All new stainless steel appliances had been installed in the kitchen. Her parquet floors had been sanded and gleamed with fresh polish. Even the fireplace’s flues finally opened, though they never had before.
Her apartment looked better than it had at any time when she had ever lived there. It looked better than the day she and David had moved in.
Who had done all this?
Not Jon. She knew that. He had been at Leisha and Adam’s all week, working on the baby’s room, trying to get it done before Leisha and the baby came home from the hospital.
Not Alaric, obviously. How could he have done this while lying in bed with one leg in traction?
And Abraham Holtzman and Father Bernard and the others were missing the first layer of skin off their faces and hands.
Besides which, where would they have gotten the money?
There was only one other explanation.
And even as Meena was thinking to herself that it was impossible-impossible, because he was dead, he had to be dead (except for the fact that she could swear she felt someone’s gaze on her every night through the rectory kitchen window as she did the dishes); she had almost convinced herself she wanted him to be dead-she turned around, and there he was, coming in from the rain through the balcony door.
Chapter Sixty-two
8:30 P.M., Friday, April 23
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B
New York, New York
Hello, Meena,” he said.
Drops of rain clung damply to his short dark hair.
She caught her breath, her heart giving a sudden painful thump. She was surprised her heart even remembered how to beat, since seeing him there, just walking into her bedroom like that, was such a shock, she would have thought it would have gone into cardiac arrest.
He looked incredible, of course, just like always, even casually dressed in a charcoal-gray cashmere sweater and black trousers. Tall, broad-shouldered, taking up so much space in that tiny room where they’d once made such riotous, crazy love, trying to be quiet so they wouldn’t arouse the suspicions of her brother and Alaric, right there in the next room…
He looked so dark and so handsome and so sure of himself.
He gave off no indication at all that, less than a week ago, he’d been…
…well, what he’d been.
Or done what he’d done.
“I’ve been waiting for you,” he said, those dark brown eyes as melancholic as ever. Still, sad as those eyes might have looked, Meena didn’t miss the way his gaze raked her, making her feel, as he always did, that he knew exactly what she looked like beneath the dress she was wearing. Which, of course, he did. “I was hoping you’d come back. I know you haven’t wanted to see me. But I hope now we can talk-”
Abruptly, Meena’s knees buckled. Just gave out beneath her. She would have collapsed to the floor-there was no furniture left in the apartment for her to grab to keep herself from smacking into the hardwood that came swooping toward her so fast-if he hadn’t caught her in his strong arms, then sunk to the floor with her, cradling her body against him.
“I’m sorry, Meena,” he whispered into her hair. There was a world of remorse, of pain, of hurt in his rich, low voice. “I’m so, so sorry. You have to know that I-”
“You have no right,” she said. She was surprised her lips and tongue worked. She felt numb all over. That’s why her legs had stopped working. But apparently, though it was weak, she still had a voice. “After what you did-”
“I know,” he said. He was rocking her, his forehead pressed to hers. “I know.”
“You can’t just come in here,” Meena said. Her voice had begun to sound stronger. “And clean up my apartment like that’s going to make everything better. Because it isn’t. Lucien, people died.”
“I know,” he said. He looked-and sounded-as if he were carrying around the regret of a thousand vampires from a thousand years, not just a single five-hundred-year-old one. “More people than you even know, Meena. My brother was evil. He always was. I should have killed him long ago. This was all my fault. All of it. He’s gone now, though. He’ll never murder anyone again.”
“People got hurt,” she said, shaking her head. He had to understand that it wasn’t enough that Dimitri was gone. If he was really gone…
“I know,” he said, and lifted her wrist in its air cast and kissed it. “And I want to spend eternity making it up to you.”
“It wasn’t just me,” Meena said, the tears in her eyes making it hard for her to see. “They kidnapped my best friend. Who was pregnant. They bit a chunk out of her husband’s neck as he was trying to stop them. And she went into early labor because of what happened. She could have lost the baby. She almost did.”
Lucien stroked her. “How can we make it up to them?” he asked. “A college savings account for the baby, perhaps? I’ll open one for them and move a million dollars into it tomorrow.”
“Lucien!” Meena stared up at him disbelievingly through her tears. “You can’t just go around paying people off to make up for your mistakes. You burned down a church!”
“I know, Meena,” he said. He reached up to capture some of her tears with a thumb. “But what do you want me to do? How do you expect me to make amends? I’ve already made an anonymous donation to the church. A sizeable one that should take care of any reparations not covered by their fire insurance-”
Meena sucked in her breath. “No. That doesn’t make it right. You turned into a-”
He laid a finger over her lips to silence her before she could get the word dragon out. “There were mitigating circumstances,” he said. “Your brother shot me. With a stake. In the back.”
She winced. “I know,” she said. He’d lowered the finger. “And you’ll never know how sorry I am about that. But, Lucien-”
“Whatever else may have happened, Meena-whatever else I may have done wrong, and I’m not denying that I did many, many things wrong that night-please allow me to point out that, despite what you insisted I would do, I killed neither your brother nor that Palatine guard you’re so fond of…despite meticulous efforts on their behalf to murder me. They’re still both very much alive today.”
Meena sucked in her breath. “Because of me,” she said. “I saved them. I put a tourniquet on one and I sent the other to the maternity ward with my best friend. But, Lucien, I can’t keep on doing that. I won’t always be there. I can’t keep watching the people I love almost get killed because of you. Oh, wait, excuse me. Almost get incinerated-”
“That’s why,” he said, leaning his head down to place his lips where, a minute before, his finger had been, “I suggested that we go away. Thailand. Remember?”
Meena stared up at him, her face wet, her mouth still tingling from the kiss.
She definitely didn’t feel numb anymore. Not anywhere. The tears and his lips had taken care of that problem.
“I can’t go to Thailand with you, Lucien,” she said, starting to shake her head. How could he not understand?
“Of course you can,” he said. “Why not?”
His hand was already traveling up her thigh, already slipping beneath the short skirt of her new-used-black dress.
“A…a million reasons,” she said.
“I know you’re frightened, Meena,” he said in his deep voice. His dark-eyed gaze seemed to have a hypnotic pull on hers…the same kind of pull his fingers seemed to have on her.
She was having a hard time remembering how angry she was with him when he was touching her the way he was. How could she ever have been frightened of him? Of those lips, which were kissing her, right now, on her neck?
“And you’re right to be,” he went on, in his deep, low voice. “There are unspeakable horrors in the world, the likes of which you can’t even begin to imagine. What happened to you that night-that day-was inexcusable. Those things-those creatures-should never have touched you. It’s my fault you were ever put in a position where they were able to. And you’re absolutely correct: none of what happened to you can ever be righted with a check, no matter how sizable.”