What She Doesn't Know (16 page)

She opened her eyes and saw Christopher’s face.

“Oh, geez!” She jerked upright and looked toward the bathroom, finding evanescent steam creeping from beneath the door. The water made a slurping sound as it drained. The light flicked off. She sat and listened to the faint noises in his room and then his footsteps in the hall. She stiffened in anticipation of his knock on her door and chided herself as his footfalls led down the stairs.

“Get a grip,” she muttered, ignoring the rumble in her tummy. Damn. She hated being human.

She shoved herself off the bed and walked to the dresser, tugged a brush through her hair, and stared at her reflection. She wished she were prettier. She was okay, midland on that stupid scale of one to ten. Nice skin. Thick hair. She aligned the brush next to her bottle of moisturizer and walked out.

The parlor was dim and deserted as she came down the stairs, the dying sunlight barely penetrating the sheer curtains. The smell of shrimp and spices filled the house, just as it had the day before.

His voice floated from the kitchen, as warm and spicy as whatever he was making. “I appreciate your checking on my place … No, I doubt anyone would think of breaking in; it looks like a renovation project. Do me a favor, though, and pick up a bag of cat food and fill the container. Make sure the water dishes on the front porch are full. Have you seen them? … Yeah?” He chuckled, and the sound tickled right to the bottom of her stomach.
 

She caught herself smiling and rolled her eyes. She was once again eavesdropping on him. Instead of lingering this time, she walked into the kitchen. The room was warm, both in temperature and light. He balanced a phone between his ear and shoulder, stirring something in a Dutch oven and looking way too good in a pair of black jeans and deep red shirt.

“All five of them still there?” Another chuckle as the person on the other end perhaps related a funny story. “That’s why I call the little stinker Megabyte. He likes to bite ankles. Sure you don’t want one, Scott?” His smile disappeared when he saw her. “All right, thanks for checking on things. I owe you, buddy. See you later.”

The bad prince was taking care of kittens? She tried to look casual as she walked up to where he was stirring a liquid concoction, but her arms didn’t feel right no matter how she positioned them. She peered into the pot and said, “You have kittens?”

He followed her gaze. “Kittens are too bony.”

“Christopher! I didn’t mean kittens in whatever it is you’re making! Augh!”

He had the tip of one hand stuffed in the front pocket as he leaned against the stove and stirred with the other.
 

“You don’t really cook cats, do you?” she asked when he didn’t clarify. “I know New Orleans is a different kind of place, and they practice voodoo, but…”

“Don’t worry, dawlin’. Shrimp are the only creatures in my jambalaya.”

She wrinkled her nose and recrossed her arms in front of her. “That sounds appetizing.” Ugh.

“You can always order a pizza. But in case you’re tempted, I didn’t put a lot of hot spices in it. Try it.” He held out a wooden spoon filled with a mixture of rice, a sliver of green pepper, and a chunk of shrimp in a thick gravy; the warm tip pressed against her lips. She made the mistake of looking into his eyes. She forced her mouth open so he could slide the spoon in.

“You can swallow now.”

She obeyed, feeling even more awkward. What were they doing here? He’d just told her to butt out of his business and now he was spoon-feeding her. She was getting lost in the murky gumbo of him, tantalized by his spices and the way he made her hungry, fearful of what she might find in the depths of his soul. She was here for Brian, because he was the man who would open her heart. Christopher was just trouble, plain and simple.

She smacked her lips together, evaluating the aftertaste. “Not bad. Do you cook like this at home?”

He chuckled. “I’m a Stouffer’s gourmet, for sure. Being back here put me in the mood for New Orleans staples.”

“You live alone?” She didn’t want to know if he lived with a woman. Really, it didn’t matter.
 

“Yep. Bought a place in Virginia Highlands, an old house I’m renovating. No one else would want to live there.”

There was her warning, if she cared to notice. She focused on something safer. “You have kittens?”

“They’re not mine. They just showed up one day and made my front porch their home.”

She didn’t want to imagine him sitting on an old-fashioned porch with kittens climbing all over him, but she did anyway. She didn’t want to imagine there was some soft part of him that cared about a litter of homeless kittens. “Don’t you know that if you feed strays they never leave?” she added with a grin.
 

“Is that so?” He nodded to the jambalaya and then looked at her.

“I’m not a stray, and I only plan to stay a short time. Have you named the kittens?”

“Only to tell them apart. Megabyte, CPU, SCSI, Gigabyte and Dongle. I’m trying to find homes for them, but I hadn’t gotten around to putting an ad in the paper before I got the call from Tammy. So, up for the challenge or is it going to be pizza?”

She was a coward in too many areas of her life. “Feed me.”

After dinner, Christopher walked out to the courtyard. He needed some cool, fresh air. Rita Brooks had a way about her, a way that brought out his worst and best sides.

He hadn’t invited her to join him. That kind of pleasantry didn’t come naturally to him; he was used to being by himself. Mostly he didn’t want another repeat performance of the night before. Didn’t want to hear her say his name again, the way her accent lifted the end—
Christaphah.
Or notice her mouth as she did so. Didn’t want to want to kiss his brother’s girl.

Velda’s music was nearly drowned out by the Pegasus parade. He’d forgotten the sounds of the marching bands and the crowd begging for beads.

Rita ventured out on her own, her head tilted up as she, too, heard the noise. “The parade.” Her mouth curved into a soft smile. “It would be neat to live so near the parade route.”
 

He took a sip of his beer. “Yeah, real…neat.”

She wrinkled her nose at him, adding a dip of her chin. The gesture made his stomach quiver.

“I would have loved to have had something like that to look forward to every year.” Her voice was wistful. As though she’d had little to look forward to. When she turned those blue eyes on him, he could see empathy. She lowered herself into the chair across from him, her hands atop one another on the table. “Tell me why you said what you said earlier. About being born.”
 

“Don’t put me on your couch. I’m not going to spill my guts. I can’t complain about my childhood, not compared to what some people had. I lived in a nice house, had nice clothes, got into my fair share of trouble.” He couldn’t help but glance up at the steep pitch of roof behind him. “Does anyone have a perfect childhood?”

“No,” she said on a long breath. “But having clothes and a roof over your head doesn’t equal a good childhood. Some of those children are poorer than the ones who live in the slums and get love.”

She knew. He could see it in her eyes, hear it in her voice. She had felt the same aches he had, suffered the same loneliness. That’s what he saw in her eyes—a kindred soul. He felt the unfamiliar urge to embrace the darkness they shared and fought it.

Maybe he ought to remind her that she was uncomfortable around him. It didn’t take much to get him out of his chair, he thought with disgust. Any excuse to walk close to her.

She watched him approach, and her arms automatically crossed in front of her. Yet she steeled herself, facing him with both wariness and determination in her eyes. “I’m not going to let you intimidate me into leaving,” she stated even as she swallowed hard when he stepped into her zone. “If that’s what you’re trying to do.”

“Tell me why it’s so important that you stay.”

“Because…” Her eyes were locked to his, and he realized that she was more beautiful than he’d given her credit for: wide cheek bones, glossy eyebrows, thick, wavy hair that would wind around a man’s fingers just so.

“Do I make you nervous?” he asked.

“Yes, especially when you look at me like you’re doing now.”

At least she was honest. “And how is that?”

“Like you want to eat me.”

He kept his expression perfectly neutral. “Maybe I do.”

“See, that’s just it. I don’t know how to act around you. I don’t know if I can trust you.”

 
“You can’t trust me.” She blinked at his response. “You can’t analyze me and you can’t fix me either.”

“You don’t know that.”

He’d expected her to deny that she wanted to fix him. “I thought you were here to help Brian.”

“I am. But…” Her gaze drifted to his mouth, then quickly back to his eyes.
 

“Rita…” Her name sounded right on his tongue, the same way her mouth had felt right moving against his. “I don’t need help. I’ll tell you what some of my clients tell me. I don’t want an upgrade. No new software or hardware. I like my system just the way it is. I’ve gotten way past whatever my childhood lacked, so stop looking at me with soft, mushy eyes.” He didn’t like the way her sympathy burrowed into tender parts he didn’t want opened.

She pushed up out of the chair. “I’m going to try to catch the parade.”

She didn’t look back as she walked across the courtyard and into the house. He knew that because he’d watched her the entire way. Watched the sway of her hips and the way she tried to keep her shoulders straight…the slight pause when she opened the door before pushing on.

Why had Brian done this to him, brought this warm, caring woman into his life and made him, at least for a moment, want to share that warmth? As if she could wave her magic wand and set his life straight.
 

He shook his head, returning to his chair and his beer. Even if he could share his childhood aches and pains with her, she couldn’t fix the fact that he wasn’t worthy of holding love in his hands again. Two people had died because of him. His family had almost gone broke because of him. He couldn’t hold onto his family, his friend, or to the woman he’d sworn to protect and let die anyway. Wasn’t he reminded of that every time he looked in the mirror and saw the scar across his chest?

He tossed down the last of his beer and listened to the remnants of the parade going by on St. Charles. That was what he’d always hated about Mardi Gras. All around him everyone celebrated, making his darkness even blacker in contrast.
 

Masses of people flowed toward Rita as she made her way to Napoleon Avenue. She arrived at the street to find the crowd dispersing and no sign of the floats. The sounds of cheering and music floated through the air as the end of the parade moved farther away.

She picked up a string of gold beads lying on the sidewalk. The two ends dangled, making her feel silly. She let the beads slip from her fingers and walked into the remnants of the crowd.
 

Shivering now, she turned back to the house, to Christopher. She’d stood up to him, was maybe a little too honest for her own good. She’d done well considering her startling realization: he was, indeed, part of the reason she couldn’t leave yet.

She didn’t
want
to help him; she
needed
to help him just as much as she needed to find the truth about Brian. She couldn’t explain it, but fixing him had something to do with fixing what was wrong with her.
 

Why didn’t he deserve redemption?
I was born.
No, it was more than that, darker and deeper than being the child who didn’t belong. Despite his dark eyes, despite his warning that he couldn’t be trusted, despite all that masculinity that he used to intimidate her with, she couldn’t forget that he had taken in five kittens. And he had come back for Brian.
 

The next morning Christopher let Rita take his car to the hospital, telling her he needed to catch up on his work. A new guard took a break when she got there and told her he’d sit outside the room until she left.

“I remembered the word ‘Sira,’” she told Brian. “But I don’t know what it is. I’ve looked through your things but can’t find anything. You have to help me. All I get are the scenes you showed me, and really, at the most unexpected times.”
 

But that kiss had been unexpected, too. She felt a need to confess her sin, to assure Brian that he was the only one who could guide her past her fears. She held in the words. He wasn’t the man she thought she knew. Or perhaps she only knew a small part of him. He’d never shared any of those inspirational messages with her, for example.
 

She squeezed his hand. “You’ve come to mean so much to me, yet I know so little about who you are. I want to understand your childhood, but Christopher is no help there. He’s so…so…” She didn’t know the word she wanted. “I don’t know, but he makes me…I…” At the end, she couldn’t put into words what he did to her, or how she felt about him. Probably she didn’t want to know.

A shuffling sound made her turn to the doorway. Trent was standing there, looking disconcerted at being caught. How long had he been standing there?

When he started to turn away, she said, “Hello, Trent. You can come in.”

He jammed his hands into the pockets of his linen pants and ambled in. “I was just stopping by… to see how he was.”
 

She looked at Brian’s monitors, but the numbers were stable. She turned back to Trent and studied his behavior. He was clearly nervous around her, or nervous about being there. He looked as though he was waiting for the right moment to bolt. She wondered what his feelings were toward Brian, but that was too personal to broach.

“How are things at the hotel? You mentioned how tough it was without Brian around.”

“We’re managing. We always do.”

“Always do?”

He shuffled his feet, the sound that had caught her attention earlier. “He wasn’t around on Mardi Gras day last year. I mean, he came in early in the morning, but left in the afternoon.”