Keeping Watch: Heart of the Night\Accidental Bodyguard (17 page)

“Now what?” she whispered. Get it over with. Find out if she had been as foolish as she felt right now.

The pause was too long. He didn’t touch her, and he didn’t answer her question. She felt the elation of the kiss begin to fade, and humiliation grow to replace it, rising hotly into her chest and then upward to fill her throat.

She had thrown herself at him. Her mother used to warn her about doing that when she was a teenager, madly in love with her latest crush.
Just don’t throw yourself at him, honey.
The words taunted from her memory.

“I don’t know,” he said, but finally his left hand came up to find her upper arm, thumb smoothing over her bare skin, exposed by the sleeveless silk blouse she was wearing. “I don’t know,” he said again.

She thought she heard pain in the whisper. “Okay,” she said. “It’s okay. You don’t have to know. As long as you understand that…it isn’t the series. I’m not working on a story about you.”

“It’s been a long time,” he said.

The silence that had preceded his comment was not as strained as before because he was still touching her, but then he didn’t go on, didn’t finish whatever thought he had had.
Since he’d kissed someone?
she wondered.
Felt this way? Made love?

“Since?” she prodded softly.

He laughed, a breath of sound.

“Since I kissed a woman. Or wanted to.”

“Then I guess I should be flattered.”

“Probably not,” he said. He had moved closer to her again. She could feel the breath of that comment against her forehead.

“Why not?”

His lips touched where his breath had, almost as lightly.

“This used to all come so easily,” he said instead of answering.

“Gettin’ women?” she teased, her own laughter soft, buried against the warmth of his throat.

“Knowing what to do. What to say.”

“You don’t know?”

“My life…” he began. When he stopped, she waited through the pause. “Everything’s a lot more complicated than it used to be,” he finished finally.

“It doesn’t have to be. Complicated.”

“Given my…situation, it probably does,” he said.

“It wasn’t tonight. We sat at the table together. We ate. We talked. It seemed pretty simple to me. Uncomplicated.”

“Normal,” he said, his tone mocking.

“You’re not some kind of…” The phrases Lew had used were suddenly in her head.
Night crawler. Monster.
And then her own.
Vampire.

“Recluse?” he offered, and her brain relaxed, relieved he hadn’t known what she had been thinking. “Yes, I am, Kate. That’s exactly what I am.”

“By choice,” she argued.

“Not really.”

“It doesn’t matter,” she said.

For the first time she took the initiative, moving against him, putting her hands on the wide shoulders. Raising her face for his kiss. Inviting it now.

There was time to wonder what she would do if he didn’t respond before his mouth closed over hers. Deeper now, more intense. They both knew now that this was what the other wanted, too, and there was freedom in knowing that. No one was going to have to pull away in embarrassment.

His arms closed around her, and he held her, pressing his body into hers. She realized, a little surprised by the discovery, that he was already strongly aroused. Her back was against the wall of the hallway, his hands possessive over her bottom, pulling her upward into the hard evidence of how much he desired her. It was all happening a little faster than she had expected. She had known how she felt, but he had given her no clue before tonight that he found her attractive. Obviously, he did. At least—sexually attractive.

For some reason she was disconcerted by that idea. Maybe it made no sense, but faced with the unexpected reality that this man was flesh and blood, and not the fantasy she had created, she was suddenly unsure. Her hands flattened against his chest, exerting their own pressure. He released her immediately, again stepping backward into the shadows.

“Maybe you better go,” he suggested.

“While the going’s good?” she asked, still breathless.

There was again the whisper of his laughter. “It might be easier.”

“Easier?”

He took a deep breath, the broad shoulders in the white shirt lifting, visible in the darkness. “Cold showers. Think about something else. All that good advice.”

“Do those work?”

“Not with you,” he said softly, and her throat closed, hard and tight. “Sometimes I’ll wake up in the middle of the night wanting you. Thinking about you being there with me. Where the darkness doesn’t matter. Where it’s an ally, a friend.”

He had left her with nothing to say. She had thought she was the one taking the risk in confessing how she felt, but what she had done had been not nearly so brave as that.

“Thank you for telling me that,” she said.

“I thought it was already rather obvious,” he said, and again self-amusement underlay the words. “Pretty damn difficult to hide. Women have all the advantage when it comes to that.”

“I guess we do,” she agreed.

“When can I see you again?” he asked.

She almost said: Anytime. It was what she wanted to say, but somehow she was still a little guarded. His was a confession to be examined. When she was alone. Just to see if it was as promising as it had sounded when he’d made it.

“You could call me,” she said instead.

“I will,” he promised.

His left hand was touching her hair. She knew suddenly that if she didn’t get out of here pretty soon, she was going to end up…just where he’d said he wanted her. In his bed.

“I really need to go,” she said, forcing her voice to remain steady. His fingers were touching her earlobe now.

“I know,” he said.

“Thank you for inviting me in.”

He put his mouth over hers, enclosing the last word, caressing it with his tongue. More demanding this time. Wanting her. She knew now that he wanted her. She pushed away again, knowing how close she was to giving in to him, giving in to her own obsession. She walked toward the rise of the steps, black against the light filtering around them from the beveled glass door. When she opened it, the crystal tears moved, a small cascade of notes falling into the silence. Then she closed the door behind her, stepping out into the heat of the summer night.

H
E STOOD
in the shadowed darkness of the hallway, listening. There was no place in his life for the emotions that had flared between them tonight. He had told Kate August the truth—about that, at least. It had been a long time, and it all seemed too complicated now. Too hard to explain. Or too hard to justify.

He knew she was destroying the world he had created—the safe world into which he had retreated. She had accused him of hiding in the darkness and had forced him to contemplate exactly what he was hiding from.

He closed his eyes, but he could still smell her perfume, the scent caught in the shadows that surrounded him and had surrounded him so long. He was no longer sure which was more powerful—the darkness that protected him or what he felt for the woman who had touched him, who had wanted to touch him, despite what he was.

He put both hands flat on the wall before him. The left was as finely made, as strong and powerful as it had ever been. The other was as scarred and damaged as he knew himself to be. His lips twisted with the irony that he had believed—even briefly—that a woman like Kate August might really want to enter his darkness.

Vampire,
he thought again, and the mutilated hand curled into a misshapen fist.

K
ATE DIDN’T
go straight home. Not because she was afraid. She just wanted to savor what had happened, to think about what it might mean. Her professional concerns had taken a back seat to events that might have begun as a result of her work but were, as she had suggested to Kahler, very personal.

It was almost eleven when she pulled into the parking lot of her apartment house. Although it was well lighted, the lot was deserted at this hour on a weeknight. She sat in the car a moment, looking around the expanse of concrete and the low plantings around the building. For some reason she hesitated to get out of the car and walk the short distance to the entry door. This was a good neighborhood, which was why she had chosen it, but since the invasion of her home, nothing had felt the same.

Angry with herself for letting the confetti bastard make her lose her courage, she opened the door and stepped out, pressing the automatic lock. She started across the browning strip of heat-dried grass that separated the lot from the entryway.

With every step she took, the feeling she’d had in the car grew. The silence surrounding her felt wrong. Eerie. Like someone was watching her. Eyes following her passage. Only a few more feet. A few—

“Hey!”

Her blood froze. Congealed and stopped, clogging her veins with ice. She whirled around and found Kahler walking toward her. Her relieved gasp was audible.

“What the
hell,
Kahler! You scared me to death. What the hell do you think you’re doing?” She was overreacting, but given that he was very well aware of what had happened in her apartment two nights ago, it seemed that he’d have more sense than to sneak up behind her. At least he hadn’t touched her. Not like Barrington had earlier. She
would
have had a heart attack.

“Waiting for you. I was worried that you hadn’t come home,” he said.

His eyes were studying her face. She knew she looked like hell. It had been a long day, and she’d had almost no sleep for the last two nights. “Well, thanks, I guess, but you just came closer to doing me in than anything else that’s happened lately.”

“Working late?” he asked.

She hesitated. She supposed she could classify the visit to Barrington as work. It wasn’t, of course, but he was a legitimate part of the bombing story. “Yeah,” she said. “And I’m really tired. Since the home visit of our prankster, I haven’t been sleeping too well. I’ve just been putting off coming back. Dreading finding something worse in my bed.”

“You got the lock,” he reminded her.

“I know. Maybe he can pick locks. Who knows?”

“Want me to walk in with you? Check the place out?”

It was a nice offer. He was a nice man, and she truly appreciated his concern. Concerned enough to sit in a dark parking lot waiting to make sure she got home all right.

“How long have you been here?” she asked.

“Sergeant Arnold said you’d called. You didn’t leave a message, so I thought maybe it was…personal.” The hesitation had been revealing. Kahler had given her enough clues in the last couple of weeks to know that he wanted their relationship to be personal. Only, after what had happened tonight—

“Give me your key,” he said, holding out his hand. “I’ll take a look around, and then you’ll feel better. Sleep deprivation plays hell with your nerves.”

“To say nothing of your looks,” she suggested, smiling.

“There’s nothing wrong with the way you look, August. Even sleep-deprived.”

She wasn’t sure how to respond to that. His eyes were still on her face. She put her key into the outstretched palm and said simply, “Thanks, Kahler. There’s nothing wrong with the way you look, either.” She wasn’t sure if that was supposed to be comfort for the fact that she knew he felt differently about her than she did about him. It was a pretty lame remark even if concern had been her motivation.

He put his left arm around her and turned her in the direction she’d been headed when he had stopped her. His hand squeezed her shoulder slightly, and he said, “Come on. You’ll feel better inside.”

Probably not, she thought, remembering the last two nights, but she obeyed. She really didn’t have a choice, unless she wanted to ask him if she could go home with him. Or unless she wanted to go back to Thorne Barrington’s dark mansion, to curl up in his arms, safe and sound from night terrors, maybe, but very vulnerable to a lot of other kinds of danger.

K
AHLER EXAMINED
the apartment with a casual efficiency. She checked her answering machine while he walked back to the bedroom. There were two messages. She glanced toward the hall leading to the back and decided to play them while Kahler was doing his thing.

After the familiar machine noises came the recording of the slightly accented voice of the man in her bedroom.
“Kahler. They said you called. Give me a ring as soon as you get home.”
Short and to the point, she thought, smiling.

The second message was from Lew. It was longer and far more intriguing.
“I did what we talked about, Kate. And I found something that might be… I don’t know. Maybe important. Maybe nothing. Just call me. I’ll be at the office for a while. I need to run this by you.”

The second call had come in at 7:40 p.m. Sometime while she’d been driving through the twilight streets of a subdivision trying to decide whether to go home or to eat out alone. More than an hour before she had ended up at Barrington’s mansion.

“That sounded important,” Kahler said from the doorway.

She nodded. Lew rarely called her at home. It was part of his unspoken code of management. “I better call him.”

“It’s pretty late,” he said.

“I’ll call his office. If he’s not there, I won’t bother him at home. Whatever he wants can surely wait until morning.”

She had already picked up the phone and begun punching in Lew’s private number at the paper. She let it ring maybe fifteen times, but no one picked up. She put the phone back in its cradle and looked up to find Kahler watching her.

“He must have gone home,” she offered.

“I guess I’ll do the same,” he said, moving toward the door.

“Thanks for coming in with me. And for waiting for me.”

“You weren’t at the paper?” he asked.

She had told him she was working late, but if she thought Lew had been at the office when he tried to get in touch with her, then it was obvious she hadn’t been.

“I had an interview,” she said.

“They must work the night shift,” Kahler suggested. He had stopped at the door, hazel eyes assessing.

She shook her head, knowing he was too smart for her to lie to. Especially a lie as stupid as that one.