by Nora Roberts
He thought he could probably live with that.
Grinning, he went out to take his afternoon appointments. And underlined his mental note to buy wine and flowers before heading out of town.
SHE wasn’t thinking about him. Her mind was too occupied to make room for dinner plans with a man. Her latest blood analysis showed no improvement. The virus was still viable, still thriving in fact. It simply mutated to adjust to the invasion of the serum.
She’d succeeded in stimulating the B cell, and she knew from previous tests the cell divisions had begun. But they hadn’t continued, not long enough for the plasma cells to secrete sufficient antibodies to bind to the bacteria.
The infection was still there, raging.
She’d seen this before. Too many times before. But this time she’d been so hopeful. This time she’d been so sure she’d been on the edge of a breakthrough.
She’d done another DNA test and was even now carefully studying the results. It made her head ache. Lab work depressed her, though it was almost second nature to her now. She considered, as she had before, selling her business, relocating yet again. And taking a job as a lab tech. She’d have access to more sophisticated equipment that way, more resources, more current information.
The reconditioned electron microscope had cost her thousands. A top-level lab would have new equipment. Better equipment.
But there would be questions she couldn’t answer, physical exams she couldn’t take. Day-to-day contact with others she wasn’t sure she could stand. She’d been through all that before, too, and it was much, much worse than being alone.
To be with people, watching them go about the blessed normality of their lives and not be a part of who and what they were was the most damning aspect of her condition.
She could handle the pain, she could handle the violence that ripped through her three nights every month. But she couldn’t stand the lonely unless she was alone.
She’d promised herself years before, when she’d understood and accepted what had happened to her that she’d find a way to a cure. That she’d be normal again before her thirtieth birthday.
Thirty, she thought with a tired sigh, seemed a lifetime away at eighteen.
Now she was nearly there, and the infection still brewed inside her.
And she was still alone.
No point in whining, she reminded herself. She’d only just begun to try the new formula. There was still time before the full moon. Still time for the serum to work.
“Put it aside, Simone,” she told herself. “Put it aside for a few hours and think normal. Without some normal, you’ll go crazy.”
Think about dinner, she decided as she went upstairs again. Spaghetti, hold the meatballs. Red meat wasn’t a good idea this close to the cycle. At least not with company around.
She was having company, not voices reading a book, or faces on television. Human company. It had been a long, long time since she’d allowed herself to have dinner with a man. Much less in her own territory.
But it was good. It was normal. She had to continue to do normal things, every day, or when she was well, she wouldn’t know how.
So she started the sauce, using her own herbs, letting their scent fill the air of her home.
And she cleaned, housewifely chores combined with a meticulous search to be certain anything pertaining to her condition was locked away.
She cleaned and tidied rooms he had no reason to visit. In what she considered her personal media center, she scanned the room: huge cushy sofa, the indulgence of an enormous wall screen TV.
Would he think it odd that among the hundreds in her collection, she owned every movie available on VHS or DVD on werewolves? She wouldn’t be able to explain to him any more than she could explain to herself why she was compelled to watch them.
She shrugged it off and arranged fresh potpourri in a bowl.
Then she groomed. A long shower, creams for her skin. She’d leave her hair down. Loose and liberated. Turning at the mirror, she brushed the weight of it off the back of her left shoulder and exposed the small tattoo of a full moon.
That had been a young, foolish act, she thought now. Branding herself with a symbol of her disease. But it served to remind her of what she was, every day. Not just at the full moon, but every day. And when she was cured, it would remind her of what she’d survived.
She dressed simply, casually in shirt and trousers, but selected soft fabrics. The sort men liked to touch. The silky shirt of silvery gray caught the light well—and would catch the eye.
If she decided to take Gabe as a lover, she was entitled, wasn’t she? Entitled to pleasure and companionship. She’d be careful, very, very careful. She’d stay in control.
She wouldn’t hurt him. She wouldn’t hurt another human being.
She closed her fingers around the cross, felt the heat of the silver against her skin.
Back in the kitchen, she took another dose of her pills before setting the table. Were candles obvious or simply atmospheric? And if she had to debate something that basic, she’d gone much too long without human company.
Her head came up, as did Amico’s, and seconds later the sound of tires on gravel was clearly audible. The dog went with her to the front door, sitting obediently at her command when she opened the door.
It blew through her again, just the look of him. And that twisting need inside her mocked all her claims about control and care. He carried a bag in one hand, and a bouquet of tiger lilies in the other.
In all of her life, no one had brought her flowers.
“Hi. I come bearing.”
She took the lilies. “They’re beautiful.”
“I’ve got a big rawhide bone in here, if it’s okay.”
“Thanks, but I don’t want to spoil my dinner.”
He laughed, and with his lips still curved, leaned over the flowers to touch his lips to hers. “Okay, we’ll just give it to the dog. But we get to drink the wine. Didn’t know what was on the menu, so I’ve got white and red.”
“Don’t miss a trick, do you?”
“My mother raised no fools.”
He glanced around the living room. The walls were painted a deep, warm green. Like a forest, he thought. The mantel over the stone fireplace where flames simmered held iron candlesticks and pale green candles he was betting she’d made herself. The furnishings were sparse, but what there was, was all color and comfort.
“Great painting.” He gestured toward the oil over the fireplace. It was a forest scene, deep with shadows, and a lake gone milky with the light of a full white moon.
“Yes, I like it.”
There was other art—all of places, wild, lonely places struck by moonlight, he noted. There were no people in any of the paintings, and no photographs at all.
“Got a thing for the moon,” he commented, then glanced at her. She studied him, he thought, as the dog did, speculatively. “The art, the name of your shop.”
“Yes, I have a thing for the moon.”
“Maybe we can take a walk out to the cliffs later. Take a look at it over the water. I don’t know what phase it’s in, but—”
“Waxing, nearly full.”
“Cool. You know your moons.”
“Intimately.”
“Okay if Amico has the bone?”
“Offer it.”
Gabe pulled it out of the bag, held it out. “Here you go, boy.”
But Amico sat, making no move. Then Simone murmured in Italian, and the dog leaned forward, closed his teeth over the bone, wagged his tail.
“That could’ve been a raw steak, I imagine,” Gabe commented, “with the same result. That’s some dog.”
“He’s a treasure. I’m in the kitchen. We’re having spaghetti.”
“Smells great. And it shows how clever I was to pick a couple of Italian wines.” He patted the bag he carried as they stepped into the kitchen. “This Chianti’s supposed to be fairly amazing. Should I open it?”
“All right.”
She handed him a corkscrew. “Dinner’s going to be a little while yet.”
“No problem.” He pulled off his jacket, then opened the wine. He set it and the corkscrew aside. “Simone. This is going to sound strange.”
“I’m rarely surprised by strange.”
“I was thinking today, trying to figure why I’m having such a strong reaction to you. And I can’t. So I thought, maybe it’s just sex—and what’s wrong with that? But it’s not. Not when I’m standing here looking at you, it isn’t.”
She got down two glasses. “What is it then?”
“I don’t know. But it’s the kind of thing where I want to know all sorts of things about you. Where I want to sit down somewhere and talk to you for hours, which is weird considering we’ve only had two conversations before. It’s the kind of thing where I think about how your voice sounds, and the way you move. And that sounds lame. It’s just true.”
“But you don’t know all sorts of things about me, do you?”
“Next to nothing. So tell me everything.”
She poured the wine, then got out a vase for the flowers. “I was born in Saint Louis,” she began as she filled the vase with water. “An only child. I lived there until I was twelve—dead normal childhood—until I was twelve. My parents were killed in a car accident. I got out of it with a broken arm and a concussion.”
“That’s rough.”
There was sympathy in his voice, but not the maudlin, pitying sort. Just as there was comfort, but not intrusion, in the light touch of his hand to her arm.
“Very. I moved to Saint Paul to live with my aunt and uncle. They were very strict and not all that thrilled to have a child thrust on them, but too worried about image to shirk their duty. Which is all I was to them. They had a daughter close to my age, the detestable and perfect Patty. We were never even close to being friends. She, and my aunt and uncle, made certain I remembered who the daughter was, who the displaced orphan was. They were never abusive, and they were never loving.”
“I’ve always thought the withholding of love is a kind of abuse.”
She looked over at him as she began to arrange the lilies in the vase. “You have a kind heart. Not everyone does. I was provided for, and I did what I was told, for six years, because the alternative was foster care.”
“Better the devil you know?”
“Yes, exactly. I bided my time. When I was eighteen, I left. There was insurance money that came to me then, and a small trust fund from the sale of our house in Saint Louis. I planned to go to college. I had no idea what I wanted to do or be, so I decided to take a year off first and do something my parents had always talked of doing. To tour Europe.”
“Alone?”
“Yes, alone.” She sipped her wine now, leaning back on the counter. Had she ever told anyone even this much before? Since the night everything changed for her?
No, no one. What would have been the point?
“I was thrilled to be alone, to have no schedule, no one telling me what to do. It was both an adventure and a pilgrimage for me. I backpacked through Italy.”
She lifted her glass in salute. “This is very good. Anyway, when I came home, I developed an interest in herbs. I studied them, experimented, and started a little Internet business, selling skin and hair care products, that sort of thing. I expanded it, eventually moved here and opened the store. And here I am.”
“There’s a big chunk of stuff between backpacking in Italy and here I am.”
“A very big chunk,” she agreed, and took out fresh vegetables for a salad.
“Where else did you go besides Italy?”
“Circumstances made it necessary for me to cut my trip short. But I did see a bit of Italy and France before I came back home.”
“What circumstances?”
“Personal ones.”
“Okay, speaking of personal circumstances, have you ever been in love?”
“No. Superficially involved a few times. Sexually involved a few times. But I’ve never been in love. Until maybe now.”
She continued to slice mushrooms, very thin, until his hands came to her shoulders. “Me, either,” he murmured.
“It’s probably not love. It doesn’t really happen at first sight.”
“What do you know?” He turned her to face him. “You’ve never been there before.”
“I know it takes more than this.” This leap of the heart, this yearning. “It takes trust and respect and honesty. And time.”
“Let’s take some time.” He lowered his head to rub his lips over hers. “And see if we get the rest.”
“Time.” She pried a hand between them to ease him back. “That’s a problem for me.”
“Why?”
“To tell you that, I’d have to trust you, and be very honest.” She managed a smile. “And I haven’t had enough time to know you to do that.”
“We can start with tonight.”
“That’s what we’ll do.”
He lifted her hand from between them, kissed it. “Then we’ll work on tomorrow.”
“Maybe we will.”
Chapter 5
IT was extraordinary to relax in her own home over dinner with a man who not only attracted her on so many levels, but who also made her feel as if it were something they’d done before, and could do again, whenever she liked.
Someone who made her feel normal. Just a woman, eating pasta and drinking wine with a man.
For a few hours, she could put the waxing moon out of her mind and imagine what it could be like if her life was ordinary again.
“How’d you find this house?” he asked her. “This spot in Maine?”
“I like space, and it had what I was looking for.”
“You lived in Montana.” He watched her as he twirled spaghetti onto his fork. “They’ve got boatloads of space out there.”
“Maybe too much.” She shrugged a shoulder. “I liked it there, and I enjoyed the . . . I guess you could say the texture of the land. But it was too easy to cut myself off, and I reached a point where I understood the difference between being self-sufficient and private and isolation. Have you ever been out West?”
“I spent a wild week in San Diego on spring break once.”
Her lips curved. “That doesn’t count.”
“You wouldn’t say that if you’d been there. Anyway, I’m glad you decided on the East Coast, on here. Then again, if you’d stuck a pin in a map and ended up in Duluth, I’d’ve found you.”
“Duluth?”
“Wherever. It wouldn’t matter.” He reached over, laid a hand on hers. “Do you believe in fate, Simone?”
She looked down at his hand, strong fingers over hers. “Obsessively.”
“Me, too. My mother’s always after me. Gabriel, when are you going to settle down with a nice girl and give me grandchildren? When my grandmother hears her, she tells her to leave me alone. Leave the boy be, she says, he’s already in love. He just hasn’t met her yet. Now that I have, I know exactly what she means.”
“It’s a long way from a spaghetti dinner to settling down. And you don’t know that I’m a nice girl.”
“Okay, tell me the meanest thing you’ve ever done.”
Blood, spurting warm into her mouth, devouring prey while the mad hunger, the wild thrill of the hunt burned through her like black fire.
She only shook her head. “I can guarantee it tops cheating on a history test. My trip to Europe . . .” she said slowly. “Things happened there that changed me. I’ve spent a long time dealing with that, and trying to . . . find my way back.”
“A mad affair with a slick Italian who happened to be married with five children?”
“Oh. If only. No adulterous affairs. No affairs that mattered.”
“Something makes you sad under it all. Who hurt you?”
“I never knew him. But the good that came out of it is, once I dealt with it, I swore I’d never hurt anyone in the same way. Never.” She rose to begin clearing. “Which brings
me to you.”
“Are you afraid I’ll hurt you?”
“You’d be the first who could, because you’re the first who matters. But—”
“Hold that a minute.” He got to his feet, crossed to her. With his eyes on hers, he took the plates out of her hand, set them aside. “I can’t promise not to do something stupid, or screw up. Life’s full of stupidity and screwups, and I’ve got my share. But Simone . . .” He took her face in his hands. “I’ll do the best I can. And my best isn’t half bad.”
“I’m afraid of you,” she murmured. “And for you. And I can’t explain.”
“I’ll take the risk. How about you?”
He leaned in until his mouth found hers, until he found the answer.
That punch of need, a stunning blow to the system, left him shaken and reeling. It was as if he’d waited all his life for this one kiss, that everything that had gone on before was just a prelude to this single meeting of lips. As the ache followed, he drew her closer, delved deeper. Dark and dangerous and heady, the taste of her invaded him. Conquered.
“Simone.”
“Not yet, not yet.”
She needed more, for what she drew from him was hope. It was light. Bright strong beams that vanquished the shadows she lived with, day after day. Strength and heart and sweetness, the essence of him streamed into her. And soothed.
“I need you too much.” She pressed her face into his shoulder, memorizing his scent. “It can’t be real. It can’t be right.”
“Nothing’s ever felt more real, more right, to me. Let me be with you.” His mouth moved along her jaw, taking small, tantalizing bites. “Let me love you. I want to feel what it’s like to be inside you.”
She let out a half laugh. “You have no idea.”
Take him, her mind murmured as his hands moved over her. Be taken. What harm could it do? Maybe love was the answer. How could that be any more irrational than the rest?
Here and now, she thought, while his scent was buzzing through her senses, while she could hear the urgent beat of his heart, feel the heat of his blood swimming just under his skin.