He had felt Gillian’s fear and Carnes’s rage before he kicked in the door. Gillian’s shield nearly cost him his balance. He should have been prepared for her shield. Gillian wasn’t naive enough not to have thrown up a couple of good shields before entering the bar.
With a weary sigh he rubbed his fingers against his pounding temples, where a headache was forming. What in the hell was he going to do? He couldn’t very well allow Gillian to continue along her chosen career path. Maybe it would have been better if she had stayed a social worker. Visions of the grainy newspaper photo of the dead social worker who had taken Gillian’s place changed his mind.
The easy way out of this situation would be to scan Gillian’s feelings. He could find out what had motivated her this morning without even asking. Hell, he could probably pick up an idea on how to get her to change careers. But it would be wrong. Gillian would know what he had done. It was impossible to read her without her knowing it. What little trust they had between them would be shattered, and along with it, any hope of making this marriage work.
What they needed was a good long talk. He followed her into the kitchen and hesitated for a fraction of a second before closing the door. Instead of finding a defeated, subdued Gillian awaiting him, he found a frustrated wife slamming a cabinet door.
“Where in the world do you keep your coffee?” she demanded.
Mason frowned. So much for calmness. He glanced at his coffeemaker. The filter basket was removed and Gillian had managed to locate the filters. But not the coffee. His wife seemed desperate to have a cup of coffee and he could use one himself. “Sit down and I’ll make it.”
“I can manage to brew a pot of coffee, Mason.”
“I’m sure you can.” He walked over to the refrigerator and pulled out an airtight container full of coffee beans and set it on the counter. He then reached into one of the bottom cabinets and pulled out a coffee bean grinder.
“You grind your own beans?”
“It tastes better.” He went about ignoring her and making the pot of coffee while meticulously cleaning up after himself.
Gillian followed every move he made while perched on one of the bar stools. “How about if I make us some breakfast?”
He glanced at the clock on the wall. “How about if we make lunch instead?” Without waiting for her response he pulled a loaf of bread from a bread box and started to unload a couple of containers from the refrigerator. “I have some chicken salad and ham and cheese. Or would you prefer a salad?” A ripe tomato joined the assortment on the counter. He ignored the rumbling in his stomach and casually reached for two plates. A nice sensible lunch seemed like a reasonable, calm approach. After all, he was a reasonable man, or so he kept telling himself. His bride was giving him plenty of ammunition to doubt himself on that score.
Gillian slid off the stool and unwrapped the loaf of bread. “Chicken salad sounds great.”
Twenty minutes later they were on their second cup of coffee and the sandwiches were gone. Mason set his cup down and casually asked, “Want to explain to me why you left?”
She shrugged. “Business.”
Mason shook his head. “Wrong answer, try again.”.
“I had to ask Carnes a few questions and this morning seemed like a good opportunity. The Tasty Squeeze is jammed seven nights a week and I like to avoid crowds whenever possible.” She took a sip of her coffee and lowered the cup. “Besides, he has a bouncer at night that would make Arnold Schwarzenegger look like a midget.”
“Do I want to hear how you know all that?”
“No. Besides, I won’t be making that mistake twice.”
Mason wasn’t positive but he thought he felt one of the hairs on his head turn gray. “What mistake?”
Gillian glanced around the kitchen. “Did I tell you what a lovely home you have?”
“It’s our home now, and stop stalling.”
“I’m not stalling.” Gillian rose and carried her coffee cup over to the dishwasher.
“I don’t want you going there again.” He might as well lay his cards out on the table.
Gillian found a bag of chips and popped one into her mouth. “Don’t worry. I don’t need to see Carnes again.”
“I was referring to that entire district down there, not just Carnes’s place.” He stood up and placed his cup next to hers in the dishwasher. It seemed funny to see the two cups side by side along with their plates. They seemed to be paired.
“No can do, Mason. A lot of my clients’ unsupporting fathers hang out in that area. It’s one of the first places I look.”
“Then start chasing a better class of deadbeat fathers.”
Gillian chuckled and shook her head. “A better class of deadbeat fathers? Is there such a thing? The women I represent can’t afford fancy lawyers and private detectives to hunt down the fathers of their children. The system is so backed up, these kids would graduate from high school before the state had time to track down their fathers. It’s me or nobody.”
“Then maybe you should look into a career change.” He hadn’t wanted to bring up this argument so soon in their marriage. He would have preferred to wait a couple of weeks so he could learn more about his bride and possibly have a few suggestions to offer. But she was the one to push the issue with her crazy stunt this morning.
“A career change?” Gillian’s expression turned hard and her back looked as if it would snap at any moment.
Mason wondered how much he really wanted this marriage to work. If he pushed the issue, there appeared to be a great possibility that it would be over before it began. But if he sat back and allowed Gillian to repeat her performance of this morning, there was no telling what kind of trouble she could wind up in.
“It was just a suggestion,” Mason said. He’d worry about pushing the issue some other time. For now he wanted the marriage to last at least twenty-four hours, so when the Council cornered him later he could say he tried.
“A suggestion, huh?”
He watched as she popped another chip into her mouth and then slowly licked the salt off her lower lip. Heat streaked through his body as memories of last night came flooding back. What that sharp little tongue had done to his body should have been illegal.
“What was so important that you had to talk to Carnes this morning? Couldn’t it have waited until tomorrow?”
Gillian munched on another chip while contemplating the foil bag in her hand. After a moment she seemed to come to some sort of decision. “I—” The ringing of the front doorbell stopped her explanation.
“I’ll get it,” Mason muttered as he walked out of the room. Just when he was finally going to get to the bottom of things, someone had the gall to interrupt. Who would be insensitive enough to bother the newlyweds? Whoever it was, he just might take all this bottled frustration out on him.
He opened the door and glanced around. No one was there. Strange. He was about to close the door when he noticed the elegantly wrapped box sitting on the doormat. He picked it up and carried it inside. Someone probably forgot to leave it at the reception yesterday and had dropped it off. There wasn’t a card on top. It must be inside the box.
Mason carried the lightweight six-inch-square box back to the kitchen and Gillian. “Someone must have forgotten…”
Gillian took one look at the box in Mason’s hands and lost all the color in her face. “Get rid of it, Mason. Quick!”
Mason frowned at the box. “What are you talking about?”
“The box.” The bag of chips slipped from her fingers and potato chips sprayed across the floor. “Take it back outside.”
“Why?”
He started to shake the box but halted the second Gillian screamed, “Don’t!” She reached out and gently took the box from his fingers. “Did you see who left it?”
“Gillian, what in the hell is going on?” He didn’t like the fear that had sprung into her eyes. She looked ready to faint.
“Can’t you feel it?”
Mason scanned
the box and took an involuntary step back from the rage and hatred radiating from it. “What in the hell?” He snatched the box back out of Gillian’s hands. He didn’t want her near the thing.
“Careful!”
He gave her a curious look before setting the box on the corner of the table and quietly asked, “Do you want to tell me how you knew to scan this box?” Scanning wasn’t something warlocks and witches did constantly. Not only was it a drain on their powers, but it bordered on being paranoid.
“I scan everything now.” She kept her gaze glued to the box and its silver bow.
“Why?”
Gillian’s gaze shot up to his. “One of the deadbeat fathers that I tracked didn’t appreciate it. He’s been sending me some threatening letters.”
“How many?”
“I received the fifth one three days before the wedding.” She shrugged before giving him a small, crooked smile. “The first four came to my office, the fifth to my apartment.”
“Any reason why you didn’t tell me, or was this the ‘business’ you were handling when I questioned you in my chambers?”
“This is the business that had me rattled for the past couple of weeks.”
“Along with the wedding?”
“Yes, along with our wedding.” She placed both hands onto the box and concentrated for a full minute. “Nothing but hatred.” She lowered her hands. “Each time I only pick up the malice and the burning need for revenge. I can’t picture the face.”
“Want me to try?” He thought he was handling this very calmly, considering his gut was on fire. Someone was threatening his wife and she never bothered to mention it.
“Would you? Maybe you can see something I can’t.”
Mason gave her a strange look before placing both his hands on the box and closing his eyes. His fingers trembled with the hatred emanating from the box. Dark, twisted thoughts of retaliation were the only thing he could detect. Revenge against his wife. He dropped his hands. “Sorry. I can’t see a face.”
“Thanks for trying.”
He gave her a hard glare. Didn’t she realize he would have read the box no matter what? She was his wife now, and he protected what was his. “Do you want to open it, or should I?”
“I will.” She removed the bow and carefully peeled off each piece of tape. “It’s expensive paper.”
Mason continued to glare at the box, ready to raise any shield necessary to protect his wife. He watched as Gillian’s fingers shook against the white-and-silver paper. The white cardboard box looked innocent, but he knew it wasn’t.
Gillian set the paper aside. She took a deep breath and carefully started to remove the lid. She glanced inside and quickly dropped the lid back onto the box. “Yuck!”
Mason reached for the lid and slowly removed it. He stared down at the box and cringed. Five three-inch-long black leeches were wiggling around on the white tissue paper covering the bottom of the box. They appeared to be searching for food. “Lovely.” His fingers reached into the box and pulled out the card tucked into the corner. He read the neatly typed card and then passed it to Gillian.
Does the word BLOODSUCKER sound familiar? Maybe one night you’ll wake up with these in your bed and get an idea what it feels like.
Gillian read the card with silver bells imprinted on its corner and shivered. “He doesn’t sound too happy, does he?”
Mason noticed how she kept her gaze away from the box and couldn’t blame her. Leeches weren’t the most attractive creatures. “Does this have anything to do with Carnes?”
“I ran a list of all the men I helped get court orders against. Carnes was one, and he struck me as the type of guy who would pull a number like this.”
“Is he the one doing it?” If so, Mason would personally see that Carnes never saw daylight without the benefit of steels bars for the next twenty years.
“No.” Gillian frowned at the potato chips scattered across the floor as if she just noticed them for the first time. “He’s still sore and mad at me, but he isn’t the sender. Where do you keep your broom?”
Mason walked over to the small closet where his cleaning lady kept all the cleaning supplies. He handed Gillian the broom before picking up the box and its wrapping. “I’ll get rid of this.”
She bent down and picked up the foil bag and tossed it into the garbage can. “I’d appreciate that.”
Mason carefully carried the box, the wrapping paper and the bow out the door. He glanced over his shoulder to make sure Gillian wasn’t looking out the window, then opened the trunk of his car and placed the box inside. Later he would take it to a police detective he knew, to see if they could get a fingerprint and a name to match. Now he needed to continue this talk with Gillian. She might have explained why she tracked down Carnes this morning. But she hadn’t explained why she felt compelled to leave his bed to do it.
He entered the kitchen and glanced around. Gillian and the spilled chips were no longer in sight. Couldn’t she stay put for more than two minutes? He headed for the hallway wondering where she had disappeared.
Gillian stood in the middle of the guest bedroom and wondered where to start. All her clothes on hangers were already hanging next to Mason’s in his closet, but everything else was packed away or scattered throughout the room or the attached bathroom. The first thing she needed to do was unpack so she would feel more settled, and so that the next time she went looking for underwear, it wouldn’t take ten minutes to find it. She also wanted to avoid Mason for a while. She had a feeling he wasn’t done questioning her on her behavior this morning and she wasn’t in the mood.
Her nerves were frayed. What she needed now was some down time. Everything was happening too fast: the threatening letters, the wedding, Mason’s lovemaking, her confrontation with Carnes, and now a box full of leeches.
She shivered, forcing the vision of bloodsucking leeches from her mind, and reached for the first cardboard box to unpack.
“So this is where you’re hiding,” Mason said.
Gillian glanced up from the box she had dug into. “I’m not hiding.” She waved a fistful of socks at him. “I’m unpacking.”
“Need any help?”
She looked at the boxes in front of her, then at Mason. “You could carry these into our bedroom.” Our bedroom! It sounded so intimate. So loving. “You said I could use the other bureau in there, right?”
“It’s all yours.” He picked up the first box. “It’s been empty since the day I purchased the set.” He headed out the door.
Gillian frowned as she pulled another box closer and unfolded the flaps to peer inside. What kind of man left a bureau empty for years? He had known they were getting married for thirteen years now, but still, it seemed a little odd that he would have left the triple dresser with the huge mirror attached to it empty all these years. She watched as Mason returned for the second box and wondered if the half of his closet that had been empty last Thursday night had also been unused for years.
When Mason returned for the third box, she picked up the fourth and followed him into their bedroom. “Thanks.” She started to unpack the boxes and neatly place everything into the bureau. Out of the corner of her eye she kept a watch on Mason, who was sitting on the bed observing every move she made, as if fascinated by her choice of clothes.
Mason’s voice broke the strained silence. “What made you decide to go into social work?”
She fumbled a sweater she was holding and had to refold the garment before placing it into the bottom drawer. “I like helping people.” She gave him an amused glance before stacking the carton she just emptied onto another empty box. “The sight of blood makes me sick, so that left out medicine. I’m not talented with my hands, so building homes to house the poor was out. I don’t like cooking enough to do it eight hours a day, so I couldn’t feed the poor.” She started in on the next box. “So that left our social system. I’m great at paperwork.”
“Why did you leave it then?”
Gillian blush
ed. Mason’s gaze seemed riveted to the stack of colorful panties in her hands. She dropped the silky garments into the drawer and then chastised herself for the act. Mason was now her husband, and after last night there wasn’t an inch of her body the man hadn’t seen, touched or kissed. What was a dozen silk panties to that?
“I left because I was tired of butting my head up against a wall of red tape. There were forms for this, applications for that and waiting lists that nearly broke my heart.” She placed a pile of bras next to the panties. “One day I ran across one of the mothers who I had helped get training and a job. She worked herself off welfare and had every right to be proud of that fact. I was so proud of her.”
“What happened?”
“She told me she was going to quit her job and go back on welfare. It seems she could make more money being on welfare than working a forty-hour week and paying a baby-sitter for her three children. Her ex-husband had left his job with no forwarding address and his child support had stopped. She could no longer make ends meet without that support check.”
“So that’s how you started chasing down deadbeat fathers.”
She closed the drawer and looked at Mason. “You’ve seen the women and children I help. I’m their last hope. They put in applications for child-support enforcement services and have been relegated to someone’s back burner. The fathers aren’t white-collar workers who pick the kids up every other weekend. They’re pond scum who hide from their children and their responsibilities.”
“The law should be tracking down these men, Gillian. Not you.”
The way he said the word law, one would think it was a godsend instead of being a backed-up, red-taped bunch of bureaucrats usually chasing their tails around in circles. “The law can’t do it all, Mason. The numbers are just too overwhelming.”
He stood up and walked toward her. “But why you?”
“Why not me?”
Mason’s fingers reached out and tenderly brushed a strand of her hair away from her cheek. “Is it worth the threats and the possibility of danger? Is it worth constantly looking over your shoulder and scanning everything that comes into your life?” His finger traced her lower lip. “Is it worth gift-wrapped leeches?”
His Chosen Bride Page 10