by Radclyffe
Deo’s eyes flashed as all traces of humor left her face. “Just what do you base that on? The fact that I’m single and don’t hide the fact that I like women?”
Nita flushed. “I apologize. That was absolutely uncalled for. I’m very sorry. I have to go.” She tried to sidestep Deo again and, again, Deo moved with her. “Please.”
“No you don’t.” Deo narrowed her eyes. “It’s not me at all, is it? It can’t be, since you’ve had your mind made up about me since the minute we met. So who was she?”
“I’m not going to have this conversation with you,” Nita said tightly. Deo was far too close to the truth, and not only didn’t she want to think about the debacle she’d made of her life, she didn’t want Deo to know. She didn’t want Deo to know just how susceptible she actually was to Deo’s brand of charm. God, how could she be so shallow to want that kind of attention? Why did she crave the intensity of Deo’s gaze, why was even Deo’s arrogant possessiveness exciting? Why did being anywhere near her make her feel as helpless as a reed bending in the wind. “I don’t owe you any explanation. My answer is no—today, tomorrow, and any time thereafter.”
“Okay,” Deo said mildly. “You don’t have to tell me.” She jostled the key ring hanging from her belt loop. “I was about to go inside. Do you need something?”
Nita blinked, trying to adjust to the sudden change in topic. Once again, Deo had her off balance. “I don’t understand. Do you work here?”
“My office—well, my desk—is inside. I rent some space from my aunt to take care of my billing, store my files, that sort of thing. I don’t need much.” Deo unhooked her keys. “What do you need?”
“Nothing. I was supposed to do a walk-through on the house tonight because the closing is tomorrow afternoon and I’m not going to be able to get away during the day.” She shrugged, frustrated. “But I didn’t get away in time today, either.”
“So, we’ll do it tonight.” Deo fit her key into the lock and looked over her shoulder. “Come on inside out of the rain while I find the paperwork.”
“Can you do that? I mean—”
Deo grinned. “Elana is my aunt. I stand in for her from time to time. It’s no big deal.”
“Well, it would help. Are you sure?”
“Yeah.” Deo held the door open with one arm and flipped a switch that lit the room with the other. “It’ll be fine. And then you won’t be pressured tomorrow.” Deo leaned against the door, holding it open with her back while she slowly met Nita’s eyes. “What do you say? Or are you scared that you might discover you’re wrong about me?”
“I’m not the one who’s woefully misguided,” Nita said sharply as she walked past Deo into the room.
Laughing, Deo followed and let the door swing slowly closed behind her.
Chapter Eleven
“Here,” Deo said, handing Nita an industrial flashlight as they stepped into the wide foyer of what once had been a grand mansion standing on a rise above the harbor. The storm had heightened in intensity and precipitated an early dusk. “Watch your step. This house has been uninhabited for thirty years.”
Dutifully, Nita clicked on the flashlight and played the harsh white beam over the dark walnut hardwood floors. “It seemed very sound the day I saw it.”
“It probably is, but we’re going to check out a few places you probably didn’t go during the showing.” Deo slanted the beam from her light so that the edges bathed Nita’s face. In the pale light her skin took on a richer, earthy tone, and her features seemed almost exotic. She was beautiful precisely because her beauty was not conventional. Deo’s stomach tightened, but she steadfastly ignored the low-level pulse of arousal. “You can stay down here if you want, and I’ll go through by myself.”
“I thought this was just a rubber-stamp visit to be sure the roof hadn’t suddenly developed a huge hole or something.”
“Ordinarily it is, but I’m a certified building inspector and you might as well take advantage of me while you can.”
Nita almost laughed. “You are shamelessly relentless. What I don’t understand is why you’re expending the energy when I’m sure you could find company with no effort at all.”
“Maybe I don’t like people having unfounded impressions of me.”
“People?” Nita tilted her own flashlight and Deo turned her face away, but not before Nita saw the unhappiness in her eyes. “What people?”
Deo grabbed Nita’s hand and tugged. “Come on. Let’s check out the kitchen.”
Recognizing the avoidance ploy because she used it so often herself when there was something she didn’t want to discuss, Nita didn’t push. Deo was certainly entitled to her privacy, and besides, discussing personal matters wasn’t the wisest thing to do when she was trying to keep her distance. Whatever Deo’s troubles might be, they weren’t her concern.
The wide central hall was divided in the center of the house into two narrower passages by the take off of the central staircase that rose to a second-floor balcony level. As she recalled, the formal living room and dining room were off the right hallway, and the parlor and library were off the left. The large kitchen occupied the entire first floor rear. With only their flashlights to guide them, Nita felt the oppressive atmosphere of the long abandoned house closing in around her. Reflexively, she tightened her grip on Deo’s hand. Deo’s palm was slightly bumpy—work calluses, she presumed—and very warm. For a fleeting second she imagined how that rough, heated skin would feel chafing over her nipples. The unexpected image and the sharp stab of excitement that shot through her groin made her gasp.
“You okay?” Deo asked.
“Yes,” Nita responded sharply, aware that her voice sounded breathy.
“Even though the place has been closed up for years, it doesn’t smell damp or moldy,” Deo observed, stopping just inside the kitchen. She shone her light over the floor, walls, and ceiling first and then moved on to highlight the wood counters and cabinets. The appliances had all been removed long ago. “No evidence of water damage. That’s a good sign. The roof is likely sound and the window casements are probably in good shape.”
Nita extracted her hand from Deo’s, and immediately the tension in her chest eased. She took a deep breath and chided herself for her mindless response. She had gone far too long without any kind of physical intimacy. That’s all it was.
“So what do you think?”
“I’m sorry?” Nita realized Deo had asked her a question while she’d been analyzing her reaction to Deo’s touch.
“I was asking whether you wanted to convert the interior to something contemporary or go for a historical restoration.”
“If I’d wanted a contemporary house, I would have bought one.”
“Well, that makes sense,” Deo said, a note of confusion in her voice.
Nita flushed. She was making too much of a brief visceral reaction and allowing it to completely disrupt her control. It was ridiculous. “I want to renovate the house with materials and design that are historically suitable, within reason. I don’t intend to walk around the house at night carrying a candle.”
Deo laughed. “I think it probably would have been gaslights.”
“I consider flush toilets, electricity, central heat and air, telephones, and cable to be essential,” Nita said dryly.
“It’s going to cost you something to put in the air and bring the electrical system up to today’s standards,” Deo observed.
“I have considered that.” Nita saw no reason to explain that she had money. Her family would take nothing from her now and being single and having gone to medical school on scholarships, she had very little debt. The house was her indulgence.
“I want to check the cellar before we go upstairs,” Deo said. “I recommend you wait here.”
“To save us repeating this conversation, I’m buying this house and therefore I’m coming with you.”
Deo illuminated Nita’s face again. “Afraid of spiders?”
Even in the semi-darkness,
Nita could make out the mischief in her eyes. She gave Deo a cold stare.
Deo grinned. “Guess not.” She reached for Nita’s hand once more, and after a second’s hesitation, Nita took it. “Stay close, okay? People leave the damnedest things lying around in these empty houses, and who knows what kind of critters might be living down there.”
“Charming,” Nita muttered, moving closer to Deo in the impenetrable darkness that enclosed her as soon as Deo moved her light away. As she followed, she couldn’t help but occasionally brush up against Deo’s back. Even if her nipples hadn’t tightened at the slightest touch of her breasts against Deo’s body, she wouldn’t have been able to deny how much she enjoyed the contact. Her blood was practically singing with excitement.
“I don’t think anyone’s been down here for a while,” Deo grunted as she tucked the flashlight under her arm and banged the slide bolt with the heel of her hand. It moved with a rusty groan. After pushing the door open and flooding the stairwell with her bright light, she announced, “All the stairs are here and look like they’re in reasonably good shape. Just let me test each one on the way down.”
“Maybe we should postpone this until tomorrow,” Nita said. “There’s no point in taking chances.”
Deo pivoted on the top stair, the movement bringing her face very close to Nita’s. “Is that what you really believe? Or are you just afraid that you might like it?”
Nita’s jaw tightened. “You’re in a dangerous position if your intention is to irritate me.” She rested her index fingertip lightly in the center of Deo’s chest. “It wouldn’t take much to knock you down these stairs on your ass.”
“I like you when you’re angry.” Deo let go of Nita’s hand and grasped her finger. She lifted it and delicately touched her tongue to the tip. When Nita snatched it away, she laughed. “I don’t mind taking risks.”
“One more move like that and this inspection is over,” Nita said, closing her fist until the tingling in her finger dissipated.
“All right,” Deo said softly. “I promise I won’t touch you again until you ask me to.”
“Then that will be never.”
“I do need to hold your hand on these stairs, though,” Deo amended and extended her hand.
Nita took it. “As long as you remember it’s just business.”
“Fair enough.”
“And as it happens, I’m not wild about spiders,” Nita remarked as she followed Deo downstairs. “Feel free to dispense with any webs that come our way.”
Laughing, Deo swept her arm over their heads as she walked. “Wait at the bottom of the stairs until I get a good look at what’s down here.”
Nita had the sense of a large room interrupted at intervals by thick floor-to-ceiling wooden posts. The bright circle of her light illuminated several rough wooden chests overlaid with inches of dust, a chifforobe, several broken chairs, and a rusty oil tank next to an ancient furnace. The floor was hard packed dirt. A faint shimmering illumination at the far end of the room marked Deo’s location.
“Anything of interest down there?” Nita called.
“Not much. Looks like someone tried to jack up the—shit!”
Nita jumped at the sound of a loud crash. At the same time, Deo’s light winked out and a cloud of dust rolled eerily toward her through the beam of light she directed at Deo’s location. Quickly, she covered her face and turned away. She felt grit coat the back of her neck and her exposed forearms, but she didn’t even consider rushing back upstairs. Something had happened to Deo, and nothing else mattered.
“Deo! Deo, are you hurt?”
At the sound of coughing, the fear squeezing Nita’s heart eased.
“Deo?”
“Broke my fucking light,” Deo grumbled from somewhere in the darkness.
“Just stand still and keep talking. I’m coming to get you.”
“No! There’s debris all over the floor.”
Ignoring her, Nita started forward, alternating between illuminating the ceiling above her and the floor in front of her. What looked like large chunks of lathe and plaster lay heaped about.
“What happened?” Nita called.
“Someone used a fence post for a strut and it was rotted through. A piece of the underflooring came down. Shine the light at the ceiling and stop walking. God damn it,” Deo snapped, “I’ll come to you.”
Since it made sense for Deo to walk out of darkness toward the light, rather than for her to keep pushing into darkness, Nita did as Deo requested. A minute later Deo, her dark hair and T-shirt white with dust, appeared within the circle of Nita’s light. Against the pale powder coating Deo’s face, the bright red trickle of blood that ran from her right temple down her cheek looked garish, as if it had been intentionally painted there.
“You’re hurt,” Nita said, and while her physician’s mind told her that the injury could not be serious considering that Deo was walking under her own steam and talking coherently, her stomach clenched with worry.
“A few scratches,” Deo said in disgust. “I can’t believe I was stupid enough to shake that damned strut. Fucking beginner’s mistake.”
“When I was in medical school,” Nita said quietly, “the lover of one of the residents was killed in an accident almost exactly like this.” Tentatively, she touched Deo’s cheek next to the thick red rivulet of blood. “Except in her case, a beam hit her in the back of the neck and killed her instantly.”
Deo raised her hand as if to take Nita’s, then let it fall. “Freak accidents happen. Most of the time you get a few bumps, a couple of scrapes, and you forget about it a minute later. I’m fine.”
“We’ll need to get that cleaned up and make sure you don’t need sutures.” Nita backed away, not wanting to think about the surge of panic she’d experienced when she thought Deo might have been seriously injured. It didn’t mean anything. She would have felt the same for anyone she was with.
“I want to finish going through the house.”
“Absolutely not,” Nita said with finality. “You’re already injured, plus you’re filthy. You need a shower and I need to look at your face.”
“I’m not going to get your house any dirtier than it already is, Nita.”
“Don’t be ridiculous. You know what I’m talking about.”
“And we’re here now, and I just want a quick tour of the upper floors and a peek in the attic.” Deo turned Nita toward the stairs. “Besides, the weather is supposed to clear tomorrow and I want to take a look under the eaves while it’s raining. The situation down here isn’t enough to hold up the closing, but if you’ve got a leaking roof, you want to know about it now.”
With a sigh, Nita started climbing. “Ten more minutes.”
“Twenty and you’ve got a deal.”
Against her better judgment, Nita agreed. Happily, the rest of the house was sound, and they reached the narrow stairway leading up to the widow’s walk without further incident. The sound of rain drumming on the roof was so loud, Nita was forced to lean close to Deo or shout.
“It’s pouring out there. You can save that for another day.”
“No way,” Deo said. “That’s one of the best parts of this house. Besides, I need a shower. You can stay—”
“Let’s go then,” Nita grumped. Carefully, she negotiated the twisting stairs and waited on a small landing while Deo loosened yet another rusty latch and threw open the door that led out to the railed walkway that circled the highest portion of the roof. As she stepped out into the rainy night, she gasped.
“Oh my God,” Nita whispered. “It’s gorgeous.”
The town lay spread out below them, curving along the harbor. Sailboats and yachts rocked in the harbor, their running lights sending skittering shafts of gold across the inky surface. Despite the rain, a half moon peeked from behind the cloud cover and cast its pale timeless glow over the scene. For an instant, Nita imagined herself a woman searching the sea night after night, waiting in the dark for her lover to return.
&n
bsp; Deo watched Nita take it all in, struck by the way her features softened and a sad smile played across her mouth. She was every bit as beautiful as the night.
“Glad you came up here?” Deo asked quietly.
Nita turned. “Oh yes. I think I’ll come up here every night.”
“I don’t blame you. I would too.”
“Turn your face up to the sky,” Nita said, her throat suddenly thick. Deo’s dark hair lay in tendrils over her cheeks and neck. Her body was silhouetted against the moonlit sky, strong and tight and powerful. Nita wanted to run her hands over her sculpted shoulders and down her bare arms. She wanted to slide her palms beneath the thin T-shirt and cup the soft swell of her barely perceptible breasts. She wanted, and the wanting felt good even though she knew there was no more basis to it than a primal urge programmed somewhere in the depths of her brain. She hadn’t been able to resist touching Sylvia, and she had paid for that weakness with a huge part of her heart and soul. She would not make the same mistake again.
“What?” Deo asked, trying to decipher the look on Nita’s face. For an instant she thought she had seen desire, but now she saw only sadness. Remarkably, it was the sadness that made her reach out more than the fleeting desire.
Nita held up her hand and forestalled Deo’s motion. “Shower, remember? Tilt your head back and let the rain wash you clean.”
Wondering if it could really be that simple, Deo closed her eyes and surrendered to the storm.
*
“Nelson,” Reese whispered. “You awake?”
Nelson Parker turned his head slowly on the pillow, clearly struggling to focus. His voice was raspy and faint when he spoke, a mere echo of his normally deep vibrant baritone. “Reese.”
Reese reached over the aluminum railings that separated her from him and rested her hand on his bare forearm. When he tried to raise his arm he could barely move it and his weakness struck her even more powerfully than seeing the tubes and other monitoring devices attached to and exiting his body. “How are you feeling?”
“Dog shit.”