Protector(77)

She winced and hoped that the evidence of their tryst wasn’t written all over her face. It had been amazing, and she knew she wanted more, but there was a time and a place for everything. She wasn’t sure last night had really been the best time for them to sleep together, but her body had overruled her brain on that particular issue. Now she and Alex shared some kind of bond, although she’d have a difficult time explaining what that bond exactly was. It couldn’t be love. Not so soon. Didn’t it take months and months to fall in love?

For some people, maybe. Actually, she’d always thought she was one of those people, someone who needed to spend a lot of time with a guy before deciding if it was worth going any further. For her, it had never seemed to be. But now she’d jumped into bed with Alex without even stopping to think it over. It was as if her body and soul already knew something that her mind kept refusing to acknowledge.

“Here we are,” he said, pulling over to the curb in front of an imposing Spanish-style mansion with an actual turret to one side, a turret with large windows that overlooked the street. You couldn’t see inside, though; the curtains were shut.

Caitlin’s hands suddenly felt very cold. She wished she could blame her chilled fingers on the gloomy gray day, but she knew they were only evidence of a spectacular case of the nerves.

Alex turned toward her. “You ready?”

“Probably not,” she admitted. “But let’s do this anyway.”

A flashing grin, one that sent an unexpected rush of warmth right to her core, despite their current circumstances. Then he undid his seatbelt and got out, while she followed suit.

A flagstone pathway wound up toward the arched front door. To either side of that door were terra-cotta urns with graceful drooping palms of a variety Caitlin didn’t recognize. They matched the house very well, but something about them felt cold and artificial, as if they’d been placed there precisely because they did go with the place and not because the people who lived there particularly cared for them.

Alex reached over and rang the doorbell. The sound of the Westminster chimes sequence echoed dimly within the house, and Caitlin held her breath, waiting. And waiting. She cast a worried glance up at Alex, and he gave the barest lift of his shoulders.

“It’s a big place. It could just take them a long time to get to the door.”

True. Or maybe they simply didn’t answer that door if they weren’t expecting anyone, in which case getting in might be even more difficult than she and Alex had expected.

After what felt like an eternity, though, the door opened slowly, and a pretty young woman around Alex’s age stood there looking at them with a half-startled, half-suspicious expression on her face. Caitlin could sense right away that the other young woman was a witch, and so that meant she could also tell that Caitlin and Alex were no civilian canvassers, out to tell everyone in the neighborhood about The Watchtower or the Book of Mormon.

“What is it?” the young woman asked.

Alex smiled — the sort of smile Caitlin thought should melt just about any heterosexual woman’s knees. The strange young witch seemed fairly impervious, however, and continued to stare at them, her expression not altering one whit.

The smile faded, and Alex said, “We’re really sorry to just show up like this, but there’s an urgent matter we need to discuss with Simón Santiago.”

She blinked. “And who are you, to show up on our doorstep and ask for such a thing?”

Our doorstep. Caitlin wondered exactly who the young woman was. Simón’s daughter? Most likely. She didn’t know all that much about the Santiago clan, but she figured the prima must have had at least one child before she suffered the fall that put her in a wheelchair.

Alex’s smile returned, albeit somewhat more subdued this time. “My name is Alex Trujillo, and my grandmother is Maya de la Paz. This is Caitlin McAllister. Her mother is one of the elders of the McAllister clan.”

Once she’d been given these credentials, the young woman appeared to soften slightly. “Well….”

“Please. This shouldn’t take very long.”

A lift of her shoulders, and she said, “All right. You can wait in the living room. My father’s out in the greenhouse. I’ll go get him.”

She opened the door the rest of the way and ushered them in, then shut it behind them. They stood in a large foyer with a wrought-iron candelabra hanging from the twenty-foot ceiling. All around were expensive-looking antiques and Persian rugs, and on many of the tables were orchids in a dizzying variety of shapes and sizes. That must have been what the young woman meant when she’d spoken of her father being in the greenhouse. The orchids were probably his hobby.