Midnight Rose

by Shelby Reed

  Spring flu doesn’t make you go all wet and wanting.

  None of it was her fault. Still, she couldn’t shake the feeling she’d done something wrong in Gideon’s presence. So they’d shared a few harmless, flirtatious exchanges…big deal. Anyway, he’d started it. Whatever had irked him, it was his problem and she could definitely keep her distance. She was there to focus on Jude, and winning him over was a much greater concern than his father’s state of mind.

  She hesitated at the front door, unsure of whether to knock. Everything about this house seemed impenetrable; she felt like an intruder as she twisted the knob, leaned her shoulder against the wood and pushed. The door gave with a heavy groan, and she stepped inside and closed it with a firm thrust of her backside. Her gaze landed on the disconcerting hunt scene hanging above the landing.

  The hound to the left had moved. All four paws were now firmly planted on the ground. She narrowed her eyes, took a few steps closer. Several times in the past twenty-four hours, she’d studied the painting. All the hounds should be leaping with teeth bared, legs barreling beneath them, slobber flying from their jowls. But this beagle…it wasn’t possible. It was standing still, nose raised, alert. Jaws closed. Eyes limpid.

  It was some kind of trick. She dashed up the steps to the landing, headed toward the canvas with palm outstretched—

  “What are you doing?”

  “Mary, Mother of God!” She slapped a hand against her thundering heart and sagged back against the wall as Jude descended the stairs from the east wing. “Oh, Jude, you scared me to death.”

  For the first time, a smile of genuine humor played around his mouth. His lips were full, beautifully formed, like his father’s. He studied her with black, liquid eyes, and in the silence Kate stared right back at him.

  He didn’t look quite so Eddie Munster-ish now that he’d rested. He wore a gray waffle knit shirt, jeans and tennis shoes. Looked just like any other kid, except prettier and significantly paler. His complexion appeared nearly translucent in the glow of the entry chandelier. She glanced at his hands. Tiny blue veins tangled beneath the papery thin surface of his skin.

  “You don’t look like a teacher,” he said finally, as though he’d reached a monumental conclusion.

  “You don’t look like a thirteen-year-old,” she replied.

  The furrows between his dark, winged brows deepened. “Are you saying I look like a little kid?”

  She shook her head gravely. “More like a man trapped in a kid’s body.”

  That response seemed to mollify him, and he moved past her to start down to the foyer. Then he paused and said without turning around, “You like that painting?”

  “Not really.” She glanced at the now placid, tri-colored hound, which appeared absurdly out of place amid the magnificent brutality of the foxhunt. “It creeps me out.”

  “Me, too. It moves. The figures move.”

  Kate couldn’t exactly argue his matter-of-fact observation, so she said nothing and followed him down the stairs, leaving the beagle and all its mysteries behind for now.

  “You play chess?” Jude asked as they walked through the living room and past a gleaming ivory chessboard poised on a game table.

  “No. You?”

  He shrugged. “Sometimes. My dad taught me. I could probably teach you.”

  A tiny frisson of hope leaped in her chest. “How about now?”

  “Right now I have to take my medicine.” He nodded toward the kitchen stairwell.

  Kate followed the direction of his gaze and was startled to find Gideon standing at the top of the stairs. He melded with the shadows, all darkness and silence.

  Like a ghost.

  A ghost holding a black, odd-shaped bottle in his hand. “Ready, J?” he asked, but he was looking at Kate.

  Jude sighed. “Can I have water with it this time?”

  “Nope. Can’t be diluted.” Moving toward them with that easy, confident grace that had so fascinated Kate last night, Gideon reached them and tenderly brushed his fingers through Jude’s dark hair. His lashes hid his expression as he examined his son’s face. “How’re you feeling?”

  “Okay. But that stuff is so gross. I think it makes me sicker.”

  “It doesn’t make you sicker.” He started to uncap the bottle, then glanced at Kate. “Dinner’s ready. You don’t have to wait for us.”

  His firm tone told her she didn’t have a choice. When she reached the top of the kitchen stairs, she glanced back and saw Gideon lift what looked like a dropper toward the glow from a nearby lamp. A thin amber substance filled the tube, shining wetly in the light.

  Jude made a face, took the dropper from his father’s hand, and sucked down whatever was inside it. Then he gagged and leaned over with all the dramatic fervor of a child film star. “God, Dad! I’m dying!”

  “It’s not that bad,” Gideon said evenly.

  Kate smothered a smile. For all their extraordinary appearances and circumstances and hardships, they were just like any father and son she’d ever met. Simultaneously at odds and tethered at the heart.

  * * * * *

  “How come you’re having dinner with us tonight?” Jude wanted to know when Gideon sat across from him at the kitchen table.

  “Why?” He set a roll on his bread plate and one on his son’s. “You’ve got a problem with that?”

  A phantom smile crossed the boy’s face. “No. I just thought you had a date. Mrs. Shelton said—”

  “Mrs. Shelton was mistaken.” Gideon glanced at Kate beside him and reached for the linen napkin folded artfully at his elbow. “No date tonight.”

  “Want to know what my dad does for a living?” Jude asked Kate in the pregnant silence that followed.

  She avoided Gideon’s gaze. “Something with plants, right?”

  “He invents flowers.”

  “Horticulture,” Gideon added. “Specifically rose-breeding. I take it you saw the greenhouse this afternoon when you walked the grounds, Ms. O’Brien.”

  “I didn’t go inside, though.” She started to take a bite of her baked potato, but then set down her fork, mildly irritated. “You know, while my name is, technically, Ms. O’Brien, I’d feel far more comfortable if you and Jude would call me Kate.”

  Jude raised his brows. “That’d be weird.”

  “No, it wouldn’t.” Gideon stabbed a chicken leg and forked it onto Jude’s plate. “If she wants to be called by her first name, you can extend her that courtesy.”

  “Can she call me Mr. Renaud?”

  Kate choked on a sip of iced tea.

  Jude ignored his father’s warning look and smiled at his chicken leg.

  The rest of the meal passed with polite conversation, but Kate was ever aware of Gideon’s electric presence beside her, and of Jude’s watchful gaze across the table. The two of them were more enigmatic a pair than any she’d ever met, and she longed to sit back in her chair and study them more closely. She couldn’t quite pinpoint what made them so different, beyond their striking good looks and the intensity they both radiated.

  But there was something…and now wasn’t the time to examine it.

  Betty had left for the weekend directly after preparing dinner, so when they finished eating, Kate rolled up her sleeves and rinsed the dishes before setting them in the multi-featured dishwasher. Behind her, Gideon and Jude cleared the table, then the boy slipped outside to entertain himself under the protective cover of night, and Gideon crouched in front of the dishwasher to examine the controls.

  “Hell of a contraption,” he said after pressing several buttons. He finally hit the right one and the machine hissed to life. Rising, he leaned on the counter and watched Kate dry her hands on a towel.

  She reached for the lotion pump near the soap dish, trying to ignore him as she worked the lotion into her skin, but his gaze was hot on every inch of her. A wave of warm discomfort crept up her neck, and finally she glared at him. “Am I supposed to say something?”

  He straightened. “N
o. I’m sorry. I just want to know more about you.”

  “Fire away,” she said with forced confidence.

  “Why aren’t you married?”

  “I was. But he turned out to be gay.” The surprised look on his face tightened her posture, an automatic response to a fading injury. “I didn’t make him that way, you know. He never told me he was bisexual to begin with.”

  Gideon opened his mouth to respond, then seemed to think better of it. “How about a cup of coffee?”

  It sounded suspiciously like a peace offering for the morning’s conflict, although she still didn’t know what had caused the tension in the first place. Hesitantly she agreed, and found two mugs in the cabinet beside the refrigerator while he retrieved the pot from the coffeemaker.

  “Tell me something, Kate,” he said, pulling out a chair to sit at the table. “What made you give up life in a big city for complete isolation out in the middle of nowhere? There’s no social life out here. Nothing.”

  Sitting across from him, she held out her cup while he poured the coffee. “You make my new position sound so appealing.”

  “It wouldn’t appeal to someone whose needs are met by an urban lifestyle.” His expression was somber, the steam from his mug curling beneath his chin like caressing fingers. “Your needs weren’t being met in Richmond.”

  “No. There was nothing there to hold me.”

  “No boyfriend after the gay husband?”

  “No one.”

  “You’re beautiful,” he said. “Young, personable. If I’d been the one to interview you for the job instead of Martha, I would’ve turned you away based on your appeal alone.”

  A thread of irritation invaded her good mood. “That’s complete discrimination. And sexist.”

  “That’s me being careful to avoid hiring someone who’ll touch my son’s life and leave the minute a boyfriend enters the picture. It’s happened once before, two years ago. I told Martha, no more young, single teachers. She didn’t listen.”

  “I’ll be thirty-three in September,” Kate said, lips thinned in defense. “I’m no fresh-faced coed. And how is a boyfriend supposed to enter the picture when we’re out here in the middle of the far-flung countryside? This place puts Turner’s remote landscape to shame.”

  Humor softened the lines around his mouth. “As Betty likes to say, the pickings around here are slim. But drive thirty minutes and you’ll find civilization. It’s not impossible for you to have a life while you’re here, and it wouldn’t be fair to deny yourself that. But I feel ridiculously compelled to remind you that you’ve committed to a three-month trial period.”

  “I can go without a date for three months,” she shot back. “I took this job because I needed something more substantial than a social life. Working with Jude will be more than enough to fill my needs.”

  His hand slid around the mug, caressed it. “Ah, but not forever. I’ll hold you to the three months. Beyond that…the moment you begin to resent your isolation here, don’t delay. Strike out and seek the life you so adamantly deny needing.”

  “You sound like you’re trying to get rid of me, Gideon, and I’ve only been here a matter of hours.”

  “Just thinking ahead for the advent of your restlessness. All I ask is that you first warn us of its approach, Ms. O’Brien. Give me time to replace you with someone Jude could care for as much as he’ll inevitably care for you.”

  “I appreciate your frankness,” she said, inexplicably stirred by his probing. “Is this a casual, no-holds-barred exchange? Because now I have a question for you.”

  The furrow between his brows eased and he sat back. “Go ahead.”

  “Where’s the woman in your life?”

  “There isn’t one.”

  She raised her eyebrows. “No one near and dear?”

  “I have no driving need for romance.”

  “But what about…” Kate hesitated. Gideon was her employer, and she didn’t know him well enough to pry. Still, common sense didn’t usually squelch her curiosity no matter the consequences, and it certainly didn’t now.

  “It’s possible to need something less than a relationship,” she said carefully, glancing at him from beneath her lashes. “So, what do you do with those needs?”

  His left brow lifted ever so slightly, all the reply he offered, and heat sizzled through her nerves.

  Silence fell between them, laden with electric tension.

  Kate forced her gaze back to her coffee cup and took a sip of the cooling liquid. Eventually she gathered her wits enough to redirect the conversation. “Tell me about your work, Gideon. Jude says you’ve invented a new species of rose.”

  A fleeting smile brushed his features, as though he knew she retreated from the sudden awkward turn the conversation had taken. “Right now I’m hybridizing and hoping it’ll result in offspring plants with better fertility.”

  While he told her about his work as a horticulturist, she sat across from him and studied his face. He mesmerized her. She wanted to file him in her mental little black book as handsome, but his features held an element that went far beyond merely attractive. “Otherworldly” came to mind. So did “incredibly sexy” and “completely hot”. The thought made her smile, even though what he was telling her—something about roses and poor germination rates—wasn’t funny in the least.

  He paused. “You’re amused?”

  Instantly she sobered. “No. It’s not you. Well, it is you. I just…I feel like I’ve known you a very long time. Kind of like what I said in the living room this morning. I feel as though we’ve met before.”

  Leaning forward, he wrapped his hands around his mug and studied the rich liquid inside. “Were you thinking this before or after you saw me swimming buck-naked last night?”

  Oh, God.

  “That would be after.” She actually managed to sound unfazed. “Martha told me you were out of town. I didn’t know you liked to skinny-dip when I came out on the balcony. I wasn’t spying on you.”

  “I know. But once you saw me, you could’ve gone inside.”

  And given up such an incredible sight?

  “Yes,” she said. “I could have. It was just one of those awkward moments when a girl doesn’t know what to do.”

  The corner of his mouth quirked. “So she watches.”

  “Yes. No.” Kate shifted on her chair and glared at him. “I was mortified. I didn’t mean for it to happen.”

  “But it did.”

  “Right.”

  “I didn’t mind.”

  Her gaze flew to his, and for an endless, aching moment they stared at each other, while excitement sent tiny jolts of electricity through her body. Then she shook her head and shoved back from the table, frustration fueling her movements with superhuman speed. “I can start with Jude’s lessons first thing when he wakes up tomorrow, or we can work at night. Whatever he needs. I know his days and nights get turned around because of his sensitivity to light.” She thrust her mug in the sink, paused to make sure she hadn’t shattered it, and started for the stairs.

  “Kate.”

  The mildly plaintive note buried in that one word stopped her, but she refused to examine it, or the pleasant shiver it sent down her spine. “What?” she said without turning around.

  “We got off to a strange start. I know what happened last night wasn’t your intention, and it wasn’t my intention to be turned on by it.”

  She swallowed. “Were you?”

  “I was. I think you were, too.”

  Kate didn’t reply, just braced for the touch she somehow believed would come at the nape of her neck, for the gentle brush of fingertips at the base of her spine. They hardly knew each other, and yet it seemed he had a right to touch her thus. So she stood in silence, and waited.

  She heard the scrape of his chair on the brick, the soft fall of his footsteps, then sensed the close proximity of his body, not quite heat, but galvanic and thrilling all the same. He didn’t touch her, but when he spoke again, his lips wer
e close to her ear. “I’d like us to start over, but I don’t know how to erase the last few hours.”

  She stared up the shadowed stairwell, inanely wondering how many decades of footsteps had climbed them. A hollow groove was worn into the wood. “You can’t,” she said in a shaky voice. “You can’t make me forget last night, Gideon, or the way you kissed me today. I know you kissed me,” she added when he took a breath as though to argue. “I won’t forget how it felt, and I wouldn’t want to, anyway. No woman in her right mind would want to. And if it happens again, I won’t mind any more than I’d mind spying on you skinny-dipping in the pool again.”

  “Christ,” he said on a groan, and she waited until she was upstairs and past Ferdinand, the flower-sniffing beagle, before she let herself smile.

  Chapter Four

  How quickly we forget our resolve. Gideon leaned in the shadow of the pool house, his attention fixed on Kate’s balcony, where golden warmth glowed from behind partially drawn draperies. A phantom moved past the window. The hot, crimson outline radiating from it told his hungry eyes it was Kate, performing feminine bedtime rituals.

  He loved to watch a woman ready herself for sleep, savored the slow, methodic disrobing, the removal of hairpins, the soft whisk of the brush dragging through loosened strands. How he missed hearing the rush of water from behind the bathroom door, the sound of a toothbrush tapped on the edge of a sink, and then her reappearance, fresh-faced, untouched by cosmetics and scented with some mysterious moisturizer.

  Deep within the core of his residual humanity, the old melancholy stirred, a yearning for the banal routines of mortal life. And something more. Tonight, gazing at Kate O’Brien’s face over a cup of coffee that he’d merely played at tasting, he’d felt…possibilities.

  Love is the great redeemer, the old Franciscan had told him a decade before, pressing the small, wooden box into Gideon’s palm. Through love, all things are possible.

  Gideon, newly widowed and desperate for hope, had wept and clutched the box with silent gratitude. The tiny relic it contained, a vial of sacred blood, held the answer to his deepest desire. Then, of course, the old priest had doused his hope by setting the book atop the box.