SUMMARY: The courtship of Alexandra Johnson and Connor MacLeod.
DISCLAIMER: Not my original characters (except Ben and Mitzi), not my created universe. No money is being made from this story.
All the Good Women
by Parda, August 2001
Sequel to "Wild Mountain Thyme"
Part 1: COMING HOME
January 1994, Scotland
"What the hell are you doing in Scotland?" Jack demanded, his voice on the phone hard to hear over the music in the pub.
Falling in love, Connor thought, but he didn't get a chance to answer his friend.
"I just put John on a flight in Marrakesh," Jack was saying. "He gets into Newark tomorrow afternoon, as planned."
Connor's fingers clamped down on the phone as his guts tightened in fear. Nothing had been planned. He hadn't spoken to Jack in nearly a month, when Connor had left John in Jack's care.
"Something wrong with your memory?" Jack inquired caustically.
"No problem, Jack," Connor said, even though his mind was screaming "Kane!" in rage, and every muscle in his body was clenched in dread. "I'll pick him up.
"I have to leave," Connor told Alex when he got back to their table in the main room of the pub. Her mouth opened in surprise. "You coming?" Connor demanded.
"What?"
"Yes or no?"
"Yes," she said, standing up. He hauled her out the door and into his car. "But, my clothes...," she protested, when he took the road to Glasgow. "They're still at the hotel."
"Have them mailed," Connor told her, barely holding the car to the road as it careened on the very edge of the curve.
"What's wrong?" Alex asked, simple and straightforward, no complaining, no hysterics.
Connor appreciated that, especially now. "Kane's going after my son."
When they reached a straight-away, he pressed the accelerator to the floor. Alex reached over and touched him lightly on the hand in sympathy, and then she let him drive. No explanation was needed; Alex had met Kane before.
After they finally got on the airplane, she held Connor's hand and listened if he talked, but she didn't pester him with questions, and when he yawned, she offered her lap as a pillow and pulled a blanket over him. Connor slept fitfully. When he woke from a nightmare, Alex's fingers were gently stroking his hair. Connor kept his eyes closed, savoring her touch and his memories of the afternoon before.
"What do you want?" Alex had asked him, as they stood holding hands in the ruins of his broken-down forge, surrounded by the crumbled remains of his first life, his life with Heather in the Highlands, so very long ago, when he had been Connor MacLeod of the clan MacLeod, and he had always been able to look up and see the stars.
Nobody had asked him that in a very long time, and Connor didn't want to have to hide, not anymore, not from her. "I've always wanted a family," he admitted and watched as her blue eyes darkened with desire, then shifted nervously away.
"Things are going kind of fast," she pointed out, because they'd met only last month and spent a week together so far. The chill winter breeze of the Highlands stirred the golden strands of her hair.
"For both of us," he agreed, though he ached to feel the softness of her hair beneath his hand, to feel the brush of it against his skin. "But I need what's between us to be more than..."
"Swordplay?" she suggested, smiling, because they'd had a flirtatious and suggestive conversation about that very thing, when she'd asked if she could hold his sword a few days before. Connor grinned in return. "I need more than that, too," she told him, "and I'd like the chance to find out how much more."
"Good," Connor said, also eager to take that chance, and maybe, perhaps, to risk his heart with her. When she kissed him, it was with all the sweetness and promise of springtime, and Connor had lived in winter too long. They walked together down the hill, and in a castle-turned-hotel with a grand view of Loch Leven, they ignored the scenery outside the windows and went straight to their room.
Her hair was silk beneath his hands.
Connor had wanted to spend another few days with her, or maybe even a week. She was like springtime in the Highlands, sweet and wild and lovely, with the promise of summer heat to come. But they'd had only that one afternoon and dinner together in the pub, and then the phone call had come.
Connor shifted on the airplane seats and tried to go to sleep again, to give his body the rest it would need for the battle ahead. Sleep came, and with it the dreams, yet always he felt the touch of Alex's hand.
When they landed at Newark airport, Connor knew Kane was there. "I can feel him," Connor hissed to Alex, and he cut to the front of the line, but still he wasn't fast enough. Kane took John, and Connor abandoned his place with the customs agent and went tearing across luggage carousels and through barricades, trying to rescue his son.
Then the cops came. "FREEZE!" they yelled, with feet apart and arms braced, the better to point their guns right at Connor's head.
Connor kept right on going, so they tackled him, rough hands grabbing at his arms and coat, a punch or two thrown on both sides. "Let me go!" Connor shouted, still struggling to get past them and out the airport doors, trying desperately to rescue John from that immortal bastard, Kane.
The cops hung on, and more punches were exchanged. Connor couldn't win against them all. They slammed him up against a wall, handcuffed him, and shoved him in the back of a cop car. No one spoke to him on the ride to the police station, and then they sat him in a chair in front of a gray metal table in a cell of a room, with what seemed to be a mirror on the wall behind him. It was also, Connor knew, a one-way window. He'd been in rooms like this before.
He stood and started pacing, only enough room for three steps, back and forth and back and forth. Time could crawl, and time could race; Connor knew that better than most. He was immortal, and he'd seen nearly five hundred years go by. Even so, he didn't remember time doing both at once, yet now the minutes crept by with dreadful speed.
Five agonizingly slow minutes for him of waiting helpless in this room, and that meant forty-five minutes had flown since Kane had first stolen John away. Forty-five minutes. Connor didn't want to imagine - couldn't help but imagine - what Kane might do to a ten-year-old boy.
Might be doing, right now.
Back and forth and back and forth, from the one-way mirror to the blank and dirty wall. Ten more minutes, and that meant fifty-five for John. Nearly an hour. Nearly twenty-three hours since Connor had gotten the phone call from Jack, the phone call that told Connor that Kane was bringing the Game back into Connor's life...and straight to Connor's son.
Connor paused in his pacing of the interrogation room to look at his watch again. Fifteen minutes since they'd dumped him here, and still no cops had appeared. "Jesus!" Connor exploded and slammed his fist into the wall.
They'd probably been waiting for something just like that. A minute later, the door opened, and two cops strolled in. "Have a seat, Nash," the dark-haired cop said, using one of Connor's other names, a name Connor really needed to lose. Russell Nash had been a suspect in that string of beheadings nearly nine years ago, and when a headless body had been discovered in a hospital last month, Lt. John Stenn had quickly narrowed his search to that same man. Stenn was completely justified in his suspicions, but the cops didn't have a shred of evidence, and Connor wanted to keep it that way.
The older, fatter cop pulled out a chair for Connor to sit in. Connor debated disabling them both and making a run for it, but decided he'd never make it out of the building alive. Reviving and escaping from the morgue might take even more time. Connor did as he'd been told. The cops sat down on either side of him, and then the questions began. "He's got my son," Connor kept repeating, desperately hoping they would let him go, so he could separate yet another body from its head.
"What son, Nash?" the cops demanded. "Your records don't show any son. Guess we'll have to wait for the files. And tell us again, Nash. What were you doing in Scotland? How long were you out of the country? Why?"
"Jesus," Connor both swore and prayed, as the minutes and the hours ticked by. Around nine in the evening, Lt. John Stenn walked in, and Connor felt like putting his own head down on the table and banging away.
"So, Nash," Stenn said in his god-awful nasal twang, stinking of cigarettes and, as always, in need of a shave. "Talk to me. We got plenty of time."
There was no time at all. "He's got my son," Connor repeated, hoping it was still true, hoping John wasn't already dead.
Eventually, at four in the morning, after over twelve hours, twelve fucking hours of the same fucking questions, over and over again, first from this cop, then from that cop, and always - always! - from that persistent son of a bitch Stenn, the cops let Connor go. He shoved back the chair and headed for the door, and then Stenn called his name ... again.
Connor turned slowly, forcing himself not to slam that asshole headfirst into a wall, not to haul off and slug the fat cop who was blocking his way. They'd arrest him for assaulting a policeman, lock him up, and let him rot in jail while the paperwork got delayed.
"One day you'll make a mistake, Nash," Stenn warned, wagging a finger at him from across the interrogation room, the inevitable cigarette in his hand. "And when you do, I'll nail you."
Connor laughed at him, that annoying little man. "I've heard that before."
Stenn's watery blue eyes narrowed in hatred as he reluctantly told the fat one: "Let the fucker go."
Connor walked out the door. Alex was waiting for him downstairs. "I picked up our 'luggage' at the airport," she told him as they hurried through the halls. "I stored it in a locker in the bus station down the street."
"Good," Connor said, opening the door for her and then stepping out into the cold, gray dawn. Taking a murder weapon into a police station was not a great idea. At the bus station, they retrieved the duffel bag he had bought at the Glasgow airport, and in it, his sword. "You knew just what I needed," Connor told Alex with a kiss, and he flagged down a cab.
Connor and Alex went home to his loft, located above Russell Nash's antique store. The red light on the answering machine was blinking like a malevolent eye. Connor had to step over the shattered remains of the Faberge' egg to get to his desk, and he knew right then that Kane had been in his house, at this desk, looking at his things - including the picture of John.
Oh, Jesus Christ! How could he have been so stupid as to leave that sitting there? He'd already made that mistake Stenn had warned him about, and Kane had nailed him to the wall. And maybe nailed John, too. God!
Connor punched the button on the answering machine, and Kane's amused voice slithered forth. "MacLeod, or Highlander, or whatever you're going by these days it's your boy."
In the distance, John cried out, "Dad!"
"I hope I wasn't too hard on him," Kane said, laughing softly, and Connor had to consciously unclench each finger to relax his right hand, so tight it was in rage. "I'm at the old mission, Route One, Jersey City," Kane went on and added a sultry - and completely unnecessary - invitation: "Do come."
Connor went to Alex and took her hand in his, but there wasn't anything he needed to say. She knew. She knew of the Game, of the swords, of the killing and the blood, and she had accepted him just the same, earlier in the Highlands, all night at the police station, and here this morning by his side. Connor removed the ring from his little finger, the ring his lover Sarah had given to him before he had left her, and he placed it in Alex's hand. Her fingers closed over it slowly, but she didn't say anything. No warnings of "Be careful," no pleas of "Come back to me," because she knew he was going to, if he could.
He kissed her, softly, gently, tasting again that chance of new life. But it was still winter, with snow on the ground, and he might never see the spring. She was crying, silent single tears, and he brushed one away, her skin flower-soft under his hand. There was no whispered "I love you" between them, because they hadn't gotten that far. They hadn't had time. He wanted that time, and - oh, God damn this bloody damned Game! - he wanted it with her. He started to say that, he wanted her to know, but he had to turn and walk out the door, before it got too hard to leave.
Alex stood staring at the door until the tracks of her tears on her cheeks went from warm to cold and then dried completely, but the door didn't open, and Connor didn't reappear. Not that he could come back, she understood that, not until he'd rescued his son. Not until he'd killed Kane. Not until he'd chopped Kane's head off with a sword. Alex understood that, too.
She opened her hand slowly and looked at the antique silver ring that lay on her palm, a wide band supporting a small circle which was emblazoned with a crescent moon behind a star. A present from Sarah, Connor had explained yesterday, given over two hundred years ago. And now a gift to her, a hope for the future, but not a promise of forever, not yet. The right hand, Alex decided, not the left. She and Connor weren't engaged. It would also balance nicely with the ring her father had given to her four and a half years ago, on her graduation day.
"Hey, Dr. Johnson," Dad had called to her while she was still in her cap and gown, and her new title sounded very weird. "Congratulations! I knew you'd be stubborn enough to get that dissertation done, no matter how much you complained." He had taken a box from his pocket and opened it to show her a large oval of silver filigree mounted on a ring. "This was my mother's," he'd said, sliding it onto Alex's finger. Then he had frowned. "It's a little loose. You should get it resized."
"I don't want to change it at all," Alex had said, and she'd moved it to the forefinger of her left hand. "There. Perfect." And it was.
Connor had worn Sarah's ring on his little finger, a woman's ring on a man's hand, but when Alex slid the circle over the knuckle of her fourth finger, Sarah's ring fit perfectly, too. "Well," Alex said, looking around, but her voice became instantly lost in the vastness of the room, swallowed by this place of high ceilings and soaring windows, a home that seemed empty now that Connor was gone. Except Connor wasn't "gone," she told herself fiercely, scrubbing her hands across her cheeks. He was just not home right now. But he would be coming home soon. With John. And they would be fine. Both of them.
"Well," she said again, more strongly this time, and the word didn't just disappear. "What next, Johnson?" she asked herself, looking around. Connor and John deserved a warm homecoming, and the loft was freezing. Connor must have turned down the heat before he'd left for Scotland three weeks ago. Alex walked by the rack of swords that stood at the base of the metal staircase, past the gleaming grand piano, and straight to the thermostat on the wall near the door. She turned the heat up then started looking for a broom to take care of the broken glass in front of Connor's desk. The broom was in a kitchen closet, and that small task didn't take her very long, so Alex got busy with other chores. She had a lot to do before Connor and John came home.
Connor found Kane at the mission in Jersey City, as promised. They moved off Holy Ground to a nearby power plant to fight. The battle was brutal and ugly, even more so than most, but Connor survived. The lightning from Kane's Quickening ripped him open and flayed him alive, then dropped him face down and gasping on a cold metal gangway, high above the concrete floor. Behind him, Connor heard John's hesitant footsteps on the stairs. Connor dragged himself to his knees and turned to face his son - alive, thank God, both of them alive. "Oh, John," Connor whispered, holding him close, feeling the wiry strength of the young boy in his arms, which only hinted at the power of the young man to come. "I love you, John."
John's voice was muffled against Connor's shoulder. "Is he ... is he ...?"
"He's dead, John," Connor told him, turning John away from the shadows where the head and the body lay. "You're safe. I'm here. I'm going to take you home."
But home for John wasn't the loft on Hudson Street; it was their house in Marrakesh, where Connor and John had lived for the past seven years, ever since Connor's wife Brenda had died. John had seen the loft and liked to play in it, but they always stayed with Rachel when they visited New York. But Rachel was visiting her daughter and son-in-law in Florida, because last month Connor had told Rachel to get the hell out of town, far away from Kane.
Besides, Alex was waiting, and Connor wanted to go home. He told John a little about Alex on the way back to the city, but John didn't say anything, and he made no move to get out of the car when Connor parked in the garage. Connor carried him across the snowy street and up the stairs, the boy's arms clinging around his neck, the soft black curls tickling the underneath of his chin.
"Alex, this is John," Connor told her, and her eyes widened slightly as she took in Connor's torn and bloody clothing, and John's slightly glassy stare.
But all she said was, "Welcome home, John. Are you hungry? Want some macaroni and cheese? Chicken noodle soup? Hot bread? There are cookies for dessert." Connor could smell the food from the kitchen, and he gave her a grateful smile, because he knew how hard that was, to prepare a meal and keep it warm for people who might never return.
"Yeah, I guess," John said, the first sign of life Connor had seen so far. Connor sat next to John on the red sofa in front of the TV and put his arm around him. John leaned against his side.
Connor's hands were trembling, and he breathed deeply and slowly, trying to control the tremors that came from a Quickening, from that unique mixture of hunger, energy and fatigue. Alex brought over a tray and set it on the low table in front of them. Connor devoured three bowls of soup and plenty of bread, all the while trying not to notice the way her long black skirt revealed the supple line of her thighs as she moved about his loft, trying not to envision what he knew was underneath that thin gray sweater, trying not to remember the feel of her breasts in his hands, the taste of her, the touch of her, the little gasp she made when he-
Connor took another deep breath then reached for a cookie. He stared determinedly at his plate as he nibbled at the slightly burnt edge. It wouldn't be fair to Alex to use her in that way, and besides, John needed him now. Connor could deal with it. He'd done it before.
John ate two helpings of pasta and four chocolate chip cookies before he yawned and rubbed his eyes. "I made up the bed in the small room upstairs," Alex said to Connor. "Does he usually sleep in there?"
That had been Rachel's room, years ago, but Connor didn't want to explain just now. "That's fine. And thanks for cooking," he said, putting all he could into his smile, when he wanted to give Alex so much more. "It was great."
Alex smiled back but gave a half-embarrassed shrug. "I had to do something."
"Yeah," Connor said, understanding very well. He stared at her with hungry eyes until John yawned again, loudly this time. Connor walked with John up the stairs to the bedroom and tucked him right into bed. Teeth-brushing be damned. That could wait.
"Dad?" John called out, when Connor moved to pull down the shades. It was eleven o'clock in the morning, and the sun shone brightly on the snowy streets outside.
"I'm here," Connor said instantly and lay down next to his son on the bed. "I'm here. You're safe; you can sleep now." But that was more of a hope than a promise, because John was crying now, helpless tears of fear and shame.
"He said he said he was going to kill me, Dad," John said, and the words were gulped out between the sobs. "He drove the car. He looked like you. I didn't know... I wouldn't have gone..."
"I know, John," Connor said, holding him tight through the shuddering sobs, and wishing he could behead that bastard Kane all over again. "It wasn't your fault, John. You couldn't have known."
"He drove so fast, Dad; I was so scared. He was going... he said he would ... he said..."
"It's OK," Connor whispered, rocking back and forth and grimly holding on, because that was all he could do in the face of such terror. He knew; he had done this before. "It's OK, you can cry."
"Die Soldaten, die Soldaten!" Rachel used to cry out in the night, when she had first come to share his home, fifty years ago. "Everybody's dead!" she would wail. "The SS shot them all. Mama, Papa! Mama!"
"It's all right, mein Liebes," Connor would whisper to her, her still frail and undernourished body rigid with fear. "Not here. Not anymore. You're safe; I'm here." Slowly, she would relax in his arms and go back to sleep, and slowly, over the months and years, the nightmares went away. He had stayed by her side that entire first year, night and day.
And now another child of his was weeping in fear, and this time it was all his fault. Stupid, so fucking stupid of him to have been out of touch so long, to have let this happen, not to warn Jack somehow. Connor had thought John would be safe in Morocco, hidden away, but Kane had found him and used him
Used him.
Oh God, Connor thought, feeling sick with helpless rage. Not that. Not to a ten-year-old boy. Not that, too. "John," he asked softly, his eyes closed and his cheek against his son's hair. "Did he hurt you? Did he do anything to you?"
John's voice was muffled against his chest. "He kept driving into things; he almost pushed me out of the car. He told me we were going to die. But then he said that only I would die, because he couldn't die. He'd just keep coming back!" John pulled his head back to look up at Connor, his face tear-streaked, his dark brown eyes almost black, the pupils were so large. "He won't come back, will he, Dad?"
"No," Connor said firmly. "He can't come back. He's really dead."
"But he said-"
"I saw the body," Connor broke in. "It didn't have a head. He's dead." He spoke with the compelling conviction of the truth - some of it, anyway, the rest could wait - and John nodded and gulped air, believing him. But Connor couldn't stop here. "John, what else did he do besides drive fast and scare you?"
John's nose wrinkled, a sure sign of thought. "He talked mean, all the time, and he laughed at me a lot, whenever I- -"
Whenever John cried, Connor finished silently. John had always hated to cry.
"- - he hit me a couple of times - - "
Connor forced himself to sit there and listen, instead of getting up and slamming his fist through a wall. He should have gutted that goddamned, filthy bastard and watched him strangle in his own intestines before he did him the courtesy of chopping off his head.
"- - and he didn't give me anything to eat!" John finished, full of fury at this last offense. "Not even when I told him I was hungry!"
Connor bit back half-relieved and half-hysterical laughter, and instead nodded gravely. "You still hungry?"
"No," John said thoughtfully. "Those cookies were good, but I'm tired."
"Then let's go to sleep," Connor said, stretching out on the bed, one arm around his son. "I'm tired, too." John snuggled closer and shut his eyes, but Connor kept looking at his son, the dark lashes against dusky skin, the way his hair curled around his ears, the mole on his right jaw, the tiny scars above his lip: three straight lines in a row, from the seam on a baseball that had popped up and caught him right in the mouth. His mouth was slightly open now, white teeth showing as he breathed softly and slowly, asleep. "I love you, John," Connor told him again, and he bent his head to touch his son's.
Connor had always hated to cry.
Alex put away the leftovers, washed the dishes, swept the kitchen floor, and wiped the counter, but when she found herself scrubbing the sink, she set down the sponge and forced herself to sit on the lounge chair in front of the TV. Connor was home. John was safe. She didn't need to busy herself with compulsive, mindless cleaning anymore. They were fine.
Which meant that Kane was dead. Beheaded. Chopped into two very dissimilar pieces.
Alex got up from the chair and went back to scrubbing the sink. When that was clean, she dusted the items on the lower shelf in front of the window: a glass bowl, a silver vase with handles, a small statue of a horse. Then she stopped herself again and put water on for tea.
Connor was alive and John was safe, and that was good. Alex poured the boiling water over the tea bag and watched as tendrils of darkness curled through the cup. Kane was dead, and that was also good. Very good.
Alex tossed the tea bag in the trash bin under the sink, then sipped from the cup as she wandered about the loft and looked anew at Connor's home. Three columns of angular steel stretched high to the ceiling, marching alongside the metal staircase that bisected the room. Soft, filtered light poured through the skylights above and the immense windows on three of the four walls. The modern curves of a recliner chair and a bright red couch mingled casually with formal antiques from Europe. Oriental rugs offered islands of color on the polished wooden floor, and art in many forms adorned the walls: statues, paintings, porcelain, glass. There were curios from Africa, from India, from Japan.
When she'd changed the sheets in the bedrooms upstairs, she'd seen the same sparse, eclectic style in Connor's room: a huge antique wardrobe for his clothes (all precisely folded or neatly hung), one entire wall devoted to thousands of books, a king-sized bed of modern design with a Japanese kimono above it, and a large Impressionistic seascape on the fourth wall. Not a Manet, as Alex had originally assumed, but a Morisot: an original and no doubt very valuable piece of art. She'd seen another Morisot in the dining room, a painting of a languid brunette reclining by a stream.
The loft was a place of cold steel and extravagant beauty, a mingling of modern and ancient, the very air a constantly shifting battle between light and dark, the walls painted with the moving shadows of bars ... a home that echoed the man.
And the pictures of Connor himself, all neatly arranged on a wall... Alex stood next to his desk and looked at them again, now that she knew who and what he was, as she hadn't known when she had first entered his loft three weeks ago. Connor in Civil War garb, standing near a tree with comrades in arms. Connor in turn-of-the-century clothes, seated at a table with several other men, gambling perhaps, or making a deal. Connor throughout the years, different hair, different clothes, but always looking exactly the same age.
She went to a window on the eastern wall and looked down at the side street three stories below. A delivery truck beeped as it moved backwards, narrowly missing a silver garbage can. The first floor of the building was the antique shop, she knew, and Connor had told her that the second floor had a storage room, an office, and an apartment which had been built for Rachel nearly forty years ago. It stood vacant now. The basement held various odds and ends and the heating system, plus Connor's exercise room.
On the north wall, past the elevator shaft, was a pair of double doors, strongly built of a mottled wood she couldn't name. Connor hadn't mentioned that room, and when Alex tested the handles of the double doors, neither of them moved.
Alex nodded, well-pleased. She was an archeologist, and it was her job to discover buried treasures and bring to light hidden things. She had a feeling that Connor was going to be a very complex and demanding project, and that was very good indeed. Alex drank what was left of her tea, rinsed out the cup and set it in the dishwasher, then went quietly up the stairs. No sound came from the small bedroom, and Alex peeked around the half-closed door and froze, caught by a tableau that brought sudden tears to her eyes. Connor and John were both sound asleep, with John curled close against his father's side, and Connor's arm around his son. Their heads touched slightly, dark curls next to fair hair. Alex drew a trembling breath and closed her eyes in thanksgiving. It was good to have them home.
She went back downstairs and chose a different place to sit this time: the couch in the sunken living area, in front of the magnificent windows that stretched from ceiling to floor. Books were stacked on a shelf behind the couch, and Alex examined her choices then settled down to read, and to wait.
When Connor woke, John was still sleeping, so Connor eased himself silently from the room and went downstairs. Alex was sitting on the sofa in the corner near the piano, with a blanket tucked around her feet and legs. One of his books was in her hand. The Wasteland, by T. S. Eliot- Connor read the title from over her shoulder. She looked good sitting there, comfortable ... comforting. Sunlight streamed in from the wall of windows, lightening her hair to white gold. The ring he'd given her was on the fourth finger of her right hand, and Connor found himself surprised. Sarah had worn the ring above the knuckle on her middle finger, and for some reason he'd expected Alex to do the same. Different fashions, he reminded himself, different times. Different women.
Another ring was on Alex's left forefinger, a large oval of antique silver filigree. "It was my grandmother's," she'd explained when he'd asked her about it last week, as they stood in the shadow of a ruined castle and the wind flirted with her hair. "My father gave it to me the day I got my doctorate. And this one you wear?" she'd asked, with the briefest of touches and the barest grazing of hand upon hand, a searing bolt of warmth that had made Connor suck in air.
"A gift," Connor had replied, but he hadn't told Alex anything more, not that day. The explanations had come later, after he'd gone back to her, and after she'd told him she knew his name. Connor flexed his right hand experimentally. His finger still felt bare.
"Hey," Alex said now, looking up behind her. She took off her reading glasses and set down the book then moved over to make room for him on the sofa.
"Hey," he said in return and smiled at her, but he didn't sit down. He'd driven from the Highlands to Glasgow, flown across an ocean, spent the night in a police station, fought a battle to the death, taken a Quickening, and fallen asleep without brushing his teeth. Even he didn't want be close to him. "I'm going to take a shower. I'll be right back."
"Want company?" she offered.
"Alex," he began, but she was already off the sofa and standing in front of him, close enough to touch. Close enough for him to catch her scent, and she smelled great: violets and baked bread. The tremors started again, but only lust and energy now. He hadn't taken a Quickening in years, and Kane's was a strong one. He hadn't been with a woman in years, either, except for that afternoon with Alex two days ago. His wife Brenda had died seven years ago, and since then he'd been living in Morocco with John, and there wasn't ... except for that once ... he hadn't...
"Alex," he said again, swallowing in a dry throat and tasting the onions from the soup again. "That's not a good idea. I'm not-"
"I'll scrub your back," she interrupted and went up the stairs. Connor stood at the bottom of the staircase, gripping the railing and beating his head against the cold metal frame, slowly and methodically, hard enough to hurt, but not hard enough to make a lot of noise. Water started running through the pipes.
Alex appeared on the walkway overhead. "It's warm," she called down. "Do you need help getting undressed?"
"No!" he called back immediately, because as soon as she touched him... Alex nodded and went into his bedroom again. Connor slammed his head against the railing one more time. When he got to the bathroom (more of a bathing suite, actually, with separate areas for the sinks and the tub), she wasn't in sight, which was good. He peeled off his filthy clothes and dropped them on the floor, then stepped under the warm spray of water. Connor scrubbed off the first layer of grime and washed his hair. He still needed a shave, but Alex had thoughtfully placed a toothbrush in the shower, and he scraped the fuzz off his teeth.
"Do you want help now?" she asked, low and husky right behind him, and the sound of her voice shot straight down to the base of his spine. Then she was in the shower, naked, her hands touching his chest and down his sides and to the small of his back, and then he turned and was in her, that fast, with the water sluicing over them, running over his back and chest and thighs; and her back against the wall, with her arms around his neck and her legs around his waist; and his hands on her thighs, holding her there, holding her close, and with the heat from without and the heat from within, and-oh, God!-he was alive and she was here and-God, oh God!-he was alive!
He was alive.
Connor closed his eyes and let the water run, down over his back and shoulders, leaning his head against a wall this time, taking in deep breaths of air. "Mmm," Alex murmured, trying to lower one leg, and Connor carefully eased her down so that her feet could touch the floor. "Mmm-mm," she said this time, more comfortable now, leaning on him with her breasts pressed warm against his chest and her arms heavy and relaxed around his neck. "Talk about anaerobic exercise," she said, and Connor's snort was half amusement and half shame.
"Sorry," he muttered. "I'm not always a ten-second sprinter."
"Oh, I know," she said, sounding only amused, and she kissed him on the nose. "I remember a certain marathon event the other day." She kissed him on the mouth then, and Connor took his time about that. "Mmm," she murmured in pleasure, and a few moments later came an "Mmm?" of surprise.
"I'm an Immortal," he explained with a grin. "We recuperate fast."
Her eyebrows lifted, disappearing under darkened strands of wet hair. "I'll say."
Connor wanted her- -needed her- -now, but not if she didn't... if she... "Alex?" he asked, trying to control himself, trying to...
But- "Yes, Connor," she said, giving him everything. "Yes."
Connor didn't ask twice. "Turn around."
Alex shivered, but not because she was cold. The steamy heat from the shower kept the bathroom plenty warm, and Connor's hoarse command had just ignited a flame deep inside. Alex knew of the danger here, of the brute strength in him that could erupt into violence, of the raw domination that could so easily overwhelm. Yet she thrilled to that dark energy, and the fire inside her burned with both excitement and fear, because she also knew that Connor would balance himself-and her-on the knife-edge of a force that neither of them could control.
Alex looked once into those hooded, hungry eyes, and then she turned around.
Again, there was no foreplay, no finesse... only a relentless surge of elemental power that caught and immediately carried her to the crest of a towering wave. She leaned forward and braced her hands on the wall in front of her, the tile smooth and slippery under her palms. Connor's hands gripped her hard on the hips, his fingers deep enough to leave bruises. No ten-second sprinter now, the savage pounding drove her forward again and again, and his breathing sounded harsh and ragged above her breathless gasps for air. Finally, the wave crested and broke, and Alex cried out as it came crashing down and Connor slammed against her, driving deep. The power slowly drained away, leaving them both panting in a gentle rolling swell, with the soft pattering of rain from the shower running down her back and legs, and Connor's hands still holding her firm.
"God," Alex breathed, opening her eyes and trying to focus on the serpentine patterns of the aqua-blue and white tiles on the shower floor. "What a ride."
Connor chuckled as his hands slowly started to move, sliding forward on her hips until his fingertips met in front, then caressing the soft skin between the navel and the mons. "Your turn."
Alex straightened and started to turn around. "Connor..."
"Don't move," he commanded, and when she twisted her head to look at him, he immediately sank his teeth into the side of her neck, like a stallion with a mare, and his left hand shot up to take her by the throat. Alex froze, her pulse leaping high under his palm, that flame of fear licking along every vein, though there was no pain, no breaking of the skin, just a relentless grip that immediately turned gentle, the bite becoming a nibble and then a kiss, the hand relaxing into fingertips that dipped into the hollow of her throat and flowed on.
"I said: 'Don't move,'" he told her, and the words were a growl, a shudder of desire that racked her to the bones. His thumb and forefinger traced the veins on either side of her neck, barely touching, then sliding closer to take her by the throat again...firm yet gentle, strong yet soothing, dangerous and quite possibly deadly, this grip of a man who had killed only a few hours before, and now held her in his grip as well.
"But-"
"Trust me," he demanded, his hand pressing, urging, stroking, and she did, arching her neck against his hand like a cat in an ecstasy of submission, a surrendering that defied logic and pride and the feminist movement, because Alex didn't give a damn about feminism or femininity right now. She was a woman with a man, and she wanted everything he had.
"Good," he growled, and oh God, he was right, it was. Alex closed her eyes and leaned her head back against his shoulder, shuddering again when his right hand urged her legs apart, and she gave him that as well. Everything. She was his, and he was hers, and she wanted it all.
"Don't move," Connor reminded her, and Alex did her best to stand still as his hand moved in slow circles, the heel of his palm at her navel, his splayed fingers pointing down, moving lower, grazing the soft curls lower, spreading the folded layers lower still.
"Connor!" she gasped, surging against him, and instantly his teeth were back in her neck, harder this time, a nip of pain that flooded her completely, followed by another burst as his fingers savagely squeezed instead of gently explored.
"You bastard!" she swore, when she could summon breath enough to speak.
Connor's teeth nibbled upward and his tongue traced a path to the back of her ear, as his right hand slowly relaxed and massaged. "And you like it."
And she did. "Damn you," she said weakly, and Connor only laughed, his left hand moving once again on her throat, a steady stroking up and down, now matching the movement of his right. "Oh, God," Alex said helplessly, when he started going faster, giving her exactly what she craved. A slow spiral of heat started to build, shaking all her limbs. "Connor," she pleaded, "I can't stand up."
"Lean on me," came the husky command, close to her ear, and Alex relaxed into the strength of him, the lean firmness of his thighs bracing hers, his left arm now curled around her, just underneath her breasts, while his right hand continued to drive her mad. The shower pattered behind them, and she was slick with the water that flowed between them and over them, adding to her torture with warm rivulets over heated skin.
"Connor, please," she whimpered. "I have to... I can't-"
"You will," he ordered, and so she did, surrendering completely to him, to the rhythm of his touch and to the sharp nips and flowering bursts of pain that came whenever she moved -because she simply had to move-and to the ever-widening ripples of pleasure that followed every time.
"Connor," she said again, as the ripples slowly built to waves, and she could no longer tell the pleasure from the pain. "Oh, God..."
"I like my name better," he told her, dark and low. "Say it again."
"Connor," she said again, moving again, desperately needing what she had sworn at him for doing only a few minutes ago. "Oh, Connor, please, Connor please, Connor, Connor, Connor," over and over, until his name became a mantra of desire, until he finally told her, "Yes," and his hand surged upward and the tidal wave crested, sweeping her irresistibly onward, the pleasure flooding any pain, an endless ebb and flow that left her floating boneless in Connor's arms, completely unable to move.
"Oh, God," she finally breathed, and Connor laughed softly and kissed the back of her neck beneath her hair. She turned in his arms and looked into the dark gray eyes under water-darkened hair, the eyes of a man who could kill and make love on the same day, the eyes of the man she loved.
"You're a bastard," she told him, and Connor only laughed again, and Alex laughed, too. Then she pulled him closer to kiss him, because she wanted the tenderness between them again. Connor gave her tenderness, with sweetness added in, just as he had earlier this morning, when he had had to leave to go fight Kane. "I'm glad you're home," she said.
"So am I," came his heartfelt response, and Alex kissed him again.
"Turn around," she ordered next, and Connor raised an eyebrow. "I did say I'd wash your back," she reminded him, "and the hot water isn't going to last forever."
"I like it cold."
"So do I," Alex answered, and so after she'd soaped and scrubbed his back thoroughly and then let her hands wander to the front and told him not to move, until he couldn't not move anymore, she turned the water to full cold. They stood there under the frigid spray, skin goose-bumped and tingling, mouths open to catch a drink, hair dripping and blood racing and the both of them completely and totally alive.
John was safe, and Connor was home, and Alex couldn't think of anything better at all.
"I'm getting out," she announced.
"Too cold?" he challenged.
"No. My fingers are getting wrinkled." Alex was out of the shower and toweling off before it occurred to her to wonder if Immortals could get wrinkled fingers. When Connor emerged a moment later, she checked. Yes, Immortals got wrinkled fingers. Goosebumps, too, she remembered. And their hair-growth cycles seemed to be like mortals'; Connor was getting ready to shave. But their sexual response time was decidedly unusual. Alex decided more research was in order, taking into account a variety of conditions and factors ... definitely a long-term project.
Alex toweled her hair dry and watched Connor lather the shaving cream on his face as he stood in front of the mirror, a white towel wrapped around his slim waist. He used a straight edge, not a safety razor, but, of course, Connor was used to sharp blades. He caught her watching and winked at her reflection without turning around. "Thought you'd appreciate it," he said.
"The razor?" she asked, confused.
Connor shook his head then carefully shaved along his right jaw. "Me shaving." His gaze went back to hers in the mirror. "Considering what I have in mind for you next...in bed."
Later, after Connor had shown her what he had in mind and Alex had chanted his name again, they lay quietly together under the warmth of the covers in his king-size bed, toes curled against toes, legs intertwined with legs, torsos pressed together, heads touching, one set of hands clasped while the other set explored in wondering caresses ... a contented merging of two bodies into one.
"Is it always so intense for you?" Alex asked, as she trailed a finger over the muscles on his chest, following the subtle curves with fascination. "After?" Connor drew in a breath as he looked down and away, then his eyebrows lifted and descended slowly as he let out a quiet gust of air. So, he didn't want to answer, but the answer was yes. Alex knew he needed to talk, and she also wanted to know. "You certainly made it intense for me," she said, sultry and slow, hoping to encourage him.
Connor cleared his throat. "Good?"
"Good?" she repeated, lifting her head to look at him. "I wouldn't have said that," she teased and knew immediately it had been exactly the wrong thing to say. Connor's fingers had abruptly stopped combing the still slightly damp strands of her hair, and his eyes were watching her warily, even defensively, with more than a touch of embarrassment or shame.
"More than good, Connor," she hurried to reassure him, and she couldn't help but smile as she remembered the thrill of that ride. "Exhilarating, mind-blowing, incredible, overwhelming... a lot more than good." Connor nodded and smiled back, and his hand started to move again. Alex let go a silent sigh of relief, because she already knew that Connor was incredibly brave ... and also incredibly shy. He'd run from her before, and she'd had to wait for him to come back. She wasn't going to lose him now.
"I won't use you, Alex," he said, his hand stopping again, his eyes uncertain once more. "If you don't want-"
"I do want," she interrupted. "And I did want. Very much."
"You sure?"
She kissed him, sweet and tender and certain. "I'm sure." She tried to explain. "To know that you wanted me that much... it made me want you. And also, just looking at you, the way you were, I wanted you. You were so..."
"Impatient?" he offered.
"Pure," she replied, with a reproving thump on his chest. "Pure power, pure desire, but still held in control. You were so totally and completely a man." Not just a man, Alex realized, but a victorious warrior, a hero- -that mythical figure from thousands of fairy tales and thousands of women's dreams- -Alex's dreams, too, in a "you Tarzan, me Jane" purely primal and primitive way. "I've never seen that kind of beauty before."
Now she'd embarrassed him again... but not unpleasantly so. "Beauty and the beast," he said wryly.
"I like your animal side, too," Alex said as she pressed even more closely against him, adding a suggestive wiggle and a wicked smile. "And what you did after-" That smile came again, and with it a remembered thrill of pleasure, uncoiling inside. "God," she breathed, ducking her head against his shoulder in her own not-unpleasant embarrassment, then looking up to ask, "How did you know?"
"About your animal side?" he asked. Alex nodded, and Connor's left hand slid from the hair at the back of her neck and curled around her throat. Alex closed her eyes and almost purred. Connor chuckled. "I've often found that horses prefer a firm and guiding hand, and a rider who's in control."
"Are you implying," she asked, opening her eyes, "that I'm a horse?"
"A fine filly," he agreed, and Alex didn't mind. She'd thought of Connor as a stallion many times. "A palomino with creamy skin and golden mane," Connor said, stroking her hair again. "Easy gait, long-legged, beautiful lines." His hand slid down her back, caressing as it went, and Alex was smiling until he added, "Strong hindquarters," and smacked her on the rear, hard enough to sting. She twisted her head sharply and sank her teeth into his right hand, and she didn't let go.
"Good for riding bareback, if a bit high-spirited," Connor continued blithely, and Alex bit down. Connor smacked her again, even harder, and Alex let out of yip of pain. She changed her bite to a kiss, then swirled her tongue around the tip of his forefinger before she pulled his finger farther in. She nipped at it gently with her teeth then started a steady rhythmic motion with her lips and tongue.
"And a velvet mouth," Connor concluded, staring into her eyes. His own were molten metal gray.
Alex smiled in triumph and slowly-ever so slowly-let go.
His right hand reached over to gently trace the lines of her throat, and Alex tilted her head back and purred. Then his hand stopped, and Alex stopped, too. "Tell me," he said suddenly, an order, not a request, "if I do something you don't like, or go too far, or if there's something you'd like to try, or if you're just not in the mood, or-"
"Well, of course," she agreed in some surprise. Who'd put up with that, especially in bed?
"Promise me," he insisted. "No lies between us- -ever."
Alex knew then that somebody, sometime, somewhere, had indeed "put up with that," or lied to Connor somehow. What a bitch! she thought, and Alex kissed Connor once more. "I promise," she agreed. "No lies." She didn't feel the need to ask Connor to promise her the same; he wasn't the type to lie. But he also wasn't the type to talk, not without encouragement, so Alex went back to her original question. "Is it intense because of the Quickening?" she asked, the word still unfamiliar and strange. "Or just the fighting?"
He shrugged one shoulder, his hand gilding up and down the inside of her arm. "Both. Fighting will do that to anyone, mortal or immortal, but the Quickenings ... it's... " He gave up on that and let out another long and quiet gust of air. "You're alive," he told her, and Alex propped her head up on her hand so she could look into his eyes, deep gray with splinters of gold, massed storm clouds shot through with bolts of lightning. "You feel each blade of grass under your hands," Connor said, staring into nothing. "You know the shape and size and temperature of each droplet of blood touching your skin. You can taste the pollen in the air, or the coming snow. You hear everything: your heartbeat, the sap rising in the trees, the water deep underground, the pulse of the earth. It's as if your skin is peeled off, and fire is all around." He blinked and focused on her, then added half of a crooked smile and another half shrug. "It's a high, and it's hard coming down."
"I've noticed," she said then let her hand wander from his chest to follow the trail of fine hairs that led down the silk-smooth tautness of muscle, and finally to a lower set of curls. Connor sucked in air. "Looks like it's hard going up, too," she observed.
"It is," he assured her, but Alex decided a more detailed evaluation was called for, so she lowered her head to look... and to show him just how velvet her mouth could be.
Connor and Alex were asleep in his bed when the screaming began. Connor was out the door before Alex even sat up all the way. He opened the door to the small bedroom and took his son in his arms. "Shh, John, shh. I'm here," Connor said, over and over again, and the screaming slowly changed to sobs and then to whimpers, and then to gulping hiccups for air.
"I saw him, Dad. I saw him, in my dream. He's coming back for me, he's coming, he's not really dead-"
"He's dead, John," Connor interrupted. "Kane is dead."
John sniffled and wiped his nose on his sleeve. "Was that his name?"
"Yeah."
John blinked, his lashes black and spiky with tears. "He said he was your friend."
"God, no!" Connor swallowed hard. "No, John."
"But you know his name, and he said you were like him. He said you couldn't die."
Shit! This was not something Connor wanted to deal with right now. He'd been planning on telling John later, maybe in a year or two. Or three. Shit. "Kane is dead," Connor insisted. "And he and I were never friends. OK?"
John blinked again and sniffled. "OK." He sat up and looked around. "Dad, you don't have any clothes on."
"I took a shower," Connor explained, and that was certainly true. "You want a shower?" Connor suggested. "Or a bath?"
"A bath, I guess. But no hair-washing, OK?"
Connor laughed and ruffled his son's hair. "OK. Not tonight." John had always hated that.
John peered at the gray twilight around the window shades. "Is it night already?"
"Almost five o'clock. Should we send out for Chinese?"
"Yeah, I'm starving!" John agreed, and he hopped out of bed and went to the bathroom connected to his room, only to pause at the door. "Would you would you stay here? Until I'm done?"
"I wanted to put some clothes on, John," Connor said, half-laughing, but then he saw John's eyes, the fear there, and the shame at being afraid. "Come on," Connor said casually, holding out his hand. "The big bathroom's more fun anyway. It's got water jets in the tub."
"Cool!" John said and came with him down the walkway.
Connor was going to tap on the semi-closed door of his bedroom, because for John to see a naked woman in Connor's bed was bound to raise some questions, and Connor already had enough to explain. But Alex was downstairs, fully dressed and on the sofa reading, as if she'd been calmly sitting there all afternoon, and she didn't look up at the sound of their footsteps. Connor went into his bedroom so he could get dressed while John bathed.
The Chinese food was on the table and John was busy practicing with the wooden chopsticks when Alex joined Connor in the kitchen, where he was putting water on to boil for tea. "John should probably be seen by a doctor," she suggested quietly.
"Yeah," Connor agreed, turning on the burner. Rachel might know a good one. He needed to call her anyway, to tell her Kane was dead and she could come back to New York. At least Rachel had been safe through this mess. He'd done something right.
"And a therapist," Alex said.
"Hmm." Connor wasn't so sure about that. He got out a Japanese teapot and cups.
But two days later, when Rachel got back from Florida and stopped by the loft for lunch and to say hello (and, Connor knew, to check out the new girlfriend), she said the same thing. "John needs counseling," Rachel told Connor, who was once again making tea in the kitchen, but for an afternoon snack this time, not for Chinese.
"You didn't get counseling," Connor pointed out, rummaging in the cupboard next to the refrigerator.
"I had you," she said simply, her voice still carrying the cultured tones of the British boarding school where she'd spent her early years, even after nearly four decades of living in New York.
Connor set the mugs on the counter with a decided thump. "So does John."
Rachel turned from the kitchen counter to look toward the sitting area, where Alex putting a puzzle together with John's infrequent help. Connor watched his son, not liking what he saw. John was too quiet, too restrained. Connor hadn't even had to order him not to climb on the underneath of the stairs, or to suggest that rappelling off the overheard walkway might not be such a good idea, at least until they cleared the furniture out of the way. The nightmares hadn't gotten any better, and for the last two days John had mostly sat and watched TV or stared out the windows, looking around every few minutes to see where Connor was. Good thing the loft had no walls downstairs.
"I had all of you," Rachel said, turning back. "John's sharing you with Alex."
Connor ripped open the tea bags, pulling the tag of one completely off. "Alex is good with him." Alex had been the one to suggest John work on the puzzle with her. Putting pieces together didn't require conversation, and Alex knew how to be comfortably quiet. John seemed to like her; he listened when she read to him, and he'd even thanked for the cookies she'd made.
"Yes, she is," Rachel agreed immediately, and she gently took the tea bag from him then folded his hands in her own. "And she's good with you, and good for you. You've been alone too long."
"Not by choice." Not this time.
"I miss Brenda, too," Rachel said softly. "I think she'd have liked Alex."
"You do?" Connor said dubiously.
"Well, approve, anyway," Rachel amended. "Perhaps they wouldn't have been great friends. Alex seems very quiet. Not that Brenda was loud," Rachel added quickly, "but-"
"I know," Connor said with a grin, and Rachel grinned, too. Brenda had never been shy about making her opinions known.
Rachel gave his hands a quick squeeze of affection, then appropriated Connor's task of making the tea. Her mothering instinct was rising to the fore, and Connor knew better than to get in the way. He leaned one hip against the kitchen counter and watched the deft movements of her beautifully manicured hands as she set the tea bags in the mugs, added sugar, and laid spoons neatly on a tray. Her trim figure was nicely displayed in black wool trousers and a dark-honey cashmere sweater, and her silvering blonde hair was newly styled in short and sassy curls. She looked, as always, demurely elegant and serene. "I have to," she'd told him twenty-five years ago, when Connor had sported a ponytail and been trendily attired in ripped jeans and a tie-dyed shirt. "Look at you."
"It's comfortable," Connor had protested, hiding his smile.
"You look like a slob," she'd sniffed, smoothing a wrinkle in her polyester mini-skirt of navy blue and lime green. "Customers in our antique store expect more. At least you're not wearing love beads."
He'd gone out and bought some that very afternoon, a set for himself and a set for her.
Rachel picked up the tea kettle from the stove. "I do like Alex, Connor."
"Good," Connor said. "So do I."
"I know," Rachel said, smiling now, her sherry-brown eyes amused and wise.
"You always know," Connor told her. Sometimes before he knew himself.
"Of course I do," Rachel agreed then immediately returned to the topic of John. Alex wouldn't be the only stubborn woman in Connor's life... if she decided to stay. "But Alex is still a stranger to John, Connor," Rachel was saying as she poured the boiling water, "and immortality is new to him, too. He has to keep it all a secret. I didn't have professional counseling, that's true, but everyone knew about World War II; I didn't have to hide everything. Who can John talk to?"
"Me. You. Alex. Duncan, even. He'd fly back from Paris."
"He's in Paris again?" Rachel asked in surprise. "I talked to him last week, and he said he and Charlie were planning on fixing up the dojo this month."
"Unexpected business," Connor explained, which of course meant immortal business. Duncan had called earlier that day, right before he'd left Seacouver, with a hurried tale of machine-gun toting thugs who were working for the irritatingly urbane Immortal Xavier St. Cloud. Duncan had been shot (and killed), Charlie was in the hospital (in serious condition, but expected to recover), and the dojo was full of bullet holes (it would need a lot more fixing up now). "Watch your back," Duncan had warned. "St. Cloud's not playing by the rules." Connor had nodded grimly and told Duncan to do the same.
Rachel didn't press Connor for details, and Connor didn't volunteer. It was easier that way. They'd worked that out long ago. She set the tea kettle back on the stove. "Maybe John could talk to that nice psychiatrist Sean Burns," she said, ignoring all of Connor's earlier suggestions, which of course meant she'd had an answer of her own all along. "Brenda said he was a great help, afterward. For both of you."
Connor could translate the "afterward" easily enough. After the Kurgan had kidnapped Brenda. After the terrifying ride in the Kurgan's car. After the rape. After the battle to the death that had very nearly gone the wrong way, and after the Quickening that had left Connor fighting yet another battle, that one for his soul. The Kurgan hadn't gone down easy, either time. Kane wasn't giving Connor any problems like that, but maybe seeing Sean wasn't such a bad idea.
"Why don't you call him now?" Rachel said, picking up the tray with the tea. "You'd be able to visit with Duncan, too, since he and Sean are both in France."
Rachel went to sit with Alex and John, and Connor went upstairs to use the phone on the walkway. Sean was at home, delighted to hear from Connor, and eager to see John right away, the sooner the better. "And you, too," Sean added, and Connor was also looking forward to seeing his old friend.
He went downstairs and nodded in response to Rachel's unasked question, then sat next to John to help with the puzzle: a photograph of Niagara Falls. They didn't make much progress- -the damn thing was near impossible, all spray and water and sky- -and around four Rachel stood to leave. "Mitzi's probably making dinner now," Rachel said. "I told her I'd be home by five." Connor helped Rachel on with her coat, and she kissed his cheek and took both his hands. "I'm glad you've come home," she told him, and Connor knew she wasn't talking only about being back in New York.
"So am I."
"I know," she replied then turned to give John a hug. "Come visit me and Mitzi soon, all right? We'll make a cake."
John only nodded, instead of immediately asking what kind or requesting a pie. Rachel and Alex were right; the boy needed help. And he'd be getting it soon, Connor reminded himself. John would be all right.
"I'll call you," Rachel said to Alex, buttoning up her coat as she stood near the door. "We'll have lunch." She smiled at Connor and then gave Alex a grin. "And we'll talk."
"I'd love that," Alex answered, grinning back, and Connor very carefully did not roll his eyes or- -God forbid- -make a snort of any kind. Those two women weren't just stubborn; they were damn inquisitive, too.
Connor wouldn't want it any other way.
"Want to come to France with John and me for a month or so?" Connor asked Alex a little later that night in the kitchen, with his arms around her waist as he stood behind her and nibbled at one ear. She was much tastier than the salad she was making for dinner. Washed greens lay on the counter, and carrots were in the sink. John was practicing the piano on the other side of the loft, within sight but too far away to hear them. "We can stay long enough to see Paris in the spring," Connor suggested.
She turned in the circle of his arms and kissed him before she said no. "John needs you, Connor. All of you. He shouldn't have to share, not now," and Connor nodded in understanding and appreciation. His son came first.
"Besides," Alex went on, "I've been away from my job for almost three weeks, and I don't have any leave left. And ... and I've also been thinking that you and I should spend some time apart."
"Hunh," Connor replied, inelegantly mystified, incoherently hurt. The first two reasons made sense. That last one... He let go of her and stepped back with a shrug, already feeling the walls inside him slamming down, those walls that kept him safe ... and alone. He'd heard this "breaking up gently" routine before, even done it himself a few times, more than a few times. So much for having "come home."
"If that's what you want," he told her.
"It's too fast, Connor. Too much."
And yet another wall slammed down. The old "too much commitment" excuse. Connor nodded once and headed for his desk, already planning the trip in his mind. Tickets, passports, luggage, hotels... John would want to see a castle, maybe Mont-Saint-Michel. They'd say goodbye to Rachel before they left, then go back to Marrakesh when Sean said the therapy was done. There was nothing to keep them in New York.
Alex caught up to him before he got past the dining room table. "Connor!" she said and grabbed him by the shoulder to turn him around. He stood rock-still. "Hey!" she said, moving to stand in front of him, her eyes narrowed with anger. "Don't you do that to me!"
Connor narrowed his own eyes and demanded: "Do what?" in return.
"Give up," she accused. "Just walk away. Like it's nothing. Like you don't care at all."
"You said you wanted to go." He shrugged. "So go."
"I said," she enunciated, each word carefully spaced, "that I thought you and I needed some time apart, not that I wanted to leave."
"You also said it was 'too much,'" Connor accused in turn. "'Too fast.'"
"I'm not exactly accustomed to Immortality, wild rides across the Highlands of Scotland, kidnappings, arrests, fights to the death, beheadings, and the aftermath of a Quickening, Mr. MacLeod," she retorted, with that ironic twist to his name she'd used a few times before, back when she hadn't known for sure who- -or what- -he was. "And even without all of that..." She laid one hand on his chest in a gentle plea. "Connor ... you overwhelm me. I don't think straight around you." She smiled then, and her eyes went smoky-blue. "And when you touch me, I don't think at all."
"I know what you mean," Connor admitted with a smile. He laid his hand on top of hers, caressing the slim fingers with his thumb.
Alex drew in a sharp breath at his touch, but she didn't pull away and she didn't tell him to stop. "I need that chance to think," she explained. "To make sure of what I want."
"And what do you want?" he asked her now, as once she had asked him.
"Love," she answered simply, using "that word" with a casual confidence and ease that left him helpless and stunned. "Enough love for a lifetime. I don't want half a marriage, Connor," she went on, and there was the other word, so casual, so right. "I want it all, and I'm pretty sure I want it with you. But I need to know, and that means more time, and a little breathing space for a while."
"Love for a lifetime," he repeated, seizing that hope. "I want that, too." He watched the way her eyes darkened further with desire, then shifted away with the realization of what his immortality meant.
"My lifetime," she said, staring at the floor.
Connor put his hand under her chin and gently lifted her face to his. "And mine," he promised her. "However long." Or however short. Not all Immortals lived forever. "Till the end of my days."
"Talk about a big commitment," she joked nervously, and he smiled with her. She was right. It was. He'd made that commitment to Heather and to Brenda, and he'd kept it, every day. He was ready to make that commitment to Alex, too, but he knew he had to wait for her.
"You know I'm already half in love with you, Connor."
He hadn't known that, but he was damned glad to hear it. He smiled again and said, "Then we're both halfway there."
"Are we?" she said, smiling in surprise and delight, and her eyes searched his face once more. "I want to learn how to love you the rest of the way, Connor, and I want the time to do it right."
"Might take a while," he warned her. "A lifetime even."
"Good," she said and kissed him, sweet and hard. "Write to me while you're in France, Connor, and I'll write to you. When you and John come back, we'll see how much farther we have to go."
Continued in Part 2: Family Ties