Yearnings: A Paranormal Romance Box Set (97 page)

“
Yes. He fears what happens when he has transformed. He loses all human identity. Or he believes he does. I have to think some part of him remains, though. Why else would he have survived this long? Why else would he have killed that man?”

Jacob nearly shot out of his seat. Yes, yes, he nodded, gesturing at Bea. Leigh tried not to stare or frown at the ghost. What about killing the man on the ship had anything to do with Jacob or Tristan? “Is it because of the wolf that Tristan was taken?”

Jacob slumped in a chair, hands on his head.

Bea shook her head, emphatic. “No. Transforming came after. He says it’s what saved him. He would have died if not for a Chinese healer who must have found him in the alley the next morning. By then, Tristan was gone. It was days until Grant regained consciousness and we knew he’d survived, too.”

Peering up and dropping his hands, Jacob listened intently again.

Leigh kept quiet, hoping Bea would say more about the man who wouldn’t get out of her head, confusing her with his actions.

“
I feared at first that they were both dead, from an accident. Then I began to hope my brother had gotten into enough trouble to need to take Tristan himself, some crazed escape he couldn’t face alone.”

“
Escape from what?” They’d come from an affluent family. What darkness could possibly exist for Grant to run from? Then Leigh remembered the woman and the wasps.

“
He’ll never tell me what his life was like then. I’ve asked. I only have rumors to go by, and most of those delivered from Eliza, who didn’t exactly have his best interests at heart. I never knew what to believe. Gambling. Women. Like men are wont to do. Grant was angry.”

Jacob leaned closer. So close that Leigh thought Bea should sense him, like a fly tickling her hair. “Angry?”

“
He was very close to my mother. Very. Her suicide broke his heart.”

So much loss. Leigh had only lost her father and not to death. She could feel and see Beatrice’s deep sorrow. How much more would her own hurt? How did a person ever climb out of that level of grief? “She killed herself?”

Wasps
, Jacob whispered in her head. Understanding hit her like a tidal wave. Grant’s mother poisoned herself? When? Why? But Bea was nodding and Jacob was nodding, so she didn’t want to ask or say more.

“
Yes, well, it changed Grant. He started to live rather destructively. Never hurting others, just himself. Only himself.”

And Tristan? Did Grant’s choices hurt Tristan, too?

No!
Jacob stood up. He shook his head vehemently.
No.

Okay! It wasn’t as though she had the nerve to ask. She would have to eventually know more about Tristan, but they had time. Again, Jacob grew agitated. About time? There was time. Wasn’t there? At least time enough to get to San Francisco? Jacob paced the floor, growing more transparent by the second. She wanted to soothe him somehow, but everything in her yelled for her to act normal. Bea had enough to deal with. She didn’t need to see Leigh talking to thin air. Or was it more than that?

Jacob paused, nodding again, gesturing with his hands so that Leigh felt she’d just been thrown into a game of charades. Ghost charades. That she wasn’t allowed to react to. Swell. Amid the ghost’s waving hands, Bea seemed to be mentally drifting further and further away. What would bring her back?

“
He’s got the dog. At least there’s that.”

Bea frowned at her. “Oh, Grant? Um, yes, Duchy. He’s got Duchy. And Nick might be next door as well. I can’t imagine they’d be able to sit in a room for longer than ten minutes alone without killing each other, but, it is possible I suppose.” Bea glanced about and sighed. “Should we order dinner, do you think?”

Sure she had misunderstood or misheard Beatrice, she dismissed Jacob’s pantomiming altogether. “Next door?”

Bea blinked at her. “You want to have dinner with Grant?”

Leigh shook her head. “No, thank you, but I was asking if his car is the one adjacent to ours.”

Again, Bea blinked. “Where else would it be?”

After what happened the last time they saw each other, what with his avoiding her ever since, she imagined he’d be on another train. Not exactly. Not another train. But at least a few cars away. Avoiding her might not be fair. He had been detained. Being jailed can’t be called avoiding. She just didn’t see any point to his avoiding her anymore. She’d seen him as a wolf. If Duchy was safe from the wolf, why wouldn’t everyone be? The train car interior seemed to breathe in and out. Or maybe it was her vision shrinking and expanding. She wanted to see him. To just be in the same room with him would be a relief. Bea didn’t seem to need an answer. If anything, she needed rest. The dark shadows under her eyes never seemed to go away.

Bea narrowed her eyes. “What happened that you aren’t telling me?”

“
What do you mean?”

Bea got up and took the seat next to Leigh. “Grant told you something. What?”

“
He hasn’t told me anything, Bea,” Leigh said, but her cheeks were warming, memories of Grant’s hands on her body flashed in her mind. What would Bea say if she knew what passed between her and Grant?

“
He’s hiding something,” she said, her gaze growing intent. “I can feel it.”

“
He’s protecting you from what happened on the ship. I’m sure that’s all. Hiding the details.”

“
No. Something else. I get this same feeling deep in my belly over and again when I think of what else he knows.”

“
Feeling?” What would Bea think of her if she knew about what happened with Grant?

“
Dread but not dread. Like somebody reading your private diaries without your permission.” Bea shook her head. “I know. It sounds crazy. Grant swears he’s told me everything from that night. I know he keeps some things from me. Like when he changes. He lies to me about how many hours he loses. He lies about what disasters he manages to get out of.”

Leigh felt selfish suddenly. Grant might not be avoiding Leigh at all. He was more likely protecting both Bea and her, just as Bea said. She had to face the fact that she just longed to see him. And that he didn’t long to see her, too, stung. She pushed the feeling away and latched onto what Bea said. “What disasters?”

“
Oh, the usual, awful kind that makes a person thank God they’re alive. He almost drowned once. He transformed into human form, swimming in the dark of night in the Hudson River. I don’t know how he keeps getting so lucky. Luck like that can’t last forever.”

Leigh remembered the river by her house rising one spring, full of rainwater and melted snow from the mountains. They had had to protect their house with sandbags. Leigh had wanted to feel the fast current on her fingertips and had leaned over a wall of bags. Her father had never been madder at her.

“
Men die in that water, Leigh,” he had yelled. “Grown men. I won’t lose you, do you understand me? I won’t.”

She pictured Grant changing into a human, the cold flash of water hitting his mouth, pushing up his nostrils. Becoming a wolf really could kill him. Every time. Murdering a man, an icy river. That was what he was trying to protect them from—the next tragedy. The next results of a transformation he clearly couldn’t control.

More
, Jacob insisted.

Leigh almost startled out of her reverie. She’d forgotten he was in the room, he’d fallen so still. More what?
More.
Leigh shook her head. Jacob put his head in his hands again, raking his hair in frustration. He pointed at Beatrice and stared at Leigh. No matter how intensely he glared, she didn’t understand what he was demanding of her.

She felt trapped between Beatrice’s strange glances, her worry taking up more and more space, and Jacob’s gestures. All she wanted to do was see Grant. To verify he was safe and whole. She wanted to sit at the window and stare out of it, all the while feeling him there with her.

When had that happened? When had having Grant physically present become an anchor to reality? Before she could analyze the realization, Jacob lost his temper, and on the heels of one last accusing look, vanished. Wonderful. That look really stung. As if she’d made some sort of choice just now in all her confusion, and that choice betrayed him.

Beatrice eyed her all the more warily. It was almost impossible not to react to Jacob leaving. Her chest ached with it. Damn him! Didn’t he realize that she needed him for more than connecting to the other side? Having him gone had made her see just how much she had relied on him as a compass in life. That had to end. Leigh gave Beatrice a wobbly smile, trying to recapture what they’d been talking about.

Oh, that’s right. Grant. His luck running out.

Leigh put all her energy into not squirming under Beatrice’s assessing stare. Something was coming. She could feel it in that look. Something that Leigh wasn’t sure she could handle yet. For the first time since leaving home, she felt truly unmoored.

“
You’ve lied to me, haven’t you?” Beatrice said, her voice choked.

Leigh slowly shook her head. “No.” She hadn’t lied. Even about Tristan, she had no real evidence beyond a feeling in her bones that he was still alive. “I haven’t lied to you, Bea.”

“
Prove it,” Beatrice said.

~~~

Chapter Sixteen

“
You’re even starting to look like a wolf,” Nick said, mocking Grant with a grin.

Grant paused in his aggravated pacing long enough to send the man a baleful look meant to tell him exactly what he thought of his commentary. Any more, and Nick would be wearing the brandy he swirled so lackadaisically. “Why are you here, Levitt?”

“
Boredom, I suppose.”

“
Do us both a favor. Amuse yourself somewhere else.” Like in Bea and Leigh’s car. The idea of Nick spending quiet time with his sister didn’t bother him one whit. Which, in and of itself, should alarm him. Grant might not count his brother-in-law, Samuel, as a best friend any longer, but no man deserved to suffer infidelity. Samuel had failed Beatrice for three long years now. But a vow was a vow.

“
No place to go, I’m afraid.”

“
Oh? What did you do to piss my sister off now?”

“
Not a thing, friend.” Nick’s eyes flashed. “Do you realize that you even hang your head a bit lower on your shoulders, just like a dog would, as you stalk back and forth? It’s remarkable.”

Grant turned to Duchy. “Bite him, will you?”

The poodle rolled onto her belly and stretched. Nick rubbed the dog’s belly and leaned back. “Avoiding her won’t make it go away, you know.”

“
Oh? Then why are you?”

Nick crooked one side of his mouth up. “Dodge it all you like, Connel. Once a woman gets under your skin, there is no way to get her out. Well, there might be one way.”

“
The only things getting under my skin are this damned train and you. What do I have to do to get some goddamned privacy?”

Nick shook the ice in his otherwise empty glass again. “Plenty of other cars for you to go to, friend.” Not that he had a thing to hide in the private car, but Grant would never leave the man here alone. Nick made a clucking noise in his cheek. “Don’t let me stop you. Go. Leave. Roam. Or are you going to turn wolf on us?”

Grant was beginning to think that Nick wanted him to shift right then and there, just as a change of pace. Bea must have the man in some pretty tight knots, if so. The wolf felt even more restless than Grant. It wanted something Grant couldn’t name. The nameless desire gripped Grant by the throat like a hunger, but nothing Grant could think of seemed like the right answer to satisfy it.

Nothing, except seeing Leigh. That, he couldn’t do. And when he analyzed the emotion, he found urgency beneath the desire to see her. Something more. A tangible item he couldn’t name. A missing piece that, twenty or so minutes ago, set Grant’s teeth with tension. It became all he could do not to choke Nick.

He’d been fine, considering that he’d been taken over by a wolf, killed a man, suffered a concussion, and survived two nights in a moldy cell. Irritable, sure. Nick tended to have that effect on him, though. Particularly when the man set his mind to it, like now. Or Grant would growl at Duchy and her wagging tail stump. The wolf had been quiet ever since releasing the soul on the ship. Not quite dormant, but lying in wait, deep down below the surface.

This wasn’t about Leigh. Jesus, yes, he wanted to see her. His thoughts clung to the memory of her in his arms. If he let himself sink into the images, the heat in her eyes, the blood rushed down his belly and up his thighs, ready to embarrass him right there in front of Duchy and Nick. He could make so many easy excuses to see her. He couldn’t see her. He had nothing good or honorable to offer her, and if he got near her again, he’d be unable to stop himself from seducing her.

The curves of her calves, the shape of her bare shoulders. The weight of her breast in his palm and the feel of her hand on his throbbing—

The air shifted. Grant stopped, his skin prickled. His agitation cooled. Nick met his gaze, his brow furrowing. His hand fell away from Duchy’s belly as the dog rolled over, her ears twitching to attention. “What was that?” Nick asked, his voice low.