Tommie sighed, then, sliding her hands over me as she took a step back, raking her fingers through her hair. She shrugged. “Just a minute,” she muttered loudly, then cleared her throat, looking to me as she raised a single brow and crossed her arms over her chest.
I cleared my throat, too, my hands rising up to my hair. But nothing had happened. We’d just kissed. I pressed my fingers to my lips—they’d probably be bruised in the morning. I probably looked freshly kissed.
But that was okay. It was just Gwen at the door. Gwen would understand.
And I shouldn’t feel guilty about anything. Because there was nothing between Kane and me.
I was beginning to realize that there never had been.
I squared my shoulders, walked to the door and opened it.
Gwen’s eyes became round as she glanced from me to Tommie, further back in the room. “Hi… I’m sorry to disturb you?” she asked, her head to the side. Whether she was wondering if she was sorry or if she’d actually disturbed us, I wasn’t sure, but a smile flickered across Gwen’s face before she tilted her head to the side, folding her arms. “Um…Rose?”
I shook my head, bit my lip and went back into the room to retrieve my purse, to remove my cell phone charger out of the wall and take my phone. It hadn’t been long enough for the phone to charge, but I needed to talk to Gwen now. “Thank you for your help,” I told Tommie, pausing in the doorway for a long moment.
She shrugged elegantly, leaning against the wall as she watched me go, her expression unreadable. “I hope I’ll see you sooner rather than later,” is all she said to me.
And there was regret in her voice and her eyes as I shut the door behind me.
“So…there’s a lot going on, and I don’t know if I have the story straight or…what the heck just happened?” asked Gwen as we began to stride quickly down the corridor, her voice rising in an excited squeak. “Oh, my God, were you just making out with Tommie Sullivan?”
I grinned in spite of myself, shaking my head. But then the gravity of my situation came back to me. “I mean, yes—but there are more pressing matters, Gwen. I was let go from the Sullivan Hotel. Fired. It’s over.”
She paused, the glee in her face dissolving to worry. “What? Why? Who—”
“Melody fired me. And for no reason—no real reason, anyway. I think she did it because…she feels threatened by me? Because she thinks that there’s something between me and Kane?” I spread my hands and shook my head. “But, regardless, I’m no longer an employee of the Sullivan Hotel. The lock was changed on my room, and Melody technically kicked me out this morning. My suitcases are down at the front desk. She wants me gone. But I don’t have a car…” I trailed off, shaking my head in frustration as I sighed out. “I just don’t really know what to do.”
“Have you talked to Kane about this?” Gwen’s voice was low, a whisper, as I glanced up at her quickly. She shook her head. “Don’t give me that look,” she continued, hands on her hips now as she glared at me. “Did you?”
“Melody told me that Kane agreed with her decision to dismiss me,” I said, but my words sounded weak and flat, even to my own ears. Melody hadn’t said exactly that. Melody had said that Kane knows that you need to leave.
“Screw Melody. I really think you should go and talk to Kane about this,” Gwen urged. She glanced down at the slim silver watch on her wrist. “It’s almost six o’clock…” She nudged aside one of the thick black curtains over a floor-to-ceiling-length window—outside, it was already dim and twilit, the parking lot far below, the ocean and the glimmering, distant lights of Eternal Cove all washed in monochrome. The storm raged on with rain pelting the window with a curtain of rough water. “I have to get into my cocktail uniform,” said Gwen, closing the curtain snugly again. “The Conference begins tonight with ‘an intimate party in the Sullivan drawing room,’ and I’ll be there—serving cocktails to everyone,” she said, hurrying along the corridor. She glanced over her shoulder at me. “Promise me you’ll talk to Kane? I really think we can get this sorted out,” said Gwen, as I hurried after her.
“I don’t know if it’ll be that easy,” I warned, but her calm confidence in the situation made me feel better about it. I was very glad, again, that Tommie hadn’t let me walk all the way to Eternal Cove, where I would have waited for hours by myself, getting more depressed by the moment over my new lot in life.
The afternoon had certainly taken a different direction than I ever could have predicted.
A much better direction—I hoped.
“Of course it’ll be that easy,” said Gwen smoothly. We’d reached the spiral staircase, and we began to head up it to the fifth floor. Gwen, who was already on the staircase ahead of me, glanced down at me with a small, calm smile. “Honestly, Rose, this is just a minor roadblock; it’s completely fixable. I really believe you were meant to be here.”
Her words made me stop cold, one hand on the banister, the other brushing frozen fingertips against the fabric of my skirt. “Why do you… Why do you say that?” I managed, glancing up at her.
She shrugged, shaking her unruly mane. Curls flew every which way as her brow furrowed, her hand spinning a low, lazy circle as she tried to figure out what to say. “You know how you just know something?” she asked me, her head to the side. “I’ve known that you were meant to be here. Hell, I’ve felt that way ever since I arrived. There was a Rose-shaped hole in the Sullivan Hotel long before you ever got here. And now it’s been filled. And it can’t go back to being empty.” Gwen’s smile at me radiated confidence, and I followed my best friend up the stairs with slow, plodding steps, mystified.
Gwen’s the kind of woman who believes in angels and crystals and past lives and cosmic energy, the kind of woman who trusts the universe because it’s got something wonderful in store for her.
I’ve never been that kind of woman. I’ve never had that kind of trust.
But when Gwen said, just then, that I was meant to be at the Sullivan Hotel…I felt the rightness of those words, too.
Because I’d felt the same way, when I first arrived.
I’d known I was meant to be here.
We climbed to the fifth floor and strode to Gwen’s door, situated right next to mine, with its shiny new doorknob and lock glittering in the overhead lights. I sighed unhappily, glancing at it, but Gwen shook her head as she slipped her own key into her lock and turned the door handle. She pushed the door open and stepped inside her room. “Seriously, don’t you worry about that. We’re going to fix this. Don’t worry, okay?” she said with her brows raised.
Gwen tossed her key ring onto the bed and picked up a long dry-cleaning bag that had been hung on a wall hook. “I have to get changed super fast, or I’m going to be late.” Then she trotted into the bathroom and partially shut the door behind her with her hip. “So, Tommie?” she called out, utterly relentless.
I grinned in spite of myself, glancing at my reflection in the antique silver mirror above the dresser. If I’d looked freshly kissed before when Gwen had first seen me, I didn’t now, but the memory of Tommie’s mouth on my own lingered on my lips. I reached up and touched my mouth with my fingertips, watching my reflection, watching my eyes. They were hooded, unreadable, though my smile certainly said a lot.
“Yeah?” I called to Gwen, and sat down on the bed, leaning back on my hands after I plunked my purse down beside me, my cell phone and my charger spilling out of it.
“I thought you told me you were attracted to Kane? That you weren’t attracted to Tommie because you wanted a relationship…and that you were pretty certain that Tommie was incapable of having a relationship—if I recall correctly.” Her tone was wheedling, and I could hear zippers being sworn at under her breath. I shook my head, glancing down at my shoes. I kicked off my flats, let my feet rest against the cool wood floor absentmindedly.
“I’m still not certain how capable Tommie is of a relationship,” I said softly, and I paused, considering Gwen’s words. “But…but maybe
I’m not in the market for a relationship right now.”
There was a strangled sound, and then Gwen peered around the door with wide eyes. “Rose Clyde, are you telling me that you’re looking for a one-night stand?”
Gwen sounded half-joking and half in shock as she pushed the bathroom door open the entire way, fiddling with the back of her tiny dress. She didn’t give me a chance to reply. “Can you help me with this stupid dress? It’s so annoying, and I’m so late,” she moaned, turning her back to me and showing me the half-zipped-up zipper.
“Wait—you’re wearing that?” I gasped incredulously.
Gwen looked, well…hyper-sexualized. She was wearing a short maid’s outfit, complete with a fluffy black skirt that only just covered her bottom, tons of tulle and a white lacy apron. Her black stockings sheathed the skin of her legs, but they left little to the imagination. Coupled with the black heels and plunging neckline, she looked as if she were wearing the sort of maid costume they sold in Halloween stores, not something an actual human woman wore while serving cocktails at a posh party.
“Hey, I don’t pick the uniforms,” Gwen snorted, wiggling at me. “Hurry and zip me up. I’m late.”
“So you keep saying,” I muttered, rising and crossing the room. I zipped Gwen’s back and tried tugging the dress up a little to cover even a millimeter more of her skin.
“It’s no good. I already tried that,” she muttered dryly, twisting in the bathroom mirror this way and that as she considered herself, patting down the puffed skirt.
I shook my head, crossing my arms. “Who exactly is responsible for this fetish wear?”
Gwen started laughing and adjusted the bow at the back of the apron. “Rumor has it that Tommie had these uniforms made specially, just for the occasion,” Gwen said slyly, arching one brow at me. She picked up a tube of lipstick off the sink’s rim and popped off the cap, then pursed her lips and carefully applied a smear of red. “But hey, as your straight best friend,” she muttered as she winked at me, “I don’t mind telling you that there’s just as many guys as gals at this thing tonight, and I don’t mind showing off a little skin. Everyone will probably tip great; I heard all the guests are loaded. And who knows? Maybe there’ll be a super-loaded guy who will start this amazing conversation with me, be as turned on by my brain as my bod, and I could get lucky!”
I laughed and shook my head. “Just remember that I’m shacking up with you tonight,” I quipped, as Gwen blotted her lips with a tissue. “If you have to bring a guy back to your room, give me some sort of warning so I can go for a walk or…something.”
“I’d probably be going to his room, sugar,” said Gwen with a wide, cheesy grin as she tossed the lipstick back onto the sink. “And, anyway, you know I’m all talk… I still haven’t gotten over Gary.”
I rolled my eyes so hard they were in danger of falling out. “That you ever had something with Gary to be gotten over is an incredible feat—”
“Hey, don’t start in on that poor man again,” Gwen sighed, smoothing down the front bodice and skimpy apron as she pouted in the mirror, pulling her hair up into a high bun and jabbing at the stray curls with bobby pins.
“I just think that you shouldn’t mourn jerks,” I said, then spread my hands as she glared at my reflection in the mirror. “And that’s all I’ll say on the matter.”
“Yeah, well,” Gwen muttered around a mouthful of bobby pins, “the past is behind us now, isn’t it?”
My reflection took on a somber expression, and I turned, walking back into the bedroom as images of Anna filled my head.
If Melody had, in fact, talked to Kane about my leaving, if Kane really had agreed with her and wanted me to leave the Sullivan Hotel—for good—then that meant that I was headed back to Greensprings, New Hampshire…the town where Anna and I had started to build a life together before her accident. Before I’d lost her. Again, I’d be surrounded with a million reminders of the life we could have had together—and didn’t. Again, I’d spend every day with a shadow from my past haunting my every moment. Again, I would spend every day mourning what could never be. Mourning her.
I…didn’t want the rest of my days to be filled with regret.
Not about Anna.
And not about Kane.
And not about Tommie.
“Are you okay?” Gwen murmured, coming out of the bathroom. She looked ready to go, with her usually crazy mane of hair pinned up prettily, standing there in her ridiculous maid outfit.
“I’m all right,” I told her with a soft smile. Which was the truth. The path my life took would never again be chosen for me. I would decide my own fate, I knew. I vowed.
Starting now. Vampires be damned.
“Have…fun?” I asked, and smiled again as I hugged her tightly.
“Wish me, like, a million dollars in tips,” said Gwen, kissing me lightly on the cheek before heading quickly to her door.
“Good luck,” I muttered, after she’d shut the door behind her.
---
For a long time after Gwen left, I thought about heading back to Tommie’s rooms (not that she’d probably still be in them) and…finishing what we’d started. Whenever I considered the notion, my heart fluttered, and I fell into a reverie, remembering her cool lips pressed hard against mine...
True, I felt guilty for thinking about Tommie, but every time the guilt reared its ugly head, I reminded myself of the fact that Kane and I were not, and had never been, a couple.
Still, I was so confused. I’d think of Kane, and I’d close my eyes and feel, again, her arms, her mouth…that one cold, beautiful kiss…
I was driving myself crazy.
So instead of thinking about the two beautiful vampires that my mind and heart were obsessing over, I tried not to think at all.
I read some of the magazines Gwen had on her bedside table. They were mostly about yoga, and since I don’t do yoga, all of the talk about asanas and proper posture went over my head. Eventually, I fell asleep with her bedside lamp on and a yoga magazine open beside me.
And I dreamed.
---
I stood on a tall balcony, many stories up from the ground, my fingers resting lightly on the elaborate bronze railing as I looked out to the sea. The sea breeze was so sharp, so cold, but I stood there, still and resolute despite the cold, my heart thundering in me.
I knew I was at the Sullivan Hotel, because behind me and below me was the familiar, tell-tale red stone of the building.
There were a dozen roses on the small, round table behind me, their crystal vase resting in the very center of the lace doily on the smooth and polished tabletop. They had just been brought to me by a small, shaky bellboy who probably wouldn’t last long here, I thought. His subconscious knew he was surrounded by hunters, and even though they would never hunt him, he still feared them.
The roses were so fragrant, even on this windy, storm-tossed autumn day. The beautiful perfume reached my nose even here, even out on the balcony with the stiff salt breeze to cool me.
The roses unsettled me, but—in the dream—I couldn’t remember exactly why. It was the feeling that I knew something, but couldn’t quite remember it, and that sensation was maddening.
There was a knock at the door.
My heart began to beat faster, and I turned slowly, glancing down at myself. The dress I wore was so…big. With wide, large red skirts and something that squeezed me around my middle. I pressed my fingers to my unnaturally slimmed waist—a corset? The dress made moving slow, like I was treading through water, but I managed to stride off the balcony, through the room with its odd, antique decorations, to the door.
I opened it, and Tommie was there.
Like I knew she’d be.
She was wearing a men’s suit, like she always does, but this one was a little different from her usual attire—more antique looking, with the waistcoat that bore a gold watch chain. Her hair was different, parted on the side and slicked back with grease, and her hat looked like somet
hing out of vaudeville. She had it in her hands in front of her, twisting the brim this way and that, and her mouth was in a downward turning grimace.
“You got the flowers,” she said softly—not a question.
In the dream, I took a step back. There was something off, ominous between us as Tommie stepped into the room, as she shut the door softly behind us.
Like a confession was about to be made.
“I’ve done everything I could…” I stared at her in surprise as she choked down a sob, turning toward me, breathing out. Though she was cold, I knew, like all vampires, there was a heat that crackled between us. “Please believe me,” she began, taking a deep breath to calm herself, searching my eyes with her own, flashing green ones, “that I have done everything I could to rid myself of you.” She took one more step forward, and then she was standing right there before me, and her cold fingers were grasping my hand as tightly as any lifeline.
“I love you,” she whispered, and my blood thundered through me as she fell to her knees brokenly, wrapping her arms tightly about my waist as she stared up at me, her face contorted in pain. “Tell me what you will, tell me that I must stop in this pursuit of you. But I can not. I feel for you something I have never felt, and she…” The word was spat out between us. “She has everything. She’s always had everything. She has you, and I will never have a chance with you because of her. But you can change that. Give me one word of kindness, just one and—”
“Tommie, please…” I whispered, trying to take a step back as she gripped me tightly. It was not my voice that spoke those words—it was a voice I almost didn’t recognize, but did enough to wonder where I’d heard it before. “You ask of me an impossibility,” I murmured, my hands closing over hers behind me as I breathed out. “Please understand, I care about you. I care about you truly. You are a very good friend.”
Tommie looked so betrayed, so utterly gutted, that my heart felt like it was breaking. “A friend,” she whispered. Her hands fell away from me, and she rose slowly, her knees dusty as she stood, her fingers shaking. “And is that all I may ever hope for?”
Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2 Page 4