Night Magic

by Susan Squires

  She was relieved to feel him straighten his shoulders. He swallowed and nodded. “I know it’s me. I’ll do the best I can. I can handle Tremaine Enterprises. Edwards and I can make the Breakers secure. I . . . I’ve had some ideas about that.” He shot her a worried look. “The family part? Not so sure. Did you see Lanyon today out in the yard? His hands were clenched and he wouldn’t come up to be with the rest of the family. And Tamsen? All the girlish joy has just drained right out of her. Mother would know what to do. You probably know. I’m lost.”

  “You’re not lost. You recognize the problem.” She remembered a time when he was totally oblivious to Devin’s pain over his love for Kee. “Tammy and Lanyon will respond to love. That you’re good at.”

  His face squinched up in pain. “The guy who bought his wife a house without asking her. Rushed her off to a shotgun wedding. He sounds pretty lame at relationships to me.”

  Jane pushed him gently back down on the bed, and settled herself in his lap. “You arranged for a beautiful dress for me. A private fitting no less. I loved it.” She shrugged and smiled a little ruefully. “At least once I got used to the idea. You settled my mother. That was a problem I couldn’t see my way through and you knew just what to do. You, Kemble Tremaine, are a loving man.”

  “I love you,” he said, pulling into his body more tightly. “God, how I love you, Jane.”

  “I know.”

  “Is it just genetic? Why did I not realize sooner? I’m so sorry you had to spend all that time thinking I’d never love you the way you love me.” He kissed her hair.

  “Who cares why it is? Let’s just be grateful for what we have.”

  “I feel guilty about that piece of me that’s so happy to have your love, what with Senior on life support and Mother suffering, and the Clan probably regrouping even now….”

  He’d been doing so well. She’d been glimpsing the man Kemble would be all day today, and she loved what she saw. She couldn’t let him feel guilty about becoming that man. She twisted in his arms to take his head in her hands, and made a startling discovery. Kemble had an erection. Which matched the slick tingling between her thighs exactly. How could they be aroused when they were both so exhausted?

  “Sorry,” he apologized, apparently realizing she felt his “issue.” “I know this isn’t the time or the place. It will pass.”

  He wasn’t going to make love to her.

  Maybe it was how tired she was. Or maybe something more had changed inside her than just her magic blossoming. Drew was right. She’d never confessed her love for him for all those years because she didn’t think she was worthy of being a Tremaine. She slid through the shadows in the background of the Breakers, never asking for anything, not accepting even what they wanted to give her.

  But she was special too. She had the gene. Some cosmic fate, some stars aligning, had brought her to just the place that she should be. She wanted Kemble Tremaine, and now he was hers. Maybe he could have been hers sooner if she hadn’t been so timid.

  It was time to start asking for what she wanted.

  “I love you. We are going to support this family together, Kemble Tremaine. And if that means figuring out together how to help Lanyon and Tammy, and Brina and Brian, then we’ll do that. You’ve already stepped up to the leadership of the family. And you’re going to find a way for me to go visit my mother as soon as her thirty days are up.”

  “Of course I will. And I’ll come with you. I’d never let you do that alone.”

  “I knew that. Don’t interrupt.” He looked a little startled. “Right now you are going to make slow, sweet love to me, and we are going to treasure the urge to life that sex represents. Some very frequent lovemaking will give us the strength to do what we must for the family.”

  He blinked at her and began a sexy smile. Then she saw the panic flash in his eyes again. “I don’t have a condom. I loaned my last to Devin.”

  Jane had to laugh. “Silly man. You are my husband. I am going to have your babies, and they are going to have magic in their genes, more magic than you and I have. Why would I want you to wear a condom? I’m thirty and I want to get started.”

  “Bring babies into this mess?” He pressed his lips together.

  “Life finds a way,” she whispered in his ear. “What better symbol of life to the family than a child? Besides, Maggie’s baby needs a playmate. Jesse will be too old. He needs a playmate too. Which reminds me, we need to send Mr. Edwards over to Tammy’s animal shelter and pick up Suzie the Rottweiler. I bet that will cheer Tammy up, and Jesse will love her. Now are you going to make love to me, or leave me needy and gasping here like a fish?”

  “Great metaphor, my love.” He moved in for the kiss. “I’m going to make slow, sweet love to you until you’re gasping. Very unlike a fish,” he added. He pulled her back onto the bed. “I might even make you a baby.”

  About Susan Squires

  Susan Squires is a New York Times bestselling author known for breaking the rules of romance writing. She has published five novels and a novella with Dorchester Publishing and nine and two novellas with St. Martin’s Press. Whatever her time period or subject, some element of the paranormal always creeps in. She has won multiple contests for published novels and reviewer’s choice awards. Publisher’s Weekly named Body Electric one of the most influential mass market books of 2003 and One with the Shadows, the fifth in her vampire Companion Series, a Best Book of 2007. Time for Eternity, the first in her Da Vinci time travel series, received a starred review from Publisher’s Weekly.

  Susan has a Masters in English literature from UCLA and once toiled as an executive for a Fortune 500 company. Now she lives at the beach in Southern California with her husband, Harry, a writer of supernatural thrillers, and three very active Belgian Sheepdogs, who like to help her write by putting their chins on the keyboarddddddddddddddddddddddd.

  Follow Susan on Twitter, like her Facebook page at AuthorSusanSquires or check out her website at http://www.susansquires.com

  Coming soon, Book Five in the Magic Series:

  The Magic’s In the Music

  CHAPTER ONE

  “You can’t seriously be considering turning down this role,” Greta’s friend Jax shouted over the din at Magma. Though the band was on a break, the place was not exactly ripe for intimate conversation. It was full to overflowing tonight. “Any woman in her right mind would kill for it.”

  Greta raised her brows at her friend. “Girlfriend of the superhero in a comic book reboot?” The whole place was lit with red, like the inside of a volcano she supposed. It was sure to give her a headache.

  “Hey, playing true love with Jimmy DeBrett and a franchise that will still be going when you’re forty? And a chance to kick butt. They’re gonna give you martial arts lessons, for heaven’s sake.” Jax sipped her drink. “Correction. Every woman and half the men in Hollywood want that gig. You can’t turn it down.” She giggled. Greta kind of felt bad that Jax had always dreamed about having what seemed to come so easily to Greta. And Greta didn’t even want.

  “I didn’t fight so hard for control of my life just to let my agent talk me into a new form of servitude.”

  “Uh-oh. Incoming at six o’clock.” Jax gestured with her glass.

  Greta sighed. In a place like this they weren’t likely to be the sweet, shy ones. She half turned, as though to survey the room, and caught their approach from the corner of her eye. No. Not sweet and shy. A cluster of swaggering young men moved in on her. Leather jackets, scruffy hair and scruffier boots. The one in the lead had a leer to match his three-day stubble.

  “You’re Gretchen Falk,” he accused, hooking his thumbs in his front jeans pockets.

  She gave him her sweetest smile. Why the hell did she let Jax talk her into clubbing tonight? “Yes, I am. What can I do for you?”

  He looked her up and down. Slowly. “Not what you can do for me, honey, but what I can do for you.” His voice was a gravely growl. She bet he practiced it, along with the smir
k, in front of a mirror.

  She sighed and swiveled back on her stool. “Think I’ll pass on that kind offer,” she muttered, pretty sure he couldn’t hear her over the din. She passed her glass to one of the bartenders who was setting drinks down in front of a another couple to her right. He finished and raised it to her to indicate he’d refill it.

  The hand on her shoulder made her flinch as the smirker swiveled her around. He leaned in close enough that she could smell the whiskey on his breath, but his unfocused eyes told her that whiskey wasn’t all he was on. “You don’t want to miss out on an offer like this, honey.”

  She tried to shrug him off, but he wasn’t having any of it. Damn. Maybe she needed those martial arts lessons, if she wasn’t going to use a bodyguard. “Look,” she said, “If you want autographs, fine. Show me something I can sign. Otherwise, leave me alone.”

  “But that’s just what I know you don’t want to be tonight,” the guy shouted at her. “Alone.” He grabbed her arm, right as a mountain loomed behind him and grabbed his. Make that two mountains, one on each arm.

  “Well, boys, you don’t want to be making a nuisance of yourself, do you?” The big man with the close-cropped hair asked, his voice surprisingly soft.

  “Let go of me,” the punk said. As his attention shifted, Greta wriggled off her stool, pulling the skirt of her tiny beaded dress discretely down and took a step back to stand next to Jax. The bartender was hovering.

  “I think you need to leave,” the second mountain said to the jerk. He gave a hard-eyed stare to the others in the pack. “Anybody else want to have privileges revoked?”

  They looked like sulky children, but no one stepped up to challenge the two huge men as they walked the jerk to the door. The pack dissolved into the crowd.

  “Sorry about that,” the bartender shouted. “I should have caught that earlier.”

  “If I have you to thank for calling in the cavalry, I’m more than grateful.”

  “Next martini is on the house.” All the bartenders at Magma were good-looking. He slid the drink in front of her.

  The funny thing was, he didn’t have to shout. The place had gone quiet.

  “There he is,” someone said, into the silence.

  “It’s him.”

  “The Ghost,” was hissed from several points in the room.

  Jax swiveled, then froze, her Cosmo forgotten.

  For Greta, things started to move almost in slow motion. She felt a tug, almost physical from behind her. She turned like she was moving through viscous liquid.

  The man who strode through the crowd had shaggy dark hair, a long leather jacket and stubble of at least three days. But that’s where the similarity to the jerk who’d just been tossed out ended. This guy was no poseur. He couldn’t care less about the crowd. He didn’t even spare them a glance. The fierce look in his eyes was all for the red-washed stage. He strode toward it like he was moving through hell toward redemption. Greta noticed that he carried a backpack. It swung carelessly by his side.

  “Get the guys on the board and the lights.” A hefty man in his late forties hissed to someone in the shadows. Club manager? There was some scurrying.

  Greta was having a hard time catching her breath. What was with that? Yeah, the guy was a looker, but she’d been hanging out with beautiful men since she was twelve, and they never affected her this way.

  The crowd didn’t yell at the newcomer or jeer. They backed out of his way, respectfully.

  “It’s him,” Jax whispered, as the guy hopped up on the stage and surveyed the instruments abandoned there, his back to the crowd. No one challenged him, though Greta could see the band who owned the instruments had stuck their heads back in from the greenroom where they’d been taking their break. He glanced to the keyboards, but then settled on a guitar, a candy-apple red one that glinted in the dim light. He picked it up, flipped a few switches on the amp, and corrected the tuning. Then, back still to the audience, he strummed a chord.

  That chord seemed to reach right down into your guts and quiver around there. Greta found it almost shocking. As the echo died away, the man on stage threw his head back and began to play in earnest. It was no song she knew. She’d be willing to bet nobody knew that song. The cascading notes were angry, but with a sobbing sound below them that vibrated with sadness in your lungs. After a while the notes started to soar, only to be dashed to earth again and again by evil riffs. It was as if the man was ripping his soul out with that music. It went on and on. Nobody fidgeted. Nobody talked. Nobody got up to go to the bathroom. They just listened, mesmerized. She’d be willing to bet they all knew they’d never hear something like this again.

  He turned around to the audience after a while, but he wasn’t seeing anybody in the room. His face was transformed into a sliding mask of emotion as he pulled those notes out and sent them skittering, or thundering, or sidling slyly into the room.

  When the last resounding chord had crashed into silence, he stood with head down as the place erupted in applause and shouts of “Ghost.” Greta felt like a linen suit in Arizona in the summertime, or a horse that was rode hard and put away wet. She came to herself and grabbed for her martini. Her hand was shaking.

  What the hell was that?

  When she turned back, the two security guards who had saved her bacon along with several others were converging on the stage.

  “Wasn’t he wonderful?” Jax was saying from somewhere far away. “I can’t believe we saw him. He could have been at a dozen clubs tonight, but I just had a feeling it’d be Magma. He hasn’t been here in three weeks. It was time.”

  The bouncers were almost at the stage. “They aren’t going to throw him out, are they?” Greta asked, as if Jax would know such a thing.

  “Oh, no. He just doesn’t like to be touched. They’ll escort him to the bar, and he’ll drink for free all night if he wants. He doesn’t talk to anybody. And then somehow he slips out without anybody knowing it, and just… disappears. That’s why they call him the Ghost.”

  “Who is he? I mean he’s got a real name, doesn’t he?”

  Jax’s eyes were big as she turned toward Greta. “Nobody knows.”

  Greta watched as the Ghost set aside the guitar in its stand and jumped down into the empty center of the circle the bouncers had formed. He seemed to stagger. The phalanx made its way over to the bar. People were shouting his name now (well, to be fair, his name probably wasn’t actually Ghost) and pandemonium had broken out across the club. Greta glanced at her watch. He’d played for nearly an hour. Wait staff fanned out taking drink orders. The din was back in spades.

  “No wonder he drinks for free,” she shouted at Jax. “This place is minting money with everyone hoping he’ll show up.”

  “He’s been doing this for a couple of months. Business is up all over the club scene.” Jax’s short dark hair flipped as she swung to see where the phalanx would land at the bar. No wonder she’d refused the table they’d been offered. And that explained the drape neckline of the pink dress she was wearing that clearly showed most of her breasts. That wasn’t like Jax.

  But she wasn’t alone. The pheromones were hanging heavy in the air as everyone along the bar, male and female, watched the phalanx approach. She could catch only glimpses of the Ghost behind the huge bouncers. He didn’t look up, just shuffled along with his striding escort.

  Damn it. What was with this guy? Greta was not one to fawn over anyone, but the combination of all that talent and torment, and that tug she’d felt from the first moment he came in was making her….wet. And she didn’t like being that out of control.

  Oh, sweet heavens. They were coming down to this end of the bar. The two front bouncers broke away and politely asked the two guys to her right if they might be provided a seat elsewhere in order to make room for the club’s guest. Drinks would be on the house. To Greta’s surprise, neither complained. They just took their drinks and followed the bouncers away, staring all the time at the man now revealed clearly in the c
enter of the circle. The bodyguards were huge, all of them, but the Ghost wasn’t little. He was over six feet by several inches, and he had a pair of shoulders on him as revealed by a dark Henley knit shirt. His shaggy dark hair was wet with sweat. He looked…dazed and a little lost.

  He took the far bar stool, the one in the corner. a bouncer laid his long leather coat and his pack on the seat next to him, almost reverently. Greta felt his presence like it was somewhere down in her bones.

  “Thanks,” he said, as though he was someplace far away.

  The bouncers, except for two, melted away into the crowd. Those two turned out to face the crowd, which was edging closer to get a look. A woman yelled, “That was really good,” over the noise of the band. But the man they all called Ghost didn’t acknowledge her.

  “Scotch,” he said. “Old. A lot of it. Neat. ”

  “Yes, sir,” the bartender yelled. He pulled out a bottle of Lafroig 15. “Will this do, sir?”

  The Ghost nodded. “Yeah.” He hunched over the glass and downed it. “Might as well leave the bottle.”

  The bartender didn’t blink an eye. He set the bottle on the bar in the empty space between Greta and the guy. “It’s all yours.”

  Greta needed about three martinis herself. That might be the only way to numb the electric reaction her body seemed to be having to the man one barstool away. In the background, the regular band for the evening must have picked up their instruments, because their music blared out over the din of the crowd. It sounded tinny and predictable by comparison. Boy, she’d sure hate to have to follow this guy’s act.

  Greta clutched her martini, trying not to sneak glances at her neighbor, but she could see in her peripheral vision that he downed another glass of scotch. She felt like some kind of schoolgirl, deliberately not looking at the object of her attentions, and she hadn’t felt like that since way before she’d stopped being a schoolgirl. Time to get out of here.