Page 68 of Edge of Darkness (Night Prowler 4)
The car slid to a stop at the curb on the street where he’d stopped that first night he’d brought her here, when she was in the cat costume and Christian had come up to her apartment. A thought occurred to her, something Christian had said that night in her kitchen, and Ember sat up, wiping her nose and face.
In a hoarse whisper, she asked, “Corbin, would it be all right if I asked you a question? A personal question…about Christian?”
He turned in the seat and looked at her, then nodded once.
“It’s just, something Christian told me about…about where he grew up.”
Corbin’s brows lifted. He peered at her in silence, waiting.
“He said there were no cars.”
Corbin nodded, still waiting.
“Well, he told me his parents had been killed in a car accident, and I wondered…I wondered…”
“They were away—on a trip,” he said quietly, and Ember sensed by the tone of his words and the expression on his face there was a lot more to it than that. She didn’t ask for details.
“Oh. I guess…I guess it doesn’t matter. I just wondered what happened. Because my…” She swallowed, and her throat tightened all over again. “Because my mother and brother were killed in a car accident, too.”
A fleeting look of sympathy crossed his face. “I’m very sorry, Miss Jones.” He stared at her thoughtfully for a moment. “It’s terrible to have something so painful in common, but perhaps in a way it could be a blessing, too.”
He saw her look of shock.
“Forgive me. It might be indelicate to say and I may be entirely wrong. But it seems to me that only someone who’s lost someone they love in such a violent way can relate to the pain of another in the same circumstances. You’re kindred spirits, so to speak.”
Kindred spirits. Clearly he didn’t know the circumstances under which she’d left. The pull of morbid curiosity prompted her next question.
“Was it a storm or something? What happened—to his parents?”
Corbin turned back around in his seat. With his hands gripping the steering wheel, staring straight out into the rainy night, he said darkly, “No, not a storm, miss. That would have been merely tragic. It was murder.”
Their eyes met in the rearview mirror, and Ember knew with sudden, freezing surety what he was going to say before he even said it.
Because of course it would be. Of course it would.
“It was a drunk driver. Christian’s parents were instantly killed.” He made a sound of disgust. “The man who hit them survived though, sorry bastard.”
Dying all over again, Ember whispered, “They always do, don’t they?”
Before Corbin could agree with her, Ember opened the door, leapt from the car as if it was on fire, and ran away through the pouring rain.
The next few weeks were neither good nor easy, a reality Ember resigned herself to with a certain amount of gratitude. Nothing should ever be easy or good for her, a fact she’d forgotten in her state of temporary insanity brought on by falling in love.
Love. Her mind flinched from the word like an abused dog, expecting a kick.
Things had returned to “normal.” She was back working at the bookstore and volunteering at the shelter on Sundays and three evenings a week as they continued to be overloaded with unwanted house cats who were being euthanized by the hundreds. Had she not been quite so numb, it would have sickened her, but she accepted this too with the resignation of someone for whom horror was a daily part of life.
Marguerite was furious with her for not signing over her shares in the bookstore and had threatened to never speak to her again if she continued to refuse. This suited Ember just fine. She didn’t know why Christian hadn’t withdrawn the offer, but he hadn’t. It stood as further testament to his character, which was so much finer than hers she felt like an insect in comparison, like something that should be smashed underfoot.
But she wouldn’t sell. She knew the reasons behind his offer to Marguerite were motivated by misplaced affection for her. And even if he were too much a gentleman to withdraw the offer the way he’d withdrawn his affections, she wouldn’t take advantage of it.
Now if she could only figure out a way to return all the money for her rent.
It came to her one night as she was cleaning out a cage at the shelter. Holding a filthy litterbox in one gloved hand and a pooper scooper in the other, she froze.
She had to move out of her apartment.
It was so simple she was surprised she hadn’t thought of it sooner. If she moved out, all the money would go to the cystic fibrosis foundation Dante had designated in his contract with Christian. She could help other children like Clare. It would be, in some small way, a payment toward an unrepayable debt.
