chapter 7
Rose knew she had to be very careful. The wrong word and she would be toast. The less any of the Scanguards people knew, the better. Particularly Quinn. He could never find out what had really happened two hundred years ago, or he would never help her save Blake.
Nor was he allowed to find out what Keegan really wanted, not yet anyway. First she had to figure out which side he stood on: would he help her protect what she had stolen, or would he simply want it to attain power himself by using it? The Quinn she knew from when she was human would have never wanted that kind of power, but what about the vampire he was now?
Rose looked around the comfortable office, waiting for Gabriel to return. He hadn’t wanted to make the phone call in front of her, which she couldn’t really blame him for.
Despite the gruesome scar on his face, he had appeared very civilized, polite even. It could be a trick of course, just as Keegan’s polished behavior had simply been a façade. Beneath it, he had hidden his brutality.
She was sick of violent men. They had crossed her long life too many times. This time she would be more careful. She couldn’t afford to trust the wrong man again. There was too much at stake. Besides, she wasn’t here to rekindle her relationship with Quinn. All she wanted from him was his help in protecting Blake. Once he was out of danger, she would disappear again.
Staying away from Quinn was the only way to protect her secret, because if he ever found out what she had done two centuries ago, he would kill her.
“Excuse the delay,” Gabriel’s voice came from behind her.
Pure instinct made her shoot up from her chair and reach into the inside pocket of her leather jacket. She stopped herself short of pulling out the silver blade she was hiding there.
Gabriel broke his stride and came to an abrupt halt, his eyes narrowing instantly. He had perceived her threat.
Not breaking eye contact, she slowly pulled her hand from her jacket, leaving the knife where it was. Even more slowly, she sat back down.
“I’m sorry,” she purred, trying to play down her action. “I get startled easily.”
He nodded before moving back to his own chair and sitting down behind the desk once more.
“Quinn will be here in a few minutes.”
At the sound of his name, a tingling danced down her spine. Only a few more minutes and she would see him again. Would he have the same effect on her as he had then? Would her knees grow weak at the sight of him? Would her stomach turn into a nesting ground for butterflies?
“Why don’t we talk about the assignment in the meantime? I’m afraid you’ve given me very little information so far.”
“It’s a very delicate matter,” she insisted.
“You said that earlier. But we need a little more than that.”
Rose pushed a strand of her long blond hair behind her shoulder. “Doesn’t a million dollars suffice to douse your curiosity? I’m sure you don’t get offered that kind of fee every day.”
“On the contrary, somebody offering that kind of money always arouses my curiosity.”
Gabriel leaned back, giving a relaxed impression, but she wasn’t fooled. Underneath the calm exterior, he was watching her closely. Just as she was watching him.
“I prefer to defer disclosing the details until Quinn is here. I hate having to tell the same story twice.” Besides, the more often she had to tell it, the more likely she would trip up and get caught in her own web of lies.
“As you wish.” Gabriel straightened in his chair, a sign she interpreted as displeasure. “So, how long have you known Quinn?”
“That’s irrelevant.” Her relationship to Quinn wasn’t up for discussion.
“If you do truly know him . . . ” he insinuated. Gabriel leaned forward.
She wouldn’t take the bait. If he wanted to know anything about her and Quinn, he could try his luck with Quinn. Maybe he would be more forthcoming. But she would remain tightlipped. Some things didn’t need to be dredged up again. Her ill-fated relationship with the father of her daughter was one of those things.
It would be hard enough having to see him again.
A sound at the door made her whip her head around.
Oh, God, it would be harder than she thought.
Quinn was as handsome as he’d ever been. His blond hair seemed a shade darker, but maybe it was simply the way the light reflected on it. His hazel eyes appeared more alert and drained of the innocence that had inhabited them so many decades ago. While his body hadn’t aged, she realized that his mind had. There was hardness in him now. The carefree young man she’d known, the one who’d gone off to war to make a name for himself, was gone.
Yet at the same time, he was still the same. Still the man she’d loved so fiercely, with all her heart and soul. The man she’d given her body to more freely than she’d done ever since. The man she’d called husband for one night.
Rose only noticed that she’d risen when she felt her knees wobble and had to reach for the backrest of her chair to steady herself. Had Quinn noticed? Had he seen her weakness?
She searched his eyes, looking for a sign of what was going on inside him. Did he feel what she felt?
She wanted to turn away, wanted to hide from him, from the feelings that welled up in his presence. But turning away would expose her even more. She couldn’t allow him to detect her vulnerability.
She opened her lips, wanting to issue a greeting, something business like, but her dry throat was incapable of producing a single sound.
The silence was suffocating, and she yanked at the collar of her thin turtleneck top. The heat in the room was suddenly stifling, the air thick with unspoken words, the atmosphere laden with memories.
“Rose . . . ”
Her gaze locked with his, and the room and their host melted into the background. Hesitant steps brought her closer to him, while he too moved toward her as if pulled by invisible strings.
For a moment she allowed herself to fall, to take in his scent, his presence. And for an instant of weakness, she wished it could be different, that she could be honest with him, tell him the truth. Confess everything.
When his hand came up to her face, she leaned in. She wanted his touch, craved it. When his fingertips connected with her cheek, she lowered her lids and took a breath. She didn’t release it, because it would have come out as a sob.
Quinn’s heart rejoiced at the sight of her. “You’re alive!”
Happiness poured through every cell of his body, making him feel alive for the first time in two hundred years. At the same time, his eyes greedily roamed her body, not being able to get enough of this vision.
She was as young as when he’d seen her last. He’d come back from the war to claim her. She’d looked just like she looked now. Her hair was golden, her eyes sparkled in a bright blue, her red lips beckoned for a kiss. Not a single wrinkle marked her flawless face. And her body: slender, young, and utterly enticing. Back then, she’d been dressed in the fashion of the day, her legs always hidden beneath layers of fabric, and just as well. Had the men of that era seen her legs the way they were encased in tight fitting jeans right now, they would have made fools of themselves in public.
Yes, public ravishing would have ensued.
Just as he wanted to ravish her now. His feet carried him to her without him even realizing. When he stopped only inches from her, he lifted his hand, touching her golden hair. She wasn’t an illusion his lovesick mind had conjured up—she was real. Flesh and blood.
His fingers connected with her skin, stroked over the silken softness of it.
His Rose was alive. As beautiful as back then, yet different: she was a vampire.
The realization took only seconds to sink in. What this meant took longer to digest: she’d been alive all these years, while he’d thought her dead, while he’d grieved for her.
At that moment something inside him snapped. The heart that had cherished her love for two centuries and kept it alive, suddenly cracked, a fault line the size of the St. Andreas fault carving itself through it.
His voice turned to ice when he addressed her again. “You made me believe you were dead.”
All these years she’d been alive, and she’d never come to see him. Had she not loved him even a little? For two hundred years, he’d mourned her, pined for her, and she had been alive all this time.
“I did no such thing.”
Hearing her voice for the first time in two centuries, nearly undid him. Despite the words, the sound was as sweet as a bird song. He knew he was a fool, but when it came to Rose, he would never truly be in possession of all his faculties.
“I went to your grave! I read the gravestone. You died shortly after I returned from the war.”
She made a dismissive hand movement. “So I did.” Then she straightened. “But I’m not here to talk about the past. I’m here to save our grandson.”
Shock made him stumble back a couple of paces. “Our what?” he choked out.
“Well, Blake is our great-great-great-great-grandson, but that’s just too long a word.”
God, how easy it was for her to talk to him, as if it all meant nothing, as if she wasn’t at all affected by this reunion. Her words sounded so matter-of-fact, whereas he could barely string a coherent sentence together. How cold had she become, the woman he’d once called wife?
“We had a child?” he managed to ask while he was barely able to keep upright.
“A daughter.”
The clearing of a throat made him snap toward the sound.
“I think I’ll leave you alone,” Gabriel said as he walked to the door.
Quinn hadn’t even noticed that he was still in the room, so taken in was he by Rose’s presence.
“I’ll be downstairs in Maya’s office if you need me,” Gabriel added before closing the door behind him.
Slowly, Quinn drew his gaze back to Rose, trying to digest her words. A daughter. He was a father.
“Where is she?”
A sad look crossed her face. “She’s long dead. She lived a full life, a happy—”
Quinn pounced, slamming her against the wall behind her, before he even knew what he was doing.
“You deprived me of ever knowing my daughter? You kept her from me? How could you be so heartless? How could you lie to me like that?”
She didn’t blink when she met his furious glare.
“This is exactly why.” She motioned to his claws that pressed her against the wall. “You came back as a vampire. I was afraid for her. I was afraid you’d hurt her if you knew she existed.”
“I would never hurt my own flesh and blood!” he shouted at the top of his lungs. “Never! Do you understand that?”
“Don’t you remember what you were like then? How you reacted when I . . . when . . . ?”
“You mean when you rejected me because of what I had become?” he hissed, hatred filling his heart, where love and grief had lived for two centuries.
Oh, he remembered every painful moment of it. How could he ever forget?
“I snuck into your house that night because your father wouldn’t receive me.” He remembered it just as though it were tonight. She’d looked angelic. She’d glowed, smiled at him when he’d entered her chamber.
“You wanted to tell me something then, but I didn’t let you talk. I wanted to tell you first what had happened to me. God . . . ” He paused and shoved a hand through his hair. “I almost died on that battlefield. And had Wallace not been there that evening, if he hadn’t turned me into a vampire that night, I would have been gone forever. But he offered me a way to come back to you. I did this for you. So we could be together again.”
Quinn stared into her blue eyes, but he didn’t really see her. He saw only what had happened that night. “You were afraid of me when I told you. You shrunk back from me, disgusted. As if you thought I would hurt you. I would have never hurt you. I promised you I wouldn’t hurt you. You wouldn’t listen. You didn’t even see ME. You saw a monster, but I wasn’t a monster. I was still the same man. I loved you!”
The last words made him choke. His heart broke a second time.
“And you trampled on my love. And as if that wasn’t enough, you lied to me. You kept my own flesh and blood from me!”
Quinn’s words sent a chill down her spine. Rose had never seen him so furious, so wild. And he had every reason to be. She would have reacted the same way.
The glare Quinn lashed at her cut deep into her heart.
Finally she pushed him away with both hands. Maybe she’d pushed him too far, but she couldn’t stop now. She still needed his help.
“What was her name?” he asked, his voice suddenly calmer.
“Charlotte.”
“That was my mother’s name.”
“I know.” When she’d given birth, she’d still believed that everything would turn out fine. That Quinn would return. Out of love and respect for him she’d named their daughter after his mother, a woman he’d adored and loved.
“Where was she when I came back?”
She didn’t really want to talk about those painful days, but she knew if she didn’t answer his questions, he would never agree to help her. She had to pacify him.
Rose pinned her gaze at the window, looking out into the darkness. “When it was obvious to my parents that I was with child, I showed them our marriage certificate. My father was livid. They sent me to a country estate. They told everybody in London that I was sick. I gave birth there, but they took Charlotte away from me. They placed her with a farmer’s family. It hurt to let her go, but I knew I would come back for her.” She lifted her lids. “Once you came back, we would have collected her. But . . . ” Her voice broke.
Undeterred by her anguish, he continued his questioning. “What happened to her?”
“She grew up as the farmer’s daughter. She married and had children. Only one survived. Charlotte died at the age of sixty-eight.”
Quinn turned away, but not before she’d seen a wet sheen suddenly covering his irises.
For the first time, she wondered whether it had been a mistake to hide his daughter from him. Maybe he would have loved her, cared for her. Doubts that had risen years ago resurfaced again. Had she been wrong? Should she have accepted him after he’d come back from the war, after he’d come back a changed man? No, not a man, a vampire. Could they have had a life together? No matter. It was too late now. She couldn’t turn back time, even if she wanted to.
“Did she know you were her mother?”
Rose nodded even though Quinn remained with his back to her. “Not at first. But I told her later. I looked out for her. She was never in need of anything. I protected her. And she made me swear to protect all her offspring too once she was gone.”
“She knew what you were?” he asked, disbelief in his voice.
“She was a brave girl. Never afraid of anything. When I told her, she accepted it. She made me show her my fangs. She showed no fear.”
She’d been so proud of Charlotte then. To have a daughter who had accepted her, loved her. Her descendants hadn’t been as welcoming. When she had told Charlotte’s son who she was, he’d tried to stake her right there and then, his country bumpkin prejudices too deeply ingrained in him to listen to her explanation. She’d had to wipe his memory of her to make sure it wouldn’t happen again. That was why she had not revealed herself to the others, but simply watched over them from afar, just as she watched over Blake from a distance. He had never met her, didn’t know who she was. And she wanted to keep it that way.
“You were disgusted with what I had become,” Quinn recalled in turning back to her, his face composed. “Yet you became a vampire shortly after that. Don’t deny it: you look the same as you did when I came back. You must have gotten turned within a year of my return.” His voice turned to stone again. “I want to know what happened. Everything.”
The dangerous undertone in his voice was unmistakable. But she couldn’t comply with his request. If he knew how she’d gotten turned, he would suspect what else she had done. And if he found out, she would be as good as dead.
“It’s not important. What’s important is that our grandson Blake is in mortal danger. I need your help to protect him. I can’t do it on my own.”
As hard as it was to admit that, she needed his expertise. After all, he was a bodyguard, and of all the things that she’d found out about Scanguards and the people he worked with, she knew they were the best. If anybody could prevent Keegan from digging his claws into Blake, it was Quinn.
“What makes you think I will help you after all you’ve done to me?”
She gasped. “After all I have done to you?” Had he already forgotten what he had done to her?
“Yes, you! Would you like me to make a list for you?” His glare intensified. He lifted his hand, counting with his fingers. “You tossed me out after I came back from the war. I professed my love. You stomped on it. You hid my daughter from me. And then you even made me believe you were dead when in reality you were living as a vampire. You became what you hated so much about me. Yet, you never came back to me, not even after you became what I was. Why is that, Rose? Why did you do all this to me? Did you hate me so much for taking your innocence, for leaving you with child?”
There was a hunted look in his eyes. Involuntarily, she reached out her hand, wanting to soothe his pain. He jerked back, as if he couldn’t bear her touch.
“I can’t talk to you right now.”
He turned on his heels and stormed out faster than she could get another word past her lips.
“I’m sorry,” she whispered, but he was already gone.
If only she could tell him the truth, but the truth would get her killed. And she wasn’t ready to die.