When her father was alive, these parties were, if not fun, bearable. His eyes would meet hers from across the room with a spark of mischief, and ten minutes later they’d be taking a clandestine hot chocolate break in the library, doing impressions of the guests. Her mother would roll her eyes at their disappearance. “Really, Alfred,” she’d chide, when they’d been gone long enough for her to notice and come find them. “These are your guests as well.” And then she would take his arm and sail from the room and back into the party, but not before whispering, “I do believe Lady Iveness looks rather like a parrot in that green silk. Unfortunate woman certainly sounds like one,” just loud enough for Holly, trailing behind them, to hear.
But Jane’s sense of humor died when Holly’s father did, fourteen years ago. So Holly hurries down the hall to the main staircase. At the top, she takes a deep breath to steady herself. Three, maybe four hours to endure before she can escape. Not so bad. She rolls her head from side to side, trying to release the tension that’s returned to her shoulders and neck. Robert’s face pops into her brain. What would the party be like with him here? She’d have someone to make her smile, at least. Someone to remind her to breathe, to eat. Someone enjoyable to dance with.
But the idea is ludicrous. She barely knows him. And even if she did, bringing him home to meet her mother . . . Holly shudders. No man deserves that. She pushes the thought away and descends the stairs, one careful step at a time.
“Holly,” her mother hisses from her place at the foot of the landing. “Where have you been?” Up close, Jane’s dress is even more beautiful, glinting under the lights as if it’s been spun from ice and snow. Her hair, shot through with silver, is pulled back into a sleek dancer’s chignon, not a strand out of place, and her posture is as perfect and graceful as if she were still a prima donna onstage. She casts a withering look at Holly’s own hair and opens her mouth to speak.
And then, impossibly, he is there. Standing between Holly and her mother like her own personal champion, blue eyes twinkling. He’s so handsome in a tuxedo that Holly catches her breath.
“Lady Darling,” he interjects before Jane can say a word. “As ravishing as ever.” He gives a courtly bow.
“Why, thank you, Robert,” Jane says. She turns to Holly, all traces of pique forgotten. “Holly, you do remember Robert Wightwick, don’t you? Robert, this is my daughter, Holly. I believe you attend the same school?”
“Indeed we do. In fact, I must apologize for both our tardiness. I was your daughter’s ride home and I lost track of time.”
He reaches out a hand toward Holly but smiles so winningly at her mother Holly can’t be sure who his next words are directed at. “Forgive me?”
The band is striking up a new number, and before Jane can say a word, Holly is in Robert’s arms and he’s whisking her away. This close, his cologne is the best thing she has ever smelled in her life.
“So do you?”
“Do I what?” she says, distracted by his scent and his closeness and those beautiful eyes.
“Forgive me.” His hands are on her back, and he expertly steers her through the crowd until they reach a sheltered alcove by the library.
“Tell me your sins, my child,” Holly says. She’s drunk on the music, on the night and the snow and her heady escape from her mother, who is actually beaming at her from across the room. On the heat of Robert’s hands. The way he’s looking at her.
“The list is long and illustrious,” he murmurs into her ear, and the feel of his breath makes her gasp. “Do you know that in all the years I’ve been coming to this party, you’ve never once given me a second glance? And you’re terribly oblivious to everything that isn’t a lab. I saved you a seat in front of me in that ethics class for a whole term, woman, without a single word of thanks.”
“We’re talking about your sins, not mine,” she reminds him. And then she can’t say anything else because he’s laying a tiny trail of kisses along her jaw.
“Fine. Mark me down for dishonesty. You have a terrible issue with punctuality, have I mentioned that?” he says between kisses. “So tonight I took fate into my own hands. Your roommate was taking your name in vain in the parking lot, and I promised I’d be responsible for you. I wasn’t waiting for a friend. I was waiting for you.”
“Dishonesty isn’t one of the seven deadly sins,” Holly says, but it comes out as a sigh, because now he’s kissing her collarbone. Her neck. The corner of her mouth.
He pulls away, looks her in the eye. “It’s not?” he says, and the absence of his mouth leaves such a hole in her skin that her hands of their own accord twine their way to the back of his neck, pulling him closer. “Then what is?”
“Lust.” The snow is falling like a thousand lost stars and the world outside the window gleams as if brand-new. Before he can say another word, she kisses him on the mouth and pulls the curtains of the alcove closed around them.
* * *
Holly stands quietly at her workbench, waiting for grief to release its hold on her. When the softness of vanilla finally fades enough to be replaced with the sharp odor of bleach, she moves to the far end of the room, where there is a refrigerated safe. She punches in her code and its door unseals. There are two drawers behind it. She reaches into the top one and extracts a bag of blood, still in its hazardous-materials packing. It came in yesterday from Cornwall, and with the Pixie Dust launch she hasn’t had time to handle it until now.
She carefully deposits the contents of the bag in a serum-separation tube, then places the tube in the centrifuge. It takes fifteen minutes for the blood to separate. Holly watches the entire time, keeping her mind still, trying to lose herself in the work and not think of Robert or Eden or any of the memories clamoring for her attention. Trying to breathe.
When the machine comes to a stop, she unlocks the lid. The red blood cells have collected at the bottom of the tube, the plasma and serum at the top. She draws off the plasma and serum into an unused sterile jar. She labels and dates the jar, then puts it in the top drawer of the safe.
Next she opens the bottom drawer—the freezer. Inside is a test tube of frozen blood and a thermometer. Holly checks the temperature, then shuts the door.
She takes the test tube containing the red blood cells out of the centrifuge machine and places it in a specially designed padded chiller bag, then locks her lab. She studies the video monitor to make certain she is alone before she slips out into the corridor.
Back upstairs in her main office, she nestles the bag into an inside zippered pocket of her leather tote. She takes one last look around the room, running through a mental list of tasks. Satisfied she’s not leaving anything undone, she pulls off her lab coat, tosses it into a hamper in the corner of her office, and leaves for home, shutting the door firmly behind her on any lingering ghosts.
Chapter Four
The apartment is silent when she lets herself in. There’s a note from Manuela, the housekeeper, saying there’s a roast chicken in the oven. Holly texts her that she can have the week off. She texts Barry too, telling him she’s on tomorrow’s flight out, that she’ll have Jack dropped off after school. And then she takes a deep breath, soaking in the quiet of the sanctuary she’s created.
With its clean-lined modern furniture and bright white walls, the apartment is about as far from her family’s London home as can be. No dust-collecting antiques, no gloomy corners, just white leather couches and gleaming hardwood floors. The first time Holly’s mother, Jane, visited, she’d taken one look and offered the loan of some family artwork. Not the Sargent oil, of course, which displayed Grandmother Wendy in all her luminous, adolescent glory, but perhaps the sketch he’d done of all three of the famous siblings? Holly thought of Great-Uncle Michael’s vacant stare and shuddered before firmly declining. It might be beneficial to trade upon her name at work, but she wanted no ties to the Darling family and its pedigreed history here.
Instead she’d purchased a few pieces of modern art to add color to the walls. And while there’s a bank of floor-to-ceiling windows at the far end of the living room, there are no curtains, no space for anyone to hide behind. Most importantly, only a handful of the windows open, and those only a few inches wide.