“Have you had any contact with your parents?”
He snorted. “How can I? I’m dead, remember? I paid back every dime they wasted on me by sending them a check from a phony life insurance policy, but I can hardly walk up to them and say, ‘Dad, Mom, I’m so sorry I hurt you. I screwed up big-time. Can you forgive me?”’
She sat back, leaning her head against the wall, thinking.
“Can you forgive me?” he asked.
“That’s easy,” she said. “There’s nothing to forgive. The Brian Webster I know is the most honorable person I’ve ever met. Whatever he was like in the past, today he’d do the right thing, no matter what.”
“I let my sister die.”
“Yes,” she agreed, “you did. And I never heard you make one attempt to shift the blame to the drugs or the pressure you were under. You accepted complete responsibility for your actions, and there’s nothing more honorable than that.”
“I would’ve let Heather die, too.”
“Only to save millions more.”
“You would have hated me.”
“Maybe,” she said, sighing. But maybe not. Brian’s decision had never really been a question mark in her mind. After all, this was a man who, in addition to being smart, amusing, and absolutely wicked in bed, was also ruthlessly honorable. Still, he’d managed to surprise her. She never expected the painful secrets, never expected that they’d have so much in common—that they might be dealing with the same darkness inside, consumed by the same feelings of guilt. The mask he wore might actually be better than hers.
She smiled.
She liked a man who wasn’t all he seemed on the surface.
He’d done a very brave thing in there, confessing his past to help Heather see her way into the future. Was she willing to be as courageous? To see if they had a future?
“Lena, I—”
“Wait,” she interrupted. “You’ve done a lot of talking. I think it’s my turn.”
He arched a brow, but remained silent, waiting.
Lena opened her purse and pulled out the puzzle box. She placed it in his hands, then coaxed his fingers to the four spots that needed to be pressed simultaneously for it to open.
The lid popped up, revealing the contents.
“This,” she said, picking up a curled yellow snapshot, “is a picture of my father. His name was Russell Sharpe and he was a British archeologist who came to Cairo in 1871....”
Brian sat there, stunned, and listened as Lena told him how her mother died of malaria when she was six, and how her father would get so wrapped up in his excavations, he’d disappear for days at a time, leaving her completely on her own.
“At six?” he asked. “He left you on your own at six?”
“He didn’t mean to,” she said dismissively. “He thought the housekeeper was looking after me. But she just took his money and did her own thing. My father was never the same after my mother died.”
No bitterness edged her words when discussing her father, even when she spoke of how he’d turned his back on her when she got pregnant. Her gratitude over his decision to raise Lily as his own after Lena died was sincere. Her heartbreak over missing out on one last chance to hug her infant daughter was palpable, yet tempered with the knowledge that Lily lived to the ripe old age of ninety-eight. It wasn’t until she got to the part about Azim, the father of her child, that her voice cracked. “I loved him, as much as I was capable of loving anyone then. But I never told him. In hindsight, I can see that I was afraid of loving him too much. Everyone I ever cared about left me.”
It was on the tip of Brian’s tongue to declare that he’d never leave her, but he caught himself in time. How could he make a promise like that?
“I don’t remember as much about Azim as I would like,” she confessed. “To gain the pagan gods’ favor, I must trade items I value. Horus claims lengths of my hair, Nepthys takes dreams, and Sekhmet demands memories.”
Horrified, he stared at her. Memories? There were some he wished he could banish and others he’d be happy to never revisit, but most of his memories were precious. “Don’t you ever do that again. We’ll train you. You don’t need to give up something that important to get help.”
She flushed. “Today, I had to give up the memory of our first kiss. I’m sorry, but I truly needed Sekhmet’s support.”
He blinked. Were those tears in her eyes? Was she really crying because she couldn’t remember their first kiss? “You mean you don’t remember smacking me on the head with a crystal paperweight?” he teased.
The tears fell in earnest.
“No.”
He kissed away the tears on one cheek, and then kissed away the tears on the other. “We’ll just have to make a new memory to replace that one,” he said softly.
Then he took her mouth. Hard and hungry, in tempo with the hopeful beat of his heart. She’d told him more in the last five minutes than she had in the entire ten days he’d known her. And all on her own, without a single prompt from him.
What it meant, he wasn’t sure.
It was too early to tell her he loved her, and much too early to ask if she could ever love him in return. But for the first time, he actually felt a happy ending was possible. Taking her hand in his, he tugged her to her feet.
“I’m thinking now is a really good time to create that memory,” he said, leading her down the hall to the elevators. “Come on.”
“Now?”
“Trust me,” he assured her. At the front entrance, he waved to a waiting cab, opened the door, and hustled her inside. “With everyone here at the hospital, we’ll have the ranch house to ourselves. This is the perfect time.”
Lena raised an eyebrow, but didn’t resist.
They rode to the ranch in silence, entwined on the backseat of the cab, her head resting on his chest, her exotic floral scent in his nose, their heartbeats slow and steady. Brian would have lost himself in the moment, but his thoughts were already racing ahead.
When they arrived at the house and paid off the cabbie, he tugged her up the stairs to her bedroom door. There were no lights on in the house, and the only sound came from the faint hum of the brand-new air conditioner.
“Change into whatever you want. Give me ten minutes; then come to my room.”
“Your room?”
He smiled. “You’ve never been in my bedroom, have you?”
“No.”
“Ten minutes,” he reiterated, then pushed her into her room and shut the door behind her. Ten minutes wasn’t a lot of time, but he used it effectively, and managed to gather everything he needed with a couple of moments to spare. When Lena knocked, he was ready.
He opened the door.
And sucked in a sharp breath. Scrap that.
He wasn’t ready. Not for the view that greeted him—Lena standing in his hallway clad only in her French-lace bra and panties, a delicate froth of white and silver material that almost stopped his heart. It barely covered the important bits and teased him unmercifully about all the rest.
He swallowed. Hard.
It was oh-so-tempting to dive on her right then and there. But he was supposed to be creating a memory. And hardwood floors and rug burns didn’t make for great memories. So instead, he swung the door wide to invite her in.
As her gaze flicked to the scene behind him, her gorgeous brown eyes grew round and her mouth fell open. “You did all this in ten minutes?”
He pulled her into the room and shut the door.
“The lights were already here.”
By lights, he meant the dozen aimable halogen lights on the ceiling. The ones currently directed toward the thirty or so Swarovski crystal figurines scattered around the room. He’d been collecting the silly things for years, burying them in the back of the china cabinet in the dining room. All because Melanie had once admired the big bear in a Manhattan store. On the first anniversary of her death, he’d bought it, not entirely sure why. And then, piece by piece, he’d added to the collection until he
had this rather ridiculous menagerie: seals, horses, whales, owls, lions, elephants, turtles, bears ... and more. Much more.
Tonight they lit up his bedroom in a glorious rainbow of tiny reflected lights.
Brian grabbed Lena’s hand and slid a large, rounded candleholder into her palm, remarkably similar to the paperweight back at her house in L.A. “You don’t have to use it,” he said, smiling. “But if you feel the need, it’s there.” Then he pulled her to his chest, reveled in the crush of her plump breasts against his pecs, and kissed her, long and slow and deep. He kissed her as if it were the first time, and maybe the only time. Hungry, yet restrained. Sweet, yet hot and spicy. He put all of himself into that kiss—the good, the bad, the ugly, and the incredible way she made him feel when she shared even the tiniest parts of herself. Everything.
And she reciprocated with an open enthusiasm he didn’t recognize.
He caught the candleholder before it hit the floor. “Denting my head is one thing,” he murmured against her lips. “Denting the hardwood quite another.”
Lena’s fingers attacked the mother-of-pearl buttons of his Gucci shirt. “Have any of your previous women ever mentioned that you talk too much?” She peeled back the material and stared at his chest. “Ah, probably not. It’s far too easy to forgive you.”
He chuckled. “God, you are so good for my ego.”
“I seem to recall you owe me one free orgasm,” she said, trailing a fingernail down his body to his belly, connecting dots of light on his skin. He shuddered. Every overexcited nerve ending in his body wanted to be under that finger. “Anytime you want to get started, go ahead.”
Brian scooped her up and carried her to his big four-poster bed. “Save your voucher for when you really need it, babe. Tonight is special. You and I are doing each other. At the same time.”
She stared up at him from the navy blue duvet. “Exactly the same time?”
“As close as we can manage.”
Bending, he nuzzled the tender skin of her neck, his lips gently gliding over the supersensitive spot beneath her ear.
Her breath came shorter. “That will require ... coordination.”
“Mmmm,” he agreed. “And mutual awareness, a willingness to experiment, and a healthy dose of selflessness.” His teeth caught her lobe and he nibbled.
She squirmed, but when he went to pull away, her arm folded around his neck and held him close. “I’m not very good at doing things together.”
“Me, either.” Kicking off his shoes, he crawled up her body and onto the bed. He rolled to the side, pulling her with him. His hand couldn’t resist sliding along the ultrafeminine slope of her hip and down to her narrow waist. “I figure that’s a good thing. No danger that one of us will show the other up. You’re crazy beautiful—you know that?”
The faint furrows in her brow disappeared.
“I like you,” she pronounced.
He snorted. “You like being complimented. That’s not the same thing.”
“No, I mean it. I really do like you.”
His brow lifted. “Oh yeah? Name one thing about me that you think is terrific—and not something physical.”
She stilled.
“Can’t think of anything, huh?” he teased.
Her hand grazed over his cheek, her eyes as serious as he’d ever seen them. “What you did for Amanda, risking your life to try to save her from the martial demon, was one of the finest things anyone has ever done for someone I know.”
Amanda? Brian blinked. Ah, hell. “The girl in the church,” he said hoarsely. “Her name was Amanda?”
Lena nodded.
She leaned toward him, pressed her lips to his, and kissed him. For a moment, it was a thank-you kiss—sweet and cool and graceful. Then he felt her lips curve, and her hands dove under his shirt, roving over the muscles of his back.
“We may have to practice this together thing a few times,” she whispered, wriggling alongside him until their entire bodies were entwined. “It may take us a while to get it right.”
Her boldly flirtatious movements sent blood pumping through his veins like a molten river, and his skin grew hot and tight. He had a smart-ass quip on the tip of his tongue, but he bit it back. Instead, he looked her in the eye. No mask, no secrets, just open, honest truth. “I’m good with that. I’m in this for the long haul.”
Amazingly, she didn’t look away.
“Me, too,” she said softly.
That was the last coherent word either of them spoke for quite some time. Or at least the last one he remembered. The night was memorable. That was all that mattered.
EPILOGUE
Brian plucked his BlackBerry out of the holster at his waist and put it to his ear. His gaze remained locked on Lena, who stood on the front step of his parents’ house, ringing the doorbell. “Yeah, MacGregor, what’s up?”
“Bad news.”
He grimaced. “Is there any other kind?”
Someone came to the door. A sandy-haired woman wearing a red sweatshirt splashed with the New Jersey Devils logo. His mother. She opened the white screen door he’d slammed a thousand times as a kid and accepted the box Lena held out, smiling tentatively. She looked the same as the last time he saw her, the day before he died, maybe slightly more gray in her hair.
“Simon Reed just called. The Linen has gone missing.”
“Fuck.”
“Aye.” There was a pause. “He wants to meet with you.”
The two women shook hands; the door closed; then Lena descended the steps and strode down the sidewalk toward the car.
“I wonder if he’ll be any friendlier this time,” Brian said. His gaze wandered to the big oak tree in the backyard, a couple of rotting boards from an old tree house hanging in its branches. How many peanut-butter sandwiches had he and Melanie eaten in there? Hundreds.
“I think he’s going to ask for your help,” MacGregor said dryly.
“Better late than never, I guess.” He pushed the driver’s-side door open and let Lena slip into the seat. She was smiling, deeply, and his heart thudded.
“Are you headed back?” MacGregor asked.
“Soon. Why?”
“Carlos has disappeared. Apparently, he left Emily a note begging her not to follow him, insisting he needs some time to sort things out. She found it on her pillow this afternoon. That’s when she broke down and confessed to her mother that she brought the lad’s soul back from hell.”
“What?”
“Hell.”
“Christ. That explains a lot.”
“Aye. Emily feels like shite. She’s in the arena right now, bawling her eyes out and trying everything she can think of to turn that gold coin back into silver. And Uriel stopped by to give us the latest tallies on the souls. We’ve gained some ground, but the loss of the Linen will undoubtedly erode our advance.” MacGregor sighed. “Am I ever glad you’re in charge now and no’ me.”
Brian grunted. “I should be back tomorrow. The planning committee for the Amanda Currie Drug Rehab Center is meeting to discuss the blueprints in the afternoon and, as I’m the primary sponsor, they really want me to be there.”
“Great. See you then.”
“Yeah.” He hung up, then arched a brow at Lena. “So?”
“She bought it, hook, line, and sinker. Never questioned that I was your girlfriend in New York, or that you might have left a box of your stuff in my basement.”
He nodded. “Did she say anything?”
“She cried. And thanked me so profusely I actually felt bad about lying.” Lena brushed a lock of hair away from his forehead. “She was really sweet. She’ll read the letter—I know it.”
The letter. The one he’d written this past week. Or more accurately, written and rewritten a thousand times this past week. The one telling his parents everything he would have liked them to know before he died, apologizing for being a difficult son, begging their forgiveness.
The letter had been Lena’s idea.
In fact, this w
hole visit had been her idea. Her way of helping him move on, like they were helping Heather move on. And it had worked. The hole in his chest, the one he had endured for six years, was finally filled.
“I’ve decided this is as good a time as any to tell you.” She fastened her seat belt, then started the car, checked her mirror, and pulled out onto the road.
He smiled. New drivers were always so careful. “Tell me what?”
“That I love you.”
He stared at her profile. “I beg your pardon?”
“I love you.” She glanced at him, then back at the road. “From what I heard of MacGregor’s phone call, it seems things aren’t going too well. I thought it might not be wise to wait too long to tell you. You know, in case the world ends.”
“So you tell me while we’re driving?”
She glanced at him again. “Should I have waited until we got to the hotel?”
“Hell, yes.”
As she stopped at a red light, she asked tentatively, “Didn’t you want to say something to me in return?”
“You mean something other than what I whispered to you in bed last night when you were pretending to be asleep?”
She smiled. “You could say it out loud. Make it official.”
“If you want, I’ll climb to the roof of the hotel and shout it to the world.”
“That’s not necessary. No one needs to know but me.”
Still private, still reserved, still tough as nails. That was his Lena. She’d come a long way in the sharing department these past couple of weeks, but she was definitely a work in progress. Oh well. He found watching her wield a sword with finesse was a huge turn-on, and the new muscles she had developed in her thighs had come in handy on more than one occasion already.
He grinned. In all honesty, if he had to confront Armageddon, he couldn’t imagine a better person to face it with. Every day with Lena felt fresh and fun. Even the ones when Satan kicked their asses. Even the ones like today.
“I love you, too,” he said. “And, babe, I intend to show you just how much when we get to the hotel.”
Read on for a preview of
Annette McCleave’s next exciting book
Bound by Darkness Page 31