Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (60 page)

Hospitals, schools, and even recreation centers were represented. The goal of the event was to put the underfunded agencies in the same place as the money.

Underlings such as Yeshato and herself were trotted out to give the privileged debutants a taste of the inner city. The Badger would drag them from one rich couple to another, telling stories of how the ER helped the city they all loved. It was their job to prove that S.F. General should get their checks instead of the Boys and Girls Club.

While she understood the necessity of the event, Sal had thankfully only been to one, and wanted to keep it that way. “I’m sorry, but I’m just not up to it.”

“
Ah, but you and Richard make such a lovely couple. You, the young, impassioned emergency room resident, and he the selfless clinician who still dirties his hands in the County hospital. If that doesn’t get them to part with their money …”

Sal wasn’t sure they’d make that pretty a pair anymore. The thought of standing arm in arm, all smiles with Richard, made her stomach turn.

“
Sorry.” Then she had an idea. “But have you asked Cammer? He and his wife adopted a homeless child that he originally treated in the ER.”

The Badger brightened. “I’d forgotten about that. Isn’t his wife the OB nurse who’s sterile?”

“
I believe so.”

“
Ah, how poetic.” Bersher made a beeline over to the young resident.

She almost felt guilty for siccing the Badger on the poor doctor, but if it got her out of the fund-raiser, so be it.

Free of Bersher, Sal went back to circulating around the room, dipping into this story and then another. Tasting Maria in each of them. This had turned out so much better than she could have ever planned. She couldn’t imagine a better way to grieve for her friend without collapsing into a heap of sobs.

Then she spotted Stacy drinking alone in the corner. While everyone else had formed shifting groups of their peers, Manning sat isolated against the wall.

Serves her right
, was Sal’s first instinct, but then realized that reaction didn’t honor Maria’s memory very well. For as much as the head nurse couldn’t stand the resident, Maria would have been the first person over there, encouraging Stacey to join the rest of them.

So Sal picked up a mug and headed over to the small table. “Looks like you needed a refill.”

“
I’m on shift in a few minutes,” Stacey answered flatly.

Under any other circumstances, Sal would have walked away, but today was Maria’s day, and if her best friend felt like channeling good cheer through her, Sal couldn’t argue.

Pulling up a chair, she sat down, running her finger along the rim of the glass. While she wanted to play Maria’s role, Sal had absolutely no idea
of
how to start this conversation. She and Manning had so little in common.

What could bridge the gap between them?

“
Maria could be such a bitch,” Stacy said out of nowhere.

Hackles up, Sal bit her tongue. Getting into a knock-down, drag-out fight with Manning wasn’t going to help anyone. Still, how could she say such a thing, on such a day?

“
I’m going to miss that,” Stacy announced, then drank the dregs of her beer as she rose. “A lot.”

Only then did Sal realize the resident had tears in her eyes. Stacy hadn’t retreated to distance herself from grieving, but to bear it privately.

Stacy was halfway out of the pub when Sal rushed to join her.

“
Manning!”

The resident didn’t stop, however. Sal had to catch her at the corner of the block. “Stacy.”

Her rival couldn’t help but stop. The light had switched to red, and pedestrians took their lives in their own hands with the cabbies if they went into the crosswalk against the light. They seemed to feel that if they had the green, hitting you was just bonus points.

“
Why don’t you go back inside and prove to everyone that you’re the kinder, gentler resident?” Stacy sneered.

On another day, Manning could have gotten her to rise to that bait, but Sal could see the resident’s streaked mascara.

“
I just wanted to say thanks for finishing up my paperwork.”

Manning shrugged, wiping the black away from the corner of her eye. “It’s what Maria would’ve made me do.”

Now it was Sal’s eyes that spilled over. They might have shared an honest-to- goodness moment together, if the light hadn’t turned green.

Without a look back, Stacy crossed the street at a brisk walk.

“
Sal! What are you doing out there when the party’s in here?” Paul yelled from the pub’s door.

She watched Manning disappear around the corner. They had been almost human to one another. Would miracles never cease?

* * * * *

CHAPTER 54

Tired, and her feet killing her, Sal pulled off her heels as she approached her apartment. Even if she’d forgotten which door was hers, the pile of telephone books, Chinese food ads, and “stay at home” job offers would have marked it as hers. How long had it been since she had been here?

Three days?

She was glad to be home. Alone. All she wanted to do was take off these itchy pantyhose and melt into a near-scalding bath. Granted, the tub was narrow and not very deep, but she could soak away the stress as long as she wanted without someone questioning the number of BTUs that she was wasting by leaving the hot water to drip into the bath. Richard didn’t seem to understand that was the only way to keep the tub at exactly the right temperature for nearly an hour.

Richard’s locks were remote-controlled. Fumbling with her keys, she’d almost forgotten what it was like to have to insert the metal into the door.

Damn him and his conveniences.

Hadn’t she learned something even more convenient? Praxis? She hadn’t been able to open the door to the boathouse, but the window? And she fired a gun, using just Praxis. Her palm lingered over the handle. Could she do it? Should she do it?

Remembering what disaster had sprung from her decisions the night before, she removed her hand and finally fit the key into its lock. The deadbolt gave the old-fashioned way, and she walked into her foyer.

Actually, the space wasn’t so much an entry as it was the end of a narrow hallway. The total sum of her apartment could fit into Richard’s master suite.

Sal flopped her shoes, laptop, and keys onto the tiny stand next to the door. While still making her way to the living room, she pulled off her stockings. She put at least three runs in them, but didn’t care.

She was home.

So many things about her apartment struck her. The vaguely vintage vibe she had going. Not enough to call it a coherent decorating theme, but enough that the circa-sixties gilded candlesticks made her smile.

The tiny kitchenette off to the left, which barely had the counter room for a microwave. Sal felt a welling of love for this place she’d created for herself, and then another feeling. A darker feeling.

She wasn’t alone.

* * * * *

CHAPTER 55

Sal knew that it was Tyr even before she turned the corner and found his broad back silhouetted against the afternoon sun. He looked out over the city, unmoving. He didn’t even acknowledge her entrance.

“
Don’t you ever sleep?” she said sounding way more bitter than she realized. Would anyone blame her, though? How dare he show up, not even on her doorstep, but in her living room? The gall.

She really wanted to lay into him, force him to feel the pain he caused, and she wasn’t just talking about the puncture wound to her shoulder.

Unfortunately, the beer had given her a slight buzz, and her stomach grumbled loudly. Except for the peanuts at the pub, she hadn’t eaten in over a day.

Since it didn’t look like Tyr was going to leave any time soon, Sal headed over to the tiny kitchen.

“
I take it you don’t have to eat, either?” Sal asked, even though she really didn’t expect an answer as she looked in the fridge. Not much there that hadn’t turned into a nasty science project. A few eggs were about the best she could do. Sal glanced over her shoulder. He hadn’t moved an inch.

It was like having a statue in your room. A brooding, contradictory statue just standing there, seemingly deaf and dumb.

With her back to him, concentrating on scrambling the eggs, Sal could almost imagine he wasn’t there. But not quite. His presence radiated across the living room in waves. If she quieted her mind, she could hear his soft, regular breaths. And that leather coat of his, Sal could sniff it out a mile away.

While Tyr’s presence had felt strained at first, it mellowed into something oddly familiar. Feeling more tired than angry, she went back to the refrigerator and found a soggy onion and a couple of mushrooms that didn’t look like they’d gone all the way killer-fungi.

The scrambled eggs smelled like the finest gourmet food San Francisco had to offer. Whether Tyr found it as appetizing was his problem.

While the eggs finished cooking, Sal started to set the table for two, then stopped. Had she ever set her table for two before? Either Richard cooked at his place, or they ate out. She wasn’t sure if another living person had used that second kitchen chair. It was virgin territory.

Sal piled the eggs onto a plastic platter she didn’t even realize had been hiding underneath the counter. Placing it in the middle of the table, she turned to Tyr. “You going to join me, or what?”

Still, he stood with his legs shoulder-width apart, knees locked. Sal knew the stance well. Usually about sixty hours into a seventy-two-hour shift. While Tyr seemed to want to project a stoic, unmoving presence, she knew he was on the verge of falling over.

Much softer. “How many days has it been since you’ve eaten?”

There was a pause, but not necessarily a delay. She could see his muscles tense under his coat, his head cocking ever so slightly in her direction.

“
Four,” the word was more of a rumble than a spoken answer.

“
Then sit,” Sal urged, as she pulled the chair out for him.

Tyr didn’t move. Sighing, she went back to the sink and drew up two glasses of water. The milk had gone way bad.

When she turned back, Sal found him devouring the eggs. She’d nearly forgotten how quietly he could move when he wanted to. Also, in his land they clearly didn’t understand the concept of a communal plate as he dug into the eggs with a vengeance.

Sal sat across from him. When she was little, growing up in the Spanish ghetto of the Mission district, she’d found a starving puppy. Every night Sal had brought out her leftovers to the scrawny thing, and he had gulped them down without even tasting the food, just like Tyr. Which was probably for the best, given her meager cooking supplies.

Only after the last speck of the eggs was consumed did Tyr glance up. He was nowhere near full. Just like the puppy. He looked almost ashamed of his hunger. Whatever anger she had felt melted away under those sad blue eyes.

“
I think I can scare up some more.”

His hand gripped her wrist. “Thanks be …” Tyr looked up, seeming almost shy. “I know not the lady to thank.”

For a moment she didn’t understand the question, and then realized he didn’t know her name. “Sal.”

“
I do not think when your mother put your smooth cheek to her breast for the first suckling, that was the name she uttered.”

Sal blushed. Of course it wasn’t. But how she hated her given name! It was so … so girlie. “Salista.”

“
Salista …” Somehow when Tyr rolled the name across his tongue, it didn’t sound hateful at all. “Your mother may not have the word for essence, yet she truly captured yours.”

Her cheeks must have been fuchsia by now. Her intimacy alert was ringing loudly in her ear. His words were intimate. His hand against the tender flesh of her wrist was intimate. His mixture of sweat and leather was intimate. She had to find some way to counteract it.

That repressed anger welled again. His sweet words now didn’t erase his action in the museum. “Yet you were so willing to sacrifice it, weren’t you?”

His fingers released her hand, and he was up and out of the chair, heading back to the window. It was her turn to grab his arm.

“
No, damn it! Look at me.”

It took him drawing upon a strength greater than that he used to fight the beast to turn back to her.

“
How could you do that to me?”

“
I am dead blood,” he explained without explaining.

Sal shook her head. “That doesn’t mean you don’t have morals.”

“
I hunt beasts. I kill beasts. To expect more of a dead blood is folly.”

Tyr winced as he tried to pull away from her. The action opened the edge of his coat. Beneath the leather, his white shirt was torn to shreds, revealing red, angry claw marks across his chest.