A Rose At Midnight

Chapter Two

“Marry you?”

The hard drum of Christi’s heart slapped against her ears, making her wonder for a moment if she’d hallucinated the words she’d heard. An hour ago she hadn’t known Daniel was alive, and now, here in her mother’s childhood home, he was asking her to spend the rest of her life with him? “Just like that?”

Only the fluorescent fixture over the sink lit the room. Its stark light stretched the shadows of the pine table and chairs to horror film proportions. The black window skewed its reflection of the kitchen out of shape. Only hours ago, she’d found comfort here, and Daniel was taking it all away.

He slung his midnight-colored coat, tuxedo jacket and bow tie onto the back of the nearest kitchen chair. “Yes. Just like that.”

Feeling every one of Quebec City’s twenty degrees below zero as if the room had no insulation, no walls, Christi buried her hands deep into her coat pockets to keep them warm.

Part of her had waited so long to hear those words. Yet a sense of disappointment, of confusion, rather than joy filled her. She’d wanted to hear the words, but not in this dispassionate way. That wasn’t the Daniel she knew and loved.

Had loved. She swallowed hard. Still loved. The truth hit hard. Her fist automatically sought the hard lump in her stomach, trying to soothe it with massaging pressure. As much as she’d like to hate him, as much as she’d like to pretend the love had melted along with the anger, she couldn’t. In spite of all that had happened, in spite of the fact they were hardly more than strangers, she still cared for him in a way that defied all logic.

“Would you like some tea or coffee?” Daniel asked with the ease of someone who was at home. Ease he shouldn’t have felt in the house that belonged to her mother’s cousin.

“No.” She breathed the word out on a long exhale and took her time to fill her lungs once more. “I don’t want tea. I don’t want coffee. What I do want is answers.”

“Some things are better left unsaid.”

“Like goodbye?”

A muscle flinched in his jaw, but otherwise, he gave no indication her deliberate barb had found its mark.

He opened a set of cupboard doors and rummaged through the contents on the shelves. “And if you don’t like the answers, Christiane, what will you do?”

“I’ll survive. I’ve done it often enough.” Raised as an air force brat, she’d left enough friends behind to learn how to cope with constant changes.

He banged the cupboard doors closed and moved to the next set. “The answer is that you’ve walked into a long-standing battle between me and Armand. If you stay here, you’ll only get hurt.”

“I’ve already been hurt.” And the way he’d left cut the deepest wound. If she’d survived that, she could survive anything.

Holding on to the glass handles, Daniel pressed his forehead against the crack between the crisp white cupboard doors. The signs were all there. She recognized the thin edge of control he held on his temper, the explosive emotions caged somewhere beneath the surface, and imagined the jumble of words hurtling chaotically in his head never to be spoken.

“If you hate Armand so much, how come you have a key to his house?”

“My father was his business partner. He was once a friend of the family. He was my godfather.”

She nodded once, sensing the ties made the battle between them that much more potent, but not quite understanding them, or why she was caught in the middle.

“Why?” She was aware of him on a physical level. Aware of the space he occupied, of the tension in his shoulders, of the uncomprehending way she wanted to go to him and hold him. She tried to look past all the layers of armor he’d suited himself with, reaching out for the missing something behind the words. The past and present mingled until she wasn’t quite sure where she was. So she focused on the curiously vulnerable bend of his neck. “Why do you want to marry me?”

Slowly, he turned to face her. He leaned the heels of his hands on the gray-flecked counter. His gaze met hers with control ruling. “Since you refuse to leave, it’s the only way I can think to protect you.”

“I don’t need protection.” I need you.

“I can give you now what I couldn’t offer you then.”

“That’s it?” She shook her head. A cold sadness squeezed her heart. She’d wanted something from him, but not that.

“What more do you want?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned back to the cupboard, and with quick movements, returned to his hunt.

“What about love?” Her voice sounded thin and stretched with desperation. As if her index finger belonged to someone else, she watched it trace a smooth knot on the table’s pine board.

“What of it?”

“You’re offering marriage.” She twitched her finger off the table when she realized the knot on the pine board was shaped like a lopsided heart. “Does it include love?”

“Love is a useless emotion.” He found a jar of instant coffee and banged it on the counter. He whisked a mug from a display shelf on the side of the sink window and set it beside the coffee jar with a thump. “We’re adults now, not children. We’re old enough to know that feelings have no place in this world.”

“What’s the point of marriage, then?”

“You said you wanted roots.”

Her heart hitched inside her chest. He’d remembered that from their six-month courtship? Her gaze sought him and she willed him to turn around.

He twisted the sink’s spigot too harshly and water splashed onto his white tuxedo shirt. Without acknowledging the wetness, he stuffed the kettle under the water’s stream and filled it. “I can protect you. I can give you security. I can give you the world.”

“But not your love.” She no longer seemed to feel anything—not the room’s cold air, not the fire in her stomach, not the feelings that should be ripping through her like a tornado.

“There are more solid things between a man and a woman than useless feelings.”

“Like what?” Could he have forgotten the passion they’d once shared?

He jammed the kettle onto a burner and wrenched the knob. The click-click-click of spark kindling gas sounded like cockroaches scurrying for cover. “Like the things you say you want, Christiane. Family, roots, security.”

Her voice could not climb up her throat. A tiny sound echoed inside her like a wounded cry. She checked her cheeks with a quick flick of her hand to make sure no moisture stained them, betraying the ease with which he could tear open old wounds.

“Trust me.” He said the words so softly, she had to strain to catch them. Their gazes met and held. His weighty sadness mixed with hers and wove a bond of regret for all that might have been, all that could never be.

“The last time I trusted you,” she blurted out, “I ended up alone and pregnant.”

She hadn’t meant to tell him. Not now. Not like this. As she waited for his reaction, no air could crawl through the constricted passages of her lungs. Her fingers dug into the soft flesh of her stomach, trying to stem the flickers of fire burning through her gut. Nothing moved across his face. No shadow, no emotion, no surprise. He was taking the news of his fatherhood as if she’d casually mentioned the weather—calmly, much too calmly. Could he really feel so little?

“Then think of our child.” If he’d said anything else. If he hadn’t said the words so blankly. If he hadn’t looked at her with such remote coldness, she could have kept her cool. But his utter lack of emotion detonated a small explosion deep inside her, one that concentrated all he should have felt with all she couldn’t contain and spewed it out in a high, thin voice. “Our child? Our child!” She thumped her fist against her chest. “My child, Daniel. My daughter.”

“Mine also. An obligation it’s past time I take on.”

Anger snaked into rampant fear as his unspoken threat unleashed a forewarning so terrifying she was at a loss for words.

“It’s my right to know my daughter.” He snagged a spoon from a jelly jar on the table, catching the lip of the glass.

Her hands gnarled into fists. Her muscles shook with such intensity she had to clamp her arms at her sides to keep herself from leaping out of her chair. She barely registered when the spoon jar rattled against the table, when it toppled over, scattering spoons onto the tabletop, spilling them onto the floor, when the falling spoons clacked like skeleton teeth against the linoleum tiles. “You. Can’t. Have. Her.” She’s all I have.

Carefully, he dropped a heaping spoonful of instant coffee into a mug and laid the spoon on the counter. Precisely, he screwed the plastic cap back onto the glass jar. Rigidly, he replaced the jar into the cupboard, giving a half twist so the red and gold label would face out like the rest of the bottles and jars on the shelf. “If you want to stay here, you’ll have to do it on my terms.”

“You have no hold on me.” Barely aware she was moving, she rose. “I won’t let you play with me, hurt me again.” With slow, purposeful steps, she moved toward him. “I won’t let you use my daughter to control me.”

He started forward with cool, measured strides, meeting her halfway. They stood facing each other squarely, a foot of space between them—two hungry dogs, one precious bone. “You’re not giving me any choice. I need—”

“You need what, Daniel? Tell me.”

He crowded in on her, invading her personal space with the intensity of his will, his heat, his body. She backed away reflexively. Playing with fire was dangerous. He followed, matching her step for step. She was going to get burned. He backed her against the solid surface of the refrigerator. And there was no way out.

“There’s too much between us.” His voice, low and husky, rumbled through her. “Bonds. Obligations. History.” He planted the back of one hand next to her head on the refrigerator’s enamel and fanned the tips of his fingers through the ends of her hair. “By insisting on staying, you’re bringing the past into the present. You’re asking for loose ends to be tied.”

Loose ends. The edge of madness dissipated. Loose ends. She hadn’t thought of it that way, but it was. Her history was a loose end. Daniel was a loose end. She herself was a loose end. And he was right. Loose ends needed trimming.

He reached for her then, his free hand molding to the back of her neck, fingertips burrowing between strands of her hair to cradle the sensitive scalp beneath. She trembled at his touch, felt the echo of it shimmer through him. He pressed his lips against hers, savoring, caressing, demanding a response. He tasted hot and exciting, and she couldn’t help the throaty sound of desire as she opened up to him. His hand skimmed her shoulder, followed the curve of her back to her waist and pressed her closer to him, letting her feel him come alive against her. Her skin warmed. Her blood heated. Her pulse flared. Against her will, she softened against him, melting with a sigh into his embrace, responding to his unexpected male hunger with a feminine fierceness that surprised her.

He knew her. Knew how to play her with even more ease than his keyboard. Knew she could not resist him anymore than she could resist his music. And he would take away the only point of stability in her life. All to get what he wanted.

“Please…stop.” Struggling, she pushed away from the blaze of his kiss with a trembling hand.

He allowed her a small retreat, but held her hips prisoner in his palms. “You wanted me then. You want me still. It’s a solid enough base for a marriage.”

“I let you into my bed because I loved you, not to satisfy hormones. Sex isn’t solid. It’s a moment.”

“A moment you’ve lived with for nine years.” His thumb glided gently over her still-moist bottom lip. Her skin pulsated in the trail of his touch. The shadow of memories played on his face, softening the harsh lines around his mouth, deepening the amber of his eyes to that mellow brandy that made her forget logic. “Can you honestly say that you don’t want me?”

Still and always. “You hurt me once. I won’t let you hurt me again.”

But physical love wasn’t enough. She wanted more—she wanted permanence. She needed an emotional connection, too—soil that would allow roots to grow deep and strong. And he wasn’t prepared to give her that. She needed to release the lingering something between them. Only then would she be free to go on with the rest of her life without the tug of nostalgia.

The kettle’s water, spilling over the red-hot burner, hissed, diverting his attention. As he released her, a mixture of regret and relief scrambled through her, drawing a long exhale of breath. No other man could run up her temperature so high and so fast. He’d once made her feel safe and loved. He’d once made her believe in forever. And it had all turned out to be illusion. Hands pressed against the refrigerator’s humming surface, she became aware of the returning acid storm in her stomach.

Daniel made a near ritual of filling his mug with water and stirring his coffee more vigorously than necessary before he turned to face her. “There’s something between us that even nine years hasn’t erased. Armand’s counting on that. He’ll use it, Christiane, and destroy us both.”

“I don’t understand.” She rubbed at the chill permeating the thick layer of her coat.

“And I don’t know how to explain it.”

She leaned forward, drawing her arms tight under her chest, pleading. Talk to me. “Try.”

“Armand wants something from you.”

“What? What could an old man possibly want from me?”

Daniel took a hasty sip from his mug, then grimaced as the hot liquid burned his tongue. “I’m not sure.” He slammed the mug down. Coffee spilled over the side, steamed in a ghostlike breath, then pooled on the counter. “But by sticking together we have a better chance of defeating him than by standing alone being played one against the other. Whatever else you do, you have to trust me. I won’t let anyone hurt you.”

Except you. You’ll hurt me, Daniel.

A piece in a game. That’s what he’d called her earlier. The stakes for her—her identity, her heart, her daughter. Whether she stayed or left, she risked everything. For him? A question mark, and no enlightenment on the horizon.

Would he really use Rosane against her? Was it fair to keep Rosane away from her father and keep her from knowing her roots? It was, after all, what Christi sought for herself. Maybe if she allowed Daniel to see Rosane, he would understand it was better if he didn’t upset their ordered lives.

She huffed a ragged sigh. A headache echoed the pain searing her stomach. “You’ve the right to know your daughter, and she, you. But promise me something, Daniel—”

“Anything.”

“Promise you won’t try to take her away from me under any circumstance.”

“I’ll do anything to keep you both safe.”

“Promise me,” she insisted. “I need to hear the words.”

From across the kitchen, the harsh light above the sink cut his face with grim shadows and rigid lines. But the amber of his eyes was clear and vibrant. “I promise.”

The solid timbre of his voice, the unbending look in his eyes, the shred of soul reaching out to her told her he would do everything he could to keep his word. Part of the storm inside her ebbed. “Thank you.”

She pushed herself off the refrigerator’s surface and stuffed her hands deep into her coat pockets. “I need time…to tell Rosane about you.” Christi lifted her shoulders and shook her head.

His cup halted midway to his mouth. “What’s wrong?”

“Nothing’s wrong.” Christi lowered her gaze to the black and white checkerboard of tiles on the floor, then raised it again. “She thinks her father’s dead.” An almost imperceptible flinch flashed through his eyes. “I’m sorry. But in a way, you were dead to both of us. Please. Give me time to prepare her.”

He nodded curtly. “I’ll give you a week.”

“It may not be enough.”

“One week, Christiane.” He stamped his cup against the counter with impatience. “Then you’ll have to marry me and let me take my rightful place in her life. Or you’ll have to leave.”

Leaving would be easier. A short-term remedy for a long-time ill. But marrying him wasn’t a decision she was ready to make in such a short time. And with her parents recently dead, she’d lost too much to turn back with no answers. If a friend had come to her with this dilemma, she’d have counseled her to stay, to see things through. She had a week—a lot could happen in a week. “I’ll tell Rosane about you. But I can’t marry you. Not when you refuse to tell me what’s going on between you and Armand and why you think my life is in danger.”

Daniel grabbed a rag from a hook inside the cupboard door beneath the sink, then wiped the coffee spill. He plopped the wet rag into the sink. “If Armand invited you here, he has a reason. And it’s not your well-being.”

“What other reason could there be?”

Taking a sip from his mug, he leaned against the counter and crossed his ankles. “Did you know I was the guest of honor at the gala tonight?”

“No, I—”

“Armand conveniently forgot to mention the fact because it suited him to make a point.”

“But—”

“There’s no but, Christiane. Armand is the devil himself. He invited you here to continue what he started nine years ago.” He held up a hand to halt the question about to spill out of her mouth. “He found you nine years ago through me. He wanted something then. I don’t know what, only that it scared your mother and made me abandon my music scholarship. I wanted to protect you then, Christiane, and I want to protect you now. He invited me here to let me know I had no control over the outcome. I won’t let him win.” Frustration strained his face. “Do you understand?”

“No, I don’t.” Points to be made? Devils in disguise? Covert plans and schemes? Daniel was wrong. Armand had nothing to gain from her. Daniel was turning this once warm kitchen into a deep freeze of suspicion where half truths fogged the air. “What has Armand done to you to make you hate him so?”

“He treated me like a son. Then he betrayed my—me.”

“How? What happened?”

For a long time, Daniel simply stared at her. She wanted to go to him, shake him, punch him, do something, anything to let the words locked in his skull spill out. But she did nothing, except stare back, and wait for the words she knew wouldn’t come.

“What’s important now is keeping you safe,” he said.

Enough was enough. He wanted to play with smoke and mirrors, and she wanted straight answers. They weren’t going to get anywhere at this rate. If he couldn’t explain, then she couldn’t accept the notion of Armand as a threat. She wasn’t going to let Daniel put down the only solace she’d felt in a long time.

“Armand and Marguerite have been nothing but kind and generous. They’ve given me something I’ve been looking for since I was a little girl. A sense of where I come from, where I belong.”

Even on the other side of the room, Daniel crowded her. “You belong with me.”

She placed both her hands on the table separating them and challenged him. “Then why did you leave?”

“I told you. To keep you safe. I had no choice.”

As she straightened her stance, she let out a short, sharp laugh. “No choice, no heart, no love. Where does that leave me, Daniel? I’ll tell you where. It leaves me hanging and I don’t like that. I’ve had too much of that in my life. It has to end.”

The turbulent mix of emotions churning through her was too much. She needed time to think, time to sort through all the questions, time to let her rioting feelings settle. “Well, it’s been an interesting evening, but I’m tired.” She ran a hand through her hair. “If you’ll excuse me, I’m going to check on my daughter and go to bed.” She walked stiffly to the kitchen door and turned. She gripped the door frame with a force that sapped the blood from her fingertips, leaving them white. “I trust you can see yourself out.”