The Witching Hour (Lives of the Mayfair Witches 1)

Silence, then:

"I was hungry," she whispered.

He shook himself all over. He cracked open a fresh beer. The delicious malty aroma filled the car.

"And now you don't like me very much, do you?" he asked.

She didn't respond. She was just staring at the traffic.

He was dazed by the headlights looming at him. Thank God they were turning off the main highway onto the narrow road that led into Tiburon.

"I like you a lot," she answered finally. Voice low, purring, husky.

"I'm glad," he said. "I was really afraid ... I'm just glad. I don't know why I said all those things ... "

"I asked you what you saw," she said simply.

He laughed, taking a deep drink of the beer.

"We're almost home," she said. "Would you slow down on the beer? It's a doctor asking."

He took another deep drink. Again the kitchen, the smell of roast in the oven, the open red wine, the two glasses.

... it seems brutal but there is absolutely no reason for me to subject myself to her dying, and if you choose to stay around and watch a woman die of cancer, well, then you have to ask why you want to subject yourself to that kind of thing, why you love that sort of suffering, what's wrong with you that ...

Don't hand me that crap, not me!

Something more to it, much more. And all you have to do to see it is to keep thinking about it. Gave you everything you ever wanted, Rowan. You know you were always the thing holding us together. I would have left a long time ago if it wasn't for you. Did Ellie ever tell you that? She lied to me. She said she could have children. She knew it was a lie. I would have packed it in if it hadn't been for you.

They made a right turn, west, he figured, into a dark wooded street that climbed a hill and then descended. Flash of the great clear dark sky again, full of distant uninteresting stars, and across the black midnight bay, the great lovely spectacle of Sausalito tumbling down the hills to its crowded little harbor. She didn't have to tell him they were almost there.

"Let me ask you something, Dr. Mayfair."

"Yes?"

"Are you ... are you afraid of hurting me?"

"Why do you ask that?"

"I just got the strangest idea, that you were trying ... just now when I held your hand ... you were trying to throw me a warning."

She didn't answer. He knew he'd shaken her with the statement.

They drove down and onto the shoreline street. Small lawns, pitched roofs barely visible above high fences, Monterey cypress trees cruelly twisted by the relentless western winds. An enclave of millionaire dwellings. He almost never saw such wonderful modern houses.

He could smell the water even more keenly than he had on the Golden Gate.

She pulled into a paved drive, and killed the motor. The lights flooded a great double redwood gate. Then went out. Of the house beyond, he could see nothing but darkness against a paler sky.

"I want something from you," she said. She sat there quietly staring forward. Her hair swung down to veil her profile as she bowed her head.

"Well, I owe you one," he answered without hesitation. He took another deep foamy drink of the beer. "What do you want?" he asked. "That I go in there and I lay my hands on the kitchen floor and tell you what happened when he died, what actually killed him?"

Another jolt. Silence in the dark cockpit of the car. He found himself sharply aware of her nearness, of the sweet clean fragrance of her skin. She turned to face him. The street lamp threw its light in yellow patches through the branches of the tree. First he thought her eyes were lowered, almost closed. Then he realized they were open and looking at him.

"Yes, that's what I want," she said. "That is the sort of thing I want."

"That's fine," he answered. "Bad luck for it to happen during an argument like that. You must have blamed yourself."

Her knee grazed his. Chills again.

"What makes you think so?"

"You can't bear the thought of hurting anyone," he said.

"That's naive."

"I may be crazy, Doctor"--he laughed--"but naive I ain't. The Currys never raised any naive children." He drank the rest of the can of beer in a long swallow. He found himself staring at the pale line of the light on her chin, her soft curling hair. Her lower lip looked full and soft and delicious to kiss ...

"Then it's something else," she said. "Call it innocence if you like."

He scoffed at that without answering. If only she knew what was in his mind just now as he looked at her mouth, her sweet full mouth.

"And the answer to that question is yes," she said. She got out of the car.

He opened the door and stood up. "What the hell question is that?" he asked. He blushed.

She pulled his suitcase out of the back. "Oh, you know," she said.

"I do not!"

She shrugged as she started towards the gate. "You wanted to know if I would go to bed with you. The answer's yes, as I just told you."

He caught up with her as she went through the gate. A broad cement path led to the black teakwood double doors.

"Well, I wonder why the hell we even bother to talk," he said. He took the suitcase from her as she fumbled for the key.

She looked a little confused again. She gestured for him to go inside. As she took the sack of beer from him, he scarcely noticed.

The house was infinitely more beautiful than he had imagined. Countless old houses he'd known and explored. But this sort of house, this carefully crafted modern masterpiece, was something unfamiliar to him.

What he saw now was a great expanse of broad plank floor, flowing from dining room to living room to game room without division. Glass walls opened on a broad apron of wooden decking to the south and to the west and to the north, a deep roofless porch softly illuminated from above by an occasional dim floodlamp. Beyond, the bay was simply black and invisible. And the small twinkling lights of Sausalito to the west were delicate and intimate compared to the distant splendid southern view of the crowded and violently colored skyline of San Francisco.

The fog was only a thin slash of mist now against the brilliance of the night, thinning and vanishing even as he gazed at it.

He might have looked at the view forever, but the house struck him as similarly miraculous. Letting out a long sigh, he ran his hand along the tongue and groove wall, admiring the same fine inlay of the lofty ceiling beyond its heavy beams which rose steeply to a central point. All wood, beautifully grained wood, pegged and fitted and polished and preserved exquisitely. Wood framed the massive glass doors. Wood furnishings stood here and there, with dim flashes of glass or leather, chair and table legs reflected in the sheen of the floor.

In the eastern corner of the house stood the kitchen he had seen in the early flashing vision--a large alcove of dark wooden cabinets and countertops, and shining copper pots strung from overhead hooks. A kitchen to be looked at as well as worked in. Only a deep stone fireplace, with a high broad hearth--the kind of hearth you could sit on--separated this kitchen from the other rooms.

"I didn't think you'd like it," she said.

"Oh, but it's wonderful." He sighed. "It's made like a ship. I've never seen a new house so finely made."

"Can you feel it moving? It's made to move, with the water."

He walked slowly across the thick carpet of the living room. And only then saw a curving iron stairs behind the fireplace. A soft amber light fell from an open doorway above. He thought of bedrooms at once, of rooms as open as these, of lying in the dark with her and the glimmer of city lights. His face grew hot again.

He glanced at her. Had she caught this thought, the way she claimed to have caught his earlier question? Hell, any woman could have picked up on that.