Harvest XII (Epilogue)
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"You really do look beautiful tonight." Mick lifted her hand off her lap and kissed her fingertips.
"Thank you, kind sir. I just hope my gown can survive tonight's hazardous conditions."
"Hazardous conditions?" Twin lines of bemusement creased Mick's brow.
"Yeah," Beth said airily, "you know, the female feeding frenzy that's going to crush everything around you once the clock strikes midnight."
He harrumphed and pretended to concentrate on the road. Beth smiled at his profile, loving every familiar inch of it. Mick had been as good as his word. Their relationship had improved on every level since coming home from his mystery trip. Still, she found herself missing Josef at odd, random moments. She and Mick had been too wrapped up in one another to have seen much of anyone in the months since his return.
The Mercedes turned into Josef's long driveway. Beth gasped. Fairy lights lit the undergrowth all the way along the long drive to Josef's mansion and cool jazz floated down the hill in a way that made her skin tingle. Beth leaned forward. Coming up the winding drive tonight felt like coming home. Butterflies began to churn in her stomach.
Mick parked and threw the keys to a valet. People crowded out every open doorway.
"You ready to brave the crowd?"
With his hand on the small of her back, she'd brave anything. They walked into the wall of sound, laughing as they squeezed past beautiful women in floor length gowns and men in white shirts and ties and glossy black shoes. Mick clutched her hand tightly and forged through the crowd looking for Josef.
A space opened up suddenly and there he was, across the room by the piano, each arm around what looked like a pair of identical twins.
Mick shook his head. "Josef," he muttered in amused dismay, his tone not nearly as disapproving as Beth would have liked.
Josef looked across and grinned and waved them over. He looked insufferably smug as he stroked each of the exotic girls' flat midriffs. "Nina and Katrina, meet my friends Mick and Beth. Mick and Beth, meet my friends with benefits." Josef raised an eyebrow and shot Beth a far more polite version of the face that she was giving him.
Mick hugged Beth tight to his side, hoping it would stop the flow of air across her vocal cords. "Josef. I don't want to interrupt… I can see you have your hands full looking after your guests."
"Enjoy the party…. you know my home is your home," Josef smiled, and it seemed that his eyes caught Beth's and held them for a second before he was swallowed up by a bevy of giggly girls raiding his pockets for cigars.
The rest of the evening passed in a swirl of color and conversation and champagne by the pool as Mick held her close and swayed to Chet Baker's 'My Funny Valentine'. She hadn't caught a glimpse of Josef, let alone had any time with him to really talk and as the clock ticked ever closer to the hour she caught herself looking for him surreptitiously in the crowd. Eventually she asked Mick.
"Where did Josef go?"
Mick shrugged. "He'll be around – usually in the middle of wherever the most women are."
"Oh," she said. She took another sip of the expensive champagne the waiters had been filling her glass with all evening and tried to tell herself what she was feeling wasn't disappointment.
The band had stopped and the MC was counting down.
".. Four! Three! Two! One!.."
Starbursts of brilliant gold and vermillion exploded in the sky above them.
"Happy New Year, Beth," Mick smiled into the nape of her neck.
She turned and raised her mouth to his, breathless when they parted. "Happy New Year, Mick."
She peered over his shoulder and laughed. As predicted, Josef's fireworks weren't the only things getting a little attention from the crowd. Every freshie in the place and many of the other women present were heading straight in Mick's direction, purposeful smiles on all their faces. She and Mick exchanged looks and Mick raised his eyebrows in consternation. What am I supposed to do, his face asked, as a dozen women began to converge on his position, Tell me what I'm supposed to do!
Mick was such a gentleman; he'd hate having to embarrass any of the ladies with a refusal. What the hell? It was New Year's Eve after all.
"Okay," Beth laughed again. "Hall Pass." An unsteady finger rose in warning. "But this is a oncer, you hear me, Mick St. John?! Anything after one a.m. is officially infidelity."
Mick kissed her. "As if," he whispered, "I would ever cheat on you."
She squeezed his arm and left him to it, threading her way through the crowd with the loose, careful gait of mid-level inebriation.
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*.*.*.*.*.*.*
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"It's anti-social, you know, leaving your own party before midnight on New Year's Eve."
Josef's office chair swung around to face her. She was standing in the doorway to his private office the way she had so many infuriating times before, the gold organza of her gown clinging to her slender curves.
"Just another one of my endearing eccentricities," he said, raising a tumbler of red-tinged whiskey in her direction. "You know how it is, they won't let you in the billionaire's club without some."
"Sad, that merely being a vampire isn't enough to maintain the mystique these days," she said as she strolled into the room.
"TMZ has a lot to answer for."
She laughed. A champagne glass was dangling from her fingertips and he could feel the warmth from the alcohol flush on her cheeks from where he was sitting. She'd over imbibed.
She leaned both palms on his desk, allowing him a good view of the creamy cleavage framed by the sweetheart neckline of her gown. "Have you missed me?" she asked, her aim straight, as usual, for the bullseye. She didn't wait for a response, pointing to the closed drapes against his window. "What's with all the gloom?" She picked up the remote from his desk and pressed the switch that operated the office window hangings.
The scenery outside was beautiful; the emerald green of the under-lit palms beyond his window a dramatic contrast to the star lit inky blackness of the evening sky.
"I couldn't let you miss it all," she said.
She rested her glass carefully on his desk and reached out and caught his hands and pulled him from his chair to stand beside her. He didn't know what she could mean. The fireworks had finished several minutes ago.
"They always carry spares in case some fail to detonate", she said, as if reading his mind. "I asked if they could blow them all."
On cue, a spectacular shower of silver sparks lit up the sky and fell to earth in a slow, graceful arc. Beth laughed, fumbling at the catch on his window, swinging both sides open as shower after shower of emerald and ruby sparklers bloomed from overhead. She leaned out, grinning from ear to ear.
"Don't you just love it?" she shouted back at him above the din. She'd never seemed more beautiful.
If she thought anything of the look he was giving her she didn't say, just looped an arm through his and nudged his shoulder. "Come on, Josef, don't be such a New Year's Grinch. You've got three hundred and sixty four days of the year to be a grouchy old Vamp in. Tonight's the one night you can let yourself go." She stood on tiptoes, raised her face to his. "Happy New Year."
Her breath smelled of Dom Perignon and the faintest hint of cinnamon. At the last moment he turned his face away, just a tiny sideways movement, but it was enough for her lips to miss their mark, landing at the edge of his mouth rather than in the center. Their eyes locked as she pulled away and the sounds of the party and the last of the fireworks faded away to nothing. Her pupils widened and he could see that she had finally understood.
"Why did you leave your party?" Beth whispered.
He spun on his heel, looked out of the window once again. "Why are you here, Beth?" he demanded, his tone acerbic.
"You invited us."
He turned and looked her in the eye. "I mean, you, here, in this room with me right now."
"You're my friend. I wanted to wish you a happy new year."
"Am I? Your friend?" The sarcasm made her wince. He heard her heartbeat quicken, felt the heat rise to the surface of her skin.
Her eyebrows rose in confusion. "I…"
"Forget it, Beth." He seemed too absorbed with the motion of the palm leaves outside his window to let her finish. "I've had a little too much bloodied whiskey. Go back to the party."
"Josef, I - "
"I said, GO!"
"I'm sorry. I didn't mean to upset you." Her gown rustled and then her hand was on his forearm. "I wanted to… just wanted - "
His hands curled around her upper arms and he whispered, "Happy New Year, Beth," and arched her back against the wall and leaned in and kissed her the way he had always wanted to, the way he had dreaded one day that he would. Beth gasped and he pulled away, his hands dropping to his sides. He walked to the bar, poured himself another drink. He didn't dare look at her.
The silence stretched in unbearable increments. Her footsteps came toward him and she joined him at the bar, filling her champagne glass without giving him a glance. She lifted it to her lips and took one long swallow, finishing the glass completely before finally speaking.
"No fair, Josef." Her laugh sounded shaky and the hand that held her champagne glass was trembling. "You're immortal, stinking rich and you kiss like that? If Mick wasn't around I'd have to take a contract out on all those lucky girls you call your friends with benefits so I could have you to myself."
One night, Beth, I can last a lifetime on just one night. Mick would never know and we would never, ever speak of it again. The words burned like bile at the back of his throat. The silence felt a little dangerous and beside him, Beth watched as his knuckles whitened around his whiskey glass. Then his spine straightened and he cocked his head and turned to her with his trademark, lop-sided grin. "It would never work out, BuzzWire" he said, his tone almost managing the airy nonchalance he was aiming for. "My list of those kind of friends would bankrupt you."
It was going to be alright. She rested her palm against his cheek in gratitude. "I don't know any hit-men, anyway."
He peeled the hand away from his face and dropped a kiss into the centre of her palm, then threaded his fingers through hers and raised an eyebrow and looked at her meaningfully, a reminder of just exactly which of the two of them did have a little black book full of those sorts of acquaintances.
"You're scary, you know that? Scary," she laughed.
"Oh, so five months of rules and death threats from me while you were living here and now you're scared."
They beamed at one another, just like old times.
"What can I say…?" Her smile got a little wobbly. "I've always been a little slow."
And then she placed her empty glass down and lay her palm against his jaw and drew him to her, taking her time so there could be no mistaking her intention. There were tears in her eyes when their lips met, and this time the kiss was a tender acknowledgement of what so easily might have been.
"Come to me if you ever need anything, Beth," he murmured against her hair and then he groaned in pained amusement. "Falling for you human girls is killing me, you hear me, killing me. Thank God it's only twice a century."
She smiled and squeezed his hand and, freeing herself from his arms, stepped back. "It's time I went and pried your supper away from - "
The study door opened.
"- Mick!"
"Here you are, Beautiful." Mick kissed the side of Beth's face, cocking his head at the way Josef's aroma clung to her. "I see I wasn't the only one with a Hall Pass tonight." He was smiling, but there was an edge in his tone and for a second his eyes narrowed speculatively at his friend.
Josef returned his gaze evenly.
"Josef and I wished one another a happy new year, Mick." Beth said quietly.
And just like that the moment passed and Mick smiled and stuck out his hand. "Happy New Year, Old Man."
"Happy New Year, Brother."
Josef grinned and draped an arm around each of his friends and led them back toward the fun and laughter of the party outside. He was Josef Kostan, the Master of L.A., and as long as he had his money and his girls and a few good friends he would survive the worst of this painful harvest and live to love another day.
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