Annette Blair (20 page)

“Kira went where?” he asked when everything was served, not sure he’d heard correctly the first time.

“Home to her family, dear,” Gram said. “They only live in Boston. I could give you her cell phone number, if you need to get in touch with her. Or her address, if you’d like to go and—”

“Of course not,” Jason said, trying not to snap. Something had spooked Kira enough to send her running home to the safety of her parents’ house.

Granted, she had plenty to be spooked about: infatuated birds; his amusement over same, which made him smile even now; and him making her come all afternoon, which made him hard even now.

Jason had never witnessed such sensuality in his partner before, and, frankly, the way his . . . captivation escalated in those few short hours scared the hell out of him. He moved a meatball around in his plate, while his body calmed enough for him to rise, with dignity, and go upstairs.

“Yes,” he said, looking at his grandmother. “Give me Kira’s number. I’ll program it into my cell phone, in case.”

Later that night, after hours of talking himself out of calling her, he lay in his bed, in the dark, and hit speed dial.

Kira answered on the first ring.

“What are you doing?” Jason asked.

“Trying to sleep,” she snapped.

“It’s only eleven.”

“What do you want?”

“I wondered if you made up with your sister.”

“She’s a witch.”

“Like you?”

“No. I stand corrected. She starts with the letter
B
.”

Jason smiled. “Did you have another fight?”

“No. She’s not here, or I wouldn’t have come home.”

“I’m calling from my rabbit hole,” he said. “Are you in yours?”

“My very first,” Kira said.

“Describe it.”

“I’m safe in an enchanted glade,” Kira said, voice soft, “where pastel butterflies sleep on lush green leaves, bathe in buttercups, and sip from dewdrops. Yellow organdy curtains form a canopy for my bed and my window-seat.”

“Anything hanging on the walls?”

“A copper moon. Crystal stars.”

“No quilts, nothing red?”

“No, this is the ultimate rabbit hole; it’s like climbing back into the womb.”

“And you needed that tonight?”

“Why did you say you called?”

“Do you want me to describe my bachelor rabbit hole?”

“Let me guess,” she said, “chrome and glass?”

“Wrong. Aged honey-gold wood and an ancient brass bed four feet off the floor.”

“I’m impressed, but I’m betting you have a brown or tan bedspread.”

“Afraid you’ve got me there,” Jason said running a hand over her quilt—the window into her soul—with which he’d replaced his tan bedspread, though he wasn’t ready to confess as much, especially to her.

“Why did you really call?” Kira asked.

To be, or not to be . . . honest? But Jason decided to blow the bankroll on truth. “I’m hot.”

“I told you, I didn’t mean that, I meant—”

“Not that. I mean I’m laying in my bed thinking about you coming like a rocket in my arms today, and I’m hard-as-a-rock hot and . . . wishing you were here to make
me
come.”

An indrawn breath, then silence. Jason waited for the inevitable click and dial tone, but then he thought he heard her shift in her bed. “Kira? Are you still there?”

“You should have let me take Harvey out this afternoon.”

“I wanted to be there for you. If Harvey got involved, if I got carried away, I didn’t want to make a mockery out of . . . what might have taken place, so I . . . didn’t take the chance. I wanted better for us.”

“I can’t decide if that was thoughtful,” Kira said, “or stupid.”

“In hindsight, me, either.”

“Hindsight; I hate that shit.”

“Me, too. Why did you run? Wait, let me rephrase that,” Jason said. “I’m sorry if I did anything to make you r—”

“I’m hot, too.”

Jason closed his eyes, half in relief, half in ecstasy. “Yeah? Want to tell me about it?”

“My mechanical device doesn’t work as well as it used to,” she confessed.

“You tried? Just now? Tonight?”

“Yeah.”

“Today wasn’t enough?” Jason wiggled out of his jockeys to give Harvey room to grow.

“I tried to tell myself that what you did wasn’t such a big deal. That I could, you know, any time I wanted.”

“And you failed?”

“Yeah.”

Jason felt like beating his chest, or beating his saluting soldier, at any rate. “I think maybe you came about thirty-three times this afternoon. Could be that you reached your limit.”

Kira chuckled, her voice wobbly, her laugh throaty, as if he’d more than entertained her, as if he’d made her hotter.

“I wish I was there,” Jason said. “Or you were here.”

“Yeah, me, too.”

“Because you want me to make you come again?” he asked.

“I . . . yeah.”

“You’re greedy, Fitz. You’d have to give me a turn, you know. The big guy’s crying and moaning here, looking for a warm place to go, and he’s really disappointed you’re not here.”

“That’s your fault. You wouldn’t let me take him out to play when I wanted to.”

“More fool me. I wish you hadn’t gone home.”

“I think it’s best that I did. I’m not ready for any kind of . . . anything right now, and if I had stayed—”

Jason knuckled his erection. “I know what you mean. I’m not ready for . . . anything like that, either. We both gave that up, remember?”

“Yeah, I do. How long since you actually got laid?” she asked, a note of amusement in her voice.

The lighthearted question made him smile. “Since my accident nearly a year ago.”

“Yeesh, it’s a wonder you haven’t exploded.”

“I have actually, a couple of times. What about you?”

“Since the Penis screwed me over. Couple months now.”

“So now you’re having a fling with a mechanical device?”

“Hey, my devices never let me down, and they don’t cheat on me, either.”

“I hear you. Er, did you say devices, plural? You have more than one?”

“I have . . . an assortment,” Kira said.

Harvey did a little happy dance. “You are incredible,” Jason said, grinning.

“What? That’s not allowed? Guys like to have a lot of women.”

“Kira, sweetheart, I’m grinning here. I’m proud of you for taking your sex life into your own hands . . . so to speak.”

“Are you making fun of me?”

“No, damn it, you’re making me hot. I’m getting hard just thinking about you using those things. Geez. Calm down and enjoy a little vocal stimulation, will you? Talk about uptight.”

She was quiet for a minute, and Jason thought he’d lost her, and he was sorry. That was when he realized that he’d be happy, if she were happy. Serious stuff.

“So . . . say something stimulating,” she finally said.

What he wanted to say scared the crap out of him. “Harvey is really hard. How fast can you get home?”

“Tell you what,” she said.

“What?” Jason asked, the big guy “up” for anything.

“Why don’t I turn on one of my devices and tell you how it feels to me, while you take Harvey in hand and tell me how that feels to you?”

Jason’s hips came off the bed with her words. “You nearly finished him off with the suggestion,” he said.

ON
Monday Jason anticipated an awkward workday, perhaps worse than Friday after the hidden staircase. Not only had they talked sex on the phone Friday night, she’d called him Saturday night for more, and he’d called her Sunday night.

Funny how you could say things on the phone that you weren’t ready to say in person.

Jason ran from the Hummer, through the biting rain toward Castleton Court, glad Kira’s car wasn’t in the lot yet, wondering exactly what he’d say to her when she arrived.

He’d no sooner hung his raincoat on the rack than he heard her key in her lock and went through the adjoining door to wait in her office for her.

“Shiver my liver,” Kira said, coming in and leaning her
wet umbrella against the wall in the corner. “I hope it’s not like this on the night of the ghost tour, or we won’t be able to visit the cemetery.”

“Sure we can,” Jason said, charmed and disarmed by the sight of her in her bright new Wellies, “we can hand out black umbrellas. It’ll add to the graveyard ambience.”

“Oh, I almost forgot. Look,” she said, showing him her red-and-yellow argyle umbrella, opening and closing it with several soft, effective clicks. “I found one to match.”

“Damned if you didn’t,” Jason said, wishing he could take her into his arms, a reckless inclination.

After her argyle raingear was stowed, she still wore unrelieved black, her simple dress fine and figure hugging, but Jason was still turned on, so for the sake of self-preservation, and to give Kira space to bloom, he went to his own office.

She had worn the argyle boots he gave her. This was big. They’d come to some kind of crossroad, made some kind of peace, and perhaps Kira herself had taken a first tentative step out of hiding.

As the two of them had become emotionally and physically intimate, at least in their rabbit holes, Jason thought, their minds and libidos were getting closer in the real world, which meant they could very well be rushing headlong toward either a merger, or an explosion.

Time to tread wary.

On and off the job, he realized, they’d been pushing each other’s buttons, literally and figuratively, testing boundaries, goading each other into outrageous behavior and daring wordplay, speaking and touching just to raise the heat between them.

He had never felt so exhilarated.

THE
night of the Rainbow’s Edge Ghost and Graveyard Tour, Jason arrived just after dark and saw the house decorated for the first time. Kira had aced it.

Tiny white lights outlined Gothic peaks and gables. Grisly bright jack-o’-lanterns hung from the trees nearest the house. The spotlighted front entrance, black enameled double doors, with matching bittersweet wreaths, stood bright and welcoming.

Outside, behind the house, and off to the side, distant spotlights made the family cemetery, its bright white stones bathed in shadow, look stark and eerie, setting the perfect stage for the event.

It was All Hallows’ Eve, Kira had reminded him on the phone, the night spirits roamed free. Oddly enough, tonight, at this moment, he believed her.

Kira met him at the door, looking like magic herself. “The house looks great,” Jason said, kissing her cheek.

“You did a wonderful job.” “I’m glad you like it,” she said. “I have a surprise.”

Jason tilted his head. “Do I have to close my eyes,” he whispered. “Does it involve a rabbit hole?”

“A surprise that will excite our guests,” Kira said. “Not us.”

“Bummer,” Jason said. “Okay, shoot. What’s the surprise?”

“Milford Marble and Granite raised Addie’s gravestone this afternoon. I had the gardeners stake a tarp over it, and tonight during the tour, we’ll have an official unveiling. I have news crews coming.”

Jason high-fived her. “Have you seen it? Is it really Addie’s? What does it say?”

“Jim, the owner, confirmed that the gravestone was Addie’s when he called to say it had been raised. After that, I had barely enough time to alert the media and go home to change, so, no, I haven’t seen it yet.”

“You’re right. After all these years, seeing Addie’s stone for the first time will excite our guests,” Jason said. “And raise the spook factor big time.”

An hour later, as the noted host, Jason welcomed their guests. Beside him, in a floor-length black strapless gown and cape, a gold-starred black net scarf over her fiery hair, Kira added to the mystical aura of the evening. Her black lace Victorian gloves left her fingers bare, making them seem forbidden to the touch.

Jason found that he needed to touch them often.

Though the evening had barely begun, more than a hundred people, at a thousand dollars a clip, made it an instant success. Waiters in the formal livery once worn by the original staff of Rainbow’s Edge served cocktails and hot canapés.

Inside the house lit jack-o’-lanterns sat high and low, on mantels, bookcases, and tables, while corners held huge vases brimming with Chinese lanterns and bittersweet.

To allow their guests to view the theatrical of the fake haunting, they were forced to use the stairway that opened into the drawing room, the largest room. Therefore, by
virtue of its location, the hidden stairway remained hidden.

In the guise of little Davie Winthrop III, Travis aced the portrayal of the child closed in the hidden stairwell for hours, who claimed to have been captured by a ghost.

Zane made a scary-cute ghost, almost frightening, Jason thought, with his filmy white gauze layering, as he moaned and limped in his brother’s shadowed wake, haunting him by stalking him.

At the end of the play, everyone turned toward a bejeweled matriarch jabbing the floor with her cane. Like a painted china doll, with her rice-paper face and circles of blush on each cheek, Gram’s old friend Doris Putnam continued the jarring noise until she captured every eye. “That’s not the whole story,” she cackled. “I was there, six years old and ears wide open.”

Uh-oh,
Jason thought.
This can’t be good
.