When Darkness Falls: Kiss of the Wolf\Shadow Kissing\The Devil She Knew by Susan Krinard & Tanith Lee & Evelyn Vaughn

Author:Susan Krinard & Tanith Lee & Evelyn Vaughn [Krinard, Susan & Lee, Tanith & Vaughn, Evelyn]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Anthology
ISBN: 9781459216761
Google: qkLK_HCLrW0C
Amazon: 0373218222
Publisher: Harlequin
Published: 2003-10-01T00:00:00+00:00

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Chapter 6

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Having asked her if she minded walking, which she didn't, they duly walked through the lively, sun-setting city streets for twenty minutes, to a small restaurant he apparently knew.

By the time they were seated and choosing their food, Vivien found he and she were talking to each other as if they had known each other much longer and, perhaps, done this several times before. He seemed to know what she liked, for example, when he recommended to her from the list of starters an avocado dish she was already deciding on.

The restaurant was pleasantly lit and not hot, and only about half-full. As the sun went and evening settled in the open windows, a waiter came to light the rosy candles on the tables.

Connor told her then some of his history. Of an acting career he had mostly now jettisoned in favor of the work of Scavengers. A little about his gambling father, who had destroyed any joint family capital and then walked out on Connor's mother. Connor spoke of this briefly. He added no flavors either of anger or bitterness. Despite the controlled editing, Vivien's heart ached for him and the child he had been.

In turn Vivien displayed something of her rather uneventful if precarious life—her "unworldliness"—secondary school to art school, to a series of makeshift jobs, then the breakthrough into book-jackets and occasional exhibitions at modest venues. She told him, too, quickly, of her disapproving parents—her gruff father and chilly mother. She seldom saw them now, and spoke to them less often. Of Ellie Leiber, Vivien spoke at much more length, with warmth and a nostalgia Connor readily seemed to acknowledge.

"You can't choose your family, but you can make a new one with your friends," he said.

Neither of them spoke of former lovers.

She had little enough to say on that score. But with Connor, she sensed a shadow—darker by far than his fecklessly gambling father—that hung across Connor's emotional past.

Was that shadow, then, the mysterious K? Surely not. Her note to Connor in the volume of Shakespeare tragedies had been contrastingly humorous and light. K had sounded—OK. So, where was she now?

But that was silly, too. People part, not always in horrible ways.

When Connor and Vivien didn't select a dessert, the waiter brought them a dish of fresh fruit, nuts and cheese, and two tiny liqueurs, in vessels like metal thimbles. "On the house, Mr. Sinclair. With Milo's compliments."

Later Milo, the restaurant's owner, appeared with the coffee, to exchange a few words with Connor, and to bow to Vivien, as if they had all traveled back in time and geography to the Italy of the 1700s.

"The restaurant got a credit on a film we worked for," Connor remarked later on. "Milo said it increased business, and never stops thanking me. It wasn't anything, but he's one of the good guys."

After the meal, they walked again, more slowly, through still darkening evening streets beginning to blush with neon and street-lighting.

"Light pollution," said Connor scathingly.

"I wish just sometimes I could see the stars," Vivien agreed.

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