A Very Gothic Christmas

  "He's composing again?" Joy surged through her. "That's wonderful, just what he needs. He's been alone far too long."

  Paul matched her shorter strides on the stairs. "He's having a difficult time being around anyone. He doesn't like to be seen. And his temper . . . He's used to having his own way, Jessica. He isn't the Dillon you remember."

  She heard something in his voice, something that sent alarm bells ringing in her head. She looked sideways at him. "I don't expect him to be. I know you're warning me off, trying to protect him, but Trevor and Tara need a father. He may have gone through a lot, but so did they. They lost their home and parents. Vivian might not have counted, they barely knew her and what they remember isn't pleasant, but he abandoned them. Add it up any way you like, he retreated and left them behind."

  Paul stopped on the second floor landing, looking up the staircase. "He went through hell. Over a year in the hospital, so they could do what they could for his burns, all those surgeries, the skin grafts, and through it all, the reporters hounding him. And, of course, the trial. He went to court covered in bandages like a damned mummy. It was a media circus. Television cameras in his face, people staring at him like he was some freak. They wanted to believe he murdered Vivian and her lover. They wanted him to be guilty. Vivian wasn't the only one who died that night. Seven people died in that fire. They made him out to be a monster."

  "I was here," Jessica reminded him softly, her stomach revolting at the memories. "I crawled through the house on my hands and knees with two five-year-olds, Paul. I pushed them out a window and followed them. Tara rolled down the side of the cliff and nearly drowned in the ocean. I didn't get her out of the sea and make my way around to the other side of the house in time to let Dillon know we were safe." She had been so exhausted after battling to save Tara who could barely stay afloat. She had wasted precious time lying on the shore with the children, her heart racing and her lungs burning. While she'd been lying there, Dillon had fought past the others and run back into the burning house to save the children. She pressed a hand to her head. "You think I don't think of it every day of my life? What I should have done? I can't change it, I can't go back and do it over." Guilt washed over her, through her, so that she felt sick with it.

  "Jessica." Dillon's voice floated down the stairs. No one had a voice like Dillon Wentworth's. The way he said her name conjured up night fantasies, vivid impressions of black velvet brushing over exposed skin. He could weave spells with that voice, mesmerize, hold thousands of people enthralled. His voice was a potent weapon and she had always been very susceptible.

  Jessica grasped the banister and went up to him. He waited at the top of the stairs. It saddened her to see that he had changed and was wearing a long-sleeved white shirt that concealed his scarred arms. A pair of thin black leather gloves covered his hands. He was thinner than in the old days, but still gave the impression of immense power that she remembered so vividly. He moved with grace, a sense of rhythm. His body didn't just walk across a stage, it flowed. He was only nine years older than she, but lines of suffering were etched into his face, and his eyes reflected a deep inner pain.

  "Dillon." She said his name. There was so much more, so many words, so many emotions rising up out of the ashes of their past. She wanted to hold him close, gather him into her arms. She wanted him to reach for her, but she knew he wouldn't touch her. Jessica smiled instead, hoping he would see how she felt. "I'm so glad to see you again."

  There was no answering smile on his face. "What in the world are you doing here, Jessica? What were you thinking, bringing the children here?"

  His face was a mask she couldn't penetrate. Paul was right. Dillon wasn't the same man any longer. This man was a stranger to her. He looked like Dillon, he even moved like Dillon, but there was a cruel edge to his mouth where before there had been a ready smile and a certain sensuality. His blue eyes had always burned with his intensity, his drive, his wild passions, his joy of life. Now they burned a piercing ice-blue.

  "Are you taking a good look?" He had a way of twisting his words right at the end, a different accent that was all his own. His words were bitter but his voice was even, cool. "Look your fill, Jess, get it out of your system."

  "I'm looking, Dillon. Why not? I haven't seen you in seven years. Not since the accident." She kept her voice strictly neutral when a part of her wanted to weep for him. Not for the scars on his body, but the ones far worse, the ones on his soul. And he was looking at her, his gaze like a rapier as it moved over her, taking in every detail. Jessica would not allow him to rattle her. This was too important for all of them. Tara and Trevor had no one else to fight for them, for their rights. For their protection. And neither, it seemed, did Dillon.

  "Is that what you believe, Jessica? That it was an accident?" A small, humorless smile softened the edge of his mouth but made his eyes glitter like icy crystals. He turned away from her and led the way to his study. Dillon stepped back, gestured for her to precede him. "You're much more naive than I ever gave you credit for being."

  Jessica's body brushed up against his as she stepped past him to enter his private domain. At once she became aware of him as a man, her every nerve ending leaping to life. Electricity seemed to arc between them. He drew in his breath sharply and his eyes went smoky before he turned away from her.

  She looked around his study, away from him and his virility, and found it to be comforting. It was more like the Dillon she remembered. All warm leather, golds and browns, warm colors. Books were in floor-to-ceiling shelves, glass doors guarding treasures. "The fire was an accident," she ventured, feeling her way carefully with him.

  The ground seemed to be shifting out from under her feet. This house was different, and yet the same as the one she remembered. There were places of comfort that could quickly disappear. Dillon was a stranger, and there was something threatening in his glittering gaze. He watched her with the same unblinking menace of a predator. Uneasily, Jessica seated herself across from him with the huge mahogany desk between them, feeling she was facing a foe, not a friend.

  "That's the official verdict, isn't it? Funny word, official. You can make almost anything official if you write it up on paper and repeat it often enough."

  Jessica was uncertain how to reply. She had no idea what he was implying. She twisted her fingers together, her green eyes watching him intently. "What are you saying, Dillon? Do you think Vivian started the fire on purpose?"

  "Poor neglected Vivian." He sighed. "You bring back too many memories, Jess, ones I can do without."

  In her lap, her fingers twisted together tightly. "I'm sorry for that, Dillon. Most of my memories of you are wonderful and I cherish them."

  He leaned back in his chair, carefully positioned to keep his body in the deeper shadows. "Tell me about yourself. What have you been doing lately?"

  Her green gaze met his blue one squarely. "I have a degree in music and I work at Eternity Studios as a sound engineer. But I think you know that."

  He nodded. "They say you're brilliant at it, Jess." He watched her mouth curve and his body tightened in reaction. Actually hardened, in a heavy, throbbing ache. He was fascinated by her mouth and his fascination disgusted him. It brought up too many sins he didn't want to think about. Jessica Fitzpatrick should never have walked back into his life.

  "You moved the house away from the cliffs," she said.

  "I never liked it there. It wasn't safe." His blue eyes slid over her figure, deliberately appraising. Almost insulting. "Tell me about the men in your life. I presume you have one or two? Did you come here to tell me you've found someone and you're dumping the kids?" The idea of it enraged him. A volcanic heat that erupted into his bloodstream to swirl thick and hot and dangerous.

  There was an edge to him, one she couldn't quite nail down. As soon as she focused on something, he shifted and moved so that she was thrown off balance. Their conversation seemed more like one of the chess matches they'd often played in her mother's kitchen so many y
ears earlier. She was no match for him in sparring and she knew it. Dillon could cut the heart out of someone with a smile on his face. She'd seen him do it, charming, edgy, saying the one thing that would shatter his opponent like glass.

  "Are we at war, Dillon?" Jessica asked. "Because if we are, you should lay out the rules for me. We came here to spend Christmas with you."

  "Christmas?" He nearly spat the word. "I don't do Christmas."

  "Well, we do Christmas, your children, your family, Dillon. You remember family, don't you? We haven't seen you in years; I thought you might be pleased."

  His eyebrow shot up. "Pleased, Jess? You thought I'd be pleased? You didn't think that for a minute. Let's have a little honesty between us."

  Her temper was beginning a slow smolder. "I doubt if you know the meaning of honesty, Dillon. You lie to yourself so much it's become a habit." She was appalled at her own lack of control. The accusation slipped out before she could censor it.

  He leaned back in his leather chair, his body sprawled out, lazy and amused, still in the shadows. "I wondered when your temper would start to surface. I remember the old days when you would go up in flames if someone pushed you hard enough. It's still there, hidden deep, but you burn, don't you, Jess?"

  Dillon remembered it all too vividly. He'd been a grown man, for God's sake, nearly twenty-seven with two children and an insane drug addict for a wife. And he'd been obsessed with an eighteen-year-old girl. It was sick, disgusting. Beyond his every understanding. Jessica had always been so alive, so passionate about life. She was intelligent; she had a mind that was like a hungry sponge. She shared his love of music, old buildings, and nature. She loved his children. He'd never touched her, never allowed himself to think of her sexually, but he had noticed every detail about her and he detested himself for that weakness.

  "Are you purposely goading me to see what I'll do?" She tried not to sound hurt, but was afraid it showed on her face. He always noticed the smallest detail about everyone.

  "Damn right I am," he suddenly admitted, his blue eyes glittering at her, his lazy, indolent manner gone in a flash. "Why the hell did you bring my children all this way, scaring the hell out of them, risking their lives . . ." He wanted to strangle her. Wrap his hands around her slender neck and strangle her for wreaking havoc with his life again. He couldn't afford to have Jessica around. Not now. Not ever.

  "I did not risk their lives." Her green eyes glared at him as she denied the charge.

  "You risked them in that kind of weather. You didn't even call me first."

  Jessica took a deep breath and let it out slowly. "No, I didn't call. You would have said not to come. They belong here, Dillon."

  "Jessica, all grown up. It's hard to stop thinking of you as a wild teen and accept that you're a grown woman." His tone was sheer insult.

  Her chin lifted. "Really, Dillon, I would have thought you would have preferred to think of me as a much older woman. You certainly were willing to leave Trevor and Tara with me after Mama's death, no matter what my age."

  He rose from his chair, moving quickly across the room, putting distance between them. "Is that what this is about? You want more money?"

  Jessica remained silent, simply watching him. It took a great deal of self-control not to get up and walk out. She allowed the silence to stretch out between them, a taut, tension-filled moment. Dillon finally turned to look at her.

  "That was beneath even you, Dillon," she said softly. "Someone should have slapped your face a long time ago. Are you expecting me to feel sorry for you? Is that what you're looking for from me? Pity? Sympathy? You're going to have a long wait."

  He leaned against the bookcase, his blue eyes fixed on her face. "I suppose I deserved that." His gloved fingers slid along the spine of a book. Back and forth. Whispered over the leather. "Money has never held much allure for you or your mother. I was sorry to hear of her death."

  "Were you? How kind of you, Dillon, to be sorry to hear. She was my mother and the mother of your children, whether you want to acknowledge that or not. My mother took care of Tara and Trevor almost from the day they were born. They never knew any other mother. They were devastated at losing her. I was devastated. Your kind gesture of flowers and seeing to all the arrangements . . . lacked something."

  He straightened, pulled himself up to his full height, his blue eyes ice-cold. "My God, you're reprimanding me, questioning my actions."

  "What actions, Dillon? You made a few phone calls. I doubt that took more than a few minutes of your precious time. More likely you asked Paul to make the phone calls for you."

  His dark brow shot up. "What did you expect me to do, Jessica? Show up at the funeral? Cause another media circus? Do you really think the press would have left it alone? The unsolved murders and the fire were a high profile case."

  "It wasn't about you, Dillon, was it? Not everything is about you. All that mattered to you was that your life didn't change. It's been eleven months since my mother's death and it didn't change, did it? Not at all. You made certain of that. I just stepped right into my mother's shoes, didn't I? You knew I'd never give them up or let them go into foster care. The minute you suggested hiring a stranger, maybe breaking them up, you knew I'd keep them together."

  He shrugged, in no way remorseful. "They belonged with you. They've been with you their entire life. Who better than you, Jessica? I already knew you loved them, that you would risk your life for them. Tell me why I was wrong not to want the best for my children?"

  "They belong with you, Dillon. Here, with you. They need a father."

  His laughter was bitter, without a trace of humor. "A father? Is that what I'm supposed to be, Jessica? I seem to recall my earlier parenting skills. I left them with their mother in a house on an island with no fire department. Do you remember that as vividly as I do? Because, believe me, it's etched in my brain. I left them with a mother who I knew was out of her mind. I knew she was flying on drugs, that she was unstable and violent. I knew she brought her friends here. And worse, I knew she was fooling around with people who were occultists. I let them into my home with my children, with you." He raked gloved fingers through his black hair, tousling the unruly curls so that his hair fell in waves around the perfection of his face.

  He pushed away from the bookcase, a quicksilver movement of impatience, then stalked across the floor with all the grace of a ballet dancer and all the stealth of a leopard. When had his obsession started? He only remembered longing to get home, to sit in the kitchen and watch the expressions chasing across Jessica's face. He wrote his songs about her. Found peace in her presence. Jessica had a gift for silences, for laughter. He watched her all the time, and yet, in the end, he had failed her, too.

  "Dillon, you're being way too hard on yourself," Jessica said softly. "You were so young back then, and everything came at once--the fame and fortune. The world was upside down. You used to say you didn't know reality, what was up or what was down. And you were working, making it all come together for everyone. You had so many others who needed the money you generated. Everyone depended on you. Why should you expect that you would have handled everything so perfectly? You weren't responsible for Vivian's decisions to use drugs nor were you responsible for any of the things she did."

  "Really? She was clearly ill, Jess. Whose responsibility was she if not mine?"

  "You put her in countless rehabs. We all heard her threaten to commit suicide if you left her. She threatened to take the kids." She threatened a lot more than that. More than once Vivian had rushed to the nursery, shouting she would throw the twins in the foaming sea. Jessica pressed a hand to her mouth as the memory rose up to haunt her. He had tried to get her committed, to put her in a psychiatric hospital, but Vivian was adept at fooling the doctors, and they believed her tales of a philandering husband who wanted her out of the way while he did drugs and slept with groupies. The tabloids certainly supported her accusations.

  "I took the easy way out. I left. I went on the road a
nd I left my children, and you, and Rita, to her insanity."

  "The tour had been booked for a long time," Jessica pointed out. "Dillon, it's all water under the bridge. We can't change the things that happened, we can only go forward. Tara and Trevor need you now. I'm not saying they should live with you, but they should have a relationship with you. You're missing so much by not knowing them, and they're missing so much by not knowing you."

  "You don't even know who I am anymore, Jess," Dillon said quietly.

  "Exactly my point. We're staying through Christmas. That's nearly three weeks and it should give us plenty of time to get to know each other again."

  "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.