Carson's Night (The Stonebrood Saga) Read Free

works.” She glanced at her father and away. “We’ll need something to cover him up.” She looked up at Connors. “You have a first name, Connors?”
    “Carson.” He was staring at her. “Sherwood trained you, but not your father?”
    “That’s a hell of an assumption.”
    “I’m in the sort of business that works on intuitive assumptions. I’ve been working with your father for nearly a year but I’ve never met you. Not even once. So he keeps—kept—you and his business carefully separated. Yet you know the business really well and you’ve been trained in it. You know Sherwood and his lover very well indeed. Ergo, Sherwood trained you. Why Sherwood and not your father?”
    “None of your business, Connors.”
    He caught her arm in his hand. His hand was big and warm, unlike Nick’s, which was always cool and slender. She looked down at it, then up at his face. He wasn’t angry, or impatient. He just looked at her.
    “Don’t fight me off, Tally,” he said softly. “Don’t be scared of me.”
    “I’m not.”
    “You are,” he said flatly. “I know you felt it, back inside.” He curled his hand around her neck, under her hair. “I imagine you’ve had hundreds of men tell you how beautiful you are, but you’ve never felt about them the way you reacted to me just now.”
    “Oh god, please,” she moaned. She couldn’t think of anything else to say. He was plucking the thoughts from her mind and speaking them aloud and it terrified her.
    “Say it, Tally,” he breathed.
    “I don’t want to want you,” she said, and this time the tears did fall.
    He didn’t just wipe them. He kissed them away.
    “Let me get you somewhere safe. Then I’ll show you that wanting me is good.”
    And so he did. They reached Nick’s three-story mid-town apartment by nine a.m., bringing her father’s body up in the service elevator, bent over and huddled inside a lined U.S. Postal Service bag. Then finally, they reached the apartment.
    Nick greeted them at the door and he looked even more haggard than before.
    “What happened?” Tally asked sharply.
    “Damian,” Nick said simply.
    She pushed past him into the apartment’s main room, her heart in her throat, looking for Damian. He was lying on the big leather couch in the main room and was horribly still. A blanket was pulled up to his chin.
    She reached for the blanket, but Nick grabbed her wrist. “No, it’s like seeing us naked,” he said.
    “I’ve seen you both naked, plenty of times.”
    “This is far more intimate,” Nick said awkwardly. He’s been…torn up.”
    She could feel more tears pooling in her eyes. “Will he heal?”
    Nick pushed his hand through his hair, one of his mannerisms for when he was stressed. “Yes, with time.”
    “How much time?”
    He shrugged. “I don’t know. We…they…no one has ever studied these things.” He looked down at Damian miserably and Tally impulsively threw her arms around him. Nicholas, she knew, came from somewhere in England in the feudal times, and this was not what a proper Englishman did even when he was unhappy, but Nick surprised her by hugging her back, his arms holding her hard and long.
    When he let her go, he held her head for a moment and kissed her cheek. His lips brushed her cheekbone as he murmured by her ear. “Connors wants you. I’ve never sensed longing with such power before. Let yourself want him back, Tally. I know you do.”
    She jerked in surprise and pulled back to look Nick in the eye. “Is nothing sacred with you, Nick?” she said in a normal voice.
    He smiled a little. “No.” He pushed her hair off her face. “You forget with whom you’re speaking.” Abruptly his accent was stiff and far more pronounced than usual.
    “Snob,” she teased, stepping away from him.
    He grimaced and swallowed. “Worried,” he corrected, with a glance at Damian.
    “He’s a tough old Spartan. He’ll pull through.” She whacked him on the shoulder. “Can you put my father in