by Shelby Reed
The sun sat like a fat, neon ball on the horizon as he traveled the road between Putnam and Sister Oaks. He paused the Audi at a four-way stop, his eyes safely encased behind darkened lenses, and stared at the fiery orb. There was a time when he’d been as photophobic as Jude, when stepping out into the daylight meant blisters and agony and imaginative lies at the ready for the physicians who’d dealt with his various injuries. As the decades passed, it grew trickier to explain the burns.
“This isn’t a contact burn,” the last emergency room doctor told him in 1968. “I’d like to run some tests.”
Gideon had slipped away the minute the physician left the room, sadly lacking in painkillers, but knowing he’d heal with inhuman speed, like always. It was the brief bouts of pain that were so devastating, so dispiriting. Two, three days of bandages and blisters and agony, then it would be over.
He’d been driven to test the daylight again and again, aching from the dearth of bone-soothing, solar warmth. After that, he began researching nutritional supplements and eventually found a strange concoction of herbs, compliments of a Haight-Asbury head shop, which bolstered his immunity to ultraviolet rays. It tortured him that he couldn’t share the supplements with his son. They couldn’t be mixed with Jude’s medication. Jude’s world would forever be dark, and thirteen short years into it, the kid was already starting to wear.
The pressure in his chest crept up toward his throat and he gripped the steering wheel, mindless of Melissa Etheridge’s husky, soul-exposed rhythm thumping from the stereo. Carefully he removed the sunglasses, squinted at the crimson half-circle simmering on the horizon. A wave of shuddering heat blasted through him and with a curse, he jammed the glasses back in place. Too soon. His eyes would pay the price for the risk he’d taken, just to have a peek at God’s fire before it disappeared and dragged the day down with it.
With a heavy sigh, he accelerated through the deserted intersection and headed toward Sister Oaks and a single, bright heat that waited to enfold him.
* * * * *
“What are we looking for?” Kate asked, following Jude through the darkened hallway that led to the back doors of the library.
“Photo albums.” He threw open the doors, his slim body snaking through the dark, around obstacles that would trip a child unused to the night. A single click of a floor lamp and light flooded the area in front of the fireplace. “We keep them over here.”
Crouching in front of a bookshelf to the left of the hearth, he examined the leather-encased spines and pulled out a wide, black album with gold inlay. “This one has pictures of my mom.”
Settling on the burgundy leather sofa beside her, Jude opened the album and plopped half of it in Kate’s lap. “That’s her when she was little.” He pointed to a faded photograph of a raven-haired toddler in an Easter bonnet who squinted at the camera before a sapling decorated with dyed eggs and ribbons. “And this is her at a dance when she was in high school.” An exotic beauty with waist-length black hair, sultry, kohl-lined eyes and a reluctant smile stared back at Kate from a Seventies-era Polaroid.
“Do you know how they met, Jude?”
“She was in one of Dad’s classes at the University of Massachusetts.”
“She liked flowers, too, huh?”
“No. She was an artist. Mrs. Shelton said my mom took the flower class because she had a crush on Dad.”
Kate thought of Gideon, his dark beauty, his sensitive hands, and pictured them on this girl’s lovely, slender body. A surge of unexpected jealousy sizzled through her. For crying out loud, this was a dead woman. Someone who’d captured his heart years ago. The photograph had to be circa 1975.
Wait a minute.
“How old is your dad?” she asked Jude, confusion knotting her thoughts.
He shrugged. “Pretty old. Thirty-four, maybe.”
Her gaze shifted back to the photo, brows raised. Jude’s mother must have been at least sixteen when it was taken. “That would make him significantly younger than your mother. Like seven or eight years younger?”
“No.” He looked at her like she was crazy and flipped the page to study the next grouping of photos. “He was way older than her. I know because once I heard him tell Mrs. Shelton that it made Mom’s parents mad when she married him.”
Impossible. She opened her mouth to argue, but then he said, “See? Here’s a picture after they got married. He’s…” He squinted at it, scratched his nose. “He sort of looks the same as he does now.”
Kate peered at the image and her pulse inexplicably quickened. “His head is turned, it’s hard to tell. But Jude, if your father was older than your mother, and he’s only thirty-four now—”
Before she could dissect the bizarre scenario, Gideon appeared in the doorway leading to the conservatory. “I thought I heard voices back here.”
“We’re looking at old photographs,” Kate said, momentarily struck by his dark appeal. He’d removed his suit coat and his tie hung loosened around his neck. His eyes looked tired, and the usual humor that hovered around him was conspicuously absent.
He hesitated, his gaze fixed on the book in her lap. “Jude, the phlebotomist comes in the morning for your treatment. You need to clean your room and finish your homework now because you’ll be down for the count tomorrow.”
“But I’m showing these pictures to Kate,” Jude said plaintively. “Can’t we finish first?”
Gideon shook his head, and the slight rise of his eyebrow spoke of little room for argument.
“Fine.” In a rush of indignation, Jude snatched the album from Kate’s lap and shoved it back on the bookshelf. He started to stalk by his father, but Gideon caught his arm and gently led him back to meet his gaze.
“Leave the attitude behind when you come back down, or you can just go to bed.”
“I’m not coming back down.” He tugged free. “Just because you had a bad day doesn’t mean we did. Until now.”
The darkness that fell across Gideon’s face as Jude left the room revealed how the boy’s words had crept beneath his skin.
Kate didn’t know what to say. She rose, smoothed her khaki shorts, and started for the door, unsure of the brooding man who hovered on the threshold.
“Where are you going?” he demanded as she tried to slip by him.
She gave him a stony look. “Out of the lion’s den, if that’s okay with you.”
“I want you to stay.” He laid a hand on her arm. “Please. I’ve thought about you all day. You don’t have to say a word…just sit by me.”
Kate read the weariness in his face, the turmoil in his black eyes. Reluctantly, she moved back into the dimly lit room while he closed the double doors leading to the music room, then the hallway doors. There was something provocative in the deliberate way he shut them in, as though turning off the outside world.
Uncertainty and anticipation shimmied in her stomach and left her restive. She purposefully chose a club chair near the corner of the sofa, distancing herself from him. “What’s wrong?”
He eased down on the sofa, his fingers working to unknot his drooping tie. “Oh, a little of this, a little of that…” He released a slow breath and let his head relax against the cushion behind him. “The phlebotomist is coming tomorrow to take Jude’s blood. It’s a necessity about twice a month; helps control his hemoglobin and iron levels. Afterward he feels bad. I don’t know how much of it’s mental. He’s tired of the needles and the poking and prodding. I haven’t seen him smile in the last few weeks…except when he’s with you.” He rolled his head toward her, the expression in his red-rimmed eyes indiscernible. “You’re good with him. He was happy when I came in. And I didn’t even ask him how his day went.”
Sympathy warred with lingering indignation as Kate regarded him. She eased forward to the edge of the chair, battling the urge to reach out and push back the hair fallen across his forehead. “You can always apologize to him.”
“When he’s cooled off, yes.” An ironic smile twisted his lips. “Te
chnically, I’m getting what I deserve. He’s a chip off the ol’ block. Hard-pressed to forgive, even harder-pressed to forget. I feel responsible for so much of his unhappiness.”
“You can’t blame yourself forever for his illness, Gideon.”
His humor faded. “Why not? He inherited the defective enzyme from me, not his mother.”
“But you didn’t choose to be the carrier. And if you’d known, before your wife got pregnant…”
“How can you be so sure? You don’t know me, Kate. You don’t know what’s in my heart.”
“No,” she said softly, “but I can guess.”
Her reply seemed to rob him of his edginess. “He’s everything to me. The only thing in my life I’ve really done right. So maybe that makes me a selfish bastard. Especially when he’s in pain.” His eyelids slid closed. “Or when he looks at me like he hates me.”
“All parents go through that with their kids.”
“I know. It doesn’t make it easier.”
“He’s figured out how to make you feel guilty.”
“I think I mastered doing that to myself, before he took his first step.” He opened his eyes again, slid his tie from his collar, watching her with a laziness that caught her off-guard. “You’re beautiful.”
Heat sizzled a line straight to her core. “You’re changing the subject.”
“I don’t want to talk about guilt anymore.”
She tried to reply; cleared her throat, tried again. “Then what?”
“Let’s talk about last night.”
Kate wasn’t ready. She stared back at him, mute and electrified.
“I’ll start.” He stretched his legs out, crossed his feet at the ankles, and laced his fingers across his lean belly. “You claim something happened between us. I assume you’re speaking of something besides the kiss we shared on the driveway.”
“Right.” She exhaled a shaky breath, using every ounce of willpower to squelch the hot flush rising to her cheeks. “I dreamed you were in my room last night.”
His brows shot up. “Is that right? For a chat, or…”
“Stop teasing me. Did you come to my room? Tell me the truth.”
He didn’t answer right away. His dark gaze fixed on the painting above the fireplace, and the longer Kate waited, the faster her pulse hummed. What was he thinking? He held a disconcerting edge tonight. Shadowed and unpredictable.
“Around here the truth is useless,” he said finally, shifting his attention back to her face. “Dreams seem more realistic than reality. Reality appears dreamlike.”
“That’s a lovely introduction to an old episode of The Twilight Zone,” she said dryly. “Rod Serling could have used you on his writing staff.”
The smile that crept across his face was languid, inviting. Kate wanted to lean forward and kiss it right off his lips. She was too flustered—and excited—by this unruly side of him to be angry.
“But last night seemed so…real,” she said after a moment of uncertainty.
“Like the music floating in the conservatory.” His head dropped back against the sofa and he closed his eyes. “Like the painting on the landing that Jude says changes every day.”
“Yes.”
“Maybe it’s the house, then.”
“Gideon…”
His lashes lifted. “I can’t tell you what happened last night. It was your dream. But with all my heart, I hope you enjoyed whatever transpired between us.”
Bemused, Kate just shook her head. “Creepy” didn’t begin to describe the constant, mystical element that hovered over this house. Any other woman would be packed, taxi called, waiting on the front stoop with every hair on the back of her neck at attention. But not Kate. Never Kate. There was a damn good reason trouble nipped at her heels.
So now what? she thought. What happens next, Gideon?
He sighed, rose to his feet. “Now, I give my son his medication.”
Instantly Kate’s spine stiffened. “What did you say?”
“You asked what happens next. It’s time for Jude’s medication. And then I go to my bed and you go to yours. If you decide to test last night’s possibilities, you know where to find me. Until then, I’ll stay out of your room. Or your dreams, or whatever the hell that was last night.”
“But I didn’t…I didn’t ask—”
“Didn’t you?”
Fear and astonishment stole her voice, and all she could do was close her eyes when he crouched before her.
Running a bold hand through her hair, he let the strands trickle through his fingers. “Silk. I want this on my pillow. In my hands. I should be the one dreaming, not you. I daydream, though. Do you want to know what plays across my mind’s eye when I’m sitting at my desk, staring off into space instead of grading term papers?”
“No.” She fought with all her might not to lean into the sensual caress. It made her want to coil like a cat around him and beg for more. “Well? What?”
“I think about that night in the music room. Pulling off your panties. Setting your sweet ass on the piano keys and fucking you senseless.”
“But you didn’t.”
“The help came.”
“I don’t understand how you heard them down in the kitchen from where we were. I don’t understand so much of what happens around here,” she told him without opening her eyes.
“In time, Kate. Everything comes clear eventually.” His touch melted away; a draft of cool air whispered against her skin.
Her eyelids fluttered open.
And once again, she faced an empty room.
* * * * *
“This isn’t like you, Gideon.” Delilah’s sultry, condescending tone crept around Gideon’s nerves. “Come on, darling. You used to be so sociable. Why turn down the precious chance to see such old and dear friends?”
“A hundred years worth of old and dear,” he murmured, bracing his forearm on the windowsill as he watched the play of the sun on the greenhouse roof across the yard. “I haven’t seen Jakome since…what? 1956?”
“That’s too long, for both of you stubborn creatures.”
“How is he?” Gideon ventured, his pulse quickening at the thought of seeing his old and once-closest friend after so many decades.
“He’s been living in Montana, disguised as a cattle rancher. The poor sucker is just as mindless about redeeming himself as you are. He’s been surviving off bovine blood and fighting his ungodly urges for twenty-five years. He misses you dreadfully, and he’s perfectly willing to forgive you for stealing away the love of his life. What was her name? Sally?”
Gideon shifted the receiver against his ear and winced at the memory of platinum hair, wide blue eyes and a swan-like neck that had made his mouth water even as he dragged the cocktail waitress from his fellow nightwalker’s apartment. The girl hadn’t been one bit grateful, either…until he explained in no uncertain terms what Jakome was, what he himself was, and that if she had any sense under that bottle-blonde chignon, she’d run for her life.
“Her name was Stella. And she wasn’t the love of his life—she was dinner that night, and I thought her too nice a girl to let Jakome have a go at her sweet little jugular.”
“Hmm. Well, he claims to have loved her madly. The passing of years has fogged his memory, perhaps.” The seductiveness in her tone traveled the phone line between them. “It’s not important, dear one. I know he wants to put the hard feelings behind and reclaim your friendship. Davide will be with him. They’re clamoring to catch up on your life story. Won’t you come to Roanoke and meet us, Gid?”
Snapping the plantation shutter closed, he turned from the window and found himself gazing at Jude’s baby photo on his office desk. “I can’t,” he said staunchly. “I’m sorry, Delilah. I miss the old times, too. I miss my friends. But they don’t fit into the life I’ve built with my son. It goes without saying that Jude needs my attention. He needs all of me.”
“I see,” came her chilled response. “And if I told you that I need your at
tention, too? As soon as possible? That I’m burning up for you, and just my fantasies about you may have already cost several nubile young men their charmed existences? What would you say to that?”
Gideon was unmoved. “Wouldn’t a mass killing spree draw unwanted attention?”
“Maybe they died from natural causes. The sheer pleasure of taking me to bed.”
“Maybe.” He smiled at the petulant note in her voice and sifted through the mail on his desk. “Don’t kill on my account, Delilah. You’ve always done it for fun and games. Why change your motives now?”
“And you’ve never turned away the chance to take me to bed and swap platelets, Gid. Why change now?” she mimicked softly.
An image of Kate darted through his mind, potent enough to send a rare surge of warmth through his body. Quickly he tried to squelch the thought, but it was too late. Delilah had read his mind through miles of phone line before he could drop the curtain between them.
She sucked in her breath and released it with a rushing, brittle laugh. “Oh, Gideon. You’ve got to be kidding.”
“I have to go,” he said, his grip tightening around the receiver. “Give my best to Jakome and Davide—”
“You’re not slipping away so easily. Tell me about her. Is she luscious and hot-blooded like your precious Caroline was? Is she worth the risk?” When he didn’t reply, she said slowly, “Does she even know about you, Gideon?”
“Delilah.” His tone smoothed and lowered, laced with a quiet warning as he regained control. “Don’t.”
For a terse moment, explosive silence hung between them. Then Delilah uttered a soft sigh of defeat and the flippant edge returned to her voice. “Dear Gideon. Always the romantic. Well, for whatever it’s worth, enjoy her. Mortals have such quicksilver existences. And falling in love with one is an utter ignominy for a beautiful creature like you.”
He didn’t reply.