Teresa Medeiros (27 page)

“Rose petals,” he said without looking up. “I’m allergic to orange blossoms. They make me sneeze.”

Arian made a spiteful mental note to call the florist and order orange blossoms. She circled behind his chair, wishing for the courage to touch him. To seek out some hint of the man who had stroked her to shivering ecstasy, then dried her tears of release with his kisses. But Tristan’s back was rigid, his long, graceful fingers wrapped so tightly around the monogrammed pen that his knuckles were blanched.

She leaned over his shoulder, so near that if he turned his face a quarter of an inch, their lips would graze. Her fingertips tingled with the urge to caress the golden hint of beard that shadowed his jaw. “And where would you prefer to honeymoon? Aruba or Aspen?”

“Aspen. I prefer the cold.”

Arian should have anticipated his answer. Coaxing a response from him was like trying to strike a spark off a block of ice. She straightened, her defeated sigh ruffling his hair.

With lightning speed, he swiveled the chair around to face her. “What’s really bothering you, Arian? Is the credit limit on your American Express card not generous enough? The diamond in your engagement ring a tad small for your tastes?”

Arian might have jerked off that ring and thrown it in his smug face had she not recognized the same note
of thinly veiled contempt he had hurled like a weapon toward his mother. It was the voice of a wounded boy lashing out at those he believed had wronged him.

She backed away from him a step, allowing a hint of her own anger to show. “Forgive me for disturbing you,
Mr
. Lennox. I just thought you might want to help me plan the ceremony. It is
your
wedding, too, you know.”

He tapped the pen on his knee and surveyed her through narrowed eyes, his expression so ruthlessly pleasant it almost made her wish he still wore his apathetic mask. “Try not to think of it as a wedding, but as an acquisition or a business merger. When the echo of the church bells has faded and the last grain of rice has fallen, you’ll have what you wanted.” His voice softened to a smoky murmur. “And I’ll get what I want.”

For a tantalizing instant, the veil of frost dropped, giving Arian a glimpse of the embers that smoldered behind it, embers glowing hot enough to leap into flame at the slightest provocation. An answering flicker of triumph sprang to life in her own heart.

Tristan might have thought his financial analogy would elude her, but she hadn’t been reading the
Wall Street Journal
from front to back every night for the past two weeks for nothing. “I’m looking forward to it, sir. Some mergers turn out to be very profitable. For both parties involved.”

With an enigmatic smile that was a mocking twin of his own, she turned on her heel and stalked out, barely resisting the petty urge to slam the door behind her.

She had learned both less and more than she had sought tonight. Tristan might not love her, but he still wanted her. Badly.

And for now, that would just have to be enough.

Arian stepped off the penthouse elevator to the strident jangling of the bedroom phone. She rushed across the
suite to answer it, entertaining the absurd hope that Tristan might have repented of his boorish behavior and was calling to beg her forgiveness.

“Hello!” When there was no response, she realized she was bellowing into the earpiece.

She reversed the receiver and tried again.

A raspy voice floated out at her, sending a prickle of foreboding down her spine. “I can see you’ve failed to heed my warning, young lady. What a pity.”

“Mr. Lize, is that you?” Arian felt compelled to whisper, although there was no one to overhear her.

A petulant sniff confirmed the caller’s identity. “How did you know it was me? I am a master of disguise.”

“Why, of course you are.” Arian sought to soothe the old man’s ruffled vanity. “But how could I fail to recognize you when your kindness made such an impression on me at the Halloween reception?”

“Apparently, I’m not the only one who made an impression on you that night. I hear you’re to become Mrs. Tristan Lennox on Saturday.”

“And you’re calling to offer your congratulations?”

“No, my condolences.”

Arian fumbled for the bed behind her, her knees growing weak with dread. “Mr. Lize, if you’ve called to speak ill of my betrothed—”

He interrupted her, his voice crackling with urgency. “I must meet with you. Friday afternoon at three o’clock at the cafe on the corner.”

Arian wavered, thinking that she really ought to summon Sven and let him deal with the tenacious meddler.

Wite Lize took advantage of her hesitation. “Lennox is a very powerful man. Once he has you in his clutches, he’ll never allow you to speak to me.” A tense pause. “Please. Arian …”

Arian squeezed the phone, her knuckles going white. Oddly enough, it was not the plea, but the use of
her Christian name in this century of so many strangers that swayed her. “I’ll consider it, but only if you’ll tell me why you bear such a grudge toward my future husband.”

All traces of pomp and bluster vanished from the old man’s voice, leaving it dry and paper thin. “He murdered my son.”

Arian had already started to shake when the line went dead with a hollow click.

Arian melted into the crowd streaming past the Tower by drawing the floppy brim of her hat over her pilfered pair of sunglasses, thankful that Tristan’s tastes ran to the stylish and Sven’s to the functional. She had escaped the penthouse with surprising ease, shooing away the last of the fretful caterers and exhausted dressmakers and informing Sven that she planned to spend the afternoon soaking in a steaming bubble bath in preparation for tomorrow’s wedding.

A wedding that would never take place if the persistent Mr. Lize had anything to say about it.

Garbed in one of the smart little crimson suits Tristan had bought for her and a pair of white gloves, Arian marched down the teeming sidewalk. Marcus would have scolded her for wearing the devil’s color, but Arian didn’t care. If Wite Lize didn’t stop spreading his malicious accusations, she was fully prepared to give him an earful of unholy hell.

Her host was disguised as a strolling Gypsy, which only made it that much easier for Arian to recognize him.
He rushed forward to lead her to a corner table, the drooping ends of his fake mustache quivering with eagerness. “Miss Whitewood! How kind of you to come! I knew you wouldn’t be so heartless as to leave an old man stewing in his regrets. I took the liberty of ordering you some herbal tea.”

Arian started to remove the sunglasses, then thought better of it. If her eyes betrayed so much as a flicker of doubt in Tristan, she did not want Wite Lize to use it as a weapon against her. She drew off her gloves instead. “I didn’t come here to sip tea with you, sir. I came to defend my fiancé’s honor.”

Wite Lize snorted. “Tristan Lennox doesn’t know the meaning of the word.”

Arian started to rise, but he seized her hand with such pathetic desperation that she hesitated. His rheumy blue eyes crinkled in plea. “Don’t go. Please. Not until you’ve heard me out.”

Arian sank back down in the chair and unfolded her napkin. “Have you always hated Tristan so bitterly?”

“Not always. Once I loved him like a son. Nearly as much as my own son.”

“The son you claim Tristan murdered.” Arian had thought saying the words aloud might rob them of their weight. She was wrong.

“Arthur,” Wite Lize provided, smiling wistfully. “My sweet, brilliant boy.”

Arian took a sip of the tea to hide a wince of empathy. She didn’t want to picture this Arthur. Didn’t want to evoke even a shadow of his memory.

“Arthur and Tristan roomed together their very first semester at MIT. A university in Boston,” he added, noting her confusion. “Judging by outward appearances, they had much in common—brilliant minds, a love of computers, a shameless talent for hacking, and boundless imagination. One was dark, one light, yet they were enough alike beneath the skin to have been born brothers.” Wite Lize took a sip of his own tea, his eyes focused
on the past. “Tristan had no kin of his own so he would spend the holidays with Arthur and me in our tiny Greenwich Village apartment. We didn’t have much money, couldn’t even afford a Christmas tree some years, but he always seemed so pitifully eager to be part of our humble little family.”

Arian shifted uncomfortably in her seat, more vulnerable to Tristan’s phantom than she had been to Arthur’s. Arthur was already lost. That bright-eyed boy Tristan had been might still be saved.

A ghost of a grin tugged at the old man’s lips. “We used to laugh about how they would buy a Christmas tree bigger than the one in Rockefeller Center once they’d made their first million.” The smile twisted into a sneer. “Lennox was true to his word. Every year, he puts up that very tree in the courtyard of his kingdom.”

“Mr. Lize, please … I don’t have much time.”

“No, you don’t.” His pitying gaze unnerved her, especially when it drifted down to caress her amulet. “After Arthur and Tristan graduated, they bought several used computers, leased a cockroach-infested brown-stone, and hung out a sign that read Warlock, Inc.”

Beware the warlock
.

Wite Lize’s eyes were sharp enough to note her shiver. He did not seem displeased by it. “The name was meant to be an inside joke, but Arthur had a theory. He believed that the same laws that have ruled the universe since the beginning of time—the fundamental principles that govern mathematics, music, science, and magic—could be accessed through the central core of a computer.”

Arian might know nothing about computers, but she knew too much about the capricious nature of magic to dismiss Arthur’s theory as madness.

“He and Tristan slaved day and night, going without food, without sleep, driving themselves half insane trying to design a software program that would allow them to test Arthur’s theory.”

“And did they succeed?”

“I was performing at a seedy club in SoHo one night when Arthur called and left me a message.” With the unsettling dexterity common to magicians, Wite Lize whipped a small silver box out from under the tablecloth and pushed a button.

“Dad? Are you there, Dad?”
Arian started when a disembodied voice floated out of the device—a young male voice, wild and almost feverish with excitement, yet eerily familiar. Arian supposed she could hear an echo of the father in the son.
“If you’re there, for God’s sake, pick up! We’re onto something big here. Something huge! Something that could bring us both riches and fame beyond our wildest imaginings.” The
voice lowered to a croaked whisper.
“I’ve got one last virus to exterminate. I’ll call you first thing in the morning.”
A brief pause.
“And, Dad … I love you.”

Wite Lize’s knobby finger shook as he punched off the device. A film of tears dimmed his eyes. “That was the last time I ever heard my son’s voice.”

Arian patted her trembling lips with her napkin and gathered her gloves, desiring nothing more than to cling to the bliss of ignorance. “I’m sorry, Mr. Lize, but if that’s all the evidence you have, then I’ll be on my—”

“Sit!” the old man barked.

Arian sat.

He drew a leather-bound book out from beneath the tablecloth, making Arian want to steal a peek just to see if he had any rabbits or bouquets of flowers stashed under there as well. As he flipped open the book and shoved it across the table at her, she prayed she wasn’t to be subjected to snaggle-toothed baby portraits of the noble Arthur.

But the face beneath her fingers was as familiar to her as her own and twice as dear. She thumbed through the scrapbook, her fingers going numb as she discovered page after page of Tristan’s golden image tarnished by ugly slurs and black innuendo.

MAGIC, MURDER, AND MAYHEM IN MIDTOWN MANHATTAN!

WARLOCK MAKES PARTNER DISAPPEAR!

TRISTAN LENNOX: BOY BILLIONAIRE OR BLOODTHIRSTY BUTCHER?

Credit for the more lurid headlines was invariably claimed by a Mr. Eddie Hobbes. For Arian, the very name was accompanied by a whiff of stale cigar smoke and a shudder of remembered humiliation.

She skimmed the articles, growing colder with each word she read despite the unseasonal heat of the November day.

Wite Lize leaned over and tapped a photograph of Tristan’s image superimposed over a cage of bones. “He tore down the brownstone to build the Tower. There are some who whisper that he buried Arthur in the basement, then erected the Tower as a monument to his own greed and treachery.”

Arian slammed the book shut, nearly catching the old man’s finger. He shot her a wounded glare.

“How dare you!” she breathed. “You have no proof. You have nothing here but gossip and slander and vicious rumors.”

“I have sworn affidavits from neighbors who heard angry shouts and the sound of a violent struggle near midnight that night. I have photos of Tristan Lennox being led away by the police with my son’s blood smeared all over his clothes.” Wite Lize’s voice rose to an unholy thunder, evoking alarmed glances from diners at nearby tables. “And most damning of all, Miss Whitewood,
I have no son.”