“How interesting. We have that in common.”
Through the phone came a very unladylike snort. “Really? You’re from my mother’s womb, too? We must’ve had different fathers because you sure don’t look like you’re from his side of the family.”
He tipped his head back and laughed. Crossing through the study, his valet Corbin paused mid-stride, blinked at him in surprise, then continued on his way.
Christian was known for many things, but laughing was not one of them. Especially over the past few years.
“I meant what part of the States.”
She paused before answering. Christian sensed her irritation through the line, and wondered again why she didn’t like him. And why she didn’t like answering personal questions.
“New Mexico. Taos.”
He waited for more, but when no further details were forthcoming, said, “Beautiful country there, I understand. Big art scene.”
On the other end of the phone, her silence was deafening.
He cleared his throat. “There’s a famous music school there, too, if I’m not mis—”
“I’ve got two copies of Casino Royale for you to look at,” she said, her voice terse and unhappy. “We’re open until six.”
Then the phone went dead in his hand. Christian, staring down at it, wondered if there was something more to her dislike of him. Something to do with her avoidance of personal questions.
Because he loved solving mysteries as much as he loved a challenge, he became determined to find out.
With a muttered oath that made the elderly gentleman in the bowler hat browsing through a folio of antique maps turn around to give her a disapproving stare, Ember slammed the phone back in its cradle on the wall.
“Lo siento, señor,” she said apologetically. “Mi suegra.”
My mother-in-law. The international word for misery, it had its intended effect. The gentleman smiled wryly and nodded, turning back to the sheets of yellowed parchment.
Ember passed her left hand over her face, noting it was trembling.
Damn.
She flexed the hand open and pulled it back the way the physical therapist had shown her all those years ago, painfully stretching the shortened tendons in her wrist and garnering a loud crack as they slid over the metal pins that secured her bones together. There were twenty-one pins in her left hand and wrist, and three metal plates in the bones of her arm, all permanent. The nerve damage and scars were permanent, too, as was the anger that had settled between the ruined byways of her healing flesh, cleaving itself to her body like dark matter, an unseen and undetectable anomaly that only made itself known at moments like this.
Moments when memory would come flooding back. Choking her, filling her with an old, familiar enemy: despair.
She’d done battle with despair since she was eighteen years old. Knowing the worst of it would pass in a moment, Ember closed her eyes and let it slice through her like a thousand sharpened knives. She breathed through it, trying to block out all the images his words had evoked. All the pain.
Big art scene. There’s a famous music school there, I understand.
“Sleeping on the job? Even for you that’s indolent.”
Another old, familiar enemy: her stepmother, Marguerite. Just hearing her icy voice made Ember’s skin crawl.
She turned and gazed into Marguerite’s cold gray eyes, and kept her voice light as she said, “Oh, good morning, Marguerite. I didn’t realize your kind could come out during the daytime.”
“And I didn’t realize bag lady chic was all the rage this season,” Marguerite replied in exactly the same offhand tone, letting her disdainful gaze travel over Ember’s usual ensemble of jeans, shapeless sweater, old running shoes. Her upper lip curled as if she smelled something rotting.
A walking advertisement for the finest haute couture houses, Marguerite was nothing if not perfectly put together. She was tall, blade thin, and bone pale, with dark hair scraped severely off her forehead and gathered into a low bun at the nape of her elegant neck. At the age where a woman had to decide to embrace growing older gracefully or wage a losing battle against time with fillers and needles and surgical blades, Marguerite had gone with the latter. Her poreless skin was pulled just slightly too tight over her cheeks, her brows were just slightly too arched. Combined with an almost entirely black wardrobe and lips that were a cheerless slash of vermilion, she held more than a passing resemblance to certain bloodsucking creatures of the night.
Without a hint of warmth, the two women smiled at one another.
“Where’re the Tweedies?” Ember asked sweetly.
Marguerite’s smile vanished. She loathed Ember’s nicknames for her twin stepsisters. Analia and Allegra were Tweedledee and Tweedledum, respectively, and the bane of Ember’s existence. Two of the banes, anyway. Pie-faced and rotund, they were spoiled to within an inch of their lives by their doting mother, and never missed an opportunity to make Ember’s life hell.
They had far fewer opportunities since Ember moved out of the house three years ago, after her father died, but that didn’t stop them from trying.
Marguerite crossed her arms over her bony chest and gazed down her hawk-like nose at Ember. “I’ve had a call from Señor Alvarez.”
Ember’s heart sank. Señor Alvarez was the family accountant. This wouldn’t be good.
“And I’m sure you can guess what he told me.”
“You’ve won the lottery? Congratulations.”
Before answering, Marguerite pressed her lips together so hard there was nothing left of them but a downward-turned red sliver. She leaned forward and hissed, “Thanks to your total lack of business sense, Antiquarian Books is on the verge of bankruptcy!” Now enveloped in the cloud of heavy perfume emanating from Marguerite like the evil mist preceding the arrival of a monster in a horror movie, Ember took a step back. “If something isn’t done immediately, we’ll owe the creditors more than it’s worth. Your father would be appalled to find it in such a state—”
Ember’s temper, volatile under the best of circumstances, snapped.
“My father would be appalled by a lot of things, Marguerite! Including the way you’ve spent what was supposed to be my inheritance on your own daughters—”
“How dare you!” Marguerite exclaimed, her bony frame stiffening. Several customers glanced over, but neither Ember nor her stepmother cared. They were sucked suddenly into the ancient morass of animosity that existed between them like quicksand, thick, deep, and suffocating.
“—And what you’ve done with his work! I’m sure gifting it to your revolving door of boyfriends isn’t exactly what he had in mind!”
Marguerite gasped. Her face, never flush with a healthy glow in the best of circumstances, paled to a blotchy, unnatural white. She sputtered, “Why you little—”
“Excuse me,” interrupted a cheerful, familiar voice. Ember looked across the counter to see Asher, thumbs hooked in the belt loops of his jeans, clearly amused at the spectacle she and her stepmother made. “I’m looking for a very rare, very expensive book. Which of you lovely ladies can assist me?” He wiggled his eyebrows at Ember, who, instead of clawing her stepmother’s eyes out, released her breath in a hard exhalation.
Like a snake furling its coils, Marguerite slowly withdrew. She hated men to catch her with her fangs exposed, and so she tried on a chilly smile, which looked out of place on her livid face. If she didn’t know better, Ember would have sworn the woman was hiding a forked tongue in that venomous mouth.
“Ember would be happy to assist you, sir,” Marguerite said smoothly, still with a frigid smile. Then she turned and hissed under her breath, “We’ll finish this discussion later!” She stalked away and vanished through the swinging door that led to the back of the store.
“Oh, my God,” said Asher with a shudder as soon as she disappeared. “That woman is frightening!”
“Just wait til you see her head spin completely around,” Ember muttered. “You’re lucky she do
esn’t know you’re a friend of mine or she might have taken you back to her web to feed to her offspring.”
He grimaced. “And I thought my mother was bad.”
“Stepmother,” Ember corrected. “And don’t even start, your mother is amazing.”
Ember had met Asher’s mother twice when she’d come to visit from Boston. Valeria was zaftig, noisy, and hugged everyone in sight. She wore a rosary of freshwater pearls that was swallowed by her voluminous cleavage, regularly made the sign of the cross over her chest, and cooked authentic northern Italian food so delicious Ember thought she’d died and gone to heaven. Asher was her youngest, the “baby” of six, and her favorite. He complained about her in that way favorite sons do, all grumbling and grousing with nothing substantial behind it, secure in the knowledge he was loved.
That’s how it is for people who know they’re loved. They have the luxury of being dismissive of love, of taking it for granted. But for the unlucky ones who live day after day with no one who cares whether they live or die, they know exactly what it is they’re missing. And unlike the lucky ones, they ache for love so badly the emptiness inside becomes a thing that pounds and burns, a need so vast and deep there is no end to it, and no bottom.
“Well, at least she lives three thousand miles away. If I had to see her every day, I’d kill myself.”
“Yeah,” said Ember sourly. “I know the feeling.”
He smiled sympathetically at her. “Bet you can’t guess why I’m here.”
With a rueful twist of her lips, Ember said, “I thought you were going to buy a very expensive book and save the shop from ruin.”
“You wish, lady. Actually I brought you something.” He bent and retrieved a small brown paper bag from the floor by his feet. He dangled it in front of her like a cat toy. “Lunch. You said you didn’t eat this morning, so…”
Ember’s eyes misted. He brought her lunch after she ran out on him like that? Damn. This was turning out to be one hell of a morning. She took the bag and peered inside. Sandwich, fruit, a cup of plain yogurt. “Is it poisoned?” she asked, to hide how touched she was by the gesture.
Asher smiled and his eyes twinkled through his glasses. He saw right through her tough act, but never called her out on it. He was a good friend for many reasons, but primarily because he let her have her secrets and didn’t press too hard when she shut down. He knew that was the surest way to make her run away.
“No. You’re not getting off that easily.”
He blew her an air kiss and turned to go, but Ember said, “Wait,” and he looked back at her, brought up short by the emotion in her voice.
She rounded the counter, wrapped her arms around his broad shoulders, and hugged him. “Thank you, Ash,” she whispered. “I really appreciate it.”
He chuckled and gave her a squeeze. “Don’t get hysterical on me, sweetie. I only know how to handle hysterical boys.” He pulled back, still holding her around the waist, and smiled down at her, his brown eyes soft. “You creatures with ovaries really terrify me. You’re so unpredictable. Creatures with penises are much more straightforward.”
“I think you mean simple.”
He shrugged. “You say potato, I say potahto…”
She smiled back at him, her first true smile in days, and gave him a kiss on the cheek.
At exactly that moment, Christian McLoughlin sauntered through the front door.
Ember knew it was him without looking because the air in the shop suddenly became charged.
That and Asher became charged.
He turned his head toward the door as he heard the jingle of the bell, and the smile on his face faded, replaced by a look of wide-eyed, gaping shock. His fingers tightened on her waist. From his mouth came a little, wordless noise, and his eyes, fixed on some target, travelled up, down, and back again. He exhaled a slow, whistling breath.
Ember sighed, released him and turned to look at Christian.
As elegant, regal and, well, gorgeous, as the first time she’d seen him, he looked back and forth between her and Asher with a quizzical lift to his brows. Good, she thought peevishly. Let him think Asher is my boyfriend. Even though he’s looking at Christian as if he’d like to lick every part of his body.
“Helllooo, beautiful,” Asher purred. Ember elbowed him. So much for the boyfriend cover.
“That was fast. Did you fly here?” she said to Christian, not particularly warmly. The rent, Ember, she reminded herself. The rent. She forced herself to smile at him.
The corners of Christian’s lips lifted and he walked forward, his stride languid, posture cocksure. He wore dove gray trousers and a perfectly cut shirt of indigo blue, which made his eyes appear even more vivid green than they did yesterday. The hair was perfect again, too, and Ember childishly wanted to run her fingers through it just to ruffle those perfect strands and mess it up.
Or did she just want to run her fingers through it?
She mentally slapped herself. There was a line a mile long of females wanting to run their fingers through this man’s hair, she was sure—and she was equally sure she would not be standing at the end of it.
Not that he’d want her to, anyway. He looked like he only dated lingerie models and starlets. Women with perfect hair and gym-taut bodies and long, manicured fingernails who’d leave scratches when they clawed at his back while they arched and moaned in ecstasy beneath him—
“I’ll get the books!” This was said much louder than necessary, loud enough to startle Asher who was still standing inches away. He jumped and put a hand to his throat.
“Jesus, Ember! Tell the neighborhood, why don’t you?”
“And a good morning to you, too,” said Christian, watching her with an amused look on his face, as if he knew exactly what she’d been thinking. Really, the man had an unnerving habit of looking at her like that. Was he always this intuitive?
“Oh. Yes, good morning.” Ember cleared her throat. “Sorry, I’m just really busy at the moment,” she added lamely. Christian and Asher glanced around the store. The customers who’d been browsing a few moments earlier had left, and there wasn’t a soul in sight aside from the three of them. Asher cocked an eyebrow and looked at her as if she were insane, then turned to Christian with a wide smile.
“It’s nice to hear someone other than me and my girl here speak English.” His voice dropped, and he batted his eyelashes. He actually batted them. “Though of course I’ve always said a British accent makes everything sound so much more refined.”
Oh, God, she thought, cringing. He’s really going to make a meal of it.
“I’ve always preferred American accents, myself,” Christian replied, returning Asher’s smile. His gaze, electric green, flickered to Ember. “They’re so…invigorating.”
She’d never seen anyone appear so at ease in his own skin. He didn’t cross his arms or fiddle with car keys—he wasn’t holding car keys—or do any of the other little things people did when having a standing conversation. He simply stood, with his legs slightly apart and his arms hanging loose at his sides, taking up more space than he should have with the simple fact of his presence. There was a strange magnetism about him, a pull, something that made her want to reach out and touch him, something that surrounded him like an energy field, forceful and electric.
As he looked at her, Ember felt again the weird tingle of fear that had raised the hair on the back of her neck yesterday. But now the fear slid closer to a dark kind of excitement, a hum in her blood, like the threatening rumble of thunderclouds just before they discharged a bolt of lightning. He was so beautiful…she wondered absently what he might look like without clothes.
Then she stiffened, aghast. Oh, no. I do not like him. I DO NOT!
Unbelievably, horribly, Christian’s eyes went wolfishly bright and narrowed on her face. His nostrils flared with a tiny inhalation and the smile faltered, replaced by a look of…what?
Hunger?
No, it must be anger, or something else—she didn’t
know what—but she sure as hell wasn’t going to ask. This man was proving to be a little too sharp for comfort. She had the eeriest feeling he could read her like a book.
Time to move him along.
“I’ll just be a sec,” she said to Christian without introducing him to Asher.
He seemed to take it as a personal affront to his manhood because he put his hands on his hips and muttered to her with a glare, “Rude.” He then turned to Christian with his hand out and introduced himself. They shook hands—Asher glowing, Christian bemused—while Ember made her way around the counter. She silently willed Asher not to say anything too embarrassing, or to kiss Christian on the lips and try to pass it off as the regular greeting of people from Boston when meeting those from another country.
When she came back from retrieving the two copies of Casino Royale a minute or two later, she found Christian and Asher engrossed in a serious discussion about the merits of Ian Fleming versus Ernest Hemingway.
“The Sun Also Rises!” Asher insisted vehemently. “For Whom the Bell Tolls! A Farewell to Arms!”
Clearly unimpressed with the litany, Christian returned, “The Old Man and the Sea?”
“Well,” Asher replied after a pause. “You’ve got me there. That one was a little…astringent.”
“Astringent?” Christian laughed, while Asher watched in slack-jawed admiration. In spite of herself, Ember had to agree; laughter on Christian was like gilding a lily. You didn’t think it could get any more perfect, but then…voila.
Stunning.
Asher regained his composure enough to offer a faint, “But still, Ian Fleming. Ian Fleming?”
“You can’t seriously think Ian Fleming was a better writer than Ernest Hemingway,” Ember cut in, siding with Asher, who smugly pointed a finger at her as if to say, See? Proof!
Christian turned his attention to her and it felt as warm, focused, and bedazzling as a shaft of sunlight through clouds. He tilted his head and sent her a small, intimate smile that managed to bring a flush of blood to her cheeks and unsettle her in a way she definitely did not like. God, he was starting to get under her skin.
Edge of Darkness (A Night Prowler Novel) Page 3