Raintree: Haunted (Raintree 2)

“Emma,” he whispered. “Show yourself.”

He waited for the spirit who claimed to be his daughter to drop in to say hello. After all, she’d shown up before when he’d called her name. But the bathroom remained silent and free of spirits of all kinds.

“You’re sure you’re all right?” Hope called. She was closer now, standing just on the other side of the door.

“I’m fine!” Gideon snapped.

She moved away, and a moment later he heard the water running in the guest bathroom. For a moment he leaned over the sink and studied his sour, bristly-cheeked reflection. He didn’t look like a father; he didn’t feel like a father. “Come on, Emma,” he said, a bit louder than before. “This isn’t funny. It isn’t nice to tease. You’re going to give Daddy heart failure if you don’t show yourself.”

The bathroom remained silent but for his own labored breathing.

Hope was special; he couldn’t deny that. There was the continuing and annoying glow that told him his heart and soul were as involved as his body. Maybe, a few years down the line, if they continued to have great sex and they worked out the whole partner thing, then maybe he could consider the possibility that Hope was going to be a permanent fixture in his life.

But now?

“Come on, Emma. Sweetheart,” he added. “There’s no need to be hasty about this. A couple of years, maybe ten, and then I might be ready to have kids.” It was a lie, and Emma likely knew it. The world wasn’t fit for the innocence of a child; he saw that for himself every day.

She was pulling his leg. After all, he had moved Hope away from the early-morning moonbeams, and he’d used a condom faithfully.

And Hope had been wearing that damned fertility charm, which very well could have trumped everything.

Gideon took a quick shower, shaking off the feeling of impending doom as he toweled dry and then wrapped the towel around his waist. He found Hope in the kitchen, making coffee and scrounging around the cupboards looking for a breakfast of some sort.

She gave him a wary glance. “Are you sure you’re all right?”

“Yeah.” He looked at her. Most specifically, he looked at her stomach. “Come on, Emma,” he whispered as Hope turned her attentions to the refrigerator. “Talk to me.”

“What did you say?” Hope asked as she came out with a half gallon of milk.

“Nothing.”

“Oh, I thought you said Emma.” She placed the milk on the counter, beside a box of cereal. “That’s my grandmother’s name.”

He almost groaned but caught himself just in time.

Hope reached for the bowls. She already knew her way around the kitchen pretty well. “My mother has her heart set on a granddaughter named Emma,” she said, “but Sunny has three boys, and I’m not planning to have kids any time soon, so she’s outta luck.”

“Wanna bet?” Gideon asked beneath his breath.

Hope left everything she’d gathered on the counter and turned to glare at him. “Maybe I should call you Rainman instead of Raintree. You’re making no sense at all this morning.”

Gideon pointed to the fertility charm Hope had put around her neck once again, after he’d refused to take it from her palm. It had been meant for Dante, a brotherly joke, a push to get the Dranir busy reproducing, but it would be just as effective on Hope.

“That talisman you lifted from the dresser last night,” he said, as he continued to point a censuring finger, “is a fertility charm.”

“A what?” Hope took a step away from him and yanked the thing from around her neck as if it might burn her. “What kind of sick person would make a fertility charm and leave it lying around!”

Gideon raised his empty hand. “This sick person. It was meant for my brother, not you.”

Hope flung the charm at him, putting all her muscle behind it. “You really are sick,” she said sharply as he caught the charm in midair. “What did your brother ever do to you to deserve that?” She looked around her immediate vicinity for something else to throw, found nothing handy and finally sat down at the kitchen table. “It didn’t work,” she said sensibly. “I’m sure it didn’t work. That charm wasn’t made for me, and we were careful. We were always careful. It’s not like you have some kind of super sperm.”

“Yeah,” Gideon agreed, hoping she was right. If fertility charms worked without fail, Dante would have populated his own village by now. “I even moved you out of the moonlight.”

“What does that have to do with anything?” she snapped.

He figured he might as well tell her everything. “For the past three months I’ve been dreaming about this little girl. Thanks to Dante,” he added. “So don’t feel too sorry for him just because I occasionally send him something he doesn’t want.”

“He sent you some kind of dream?”