Authors: Christina Dodd

Tags: #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal, #General

Storm of Shadows (17 page)

BOOK: Storm of Shadows

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She got nervous when she looked at him. Handsome, clean, well-dressed, with an edge of primal intensity that made her want to cross her legs, lean back in her chair, and give him a sultry smile.

Or do as her father’s text had commanded, and
run
.

Who
was
Aaron Eagle, really?

An ardent lover concealed behind an impassive facade? A primitive warrior clad in the skin of a debonair James Bond?

To her, he was a book that wouldn’t open its pages.

As the afternoon drifted into evening, she found herself looking up more and more often, wondering when he was going to materialize and tell her she should eat or drink or shower or change her clothes.

But he was just gone.

Finally she gave up the attempt to concentrate, stood and stretched, and wandered over to the window to look out on the street. It was an August evening on the Upper East Side. Pedestrians hurried along the sidewalk, looking hot and grumpy. Cars and cabs cruised along the broad street. She was standing there, idly watching, wondering how many days she’d been here . . . three? four? . . . and looking for Aaron, when she thought she saw a familiar face.

But what would
he
be doing here? He hadn’t answered her text, so she had figured he was like all the rest of the guys she’d ever met—sorry he’d accidentally asked her on a date, glad she’d not shown up. Plus it was stretching coincidence that in a city of eight million people he would happen to walk by the place she was working when he didn’t know where she was, and at precisely the moment when she looked out. . . .

Idly she watched him stride down the sidewalk, shoulders broad, hair blond and crisp, and that face . . . that face!

She stiffened. She stared. She slammed herself against the window. “Lance!” she yelled. “Lance!”

He walked on.

“Lance!” She tried to open the window, fumbled with the lock, couldn’t budge it. “Lance!”

She pounded on the glass.

He didn’t turn. He was going to be gone if she didn’t
do
something.

She ran out of the room and down the stairs, through the foyer and out the front door. She raced down the sidewalk, turned the corner, and saw his glorious self walking away from her. “Lance!” she yelled.

He started. Turned. Saw her. Smiled in wonder. “Rosamund!” He hurried toward her, caught her by the arms, pulled her against the wrought-iron fence in the shadow of the building. “What are you doing here?”

“I work here. I mean, today, now I work here. For a while. I’m helping them translate some texts for their library.”

“That’s wonderful.” He glanced doubtfully at Irving’s mansion.

“What are
you
doing here?” she asked.

“I’m on my way to visit the Met.” He smiled, abashed. “I know it’s nerdy, but I love to stroll through the museum.”

“Oh, me, too!” She could hardly believe this. “What’s your favorite part?”

“I couldn’t begin to choose.”

“The marbles, especially the Greek and Roman art.”

“I love the marbles.”

“There’s that wood room. I can’t remember what it’s called, but imagine a whole room where everything, even the stuff you look at through the windows, is wood!”

“I know. Isn’t it great?”

“And the art.”

“My favorite is the . . . Gosh, let’s talk about the nineteenth century!”

“The early Impressionists. I know. Me, too.” She stood with her hands clasped before her chest, staring at him. She knew she was babbling, but he looked even better than he had in the library basement, with the wonderful physique and the fabulous face with the eyes. What eyes! Not to mention that he sort of glowed from within, as if he had a lamp of goodness lit inside him.

She had to stop staring. So she glanced around. “I think you’re going the wrong way.”

“The wrong way?”

“To the Met.” She pointed. “It’s back that way.”

“This is so embarrassing.” Although he looked annoyed. “I have no sense of direction. But listen—after we didn’t have our date—”

“I know. I’m so embarrassed, too. I had to work. I lost track of time and forgot to call.” Remembering everything Charisma and Aaron had said, about how a real man would understand, she waited anxiously for Lance’s reaction.

“The first time I met you, I knew you were that kind of girl, the kind who is so dedicated to her work she would lose herself in it.” He smiled, and the glow within him got stronger.

She melted. “I texted you.”

“I know, and the next day I went back to the library to find you and they said you were on loan to someone else, and my heart broke. I thought about texting
you
, but I was afraid to interrupt your work.”

He was so perfect, so thoughtful. “I hoped it was something like that.”

“I kept your text.”

“Really?”

“I was hoping you’d have a minute to send me another one, maybe tell me about your work.”

“Really?”
She remembered what he’d been asking about when he came to the library. “I got wrapped up in what I’m doing here, but actually, my research should be of interest to you, too.”

“What a coincidence!”

“I thought that, too. I’m searching for a prophecy that relates to a prophetess who was a black slave in a white house.”

Although Lance still smiled, his eyes sharpened dis cerningly. “How fascinating. That was exactly what I was looking for. I don’t want you to break a confidence, of course, but could you tell me how you’re doing?”

“It’s a fascinating quest, and I think I’m getting close.” She thought of the books and papers scattered across the table upstairs. “Would you like me to let you know when I succeed?”

“That would be absolutely marvelous.” He looked up at the mansion, scanning the windows. “Since we’ve run into each other, maybe we could go get a coffee.”

She shouldn’t go. She should go back to work. “I’d love to!”

He took her arm. “I know this great little place not far away—”

“Hey, Rosamund! What are you doing out here in your socks?” Aleksandr stood at the corner, holding a book and looking at her, a puzzled, concerned expression on his face.

She looked down at herself. She was wearing a loose gathered skirt, a plaid flannel pajama top, and Aaron’s big fuzzy gray socks. One heel was twisted sideways and pouched out on her ankle. The other one had lost its elastic and slouched on the top of her foot. She put her hand up to her hair. It hadn’t been combed today. The curls clung around her face in 1980s exuberance. She couldn’t remember when her face had been washed, and . . . “Oh, no.”

Lance was so beautiful.

She was so not.

Catching her hand, he smiled into her face. “You are charmingly disheveled, a woman who is dedicated to her work.”

“Wow.” He liked her like she was.

“Rosamund?” Aleksandr started toward them.

“I understand we’ll have to take a rain check. You have to stay here and work,” Lance said. “But promise me you’ll keep me updated with what’s happening with you. Text me?”

“Yes.”

“Promise?”

“I promise.”

He chucked her under the chin, then started down the sidewalk.

“Wait!” she said.

“I really need to leave.” He glanced toward Aleksandr.

“But you’re going the wrong way!” She pointed back toward Central Park. “It’s that way to the Met.”

“I’ve been talking too long. I’m going to have to go. . . .” He picked up speed. “Remember!” he called.

“I will!” She waved even though he never looked back.

“Who was that guy?” Aleksandr stared after Lance.

“I was supposed to have a date with him, but I came here instead.” She huffed in disgust. “He happened to walk by, and I saw him, and . . . oh, I like him so much!” Suddenly anxious, she said, “You won’t tell Aaron I saw him, will you? I don’t think Aaron wants me to do anything except find the prophecy.”

“I won’t tell him,” Aleksandr promised. “You can have a boyfriend if you want. We should all be able to . . . to fall in love if we want to.”

He sounded a little more fervent than she expected.

She cast a final longing glance toward Lance’s disappearing figure, then tucked her hand into Aleksandr’s arm. They started toward the front door. “Why do you say it like that?” Her mind made the logical leap. “Have you met someone?”

“Yes, and she’s so cool.” Aleksandr sounded awed. “I’m tutoring her. She needs my help in calculus, but she’s completely brilliant and pretty, and today she took my hand and told me that in two lessons I had helped her more than all the professors in the world. And she’s just so . . . you know . . .”

“I do know.” She completely understood. Aleksandr loved a girl who was like Lance, only female.

“I wanted to kiss her,” he said, “but she’s not like the other girls. She’s younger than me, and shy. I didn’t want to scare her away, you know?”

She looked at Aleksandr. He was handsome, twenty-one, with the assurance of a much older man. He was obviously experienced and knew his way around women, yet with this girl, he was awed and careful. “She’s special,” Rosamund said.

“She sure is.”

They rounded the corner, and the front door of the mansion was hanging open. “Uh-oh.” She tugged at Aleksandr. “Come on, hurry! If McKenna finds out I left the door open, he’ll kill me, and if Aaron finds out I left my work, he’ll be cranky.”

They rushed up the steps, tiptoed into the foyer, and looked around.

No one was there.

She gave a sigh of relief, and started to trudge toward the stairs. “Listen, Aleksandr, about your girlfriend—I won’t tell on you if you won’t tell on me.”

“Thank you. Yes.” He put out his hand, and she shook it. “Agreed.”

Chapter 17

T
he door of Irving’s private study slammed open, smacking the wall behind it.

Rosamund jumped, and looked up from her scroll to see Aaron posed in the doorway, jacket over his shoulder and hooked to one finger, tie loosened, hair rakishly askew, a half smile crooking his mouth.

She hadn’t seen him smile since that time in the basement of the Arthur W. Nelson Fine Arts Library when he was trying to convince her to tell him about Lance. She glanced out the window. It was dark now. He’d been gone all day. When she thought about Lance, she was glad of that, but . . . where had Aaron been?

And why did she care?

He swaggered in. “Rosamund. Hello.” His voice sounded very deep, very suave, very sure.

“Hello.” She waited for him to say something else, but he stood there staring at her, that crooked smile on his lips, so she ventured, “Did you need something?”

He took a long breath. Tossed his jacket on Irving’s leather chair. Turned to face her. “How would you know if I did?”

“You’d . . . tell me?”

“I’d have to, wouldn’t I? Because you wouldn’t recognize a signal if it was blinking on an oncoming semi.”

“Since I’ve lived in New York City most of my life, I don’t drive, but as a pedestrian, I certainly know to avoid a, um . . .”

His nostrils flared. His eyes narrowed. He looked as if he were restraining a vast annoyance. “I didn’t mean that about the signal literally.”

“Right.” Talking to him was like trying to decipher a lost language. But she was a linguist of no small talent. If she questioned him, she would surely get him figured out. “Did you want to discuss the prophecy?”

“Why would you think that?”

“B-because that’s all you ever ask me about?”

Perching his hip on the table, he slid close to her. “But that’s not what I’m
really
saying, is it?”

BOOK: Storm of Shadows

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