"Jeff! Wait up!"
He was already twenty yards ahead, running effortlessly, like the machine he was. He didn't look back.
The mud swallowed her slippers. She forged ahead barefoot, fighting the suction. How stupid. And what a mess. The hem of her bathrobe was dragging in it, weighing her down. Why hadn't she taken time to change into shorts?
"Jeff," she called again. The next step sank her up to her knees, and the pull of the mud became even stronger. "Jeff!" This time her voice was edged with panic. "Help me!"
He heard her, and turned around. In a few seconds he'd run up to the edge of the mire, and now looked down at her, mystified. "What in the hell are you doing in there?"
"I don't know." Up to her waist now, Helena raised her arms to keep them clean. "I just got caught. Give me a hand."
Jeff looked at the ring of mud surrounding her, and then pointed to his feet. "These are three-hundred-dollar shoes."
She gaped at him. Hatred, pure and strong, filled her to the brim. She'd never been so angry in her life. She loathed him. If she could grab his ankle, she'd drown him and his shoes in this muddy hole.
"You rat bastard."
Jeff drew back, surprised at her language. She never cursed around him, knowing he liked women to be ladies. "You fucker. You arrogant prick. You goddamn liar. You cheating fuckhead! I know! I know everything!"
He laughed. She was still sinking.
Alex was pacing the boundaries of her dream, trying to find a way in. She was having one of those nightmares where you're trapped, and need someone else to wake you up, but he didn't have time to get to her physically.
"Helena! It's a dream." He gathered his strength and yelled again, imagining the wall between them as glass that could be broken. "Helena!"
She heard. She looked around for him, her brow furrowed. In a small voice she said, "Alex?"
Much to Alex's satisfaction, Jeff evaporated.
"Wake up."
"Alex! Alex!" The mud came up to her armpits. Her eyes were terrified. She held out one hand to him.
He reached for her hand and crossed into her dream. Chest deep in mud, he pulled her into his arms. She wrapped herself around him like a child.
"You can make this all go away. Just wish it away, Helena."
"You'll stay?"
He stroked her hair with his mud crusted hand. "I'd never leave you."
She buried her face in his neck and vanished, leaving him kneeling on the hotel carpet.
Chapter 10
Alex arrived a half hour after dark with a bottle of wine in one hand and yet another bag of groceries in the other. He gave her a polite kiss on the cheek and headed straight to the kitchen. God help her, he looked good. His skin was white again and his super short hair hugged his skull like a cap. It almost looked like it was supposed to be that way. Sure he was still a little thin and worn, but somehow that made him more appealing.
She needed some fresh air.
"Do you mind if I take a run while you cook?" She'd had a weird dream about Jeff and running the night before and had been dying to run all day to exorcise the memory. Or was that exercise?
He smiled with some secret amusement. "That's a great idea. I don't know if I can talk and cook at the same time anyway."
The house smelled incredible when she came back an hour later. Alex seemed harried but happy. The kitchen was full of steam and rattling pots. Saying he needed more time, he handed her a glass of wine and shooed her away.
The wine gave her a quick buzz, maybe because she'd been running, maybe because she'd not eaten for a while. She took a long, hot shower and tried to figure out what to wear when a vampire cooks you dinner. The obvious answer was a turtleneck. Har de har har.
Sweats? Too casual. Nice blouse and pants? Too fussy. In the end she put on the sweater dress she'd been wearing their first night together. It was a wrap style, comfortable but kind of classy, the moss green understated.
The run, the shower and the wine combined to give her a high flush. One that wasn't going to go away anytime soon. She combed out her hair but didn't bother blow-drying it. She didn't bother with jewelry or shoes or make-up either. No amount of armor was going to help her. They didn't need another confusing encounter. They needed to have an adult conversation. He needed to go back to New York.
Her pulse was beating hard. It wasn't the sort of thing she would have noticed before meeting Alex, but now she put her hand to the base of her throat and felt the thin skin jumping under her fingers. Alex would see it. She was sure of it. But she couldn't hide upstairs all night. She tiptoed down the stairs, but he must have heard her, because he popped out of the kitchen wiping his hands on her "Kiss the Cook" apron.
"Can I get you a re…" His sentence trailed off as he looked her up and down. Helena stopped walking. He studied her bare calves, her hips, her breasts as if he'd never seen such things before. Her nipples hardened while his glance raked over her chest. Ah jeez. As much as she wanted to cross her arms over her chest, she couldn't be that lame. She straightened her back instead. He took a deep breath and came forward, hand out. "A refill?"
In answer she shot her arm straight out, glass in hand. That kept them two whole arm lengths apart. And that was a good thing. He took the glass from her, his fingers brushing over hers. She jerked her hand away, but he didn't seem to notice because his attention had fastened on her throat. Her damp, flushed throat. Her beating pulse.
Better than on the tits.
His eyes darkened and went glassy.
No, worse than the tits. Much worse.
But it only lasted a second or two before he gave her his patented charming smile and returned to the kitchen to get the wine.
"We're eating in the dining room." He gestured that she should go in.
She never set foot in the dining room. When her parents were alive they had special dinners in there, otherwise the room was mostly shut up. Since she'd taken over their house she had no use for it at all.
But Alex had found the table cloth and lit the candles. He'd laid down two place settings of her mother's china and cut juniper boughs for the table.
"It's lovely," she said as he offered her a chair.
He vanished in an odd blur. She realized he was moving like Mikhail. Not pretending to be human. What surprised her about it was that it didn't bother her at all. He returned with two tiny little demitasse cups and set them in the center of their plates. Helena bent over hers and took a sniff of the clear, pale liquid inside. It smelled like chicken broth, but chicken broth by way of exotic places.
"It's an amuse bouche," he said.
"A what?"
"Something to wake up your palette."
"Not a soup course for a hamster?"
"Take a sip."
She raised the cup to her lips, and he did the same, his eyes sparkling expectantly.
This better be good, or I'm going to have to fake it and I'm bad at—holy cow! The soup, or whatever it was, washed over her tongue and exploded her senses. Savory chicken goodness, cumin, hot pepper, lemon, basil maybe, more that she couldn't identify, all harmonizing perfectly.
Alex smiled around his cup. He already knew she liked it. How could she not?
"Can I trade up to the adult-size bowl?"
The answer was no. It turned out the rest of the amuse bouche was for him. She got her good friend the fish back, poached and garnished with parsley and mandarin peels. And new potatoes roasted with garlic and swimming in butter. Garlic! Did he do that on purpose? And a salad of endive and blue cheese. All prepared as beautifully as the soup. She'd forgotten that eating could be fun.
And while she'd expected it would be weird to be shoveling down food in front of him while all he did was sip soup, it wasn't. As they ate, and drank one bottle of wine, and then another, they talked. And talked. And talked. The crackling sexual tension that had afflicted them when she first came downstairs receded, their conversation became effortless. Ridiculously comfortable, in fact. Like they'd know each other for years.