Alex turned to her. “I came to see how you’re doing.”
“To check up on me,” she interpreted.
“I am your family doctor now.” He was looking into her eyes, but with medical disinterest and nothing else.
“I’m absolutely fine for someone who had their car totaled three days ago. Really, Alex. I’m sleeping, I’m waking, I’m eating like a horse and Bruce is keeping me on my feet on a regular basis.”
Alex gave her a small smile. “That’s good to hear. How is the rib?”
“Painful if I stretch the wrong way or bend the wrong way, so I try not to do either very much.”
“That’s about the only treatment there is,” he said. “Time and rest.” He glanced at his watch.
“Hot date, doctor?” Sydney teased him. Alex was very hard to rattle or tease, she had learned over the last year. He took everything so seriously. But at her question, he looked startled. It was a momentary flash and then it was gone, but it was definitely there.
Sydney bit her lip. “You do have a date?” Something inside her squeezed.
“No, no, I’m just having dinner with a friend…and his family,” Alex added.
The pressure in her chest relaxed abruptly and she was able to smile. “I’m sorry, it’s none of my business. Please forget I asked.”
Alex smiled at her and it seemed to her the expression was forced. “Already forgotten.” He tapped his watch. “But I really do have to go. I just wanted to check on you and make sure you and Bruce weren’t killing each other from being boxed in for days on end.”
“Bruce would never do that,” Sydney said. “But I might.”
Alex’s smile this time was natural and unforced. “You in jail would help Brody’s case along nicely.”
This time, Sydney’s mouth parted in surprise, then she laughed. “You’re teasing. I didn’t think you knew how.”
Alex opened the door again and glanced back at her. “I’m learning a great many new things these days.”
Once the door shut behind him, the apartment fell silent again. Sydney walked thoughtfully over to the easy chair she had been living in for the last three days, and considered the closed door.
Alex really had been surprised about the date question. He had covered up expertly, but Sydney was trained to see chinks and vulnerabilities in a subject. But he was meeting a friend. A male friend.
He could be lying about where he was going and that was absolutely his privilege. She had been far too direct and nosy, after all. Either he was lying, or the date was with a man.
Her heart gave a little extra-heavy beat as she considered the idea of Alexander Karim having a date with either a man or a woman. A date with anyone other than her. She didn’t like the way it made her feel.
She had never had any intention of accepting a date with him. In fact, his two-year-long campaign of emails and weekly phone calls, to try to talk her into a date, had become just another thread in the fabric of her life. Or so she thought.
But now she was feeling…what was she feeling? She examined it, trying to look at her emotions honestly. Was she really…could she be jealous?
Maybe. Perhaps. After all, Alex had been devoted to her and to winning her agreement to go to dinner with him for a long time. And now….
Now he was moving on.
With a start, she realized that he hadn’t touched her. Not once. But when he had been watching over her, he had kissed her cheek and her forehead (she could still recall the touch of his lips), and he had called her Sydney.
Bruce put his paws on the arm of the chair and lifted himself up so that he was looking directly at her. He whined, his head tilted, as if he was worrying about her and asking if she was okay.
Sydney put her arms around his thick neck and buried her hot face in his fur. “I’m fine,” she said thickly. “I’m okay.”
But it wasn’t okay at all.
She patted Bruce and let him drop down to the rug once more and he trotted away, his tags jingling reassuringly.
Sydney tucked her feet under her and reached for the Edith Wharton book on the table next to her. The Age of Innocence was an old favorite, so she didn’t have to try too hard to read it, but after a few lines, she realized that she was staring at the book sightlessly, her mind miles away.
Her mind, in fact, was wheeling around the idea that Alex’s date was a man. If he hadn’t lied about where he was going tonight. But that was irrelevant. In Sydney’s mind, he was going out with a man, and the image of Alex and the faceless other man together, their bodies touching, their lips…it took her breath away and not in a bad way.
As her thoughts grew progressively more gutter-quality, Sydney swallowed and deliberately resettled the book on her lap and tried to wrest her thoughts back to 1870s’ New York and unrequited love. But the images kept popping back into her mind: Hot, hard bodies, working against each other in interesting ways.
Alex and men…it completely changed the way she had thought about him up until now. Added to everything she knew about him, it…well, it enhanced him. But she was never going to get a chance to explore that facet of him. He had moved on.
With a sigh, she slammed the book shut and tossed it onto the sofa, startling Bruce.
The night was going to be even longer, now.
* * * * *
Rafe’s granddaughter was a middle-aged matron, with two of her adult children accompanying her, a son with long hair and tattoos, and a remarkably good looking daughter who spent a lot of time working on her cellphone. Alex thought both of them were average for the current generation of young adults. They would be just as uninterested in him as he was in them. It took a decade or two of life experience as an adult before humans started to become interesting—such as their mother.
There was also the woman, Edwina, who was a relative of some kind that Alexander was yet to unravel, but worked as a type of housekeeper for Rafe, running the big house.
Also at the dinner table was a frail man in his eighties.
“My son, Charles,” Rafe had told Alex. “Charlie, this is Doctor Alexander Karim, a very special friend of mine.”
Charlie stuck out his hand without hesitation, his gaze flickering over Alex and assessing. “It’s very good to meet you,” he said and his voice held solid conviction. “Dad has been alone for far too long.”
Alex focused on the word ‘Dad’. It was disconcerting hearing a man in the last years of his life refer to Rafael, who looked like he was in his mid-thirties, as his father. Even Philomena looked old enough to be Rafe’s mother.
Rafe raised a brow. “You’ll get used to it,” he said. “Out among humans, Charlie is my grandfather, and Philomena is my mother, unless one of her siblings is around, in which case, they all become aunts and uncles. The grand-children are getting old enough now that they’re ready to start calling me a brother in public. But here in this house, we remember who we really are to each other.”
“I like it,” Alex said, and meant it.
Charlie looked at his father. “I thought you were tying up loose ends, getting ready to shut things down?”
“I didn’t plan on this,” Rafael said. “And besides, it’s still too early to make any final decisions, yet.”
“That’s fine by me,” Charlie said heartily. “The longer you put it off, the better. So, let’s eat. I get your share, okay?”
“Glutton,” Rafe told him.
They all sat at the dinner table and Alex braced himself to practice the usual tactics he employed when forced to “dine” in public—cutting up food and moving it around on the plate, discarding it when no one was looking, plus even more sleight of hand tricks he had developed over the long years.
But when dinner was served, no plate was put in front of him or Rafe. Instead, Edwina, who was serving, placed a glass with an inch of red wine in front of both of them. “It’s bad luck to toast with water,” she murmured to Alex and rested a hand on his shoulder, before moving on to Charlie sitting next to him and
placing a dinner plate in front of him, steaming with beef and vegetables.
“You’re among friends here,” Philomena added.
Alex let out his breath, relaxing. His status as a vampire and as Rafe’s lover had been accepted completely and comprehensively.
The conversation around the table during the meal was stimulating and fast-paced. The long-haired son of Philomena, whose name was Joshua, caught Alex by surprise when he quoted Lloyd George correctly and argued politics with as much insight as a Capitol Hill resident. Joshua was an attorney working in a Pittsburgh for a public defender’s office. He tapped the tattoos on his arms with a grin. “My clients relax more when I look like them. For court, I tie my hair back and put on a suit, so the ink doesn’t show.” He shrugged. “Best of both worlds.” He glanced at his sister. “Time to unhook, darling Angeline.”
Angeline looked up from her cellphone and blushed and put it face-down on the table. “I’m so sorry,” she said, apologizing to the whole table. “I’m negotiating a deal for distribution through Walmart. I’m a bit distracted.”
“Distribution of what?” Alex asked, startled.
“Angeline has developed a natural beauty product line. It’s doing very well,” Philomena said proudly.
“Twelve million in gross product last year,” Angeline said, and leaned forward. “But if I can get into Walmart, then women everywhere will have access to beauty products that don’t destroy your immune system and cause rampant inflammation.”
“Here we go,” Joshua said with a roll of his eyes.
“Did you know that your skin is an organ and it absorbs everything you put on it?” Angeline continued. “Well, not you two, of course, but everyone else. The chemicals in retail beauty products should be outlawed! Petroleum, carcinogens, acids that strip stomach lining, and chemicals that kill your natural flora dead, dead, dead!”
Alex blinked at her passion and fury.
“Alex is a medical doctor, Angie,” Rafe said mildly. “I think he probably knows better than you what the gunk does.”
“Doctors!” Angeline said with a sniff. “They’re completely ignorant about the importance of gut health.”
“Angie…” Philomena said warningly, her voice low.
“I happen to agree with you,” Alex told Angeline, who smiled. “The average medical doctor, even most specialists that work outside the endocrine system know next to nothing about the role nutrition has on health. When I was doing my medical degree, I had a single week of food and nutrition training. Doctors focus on treating symptoms and using known treatments for common diseases, and they rely on specialists in the field to provide the knowledge for more complicated diagnosis and treatment. That’s a large part of the reason I began my own research laboratory, funded independently so politics doesn’t influence research.”
Angeline’s smile was even warmer. “We must talk more later,” she said.
“If you like,” Alex told her. “But I’m sure there are areas we disagree on and I feel strongly about some of them, too.”
“Angie loves a good debate,” Charlie said. “That won’t deter her in the slightest.
Philomena was the hardest to work out. Alex couldn’t get a read on her straight away because she didn’t speak a lot. Her two children and Charlie supplied most of the chatter, bantering back and forth, arguing over current issues, politics, and even touching on philosophy.
Charlie had started his own alternative press in the 1960s and it had grown and become one of the largest publishing houses on the west coast. He had retired five years ago, but his mind was still sharp.
Then, in a rare lull, while Edwina and Joshua cleared the table and brought dessert plates, Philomena sipped her wine and put the glass down. “Tell me, Doctor Karim, did you come out of the Middle East during the Crusades, or did you travel west later on?”
Startled, Alex glanced at Rafe for help.
Rafe grinned. “She knows prying is rude, but Philomena is a history professor at UCLA Berkeley, and that explains her table manners. It doesn’t forgive them, however.”
“I see,” Alex said slowly.
“I do apologize for the on-point question,” Philomena said. “But my area of expertise is the Arabic nations during the Crusades. Are you the same Alexander Karim who wrote Warrior Wives?”
Alex said cautiously; “That is my book, yes.”
Philomena sat back with a gleam in her eyes. “No wonder your research was so accurate. You researched on ground zero. How lucky you are!”
Alex tried not to smile. “I suppose that is one way to look at it.”
“Really?” Edwina said, sitting down in front of a Black Forrest cake wielding a big knife. “You are…you were, I mean, a part of Saladin’s domains?
“Two crusades earlier,” Alex said. “I was born into the Fatimid kingdom, but I converted to Christianity when I turned twenty-five. My family cast me out, of course.”
There was a small silence around the table. Everyone was looking at him.
“You worked for the Crusaders, when they arrived, I imagine,” Philomena said.
Alex nodded. It felt a little surreal to be sitting at the dining table of a family of humans who barely knew him, discussing his personal history. Even with Brody and Veris and Taylor, discussions about past lives were rare, and usually twined around their time-travelling abilities, that Veris was still trying to figure out using science.
“It must have been hard, to have a foot in both worlds like that,” Angeline said. “Even harder, these days.”
“You’re still Christian?” Joshua asked. “You’ve maintained your faith all that time?”
“What he means,” Philomena said hastily, “is that it’s unusual for a vampire to maintain a faith of any sort. The Christian church condemns you as the damned, the Muslims consider vampire mythology to be a western device to spread lies and propaganda and most Muslim countries ban the stories. Their reception of the real thing would undoubtedly be violent. Buddha would be appalled at the blood drinking, although Shiva would probably applaud it even as he was sweeping vampires from the land.” She laughed lightly. “Maintaining your belief in God and following the precepts for the centuries you have takes an extraordinary faith.”
“My faith has been threadbare for a year or more now,” Alex said, and was surprised at his own frankness. “Perhaps the odds against me finally made themselves felt.”
“I’m sure you’ll find it again,” Edwina said softly. “Don’t give up hope.”
“Our resident priest,” Rafe explained. “She’ll bring you back to the fold if anyone can.”
Alex had grown inured to the surprises Rafe’s family had doled out this evening. His expectations had been turned on their head, over and over, so now all he could do was nod in acknowledgement. “You’ll have your work cut out for you,” he told Edwina. “My path has become very dark and bleak. Although lately, there has been a glimmer of light.” He couldn’t help but glance at Rafe.
The table was silent again as they all looked at him, and Alex realized that he was handing out surprises of his own, just by speaking the truth.
“That’s so sweet,” Angeline said.
It was Charlie who rolled his eyes again. “Romantic claptrap!” he declared. “She’ll have you in love and married tomorrow.”
Everyone laughed and the moment ended, but under the table, Rafe’s hand rested on Alex’s knee and squeezed gently.
Alex sat back, listening to the talk as it moved on, wrestling with the flood of thoughts and feelings that were rushing through him. He watched everyone talking and laughing and was struck hard by how much of a real family this was, even though the nominal head of it was a vampire and completely unrelated by blood. And for a moment, he felt a stab of jealousy, hot and heavy in his gut.
He recalled a moment from a few years ago, sitting around Veris and Brody’s backyard, celebrating Marit’s third birthday. That was when this dark, bleak midnight of the soul had begun. He had watched Brody
and Taylor and Veris together, with their daughter, and finally named the emptiness that had been eating away his heart and mind for a long, long time.
He had told them, spitting it out like a confession; “I want to learn how you do it.”
Brody snorted. “You’ll have to cut Taylor open if you want that secret. We don’t know how she does it. She just does.”
Veris’ response had been more thoughtful. “After witnessing the horrors of our last flip back in time, you really want to risk it yourself?”
But Alex hadn’t cared about the risks of time travel. Not then. “I understand the consequences. I want to learn how.” Later on, when Brody had told him about the complications the three of them had faced in Constantinople, he had slowly begun to understand the dangers of playing with time. But then, on that warm December night, all he could focus on was the need to have what Brody, Veris and Taylor shared.
“You want children that badly, mo chara?” Brody had asked.
“It’s not just children,” Alex said. “If it were, I could find a wife and adopt dozens of children so badly in need of love and care, the matter would be solved inside months.” He waved a hand in dismissal. “Yes, I would like my own children. There is a difference, but the difference is infinitesimal and beyond dispute, as you well know, Brody.”
Brody inclined his head.
Alexander sighed. “I want to dip back into the past again. To sample it.”
“You have your memories for that,” Veris said sharply. “They’re virtually perfect.”
“They’re not the same as being there.”
“Being there will change them,” Veris replied. “Einstein’s theory of relativity doesn’t go on a holiday just because you’ve lived through it once already. You go back there, you stand a real chance of fucking up your own future.” He sat up and forward. “We were dumb lucky. Maybe not—Taylor held us together when Brody and I were going to walk away from each other and screw up all our futures, and our child into the bargain, because we were playing out our lives all over again.” He shook his head. “It’s not worth it, Alex.”
Kiss Across Deserts Page 9
