Dark & Dangerous: A Collection of Paranormal Treats

by Julie Kenner

  Even Addie, surely, would have noticed things like the roses, the wine. Presumably such things never had happened when she was there. She had exorcised the place, just as Connor had said.

  But Vivien was different. Even if she wasn’t Emily’s twin, she was over-aware, and carried her own baggage of sorrow, frustration, rage. And Connor also had come back, driven by this second secret he hadn’t disclosed.

  What had gone on in that apartment? What had happened bad enough to change him from a man so easily to be desired, to be loved, into a block of ice and poison?

  The voice on the phone was known, but it wasn’t exactly a joyous reunion.

  “This is Cinnamon Boyle-Martin at Scavengers. How can I help?”

  “I’d like to speak to Lewis Blake, please.”

  “Who is that? Wait—I know. It’s Ms. Whoever, isn’t it? Hi, Ms. Whoever. What do you want Lew for?”

  “I’ll tell him when I speak to him,” said Vivien, trying to find the balance between politeness and authority.

  Cinnamon of course was immune to both.

  “Lew is very busy. Maybe you can bring yourself to give me the teeniest itty-bitty bit of an idea.”

  “Thank you. But that will only waste your time. Lew is the one I’d like to speak to.”

  “What if I say you can’t?” Cinnamon sounded now like a bullying child.

  “I would think Lewis might wonder why you were blocking a perfectly legitimate call.”

  “Or not. You do know Lewis is happily married, don’t you, Ms. Whoever?”

  Anger scorched through Vivien’s veins. She tried to stay calm. “I beg your pardon?”

  “Beg away. Just thought you ought to know before you got in over your head. I suppose I could push the errand boy your way—bit young for you, but beggars can’t be—”

  Vivien put the receiver down. The nasty little—

  Stay cool. Try again later. Cinnamon isn’t always going to be there. There was that girl who answered last time. Or even Lewis might answer. She hadn’t tried to locate his home number, it hadn’t seemed appropriate.

  Anyway, Ellie, so much for your notion of calling Connor. I can just imagine how Cinnamon would deal with that.

  Vivien tried Scavengers again at 4:00 p.m. Cinnamon answered brightly—gleefully?

  Vivien broke the connection without speaking.

  She wondered why she and Cinnamon had taken such an instant dislike to each other—aside from Cinnamon’s general rudeness. Karma?

  Vivien thrust all this from her mind, at least for now. She hadn’t bothered to unpack anything but the essentials. She must try to work.

  At six o’clock she broke for some tea, and drank it, nerving herself now to ring Addie at the number near Perpignan. As she stretched out her hand, the phone rang.

  Was it Addie, by some strange coincidence? Bracing herself, Vivien lifted the receiver.

  “Is that Vivien Gray?”

  “Connor…”

  “It is Vivien Gray. Do you know you are part of quite a sisterhood of Grays in the London directory? Luckily Adelaide spelled your name for me, and only two of you spell Gray with an A. The other lady accused me of trying to sell her double glazing.”

  Vivien sat down slowly. She held the receiver as if it were something very fragile, and priceless.

  “Are you still there, Vivien? Have I called at a bad time?”

  He was so straightforward. Joking—playful again. It was just as if he were a friend, one of long-standing, known and welcome.

  “Yes, I’m still here. No, it isn’t a bad time.”

  He sighed.

  She wondered, astounded, if he, like she, had been holding a breath.

  “Look, Vivien. I have to ask a favor of you.”

  “Yes?”

  “I obviously realize you’ve left Adelaide’s flat—I saw you’d packed to go last night. The trouble is, Lewis or I, and the team, need to get in to shift Patrick out. I could get some spare keys off Adelaide possibly, but knowing her, that might take a while. I’d rather have everything wrapped up as soon as I can. Could I ask you to let me borrow the keys she gave you? I’ll let you have them back the minute we’re through.”

  “Yes,” said Vivien softly, “that’s all right. When—When do you want to collect them?”

  “Tonight? It’ll be me. I hope that’s okay?”

  A kind of fiery-cold heat enveloped Vivien.

  “Why not,” she said. “That’s fine.”

  “Thanks, Vivien. I appreciate this.”

  After she put the phone down, Vivien said to herself, He’ll come to the door and take the keys and go. Tomorrow he’ll return them. Maybe, that time, not even him. Someone else.

  But still, for a few moments, he would, tonight, be there.

  Don’t love him, she thought. Gray, you are not to fall in love with Connor Sinclair.

  Her own thoughts answered with stony calm: You loved him before you even met him. You loved him the moment you saw the statue.

  She had showered again, and put on a linen skirt and loose green top. She looked at herself in the ornate mirror. Yes, you look nice, yes, just casual enough, as if you hadn’t changed just because he was coming here. And all this for two minutes on the doorstep.

  By seven, Vivien had become almost unbearably nervous.

  The doorbell went.

  She felt her heart contract and expand as if it meant to explode.

  “Hello, Vivien.”

  The instant she saw him, any ordinary nervousness was washed away by a tide, like that of the most buoyant and warmest sea. All thought drained from her head. Elated, frightened, she gazed up at him and heard herself say, reasonably, as if she were still entirely sane, “Hello.”

  A white shirt now, and not jeans but narrow dark trousers, with, surprisingly, tough-looking boots that seemed as if they could withstand a trek over some rocky Welsh mountain. The odd combination was somehow exactly right.

  And, as before, he came armed with a gift. It was a bottle of Merlot, and she could tell from one glance at it, as he held it out to her, that it had cost rather more than her own.

  “Really, there wasn’t any need—”

  “It’s that sort of evening, Vivien. An evening for red wine.”

  Her hall was so narrow and brief that she didn’t make the mistake of standing aside to let him by, but walked ahead into her kitchen.

  “Here are the keys.”

  “Great. I’ll let you have them back by next Monday at the latest. Meanwhile, perhaps you have a corkscrew for this bottle? It’s at the perfect temperature, just needs to take a breath or two.”

  It’s not alone in that, she thought, remembering to inhale.

  Vivien opened a drawer and handed him the corkscrew. She took two wineglasses, unmatched—she had none that did match—one green, one blue, rinsed and dried them.

  The wine stood on the windowsill, glowing against the deepening gilt of the sky.

  “How are you?” he said, smilingly formal.

  “Very well. And you?”

  “Ravenously hungry and longing to walk somewhere. I’ve been stuck up a ladder, or crouched over nearly double all afternoon, removing unbelievably old and crumbling plasterwork. Lewis, who was up the other ladder, sends you his best, by the way.”

  He handed her the green glass, black with red wine.

  It was perfect, the wine. But she didn’t really taste the sips she took.

  “This is wonderful. Thank you.”

  “‘A votre santé, mademoiselle.”’

  He had told her he was hungry, and wanted to walk. He wouldn’t be staying long. Already he had pocketed Addie’s keys.

  “There is a third thing I would like,” he added, “apart from dinner and exercise. I would truly value your company during both. I know it’s short notice, but is there any chance?”

  Confident; arrogant, just slightly. How many women would have said no to such an invitation from him, however short the notice? She should refuse. She was alr
eady in far too deep.

  “I’d like to.”

  His smile broadened. It became a grin, startling as it undid the handsome sculpted face and made it irresistibly human.

  While she went to get a handbag, Connor took his glass of wine through into her front room, with a relaxed “May I?”

  When Vivien rejoined him, he was studying her two paintings up on the wall.

  “Are these yours?”

  “Oh. Yes.”

  “They’re extremely good. Better than that.”

  “Thank you. They finished up how I wanted them to come out. That often doesn’t happen.”

  “Delicate,” he said, “yet strong. Mysterious. An unusual combination.” He looked at her steadily.

  His eyes made it plain that he didn’t refer only to her painting style as he added, “I think I shouldn’t be amazed at that.”

  Chapter 6

  Having asked her if she minded walking, which she didn’t, they duly walked through the lively, sun-setting city streets for twenty minutes, to a small restaurant he apparently knew.

  By the time they were seated and choosing their food, Vivien found he and she were talking to each other as if they had known each other much longer and, perhaps, done this several times before. He seemed to know what she liked, for example, when he recommended to her from the list of starters an avocado dish she was already deciding on.

  The restaurant was pleasantly lit and not hot, and only about half-full. As the sun went and evening settled in the open windows, a waiter came to light the rosy candles on the tables.

  Connor told her then some of his history. Of an acting career he had mostly now jettisoned in favor of the work of Scavengers. A little about his gambling father, who had destroyed any joint family capital and then walked out on Connor’s mother. Connor spoke of this briefly. He added no flavors either of anger or bitterness. Despite the controlled editing, Vivien’s heart ached for him and the child he had been.

  In turn Vivien displayed something of her rather uneventful if precarious life—her “unworldliness”—secondary school to art school, to a series of makeshift jobs, then the breakthrough into book-jackets and occasional exhibitions at modest venues. She told him, too, quickly, of her disapproving parents—her gruff father and chilly mother. She seldom saw them now, and spoke to them less often. Of Ellie Leiber, Vivien spoke at much more length, with warmth and a nostalgia Connor readily seemed to acknowledge.

  “You can’t choose your family, but you can make a new one with your friends,” he said.

  Neither of them spoke of former lovers.

  She had little enough to say on that score. But with Connor, she sensed a shadow—darker by far than his fecklessly gambling father—that hung across Connor’s emotional past.

  Was that shadow, then, the mysterious K? Surely not. Her note to Connor in the volume of Shakespeare tragedies had been contrastingly humorous and light. K had sounded—OK. So, where was she now?

  But that was silly, too. People part, not always in horrible ways.

  When Connor and Vivien didn’t select a dessert, the waiter brought them a dish of fresh fruit, nuts and cheese, and two tiny liqueurs, in vessels like metal thimbles. “On the house, Mr. Sinclair. With Milo’s compliments.”

  Later Milo, the restaurant’s owner, appeared with the coffee, to exchange a few words with Connor, and to bow to Vivien, as if they had all traveled back in time and geography to the Italy of the 1700s.

  “The restaurant got a credit on a film we worked for,” Connor remarked later on. “Milo said it increased business, and never stops thanking me. It wasn’t anything, but he’s one of the good guys.”

  After the meal, they walked again, more slowly, through still darkening evening streets beginning to blush with neon and street-lighting.

  “Light pollution,” said Connor scathingly.

  “I wish just sometimes I could see the stars,” Vivien agreed.

  “There are places tucked away in London where you can. For example, there’s a public garden not ten minutes from here round the side of St George’s Church. The lamps along the paths are low-key. If the sky’s clear, which it is, the stars are to be seen.”

  They walked to the park.

  Vivien still did not know if this was a “date.” Surely it was—yet she could not be sure. And she remained uneasy, even beneath her enjoyment of this time spent with Connor. It was a truly weird combination; never ever before had she felt, also, so strangely comfortable in the company of any man.

  Be careful! said her mind. Yes, Mother.

  The church stood up, dimly lit and pale among its pillars, and the garden opened beyond, behind wrought-iron gates. A few people roamed the paths or sat on benches, singly or in pairs. There was no noise, no disturbance. A peaceful spot, cool with summer night and scented by the foliage of tall trees.

  A path wound up a slope. Connor took her hand and led her, telling her where tree roots, barely to be seen, broke the paving.

  The clasp of his hand electrified her. She could hardly bear it, but worse would be the moment when he let her go….

  Up among the trees, they stood now on a little hill. Above, the vast sky opened like the dome within some great cathedral, indigo velvet, sewn with a thousand stars.

  They stood gazing upwards.

  As if he had forgotten to, Connor had not relinquished Vivien’s hand.

  Neither of them spoke.

  She thought, childishly, foolishly, Let this moment go on and on….

  “Vivien…”

  How dreamlike—yet familiar—the touch of his hands, firmly, gently, turning her towards him. After the heaven of stars, where else could her eyes travel but to his face?

  For one second only, the hint of reticence, of a question in his gaze. Gone. Presumably, she had answered it.

  He leaned towards her, and the rough silk mane of his hair fell over her cheeks, her neck and shoulders. It closed them in a night-dark tent. Then his left hand curved to support the back of her neck, and through her own hair she felt the heat of it on her skin. She saw, to the last instant, his eyes watching her, intent, certain of her now, and kingly, cruel with the impetus of desire.

  His mouth was on hers. Her lips parted. His tongue, cool yet burning, tasting of wine and fruit, of night and leaves—of him—the essential maleness and power of him…

  Vivien felt herself spinning off into the sky itself. Only the irresistible anchoring hand on her neck, the vital protecting arm encircling her, held her safe in a vortex where she rushed, all gravity disposed of.

  Her hands slid on his back. Beneath the smoothness of his shirt, smooth muscles, strong enough to control all this, to hold her through the dashing whirlwind of need.

  Crushed together, flying through space and constellations, she wanted nothing else.

  One kiss ended, resumed, became another. When the second kiss ended, he lifted his head again and looked at her. In his face she saw, by that bright starlight, her own deep hunger mirrored. Never in her life had she wanted any man as she wanted this one. No, not even that one time in the past. She raised herself on tiptoe, drawing herself upwards against him, until every muscle of his chest beneath the shirt pressed into her, and she felt his body against her breasts as if both of them were naked. His response was immediate. His mouth returned to hers. The third kiss lasted far longer.

  When again he drew back, however, quietly and in gradual stages, he let her go.

  His eyes were blacker now than any night.

  “Vivien,” he said. That was all.

  “Connor,” she answered.

  They stood looking at each other, connected by some pulsing chain of invisible yet nearly tactile force.

  “What now?” he said. He smiled. “In fact, I’m sorry, Vivien, I have to meet Lewis in about an hour, back at the plaster ladders.”

  These words made no sense to Vivien at all. She nodded mutely.

  “There’s a private premier tomorrow—an art house–type film Scavengers
worked on. Quite a decent film, apparently, if it can find the right distributor. Historical—French and English, with supernatural elements. Would that appeal to you?”

  “I—”

  “Because if it would, I’ve got the regulation complimentary tickets. Could be interesting—these private film events sometimes are. And sometimes the movies end up winning at Cannes.”

  Vivien’s heart bounded along as if already en route to the show.

  “Yes, I’d really like to see the film.”

  “Some of the rest of the team are going. Lewis and Angela. His wife. I mention this to reassure you you’ll be protected from my lust.”

  “That’s a relief,” she said.

  “Yes, isn’t it, Vivien Gray? But once we’re out of the theater, I don’t promise anything. Perhaps if you run away the moment we’re out the door, I might not catch you. But yes, I think I would still catch you.”

  “And I would always,” she murmured, “run very slowly.”

  He put his hands, lightly now, on her shoulders. He bent to kiss her with a closed, decorous, yet possessive kiss. “I’ll find you a taxi.”

  In the dream, she lay on the bed of rose-colored satin. There were drapes of thinnest gauze that floated round her, drifting in some unseen breeze.

  Material and breeze, too, played on her naked body, arousing her in a remote and curious way.

  Soon, he would be with her.

  His hands would travel her body, forming her—inventing her—like the hands of a sculptor working upon her human clay.

  She would be anything he wished.

  There was no choice. None.

  Vivien heard a footstep. She opened her eyes once more. The light shone dimly amber from secret candles or lamps. Through the light, a shadow came. A white shadow.

  “No—”

  Her body was stone, would not move…or barely.

  As she rolled her head in fear, Vivien saw, cast dark as night on the floating curtains and the wall, the shadow-shape of two beings embracing. He—and she.

  It seemed already he took her—already she consented.

  But maybe it was not love he brought, but retribution—and for a crime of which she was innocent.