by Julie Reece
“I like a positive, if delusional, attitude in my patients,” he says. I can’t see his face, but I hear the smile in his voice. “It makes their recovery time so much faster.”
“What?” My gaze travels upward to Gideon’s strong jawline.
“I appreciate your offer, but I’m afraid it’s out of the question.”
“Oh.”
I say no more as he carries me across the lawn and through the front door, but as he nears the stairs, his limp becomes increasingly pronounced. When I open my mouth again to protest, he silences me with a ferocious glare. My guilt is only surpassed by my weariness. It’s comforting being held like this, even if it’s Gideon that’s doing the holding, and I really do feel like crap.
By the time we cross the threshold of my room, the only sign of Gideon’s exertion is his accelerated breathing. He lays me gently on my bed with strict instructions not to move or argue. Next he pulls out his cell and dials.
“Dave? It’s Gideon. Yes, I know what time it is, but I’ve got a situation here. No. A guest, no broken bones, but I’m concerned about a concussion or internal bleeding. Yes. What? Fell from a tree. Seventeen. Female. We’ll be there in twenty minutes, and Dave? Keep it quiet.”
***
Soft purring wakes me. When I crack my eyelids open, Edgar’s lounging on a pillow near my head, warm and dry. My heart lifts. His whiskers shoot out on either side of his nose, a white spray of fireworks against the black backdrop of his fur. “Little brat,” I croak.
“How do you feel?” Gideon’s smooth voice greets me. My heartbeat catapults.
I roll to face him. My back screams with pain. Neck muscles are stiff, but thankfully, I can move. The x-rays Doctor Dave ordered during my secret exam last night proved I’ll live. We didn’t go to the hospital like normal people. We went to some emergency walk-in clinic—through the back door. No nurses, no paperwork, everything as abnormal as can be. That’s what comes of practically kidnapping a person. Gideon couldn’t exactly get me help through normal channels, could he? Good thing he’s connected. The guy even has a doctor is his pocket.
My host has pulled a stuffed chair to the edge of my bed. His ankles are crossed on the mattress next to me. I shiver as he shifts, bare feet brushing my leg over the blanket. He wears a sexy, sleepy half-smile. His eyes are hooded, hair disheveled in an underwear model photo shoot sort of way that’s making my pulse race. No one should wake up looking so effortlessly hot.
I hate his guts.
“I feel awesome, thanks for asking. You?” Sarcasm drips from my words, but I’m not crazy about his close proximity. While thankful for his help, if he hadn’t blackmailed me, my cat wouldn’t have been stuck up that tree, and I wouldn’t have been forced to rescue him and, and, and … “You didn’t need to stay.”
“I disagree. Since you have a slight concussion, I’m not taking any chances with your health.”
I rise up on both elbows, testing my mobility. Everything hurts. “Where’ve you been, anyway? I haven’t seen you in days and then you pop up out of nowhere—first to shout at me and then come to my rescue.” Again, I was glad when he discovered Edgar, but it’s not something I’d planned to say.
“Rescue you? I did, didn’t I? You can thank me later.”
I wish my eyes were flamethrowers.
“I was in Katunayake.”
“Where?”
“Sri Lanka.”
And …? I’m hoping my blank stare will help.
“We deal with a clothing manufacturer there.”
“Ah.”
“Did you miss me?” The stiff smile is back. I answer with an incredulous stare. “I can ring Jenny when you’re ready to eat. Dave said you should try to move around a bit and work the soreness out of your muscles, but don’t overdo it. Your ribs are badly bruised.”
Who is this guy? And when did he become so chatty? He lowers his feet to the floor, stands, and stretches his arms toward the ten-foot ceilings. I’m envious. He makes it look so easy, and pain free. His T-shirt rises above his navel while his jeans sink lower revealing smooth hip bones that disappear below the denim waistline. Taut muscles ripple under his golden skin. I glance away, but not before he notices me noticing him. Damn.
He winks. “Glad to see all the neurons are still clicking. That’s a very good sign.”
I blush, then groan. I still hate him. There are little trolls in my head with sharp objects poking at my cerebral cortex. “Are you always this chipper in the mornings?”
He lifts a brow. “Only when I do good deeds the night before, now get up. I want to talk about the sketches I found.” He rises from his chair and saunters off toward my work area.
I imagine my face, my hair, good Lord, and my breath are all varying shades of humiliating. Self-conscious, I ask for a minute.
“Sure, sure,” he yells from my sewing room. “Did you know you talk in your sleep?”
“I do?” Dang it. I know I do, and sleepwalk, too.
“Hope you don’t mind, I showered in your bathroom, brushed my teeth about an hour ago. I thought it unwise to leave you for too long.”
“Ugh, gross!”
“Not with your toothbrush. Be serious.”
“Whatever.” I ease out of bed and gimp my way to the bathroom. As I wait for the water to heat, I strip down and glance at myself in the mirror. My hair is a riot of black waves, falling to my elbows. I’m pale without a scrap of makeup. Nights of broken sleep make my wide eyes wider, my cheekbones sharper. If my body is a crossword puzzle, the answers are one down, ‘bruises’, and two across ‘cuts and scrapes’. Lovely.
I’m sure a shower will help, and it does. Getting clean always perks me up, and the hot water is a balm to my battered muscles. “Edgar,” I say to the cat-shaped outline waiting on the other side of the steaming shower door. “If I didn’t love you so much, you’d be roasting on a spit right now.”
“Raven?” Gideon calls through the door.
“Gah! Shower. I’m in the shower!”
“So?”
“So, get the hell out! I’ll be another minute.” Pervert.
“It’s nothing I haven’t seen before, stop overreacting. I need to ask you about these designs.”
“Well, you haven’t seen mine!” Crap, have you? “Gideon, get out,” I order. “I’m not kidding.” I’m trying to remember how I got in the T-shirt and shorts I woke up in with growing alarm.
I peek out the door. No one’s there but Edgar. Fifteen minutes later, I’m brushed, dried, and dressed in a pair of black yoga pants paired with a red, chenille sweater. Not so much my style, but it’s about all I can stand next to my tortured skin.
When I hobble into my workroom, Gideon’s already reclining in my desk chair. Okay, technically I guess it’s his chair, and he’s examining my drawings. He makes even holey jeans and a white T-shirt look hot.
“Finally.” His tone’s impatient. When he rolls his mismatched eyes, my temper flares. Maybe he can be nonchalant about walking in on me in the nude, but I’m not that girl. “Can you—”
“Don’t you ever invade my personal space again or I’ll …” Panic seizes me, my mouth stops working. I’ll what? Too angry to think through my threat, I know better than to make one I can’t keep.
“Yes?” His eyes flash a challenge. A smile plays at the corner of his mouth. He appears anything but worried about my warning, and my hesitation makes it seem like I’m bluffing.
His smirk gives me an epiphany. “I’ll set Dane on you.”
“That won’t be necessary, Raven.” He leans forward. “As delightful as ravaging your body sounds, I like my victims less ready for the ICU. I have no intentions toward you, at present, other than to pick your mind clean of more of this …” He raises my sketchbook in the air. “Can we talk now, or would you like to punch me first?”
I consider it. “Fine, so long as we understand each other.”
His lashes shield his eyes, and he’s all business aga
in. “What was your inspiration? It appears you did absolutely nothing for nearly three weeks and then …” He flips through several pages. “Here, you began designing and didn’t stop.”
My eyes narrow. “How do you know all that?”
He taps the bottom right corner of my notebook. “You date your drawings, Ms. Weathersby.”
Oh. I blow out a breath.
“Sit.” He rises, vacating his seat, and takes the chair on the far side of the table.
He barks orders like a marine expecting obedience, and I’m too sore to quibble. “I discovered your greenhouse. The place has a kind of magic to it. Honestly, I love the time I’ve spent in there, and I don’t know …” I click a nail on the tabletop. “Outside the windows, it’s green and lush and alive, but inside, the place is forgotten, withered. I liked the contrast—the idea of sleeping or dead things being brought back to life. Rejuvenation. Redemption.”
My fingers move to one of my designs, and I pull the page closer. Using a palette of charcoals, browns, plum, dove gray, and black, my gaze scans the colored pencil drawings. Coats lined in fur, pants that button or lace up the front, brocade vests, and tall boots. Top hats in suede fashioned to mimic smooth bark grace the heads of my male models. In one of my favorites, a girl wears a corseted dress in dusky rose. Its skirt spreads helped by the blooming gray crinoline underneath, giving the impression of a dying flower. The cuff at her wrist loops around her first and third finger in thorny spikes. After a time, I lift my chin. Gideon’s gaze stays fixed on mine. A crease between his eyes makes me pause. “Sorry, but you did ask. I get carried away.”
“Wait, is that a smile?”
My cheeks burn. It is. I didn’t realize.
He stands. Gideon peruses my work as he strolls about the room, the manikins with their patterns and scraps of cloth pinned here and there. He stops at my inspiration board. Somehow his staring at my art makes me feel naked and exposed. I wonder what he thinks. Not that I care.
“You work quickly.”
“Mostly.” Always have, even to the point of sleepwalk-sewing, but I don’t see the point in sharing that particular weirdness.
“You can tell a lot about a person through their tastes, wouldn’t you agree?”
Yes. “I guess so.”
“I know a great deal more about you than I did last night, Raven Weathersby.” Voice smooth as a cello, the way he says my name sends a shiver through me. He lifts the new pocket watch I’ve transformed into an insect with moving parts from the table. The jewelry soldering iron Jamis bought worked perfectly, splitting the cover in half to form two wings.
“The gears won’t run.” Why I feel the need to explain to him, I have no idea.
“Pardon?”
“My Steampunk-beetle-watch ideas are a series I started before coming here. I don’t have the parts to complete that one.”
He places the half-finished project on the table. “You’re quite brilliant, so much passion, and excellence, and maturity for someone self-taught. You’re amazing.”
All of the sudden, I’m staring at my fingers in my lap. Lacing them together seems like the most important thing I’ll do all day.
“I’m going to make a great deal of money with these ideas.” And just like that, the moment is gone, and I want to kick him in his nether regions. “Get me the final list of materials you’ll need. I want to order immediately and start production.”
“I’m not finished. There’s not enough here yet to—”
“Now that I know what turns you on, I’ve got something I want to show you.”
My mouth pops open.
“Get your mind out of the gutter, girl.” His lips curve. “It’s a place. I’m going out of town, but when I get back, we’ll go. I have a feeling it will …” He runs a finger along the black feather pinned to my corkboard. “Produce some interesting results.”
What? “You’re leaving again?”
“Ah, see? You did miss me.” He smiles and shakes his head. “You should be well enough upon my return for our outing, I think.”
That reminds me. “Can my friend, Maggie, spend the night? Can I have friends … stay?”
“I’d prefer you did not.”
Um, let’s be clear. “Prefer or forbid?”
“The answer is no. Short visits from the pair who deliver your schoolwork is all I’ll permit.
No apology. No regrets. No nonsense. The same controlling, arrogant guy he’s always been stands in front of me. I don’t know why I bothered asking. I push my drawings away and lean back. My side throbs where my ribs smacked the tree last night, and the trolls in my head are hard at work with their pickaxes.
The misery must show up on my face because Gideon says, “There are pain meds next to your bed. Make sure you take them on time. If you never let them wear off, the pain won’t get so bad.”
A frown tugs at my mouth. “I’m not a fan of drugs.”
“No, of course, how could you be. Your stepfather’s illness made sure of that.” I glare at him, but his expression is as innocent as a baby fawn’s. He lifts my diary from the desk.
“Hey! That’s private.”
“I already read it. Last night, while you were sleeping.”
Well, shit. “Isn’t there anything of mine you recognize as off limits?” I’d scream but my head hurts too much.
“Not really, no.”
“You’re such a jerk.”
“So you’ve said.” He opens the book. I stiffen. Terrified he’s going to read my own poetry to me. Out loud. “You’re a fan of Poe. I didn’t understand the reference to your cat’s name until last night. I learned we both like Frost, and Keats, and Whitman as well.”
He likes poetry? “Look, if you don’t mind, I’ll try again to explain how some things are personal. Per-son-al. You understand?” I hold out my hand. “Give me my book.”
He ignores me, turning a page or two. “Ah, this one here … ”
Just shoot me.
“When we two parted in silence and tears, half broken-hearted to sever the years, pale grew thy cheek and colder, thy kiss; truly that hour foretold sorrow to this. In secret we met in silence I grieve that thy heart could forget, thy spirit deceive. If I should meet thee after long years, how should I greet thee? With silence and tears.”
He snaps the diary shut. “Lord Byron?”
My eyes widen, shocked he knows the author. “Yes.”
“Hmm.” He shutters his gaze. “Where did you hear this?”
“English Lit?”
“My mother wrote it in one of her journals.”
His story trumps mine. “That’s nice. Can I have the book now, please?” He places my diary on the table where I can’t reach it without getting up. His long fingers tap the top cover in a possessive gesture. Jerk face.
“You wrote this again in your own hand. Under the clipping you taped here, you took the trouble to copy this one poem. Why?”
Because of the poet’s passion, the longing and desperation in his words, and how, in the quiet, secret places, deep in my heart of hearts, I want to know what that kind of love and devotion feels like. That’s why. But Mr. Sensitivity isn’t going to get that out of me. “There isn’t always a why, Gideon.”
“Sure there is. Do you believe him, the poet, or is he speaking of an ideal? Are you a believer in love?”
“Yes.” Of sorts. There are different kinds of love. “Can’t you hear his honesty? The poem came out of his experience. That can’t be faked.”
“No, but … ”
“But what?” I’m curious now. I guessed at his father-worship from the trinkets I saw in his office, but that doesn’t mean Gideon loved him. True, he’s known loss, a lot of it. Maybe that’s what’s left him so unfeeling and ambitious. A guy like that reading poetry seems an off mix, though.
Gideon rubs the dark gold stubble on his jaw. “I think people confuse the idea of romantic love with lust and desire. My father said
love is a fantasy, a fleeting dream that destroys your soul. He believed in passion, justice, and in what you can consume, control, and discard with your own two hands.”
“I don’t believe people are disposable.” I bite my lip. He’s drowning in a vat of acid cynicism and doesn’t even know it. I’m almost sorry for him. How’d he get so jaded at nineteen? Love is a fleeting dream that destroys your soul. Did love destroy Ben? My hypocrisy pokes me in the chest, accusing. Isn’t that why I’ve never wanted to do more than date a boy once or twice and move on?
My mother believed in magic. She told me once that magic is seductive, smooth going down but leaves a bitter taste in your mouth long after the spell wears off. I wonder if magic was her code word for love, and if her view affected mine. I lift my gaze and find Gideon watching me. Handsome, and rich, and smart, maybe the only one keeping his heart locked in a cell of bitterness is him, right? Or does his father’s memory and poisonous words bleed through to stain his son? I have to admit I don’t know Gideon well enough to guess.
Who cares? He’s over my head, and his issues are none of my business anyway.
“What are you thinking?” Gideon’s curls fall across his forehead and he whips them back exposing both eyes, green and blue. A girl could get lost in there if she wasn’t careful. His fingers stroke the cover of my little book of poetry. The third finger on the right bears a gold and onyx ring.
I shrug. The motion hurts and stops me short. “Don’t judge others unless you’re prepared to be judged yourself.” I cross my arms over my chest, as if that protects me from his penetrating stare. “That’s from the Bible, you know.”
“Is it?” His lips hitch up on the ends. “Clever, even true. Now why don’t you tell me what you were really thinking?”
Stubborn, tenacious, he won’t stop asking until he hears what he wants, so I tell him straight out. “I was thinking that it’s hard not to judge you. But what you said, about your father and love … it’s the loneliest thing I’ve ever heard.”
***
When I wake the next morning, a basket tied with an enormous black bow sits on my worktable. Attached to the bow is a playing card, the Queen of Hearts, with the words ‘For Raven’ penned in black marker on the back. Under that are at least twenty pocket watches and parts in all shapes and sizes.
