You didn’t have to be a rocket scientist to figure out what he meant by “seal the deal.”
For the first time, Connor’s voice held a touch of anger. “I’m handling it, okay?”
“Are you? It doesn’t look that way to me.”
“I’m handling it.”
A silence that felt painfully long, although I knew it only had to be a second or two. Finally, Damon said, “You’d better be. If you can’t rise to the occasion, then maybe I should step in.”
My blood went cold, even as Connor replied, his tone as frosty as the ice-covered streets outside, “You’re not her consort. I am. Leave it alone.”
Another one of those agonizing pauses, until Damon said, “I will…as long as you don’t.”
Then I heard the door slam. At the same time, a weight I hadn’t even noticed up until that moment seemed to lift from my chest. The primus was gone.
And here I was, standing at the top of the stairs, just waiting for Connor to discover me. I hurried back to the guest room and closed the door, then went to the bed and sat down.
A minute later, I heard his voice outside. “It’s okay to come out.”
Since I didn’t know what else to do, I got up and opened the door. Connor stood a foot or so away, clearly making sure I had enough room to get out without having to brush past him. I said hesitantly, “He sounded…upset.”
Those sculpted lips, the ones I had to try very hard not to think about kissing, tightened briefly. “Yes, he was, but I have a feeling you listened to the whole conversation, so no need for me to go into the gory details.”
I opened my mouth to protest, saw the warning look in his eyes, and decided I’d better quit while I was ahead. Instead, I told him, “I didn’t mean to get you in trouble. I just — ”
“You just wanted to let your family know you were all right. It’s fine.” He hesitated, as if he wasn’t sure what he should say next, then lifted his shoulders. “Actually, I hoped you’d find my laptop and get a message out to them. Not that it would make this all better, but at least they’d know you were alive, right?”
“You — ” The words couldn’t quite assert themselves, I was so flabbergasted by his remark. After taking a breath, I asked, “You meant for me to contact them?”
“Like I said, I didn’t want them to worry. I wasn’t really expecting them to drag Maya de la Paz into this, but — ”
Right then the cell phone in his pocket went off. He dug it out of his jeans — it was a sleek silver iPhone — answered with a brief “hello?”, then listened as a frown dug itself into his brow. “Okay,” he said finally, “I’ll be down in a minute.”
“Your brother?” I asked.
“No. That was Joelle, my assistant in the gallery. The client I was wooing all morning came back and is about to buy the piece, but he wants my assurances as to its potential to appreciate in value.” Connor shook his head. “The guy’s supposedly buying it as a Christmas present for his wife, but he still wants to make money on it. Anyway, I need to go handle things. Make yourself at home — but you’ve already sort of done that, haven’t you?”
Without giving me a chance to reply, he turned and hurried down the stairs, leaving me alone.
Again.
3
Turquoise
Strangely — maybe because I’d been fairly caught using Connor’s laptop — I had no desire to do any more snooping. Instead, I wandered downstairs, found a glass in one of the cupboards, and filled it up with water through the refrigerator door. He seemed to prefer bottled water, but I’d always drunk water like this when I was at Sydney’s house and didn’t see the harm.
A clock of burnished copper on one wall told me it was now almost two-thirty. I wondered how long the transaction at the gallery was going to take. As long as it took, I supposed. Since I’d just purchased several large original pieces myself, I knew Connor wasn’t talking about a few hundred dollars here.
I knew I should just sit down on the couch and turn on the TV, and try to disengage my brain for a while. The wards on the apartment were too powerful for me to overcome, and I’d already contacted my family. My available options weren’t what you could call vast.
But that visit from Damon had filled me with nervous energy, and so I went to one of the two large windows on the street side of the room and looked outside. The day was still bright, although I noticed the sky had begun to be dotted with large billowy clouds. More snow on the way? I didn’t know enough about the weather patterns in Flagstaff to say for sure. All I knew was that it was much colder here than in Jerome, and the city got consistent snowfall, whereas in Jerome it was still something of a special event when it snowed and actually stuck to the ground for a while.