Darknight(80)

The only sour note in the evening came from, of course, Damon. He’d made a perfunctory pass of the paintings, didn’t even acknowledge Connor at all, and left early with Jessica in tow, murmuring something about ducking around the corner for a real drink. As he left, though, he shot me a look of such venom that I couldn’t help recoiling, although I knew I was perfectly safe here.

Despite that, I couldn’t help wondering why on earth he should be so angry with me. I’d kept a low profile the entire night, allowing Connor to bask in the praise of family members and strangers alike. I certainly couldn’t think of a single thing I’d said or done to provoke such ire.

Well, nothing except convince his brother to put his art on display when Damon always hated the idea…nothing except allow Connor to step out a little further from the primus’s shadow. When I thought of it that way, then I supposed I could see why Damon might be so angry. He didn’t want his brother independent; he wanted him under his thumb, the same place he’d wanted me. That we were both proving to be so difficult to manage had to be a thorn in his side.

What he would do about it — if anything — I had no idea.





14





The Shadow of the Wolf





Since the show was such a success, Connor threw himself into his work even more than he already had, painting sometimes eight or ten hours a day while Joelle ran the gallery. I wasn’t quite so dedicated, but I kept plugging away at my jewelry. If nothing else, it gave me something to do.

Maybe I should have felt neglected, but it was so good to see Connor happy and painting that I really didn’t mind all that much. And although I couldn’t persuade Aunt Rachel to come up to Flagstaff — that would have been asking way too much — I did borrow Connor’s FJ once or twice to drive to Sedona so she and I could meet for lunch. For some reason, I didn’t want to go back to Jerome without him. It would’ve felt like a capitulation, like I knew they still didn’t accept him. In my mind, I’d resolved that I would only return to Jerome with my consort at my side, and only when I knew they would take him in, if not with open arms, at least with the acknowledgment that he was their prima’s chosen life mate.

So March arrived, still bitingly cold. It was far too early for the trees to start budding in Jerome, let alone Flagstaff, but something in the shift of the angle of the light told me spring wasn’t too far off. I’d spent two months here, two months more than I had ever expected I would. Strange to think of that, and even stranger to realize that I enjoyed it here, enjoyed the new sights and sounds and people. I’d even made friends with a couple of the female Wilcox cousins, two girls who were around my age and all too ready to gossip whenever the occasion arose — which meant basically every time we got together.

“Aunt Janelle is just going nuts,” Carla Wilcox told me over coffee one bitingly cold morning. A freezing fog had descended on the town, and I was surprised she’d braved the icy roads to meet me at a coffee shop a few doors down from the apartment Connor and I shared.

“Seriously,” Mason Tillman put in. She and Carla were cousins of some kind, but I’d given up trying to sort them all out. She was a senior at Northern Pines and had a loft apartment here downtown, so she’d walked to the coffee shop, too.

Aunt Janelle was Jessica Lowe’s mother, apparently. It sounded as if she wasn’t all that resigned to the Wilcox curse descending on her daughter’s head, no matter what Jessica herself might think about it.

“So what is she doing about it?” I asked, then took a sip of my chai latte.

Carla rolled her eyes and let out an exaggerated sigh. “There isn’t much she can do. I mean, Damon’s the primus, so she’s sure not going to go up against him, and Jessica has been mooning over Damon for, like, forever, so she won’t listen.”

“She told her mother that she’d rather have a year with Damon than fifty years with someone else,” Mason added.

Ugh. Why couldn’t Jessica have a crush on Channing Tatum like a normal twenty-something?

“It’s just creepy,” Carla said. “I mean, not that I think he’s creepy, of course, but he’s almost eleven years older than she is, and she’s never been interested in anyone else. She totally flipped out when he got married to that civilian woman, and then when she died, Jessica was actually happy, which, I’m sorry, is just wrong.”

Yes, it was. I guess I was just surprised that a couple of Wilcoxes would think that as well. Obviously they were not quite the great monolith of evil I’d been raised to think they were. I liked Carla and Mason, and I thought Sydney would like them, too. My opinion of Damon was just as low as it had ever been, and I couldn’t really warm up to Marie, either, but these two girls and Lucas and a few others were far nicer than I’d ever imagined any Wilcox could be. They were so open, too — Carla telling me the first time we talked that her talent was what she referred to as the “mother of all bumps of direction.”