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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.”
“It’s not going to end this simply.”
“It can.”
“Armand’s already played his next move.” Daniel swallowed another sip of coffee. “I’ve been invited.”
“Invited?”
“Here. As a guest.”
“Then bid your fond regrets. If he’s playing a game, who says you have to follow his rules?”
“There’s too much at stake. I need to keep you safe. We have a daughter. Obligations.”
With one hand she grandly made the sign of the cross. “I absolve you from them all.”
“Not this time.” Both his hands tightened around the mug. “Marry me, Christiane.” His voice bore a strangely insistent urgency.
Her smile was forced. She was a fool. He would never love her. And she couldn’t help loving the boy who’d painted her dull world with rich music and vibrant passion, the boy who’d made her believe she could belong. Expectations would only lead to heartache. But to sever the ties, she had to find out how deeply they ran. In her. In him. So she reached out.
“Do you remember when I told you about the moon?” She’d let herself become vulnerable. She’d told him about her anchor in an ever-changing world. And he’d told her she didn’t have to look that far. In his eyes, in his kiss, in his lovemaking, she’d heard his unspoken promise. He’d become her anchor, her moon.
“Yes.”
“Make me believe, Daniel. Make me believe.”
AFTER CHRISTIANE left the room, Daniel dumped the bitter coffee down the sink. He hated instant. He hated having to push Christiane. But mostly, he hated how hard he’d become. He looked down at the black star sapphire ring he wore on his right hand. Just like his father.
Though the ring was a reminder his soul was tainted, he had a measure of hope for Christiane. As he’d kissed her, he’d sensed the remnants of a bond forged long ago between them, sensed it reignite. If he could fan it into life, strengthen it, then maybe he could save her from whatever twisted scheme poisoned Armand’s mind. He’d done it once when he’d given up his scholarship to buy her freedom; he could do it again.
Distractedly, he rinsed the cup and placed it in the sink. He’d spent the past nine years trying to make amends for his choices. Everyone he’d tried to protect had ended up hurt anyway— Christiane, his mother, his sister…his daughter.
With a careless swoop, he grabbed his coat, jacket and tie from the back of the chair. Five years ago his music had finally paid off and allowed him to buy his mother the art gallery she’d always wanted and help his sister set up her family practice. Which left the debt he owed Christiane and their child.
Turning off the kitchen light, he stepped into the darkened hall. The memories of his feelings for Christiane had tortured him for years. He had no desire to reexperience that agony. Not when he’d finally come to terms with his life.
He would make a good husband, take care of Christiane and their daughter, provide a safe home for them. She’d have her roots. He’d have his career. They’d both have their daughter. They could carry off this marriage with polite civility. The physical bond was enough. He’d see to that. Why complicate the whole thing with useless feelings that only got in the way?
Look what had happened the last time he’d let anything touch his heart. He’d lost everything he’d cared for. He’d found out Armand had used him to get to Christiane, that Armand had tried to kill Christiane’s mother years earlier and caused her to flee in fear, that the only way to protect Christiane from suffering her mother’s fate was to leave her behind and give up his coveted Van Cliburn scholarship.
Except that it was too easy to let down his guard around Christiane, to let her passion fuel his, to forget he’d made a bargain with the devil and that the prize was her life.
As he wound his way through the familiar corridors, he shook off the sense of dread creeping into his bones. The last time he’d walked through this house, he’d sentenced himself to hell. What would his presence here cost him this time?
At the foot of the stairs, he heard the whisper of Christiane’s voice wishing their daughter sweet dreams, the smack of lips against fingers as she blew her a kiss. With an unexpected fierceness, the memory of Christiane’s kiss ratcheted through him. One kiss had cartwheeled him back to sharing sundaes, moonlit car rides and a pile of blankets under a star-studded sky. One kiss had him wishing for a house in the woods filled with music and laughter and family.
He snapped on the light just inside the sitting room’s French door and pushed the door with enough force to close it just shy of a slam. He’d had no more time to prepare this time than the last. But now, his power and influence were equal to Armand’s. He would not cave.
He dropped his coat, jacket and tie onto the plum-upholstered, spindly-legged chair by the door. Having Christiane here was more complicated than he’d expected. He could have dealt with hate. Indifference—even better.
But she’d asked him for the moon.
He choked out a rough bark. The one thing she wanted from him was the only thing he couldn’t give her. For both their sakes. His control over the darkness was precarious at best. If he let her into his heart, they were both doomed.
He poured himself generous fingers of scotch from Armand’s finest stock, then slumped into the chair next to the gaping maw of the hearth. Leaning his head back, he propped his feet on the kidney-shaped coffee table.
“To you, old man.” He raised his glass to the glacial chill of the empty room. “And to your defeat.”
But there was no satisfaction in the promise, only the sure knowledge of inevitable death. The liquor he swallowed didn’t warm him. Nothing would. Not until he discovered Armand’s plans and knew how to keep Christiane safe.
An insistent cacophony jangled in the back of his mind, proving that chaos was only a step away. He closed his eyes and let the notes flow through his brain. They arranged and rearranged themselves into a familiar pattern. He sighed as he recognized the melody. Music had dragged him from the black edge of hell twice. Could it manage the feat a third time?
Unable to resist, he went to the piano and let his fingers dance over the keys.
“Maybe tonight…”
For years the melancholic notes had tormented him. Taunting him when he was tired and his defenses were down. Letting the piece run its course was the only way to get rid of it. Tonight he added a few notes, but still the end wouldn’t come.
Like this melody that wouldn’t finish itself, Christiane was unfinished business.
He’d tried letting her go. Now he would try hanging on to her.
Tumbling the piano bench backwards, he stood. With a stiff motion, he reached for his glass and drained the rest of the scotch, taking pleasure in the liquor’s caustic burn down his throat. Again he raised this glass to the cold room. “One more time—without feeling.”
Chapter Three
Christi needed a few moments to orient herself when she woke up the next morning. As the room focused around her, she remembered where she was and sighed. Daniel’s apparition last night had ruined her joy at finding her mother’s family.
Strong light filtered through the open moiré draperies, but the house was deathly silent and a slow dread snaked its way from her stomach to her throat. The last thing she wanted to do today was face Daniel again or confess a truth she’d hidden for much too long to her daughter. Both would cost her what little balance she had left in her life.
She reached for her watch on the night table. “Eight-fifteen! Ugh.”
She let herself flop back onto the bed. After last night, she could use a couple more hours of sleep. Given her scrambled state of mind, she was surprised she’d slept at all.
Her gaze wandered over the room. But it wasn’t the carved walnut furniture, the Aubusson rug or the cream lace coverlet that caught her eye. It was her grandmother’s portrait near the rocking chair in the corner. Catherine Langelier. Armand had told Christi that the silver brush set on the dresser was Catherine’s. And if she closed her eyes, Christi swore she could smell the trace of her grandmother’s rose-scented perfume lingering on the lace runner on the vanity.
She let her imagination roam until a weathered woman formed out of the mists of her musings. She sat at the vanity, wearing an old-fashioned white satin robe that was rich, yet demure. A delicate gold chain draped the creases of her neck, the pendant hidden beneath the neckline of her gown. A blue jar of cold cream stood next to a gold-cased lipstick and a fancy bottle of perfume. Light refracted into a rainbow as it passed through the bottle’s long, prism-shaped top. The woman sat stroking her long white hair with the silver brush. And in a trick of reverie, it seemed to Christi as if the woman looked straight at her through the mirror and smiled.
Christi shook her head. The image faded away. “I must be more tired than I thought. Damn you Daniel for showing up at the wrong place at the wrong time and screwing up my life again.” But the last part wasn’t fair. If she didn’t have feelings for him, she could have gone on as if nothing had happened between them.
Masks. She’d kept too many of them in her makeup bag over the years. It was time to strip them off and find out who she really was and what she was really made of. That would mean taking risks. Would Rosane hate her when she found out the truth about her father? Was there any chance they could all breach those nine years and become a real family? Was marriage to Daniel, even on his terms, such a bad thing?
Her job as the public relations manager of a small cable television station in Fort Worth had trained her to make decisions on the spot and stick by them. But there she wore her public mask; she could keep an objective distance. Now her decision would alter her life permanently. And the last thing she wanted was to lose more than she already had.
As soon as Christi flipped back the blankets, the room’s frigid air assaulted her. She’d seen signs of central heat, but for some reason, the warm air didn’t seem to reach this part of the stone house. She rubbed her arms and reached into the suitcase on the bench at the foot of the bed for a sweater.
Rosane should be up by now.
Christi peeked through the door across the hall.
“Rosie?”
There was no answer. The bed was neatly made. There were no signs of her daughter anywhere.
“No!” The “what ifs” galloped through her mind like a car without brakes. What if Daniel was still here? What if he’d taken Rosane? What if he’d told her who he was before Christi had a chance to prepare her?
“Calm down. She’s perfectly all right. Daniel promised you a week.” But the image of Daniel’s determined face came flashing back into her mind. His demand wasn’t a whim, but a wish he fully intended to fulfill.
Feet bare and with only her blue flannel nightgown and red sweater on, she rushed down the stairs. “Rosane! Rosie, where are you?”
Christi jerked to a halt at the bottom of the stairs. A childish giggle warbled from the kitchen. Like a hound on a scent, she followed the sound. And when she reached the kitchen, she didn’t know what to make of what she saw.
Rosane, already dressed in a purple sweatshirt and jeans, heaped spoonfuls of Cap’n Crunch into her mouth and giggled. Her daughter who rarely smiled was giggling with glee. One of Christi’s hands instinctively reached for her stomach; the other covered her mouth.
The gray eyes behind those long lashes were like her own. The rich golden brown hair spilling over her shoulders was like her mother’s. The long artistic fingers curled around the spoon were Daniel’s legacy. Christi saw the past in her daughter. A past that wound down for generations. Generations she knew nothing about. Daniel was wrong, staying here was right.
Armand entertained Rosane by making a dollar coin appear and disappear from midair. Marguerite, roly-poly like the plastic people Rosane used to play with as a toddler, puttered at the counter. From all indications, the woman seemed to live in the kitchen. Christi hadn’t seen her anywhere else. Daniel, she noted with relief, was nowhere in sight.
The kitchen’s warmth contrasted keenly with the coldness of the rest of the house. The table of whitewashed pine and the six matching chairs with their red gingham cushions provided a homey atmosphere out of character with the stiff, formal furnishings in the rest of the house. In daylight, she could almost convince herself her conversation with Daniel was just a bad dream.
Rosane tucked a lock of hair behind her ear and squinted at Armand. “Hey! How come you’re squeaking?”
Armand lifted his arms and opened his eyes wide in innocence. The spreading warmth of his smile softened the harsh angles of his thin face. The pleasure, when Rosane squealed with delight as he pulled a kitten from his jacket, was genuine. Daniel was wrong. Armand had no evil motives. Rosane forgot about the forbidden sugared cereal and lavished love on the squirming gray kitten.
“Is it a boy or a girl?” Rosane asked, leaning back from a cheek cleaning by the kitten’s sandpaper tongue.
Armand lifted the kitten’s tail. “I believe it is a girl.”
“Can I keep her?”
“She is especially for you.”
Rosane let out a jubilant shriek and hugged the kitten to her chest.
“What are you going to name her?” Armand lifted his coffee cup and his sister filled it for him.
Rosane’s face scrunched in concentration. “Something French. How do you say smoke?”
“Fumée.”
“Few-may.” As the kitten’s rough tongue scraped her nose, Rosane giggled again. “It’s a good name. She looks like a puff of smoke, don’t you think? Fumée. I like that.”
A pang of envy knocked around Christi’s chest at the ease with which Armand had made Rosane feel at home and at his ability to wrest smiles out of her. Not the devil, she thought, a magician.
“Armand, pas à la table,” Marguerite chided. Her round glasses magnified her black eyes, making them the most prominent feature on her moon face. “The child has to eat.”
“Let her have some fun.”
“She is not yours to spoil,” she said in French.
“It is no worse than all the junk you are stuffing her with.”
Marguerite waved his retort away with a dimpled hand. “Non, it’s not the same.”
Armand leaned back in his chair and gazed at Rosane with adoration. “She’s perfect, n’est ce pas?”
“Diable, Armand! She is just a child,” Marguerite insisted, jamming a strand of gray hair back into its tight bun.
“She looks like Caro, don’t you think? Only she is much stronger. You can tell by the way she carries herself and the depth in those eyes.”
Marguerite harrumphed and slammed shut the refrigerator door. She filled a saucer with milk and set it next to Rosane’s cereal bowl. She wiped her hands on the pristine white apron cinched over her plain, out-of-date black dress. In broken English, she said, “Maybe Fumée have hunger.”
