Midnight Rose (12 page)

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 attention, 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.

“I’ll let you go to her, then,” she said drolly. “May I leave you with a final bit of advice?”

“Why not?” He leaned his hip against the edge of his desk and rubbed a weary hand over his eyes.

“Don’t take her to bed, Gid. I won’t be here to quench your thirst when the bloodlust rears its ugly head. And it will. I saw her face when you thought of her, felt the desire you harbor for her.” She let the inequitable truth hang in the air for his consideration, then made a kissing sound into the phone. “Keep your fangs to yourself, darling. Au revoir .”

The door behind Kate swung open on creaking hinges and she glanced over her shoulder to find Jude standing on the stoop in sweatpants, his face a maze of emotions in the dim light of the porch lamps.

“How’d it go in the chat room?” she asked.

He lifted one shoulder in a halting shrug. “Okay, I guess.”

“Why don’t you sit out here and tell me about it?” Offering him a reassuring smile, she held her breath and waited. Three weeks had passed since she and Jude had found the Internet chat room at the blood disorders site. Her idea, of course, and his one chance to talk to other people with his illness. Yet he hung back from such a prospect, suspicious and unsure.

It must be a frightening thought to give up thirteen years of solitude, Kate mused, watching as he stepped out into the humid night and sat down on the step beside her. Unfortunately, his father hadn’t helped.

Gideon was an aggravating mixture of good intentions, overprotection and stubbornness.

To Kate’s frustration, he’d forbidden Jude to participate, citing something about children cruising the Internet and finding trouble. She’d pleaded with him before he’d left last week for a horticulture conference in Denver. She promised to sit over Jude’s shoulder and monitor what he was reading in case he encountered any sinister characters online, but Gideon had reacted with swift obduracy.

“I said no , damn it,” he’d barked, sending Kate from the library with cheeks flaming and a knot in her throat. Why wouldn’t he encourage Jude to break free from loneliness and isolation? Was he that complacent in his own discomfort? In his son’s?

The sweet idea of rebellion against his father finally drove Jude to log onto the Porphyria website, Kate was certain. He’d shooed her from the room instead of allowing her to hover over him, and she’d allowed it, wondering how Gideon would react if he came back from his trip and somehow found out.

Now, an hour after Jude’s chat session began, his father still wasn’t home. Maybe she and Jude wouldn’t be busted for their grand insurrection after all.

“There were some older people there,” he said, resting his arms on his thighs and letting his fingers dangle between his knees. “Mostly parents of kids with PCT. But then these two kids came into the chat room. One girl was fifteen, and the other was eighteen.” “And did they tell you about themselves? Did their experiences sound like yours?”

“Not exactly. Some of the things they go through are the same, like having their blood taken and all that.

And they can’t go out in the sun. But they don’t take the same medicine I do.” He sighed, then a smile quirked the corner of his mouth and he glanced at her. “I told them I was eighteen.” “You little sneak.”

“Dad thinks some pervert’s going to warp my brain if I go in the chat rooms. He’s such a dork. What pervert in his right mind would hang out in a chat room for people with a blood disease?” Kate laughed and rubbed an affectionate hand across his back. He was growing. His shoulders seemed wider and stronger. “Oh, Jude, you’d be surprised. It takes all kinds to make this world.” “Yeah. And Dad’s one of those dork kinds.”

“You need to get over being mad at him,” she said gently. “I don’t know what’s going on between you, but I think it deeply bothers your dad.”

“Good.” Jude obviously meant to sound satisfied, but the furrow between his brows spoke of regret.

When he turned his head to meet her gaze in the entry light glow, his eyes were blacker than the darkness blanketing the sky. “He won’t marry you, you know.” It took a full minute for her astonishment to subside. Then she flashed him an arid smile and leaned back on her palms. “Well, that’s a relief. Silly me. All this time I thought your dad and I were engaged.” “I’m not kidding, Kate. You’re wasting your time to think he likes you. He doesn’t like anyone except my mom. And she’s dead, so he doesn’t want anyone. Not you, not anyone.” The insult stung her cheeks. “That’s a heck of a perception you have there, Mr. Renaud. Be real careful how you throw around your theories. Someone’s feelings might get hurt.” “Yours will if you keep messing around with him. He doesn’t care about his girlfriends. He won’t care about you.”

“That’s a mean thing to say about him. I won’t have this conversation with you.” She stood, brushed the grit from the seat of her jeans and started for the front door before he shot back, “Because I’m a kid?” “No, because you’re sticking your nose somewhere it doesn’t belong.” She glared at him over her shoulder. “You have a vicious way with words, Jude. You know that?” “I know how you act with my dad,” he said sullenly. “You like him. It’s so obvious.” She lowered her voice, tried to control her indignation. “I don’t want to fight with you. Your father and I are friends. You and I are friends, even if you don’t always think so. I speak to you with respect. You owe me the same.” He glanced at her and the amber light shone on the angry tears clinging to his lashes. The intensity of his emotion surprised her. What had triggered his outburst? Certainly not jealousy. The thought made her wince. A student-teacher crush? She’d experienced it often enough to recognize such a phenomenon, but this didn’t seem typical. Certainly she and Jude had developed an immediate and powerful bond, and she hadn’t stopped to question its appropriateness until now.

Had she gotten too close to him, treated him too much like a peer instead of a student? It was nearly impossible to see him as an adolescent; he was too perceptive and worldly. And the light that shone behind his eyes…like everything else at Sister Oaks, it was inexplicably soulful and sensual and magnetic.

But he was a child. And suddenly she felt sick from uneasiness. Nothing was what it should be in this place.

Leave, whispered the distant voice of common sense.

Before she could offer some sort of comment to break the tension between them and ease her own discomfort, headlights flashed through the trees at the end of the long, narrow drive.

Jude squinted at the oncoming car, while Kate stood frozen behind him, attention glued to the headlights approaching like two icy, staring eyes. It wasn’t Gideon’s Audi. Inexplicably her pulse accelerated and a sick dread lumped in her stomach.

“No one ever comes out here,” Jude said. “I wonder what they want.”

“Maybe they’re tourists.” She descended the steps down to the driveway and watched as the dark sedan followed the circular drive around the wide loop.

“It’s not a tourist,” Jude said abruptly.

“How do you know?”

“I just know.” His hushed words raised the wispy hairs at the back of her neck. “I can feel it.”