Come the Night

“You will today.”

Toby groaned. “You sound just like Mother.”

Ross grabbed Toby’s hand and flagged down a taxi. “How is she?” he asked.

The question was out before he could stop it. Don’t kid yourself. You’d have asked it sooner or later.

“Oh, she’s all right.”

Ross said nothing until a cab pulled up, and he and Toby were in the backseat. “Does she live alone?” he asked. “I mean…” Idiot. He shut up before he dug the hole any deeper.

But Toby was too bright to have missed his intent. “I haven’t got another father,” he said. “I always knew my real father wasn’t dead.”

“Mr. Delvaux…”

“Mother never talked about him. I’m not even sure he’s real.”

“You mean your mother wasn’t really married?”

Now you’ve done it, he thought. But Toby didn’t seem to be offended.

“I don’t know,” the boy said. “Some of the pages in her diary were missing, but there was enough in it to help me find you.”

Gillian had kept a diary. About him. And she’d somehow known that he’d gone into the force when he returned to America. He hadn’t even thought about it himself until he was standing on the East River docks, trying to think of the best way to forget Gillian Maitland.

Why hadn’t she forgotten him?

“Didn’t you think how upset your mother would be when you ran away?” he asked, resolutely focusing on the present.

Toby hunched his shoulders. “She has enough things to worry about.”

Ross swallowed the questions that immediately popped into his head. “Your mother has done a lot more than just worry.”

A speculative look came into Toby’s hazel eyes. “How do you know that, Father?”

“She sent someone to look for you. A man called Ethan Warbrick.”

“Uncle Ethan?” Toby’s forehead creased with concern. “Don’t tell him I’m here.” He tugged at Ross’s sleeve. “Please, Father.”

“Don’t you like him?”

“He’s all right, but…” He lowered his voice. “I think he wants to marry my mother.”

“War—Uncle Ethan isn’t a werewolf, is he?”

Toby looked up at him curiously. “No,” he said. “Did you think he was?”

“He knows all about werewolves.”

“Mother and Uncle Ethan were secret friends when they were children.”

“Does she want to marry Uncle Ethan?” he asked, cursing himself for his weakness.

“I don’t know,” Toby said slowly, as if he’d given the matter some thought. “You wouldn’t let him, would you?”

Ross didn’t get a chance to come up with an answer, because the cab had arrived at his building and someone was standing by the door. Someone Ross recognized the moment she turned her head and looked straight into his eyes.

Gillian Maitland.

CHAPTER TWO

SHE’D CHANGED.

Oh, not so much in outward appearance; she’d always thought of herself as plain, but to Ross, she’d been beautiful from the first moment he’d laid eyes on her in the hospital. She still was. Her features were a little stronger now, a little more fully formed with experience and maturity; the faintest of lines radiated out from the outer corners of her eyes; and her golden hair had grown long, gathered in an old-fashioned chignon at the base of her slender neck.

No, it wasn’t so much her appearance that had altered, or the cut of her clothing. Her suit was conservative, the skirt reaching below her knees, the long jacket and high-necked blouse sober and without embellishments of any kind. Ross remembered when he’d first seen her out of uniform; she’d been very proper even then, as far from being a “modern girl” as he could have imagined. Nor had her scent changed, that intriguing combination of natural femininity and lavender soap.

But her eyes…oh, that was where Ross saw the difference. They were cool and distant, even as her expression registered the natural shock of seeing him again after so many years. The hazel depths he’d always admired were barred like a prison, holding the world at bay. Behind those bars crouched emotions Ross couldn’t read, experiences he hadn’t been permitted to share. And a heart as frigid as an ice storm in January.

She looked from his face to Toby’s, and her straight, slender body unbent with relief. He’d been wrong. Her heart wasn’t cold. Not where her son was concerned.

“Toby,” she said. “Thank God.”

Toby stood very still, his face ashen. He began to walk toward his mother, not unlike a prisoner going to his well-earned punishment. Gillian knelt on the rough pavement and smiled, her eyes coming to life.

“Mother,” Toby said, his voice catching, and walked into her arms.

Gillian closed her eyes, kissed Toby’s flushed cheek and held him tight for a dozen heartbeats. Then she let him go and stood up, keeping her hand on her son’s shoulder.

“Thank you,” she said to Ross, sincere and utterly formal. “Thank you for finding him.”

Ross opened his mouth to answer and found his tongue as thick and unwieldy as a block of concrete. “I didn’t find him,” he managed to say at last. “He found me.”

“At the police station,” Toby offered, his brief moment of repentance already vanished. He looked from Ross to his mother, wide-eyed innocence concealing something uncomfortably like calculation. “You needn’t have worried, Mother. I was never in any danger.”

Gillian tightened her fingers on his shoulder, her gaze steady on Ross’s. “I’m sorry that you were put to so much trouble,” she said. “I didn’t know he had left England until the ship had already departed.”

“Yeah.” Ross locked his hands behind his back. “Your friend Ethan Warbrick told me the story. He implied that you weren’t coming.”

The barest hint of color touched Gillian’s smooth cheeks. “Perhaps Lord Warbrick misunderstood.” She glanced away. “Again, I apologize, Mr. Kavanagh. If you’ve incurred any expenses…”

“I bought him a hot dog,” Ross said, a wave of heat rising under his collar. “It didn’t exactly break the bank.” He smiled the kind of smile he reserved for suspects in the interrogation room. “As I told Warbrick, I don’t need any ‘consideration,’ either.”

“I don’t understand.”

That little hint of vulnerability was a nice touch, Ross thought. “Tell Warbrick he can tear up the check.”

“The—” Her eyes widened. “Oh, no. You mustn’t think such a thing, Ross. You—” She caught herself, donning the mantle of aristocratic dignity again. “We shan’t trouble you any longer, Mr. Kavanagh.”