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Gemma pulled a face. “Tea.” She looked toward the sideboard. “Brandy would do her more good, or maybe whiskey…”
“You know very well that Miss Spires doesn’t drink.”
“Only because she’s an old—” Gemma bit her lip. “Don’t you think I should be allowed to try it, big brother? My birthday is in less than a week.”
“Out of the question.”
“Why?”
Mal stared at the ceiling. Griffin sighed. “You’re too young, Gemma, and alcohol is illegal.”
“It’s only illegal to sell it, not drink it. And anyway, you keep it here.”
“Only for guests. You know I don’t drink.”
“You shouldn’t keep the stuff around just for my sake, Grif,” Mal said.
“Thank you, Mal. Your concern is appreciated but entirely unnecessary.” Griffin turned back to Gemma. “I’m not going to argue the merits of the Volstead Act with you, Gemma. You aren’t to drink in this house.”
Gemma glared for a moment, turning undoubtedly rebellious thoughts about in her head. It was amazing how quickly she’d gone from obedient schoolgirl to willful young woman. Griffin could still remember the day of the fire, when he’d held a wailing two-yearold in his arms and watched, helpless, as their parents and elder brother were consumed by the flames. She had been so tiny then, so desperately in need of his protection…
“You can’t keep me locked up forever,” Gemma said in a deceptively calm voice. “In a few more years I’ll be able to make my own decisions, and then…”
“Gemma, Gemma—” Griffin cupped her chin in his hand “—why are you in such a hurry to face the world? It’s not as pretty as you imagine.”
She met his gaze. “I know how hard it was for you…in the War, I mean…all the things you had to do—”
He dropped his hand as if she had burned it. “You know nothing about it, and I never want you to learn. You’ll have a good life. Nothing will ever hurt you, Gemma. That I promise.”
“A good life.” She flounced away from him, banging her heels on the carpet. “You mean, a life among the stuffy, boring, proper members of New York society. You want me to marry an ordinary man and become a good, obedient wife who gives respectable teas and occasionally plays tennis with the other young matrons.” She swung back to face him. “What if I don’t want that kind of life? What if I want jazz and dancing and fast motor cars? What if I want to be free?”
“Gemma…”
“Don’t you see? We aren’t like other people, Grif! We can’t just pretend we are. What would happen if I married some nice, upstanding young man and he found out what I really am? Or will I have to hide it for the rest of my life?”
Griffin looked away, knowing she had hit on the one point he could not refute. He thought of anotherwoman who would probably represent Gemma’s ideal of the liberated, modern woman: a certain long-legged vamp with a black bob and aqua eyes and a throaty voice made for whispering seductive promises; a brash and brazen youngwoman who considered herself the equal of any male, human or otherwise—who’d made Griffin remember that he was still very much a man…
“Why can’t you just let me meet the others in New York?” Gemma demanded, cutting into his thoughts. “Why can’t we be with our own kind?”
“The pack would hardly permit you the freedom you crave,” he said.
“How do you know what they’d permit? You say you don’t trust them. I know it has something to do with what happened in San Francisco, but that was a different place. They aren’t the same!”
“They’re bootleggers,” Griffin said grimly. “They break the law every day.”
“But that isn’t—”
“Please go to your room, Gemma.”
She opened her mouth, closed it again and retreated with the air of one who had suffered only a temporary defeat. Griffin gave Mal a weary smile.
“I’m sorry about that little contretemps,” he said. “You shouldn’t be subjected to our family squabbles.”
“It’s nothing, really,” Mal said. “You should have seen me and my sisters.”
“I don’t enjoy such disagreements,” Griffin said. “She’s so much younger than I. She never knewour parents.”
“You had to raise her yourself.”
“Starke took care of us after the fire, until I was old enough to assume responsibility for the administration of our inheritance.”
“That’s why you call him Uncle Edward?”
“He was like a second father to us.” Griffin glanced away. “Afewyears later came theWar. After that, Gemma spent more time with governesses or away at school than with me.” He walked with Mal toward the door. “It’s my own fault if she doesn’t see things as I do.”
“It’s not your fault, Grif. Change is in the air. It’s not the way it was before the War. There are so many girls just like Gemma…girls who won’t go back to the way our mothers lived.”
Griffin stopped at the foot of the staircase. “Gemma won’t be that kind of girl, not as long as I have anything to say about it.” He gripped the newel post, tightening his fingers until they ached. “My life has no purpose if I can’t protect my sister.”
“No purpose?Your money does plenty of good in the world.”
“What I do is a drop in the bucket.” The newel post creaked under his hand. “Gemma has no resources to face the harsh realities of a mad and violent world. I intend to see that she reaches womanhood with her innocence unspoiled.”
Mal glanced at the floor and then back at Griffin, his expression guarded. “I hope it turns out the way you want it to, Grif, but don’t blame yourself if it doesn’t. Gemma isn’t an ordinary girl, and not even you can control everything.” He scuffed his shoe on the parquet floor. “I know it isn’t any of my business…”
“No. It isn’t.” He heard the harsh tone of his own voice and managed a smile. “Don’t worry about us, Mal. You have enough problems of your own, and I intend to help you as best I can.”
“You know I’m grateful.”
“There are no debts between us, Mal…not now and not ever.”
They continued on to the door, where Fitzsimmons could be seen waiting in the drive with the limousine. Griffin sent Mal off to Manhattan and returned to his study, his thoughts bleak and troubled.
Despite what he’d told Mal, he wasn’t at all confident that he could control Gemma. She had abilities far beyond those of a human girl her age. She was also far too inexperienced to fully grasp the consequences of employing them recklessly.
Griffin picked up the brandy snifter and swirled the liquor around and around, flaring his nostrils at the strong, sweet scent. Gemma would have been delighted to drink what Mal had left, but alcohol was the least of the dangers she faced. Maintaining Gemma’s respectability would be easy in comparison to holding her wolf nature in check. For Gemma, just like her brother, could become an animal in the blink of an eye.
And once the animal was free, there could be no certainty of restraining it.
The smell of the liquor went sour in Griffin’s nostrils. He’d been speaking no less than the truth when he’d told Mal that his life’s only remaining purpose was to protect Gemma. God knew, nothing else seemed very important. Any competent businessman could take his place administering the Durant estate, charities and commercial holdings. He had little interest in politics and even less in high society, beyond what was required to secure Gemma’s future.
And as for women…
He closed his eyes, drawn once again to the alley and his unconventional meeting with Allegra Chase. “You’re truly alone, aren’t you?” she’d said. “Is that why you spend your time rescuing damsels in distress?”
Her question had been intended as a gibe, but somehow she’d sensed that he’d cut himself off from the opposite sex, unwilling to embark on empty liaisons with the kinds of women who gave themselves freely for a handful of expensive trinkets or a few months of sexual gratification.
Allegra Chase was exactly that sort of woman, or would have been if she were human. She had her “obligations,” her powerful ties to the vampire who had Converted her, as well as to the rest of the clan—literal ties of blood even more binding than those that governed the world of the pack.Yet Griffin was still thinking about her, still remembering the fire in her eyes and the curves of her shapely legs. He’d dreamed of her last night, and awakened this morning hard and aching with need.
It was ridiculous. Allegra had been honest enough to warn him that the attraction he’d felt wasn’t real when he was too muddled to think for himself. She obviously had no more interest in him than she might have had in an African ape.
He should have been grateful. At the time, he’d thought she’d done him a favor. Allegra Chase was only a fantasy, and such visions eventually faded.
But this one hadn’t. If the attraction hadn’t been real, it surely would have died a quiet death by now.
Griffin scowled with self-disgust, nearly cracking the snifter in his hand. The only cure for these irrational thoughts and feelings would be time…time and the inevitable distance ensured by two very different lives.
Time and distance made no difference to Mal, he reflected. Once his friend had given his heart, nothing would shake him from his course. And that was why Mal deserved his happiness, he and the dreamers like him. No one—except for a few ambitious debutantes and their mothers—would notice or care if Griffin Durant cut himself off from the society that had kept him civilized.
Shaking off his grim mood, Griffin picked up the telephone receiver and gave the operator a number he hadn’t called in far too long.
“Kavanagh,” the man on the other end answered.
“Ross?”
“Griffin? Griffin Durant?”
“Hello, Ross. I know it’s been quite a while—”
“Hell, man. Far too long. How is life among the polo players and stuck-up debutantes of the North Shore?”
“The same as always. Nothing much changes here.”
“So I’ve heard. How is Gemma?”
“Her seventeenth birthday is just around the corner.”
“That old? You must be watching her like a hawk.”
“I do what I can.”
“And the pack? They aren’t giving you any more trouble?”
“No more than usual. I can handle them.”
Ross Kavanagh laughed, an edge to his voice. “Yeah. I’ll bet.”
“And you?”
“I’m dead to them. They leave me alone, and I don’t tell the other cops or my friends in the Prohibition Bureau about their little operation.”
“Good.” Griffin sat in the chair next to the telephone stand, forcing his muscles to relax. “Listen, Ross…I have a favor to ask.”
“What is it, brother?”
Succinctly Griffin recounted the situation with Margot De Luca. “Mal’s already been to see her father, and asked around every club he and Margot frequented, all with no success. If you could keep your ear to the ground, I’d appreciate it.”
“Sure. Mal’s a good kid.”
“Honest, honorable and the bravest man I’ve ever known.”
“That’s saying a lot, coming from you.” Griffin heard the sound of a pencil scratching on paper. “I’ll give you a call if I turn up anything.”
“Thanks, Ross.”
“Don’t be such a stranger, Grif.”
As he hung up and walked to the window, Griffin wondered if he would ever be anything but a stranger. He had chosen his course, and he had no one to blame but himself.
With a snap of his wrist, Griffin closed the drapes and let the darkness enfold him.
Chapter Three
LULU’S WAS JUMPING tonight, and the hottest table in the joint belonged to Allie Chase.
She relaxed in her chair, an unlit cigarette dangling from her lips, and watched Pepper Adair dance the Charleston on the tabletop, red hair bouncing to the jazz band’s hectic rhythm. Bruce and Nathan were clapping in time, shouting encouragement as the tempo increased, while Nikolai stared into his drink with a feigned air of gloom and pretended he wasn’t having a good time. Sibella scribbled furiously in her sketchbook, deftly working to capture Jimmy McCrae in action as he balanced an empty glass on his nose.
“It is all so meaningless,” Nikolai said in his heavy Russian accent. “Must we always fiddle while Rome burns?”
Allie laughed. “Is there a fire somewhere I haven’t heard about, Kolya?”
He gazed at her from dark, soulful eyes. “There is the one in my heart, which only you can extinguish.”
“Oh, knock off the mushy talk, comrade,” Jimmy said, tossing his glass from hand to hand. “You know Allie ain’t interested.”
Allie smiled sweetly. “What would I do if I didn’t have you to tell me all about myself, Jimmy?”
“Good question.” He grinned and loosened his collar. “What I don’t get is why you haven’t fallen for me.”
“Because she has better taste than that,” Bruce said. “Such good taste, in fact, that I doubt any guy will meet with her approval in the foreseeable future.”
“Don’t listen to him, Allie,” Nathan said, his gentle face achingly sincere. “Sometimes he just likes to hear the sound of his own voice.”
Bruce snorted. “Allie would be the first to agree with me.”
The music had stopped. Pepper jumped down from the table and plopped into a chair, her face flushed and her eyes bright. “What are y’all talkin’ about?” she demanded. “Come on, tell!”
Allie signaled to the waiter to bring another round of drinks. “It’s nothing very interesting, really,” she said lightly. “Just a discussion of my love life.”
Pepper leaned forward, the neckline of her frock falling open to reveal a sliver of her fashionably flat bust line. “How excitin’! Who is he, darlin’?”
“Nobody, Pep,” Jimmy said. “Just the usual string of one-night stands.”
“That’s right,” Allie said. “I believe in keeping things uncomplicated.” She accepted a whiskey from the waiter and took a long drink. “I’m not the kind to settle down like Bruce and Nathan.”
“Who says I’ve settled down?” Bruce said.
“Don’t you be mean to Nathan, darlin’, or you’ll regret it. Won’t he, Allie?”
