His Dark Embrace

“What? Oh, yes, it’s a little chilly,” she said, and then frowned. She had stopped shivering as soon as he sat beside her. “Are you here to stay?” she asked, and held her breath, waiting for his answer.

“I’m not sure.” His gaze moved over her, as warm as a summer day. “Good night, Skylynn.”

“Good night.” She stared after him as he descended the stairs and crossed the street to his house. She felt oddly bereft when he disappeared inside.

It started raining as soon as he closed the door.

After turning off the inside lights, Thorne stood at the front window, his gaze focused on the woman across the street. In spite of the distance and the darkness, he was able to see her clearly. She had always been a pretty girl but now, in her early twenties, she was exquisite. Her hair was a deep reddish-brown; her eyes, beneath delicately arched brows, were the rich warm blue of a midsummer sky. She wore a long-sleeved, square-necked lavender sweater that emphasized the swell of her breasts. A pair of white jeans hugged her legs. He was sure he could span her narrow waist with his hands.

Thorne had felt protective of Skylynn ever since she had been a little girl. Having no children of his own, he had enjoyed watching her grow up. She had been a sweet, chubby-cheeked child, a leggy adolescent, a truly beautiful teen. By the time she was seventeen, he started to feel like a dirty old man lusting after an innocent young girl, although it hadn’t been her body he lusted for. And even though he was still old, she was no longer young. Or innocent. She had been married and divorced and was now dating an investment banker in Chicago who would never be good enough for her.

It had been coincidence that brought Thorne back to Vista Verde shortly after Paddy McNamara passed away. Paddy had asked Thorne to keep an eye on Skylynn while she was away from home. Thorne never knew why. Skylynn had always been a level-headed girl, able to take care of herself. Perhaps Paddy’s concern had merely been worry for a granddaughter about to be away from home and on her own for the first time in her life. At any rate, Thorne would have looked after Sky without being asked. And he had done so, without her being the wiser, until the day she married Nick O’Brien.

Of course, Paddy’s granddaughter hadn’t been the only reason he had stayed in touch with the old man. Thanks to Paddy McNamara’s remarkable potion, Thorne had been able to live a relatively normal life for the last eight years. But the sun would soon be lost to him again if Skylynn couldn’t find her grandfather’s notes.

In the morning, shortly after breakfast, Sky went downstairs to the basement that housed Granda’s lab. The basement was divided into three rooms. There was also a half-bath to the left of the staircase.

The largest room was Granda’s workroom. It held every conceivable medical book known to man, as well as metal shelves crammed with beakers and test tubes and a plethora of other instruments. A small wooden table and chair were shoved into one corner.

A door connected his workroom to his office. A state-of-the-art computer, a twenty-four-inch monitor, and a printer took up space on an oversized desk. A small TV was mounted in one corner. A bank of gray metal file cabinets lined one wall.

The last room was the smallest. Located to the right of the staircase, it held a number of wire cages in a variety of sizes. All were empty now. One of the first things Skylynn had done after she got home was drive out to the country where she had released half a dozen mice and a handful of baby rats. In retrospect, she wondered if that had been a smart thing to do, but it was too late to worry about it now.

Sky stood at the foot of the stairs for a moment, Granda’s keys in hand; then, heaving a sigh, she unlocked the door to the room that held the filing cabinets and stepped inside. The basement had always been off-limits to Sky and she had never been down here except with Granda. It seemed wrong, somehow, to be there now, without him.

The drawers to the filing cabinets were all color-coded, labeled, and locked. The first cabinet held folders labeled INVOICES, CURRENT FILES, OLD FILES, RESEARCH NOTES, and TAX RECORDS. The next three filing cabinets contained Granda’s journals, with the first drawer labeled 1957–1962, the next 1963–1968, and so on.

The top drawer in the last filing cabinet was labeled EXPERIMENTS. Did that cabinet hold the mysterious recipe Kaiden Thorne was hoping to find?

Sky glanced at the keys in her hand. Each key was color-coded to match a particular filing cabinet.

She was about to unlock the drawer marked EXPERIMENTS when the doorbell rang. Wondering who would possibly be calling so early, she pocketed the keys and ran up the stairs, her slippers flapping.

“Mr. Thorne!” she exclaimed when she opened the door. She felt a flush heat her cheeks. Had she known he was going to show up so early, she would have changed out of her pj’s.

“I know it’s early,” he said, somewhat sheepishly. “I just wondered if you’d had a chance to look around for that formula.”

“Not really.” She slipped a hand into her pocket, her fingers curling around the keys. “It must be important.”

“Only to me.”

She tilted her head to one side. “It must work. You look great.”

His gaze moved over her with undisguised admiration. “Thanks, so do you.” He rocked back on his heels. “I should go.”

“Would you like to come over later for lunch?”

“I’d like that.”

“Around one?”

He nodded. “I’ll be here.”

Sky watched him cross the street, admiring the way his jeans hugged his taut backside, his easy, long-legged stride, the way the sun cast silver highlights in his black hair.

Murmuring, “Oh, my,” she made her way back down to Granda’s lab.

She spent the next three hours going through his filing cabinets, sorting out old receipts and purchase orders for a variety of medical supplies, perusing copious memos written in her grandfather’s spidery hand, most of which she couldn’t decipher. The drawer labeled EXPERIMENTS held a number of spiral-bound journals, the pages covered with notes, diagrams, and scientific jargon that made no sense to her.

Sitting cross-legged on the floor, she thumbed through his most recent entries, but found nothing that looked like a recipe for a vitamin drink.

At twelve-thirty, she stood and stretched her aching back and shoulders. If there was a formula hiding in any of Granda’s notes, it would have to wait until tomorrow. She was going cross-eyed, trying to decipher his handwriting.

After locking the basement door, she went upstairs, found her cell phone, and ordered two large pizzas—one pepperoni, one sausage—two orders of spicy chicken wings, and breadsticks. While waiting for the pizzas, she made a fruit salad and a pitcher of iced tea, then set two plates, two glasses, two cloth napkins, and a pair of forks on a tray.