Burning Books Page 10

  Her hand smoothed over her shirt and pants, making sure they hadn’t spontaneously fallen off. Be cool, Molly. Suggest a few nights from now. Don’t be too eager. Well, don’t show that you’re too eager, anyway. She opened her mouth to suggest the night after tomorrow and found her tongue glued to the roof of her mouth. Her brain seized, all coherent thought grinding to a screeching halt. Shit!

  The silence on the line while he waited for her response lasted a beat too long. Then, as though completely oblivious to her paralyzing case of nerves, he said smoothly, “I hope you won’t think tomorrow night is too soon.”

  Her voice squeaked out, high-pitched and breathless. “Of course not.”

  “Then tomorrow it is. I insist you come for dinner, and we can examine the book afterward. If you have a pen ready, I’ll give you my address.”

  Molly scrambled for a pen and a scrap of paper, knocking a paperback novel and her glass of water off the side table in her haste. “I’m ready.”

  He rattled off an address in Medina. She scribbled it on the paper and started to tuck it into her purse, noticing just in time that her water had spilled into it.

  “Let me know if you need directions. Seattle streets can be very confusing.”

  “I can GPS it. And please don’t feel obligated to make me dinner. I don’t want to be an inconvenience. You’re a busy man and—”

  “Molly.” That gentle command again. “It’s my pleasure. I so rarely get to cook for anyone but my children, and they are not much impressed regardless of what I put in front of them. You’ll be doing me a kindness.”

  Doubtful, that, but she accepted it at face value.

  “If you have the time, could you do me a favor? Write out a brief outline of what’s happened in the story up to where you stopped reading, so I can put into context what you’ll be reading tomorrow night.”

  “I can do that.”

  When they said goodbye, his voice held a sultry note that made her insides quiver. She set her phone down, tucked the scrap with his address into the book, and fanned her face with it. Good Lord, how was that man still single?

  The solar superstorm and a missing wife. Right..

  A sobering thought. Her blush faded, taking its painful, itchy touch from her skin and leaving confusion behind. Ordinarily, she had no trouble conversing with the opposite sex, even its more attractive members. She couldn’t fathom why Cary Welch in particular inspired this foolish reaction in her.

  She didn’t want to risk triggering the book’s magic too soon by reading to the end of the volume, so she wrapped it in her silk blouse again, then emptied the contents of her wet purse and transferred them into a dry—and equally large—one. Annis called up the stairs that dinner was ready. Molly came out into the hallway, just catching a glimpse of the housekeeper bustling back into the kitchen. A glance down the hallway at her brother’s closed bedroom door brought her up short.

  Light spilled from the gap between the door’s edge and the floor. As she watched, a shadow dimmed it and then moved on, dimmed it again and moved on again, as though someone paced inside. She hadn’t heard Magnus come home; she sincerely hoped it had been while she was in her closet searching for the red lace camisole and not while she had been on the phone convincing Cary Welch that she was an idiot.

  He had to have heard Annis calling up the stairs that dinner was ready, so she didn’t need to prod him to the table. Nevertheless, she turned toward his room rather than the stairs. Smothering sister. Mollycoddling Molly. She raised a hand to knock but paused when she heard him speak.

  “It’s got to be here somewhere. It has to be here. It has to be here. It has to be here.”

  He uttered the last bit under his breath, as though he were talking to himself. She reached for the knob, thought better of it, and raised her hand to knock again.

  The door flung open with such force, it bounced off the wall behind and hit him in the shoulder as he charged through the opening. She backpedaled, cringing from the rage etched through every line of his body. His face lay in shadow, only the furious twist of his mouth and the berserk gleam of his eyes clear enough to make her regret not minding her own business. His hand reached for her throat.

  “Magnus, I’m sorry! I’m sorry!” She collided with the wall behind her. Eyes closed and one arm raised as though to ward off a blow, she flinched away from his grasping hand.

  His touch never came. Molly opened her eyes. Magnus’s bedroom door was closed. Nothing but darkness showed through the gap at the floor. She was alone in the hall.

  A key rattled in the front door downstairs. The rising wind outside swept Magnus into the entryway. Molly could see just his head and shoulders through the balusters as he shook off a flurry of icy raindrops and banged the door shut behind him.

  “I’m home!”

  She looked once more at his closed, dark bedroom and bolted for the stairs.

  Fear and adrenaline quaked her limbs as she flung herself against him. The need to put distance between them thundered from every pore of his body. To his credit, he didn’t flinch away from her as she blurted out, “I thought there was someone in your bedroom! I thought he was attacking me!”

  “I’ll call the police.” His phone was out in an instant. He swiped his thumb across the screen to unlock it.

  Molly drew away, running a shaking hand over her face. “No, don’t. I don’t know if . . . There’s no way someone could have gone back into the room, closed the door, and shut out the light in the space of one second and without making any noise.”

  He squared his shoulders. “I’ll go check the room.”

  “No!” She caught his arm. His brows shot upward in surprise. “I mean, I don’t think it’s necessary. It was just my imagination or something.”

  “That’s a hell of an imagination, Molly, when you’re convinced there was someone in my room. Besides, I’d feel better if I checked—we have to sleep tonight, you know. I’d sleep better knowing for certain no one else is in the house.” He started up the stairs.

  “Magnus.” He paused, one foot raised to step up to the next tread. “It’s not necessary. I thought . . . I thought he was you at first.”

  His expression darkened. “I’d never hurt you, Molly.” He took the rest of the stairs two at a time and clicked the switch on the wall at the top, flooding the hallway with light. With no apparent sense of fear, he burst through his bedroom door and slammed his hand on the light switch. Hovering at the bottom of the stairs, clutching the finial atop the newel post until her knuckles turned white, Molly waited while he tossed his own room, looking for a lurking intruder.

  At last, he came back into the hallway, face flushed. “Nothing. No one’s hiding.” Leaving the hall light burning, he came back down the stairs and freed the finial from her death grip. He squeezed her fingers and let her hand drop too soon. His eyes blazed into hers.

  “I’d never hurt you,” he said again, fiercely. “Come on, let’s eat.”

  He strode off to the dining room without further comment. With one last apprehensive glance at the brightly lit hallway, Molly followed.

  ∞4∞

  Molly waited until the next morning to write out her outline of the first book and what she’d read of the second. The incident in the hallway had spooked her. She’d had enough of imaginary intrigue to last at least until morning.

  After breakfast, Magnus left on an undisclosed errand, and Annis departed to buy groceries. Molly took a notepad to the small writing desk in the sitting room and poised her pen over the paper. Where to begin . . .

  She hardly thought Cary Welch would favorably view her sketchy outline if she jotted out, This moronic woman—known forevermore as Idiot Woman—is falling in love with her stalker. She’s even drinking lattes he’s left for her. DRINKING THEM! LATTES FROM A STRANGER!!

  So she wrote instead, She thought someone was watching her and reasoned that he would be able to form his own opinion about Idiot Woman’s behavior. Writing it in outline form, as he�
�d requested, didn’t seem to capture the enormity of Idiot Woman’s fatuity, so she crumpled the paper and tossed it aside. A high-level synopsis, almost an executive summary, seemed more in order.

  The sound of her pencil scratching across the paper was hypnotizing, a soothing, low-key noise akin to the soporific drum of a gentle rain. The lines of the page blurred. Her vision swam. The pencil wobbled across the paper, leaving ragged, shaky letters in its wake. The cherry desk melted into a blond-wood table not unlike those in countless libraries across the nation. A hand closed over hers and halted the pencil’s tottering progress, indistinct in her blurred vision but masculine in feel. The warmth of a body pressed against her upper back and shoulders, enveloping her. Soft breath soughed over her ear just before a voice filled it, silky smooth with a raspy undertone.

  “Do I make you nervous?”

  Molly jolted as though he’d shouted. The pencil dug a furrow across her notepad. She flung it away and spun around on her chair, her heart slamming against her ribs, her breath caught behind a lump of fear in her throat. Her skin broke out in an icy sweat.

  She was alone.

  Her chest hurt. She released the breath she’d been holding and gasped in a fresh one. She turned back to the notepad and reached for the pencil with a trembling hand, stopping cold when she saw what she had written, the letters at first smooth and then becoming disjointed and wobbly: Culture is the collective human beliefs t—

  The letter t ended in a dark jagged slash down through several ruled lines until the pencil tip had plowed through the paper, ripping a deep furrow.

  She wanted to run from the room and never touch the notepad again. But she didn’t want Magnus finding it, didn’t want to have to field questions that had no answers. I was dreaming, that’s all. Dreaming . . . and writing notes in my sleep.

  Her lips pursed in distaste, she snagged the notepad by the topmost page between two fingers and yanked it toward her, reading the words again. Culture is the collective human beliefs t—

  Culture. The study of culture was among various other topics covered by anthropology. Cary Welch was an anthropology professor—at the university Molly had once attended. You have a familiarity about you. I feel as though I know you already. Had they met, perhaps during the year the solar superstorm robbed from the memories of humankind? Or was this all just a daydream, a byproduct of finding herself smitten with a man who was otherwise spoken for?

  From the direction of the kitchen came the rattle of the garage door. Magnus was home. She snatched up the notepad and pencil and bolted on shaking legs for the stairs, not wanting to face him so soon after her . . . whatever it was that had happened. He stomped up the stairs and paused by her room, but in the end obeyed the silent go away directive of her closed door. His own banged shut behind him.

  She sat down at her desk, holding her hands out before her. The trembling had subsided, leaving behind a faint, unsettling anxiety. Cary Welch would want this summary. She couldn’t bear explaining why she’d failed to produce it. The notepad looked innocuous, lying on her desk, but she didn’t trust it any longer. Instead, she opened her laptop and typed it out. Even though Magnus rarely invaded the sanctuary of her bedroom without invitation, she waited for the sheets to stop printing, tucked them into her purse, and locked the notepad in her desk drawer before she showered.

  She couldn’t bear explaining it to her brother, either.

  ∞

  True to his contrary nature, Magnus not only was home when she was preparing to leave but had ensconced himself in the sitting room with a book. There would be no sneaking past him. He certainly had a knack for being obstinately present when she didn’t want him to be.

  She wore a sweater dress over leggings and a pair of soft-brown equestrian boots—positively conservative, or so she thought until Magnus’s eyes narrowed on her. Some quirk of his brain allowed him to pick out the details other men might miss: the silk scarf that added a touch of color to her otherwise forest-toned outfit and hid the startling amount of bare flesh the low-cut boat neck revealed (as well as any glimpse of her scars); the emerald tennis bracelet that exactly matched the hue of her dress, and the soft, romantic curls that framed her face and robbed any severity from her neat chignon.

  “Where are you going?”

  Not a question. An accusation. Molly bristled. He randomly vanished for hours on end, sometimes until morning, with no explanation or warning, and he had the audacity to question her? The smile she sent him was pleasant, as though she hadn’t heard the bite in his tone. No sense ruining her evening with an argument.

  “I have a dinner engagement. I’m not sure how late I’ll be, but I have my house key. Be sure to lock up when you go to bed.”

  “Who are you dining with?”

  “Dr. Welch.” Magnus’s eyes narrowed to slits. “I’m nearly to the end of the second book, so we’re going to do a . . . What would you call it? A controlled experiment, that’s it. We’re going to do a controlled experiment on what happens when we trigger the chemical reaction.”

  “The magic, you mean.”

  “There’s no proof of that.”

  “There’s no proof of chemicals, either. You promised you weren’t going to read them anymore.”

  “I promised I wouldn’t read them until they’ve been examined. And now they have been.”

  “Technicality.”

  “We’re going to have dinner first,” Molly plowed on. “I guess in case neither of us ever feels like eating again.”

  “Why doesn’t he come here, where you can be properly chaperoned?”

  She barked out a laugh. “Really, Magnus? What century are we living in?”

  He rose from his chair. “Regardless of century, it’s still highly inappropriate for you to dine at a man’s house unchaperoned. Not to mention dangerous. You just met him.”

  “Joyce has known him for years—for most of his life, actually. I’ll be perfectly safe.” She frowned. “How did you know we’re dining at his house?”

  “You aren’t dining here, and you’d hardly let that book burn in front of a restaurant full of people,” he pointed out reasonably.

  “Oh. Quite right. Well, to ease your fears, we won’t be unchaperoned. His children will be there.”

  “He has children?” His eyes popped open wide. “Where there are children, there’s usually a wife.”

  There was no avoiding it, no hiding it. “She vanished during the missing year.”

  “Do I even need to point out to you that this is a very bad idea? You’re dining unchaperoned with a married man.”

  Molly picked up her clutch purse and gave him a cold look. “I believe I’m old enough to control my libido, Magnus, not that there’s any control required. We’re discussing the books, and that’s all. Now please excuse me; I don’t want to be late.”

  He came after her but didn’t try to stop her, simply leaned against the edge of the French door and watched as she shrugged into her overcoat.

  “I saw the way you were looking at each other at lunch yesterday.”

  Resisting the urge to send some street sign language his way, because flipping him off would not convince him she was mature enough to control her apparently raging libido, Molly gave him a bland smile and slipped out the front door. Yesterday’s rain had yet to abate; if anything, the day had grown wetter and blusterous. Fingers of wind snatched at her coat and attempted to thread into her hair and pull her chignon loose. She closed the car door on it with relief, spent a moment tucking her hair back into place, and then sped away before Magnus decided she was lingering in the driveway because she was spoiling for a fight.

  Her GPS led her straight to Cary Welch’s home with no confusion. She was almost reluctant to leave the warm cocoon of her car. Cary waited on the covered porch, though, with an umbrella unfurled to keep her dry from vehicle to house. The pull of his odd eyes overpowered the comfort of the cozy car, so she popped open her door. Somehow he managed to make it from the porch to the side o
f her car before she stepped out. He stood under the shelter of one side of the umbrella, and when she rose under the other side, the space seemed indecently close, the shaft an inadequate barrier between them.

  “I apologize for the weather.” His smile dazzled her. His eyes bewitched her.

  “You can control the weather?”

  She’d meant to sound droll. His widening smile could only mean she’d fallen short of witty and landed somewhere near awe. Of course he could control the weather—those eyes could command nature itself. And if the eyes alone couldn’t manage, that smile would pull in a little extra magic and make it happen. Make anything happen.

  “I meant that you had to come out in such lousy weather.” Even as he spoke, he ushered her inside. The rain came too hard and heavy for her to get more than a fleeting impression of huge rhododendrons, sculpted flowerbeds, and light-pine-green siding. He guided her inside a tasteful yet functional entry hall and closed the door on the weather, taking her coat and shaking off the icy rain before hanging it.

  As he led her deeper into his home, which was decorated in a style that could only be called Comfortable Modern Austerity, he peppered her with questions, interspersed with general comments about the rooms they passed.

  “Did you come across Lake Washington? That hallway leads to my study, which is kind of tucked behind the kitchen—easy access to snacks when I’m working. Would you like a cup of tea before dinner to take off the chill? This is the formal sitting room—we don’t use it much, just when we have company other than family. Do you eat meat? I didn’t even think to ask. I noticed you ate seafood, but I made a pork loin for tonight.” He stopped dead in his tracks. “You’re not Jewish, are you?”

  She chuckled. “I’m not Jewish, so the pork loin won’t offend me. I’m one-hundred-percent omnivore, a cup of tea would be lovely, and I came up the four-oh-five rather than across the lake.”