Midnight Rose

by Shelby Reed

  “What?” he demanded with a frown.

  She shook her head. “Nothing. Get dressed and meet me downstairs.”

  “I have to wear shorts.” He yanked open a bureau drawer. “Nothing else fits.”

  Back in her room, Kate shook off the remnants of anger still lingering from her exchange with Delilah downstairs. The woman was a textbook vamp, and her rapacious desire for Gideon was painfully obvious. She reminded Kate of a sleek Persian tabby, claws withdrawn but ready to spring. Kate had felt sideswiped, caught unprepared by the thinly veiled jabs Delilah delivered, but she planned to come back swinging if the blonde had anything else to say.

  The black spaghetti-strap dress she withdrew from her closet would help boost her confidence. It was elegant yet casual, clingy, and complimented her figure, even though plastic surgery couldn’t have rendered her even vaguely comparable to the sexy blonde waiting downstairs. And the men traveling with her…good Lord. Just as gorgeous. Delilah could wear one on each arm like high-dollar accessories.

  Jude was right. They were a weird bunch. Too pale and beautiful and sultry to even seem real. God, her ex-husband would love this scenario.

  A soft tap at the door roused her from her ruminations and she crossed the carpet to answer it, one low-heeled sandal in her hand and the other on her foot.

  “Come in,” she told Jude, and slipping on the other sandal, scurried to the bathroom to run a brush through her hair.

  “I’ve never been in here,” he said from the bedroom. “It’s girlie.”

  “I think it’s lovely.” She inserted a pair of gold hoops into her earlobes. “And note that I put away my clothes and make my bed, unlike some people around here.”

  He didn’t offer the smart reply she’d grown accustomed to. When she reemerged, he’d stepped out onto the balcony and stood with his elbows braced on the concrete banister. From behind, he looked like a man. Wide shoulders, long, muscled legs. Lean and tall. Why hadn’t she noticed the change in him before tonight? The oddity of it froze Kate in the middle of the rug. Jude had aged years in the last few weeks.

  “When do you turn fourteen?” she demanded abruptly.

  He turned. “Two weeks. I think I’m growing. Don’t you?”

  Kate didn’t respond. The slight curl to his lips was an expression she didn’t recognize, and his black eyes held a fleeting glimmer as they met hers. Too knowing. Far too cynical for a child.

  “We’re wasting time,” she muttered, starting for the door. “Let’s go.”

  Downstairs, the air was heavy with cigarette smoke and husky male laughter. Kate followed Jude into the billiard room but hung back in the doorway, taking in the congenial scene with hesitation.

  Davide and Jakome were playing a game of pool beneath a glowing Tiffany billiard lamp, their cigarettes sending tendrils of smoke to curl against the ceiling. Delilah stood behind the mahogany bar, hands braced on the marble top, her pale gaze fixed on Gideon as he leaned on the opposite side.

  When his eyes met Kate’s, he stopped talking and stared at her. Only when the sting of self-consciousness warmed her cheeks did his piercing attention shift from her face.

  “I hardly recognized you,” he told his son as Jude climbed up on the barstool beside him. “You clean up nicely.”

  Jude scowled and propped his elbows on the marble counter.

  “How old are you now, darling?” Delilah asked, watching him with an expression of delight.

  “Old enough,” Jude replied.

  Gideon’s smile immediately vanished. “Hmm. That was rude. Let’s start over.”

  He nodded at Delilah, who smirked and repeated, “How old are you, Jude?”

  “Thirteen,” the boy muttered, casting his father an icy glare.

  Delilah caught Jude’s hand over the counter and drew him flush against the bar’s leather padding. “Are thirteen-year-olds allowed a tiny glass of wine around here?”

  Gideon shook his head. “No. Especially not with the medication he’s taking.”

  “That’s too bad.” Her pale gaze lingered on Jude’s face, and to Kate’s amazement, the boy didn’t shy away. He stared back at the blonde with impassive curiosity.

  “Do you remember meeting me when I was ten?” he asked finally, withdrawing from her grasp. “You used to come to our house in Amherst.”

  “Of course I remember. How could I forget? You were a beautiful child. And now you’re turning into a beautiful man.” Her words slid into the thick atmosphere, seductive and direct. “So tell me, Jude. Do you have a girlfriend?”

  “Delilah.” Gideon’s tone held a warning, but Jude didn’t seem fazed by the provocative question.

  “I don’t even know any girls. I can’t go to a regular school because I have PCT. But tonight I got online and talked to some people who had the same problem.” He flashed a sidelong look at his father, but Gideon said nothing.

  “Tell us about this illness.” Davide leaned to break a fresh rack of balls. “A disease of the blood, yes?”

  “Yep.” Jude shrugged, unaffected.

  “And you find the sunlight inhospitable,” Delilah said, stroking a single finger down his pale cheek.

  He frowned at her, brushing her touch from his face. “You know about PCT?”

  “You could say that.” She smiled over at Gideon. “Of course, you take after your father—”

  “I’d like that drink now,” Gideon growled.

  “With your fair complexion.” Laughter laced her husky voice. “All right, then, Gid. What’s your pleasure?”

  He nodded at a decanter filled with crimson liquor.

  “And you, Kate?” Delilah spoke without looking up as she splashed a finger’s worth into a snifter. “Will you have a drink? Or are you going to haunt the threshold all night?”

  Squelching a smart remark, Kate stepped farther into the room with a confidence she didn’t feel. Her pulse danced erratically behind her breast. She didn’t want to be here with these strange people, their sinister humor and oddly draining presence. Yet Gideon somehow fit among them, as though altogether they made up a shadowy puzzle, with him the magnificent centerpiece.

  As if reading her thoughts, Gideon stood and crossed the rug to meet her. “You look beautiful,” he said low. “And very uneasy.”

  “Can you blame me?”

  “Hardly. Take my hand and don’t let go.”

  He returned to the bar with her in tow, fingers laced tightly through hers.

  “Let me guess,” Delilah said when Kate perched on a barstool to his right. “You favor sweet liqueur, white wine spritzers and light beer.”

  “Wrong.” Kate smiled with a twinge of satisfaction. “I don’t drink often, but when I do, I favor spiced rum and cola.”

  “I stand corrected.” Delilah rummaged beneath the bar and reemerged with a bottle of spiced rum and a moisture-beaded can of cola. Her gaze caught Kate’s and held it while she worked with unerring skill, mixing the drink without looking down even once.

  Disconcerted, Kate turned to watch the pool game, her heart thudding in her chest. The blonde’s perfume infused the air around them, the scent of jasmine and desire. Everything about Delilah screamed sex. Gideon would have to be made of steel not to succumb to her charms, and the frenetic air between the two told Kate that most likely he had. No male would be immune. Not even Jude, on the brink of adulthood. The boy had hardly moved his dark gaze from Delilah since the moment they’d entered the room.

  “Jude.” Jakome pointed at him with a cue stick. “Do you play billiards?”

  “I shoot pool sometimes.”

  “Come here and I’ll give you some pointers.”

  Reluctantly, Jude slipped from his perch and wandered over to where the big, dark-haired man stood. He watched as Jakome chalked the tip of his cue stick, leaned over the table and sent an orange ball streaking across the felt to crash neatly into a corner pocket.

  “You’re pretty good,” Jude admitted.

  Jakome smiled and offered
him the stick. “Want a go?”

  “Okay.” He situated himself as the older man had and listened intently while Jakome instructed him on how to properly hold the stick. Dark brows knitted in intense concentration, he made the shot.

  “Scratch,” Davide announced gleefully when the cue ball rolled across the felt expanse and thudded into a pocket. The crimson light over the table melded with shadow to disguise his expression, but his low words were rife with delight. “Don’t worry, boy. We have all night to train you. Billiards is just the beginning. The answer to every universal question is in this very room.”

  Beside Kate, Gideon stirred and relinquished her hand. “The universal truth will have to wait. It’s getting late.”

  Astonished dismay washed Jude’s face. “You’re sending me to bed?”

  “Say goodnight to our guests.”

  “But—”

  “How about hot chocolate on the way to bed?” Kate said quickly.

  “Please.” Delilah came out from behind the bar and set the chilled highball of rum and cola in Kate’s hands, like a mother pacifying a child who speaks out of turn. “Why not enjoy your drink and let me fix the boy a little something myself? He can show me to the kitchen.”

  Kate started to protest, but the blonde offered her a plaintive smile. “Humor my maternal instincts, Ms. O’Brien. I so rarely get to see Jude, and I have no children of my own.”

  Jude solved the quandary. “I don’t need hot chocolate,” he said, glaring at the adults. He thrust the cue stick toward Jakome. “Here. G’night.”

  “One must never go to sleep angry.” Delilah snagged his sleeve as he stalked by and halted his departure. “Don’t run away without telling me goodbye, my darling. The next time we meet, you may be all grown up, and then perhaps I won’t feel so free to kiss you.”

  Fat chance, Kate thought. The moment Jude hit puberty, he’d no doubt join the ranks of fair game in Delilah’s world.

  She watched Delilah cup his face in her hands and press her lips to his forehead. An innocent gesture, normally, but nothing about this woman was normal. Jude’s fingers crept around her wrists, and for an instant it seemed he would jerk her hands from his face, but then his dark lashes fluttered closed, and his shoulders slumped in surrender.

  Kate stared, dismayed. Delilah brushed a kiss on Jude’s left cheek, then skimmed over his mouth, a breath of an indecent caress as she moved to kiss the other cheek.

  She touched Jude like he belonged to her. Like he was no child, but a man.

  Gideon cleared his throat. “Delilah, let him go.”

  The sound of his father’s voice seemed to break the boy from her hypnotic spell, but he looked confused, foggy. Pulling away from her, he slipped out the door as meekly as a tamed colt and shut it quietly behind him.

  Chapter Nine

  Silence blanketed the billiard room. Then Jakome moved around the pool table and leaned on his cue stick, his brown eyes fixed on Gideon. “How old did you say Jude is?”

  “Nearly fourteen.”

  Jakome’s brows shot up. “A big fellow for fourteen. What are you feeding him out here, Gideon? Or does everything grow so fresh and rich and tall in the Blue Ridge?”

  The question was met with stony silence. Delilah’s laughter shattered it, and Jakome smiled at Gideon’s lack of response before turning back to the pool table.

  Kate saw nothing funny about it.

  Go home. There it was again, that calm, almost arid voice that held a hint of I-told-you-so. Things would only get weirder, and yet she couldn’t leave Gideon’s side. A bizarre battle of wills seemed to be unfolding before her, with Gideon the target of his friends. But why? Why would they come so far only to goad him like this?

  Laying a hand on his wrist, she leaned toward him and whispered, “Are they always this way?”

  A sad smile crossed Gideon’s features as he stared at the red liquor in his snifter. “You mean creepy and full of misguided humor? Don’t let them fool you, Kate. Nothing’s ever as it appears.” Raising the glass to his lips, he drained the contents, then leaned back against the bar while hot color flooded his cheeks.

  Alarmed, Kate caught the snifter as it slid from his fingers. Good Lord—how many drinks had he consumed? A quick glance told her that Davide and Jakome were drinking the same beverage, and had paused in the midst of their game to follow suit. Now the men stood in lulled silence, their glasses drained dry.

  Delilah glided around the room, collecting their empty snifters as naturally as if she hosted the party herself. “Nothing like a nightcap to finish off this bunch of lightweights,” she told Kate with a wink.

  Kate had no smile to offer. “That must be some nightcap you whipped up.”

  “A secret recipe. Maybe one day I’ll share it with you, Ms. O’Brien.”

  “Delilah used to tend bar on the Queen Mary,” Jakome murmured, his lashes half-mast as he leaned on the pool table. “Her cocktails are works of art.”

  Kate frowned. “The Queen Mary’s been out of commission a long, long time.”

  “Since the Sixties,” Davide added, stirring from his stupor. “And Ms. O’Brien gets a point for acuity.”

  “It’s a hotel now.” Gideon opened his eyes and straightened, swiveling to meet Delilah’s gaze. “You tended bar in the hotel, Delilah.”

  Her smile widened as she set the glasses behind the bar. “But of course I did. Drink your cocktail, Kate. The ice is melting.”

  Kate politely sipped, suspicious of the woman watching her from beneath long lashes. The cocktail slid down her throat with its usual refreshing bite. Nothing more than rum and cola.

  The drink seemed endless, too, despite the fact that it was served in an average tumbler. She tried to drain it several times and failed. When she set it on the bar, the glass was only half-empty, and after a while she sank into tipsy warmth and quit wondering how a drink could refill itself so subtly and inexplicably.

  A wayward giggle rose in her throat at the absurdity of it all. The house was haunted. The guests, sinister. The drinks kept themselves filled. Paintings moved and doors closed without the aid of human hands, and nothing was what it seemed. Ah, well. She’d been warned, and here she sat, warm rum flowing through her veins and the tension draining from her muscles, while beside her, Gideon gave a languid stretch and smiled at her in a way that coiled desire like a loaded spring in her center.

  They’d flowed from razor tension to lazy pleasure in the course of a single cocktail.

  “Come hither, Ms. O’Brien.” Jakome returned his pool stick to the rack mounted on the wall and ducked beneath the Tiffany lamp to beckon her. “I want to know your life story, and once you’re good and drunk, all your deepest, darkest secrets.”

  She smiled and slid to her feet. “I’m sure the skeletons in my closet don’t hold a candle to yours.”

  Shoulders shaking in silent mirth, Davide gestured to one of the leather wingback chairs beyond the pool table. “Wait a while and maybe you’ll find out.”

  She didn’t look back at Gideon as she crossed the room to join the two men, but she felt his gaze on her, watchful and warm.

  In short order she discovered that if it weren’t for the electric presence of Gideon Renaud, she might have found herself utterly enamored with Jakome. He was gregarious, quick to laugh, with sparkling chestnut eyes and a blinding smile. He also had a body that wouldn’t quit, all strength and muscle neatly complemented by the custom-tailored pants and smooth-fitting linen shirt he wore.

  Davide, in comparison, was lanky and smooth and golden, radiating sensuality and quiet confidence. Add Gideon’s intoxicating darkness and the men together made a fiercely attractive trio. Kate couldn’t help herself; she basked in their appreciative and solicitous attention, her confidence nicely bolstered with the help of spiced rum.

  The sultry vocals of Sade suddenly filled the air, and Kate leaned around the winged side of her chair to find Delilah kneeling before a panel she’d slid open in the wall. Layers of stereo
equipment blinked like spaceship controls behind it.

  “Quite a collection,” Delilah said. “How many CDs here, Gideon?”

  “Around three hundred.”

  “If only we had time to play each one.” She straightened, holding out her hand to him. “This night is a rare and precious thing. Dance with me before the sun steals its magic.”

  “Maybe Jakome will stand in for me,” he said dryly. “I do love to watch you weave your spells over unsuspecting victims.”

  Before Delilah could argue, Jakome whirled her into his embrace and dipped her close to the floor, her hair flying like silken webbing around them.

  The room throbbed in rhythmic beats, Sade’s cool, husky tone stroking Kate’s senses. It was utterly ridiculous that she’d be so intoxicated from one drink. One bottomless rum and cola.

  God, I’m tipsy.

  Apparently so was Gideon. His tension had dissipated along with the somber mask he wore so often lately. She caught him regarding her from across the room, a smile playing on his lips, before he slid from his barstool and started toward her.

  “What was in your glass?” she asked when he tugged her to her feet.

  “Something Davide brought with him from France.”

  “Wine?” she queried as he led her to the clearing between the bar and pool table.

  “Of sorts.” He drew her arms around his neck and began to sway her to the music.

  “It had a powerful effect on you.”

  “So do you.”

  “Was it laced with something?” she persisted, trying to ignore the burn of desire sliding through her as their bodies rubbed in slow rhythm.

  “No,” he whispered, his mouth nearly touching hers. “Just pure, unadulterated…” He drew in his breath, buried his face in her hair. “God, you smell incredible.”

  “So do you.” She pressed against him, helpless to deny the magnetic pull of his hard body, and sucked in a gasp when his hands slid down to caress the top of her buttocks. “What will your friends say if they see us dancing like this?”

  “Nothing that they haven’t already figured out. And they have no room to talk.” He nodded toward Jakome a few feet away, who held Delilah by the waist and led her with the same sinuous rhythm. Her crimson fingernails stood out like droplets of blood against the white expanse of his shirt.