To distract myself, I opened up the wine list the hostess had laid on the table between the place settings. Some people might have advised against wine, after the day I’d had, but right then I thought I could use a drink.
I looked over the edge of the leatherette folder at Raphael, who held a menu open in front of him, a slight frown pulling at his brows as he attempted to parse its contents.
“Can you — can you read English?” I murmured. After all, just because he’d spent a lot of time hanging around Earth as a spirit guide, that didn’t mean he’d ever needed to actually sit down and read something.
His dark brows drew together at once, and I realized I’d misstepped. “Of course I can,” he snapped, sounding more like the Otto of old than the Raphael I’d come to know. His blood sugar must have been getting precariously low.
“Sorry.” Then I recalled how he’d told me that his people didn’t eat meat, and I quickly set down the wine list so I could glance over the menu and analyze it to see what he actually could eat.
“You could do the mac and cheese if you ask them to hold the ham,” I suggested. “Or any of the salads would work. Or this flatbread margherita — it’s a flat type of bread baked with cheese and herbs.”
The frown disappeared. “That sounds as if it would be good.”
“I’m sure it is. I’ve never had anything here I didn’t like.”
The waitress appeared then to take our orders, and I hesitated over the wine list. Raphael had also said he didn’t drink alcohol, but right then I didn’t know for sure if I had the willpower to become a teetotaler on his behalf. Anyway, he was here, and he could drink or not drink. That was his choice. I, on the other hand, knew I wanted a glass of merlot. At least my part-time job working at the wine-tasting room uptown had let me know which of the local vintages were the best.
I ordered the wine and some chicken enchiladas. Raphael sent me an inquiring glance while the waitress asked for my I.D. and inspected it closely before writing down my order. I lifted my shoulders. I doubt one glass is going to put you under the table, I told him. But you can have water or tea or something like that. I’m afraid we don’t have anything that’s similar to rahliss.
He looked up at the waitress, who was a pretty girl about my age or a little older, probably Native American, with her long black hair and dark, almond-shaped eyes. “The margarita flatbread…and a glass of the same thing she is having.”
The girl smiled and made a note of his order, although she didn’t ask for his identification, and then told us she’d be out with our drinks in a little bit. After she’d gone, I said, “Living dangerously?”
“Perhaps. As you said, one glass should not have any seriously deleterious effects, not based on my body mass.”
I winked at him. “Next time we can order a bottle and see what happens.”
That remark earned me a pained glance, but he didn’t reply, instead sipping at his water. “I’ve never understood the human urge to destroy so many brain cells on purpose.”
“Because it feels so good while you’re doing it?”
“But doesn’t the aftermath feel decidedly not good?”
A few parties I’d attended over the past year or so came to mind, and I winced slightly. Mixing tequila and vodka was never a good idea. Actually, it was partly those experiences that had led to me drinking mostly wine these days — plus being around wine on the job. At least if you stuck with one type of alcohol, the odds of a hangover were a lot lower. “It can be kind of brutal if you drink too much. But one glass isn’t going to do a lot, one way or another.”
A theory that would be put to the test soon enough, since the waitress reappeared right then with our wine. She set my glass down in front of me first, and then placed Raphael’s near where his hand rested on the tabletop. Was it my imagination, or was she lingering just a little closer to him than strictly necessary?
“Your food will be out in a few minutes,” she said, then headed over to check on a table against the opposite window.
Good. That way I wouldn’t have to keep fighting the urge to rip out her liver.
Possessive, my love?
Clearly, he’d seen the side-eye I just shot the waitress. Only about you, dear.
He shook his head, but I could see the glint in his eyes. I doubted he’d ever admit it, but I got the impression he was a little pleased by my pricks of jealousy.
Well, why not? I thought then. This is the first time he’s had anyone around to get jealous.
Which just seemed wrong for someone as amazing as Raphael. What strange twist of fate or DNA or timing had made it so he’d had to wait so many years until I came along?
I’d probably never know, but I was saved from having to brood about the situation by him lifting his glass in my direction. “To all our firsts,” he said.
That sounded like a wonderful toast to me, so I raised my glass as well. “To all our firsts.”
Then we both drank, but I watched him the whole time, wanting to see his reaction to his first taste of Earth alcohol.
He blinked, then swallowed, then sat there for a moment, staring down into his glass but not speaking. I took another sip of my wine, wondering if there was something wrong with it. But no, it was a merlot from a local winery, and tasted just fine to me. Better than fine, actually, nice and fruity. Fruit forward, that is. One day I’d get all the nomenclature down pat.
“If you don’t like it, you can order something else,” I said.
At once he gave a slight shake of his head. “No, that’s not it at all. I suppose I wasn’t expecting it to taste good.”
I couldn’t help laughing. “Why wouldn’t it taste good? I’ll admit there’s some stuff out there that really doesn’t, but I’d say most of us want to enjoy the experience of drinking it just as much as we like its effects.”
“I didn’t know that. It always seemed to me that people of Ear — that is, people drank for no other reason than to get drunk.”
“Well, yeah, if you’re a frat guy at ASU, I can understand that. But up around here in northern Arizona, wine is a big deal. People want to savor it, choose the kind that will taste best with their meals.”
He appeared to absorb my words, then drank again. His eyes went heavy-lidded, and he looked so sexy in that moment that it required some effort to prevent myself from launching across the table at him, public place or no. Somehow I managed to keep it together, however — mostly because I made myself take another sip of wine.
When he spoke, his tone was filled with wonder. “It is as if I can taste the fruit and the earth and the sun, all at once. It’s quite…astonishing.”
I thought he was pretty astonishing, too. To be able to taste all those subtle characteristics the first time he’d ever drunk wine?
“Well, it sounds like you can always have a fallback career as wine critic if nothing else pans out,” I said, only half joking.
But he seemed to take me seriously. He lifted his glass to his lips again, and I had to make myself act as if watching him close his eyes and savor that sip in the most sensual way possible — full lips pressed together, lashes sooty crescents against his cheeks — was something I did every day. Then those lashes lifted, and he was watching me, chocolate-brown eyes almost black in the dim lighting of the restaurant. “You realize that I don’t require a career at all.”
I’d been waiting for a chance to ask the question, and now Raphael had given me the perfect opening. “The same way my father never seemed to have to work?”
“Precisely.”
“And you would never get bored?”
“Boredom, my dear Callista, is a symptom of an inferior mind. The universe presents so many opportunities for enrichment that boredom should never be an option.”
That did make some sense. After all, my father had never had a “real” job after he was exiled here on Earth — unless you counted his stint on Paranormality — and yet it seemed as if he was always occupied with something. Reading, or fi
ddling with the telescope my mother had bought him one Christmas, or exploring the area around Sedona with Lance and Paul when they weren’t running Jeep tours, in the case of the former, or writing yet another book, in the case of the latter. And my parents were always going to concerts or gallery openings or day hikes or — well, all right, they didn’t seem to get bored very easily.
“Even here on dull old Earth?” I inquired, then drank some more of my merlot.
“This world is not dull. Backward, perhaps, but not dull. It possesses astonishing natural beauty.”
No one who’d grown up in Sedona the way I had could argue with that statement. In high school everyone had always complained about how dull Sedona was, how there was nothing to do, but even then I’d thought those remarks had a lot more to do with sounding cool than because anyone actually felt that way. And even though Raphael had called Earth “backward,” I couldn’t get angry with him for saying so. Compared to the place he’d come from, it was backward. But he was still acknowledge its loveliness for all that.
The waitress came by with our food, so we left aside the discussion about Earth’s backwardness so we could dive into our meal. And oh, the things Raphael had fed me were delicious, but in my humble opinion, they couldn’t compete with a smoked chicken enchilada with black beans. He seemed to be enjoying his flatbread, too, from the way he appeared to be savoring each bite in the same way he’d savored his wine, and I allowed myself a mental sigh of relief. Maybe he would be able to acclimate to life here after all.
It definitely seemed as if he was acclimating when he flagged down the waitress and asked for another round of drinks. After she’d gone, I raised an eyebrow at him and asked, “You sure about that?”
“Of course,” he replied calmly. “I had finished mine, and there is still a good deal of my meal left. It’s logical to order more so they even out.”
“If you say so,” I said, more amused than anything. After all, we didn’t have that far to go to get back to our casita. At least I didn’t have to worry about him driving or anything.
The waitress was all too happy to bring more, especially since it gave her an opportunity to loiter by his elbow again and ask if everything as all right.
“Wonderful,” Raphael told her, while I agreed, if a bit less enthusiastically.
She smiled at him, gave me a brief nod, and headed back toward the kitchen.
A sound that might or might not have been a growl emerged from my throat, and Raphael sent me an amused look.
“Jealous, my love?”
“No,” I said coolly. “I’m just going to fling a forkful of black beans at her if she comes around and starts batting her eyelashes at you again.”
“Wasted effort on her part. You are the only one for me. You know that, of course.”
Something about that “of course” made my knees go a little weak, even though I was sitting down. He’d said it so matter-of-factly, as if his possible wandering shouldn’t even be an item of concern. Among the Pleiadians, I supposed such things weren’t. They found their soul mates, and that was it. No cheating, no lying, no running around or thinking the grass was greener on the other side. It was the way things were with my parents as well, but I’d never thought I’d be that lucky, never thought I’d meet anyone to share that sort of spiritual harmony. But Raphael had changed all that.
“Of course,” I echoed, then spooned up some more chicken enchilada and washed it down with wine. Midway into my second glass, I was starting to feel a little swimmy. Not drunk, maybe not even tipsy, but elevated. Not really of this earth. Too many hours since my last meal, too many light-years between now and when I’d woken up this morning.
If the slightly unfocused state of Raphael’s eyes was any indication, the wine had had its effect on him, too. He smiled at me somewhat blearily from across the table, and I wondered exactly how he felt right then. His system, untouched by alcohol for its entire existence, must have been working overtime to handle the unfamiliar toxin.
Which was why I flagged down the waitress and told her we were ready for the check. Raphael blinked at me but didn’t protest. And when the check arrived, I was ready, and waved my phone over the reader built into the waitress’s clipboard without even looking at the total, then pushed the button to have twenty percent added to the bill for her tip. Right then I figured the best thing to do was get paid up and out of there before my companion was completely incapable of locomotion.
All right, maybe that was a little unfair. When the time came, he stood up more or less steadily, and even retained enough presence of mind to help me into my coat. I was just glad he hadn’t argued with me about paying the bill. Yes, the Pleiadians seemed to have some secret sauce when it came to making sure their people hanging out on Earth had an inexhaustible flow of funds, but I didn’t know if Raphael had even made his intentions known to them. It seemed safer to use my bank account, which I knew was reliable.
Once again he took my hand as we walked. The night seemed even colder now, the stars glittering like chips of ice overhead. I tilted my head to look up at them, realizing that only earlier that day I’d been traveling among those very stars. Had anyone seen our approach and thought Raphael’s ship a satellite or space station, rather than the interstellar vessel it actually was?
Then I reminded myself his ship possessed such good stealth technology that even the Reptilians couldn’t detect it with their instruments, let alone a human being staring up into the night sky with the naked eye. Still, I found myself somewhat humbled by the thought that I’d traveled so very far away.
“You’re quiet,” Raphael said.
“Just thinking about all those stars,” I replied. “And being up there among them with you.”
He didn’t answer, but pulled me close to him so he could kiss me, his mouth warm in the cold night air, his tongue sweet with wine. A fire kindled inside me, one that did a very good job of making me forget how chilly it really was, out there on the path.
A moment later he moved away slightly, whispering, “Let us go inside.”
I didn’t need any encouragement. Not that I ran exactly, but my steps did speed up as we headed toward our rented casita. Once we were inside, we barely made it inside the door before his arms were around me and his lips had pressed against mine again.
This was a new, forceful Raphael — fueled by merlot, I had no doubt. I didn’t mind, though. It was a sweet wine-kissed haze that surrounded us as we fell onto the bed, clothes being flung this way and that. And it was an entirely different homecoming with his naked body next to mine, all heat and fire and aching need, as if we both knew we had to love one another all over again here on this world that was the only thing I’d ever known, and the place he’d somehow, despite all expectations, decided to make his.
He entered me, and I enveloped him, and we became one together.
CHAPTER SIXTEEN
In the days that came next, I reflected it was a good thing that I’d only had casual friends in high school, and didn’t stay very connected to any of them after I graduated. I had Taryn and Kelsey, of course, but they were different. They were family — all right, Taryn not by blood, but she might as well have been. We’d been raised by people who were fighting the same fight, who had the same secrets to hide. Getting close to the girls at my school had been impossible, not when I knew I could never tell them the truth about who my father was, what kind of blood really flowed in my veins.
Anyway, Raphael would have been hard enough to explain. Men who looked like movie stars — or gods descended from heaven — weren’t exactly to be found wandering the streets of Sedona, unless they happened to be in town for the city’s annual film festival. But the festival was still more than a month away, making Raphael’s presence all the more improbable. As out of place as he might appear, however, he was still easier to account for than how I’d suddenly managed to move out of my parents’ house and into a home that just skirted below the two-million-dollar mark.
I did
n’t actually set out to get something ostentatious. When someone like Raphael gives you a velvety smile and says, “Choose whatever you’d like,” as you’re perusing the local real estate listings, though…well, let’s just say it’s hard to exercise much self-control in that kind of situation. And if the house of your heart turns out to be a Tuscan-style mansion perched on a hillside with almost 360-degree views of the red rocks and a reflecting pool on the patio…all right, call me weak-willed. I wanted it. And I wanted to share it with Raphael.
Even in Sedona, which had more than its fair share of the rich and famous who owned vacation homes there, buying a house at the price point with cash was bound to raise some eyebrows. So I was really glad that my high school friends had more or less fallen by the wayside, although fate or evil coincidence had decreed that Leisha Pendleton, my nemesis who’d thought I was trying to steal her boyfriend from her, was working in the real estate office that handled the transaction. I thought her eyes were going to pop out of her head when I walked into the place with Raphael, and those eyes only got bigger when we came back a few days later with a cashier’s check that had a whole lot of zeroes on it.
But because she was the office assistant, and not our real estate agent, Leisha knew enough to keep her mouth shut, although I could tell she was just dying to ask where the heck I’d found Raphael and how someone who wasn’t even scraping thirty years old could pay cash for a house like that. If she’d asked, I would have been really tempted to tell her he was the hottest thing in Bollywood right then, since he did have that sort of look, but I kept my mouth shut. Best not to stir things up any more than they already had been.
The house was sold furnished. I would never have bought it that way, except that the self-help mogul who’d owned it before us — his meditation techniques had been recently debunked, leading him to a quick divestiture of all his assets — had pretty much the same taste I did, and so I didn’t see much that needed changing. Or maybe it was his interior designer whose style was similar to mine. In the end, it didn’t matter one way or another, except that now I wouldn’t have to bore Raphael with dragging him around to furniture stores to find the things I needed.
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