Emery ignored me, his eyes sweeping over the disheveled room. “What happened?”
“Someone sent Jane a can of aerosol silver, which sprayed all over the shop,” Dick said, watching Emery carefully for a reaction.
“Did it get on any of the more important books?” Emery demanded with a shriek. “Does liquid silver stain? Have you contacted your insurance agent?”
Sadly, that was exactly the reaction I’d expected. I sincerely looked forward to the day when Dick revealed their blood connection to Emery … and then Dick took his great-great-grandson out to the woodshed for an old-fashioned ass-whoopin’.
“And I’m fine, thank you,” I muttered. I felt a low growl rumble deep in Gabriel’s chest. I placed a restraining hand across his shoulders. As much as I appreciated Gabriel’s indignant response, Emery couldn’t help that he was raised to be a socially clueless tool. Plus, spilling Emery’s blood would probably damage more books.
“Well, of course, I’m concerned for you, Jane, but obviously, you’re fine,” Emery said, giving another delicate shudder at the sight of my ravaged face. “But who knows what kind of damage this little prank has done? Who knows how many books have been ruined?”
“We’re not really worried about that right now, Emery,” Andrea said. “We’re just grateful that Jane’s all right.”
“Of course, you are. You’re such a good friend, Andrea.” Emery pressed Andrea’s hands between his. Dick’s eyes narrowed into dangerous little slits.
“We’ll start checking the books just as soon as we have all this cleaned up,” Dick told him. “Why don’t you head on home to the boardinghouse or the malt shop or wherever you wholesome types spend your evenings?”
“But I can help,” Emery protested. “You probably want to clean the silver off the books as soon as possible if you’re going to salvage them. Besides, it wouldn’t do for poor Jane to stumble across a book soaked in silver months from now, would it? We can’t have those sorts of hazards just lurking around the shop for her or our vampire customers. I’m willing to examine every single book if it means making the shop safe for Jane … and her friends.”
“Andrea and I can handle it,” Dick told him.
“Wouldn’t it be better to have an extra pair of hands helping you?” Emery countered. He gave Andrea a long simpering look. “Besides, it’s obvious that Andrea is shaken by the incident. I’d like to pitch in and help her however I can.”
“Emery, look.” I stood on wobbly legs. My head swam, and the floor tilted toward me. “I don’t feel so well.”
“You’re going home,” Gabriel told me as he caught my elbows and kept me from smacking my head on the floor. “Dick, would you mind closing up?”
I was too dazed to object or hear Dick’s response. Dick and Andrea could figure out what to do with Emery. I let Gabriel lead me to his car and tuck me into the passenger side.
I stared out the window, unsure of what to say, as he drove me to River Oaks. When we got there, he let Fitz out to run and took me to the upstairs bathroom, where he carefully stripped me out of the silver-laced clothes. While Gabriel ran bathwater, I caught a glimpse of my face in the mirror and was relieved to see that it no longer looked like raw hamburger. I had a few shiny, pale pink patches across my cheeks and nose, like a human recovering from a bad sunburn.
Gabriel let me slip in under the bubbles, and I closed my eyes to avoid looking at him while he ran a sponge down my still-healing arms and legs. He poured some of my “fancy” antifrizz shampoo into his palm and massaged it through my hair. Apparently, he didn’t expect me to talk about my feelings or how awkward it was for me to let him see me naked again, especially with my fabulous shiny pink healing burns. It was just as well. I wasn’t sure how I felt about him seeing me naked again, with or without shiny pink healing burns.
When he tilted my head back to rinse my hair, I caught him staring at my face. You’d expect someone in his situation to be sneaking looks about eight inches south, but he was wholly concentrated on my face. The burns must have been worse than I thought.
“I know, it’s bad,” I told him. “But I’m feeling a lot better.”
“No, you’re almost completely healed. I just—I’m trying to take in as much as I can before you’re strong enough to drop-kick me out the door.”
“Why are you being so sweet?” I asked.
“Because you’re letting me,” he said, a sad little lopsided smile tilting his mouth. “I’m so sorry.”
“I missed you, too. But I didn’t do anything wrong, ergo no apology.”
“I can live with that.” He nodded, gently pouring warm water over my head. “I would like you to consider moving to my house for a while, Jane.”
“I couldn’t do that. It would feel weird. And I don’t think living together would be right for us at the moment. There’s too much going on.”
“Well, then move into Andrea’s place, at least until the threats stop.”
My eyebrows arched, the new skin around them stretching tight. “Andrea’s place, where Dick lives? You must be scared.”
“I don’t want anything to happen to you.”
“I’ll be fine. And I’ll be much more careful when I open the mail, I promise.” He gave me a withering fatherly look. “I’ll let Andrea open the mail from now on?” When that didn’t satisfy him, I huffed. “I’ll take it to the airport and have it X-rayed?”
“I will be spending a lot more time at the shop with you,” he said. “You don’t even have to acknowledge my presence. I will just sit in the back and watch you, to make sure you’re safe. Wherever you go, I go.”
“Like a stalker.”
He nodded. “Yes. Jane, I don’t care what capacity you let me have in your life. I just want to be there. And if that means I have to keep my distance, I’ll do that.”
I sighed. If ever there was a time for me to lay all my cards on the table, this was it. Naked, wounded, and vulnerable. “So, here’s my basic problem with us, the reason I can’t seem to relax into a relationship with you, the reason I find problems where none exist and I push you away. I—I can’t figure out why you’re with me!” I exclaimed, clapping my hand over my mouth. I hadn’t meant for that part to come out. I had meant to say, “You lie and hide things from me.”
Gabriel pried my fingers away from my lips. My hands trembled as stuff I’d been feeling for months tumbled from my tongue. “I know that makes me neurotic and sad, but I can’t figure out why you want to be with me. Every other woman in your life is exotic and beautiful and has all this history. And I’m just some drunk girl you followed home from a bar, some pathetic human you felt your usual need to protect, and you got stuck with a lifetime tie to her because she was dumb enough to get shot. I can’t stand the idea that you feel obligated to me. I know I’m insecure and pushy and spastic, desperately inappropriate at times and just plain odd at others. And I can’t help but wonder why you would want that when there are obviously so many other options. I can’t help but feel that I’m keeping you from someone better.”
I let out a loud, long breath. It felt as if some tremendous weight on my chest had wiggled loose and then dropped away. No more running. No more floating along and waiting. My cards were on the table. If Gabriel and I couldn’t have a future after this, it wasn’t because I held back from him. Now I could only hope it didn’t blow up in my face in some horrible way.
I wasn’t sure my face could handle much more.
Gabriel sighed and cupped my chin, forcing me to look him in the eye. “I didn’t follow you that night because I wanted to protect you. I followed you that night because you were one of the most interesting people I’d met in decades. You had this light about you, this sweetness, this biting humor. After I’d only known you for an hour, you made me laugh harder than I had since before I was turned. You made me feel normal, at peace, for the first time in years. And I didn’t want to lose that yet. Even if it was just watching over you from a mile away, I didn’t want to leave your presence. I followed you because I didn’t want to let you go. Even then, I saw you were one of the most extraordinary, fascinating, maddening people I would ever know. Even then, I think I knew that I would love you. If you don’t love me, that’s one thing. But if you do, just stop arguing with me about it. It’s annoying. ”
“Fair enough,” I conceded. “Why the hell couldn’t you have told me this a year ago?”
“I’ve wanted to. You weren’t ready to hear it.”
The water cooled. Gabriel helped me out of the tub and wrapped my robe around me. I snuggled up under the covers and pulled him under with me. He held me close for a long, silent moment before I finally said, “Tell me about Jeanine. Tell me everything. I won’t get mad, no matter how bad it is.”
Gabriel turned me to face him, stroking my hair. “I met Jeanine on one of my first visits to Paris. Her family had old money, very old. Her parents died when she was young, leaving her to be raised by a criminally indulgent grandmother. Jeanine’s mother had been prone to ‘spells’ during which her grandmother attended to her every need. So Jeanine learned early on that being weak and sickly was the fastest way to get attention. Batteries of doctors, nurses, and maids catered to her every whim around the clock. And yet they could never find exactly what was ailing her. Her symptoms shifted like the sands, leaving her grandmother frantic that she would lose another beloved girl. Jeanine was never forced to study subjects she found boring, never forced to meet family or social obligations she found unappealing, never made to do anything that didn’t suit her down to her stamping little foot. The end result was a girl with a woefully limited education, little empathy, and no apparent conscience.
“She spent so much time pretending to be ill that she convinced herself she was. The whole of Paris society spoke in quiet admiration of this ‘pale rose’ who only braved the trials of public appearances every so often for the opera or an important party. She was beautiful. Mahogany hair, always curled into the latest fashions. Bottomless eyes the color of bluebells. Her skin was so—”
“I get it. She made tuberculosis hot,” I said crossly. “On with the story.”
In a slightly less admiring voice, Gabriel assured me, “I found her to be manipulative, spoiled, and not nearly as wan or silly as she wanted us to believe. She was what you would have quite freely called a pain in the ass. But she was also very clever. Most of her ‘incapacitation’ was spent reading.”
“I thought you said she didn’t study.”
“Oh, she read what suited her. Romance novels, Gothic horror. Unfortunately, some of her library included Gothic romance tales, Varney the Vampire and Carmilla. ”
“Those are pretty hard-core books for the time,” I commented. “Surely, well-bred and invalid young ladies did not read lurid lesbian vampire fantasies.” Gabriel arched an eyebrow at me. “Not that I’ve read them … Moving on.”
“As I said, her grandmother was indulgent. She would go to any lengths to lift poor Jeanine’s spirits, including discreetly procuring naughty books. Jeanine recognized what I was right away. She approached me, throwing herself in my path wherever I went, the ballet, parties, even a late-night card game at a friend’s home. It was becoming a joke among my friends. Her grandmother encouraged the infatuation, because she seemed to think that whatever got Jeanine out of bed and into the world was a good thing. One night, Jeanine cornered me at a ball and told me she knew my secret, but not to worry, she wouldn’t tell a soul. All I had to do in return was to make her what I was.”