Raintree Read online

  “I don’t know.”

  She laughed lightly. “What do you mean, you don’t know? Don’t the ghosts tell you anything?”

  “Some things we’re not meant to understand.”

  She nodded, oddly accepting. This conversation shouldn’t seem so normal. Shouldn’t she laugh? Or cry? Dance, or close herself away from the world that had just changed forever? Instead, this seemed very, very natural.

  “Signs from above,” she said next.

  “Be more specific.”

  Hope lifted one hand and gestured in a casual way. “You see a rabbit cross the road, in a place where you’ve never seen a rabbit before. Maybe seeing a rabbit at a certain time of the day in a particular place is a sign. It’s good luck or bad luck, or an indication that you’re going to win the lottery or get hit by a bus.”

  “You really haven’t studied this at all, have you?” Gideon teased.

  “No. But I still want an answer.” She took a long sip of coffee and waited for one.

  “There are signs all around us, but we don’t usually see them.”

  She squirmed a little, trying to get more comfortable. “Not even you?”

  “Not even me. We overlook miracles every day. Then again…” Gideon shrugged slightly. “Sometimes a rabbit is just a rabbit.”

  The length of the day and waning adrenaline was making Hope’s eyelids heavy. They drooped, but she wasn’t ready to stop. Not yet. “Reincarnation.”

  “Definitely.”

  “You sound so sure.”

  “That’s why I used the word definitely.”

  She slapped him lightly and too comfortably on the arm. “Don’t tease me. I’m tired, and this is all new, and I still…” No, she couldn’t say she still wasn’t sure. She’d seen too much tonight not to be. Her hand remained on his arm, and it felt natural. Gideon was warm, and strong, and she liked the feel of his flesh right there, at least for now. It was soothing and spine-tingling at the same time. “If we come back again and again, and we meet the same people over and over, why don’t we remember?”

  “Where’s the fun in that?”

  “Fun?” Had he lost his mind? Life wasn’t fun. Oh, there were occasional amusing moments, but for the most part, life was hard work.

  “Yeah,” Gideon said. “Fun. We get to make mistakes, learn how to survive, discover beauty, discover the thrill of taking a risk. We experience emotions fresh, with new eyes that haven’t already been tainted or jaded by time. We face wonders with the excitement of something new and unknown, and fall in love with hearts that haven’t yet been broken and battered.”

  “Talk about a risk,” she said. Hearing Gideon talk about falling in love made her antsy. She leaned forward, placed her mug on the coffee table, reached beneath the back of her blouse, muttered a low “excuse me,” unsnapped her bra and slid it off through her left sleeve.

  “If you need help, all you have to do is ask,” Gideon said.

  “I’m fine,” she said, wiggling back into place on the couch. And ever so much more comfortable. “Angels.”

  Gideon leaned back and settled in, much as she had. “Yep.”

  “Fairies?”

  “I’ve never seen one, but that doesn’t mean they don’t exist somewhere. I’m not really sure.”

  She reached out a finger to touch the silver talisman on Gideon’s chest. “Lucky charms?” she said softly.

  He looked her in the eye, and her heart stuttered. Gideon did have amazing eyes. If she were in the market for a man, which she most certainly was not, he would do quite nicely. Not only was he beautiful in an entirely masculine way, he cared about his job. He fought for people who could no longer fight for themselves. He was justice and strength and sex…and occasionally he glowed in the dark.

  “Sometimes,” he finally answered.

  She removed her hand from his chest and flicked her own charm out from beneath her blouse. “When I was getting ready this morning, I felt like this thing was staring at me. I’m still not entirely sure why I put it on.”

  “Do me a favor,” Gideon said gently. “Don’t take it off.”

  Hope nodded, then returned to her previous and very comfy position. Everything she had ever dismissed as fantasy was apparently all real. She should be screaming in denial, but instead she felt oddly calm.

  “You say the Raintrees have been around for a long time.”

  “Yeah.”

  “When your ancestors married normal people, why weren’t the…the…Crap, I don’t know what to call it. I don’t believe in magic, but for lack of a better word, it’ll do. If your family has some kind of genetic magic, why hasn’t it been phased out as you’ve bred with the common folk?”

  Something about the word bred made them both squirm. From the beginning there had been sexual energy between them, even when she hadn’t been entirely sure he was a good guy. Still, it was too soon for energy of this sort. She never should have leaned close and touched that charm on his chest, and he never should have looked her in the eye that way.

  “Raintree genes are dominant,” Gideon explained.

  “So, if you have kids…” She opened her eyes and turned her head to look at him, curious once again. “Do you?” she asked. “Are there little Gideon Raintrees out there somewhere drawing in lightning and talking to dead people?”

  “I don’t have any children,” he said, his voice more solemn than before.

  “But when you do…”

  He was shaking his head before she had a chance to finish the sentence. “No. It’s hard enough to raise a kid in this world without teaching her that a part of who she is has to be hidden away. I won’t do that to a child.”

  “Her,” Hope repeated, closing her eyes again.

  “What?”

  “You said her. Not it, not him. Her.”

  He hesitated, briefly. “I have a niece. She’s the only kid I’ve been around for a while. That’s why I said her.”

  She didn’t believe him, but there wasn’t any real reason for her reservations. Just instinct. But she didn’t believe in instinct, did she? She believed in fact. Concrete, undisputed proof. That had been pretty much blown away tonight.

  “You shaved,” she said, turning the conversation in an absurdly normal direction.

  “I woke up feeling like the drug Tabby used was still there. It wouldn’t wash away.”

  She should’ve heard him moving around in the bathroom, but the house was so big…and she’d been so distracted…“I like it.”

  He snorted, and she smiled.

  “I’m gonna sleep now,” she said, her mind and her body falling toward oblivion. She was much too tired to even think about driving home, and if she did, she would only get there in time to take a quick shower, grab a bite to eat and start a new day. Here, she could sleep for an hour or two. “We’ll have to get up in a couple of hours and start the Clark investigation.”

  “It was Tabby,” Gideon said. “The blonde who killed Sherry Bishop and stabbed me.”

  “Yeah,” Hope answered, her speech slightly slurred. “I believe you.” And she did believe him. Every word he said was true. What a kick in the pants that was. “Tomorrow we have to find a way to prove it.”

  NINE

  Gideon lifted a sleeping Hope gently, and she didn’t even stir. He could leave her on the couch, he supposed, but the leather wouldn’t be pleasant to sleep on for very long. He laid her in his bed, instead, and she immediately rolled onto her side, grabbed a pillow and sighed.

  She could sleep in her clothes, but, like the couch…not very comfortable. He unfastened her trousers, waiting with each second that passed for her to wake up and slap him. But she was a deep sleeper, or else the day’s events had exhausted her. She slept on, barely moving while he removed her once-crisp gray trousers and tossed them aside.

  The blouse would have to stay. He really wasn’t up to getting her completely naked and then turning away. Without the bra, which still sat on the living room couch, she would be comforta