Dark Angel (Casteel 2)

want you to know more about me. Will you listen?" I nodded, somehow scared by his serious tone

of voice.

"Winter nights for me are too long. Giving time

for too many dreams to be born. I try and hold back

sleep until just before dawn, sometimes I succeed. If I

don't, I grow so restless I have to get up and dress.

Then I walk outside and let the fresh cold air wash my

dreary thoughts away. I walk the trails between the

pines, and when my brain is cleared, only then do I

come back here. And in work I can forget the coming

night and the nightmares that haunt me."

I could only stare at him. "No wonder you kept

shadows beneath your eyes last winter," I said, distressed that he could now be so melancholy. He had

me now. "I used to think you were a workaholic." Troy rolled on his side, facing the fire, reaching

a long arm for a bottle of champagne he'd put in a

silver bucket to chill. He poured the bubbling vintage

into two crystal goblets. "The last bottle of the best of

the wine," he said, turning again toward me, and

lifting his glass so it brushed lightly against mine. I had grown used to champagne during the past

winter, since it appeared so often on Jillian's party

tables, but I was still child enough to feel giddy after

one glass. Uneasily I sipped my champagne, wondering why his eyes kept avoiding mine, "What do you

mean, the last of the wine? You've got a wine cellar

beneath this house with enough champagne for the

next half-century."

"So literal," he said. "I spoke poetically. Trying

to tell you that winter and cold bring out the morbid

side I try to hide most of the time. I care too much

about you to let you become too entangled in our

relationship, without understanding just who and what