by Craig, Emma
He made a funny face, as if he were thinking about his cockeyed Mount of Apollo and its implications. “Yeah, I guess I’m not surprised, either. In fact, I reckon it makes sense. I could be a business manager without much trouble at all. I’ve even thought about it.”
Wouldn’t that be nice? Sophie thought at once. To have the capable, levelheaded Gabriel Caine overseeing their business?
Good God, what was she thinking?
Snatching her wandering brain back from the pit over which it teetered and directing it to its proper business, Sophie said, “Yes, it shows here.” She tapped his palm. “Nowhere,” she said pressing the fleshy spot beneath his pinkie, “we see your Mount of Mercury. Yours is developed quite fully, I notice.”
“Is that good?” He sounded doubtful.
“It’s not bad. It means you’re quick-witted and express yourself well.”
“Is that so?”
“Mmmm. You needn’t sound so proud of yourself. I’m sure you inherited both qualities from your father. If he went around saving the world and its occupants from eternal damnation, he must have had a glib tongue.”
“And you needn’t sound so sarcastic. My father was a good man, even if he did believe in a few ideas that I consider hogwash.”
Which pretty much expressed Sophie’s attitude about her own father. Interesting. “Yes, well, let’s move along here.”
“Let’s get to the interesting part. Isn’t there something about passion and lust in there somewhere?”
Sophie found herself suddenly reluctant to look at him again. She also discovered herself getting warm and squirmy. Her own passionate, lusty nature had been her downfall, and she could barely contain her eagerness to see what Gabriel’s palm said about his. If they were each as passionate as the other, the rest of her quest to find and kill Ivo Hardwick might at least be interesting.
Mercy, she wished she could fan herself. She wouldn’t give Gabriel the satisfaction of knowing he’d disconcerted her, however, and merely said, “We’re getting there. There are many aspects to a person’s life other than lust and passion. Aspects that endure longer and are more important.” She added that last part with a smug bite to her voice that she didn’t necessarily feel.
“Maybe. But I figure you might as well enjoy the fun stuff while you can. After all, a person’s body is only young once.”
“Yes.” She felt sad all at once, thinking of Joshua, who would be young forever. “Yes, I suppose that’s true.”
“All right. Go on. What else does my palm tell you about me? So far, you know, you haven’t predicted anything. All you’ve done is tell me about myself, which I could have done.”
She tutted, trying to get her sense of humor back. Joshua clung to her mental processes, as he’d clung to her in life, and the task was a hard one. She concentrated on Gabriel’s hand, and began to feel a little better. She poked the space below Gabriel’s middle finger. “Now here,” she said, “your Mount of Saturn lies fallow. You see? There’s no mound there.”
He leaned over and stared at his palm. “Holy God, what does that mean?”
She laughed, genuinely diverted and glad for the lightening of her own spirits. “You needn’t be worried, Gabriel. That only means that you’re neither a drunken sot nor a disagreeable sober-sides.”
“Whew.” He glanced up at her and grinned. “You had me worried there for a minute.”
“Indeed. As well you should be, I’m sure.” She poked the spot again.
“However, if you had a large and fleshy mound here, you would probably be a morbid, reclusive individual. Obviously, you aren’t.”
“True, true.”
“And if it were large and hard to the touch, you’d probably be a disagreeable, hard-headed person. Now that, I must say, wouldn’t have surprised me.”
“I’m not disagreeable. I’m charming. You’re the disagreeable one.”
Oh, Lord, he was right. She smiled sweetly. “I do try to be.” With a flutter of her eyelashes, she went back to studying his palm. She was gratified by his laugh.
Now came the tricky part. “All right.” She feigned aggravated forbearance. “I suppose we must move on to the Mount of Venus.”
“Is this the good part?”
“They’re all good parts,” she said severely.
“I don’t know. When I’m alone with you, I think this one is apt to be the most interesting.”
She glanced at him sharply. “None of that, Gabriel Caine. This is serious business.”
“Balderdash.”
“Hmmm. Well, you paid, so you’re going to get it.”
“I wish that were true.”
She smacked his wrist. “Will you stop that? I have to concentrate.”
He grinned evilly. “I’m just too much of a man for you, aren’t I, Sophie? You want me. Admit it.”
Never. No matter how right she feared he was. “We’re getting down to business now, so I ask that you be serious.”She spoke in her most aloof tone. “Let’s look at your Mount of Venus.”
“Let’s.”
She wanted to sigh, but didn’t dare. She wished he’d just let her speak and be done with it. But no. He was going to make it difficult for her. Of course. No surprise there. She bent to her task and pretended she wasn’t more interested than she wanted to be. His Mount of Venus was as well developed as she’d expected it to be. She waited a few seconds while she tried to think of unprovocative words with which to express her findings.
She pressed the base of his thumb. “All right. You obviously have a zest for life and appreciate its infinite variety.”
“You’ve got that right.”
“But,” she added with some amazement, “you’re not a blatant sensualist. You live within limits.”
“You sound shocked.”
She gave him a short glare. “I am.”
“I’m not as bad as you think I am, Sophie.”
“I already know that’s not true.”
“What does your Mount of Venus show?”
“We aren’t talking about me.” She was getting testy. This wasn’t going well anymore, and she wanted it to end.
“Hogwash. I want to see your palm.”
She snatched her hand away and put it behind her back.”You leave me alone, Gabriel Caine.”
He watched her, those brilliant eyes of his twinkling like stars, for what seemed like an eternity. Then he shrugged and sat back, leaving his hand, palm up, on the table. “Never mind. I’ll find out all about you one of these days.”
She sniffed.
“Oh, I will, Sophie. I promise you that. I’m a determined fellow, remember?”
“I’m determined, too.”
“Yeah, but I’m bigger than you are.”
“You’d never force a woman.” She said it scornfully, because she knew it to be true. Then she wished she hadn’t said it at all.
“I won’t have to force you.”
“This is preposterous.” She started to rise, but he forestalled her with a quick, snake-quick extension of his arm, grabbing her wrist.
“No, you don’t. I’ve got—let me see here.” Still holding on to her wrist, he withdrew a silver pocket watch he’d inherited from his maternal grandfather from his vest pocket and squinted at it. “Twenty minutes left.”
“Twenty minutes? But that’s longer than—”
“I paid for two appointments. I get a whole hour.”
She sank back into the chair. “You would have.”
He only grinned.
“All right, but you have to sit still and promise to stop being so—so—”
“Tantalizing?” he suggested.
“Ludicrous, was more what I was thinking.”
“I don’t believe you.”
She huffed and tipped her head so that she was again leaning over his palm. He lowered his head, too, and soon the tops of their heads were almost touching. Smoothing her fingers over his palm, she said, “We really ought to compare your two hands. You’re right-
handed.”
“Ah, you noticed.”
She clucked. “Of course, I noticed. This is my business.”
“Hmmm.” He sounded as if he knew very well that she hadn’t noticed because it was her business, but because she was interested. And he was probably right, damn him.
Nevertheless, he placed his left hand on the table, palm up, for her to compare with his right. Goodness, he had interesting hands. Sophie thought it was most unfair of him to be utterly fascinating in every detail. With an inward sigh, she lifted both of his hands and gazed into them, comparing the lines of each. “You don’t need anyone to prod you into doing what needs to be done.”
He didn’t speak.
“Your life’s achievements thus far don’t match your life’s potential, but there are clear indications that this will change.”
“What was it that poet said? The saddest words are ‘it might have been’?”
She gave him a sharp glance, but could read nothing in his expression. “Yes, well, it doesn’t appear from here that you’ll experience that particular sadness, although so far, you haven’t achieved anywhere near your potential.”
“Potential,” repeated Gabriel, as if the word tasted bad.
She laid his left hand back on the tabletop and stared closely at his right. He had a pronounced Girdle of Venus, but she was reluctant to point it out since he’d undoubtedly make some kind of suggestive comment. Her hand began to tingle where it touched his, but she didn’t release it.
His Line of Destiny tantalized her. It was so distinct and clear. Not like hers, which was broken in two—just like her. Of course, hers picked up again, but it was linked with something else she hadn’t been able to put a finger on yet. A faint alarm stirred within her. Perhaps she was linked with Gabriel Caine? Is that what her Line of Destiny foretold?
No. That was too absurd.
Yet she couldn’t stop staring at Gabriel’s palm and thinking—and wondering.
Almost against her will, she looked at the line indicating the possibility of marriage and children. She was again surprised. Indeed, she was almost shocked. There, as if the Almighty had carved it out of granite, was the deepest, firmest marriage line she’d ever seen. And children. Good heavens, Sophie could hardly feature Gabriel Caine as a father. Yet his palm indicated great and abiding happiness in family and love.
Which again showed how futile all of this palm reading and card reading was. Her own marriage and family line showed the same things, and look what had happened to her.
Without her being aware of it, silence had filled the room during the past several minutes. Silence and a sweet fragrance, almost like the incense her aunt Juniper loved so well. Sophie lifted Gabriel’s palm closer to the lamp, which glowed a soft rose under its cranberry globe and made his hand look perfect, as if it had been sculpted by Michelangelo centuries earlier.
“What do you see there?” he asked, his voice not breaking the spell so much as blending into it.
“Interesting,” she murmured.
She was neither alarmed nor surprised when Gabriel’s hand kept lifting, without her prompting, and cupped her cheek. Her own hand covered his, and she responded to the faint pressure of his fingers and lifted her head to look into his eyes. Oh, his eyes. They were the most wonderful eyes she’d ever seen.
“You’re a very beautiful woman, Sophie,” Gabriel said, his voice a whisper that brushed the back of her hand and made gooseflesh rise on her arms.
She couldn’t speak. The room had become thick with something deliciously seductive.
“What’s your story, I wonder,” he went on. “I know you won’t tell me.”
She shook her head the tiniest bit, and very slowly.
“But I want to know, and I will know. Some day.”
Again, she shook her head. Oh, those eyes of his were wicked. They drew her like a siren’s song, and made her feel as if all she had to do to achieve lifelong peace was succumb to their lure.
She knew better.
Knowing better didn’t seem to be helping at the moment. Doing so without her compliance, her face drew closer to his as if compelled by a force stronger than her. Or him. Or the both of them together.
“Sophie,” he whispered.
When his lips covered hers, Sophie felt as if the one thing she’d been missing all her life had just been given to her. She felt complete. A sensation of fullness engulfed her, of happiness at all odds with her situation and her life until now. This was one perfect instant in time, and she wished she could die now because she knew, even though her thought processes had ceased functioning, that life would never be this sweet again.
He deepened the kiss, his warm tongue moistening her lips before it gently pressed between them and entered her mouth. Sophie writhed slightly in her chair. The sweet fragrance she’d barely noticed a few minutes earlier seemed to have filled the room. It wasn’t cloying or sickly, but beautiful. Perfect. Alluring. She didn’t know what the fragrance was—sandalwood and jasmine and gardenias and orange blossoms and all the sweet things in the world combined.
“Sweet Jesus,” Gabriel murmured, and he stood up, breaking the kiss. Sophie blinked up at him, fuddled. He didn’t give her time to recover or become embarrassed, but with two great strides, came around the table and lifted her out of her chair and clasped her in his arms.
Never in her life had she experienced anything like this.
“I want you, Sophie. I want you.”
His voice grated in the air, displacing a little of the fragrance and adding something smoky and dark to the atmosphere. Whatever it was he added, it fit in somehow. Absolutely. Sophie didn’t say a word. There was nothing to say. The moment was immaculate all by itself. She felt the hardness of his masculinity pressing against her thigh, and relished the knowledge that he did want her. Badly. As she wanted him.
“Sophie, dear, do you—oh!”
Sophie felt drugged when Gabriel released her. She staggered back a step, and was only prevented from falling over by Gabriel’s strong arm, which held her upright. Aunt Juniper stood at the curtain separating the two halves of the parlor, her hand clutching the drape, her eyes wide and staring.
“Oh, my goodness, I didn’t mean to interrupt,” Juniper twittered.
“Only I began to smell that odd, sweet smell, Sophie. The one that means there’s true magic in the . . .”
Sophie glanced up at Gabriel, who looked as if he’d been caught poaching on the king’s preserve. He licked his lips, shook himself all over, and recovered. Damn him. He would.
“I beg your pardon, Miss Juniper. I reckon Miss Sophie and I got a little carried away in here. It was my fault,” he added chivalrously. If Sophie had been in a less muddled condition, she’d have snorted.
Juniper shook her head. “I do wish I hadn’t interrupted. You two were meant for each other, you know.”
Gabriel gazed blankly at her.
Sophie, trying with all her fuzzed strength to compose herself, spat out, “Tripe!”
Chapter Nine
“But, Sophie, I mean it.”
“I know you do, Aunt Juniper.” Sophie stuffed her crystal ball into its red velvet sleeve and yanked the red velvet drawstrings up violently.
“You are meant for each other. I knew it the moment I saw Mr. Caine on the train.”
“Tripe,” Sophie said for the fourth or fifth time.
Juniper sighed and tidied her deck of Tarot cards. She was using her specially painted deck this evening. Anything to give the natives a thrill, Sophie thought cynically.
Oh, that kiss! She paused in her stuffing and yanking and tidying and shut her eyes for a moment as remembered sensations washed over her.
It wasn’t fair. Nothing about this whole situation was fairway had Gabriel Caine come into her life? And why now, of all times, if he had to come into it at all?
Juniper stamped her little foot, startling Sophie into opening her eyes. She picked up her own Tarot deck—she’d bought hers from an occul
tist in Saint Louis. It was nowhere near as fine as Juniper’s, and Sophie didn’t care—and jammed it into her traveling kit. Juniper had embroidered the kit with occult symbols and signs of the Zodiac. Sophie considered it merely another trapping of her trade.
“You know as well as I do that the mystical incense doesn’t show up for just any old reason, Sophie Madrigal! There was real magic in the air tonight, and it was generated by you and Mr. Caine. Together.”
Perceiving there would be no arguing with Juniper on this subject—or, rather, that if she argued, she’d be doing so all night—Sophie said, “Very well. Mr. Caine and I make magic together. Let’s go to bed.”
Unfortunately, what Juniper said was the truth. Sophie wished it weren’t, and had no idea how she was going to fight it until she’d achieved her goal. Fight it she must, however, and she’d figure out some way to do it.
“Oh, Sophie.” Juniper sounded close to despair. “I wish life hadn’t damaged you so badly.”
“It wasn’t life,” Sophie ground out. “It was Ivo Hardwick. And I’ll soon take care of him.”
Juniper moaned and fluttered through the door of the parlor behind Sophie. Sophie was neither happy nor unhappy to see Gabriel there, sitting next to Dmitri, chatting as if the kiss they’d shared hadn’t been the most shattering event of his life. Which, she thought sourly, it unquestionably hadn’t been. She and Gabriel might make magic together—according to Juniper—but Sophie was apparently the only one who felt it.
Which figured. Sometimes Sophie thought life had been out to get her from the moment of her birth.
Gabriel rose, as did Dmitri, but before anyone could speak, a tall man strode toward Sophie. He had a fatuous smile on his face, although he was a fairly handsome specimen of the gender. He looked vaguely familiar.
Ah. Yes. Sophie remembered him. He’d come in earlier in the evening, accompanied by his wife, a plain, mousy woman, who had obviously worshiped her husband. Sophie’d told them a lot of bilge about their happy future together and how strong and smart their children would be.
It pained her, but she smiled at him, trying as she did so to recall his name. Oh, yes. She remembered now. Patterson.