She wasn’t ready to ask Matthias more about his wife yet. That was one area she didn’t want to probe. It was his private pain and memories, and the woman was well over five hundred years dead, so it wasn’t like she felt jealous about it.
She caught Matthias’ smile. Dammit, she’d been broadcasting her thoughts again. She needed to get a handle on that.
“Thank you, darling.” He kissed her hand, squeezing it. “I’m finished. Whenever you’re ready.”
“Can I have a few more minutes?”
He nodded. “Take anything you want, sweetheart. I’m sure he would have approved.” He left her alone and she put the books on the bed, looking for more. She wanted to know Rafe, not through Matthias’ thoughts, but to discover him on her own. She’d only spent a few hours with him.
She tried not to think about what she did to him before he died, because even though she knew he enjoyed it, her guilt and pain still felt too fresh and sharp. But she’d loved him and he shouldn’t just fade into memory. Not that he could, the way she felt.
Walking to his closet, she spied a denim jacket hanging over the door. She took it and pressed it to her face, inhaling deeply—
There he was, in full color, standing before her on the boardwalk at Midway Geyser Basin when they first met, kissing near Old Faithful, their dinner, and later that night when she went to him…
Her tears flowed. She didn’t try to hold them back. She clutched Rafe’s jacket and rocked herself, the guilt returning. This was her fault. If she hadn’t distracted him, if her powers hadn’t taken her over and made her act like a spoiled brat, he wouldn’t have fallen under Caroline’s control and been murdered. It didn’t matter what Matthias said. She was to blame. Negligent homicide, if nothing else. Call it what she would, Rafe would still be alive if it wasn’t for what she did.
A shirt lay on the closet floor, and she picked it up. It also held his scent. She pictured his playful, sad eyes, heard his voice. She imagined the ring on her right hand grew warmer, and she frantically stroked it with her thumb. Now she knew its secret. It was a comfort, a distraction, a way to take the edge off of the emotional tension.
She found several more books, a box of old journals, and some jewelry. In his bathroom she rummaged through his medicine cabinet, found the type of deodorant he used, the shampoo, even his shaving cream. Closing her eyes, she imagined their embrace, their boardwalk kiss, and Rafe was there in her mind as he’d been in life.
I’m sorry, she thought. I’m so sorry, Rafe.
“It’s okay.”
Her eyes darted to the bedroom door. She heard Matthias in the kitchen, well over twenty feet away. Plus she had a mental barrier keeping him out of her mind for now.
The phantom voice?
It didn’t return.
When Taz returned to the living room, she noticed Matthias had taken all the pictures from the shelf and stacked them and some photo albums on the table.
“What about the rest?”
“Albert will take care of it. Things that don’t need to be kept, he’ll make sure they go to a charity. He’ll ship personal items home to Florida so I can sort them.”
“There wasn’t anything we could have done for Rafe?”
“I’m sorry, Taz. He’d been…gone for too long. I barely managed to save you, and I was right there when you were shot.”
She still held Rafe’s jacket and shirt like security blankets. “I just keep thinking if we’d been able to get to him—”
“Taz,” Matthias said, his tone firm but not unkind, “quit torturing yourself. We aren’t miracle workers. There are parents with children who need blood transfusions, and they don’t have the right blood type. Forget the movies, forget the books and TV shows. This is real life. We aren’t gods. We may be vampires, but we aren’t superbeings. We hurt, we bleed, we die, just like everyone else.” She noticed how he walked on eggshells around her when discussing the events at Yellowstone.
“No, not just like everyone else,” she whispered.
“Mostly like everyone else. We age, we get old. Look at people who aren’t like us. Two people can be the same age and one looks twenty years younger than the other based on genetics and how they lived their life. There’s nothing supernatural about that. Albert and Tim are both younger than I am, and they look older than me, looked older than Rafe.”
“What’s this door?”
“Garage. That reminds me, I’ll have to take care of that, too.” She opened the door, and there was Rafe’s Mustang. She walked around it, a red and black Mustang Shelby GT, only a few months old. They’d talked about it at dinner in Yellowstone.
Of course he had all the options.
How appropriate. Of all cars, a Mustang.
She looked around the garage and noticed the toolboxes, large Snap-on professional setups. He was a motor head.
It reminded her of when she was a little girl, the few times her father was home, spending time with him out in the garage. He’d had lots of tools, and the scent of his garage had been similar. Motor oil, solvents, transmission fluid, rubber.
She tenderly laid the jacket and shirt on the passenger seat and popped the hood, smiling as she looked. He’d modified the supercharged 5.4 V8 engine with a high-performance package that added even more horses to the already powerful pony. She was sure he’d most likely modified the rear end and trany, too. Money wouldn’t be an object, neither would voiding his factory warranty. Rafe could well afford to fix whatever he broke. It had a six-speed manual transmission, and she itched to put it through its paces.
Something else she had in common with Rafe. Matthias didn’t care to know how his cars ran fast or well, just that they did. Rafe was obviously a hands-on guy—in more ways than one. Robertson wasn’t into cars, but he’d taken the time to learn enough from her father that he could fill in while Eric was on the race circuit, teaching Taz how to change her own oil and tires. Some of her best memories were of spending time in her father’s garage either watching or helping one or both men work on the stable of classic cars.
Walking to the toolboxes, Taz looked through them, and noticed the empty packages and old parts on the workbench. Rafe had made several of the modifications himself. She studied the car. She was an old-school girl, preferred the original Mustangs to the new generation, but it was a sweet ride.
“Go ahead, Taz. Take it. I want you to have it, baby girl.”
For once, she welcomed the disembodied voice.
“I’ll drive it back.”
“What?” Matthias turned and realized she was already in the garage. He appeared in the doorway.
“I said, I’ll drive it back. I want it. Where’s his keys?”
“Taz, I don’t know if that’s—”
“Matthias.” Her tone was don’t-fuck-with-me firm. “Where are his keys?”
It was easier to give in. “I’ll get them. Let’s load these other things in the trunk.”
Matthias handed her the key ring, the one Rafe had in Yellowstone. She sat behind the wheel and adjusted the seat and mirrors. His MP3 player was hooked to the stereo. Closing her eyes she almost heard Rafe’s laughter in her mind. She conjured his scent, but for once she didn’t feel like tears.
Taz felt like driving.
She caressed the steering wheel. Even though she’d never been in this car before, it felt like she’d spent hours driving it. Matthias popped the garage door, and she spied Rafe’s sunglasses on the dash. With trembling hands she slipped them on. Then she took a deep breath and closed her eyes. The car fired off immediately, throbbing around her. As if slipping into a dream, she slung her left arm over the wheel and smoothly shifted to reverse without having to look at the shift pattern. She backed out of the garage and impatiently waited for Matthias to lock the condo and get in the Hummer. The road lay before them, and Taz knew exactly how much pressure she needed on the modified clutch, the exact timing for each shift, as if the car was an extension of her.