There was an edge to him, one she couldn’t quite nail down. As soon as she focused on something, he shifted and moved so that she was thrown off balance. Their conversation seemed more like one of the chess matches they’d often played in her mother’s kitchen so many years earlier. She was no match for him in sparring and she knew it. Dillon could cut the heart out of someone with a smile on his face. She’d seen him do it, charming, edgy, saying the one thing that would shatter his opponent like glass.
“Are we at war, Dillon?” Jessica asked. “Because if we are, you should lay out the rules for me. We came here to spend Christmas with you.”
“Christmas?” He nearly spat the word. “I don’t do Christmas.”
“Well, we do Christmas, your children, your family, Dillon. You remember family, don’t you? We haven’t seen you in years; I thought you might be pleased.”
His eyebrow shot up. “Pleased, Jess? You thought I’d be pleased? You didn’t think that for a minute. Let’s have a little honesty between us.”
Her temper was beginning a slow smolder. “I doubt if you know the meaning of honesty, Dillon. You lie to yourself so much it’s become a habit.” She was appalled at her own lack of control. The accusation slipped out before she could censor it.
He leaned back in his leather chair, his body sprawled out, lazy and amused, still in the shadows. “I wondered when your temper would start to surface. I remember the old days when you would go up in flames if someone pushed you hard enough. It’s still there, hidden deep, but you burn, don’t you, Jess?”
Dillon remembered it all too vividly. He’d been a grown man, for God’s sake, nearly twenty-seven with two children and an insane drug addict for a wife. And he’d been obsessed with an eighteen-year-old girl. It was sick, disgusting. Beyond his every understanding. Jessica had always been so alive, so passionate about life. She was intelligent; she had a mind that was like a hungry sponge. She shared his love of music, old buildings, and nature. She loved his children. He’d never touched her, never allowed himself to think of her sexually, but he had noticed every detail about her and he detested himself for that weakness.
“Are you purposely goading me to see what I’ll do?” She tried not to sound hurt, but was afraid it showed on her face. He always noticed the smallest detail about everyone.
“Damn right I am,” he suddenly admitted, his blue eyes glittering at her, his lazy, indolent manner gone in a flash. “Why the hell did you bring my children all this way, scaring the hell out of them, risking their lives…” He wanted to strangle her. Wrap his hands around her slender neck and strangle her for wreaking havoc with his life again. He couldn’t afford to have Jessica around. Not now. Not ever.
“I did not risk their lives.” Her green eyes glared at him as she denied the charge.
“You risked them in that kind of weather. You didn’t even call me first.”
Jessica took a deep breath and let it out slowly. “No, I didn’t call. You would have said not to come. They belong here, Dillon.”
“Jessica, all grown up. It’s hard to stop thinking of you as a wild teen and accept that you’re a grown woman.” His tone was sheer insult.
Her chin lifted. “Really, Dillon, I would have thought you would have preferred to think of me as a much older woman. You certainly were willing to leave Trevor and Tara with me after Mama’s death, no matter what my age.”
He rose from his chair, moving quickly across the room, putting distance between them. “Is that what this is about? You want more money?”
Jessica remained silent, simply watching him. It took a great deal of self-control not to get up and walk out. She allowed the silence to stretch out between them, a taut, tension-filled moment. Dillon finally turned to look at her.
“That was beneath even you, Dillon,” she said softly. “Someone should have slapped your face a long time ago. Are you expecting me to feel sorry for you? Is that what you’re looking for from me? Pity? Sympathy? You’re going to have a long wait.”
He leaned against the bookcase, his blue eyes fixed on her face. “I suppose I deserved that.” His gloved fingers slid along the spine of a book. Back and forth. Whispered over the leather. “Money has never held much allure for you or your mother. I was sorry to hear of her death.”
“Were you? How kind of you, Dillon, to be sorry to hear. She was my mother and the mother of your children, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. My mother took care of Tara and Trevor almost from the day they were born. They never knew any other mother. They were devastated at losing her. I was devastated. Your kind gesture of flowers and seeing to all the arrangements…lacked something.”
He straightened, pulled himself up to his full height, his blue eyes ice-cold. “My God, you’re reprimanding me, questioning my actions.”
“What actions, Dillon? You made a few phone calls. I doubt that took more than a few minutes of your precious time. More likely you asked Paul to make the phone calls for you.”
His dark brow shot up. “What did you expect me to do, Jessica? Show up at the funeral? Cause another media circus? Do you really think the press would have left it alone? The unsolved murders and the fire were a high profile case.”
“It wasn’t about you, Dillon, was it? Not everything is about you. All that mattered to you was that your life didn’t change. It’s been eleven months since my mother’s death and it didn’t change, did it? Not at all. You made certain of that. I just stepped right into my mother’s shoes, didn’t I? You knew I’d never give them up or let them go into foster care. The minute you suggested hiring a stranger, maybe breaking them up, you knew I’d keep them together.”
He shrugged, in no way remorseful. “They belonged with you. They’ve been with you their entire life. Who better than you, Jessica? I already knew you loved them, that you would risk your life for them. Tell me why I was wrong not to want the best for my children?”
“They belong with you, Dillon. Here, with you. They need a father.”
His laughter was bitter, without a trace of humor. “A father? Is that what I’m supposed to be, Jessica? I seem to recall my earlier parenting skills. I left them with their mother in a house on an island with no fire department. Do you remember that as vividly as I do? Because, believe me, it’s etched in my brain. I left them with a mother who I knew was out of her mind. I knew she was flying on drugs, that she was unstable and violent. I knew she brought her friends here. And worse, I knew she was fooling around with people who were occultists. I let them into my home with my children, with you.” He raked gloved fingers through his black hair, tousling the unruly curls so that his hair fell in waves around the perfection of his face.
He pushed away from the bookcase, a quicksilver movement of impatience, then stalked across the floor with all the grace of a ballet dancer and all the stealth of a leopard. When had his obsession started? He only remembered longing to get home, to sit in the kitchen and watch the expressions chasing across Jessica’s face. He wrote his songs about her. Found peace in her presence. Jessica had a gift for silences, for laughter. He watched her all the time, and yet, in the end, he had failed her, too.
“Dillon, you’re being way too hard on yourself,” Jessica said softly. “You were so young back then, and everything came at once—the fame and fortune. The world was upside down. You used to say you didn’t know reality, what was up or what was down. And you were working, making it all come together for everyone. You had so many others who needed the money you generated. Everyone depended on you. Why should you expect that you would have handled everything so perfectly? You weren’t responsible for Vivian’s decisions to use drugs nor were you responsible for any of the things she did.”
“Really? She was clearly ill, Jess. Whose responsibility was she if not mine?”
“You put her in countless rehabs. We all heard her threaten to commit suicide if you left her. She threatened to take the kids.” She threatened a lot more than that. More than once Vivian had rushed to the nur
sery, shouting she would throw the twins in the foaming sea. Jessica pressed a hand to her mouth as the memory rose up to haunt her. He had tried to get her committed, to put her in a psychiatric hospital, but Vivian was adept at fooling the doctors, and they believed her tales of a philandering husband who wanted her out of the way while he did drugs and slept with groupies. The tabloids certainly supported her accusations.
“I took the easy way out. I left. I went on the road and I left my children, and you, and Rita, to her insanity.”
“The tour had been booked for a long time,” Jessica pointed out. “Dillon, it’s all water under the bridge. We can’t change the things that happened, we can only go forward. Tara and Trevor need you now. I’m not saying they should live with you, but they should have a relationship with you. You’re missing so much by not knowing them, and they’re missing so much by not knowing you.”
“You don’t even know who I am anymore, Jess,” Dillon said quietly.
“Exactly my point. We’re staying through Christmas. That’s nearly three weeks and it should give us plenty of time to get to know each other again.”
“Tara finds me repulsive to look at. Do you think I would subject a child of mine to my own nightmare?” He paced across the hardwood floor, a quick restless movement, graceful and fluid, so reminiscent of the old Dillon. There was so much passion in him, so much emotion, he could never contain it. It flowed out of him, warmed those around him so that they wanted to bask in his presence.
Jessica was sensitive to his every emotion, she always had been. She could practically see his soul bleeding, cut so deeply the gash was nearly impossible to heal. But agreeing with his twisted logic wouldn’t help him. Dillon had given up on life. He had locked his heart from the world and was determined to keep it that way. “Tara is only thirteen years old, Dillon. You’re doing her an injustice. It was a shock to her, but it’s unfair to keep her out of your life because she had a childish reaction to your scars.”
“It will be better for her if you take her away from here.”
Jessica shook her head. “It’ll be better for you, you mean. You aren’t thinking of her at all. You’ve become selfish, Dillon, living here, feeling sorry for yourself.”
He whipped around, taking her breath away with his speed. He was on her before she had a chance to run, catching her arm, his fingers wrapping around it so tightly she could feel the thick ridges of his scars against her skin, despite the leather of his glove. He dragged her close to him, right up against his chest, pulled her tight so that every soft curve of her body was pressed relentlessly against him. “How dare you say that to me.” His blue eyes glared at her, icy cold, burning with cold.
Jessica refused to flinch. She locked her gaze with his. “Someone should have said it a long time ago, Dillon. I don’t know what you’re doing here all alone in this big house, on your wild island, but it certainly isn’t living. You dropped out and you don’t have the right to do that. You chose to have children. You brought them into this world and you are responsible for them.”
His eyes blazed down into hers, his mouth hardened into a cruel line. She felt the change in him. The male aggression. The savage hostility. His hand tangled in the wealth of hair at the nape of her neck, hauled her head back. He fastened his mouth to hers hungrily. Angrily. Greedily. It was supposed to frighten her, to punish her. To drive her away. He used a bruising force, demanded submission, in a primitive retaliation designed to send her running from him.
Jessica tasted the hot anger, the fierce need to conquer and control, but she also tasted dark passion, as elemental as time. She felt the passion flood his body, harden his every muscle to iron, soften his lips when they would have been brutal. Jessica remained passive beneath the onslaught, her heart racing, her body coming alive. She didn’t fight him, she didn’t resist, but she didn’t participate either.
Dillon lifted his head abruptly, swore foully, dropped his hands as if she had burned him. “Get out of here, Jessica. Get out before I take what I want. I’m damned selfish enough to do it. Get out and take the kids with you, I won’t have them here. Sleep here tonight and stay the hell out of my way, then go when the storm passes. I’ll have Paul take you home.”
She stood there, one hand pressed to her swollen lips, shocked at the way her body throbbed and clenched in reaction to his. “You don’t have a choice in the matter, Dillon. You are perfectly within your rights to send me away, but not Tara and Trevor. Someone is trying to kill them.”
chapter
3
“WHAT THE HELL are you talking about?” All at once Dillon looked so menacing, that Jessica actually stepped back.
She held up her hand, more frightened of him than she had ever conceived she could be. There was something merciless in his eyes. Something terrifying. And for the first time, she recognized him as a dangerous man. That had never been a part of Dillon’s makeup, but events had twisted him, shaped him, just as they had shaped her. She had to stop persisting in seeing him as the man she had loved so much. He was different. She could feel the explosive violence in him swirling close to the surface.
Had she made a terrible mistake in coming to Dillon? In bringing the children to him? Her first duty was to Trevor and Tara. She loved them as a mother would, or, at the very least, an older sister.
“What the hell are you up to?” he snapped.
“What am I…” Her voice broke off in astonishment. Fear gave way to a sudden wave of fury. She stopped backing away and even took a step toward him, her fingers curling into fists. “You think I’m making up a story, Dillon? Do you think I dragged the children out of a home they’re familiar with, away from their friends, in secret, in the dead of night, to see a man they have no reason to love, who obviously doesn’t want them here, on a whim? Because I felt like it? For what? Your stupid, pitiful money?” She sneered it at him, throwing his anger right back in his face. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”
“If I obviously don’t want to have them here, why would you bring them?” His blue eyes burned with a matching fury, her words obviously stinging.
“You’re right, we shouldn’t have come here, it was stupid to think you had enough humanity left in you to care about your own children.”
Their gazes were locked, two combatants, two strong, passionate personalities. There was a silence while Jessica’s heart hammered out her fury and her eyes blazed at him. Dillon regarded her for a long time. He moved first, sighing audibly, breaking the tension, walking back to his desk with his easy, flowing grace. “I see you have a high opinion of me, Jessica.”
“You’re the one accusing me of being a greedy, grasping, money-hungry witch,” she pointed out. “I’d say you were the one with a pretty poor opinion of me.” Her chin jutted at him, her face stiff with pride. “I must say, while you’re throwing out accusations, you didn’t even have the courtesy to answer my letter suggesting the children come live with you after my mother died.”
“There was no letter.”
“There was a letter, Dillon. You ignored it like you ignored us. If I’m so money-hungry, why did you leave your children with me for all these months? Mom was dead, you knew that, yet you made no attempt to bring the children back here with you and you didn’t respond to my letter.”
“You might remember when you’re stating things you know nothing about that you are in my home. I didn’t turn you out, despite the fact that you didn’t have the courtesy to phone ahead.”
Her eyebrow shot up. “Is that a threat? What? You’re going to kick me out into the storm or even better, send me to the boathouse or the caretaker’s cottage? Give me a break, Dillon. I know you better than that!”
“I’m not that man you once knew, Jess, I never will be again.” He fell silent for a moment watching the expressions chase across her face. When she stirred, as if to speak, he held up his hand. “Did you know your mother came to see me just two days before she died?” His voice was very quiet.
A
chill went down her spine as she realized what he was saying. Her mother had gone to see Dillon and two days later she was dead in what certainly wasn’t an accident. Jessica didn’t move. She couldn’t move as she assimilated the information. She knew the two incidents had to be connected. She could feel his eyes on her, but there was a strange roaring in her ears. Her legs were all at once rubbery and the room tilted crazily. She had brought Trevor and Tara to him.
“Jessica!” He said her name sharply, “Don’t faint on me. What’s wrong?” He dragged a chair out and forced her into it, pushing her head down, the leather covering his palm feeling strange on the nape of her neck. “Breathe. Just breathe.”
She inhaled deeply, taking in great gulps of air, fighting off dizziness. “I’m just tired, Dillon, I’m all right, really I am.” She sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.
“Something about your mother’s coming here upset you, Jess. Why should that bother you? She often wrote or called to update me on the progress of the kids.”
“Why would she come here?” Jessica forced air into her lungs and waited for the dizziness to subside completely. Dillon’s hand was strong on her nape; he wasn’t going to allow her to sit up unless she was fully recovered. “I’m fine, really.” She pushed at his arm, not wanting the contact with him. He was too close. Too charismatic. And he had too many dark secrets.
Dillon abruptly let her go, almost as if he could read her thoughts. He moved away from her, back around the desk, back into the shadows, and hid his gloved hands below the desk, out of her sight. Jessica was certain his hands had been trembling.
“Why should it upset you that your mother came to see me? And why would you think someone might want to harm the twins?” The anger between them had dissipated as if it had never been, leaving his voice soft again, persuasive, so gentle it turned her heart over. “Does it hurt to talk about her? Is it too soon?”
The Wicked and the Wondrous Page 24