In the Midnight Hour (22 page)

“How comforting.” The pounding in her temples increased and she leaned over to rest her head on her folded arms.

The television clicked on and
Jeopardy
blared in the background.

Pressing and gyrating. Right. First of all, none of the four had been nearly cute enough to inspire even a teensy bit of pressing, much less any gyrating. What a big load of overblown male bull…

Ronnie didn’t realize she’d dozed off, until she felt strong hands at her neck, soothing, working magic as they rubbed and kneaded her sore muscles. Ah, Val.

Her eyes fluttered open and she half-turned to see Danny behind her. His gaze hooked with hers, intense and hot and deep, deep blue…. Blue? She snapped her eyes shut again. Danny did not have blue eyes, and Ronnie was sick. Feverish.

She relaxed. The hands soothed her aching muscles; she sighed and slipped deeper into a doze. Strong arms scooped her up, carried her to the bed, and tucked her in.

“
Sleep well
, Rouquin.” The deep voice whispered through her head a second before sweet lips touched hers in a slow, lingering kiss that rocked her senses despite the fever.

Because
of it, she reminded herself when her eyes opened and she saw Danny lean away from her and lick his lips.

Panic bolted through her, quickly swamped in a chill that gripped her body and forced her deeper into the covers. The fever, she told herself as she closed her eyes, her mouth still tingling from the kiss. Just the fever.

Chapter Eleven

Ronnie could have sworn it was Danny who tucked her into bed and kissed her goodnight.… Ugh, the kiss. It couldn’t be. Not him. Not again.

It wasn’t, she realized when she opened her eyes some time later and saw Val’s concerned face.

Val
.

No Danny. No brain scrambling. Just the imaginings of a wild fever.

Just Val.

He bathed her burning skin with a cool cloth, cradled her head, and urged her to drink. The smelly concoction burned down her throat and exploded a fireball in her stomach. The heat tempered to a pulsing warmth that swept through her body, gripped her nerves, and lulled her back to sleep.

Until she stirred again and he returned to repeat the process.

A dream.

The real thing, she realized when she finally opened her eyes and lifted her throbbing head.

He sat by her bedside, a bowl on the nightstand, a glass of some murky yellow mixture within arm’s reach.

“What time is it?” she croaked.

“
Two a.m
.”

“Two?” She cast bleary eyes at the clock. She’d fallen asleep around one o’clock. “Geez, I feel like I’ve been sleeping forever—”

“
It’s two a.m.—a full twenty-four hours later
.”

“
What
?” She bolted upright and wobbled.

Firm hands urged her back to the pillows. “
You’re sick, Veronique. Lie down
.”

“But my Friday classes—”

“
You’ll make them up
.” His fingers played across her cheek, strong yet gentle.

“But my professors. I never miss. They’ll wonder—”

“
I left a note on your door for your friend Danny and asked him to notify them of your absence
.”

“Danny?” She tried to draw his memory forth, but with Val so close, his warm scent filling her nostrils, his hands stroking down her bare arms, she couldn’t think at all. Danny who?

“
In the note, I also instructed him to call the
CPA
firm and the library. Now rest
, chérie.
You’re sick
.”

“But,” she sputtered. “But I can’t be sick. I never get sick. I mean, I get colds and stuff, but nothing serious.” She wiped at her teary eyes. “Nothing requiring bedrest.”

“
Complete bedrest
.”

She shook her head frantically. “I haven’t been that sick since I had strep throat my senior year in high school.”

“
Then you’ve earned a rest
. Now rest.” He pushed her back into the pillows and she let him because her entire body was conspiring against her. Her eyes watered. Her head pounded. Her muscles cried. Her throat burned. Little match for her stubbornness.

She closed her eyes and tried not to panic. Okay, so she’d missed one day—a quiz and three lectures, three hours at the CPA firm and four hours at the library. It wasn’t the end of the world. She could make up the quiz, borrow notes from classmates, double up at the library to compensate for missed wages, and she had sick days at the CPA firm, not that she’d ever used one—

“
Drink
,” he said a moment before the glass touched her lips.

“Ugh,” she sputtered as the sharp scent hit her. “It smells like burnt lemons.”

“
Don’t smell it. Drink it
.”

She held her nose and swallowed several mouthfuls. “It tastes like burnt lemons,” she said between choked coughs. “What was that?”

“
Something I mixed up. Guaranteed to cure what ails you
.”

A grin tugged at her lips despite her aching head. “Some nineteenth-century remedy from your past life?”

“
Actually
, it’s
a twentieth-century liquid cold formula from your present life. I found the packet in the back of your medicine cabinet
.” He sniffed and wrinkled his nose. “
The remedies my
grand-mère
used to mix up smelled and tasted much better than this
. Grand-mère
Odile had a whiskey tonic that could cure a sore throat and put hair on your chest all in one sip
.”

“Just what I need—hair on my chest.” She took another drink of the nasty cold remedy. “Your grandmother’s name is Odile?”

“
Was
,” he corrected, putting the glass aside. “
She passed away when I was nineteen. She always wore yellow. A yellow dress, a yellow shawl, yellow daisies in her gray hair during the springtime. She came to look after me and my sisters when our parents died in a carriage accident. I was fourteen then
.”

“I’m sorry, Val.”

He shrugged, the frown dissolving into a soft smile. “
It was a long time ago, and I still had my grandmother and my sisters
.” He winked. “
I grew up surrounded by the most beautiful women in Heaven’s Gate
.”

“How many sisters do you have—I mean,
did
you have?”

“
I was the only boy out of six
.”

“And probably spoiled rotten. It’s no wonder with all that feminine influence that you grew up so in tune with the female psyche.” She settled back against the pillows and closed her burning eyes. “After five girls, I bet your father was happy when you came along.”

“
Papa loved all his children equally, but he was pleased to see the name continue
.” A wistfulness filled his voice. “
A foolish dream
.” His expression closed and he held the glass to her lips again. “
You’d better drink some more
.”

The sour mixture tasted better the second time around, undoubtedly because the first few sips had permanently damaged her tastebuds. The throbbing in her head eased and she leaned back into the pillows. Ah, that felt better. “So what are—were—your sisters’ names?” She had to stop thinking present tense. Val was the past. A
ghost
.

But talking to him, feeling him so close, he seemed so much more.

The fever, she told herself. Just the fever making her think crazy thoughts, like how nice it was just to sit and talk to someone without worrying about school or work or planning the next minute of her life.

“
Margaret, Elizabeth, Mary, Rebecca, and Nicole. Nicole was the youngest, two years my senior. I was the thorn in her side
.” A soft smile played at his lips. “
She was always mad at me. Because I’d slipped Willie into her lemonade, or under her bed, or next to her dinner plate. She hated Willie
.”

“Willie?”

“
My pet frog
.”

She grinned. “You must have loved her an awful lot.”

“
Worship would be more appropriate, but I don’t know that she ever realized it. I should have told her. I should have told them all. But, alas, one minute I was giving them hell, and the next they
were
off and married, having babies, and I was alone and in charge of the estate
.”

“I’m sure they knew, Val. You were their baby brother, and every girl knows that when a boy picks on you, he likes you. It’s a fact of nature.”

“
I still should have told them I loved them
.” A strange glimmer lit his eyes and something shifted inside her.

She knew the look so well. She’d worn it many times over the past eight years since she’d been on her own.

Longing.

Loneliness.

Regret.

Her gaze locked with his and an invisible connection flowed between them, an understanding. Val knew firsthand what it was like to be on his own. Alone. A century and a half without friends or family. Thinking about the past, wondering how things could have been different.

Her thoughts shifted to her father, to their bitter parting.

“
You look sad
.” His attention riveted on her face. “
What is it
?”

“Nothing.” She blinked back the sudden moisture in her eyes. “That stuff is making my eyes water.”

“
My senses are a hundred times more heightened
than
yours, and my eyes are not watering
.” He trailed a fingertip along her cheek and she closed her eyes, suddenly overwhelmed at the tenderness of it all. His gentle ministrations, his worried expression, the sincerity in his voice …

The cold remedy. That’s why she was feeling the sudden urge to break into a pile of weepy tears and curl up in his arms.

“
What are you thinking
?”

She sniffled. “About my father.”

“
Tell me about him
, chérie.”

And she did. She wasn’t sure why. She rarely talked about her father with anyone, including Jenny. But Val was different. He understood. A kindred spirit.

The cold remedy, she reminded herself. Drugs.

She grasped on to the last explanation and told him about growing up in a traditionalist household, the strict rules forced on her, the way she’d always felt less of a person because she’d been so limited by her father’s old-fashioned view of women. She went on to tell him about her few and far-between dates in high school, nice clean-cut boys handpicked by her father, and about her engagement to Raymond.

“I’ll never forget the look on my father’s face when the minister asked if I would take Raymond and I said no.” She closed her eyes. She could still see her father’s shocked expression. His anger. His disappointment. All carefully concealed beneath a stern expression as he’d led her to the minister’s chambers. She’d tried to explain her feelings, to make him understand, but he’d been too angry. Too set in his beliefs. And then he’d said the final words that had severed their relationship completely.

“
If you walk out of here, you’re no daughter of mine, Veronica Parrish. You’re no daughter of mine?
”

“So I walked away,” she finished. “Because I didn’t love Raymond, because my father didn’t understand that, and most of all, because he didn’t care. He wanted me to marry Raymond regardless.”

“
Marry a man you did not love
?” Val muttered a few colorful phrases in French. “Non,
you could not do such a thing
.”

“I know. But I’ve always wondered maybe, just maybe, if I’d made one final plea for my father’s understanding, he might have taken his words back and maybe things would have turned out differently.”

“
Maybe
,” Val conceded. “
And maybe not
.”

She sniffled. “Probably not. All the crying and begging I did in the first place didn’t do anything but harden his resolve and prove him right. That women are ruled by emotion and men aren’t.”

“
I could argue that one with you
, chérie.
I have been known to act on pure emotion a time or two
.” His comment coaxed a smile from her.

“Try three hundred and sixty-nine times—and that wasn’t emotion, Valentine Tremaine. It was hormones.” Her smiled faded. “I’m talking about the essence of who we are. My father believes that women think with their hearts, while men think with their heads.”

“
Perhaps he is right, to a certain extent. But I think the happiest person is the one who can acknowledge both. Who isn’t afraid to act on his feelings, yet keeps his head when the situation calls for it
.”

“Like the ghost of a legendary lover who offers to give love lessons, but refuses any hands-on?”

“
The generous but smart thing to do
,” he said, a stern frown creasing his face.