you," Kristina said.

  Both children looked up with interest.

  "Is it magic?" Bree asked, brightening.

  "Don't be silly," Eliette scolded.

  Kristina felt, rather than heard, Max's inward sigh. He didn't say anything, though, but simply waited.

  "I think we'll save the magic for another time," Kristina replied. "Follow me, and I'll show you the things I played with when I was your age."

  Both Bree and Eliette complied eagerly, and Max trailed behind them. When Kristina glanced back at him once, as they all mounted the rear stairway leading to the second floor, their gazes met and held, and Kristina felt a powerful jolt of emotion.

  Upstairs, she opened the door of the attic-like room where she kept the priceless memorabilia of her childhood.

  There were dozens of dolls, most with painted china heads and elaborate dresses, along with miniature furniture of the finest craftsmanship. One end of the room was dominated by the magnificent dollhouse Valerian had given her for her seventh birthday—it was a close replica of the Palace of Versailles, complete with a Hall of Mirrors and the Queen's sumptuous boudoir. The creation was seven feet wide and over five feet tall, and it dwarfed the intricately made puppet theater resting on the floor beside it.

  Bree and Eliette were plainly enchanted, but Kristina felt immediate chagrin. Maybe it was macabre for a grown woman to have a room full of toys, however precious they might be. Suddenly her treasures seemed more like artifacts in a museum or an ancient tomb than the innocent belongings that had brought her so much joy as a little girl.

  "Wow," Max said.

  "Can we touch something?" Bree cried, almost breathless with excitement.

  "Please, Ms. Holbrook?" Eliette added in a soft, awed voice.

  "Everything is very sturdy," Kristina said, "specifically made to hold and touch." She sounded a little shaky, to herself at least—she had referred to these things as her own, mentioned playing with them when she was small. How was she going to explain the rather obvious fact that they were priceless antiques?

  Max bent to look inside the gigantic dollhouse, with its paintings and marble fireplaces and velvet-draped windows. Bree lifted a porcelain baby doll from its hand-carved cradle and held it as gently as if it were a newborn, while Eliette crouched to examine the puppet theater, her eyes wide and luminous with wonder.

  "Where did you get this?" Eliette asked, touching the tiny stage curtain, made of heavy blue velvet and trimmed in shimmering gold fringe.

  "It was a gift from my mother. I had the measles and couldn't leave my nur—my room, so she put on puppet shows for me." Kristina didn't add, of course, that Maeve had made the puppets move and speak and dance without touching them.

  "Our mommy died," Bree confided, holding the baby doll, in its exquisitely embroidered christening gown and matching bonnet, close against her little chest. "I don't remember her face."

  Kristina's throat tightened, and her eyes stung. "I'm—I'm sorry," she managed to say.

  Max, standing just behind her, laid a gentle hand on her shoulder.

  "All you have to do to see Mommy's face is look at her picture, silly," Eliette taunted, still concentrating on her examination of the puppet theater, but the words were spoken with affection, not rancor.

  "Is your mommy still alive?" Bree asked, standing very close to Kristina now, and gazing up into her face. She continued to cradle the doll.

  If the situation hadn't been so touching, Kristina might have smiled at the singular irony of that question. Alive was probably not the precise word to describe the reigning Queen of the Vampires, but it was close enough, she supposed.

  "Yes," she said simply.

  "This stuff is really old," Eliette commented. There was nothing critical in her tone; she was merely making an observation. A very astute one, for such a small child. "You couldn't get these things at Toys R Us."

  Both Kristina and Max laughed at that, and Kristina's tension eased significantly.

  "Some people like old things better than new ones," Max told his daughter a moment later. "And I think it's time you yahoos were home in bed." Both girls joined him in comical chorus to finish the statement with, "Tomorrow is a school day, after all."

  Kristina laughed again, wondering why she was so dangerously close to tears. It had been a wonderful evening, even if it was ending too quickly. For this little while, she'd felt part of a normal mortal family, and the sensation was sweet and warm.

  "I've raised a couple of smart alecks," Max confided out of the corner of his mouth, to the enormous delight of his daughters.

  Kristina led the way back downstairs, blinking hard and sniffling once or twice, so Max wouldn't guess what a sentimental fool she was. "I'm sorry to see you leave so soon," she said in the entry way, while Max helped Bree into her coat. Eliette would have scorned assistance with such a task, Kristina thought—she was trying very hard to be a big girl.

  "We had a great time," Max said, straightening, towering over Kristina now and looking straight down into her eyes. "I'd like to see you again—without the entourage."

  "He means us," Eliette said.

  Max rolled his eyes, and Kristina found herself laughing yet again. She couldn't remember the last time she'd felt such a range of emotions in such a short interval.

  Bree tugged at her da
d's leather jacket. "I want Santa to bring me a doll like that one upstairs," she crowed. "Exactly like it!"

  "Oh, great," Max murmured, but his eyes hadn't strayed from Kristina's face. There was something so strong in his expression, and yet so tender. What manner of man was this, managing two small girls with such love and skill? Kristina had been married to a mortal, and had dated any number of others, over a very long period of time, but Max Kilcarragh was different from them all. Evidently he was so confident of his masculinity that he didn't need to assert it at every turn.

  Charming, Kristina reflected, more intrigued than ever.

  Max caught her by surprise when he bent his head and brushed her lips lightly with his own. The girls, already out the door and headed for Max's Blazer, which was parked at the curb, were engaged in a lively conversation of their own.

  "Thank you," he said in a low voice. "May I call you?"

  Kristina wondered if there were stars in her eyes. "If you don't," she said, "I'll call you."

  He grinned and turned away to follow Bree and Eliette, who were arguing by that time over who got to sit in the front seat.

  "The answer is: nobody but me," Max told them in a game-show host's exuberant tone of voice.

  Kristina watched, smiling, until he'd settled both children in the backseat and made sure their seat belts were fastened. Then, after a wave to her, Max got into the Blazer and drove away.

  Suddenly the big house echoed around her, full of nothing. At that moment, as she closed the door, Kristina would have given all her possessions and the fortune she'd accrued over the decades for a family of her own.

  She allowed herself to dream as she winked off the lights.

  Oh, to be getting children off to bed, reading them a story, making sure they'd brushed their teeth and washed their faces and said their prayers. And once they were asleep, to talk quietly with a man like Max, to share the events of the day with him. to be held in his arms…

  "Stop it," Kristina whispered brokenly, standing there in the darkness, alone, just as she would always be alone.

  There was no place for her in the flesh-and-blood world of mortals, nor in the realm of supernatural beings, for she was neither one nor the other. Forgetting that fact would not only be rash, but also dangerous.

  * * *

  CHAPTER 6

  « ^ »

  The nightmare was upon Max, like some monster lying in wait, the moment he drifted off to sleep. He knew he was not awake, and yet the dream was excruciatingly vivid, in color and dimension and sound. He struggled to escape its hold, to rise to the surface of consciousness, but he was trapped, entangled, like a diver flailing in seaweed…

  He was riding in the passenger seat of the late-model van he and Sandy had just bought, to accommodate their growing family. It was a Saturday in mid-December, around seven o'clock in the evening. They'd spent the day shopping at one of the area's major malls, and the rear of the vehicle was jammed with Christmas presents, mostly toys and clothes for Bree and Eliette, who were with Sandy's parents for the weekend.

  Max and Sandy were tired, triumphant, and very, very happy. They were fortunate people; they knew that and were grateful. They had each other, their children, their career plans and personal goals, their home. And in six months Sandy was going to have another baby.

  Max was hoping for a boy.

  They'd had dinner at their favorite Mexican restaurant after braving the crowded stores, and Max, feeling unusually festive, had consumed two sizable margueritas along with a plate of enchiladas. After the meal, they'd discussed stopping off to see a movie, but in the end they'd decided to spend a romantic evening at home instead.

  Although Max did not feel drunk, he and Sandy had agreed that it would be best if she drove home, and she had gotten behind the wheel. He recalled that she'd adjusted the seat and the mirrors before carefully fastening her seat belt.

  That was Sandy—responsible, conscientious, competent. The best of wives, the most devoted of mothers, somebody who took being a good citizen very seriously. Although she'd taken a few years off from her own career as an elementary school teacher, she made a point of keeping up with every new development in the field of education. When the time came to go back to work, she would be ready. Max had not only loved Sandy, he'd admired her, too.

  Again he tried to wake up, to break out of the dream. Again he was unsuccessful. Sandy was about to die, and there was nothing he could do to prevent it. No way to warn her, or even to say good-bye.

  He was caught inside his smiling, dreaming self. He tried to memorize the look of her—slender, tall, with laughing eyes and curly light brown hair—the clean, fresh-air scent of her, the sweet sound of her voice.

  They left the restaurant parking lot, cruised along city streets, pulled onto the freeway. Traffic was fairly heavy and moving at a moderate pace as a consequence.

  She winked at him and checked the rearview before signaling and changing lanes. There was no rain, no thick fog, no ice on the pavement.

  It should have been perfectly safe.

  Should have been.

  Waking and sleeping, Max wanted to weep at the serenity he saw in Sandy's face in those final moments of her life, of their life together. She looked so happy, so trusting. She had no reason to think the future was about to be canceled.

  The semi-truck, loaded with Christmas trees, roared up beside them, appearing suddenly, then pulled out to pass. In the next instant there was a terrible metallic screech, the only warning they had, followed by a fleeting interval, surely only seconds long, of what seemed like suspended animation. That pulsing void was shattered by a thunderous crash, a bone-jarring impact, a spinning sensation so violent that Max did not have the breath to cry out.

  And then, darkness. Pain, fierce and heavy.

  Voices—horrified, reassuring. Disembodied.

  Sandy.

  The grief and terror gave Max the impetus he needed; he lunged upward out of the nightmare, breathing hard, his flesh chilled beneath a cold sweat. Groping for the switch, he turned on the bedside lamp and lay gasping in its thin light for several moments, waiting for the shock to subside. Finally, when he was no longer trembling, when he had freed himself from the last tentacles of the dream, he got up, reached for his robe, and pulled it on.

  He hadn't had that particular nightmare in months, but its return wasn't exactly a surprise he thought, as he descended the rear stairs leading to the kitchen. Max didn't need a shrink to explain the situation—he was deeply attracted to Kristina Holbrook, and he had some conflicts about it.

  He flipped on the light over the sink, poured himself a glass of milk, and leaned against the counter. He still felt the chill of the dream, and there was a lingering ache in the pit of his stomach. His strongest instinct was to push the memories out of his mind, but he made himself walk through them instead.

  Max had awakened in the Intensive Care Unit of a Seattle hospital some four days after the crash. His parents had been there when he opened his eyes, his mother on one side of his bed, his father on the other. And the sorrow he'd seen in their faces had been far worse than the relentless pain in his body.

  He'd known before either of them spoke that Sandy was gone. His dad had wept unashamedly as he related the grim facts of the accident. Sandy had died instantly.

  Max had spent what seemed like an eternity in the hospital, staring up at the ceiling, enduring, undergoing constant physical therapy. He'd missed Sandy's funeral, and Christmas, and when he was finally able to go home, he needed crutches to walk. It would have been easier to go under, body and soul, in those dark days and even darker nights, if it hadn't been for his daughters. Eliette, only five but formidably bright, had been bewildered and hollow-eyed. Bree was just a baby then, barely two, and she'd cried for Sandy at night, and searched every room and closet of the condo by day, as though hoping this was only a game. She clearly expected her mother to pop out of some hiding place and say "Boo!", the way she'd done when they played.


  Max had done his share of weeping, though always in private, so that the children wouldn't see or hear. And it had often seemed to him that Sandy couldn't be dead—that she would breeze in one morning or afternoon or evening, saying it had all been a mistake, making everything all right just by being back.

  He finished the milk and set the glass in the sink, but he wasn't really seeing the spacious kitchen around him. Instead he saw himself going through Sandy's things with help from Elaine and Gweneth and his mother, giving some of her possessions away, keeping others for the girls to have when they were older. He'd finally sold the condo, when he knew in his heart, as well as in his reasoning mind, that Sandy was never coming home. It was simply too painful to stay.

  Even now, as he remembered, Max's throat tightened, and his eyes burned. If he had problems squaring whatever he felt for Kristina with all he and Sandy had shared, it was his own fault. Had his wife lived, Max was sure they would have grown old together, for their commitment to each other had been the kind that lasts. But Sandy was gone, and he knew that she would want him to find someone else.

  "You're not cut out to be alone, Max," he recalled her saying, one winter night when they were newly weds, snuggled before the cheap fireplace in their first apartment, neither one guessing how brief their time together would be. "You need somebody to love and protect."

  Max flipped off the light. There was no question that he'd loved Sandy, but in the end, when it really counted, he hadn't been able to protect her or their unborn child. He climbed the stairs slowly. If he'd been driving the night of the accident, instead of Sandy, maybe she would have survived. He would have gladly died in her place.

  Pausing on the threshold of his empty bedroom, Max sighed and shoved a hand through his hair. He'd been over the tragedy a million times, second-guessing fate, tormenting himself with the inevitable regrets—if only he hadn't had drinks with dinner he would have been the one driving. If only they'd lingered in the restaurant for even another five minutes, or gone to the movies instead of heading straight home.