A Very Gothic Christmas Page 4

  “Tara finds me repulsive to look at. Do you think I would subject a child of mine to my own nightmare?” He paced across the hardwood floor, a quick restless movement, graceful and fluid, so reminiscent of the old Dillon. There was so much passion in him, so much emotion, he could never contain it. It flowed out of him, warmed those around him so that they wanted to bask in his presence.

  Jessica was sensitive to his every emotion, she always had been. She could practically see his soul bleeding, cut so deeply the gash was nearly impossible to heal. But agreeing with his twisted logic wouldn’t help him. Dillon had given up on life. He had locked his heart from the world and was determined to keep it that way. “Tara is only thirteen years old, Dillon. You’re doing her an injustice. It was a shock to her, but it’s unfair to keep her out of your life because she had a childish reaction to your scars.”

  “It will be better for her if you take her away from here.”

  Jessica shook her head. “It’ll be better for you, you mean. You aren’t thinking of her at all. You’ve become selfish, Dillon, living here, feeling sorry for yourself.”

  He whipped around, taking her breath away with his speed. He was on her before she had a chance to run, catching her arm, his fingers wrapping around it so tightly she could feel the thick ridges of his scars against her skin, despite the leather of his glove. He dragged her close to him, right up against his chest, pulled her tight so that every soft curve of her body was pressed relentlessly against him. “How dare you say that to me.” His blue eyes glared at her, icy cold, burning with cold.

  Jessica refused to flinch. She locked her gaze with his. “Someone should have said it a long time ago, Dillon. I don’t know what you’re doing here all alone in this big house, on your wild island, but it certainly isn’t living. You dropped out and you don’t have the right to do that. You chose to have children. You brought them into this world and you are responsible for them.”

  His eyes blazed down into hers, his mouth hardened into a cruel line. She felt the change in him. The male aggression. The savage hostility. His hand tangled in the wealth of hair at the nape of her neck, hauled her head back. He fastened his mouth to hers hungrily. Angrily. Greedily. It was supposed to frighten her, to punish her. To drive her away. He used a bruising force, demanded submission, in a primitive retaliation designed to send her running from him.

  Jessica tasted the hot anger, the fierce need to conquer and control, but she also tasted dark passion, as elemental as time. She felt the passion flood his body, harden his every muscle to iron, soften his lips when they would have been brutal. Jessica remained passive beneath the onslaught, her heart racing, her body coming alive. She didn’t fight him, she didn’t resist, but she didn’t participate either.

  Dillon lifted his head abruptly, swore foully, dropped his hands as if she had burned him. “Get out of here, Jessica. Get out before I take what I want. I’m damned selfish enough to do it. Get out and take the kids with you, I won’t have them here. Sleep here tonight and stay the hell out of my way, then go when the storm passes. I’ll have Paul take you home.”

  She stood there, one hand pressed to her swollen lips, shocked at the way her body throbbed and clenched in reaction to his. “You don’t have a choice in the matter, Dillon. You are perfectly within your rights to send me away, but not Tara and Trevor. Someone is trying to kill them.”

  chapter

  3

  “WHAT THE HELL are you talking about?” All at once Dillon looked so menacing, that Jessica actually stepped back.

  She held up her hand, more frightened of him than she had ever conceived she could be. There was something merciless in his eyes. Something terrifying. And for the first time, she recognized him as a dangerous man. That had never been a part of Dillon’s makeup, but events had twisted him, shaped him, just as they had shaped her. She had to stop persisting in seeing him as the man she had loved so much. He was different. She could feel the explosive violence in him swirling close to the surface.

  Had she made a terrible mistake in coming to Dillon? In bringing the children to him? Her first duty was to Trevor and Tara. She loved them as a mother would, or, at the very least, an older sister.

  “What the hell are you up to?” he snapped.

  “What am I . . .” Her voice broke off in astonishment. Fear gave way to a sudden wave of fury. She stopped backing away and even took a step toward him, her fingers curling into fists. “You think I’m making up a story, Dillon? Do you think I dragged the children out of a home they’re familiar with, away from their friends, in secret, in the dead of night, to see a man they have no reason to love, who obviously doesn’t want them here, on a whim? Because I felt like it? For what? Your stupid, pitiful money?” She sneered it at him, throwing his anger right back in his face. “It always comes back to that, doesn’t it?”

  “If I obviously don’t want to have them here, why would you bring them?” His blue eyes burned with a matching fury, her words obviously stinging.

  “You’re right, we shouldn’t have come here, it was stupid to think you had enough humanity left in you to care about your own children.”

  Their gazes were locked, two combatants, two strong, passionate personalities. There was a silence while Jessica’s heart hammered out her fury and her eyes blazed at him. Dillon regarded her for a long time. He moved first, sighing audibly, breaking the tension, walking back to his desk with his easy, flowing grace. “I see you have a high opinion of me, Jessica.”

  “You’re the one accusing me of being a greedy, grasping, money-hungry witch,” she pointed out. “I’d say you were the one with a pretty poor opinion of me.” Her chin jutted at him, her face stiff with pride. “I must say, while you’re throwing out accusations, you didn’t even have the courtesy to answer my letter suggesting the children come live with you after my mother died.”

  “There was no letter.”

  “There was a letter, Dillon. You ignored it like you ignored us. If I’m so money-hungry, why did you leave your children with me for all these months? Mom was dead, you knew that, yet you made no attempt to bring the children back here with you and you didn’t respond to my letter.”

  “You might remember when you’re stating things you know nothing about that you are in my home. I didn’t turn you out, despite the fact that you didn’t have the courtesy to phone ahead.”

  Her eyebrow shot up. “Is that a threat? What? You’re going to kick me out into the storm or even better, send me to the boathouse or the caretaker’s cottage? Give me a break, Dillon. I know you better than that!”

  “I’m not that man you once knew, Jess, I never will be again.” He fell silent for a moment watching the expressions chase across her face. When she stirred, as if to speak, he held up his hand. “Did you know your mother came to see me just two days before she died?” His voice was very quiet.

  A chill went down her spine as she realized what he was saying. Her mother had gone to see Dillon and two days later she was dead in what certainly wasn’t an accident. Jessica didn’t move. She couldn’t move as she assimilated the information. She knew the two incidents had to be connected. She could feel his eyes on her, but there was a strange roaring in her ears. Her legs were all at once rubbery and the room tilted crazily. She had brought Trevor and Tara to him.

  “Jessica!” He said her name sharply, “Don’t faint on me. What’s wrong?” He dragged a chair out and forced her into it, pushing her head down, the leather covering his palm feeling strange on the nape of her neck. “Breathe. Just breathe.”

  She inhaled deeply, taking in great gulps of air, fighting off dizziness. “I‘m just tired, Dillon, I’m all right, really I am.” She sounded unconvincing even to her own ears.

  “Something about your mother’s coming here upset you, Jess. Why should that bother you? She often wrote or called to update me on the progress of the kids.”

  “Why would she come here?” Jessica forced air into her lungs and waited for the dizziness to sub
side completely. Dillon’s hand was strong on her nape; he wasn’t going to allow her to sit up unless she was fully recovered. “I’m fine, really.” She pushed at his arm, not wanting the contact with him. He was too close. Too charismatic. And he had too many dark secrets.

  Dillon abruptly let her go, almost as if he could read her thoughts. He moved away from her, back around the desk, back into the shadows, and hid his gloved hands below the desk, out of her sight. Jessica was certain his hands had been trembling.

  “Why should it upset you that your mother came to see me? And why would you think someone might want to harm the twins?” The anger between them had dissipated as if it had never been, leaving his voice soft again, persuasive, so gentle it turned her heart over. “Does it hurt to talk about her? Is it too soon?”

  Jessica gritted her teeth against his effect on her. They had been so close at one time. He had filled her life with his presence, his laughter, and warmth. He had made the entire household feel safe when he was home. It was difficult to sit across from him, thrown back to those days of camaraderie by his smoky voice, when she knew he was a different person now.

  “My mother’s car had been tampered with.” Jessica blurted it out in a rush. She held up her hand to stop his inevitable protest. “Just hear me out before you tell me I’m crazy. I know what the police report said. Her brakes failed. She went over a cliff.” She was choosing her words carefully. “I accepted that it was an accident but then other accidents started happening. Little disturbing things at first, things like the fan on a motor ripping loose and tearing through the hood and windshield of my car.”

  “What?” He sat up straight. “Was anyone hurt?”

  She shook her head. “Tara had just gotten into the backseat. Trevor wasn’t in the car. I had a few scratches, nothing serious. A mechanic explained the entire thing away, but it worried me. And then there was the horse. Trevor and Tara ride every Thursday at a local stable. Same time, every week. Trev’s horse went crazy, bucking, spinning, squealing, it was awful. The horse nearly fell over backward. They discovered a drug in the horse’s system.” She looked straight at him. “I also found this in the horse’s stall, sticking out of the straw.” Watching his face she handed him the guitar pick with the distinctive design made for Dillon Wentworth as a gift so many years ago. “Trevor admitted that it might have been in his pocket and fallen out. That and other things were sent anonymously to the kids.”

  “I see.” He sounded grim.

  “The stable owners believe it was a prank on the horse, that it happens sometimes. The police thought Trevor did it, and grilled him until I called an attorney. Trevor would never do such a thing. But it felt wrong to me, two accidents so close together and only a few months after my mother’s car went out of control.” Jessica tapped her fingernail on the edge of his desk, a nervous habit when she was worried. “I might have accepted the accidents had that been the end of it, but it wasn’t.” She watched him very, very closely, trying to see past the impassive expression on his face. “Of course, the incidents didn’t happen one on top of the other, a couple of weeks elapsed between them.” She wanted desperately to read his blue eyes, but she saw only ice.

  Jessica shivered again, experiencing a frisson of fear at being alone in the shadowy room with a man who wore a mask and guarded the darkness in his soul as if it were treasure.

  “What is it, Jess?” He asked the question quietly.

  What could she say? He was a stranger she no longer trusted completely. “Why did my mother come here and when?”

  “Two days before her death. I asked her to come.”

  Her throat tightened. “In seven years you never asked us here. Why would you suddenly ask my mother to travel all the way out here to see you?”

  One dark brow shot up. “Obviously because I couldn’t go to see her.”

  The alarm bells were ringing in her mind again. He was sidestepping the question, not wanting to answer her. It was too much of a coincidence, her mother’s visiting Dillon at his island home and two days later her brakes mysteriously failing. The two events had to be connected. She remained silent, suspicion finding its way into her heart.

  “What else has happened? There must be more.”

  “Three days ago the brakes on my car failed, too. It was a miracle we all lived through it. The car was totaled. Someone also has been phoning the house and sent old newspaper accounts of the fire to the children. That’s when the guitar pick was sent. The phone calls were frightening. That, along with the other incidents over the last few months, made me decide to bring them here to you. I knew they would be safe here.” She injected a note of confidence into her voice which she no longer felt. Her instincts were on alert. “Christmas was a natural, a perfect excuse should anyone question why we decided to visit you.” She had been so certain he would be softer at Christmastime, more vulnerable and much more likely to let them into his life again. She had run to him for protection, for healing, and she was very much afraid she had made an enormous mistake.

  Dillon leaned toward her, his blue eyes vivid and sharp. “Tell me about these phone calls.”

  “The voice was recorded like a robot’s voice. Whoever was calling must have prerecorded it and then played it when one of the twins answered. They said terrible things about you, accused you of murdering Vivian and her lover. Of locking everyone inside the room and starting the fire. Once he said you might kill them, too.” She could hear her own heart beating as she confessed. “I stopped allowing the twins to answer the phone and I made plans to come here.”

  “Have you told anyone else about this?”

  “Only the police,” she admitted. She looked away from him, afraid of seeing something she couldn’t face. “The minute they realized Trevor and Tara were your children, they seemed to think I was looking to grab headlines. They asked if I was planning to sell my story to the tabloids. The incidents, other than the car, were minor things easily explained away. In the end they said they would look into it, and they took a report, but I think they thought I was either a publicity-seeker or the hysterical type.”

  “I’m sorry, Jess, that must have been painful for you.” There was a quiet sincerity in the pure sensuality of his voice. “I’ve known you all of your life. You’ve never been one to panic.”

  The moment he said the words aloud, her heart slammed hard in her chest. Both of them froze, completely still while the disturbing memories invaded, crowding in, filling the room like insidious demons crawling along the floor and the walls. A sneak attack, uninvited, unexpected, but all-invasive. The air seemed to thicken with the heavy weight of memory. Evil had come with the mere mention of a single word and both of them felt its presence.

  Jessica did indeed know panic intimately. She knew complete and utter hysteria. She knew the feeling of being so helpless, so vulnerable, so stripped of power she had wanted to scream until her throat was raw. Humiliation brought color sweeping up her face and her green gaze skittered away from Dillon’s. No one else knew. No one. Not even her mother. She had never told her mother the entire truth. The nightmare was too real, too ugly, and she couldn’t look at it.

  “I’m sorry, Jess, I didn’t mean to bring it up.” His voice was ultra soft, soothing.

  She managed to get her shaky legs under her, managed to keep from trembling visibly, although her insides were jelly as she pushed away from his desk. “I don’t think about it.” But she dreamt about it. Night after night, she dreamt about it. Her stomach lurched crazily. She needed air, needed to get away from him, away from the intensity of his burning, all-seeing eyes. For a moment she detested him, detested that he saw her so naked and vulnerable.

  “Jessica.” He said her name. Breathed her name.

  She backed away from him, raw and exposed. “I never think about it.” Jessica took the coward’s way out and retreated, whirling around and fleeing the room. Tears welled up, swimming in her eyes, blurring her vision, but somehow, she made her way down the stairs.

>   She could feel Dillon’s eyes on her, knew he followed her descent down the stairs but she didn’t turn around, didn’t look at him. She kept moving, her head high, counting in her head to keep the echo of the long ago voices, of the ancient, hideous chanting from stealing its way into her mind.

  When she reached her room, Jessica shut the door firmly, and threw herself, face down, onto the bed, breathing deeply, fighting for control. She was no child, but a grown woman. She had responsibilities. She had confidence in herself. She would not, could not let anything or anyone shake her. She knew she should get up, check on Tara and Trevor, make certain they were comfortable in the rooms Paul had provided for them, on either side of her room, but she was too tired, too drained to move. She lay there, not altogether asleep, not altogether awake, but drifting, somewhere in between.

  And the memories came to take her back in time.

  There was always the chanting when Vivian and her friends were together. Jessica forced herself to walk down the hallway, hating to go near them, but needing to find Tara’s favorite blanket. Tara would never go to sleep otherwise. Her heart was pounding, her mouth dry. Vivian’s friends frightened her with their sly, leering smiles, their black candles, and wild orgies. Jessica knew they pretended to worship Satan, they talked continually of pleasures and religious practices, but none of them really knew what they were talking about. They made it up as they went along, doing whatever they pleased, each trying to outdo the other in whatever outrageous perverted sexual ritual they could envision.

  As Jessica moved past the living room, she glanced inside. Black heavy drapes darkened the windows, candles were lit in every conceivable space. Vivian looked up from where she sat on the couch, naked from the waist up, sipping her wine while a man lapped greedily at her breasts. Another woman was naked while several men surrounded her, touching and grunting eagerly. The sight sickened and embarrassed Jessica and she looked away quickly.