Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (81 page)

But Grant didn’t look. Or didn’t see. He merely shot an eyebrow up and folded his arms as before. His chiseled chest again peeked through the jacket lapels. Those couldn’t possibly be his clothes. Such deep ridges of muscle. Completely distracting. Ignoring Grant Connel entirely would be smartest. He wanted proof? She’d give him plenty.

Withdrawing her hand from Beatrice’s, she closed her eyes and took deep, slow breaths. Her heart raced with worry. With anticipation. It began like this every time. She had to quiet the pounding fear. She breathed, she calmed, and she waited for Jacob to come to her. In her mind’s eye, she saw him. He came to her and crouched in front of her. His black hair fell in short waves, framing his face. His eyes reassured her—the same dark brown she remembered since childhood. The color of a redwood. He took her hand. Heat radiated through her fingertips, up her palm.

Jacob
. Like home, but not quite home. Only Jacob could bring her through the dark ether to meet what lay on the other side.

“
Why did you leave?” she asked him in her mind.

He didn’t leave. He’d waited. Prudence. Courtesy.

Ever the gentleman. Leigh smiled, thanking him with her heart despite the fact that he’d made her worry. Another breath. His thumb caressed the top of her hand. She whispered to him with her mind. “Bring me someone, Jacob. I want to go home. Please, help me. He wants proof. Bring me someone Grant will know.”

She waited a moment, imagining him closing his eyes, calling with his mind through the mists.

“
I have a bad feeling, Leigh," Jacob murmured. He could talk now. The bond was strong.

Leigh frowned a little. The faint scent of flowers met her nose. “What feeling?”

“
Fear, I guess. Like wasps in my gut.”

Her scowl deepened. It began this way. Small words. A chasm between them easing closed as Leigh struggled to speak in symbols. There was no other person, though. Just him and her. “Wasps? Are they in you? What are the wasps, Jacob?”

“
No. Not me. Angry wasps. Wasps angry.” He took her other hand and closed it into a fist that his covered.

Her mind searched for answers. She forced them back. She had to wait for the image to come to match the words, the emotions, the sensations and smells.

“
Something she swallowed.”

She. Swallowed. Wasps? Sharp pains needled her own stomach. She put one hand there, trying to quiet the pain, and yet decipher the meaning. “Who is she? Is she here with us? Who swallowed?”

Jacob opened his eyes and drew close. Tremors of fear rippled from him into her. Jacob was scared. He was scared for her.

“
Something I swallow?” Leigh said.

She sensed his frustration rise. No. Not her. A woman! Swallowed. Wasp-like. “Poison, Jacob?”

He squeezed her hand in his. More stings poked up and down her insides. Leigh gasped at the pain, more confused. Who had he brought through? Why couldn’t Leigh see someone? Then two hands came through Jacob’s shoulders. They pressed down onto her shoulders. Jacob fell back as though struck. Leigh blinked her eyes open, dizzy, breathless. “You hurt him!” She shot up. Grant Connel’s strong arms braced her to his chest. “Stop!”

“
Shh,” Grant whispered and held her tight. “You’re safe.”

Leigh’s struggled for space. Her eyes raced around the room. “Where is...?” She spotted Jacob in the corner shadows, his body fading fast. He was all right, drained, but out of harm’s way.

She was shaking. She realized Grant wasn’t letting her go, but standing was making her spin inside. “I need to sit down.”

Before she pushed away, he let go. Beatrice guided her to the hardwood pew.

“
Why did you touch me?” Leigh asked.

“
You were wobbling, clutching your stomach.” Beatrice’s words tumbled out. “Grant only meant to help. Are you well, Leigh? Do you need a physician?”

“
No. No physician.”

Grant’s expression darkened, but remained unreadable. His eyes fixed on hers. Her heart fluttered. The stormy color of his eyes seemed to suck time away.

“
I...I saw a woman’s stomach,” Leigh said, struggling with what Jacob tried to tell her. He let her go. Defeat hit her full force. She tried anyhow. “Wasps. Stinging.”

Beatrice looked at Grant, who shook his head.

Not enough.

Damn it all. Leigh hadn’t gotten enough “proof.” If she’d had more time for Jacob to explain, or fully pull the woman he’d been connected to through.

Grant touching her had torn her away from the symbols and sensations Jacob was showing her. “Poison, maybe?” she said, her desperation for home rising.

Jacob hadn’t said, though. Her mind refused to find a sensible conclusion that she could articulate. “Actual wasps?” She shook her head. That couldn’t be right. She’d never seen the actual woman.

Her insides felt scrubbed raw. She needed to eat, to rest.

“
Why don’t we try again another time?” Beatrice said. Her eyes shone with concern and something else. Determination? “Why don’t you get yourself something to eat? I’ll bet that would help, yes?”

The way she asked bore no room for argument. “I’m sorry. I thought I’d....” What? Helped? Tried? Found a good ghost? Leigh got to her feet. Beatrice was right. She should eat.

“
I’ll send a note to your room later.” Beatrice pressed money into Leigh’s hand. “Thank you for trying, Leigh.”

The woman’s kindness made Leigh miss her mother all the more sharply. Her heart stabbed with it. The telegraph would have arrived. Her mom would be expecting her. Leigh was a fool to have ever left. She didn’t know what to say. Not that words could have scaled the emotional mountain clogging her throat.

Jacob swept to her side. His concern comforted her very little. She’d failed. She could feel it. Whatever piece of information she’d been about to grasp, Grant Connel’s interference had fractured. This was his fault. Why had he touched her?

Maybe that was his plan the whole time. He didn’t want Leigh helping his sister. He doubted her ability and her intentions, clearly. Well, she wouldn’t let Grant Connel see how thoroughly his touch had rattled her. Not his touch. Of course not that. How could a person touching her possibly cause such a physical reaction, after all? His interruption. The connection broken. That was all.

Beatrice gave her a quick hug, ushering her to leave. Rather than meeting Grant’s eyes, she focused on his mouth—a bit bow-like—and bid them farewell. The cold air gave her hot cheeks sweet relief but misery threatened to press down on her. Jacob stayed at her side, soundless.

Yes. She should eat. But the idea repulsed her. Maybe later, she’d feel better. Once she had time to figure out how in the world she would find her way home now.

~~~

Chapter Three

Grant hung back a few feet, pausing at a corner and digging out his pocket watch. Pedestrians passed him without a glance. The low light of the gas lamps along the street helped disguise the marks on his face.

He wasn’t checking the time, though. He knew how late it was. He’d left the apartment to think. To try to clear his head of this fog, this feeling that the wolf inside him hadn’t gone fully dormant. The scenes from the church with Leigh kept circling his head, replaying. Bea had her own conclusions, and Grant was fighting against jumping to his own.

Grant popped open the watch, but searched the crowd.

Yes, the things Leigh said mere hours ago clearly defined his mother's tragic death. Wasps... poison. The air had knocked clean out of him hearing Leigh say those words. Leigh had related the vision—what else could he call it?—better than any actor on any stage. And yet, he needed more facts before he was fully convinced. Magic existed. His own brush with the supernatural never let him deny it. Hell, he could smell a fake nowadays.

Leigh was no fake. That truth unsettled him when, point in fact, it shouldn’t. He should be thrilled for Bea, for himself. What made no sense, though, what crawled under his skin, was that they found her here, a continent and ocean away, three years after Tristan’s kidnapping. After the vision, Bea had informed Grant that Leigh hailed from Redding, California, a matter of hours from the city Tristan disappeared in.

A low anxiousness hummed in his veins as he scanned the crowd and forced himself to wait for answers to his questions.

There! A few paces back, the man in the bowler hat. Grant could swear the man was following him. The feeling of awareness had prickled to life the minute he’d stepped out into the night, leaving Duchy—a man couldn’t call a dog Duchesse—safely ensconced inside.

The man paused, too. He tipped his hat, chatted with a woman, then meandered in a bit of a circle. Grant’s gut tightened. The unnamable certainty that had urged him toward the Sacré Couer this morning, despite having no trace of a memory of his scheduled rendezvous, reared up now.

For a solid hour now, the man was definitely following Grant.

Why? A robbery?

He’d managed to shower, shave, and don fresh clothes, but he never flaunted his wealth. The opposite. Grant liked to blend in. Staying at a hotel was out of the question. Leasing the apartment suited him well, especially with nights like the last such a high risk.

The man loitered at the corner, glanced Grant’s way, and veered left.

Track him,
something in him demanded.

His mind bucked, but Grant conceded and obeyed the instinct. Faint memories of Lijuan’s warnings crept into his thoughts as he kept to a stroll and turned the trailing tables on Bowler Hat. Lijaun had saved him, and had warned Grant about his wolf-soul one day taking life.

Her broken English had always been a barrier. But she showed him, pantomiming with her hands and face, and acting out what she couldn’t translate. Drawing things like the symbol, the wolf. Her red shoes. Always pointing at her red shoes. Grant tried to relax his mind and let the memory sharpen. She’d given him the wolf’s soul to save his life.

More than his life.

Tristan’s. If not for Grant, Tristan would be home, growing up in a normal life. Stupid mistakes. He never should have brought Tristan to Chinatown that day. Arrogance on his part. Or fear. The tong gang he owed would forgive a tardy payment if he had a kid with him. They hadn’t.

There was more to it, though he couldn’t recall what. A reason for the kidnapping beyond a simple gambling debt. Either the fog of last night’s blackout persisted or time had blurred his memory. Even now, he felt a thickness in his thoughts as though the change wasn’t over. Or was coming on. He couldn’t let the wolf take over again.

Grant shook himself back to the present. Within a few strides, he spotted Bowler in the crowd, but stayed well enough behind that each time Bowler glanced back, enough pedestrians milled the narrow street to offer Grant cover. A woman’s perfume cloyed the air.

Where was this man going? Why had he given up following Grant? Why trail him to begin with? Grant should be barring himself in his room. It was getting dark fast. Being out this late risked too much. If he changed here, in public, he’d certainly be hunted down and killed.

Whatever the man had been after, he’d clearly given up. If he’d been after anything at all. Grant’s mind could be playing tricks on him. The day’s events combined with the change. How much could he trust was real, versus manufactured, in his mind?

Today’s events.

Leigh.

He didn’t want to think about Leigh, clutching her stomach, fear coming off her in waves that he could practically smell.

Wasps. His mother.

No. Grant wouldn’t think about it.

He and Beatrice agreed to talk tomorrow to get their bearings. Beatrice had been thrown by Leigh’s words more than Grant himself. The wear of the day bore down on him. He should go back to his apartment and bar himself in. Duchy. There was the dog to think about now. What if he changed, and hurt Duchy? Maybe he could locate a chain—.

No. Track him.

This man had something Grant wanted...needed. Logically, he was flirting with a good brawl. The kind he could have found any night of the week deep in the heart of Chinatown years ago. Years before Tristan. He recoiled at thought of such senseless violence. Too many wounds stemmed from his reckless youth.

Bowler veered left around the corner.

Grant realized they’d come full circle, back to his apartment where he’d first sensed the man’s eyes watching. Within a few strides, he could be locked into his apartment, Duchy in his lap, the two of them hatching a plan to imprison him for the night.

The huge red windmill of Moulin Rouge towered on the horizon, lights strung on each blade of the mill. Was Bowler heading there? Nothing about the man’s demeanor or appearance helped Grant deduce what inspired the chase to begin with. He was moderately dressed and walked with his hands in his pockets and an easy gait.

Sure, Bowler glanced about a lot.

Was that so odd?

He was skittish. He’d either followed Grant for a good hour, and now avoided him for half that, or Grant’s gut was leading him astray. The very instinct he questioned surged up his throat. He had to stop this man.