A Rose At Midnight

“You had your chance while we were dancing.”

“It wasn’t a suggestion, Christiane. Your life is at stake.”

“My life?” She scoffed at his exaggeration. “Aren’t you being overdramatic?”

“We need to talk.”

She skidded to a halt, forcing Daniel to do the same. Her free hand tightened into a fist, her stomach clenched into a squirming knot and the rising heat of anger had sweat breaking out along her hairline. A glass from a passing waiter’s tray swayed, then fell, taking its neighbors with it like bowling pins. Champagne splashed down the side of her dress.

She stood tree still, staring first at the broken pieces of glass at her feet, then at the dark stain running down the side of her dress. As a glimmer of something forgotten sparked, then faded, the blood drained from her limbs, leaving her skin ice-cold and prickling.

With effluent apologies, the waiter dabbed at her dress with a linen napkin, picked up the broken pieces scattered around her satin pumps and retreated.

Christi looked at Daniel and surprised herself with her calmness. “I can’t leave without telling my escort and thanking our hostess.”

“I’ll get our coats while you make our goodbyes.”

“You’re the guest of honor. You have to stay.”

A sardonic twist crooked his smile. “Musicians are eccentric, don’t you know? Madame Bernier is a good friend. She’ll understand. I will thank her profusely tomorrow.”

His eyes held a warning, one that spoke of danger in refusal, surging question after question, the chief one being—what was going on?

Chapter Two

“Marry you?”

The hard drum of Christi’s heart slapped against her ears, making her wonder for a moment if she’d hallucinated the words she’d heard. An hour ago she hadn’t known Daniel was alive, and now, here in her mother’s childhood home, he was asking her to spend the rest of her life with him? “Just like that?”

Only the fluorescent fixture over the sink lit the room. Its stark light stretched the shadows of the pine table and chairs to horror film proportions. The black window skewed its reflection of the kitchen out of shape. Only hours ago, she’d found comfort here, and Daniel was taking it all away.

He slung his midnight-colored coat, tuxedo jacket and bow tie onto the back of the nearest kitchen chair. “Yes. Just like that.”

Feeling every one of Quebec City’s twenty degrees below zero as if the room had no insulation, no walls, Christi buried her hands deep into her coat pockets to keep them warm.

Part of her had waited so long to hear those words. Yet a sense of disappointment, of confusion, rather than joy filled her. She’d wanted to hear the words, but not in this dispassionate way. That wasn’t the Daniel she knew and loved.

Had loved. She swallowed hard. Still loved. The truth hit hard. Her fist automatically sought the hard lump in her stomach, trying to soothe it with massaging pressure. As much as she’d like to hate him, as much as she’d like to pretend the love had melted along with the anger, she couldn’t. In spite of all that had happened, in spite of the fact they were hardly more than strangers, she still cared for him in a way that defied all logic.

“Would you like some tea or coffee?” Daniel asked with the ease of someone who was at home. Ease he shouldn’t have felt in the house that belonged to her mother’s cousin.

“No.” She breathed the word out on a long exhale and took her time to fill her lungs once more. “I don’t want tea. I don’t want coffee. What I do want is answers.”

“Some things are better left unsaid.”

“Like goodbye?”

A muscle flinched in his jaw, but otherwise, he gave no indication her deliberate barb had found its mark.

He opened a set of cupboard doors and rummaged through the contents on the shelves. “And if you don’t like the answers, Christiane, what will you do?”

“I’ll survive. I’ve done it often enough.” Raised as an air force brat, she’d left enough friends behind to learn how to cope with constant changes.

He banged the cupboard doors closed and moved to the next set. “The answer is that you’ve walked into a long-standing battle between me and Armand. If you stay here, you’ll only get hurt.”

“I’ve already been hurt.” And the way he’d left cut the deepest wound. If she’d survived that, she could survive anything.

Holding on to the glass handles, Daniel pressed his forehead against the crack between the crisp white cupboard doors. The signs were all there. She recognized the thin edge of control he held on his temper, the explosive emotions caged somewhere beneath the surface, and imagined the jumble of words hurtling chaotically in his head never to be spoken.

“If you hate Armand so much, how come you have a key to his house?”

“My father was his business partner. He was once a friend of the family. He was my godfather.”

She nodded once, sensing the ties made the battle between them that much more potent, but not quite understanding them, or why she was caught in the middle.

“Why?” She was aware of him on a physical level. Aware of the space he occupied, of the tension in his shoulders, of the uncomprehending way she wanted to go to him and hold him. She tried to look past all the layers of armor he’d suited himself with, reaching out for the missing something behind the words. The past and present mingled until she wasn’t quite sure where she was. So she focused on the curiously vulnerable bend of his neck. “Why do you want to marry me?”

Slowly, he turned to face her. He leaned the heels of his hands on the gray-flecked counter. His gaze met hers with control ruling. “Since you refuse to leave, it’s the only way I can think to protect you.”

“I don’t need protection.” I need you.

“I can give you now what I couldn’t offer you then.”

“That’s it?” She shook her head. A cold sadness squeezed her heart. She’d wanted something from him, but not that.

“What more do you want?” Without waiting for an answer, he turned back to the cupboard, and with quick movements, returned to his hunt.

“What about love?” Her voice sounded thin and stretched with desperation. As if her index finger belonged to someone else, she watched it trace a smooth knot on the table’s pine board.

“What of it?”

“You’re offering marriage.” She twitched her finger off the table when she realized the knot on the pine board was shaped like a lopsided heart. “Does it include love?”

“Love is a useless emotion.” He found a jar of instant coffee and banged it on the counter. He whisked a mug from a display shelf on the side of the sink window and set it beside the coffee jar with a thump. “We’re adults now, not children. We’re old enough to know that feelings have no place in this world.”

“What’s the point of marriage, then?”

“You said you wanted roots.”

Her heart hitched inside her chest. He’d remembered that from their six-month courtship? Her gaze sought him and she willed him to turn around.

He twisted the sink’s spigot too harshly and water splashed onto his white tuxedo shirt. Without acknowledging the wetness, he stuffed the kettle under the water’s stream and filled it. “I can protect you. I can give you security. I can give you the world.”

“But not your love.” She no longer seemed to feel anything—not the room’s cold air, not the fire in her stomach, not the feelings that should be ripping through her like a tornado.

“There are more solid things between a man and a woman than useless feelings.”

“Like what?” Could he have forgotten the passion they’d once shared?