Fallen (Seven Deadly Sins #2)(24)
Author: Erin McCarthy

“Do you have a box or something I can put the kitten in? I don’t want her getting under my car seats or the gas or brake pedals.”

“I’m sure I have something.” Gabriel jogged up the stairs and opened his apartment.

Sara followed more slowly, and by the time she got upstairs he already had a bowl of milk in his hand. He brought it to the floor in front of the couch, so Sara sat down on the hardwood floor, the kitten in her lap. It didn’t take long for the cat to smell food and venture forward, her back legs still on Sara, her front straining to reach the bowl. She lapped out tentatively, then more enthusiastically, drinking quickly. Once she glanced back, milk dripping off her nose and whiskers, and blinked at Sara before sticking her face back in the bowl.

Sara was so keeping the kitten. She was too adorable to give up, practical or not.

“Here’s a towel to use as a blanket,” Gabriel said, handing her a white towel smelling of fabric softener and so sharp in color that it looked bleached.

Gabriel had laundry skills.

“Thanks.” Sara took it, but added, “It’s probably going to get ruined. She needs a bath, and she’s going to get this towel filthy.”

“Why don’t you just give her a bath now? You don’t want to be carrying her around like that. And her fur’s all matted. It’s probably really uncomfortable for her, tugging her skin.”

Sara looked back at Gabriel as she ran her fingers lightly across the kitten’s fur. She had the sense that the room around her had gotten clear, the objects in it sharply focused, more real than they were earlier. It made no sense, but it seemed that she and Gabriel themselves were in sharper focus, and she ached again with the need to touch and be touched, to lay her head down on a man’s shoulder, and rest. The night was dark and silent, and her body weary from lack of sleep, but her mind skittered back and forth, manic and excited, the fear held completely at bay for once. She’d had a fun night. Hadn’t realized she still knew how.

Now she was sitting in Gabriel’s apartment with him, and he was offering up his shower for her to bathe the kitten. It seemed like it should be odd, that they were there together. That their paths in life had crossed.

And he was an alcoholic. Which meant they were potentially poison for each other. They both had addictive propensities.

But it was a working relationship, and a strange, budding friendship that she desperately needed, and she wasn’t going to walk away because of the slim, off chance that it would go too far.

“That’s a great idea, if you don’t mind.”

“Not at all. You can do it in the bathroom sink so it won’t be as scary for her.”

Sara smiled. “Thanks.” Any man who was considerate of a mangy kitten was a good man. She felt so damn safe with him, and normal. God, it felt normal, even as her head swam from lack of sleep when she stood up quickly. Or maybe it wasn’t that she felt normal. That wasn’t the right word. Normalcy was still elusive. Maybe it was that she felt alive.

For the first time in a year.

Gabriel watched Sara trying to soap up the squirming and desperate cat in his small bathroom. There was water all over the front of her tank top, dripping from the top of her hair, and splashing all over the mirror. Filthy or not, the cat didn’t want a bath, but Sara was determined. Kind and gentle, but determined.

After a chaotic five minutes, she had the cat bundled up in a towel and snuggled against her. She shook her damp hair out of her eyes, and laughed as she glanced over at him. “There. Not so bad.” She kissed the top of the cat’s gray and damp head. “You survived, Angel. From here on out, life will be a piece of cake, I promise.”

Surely he had heard her name for the cat wrong. Or she had just spoken it as a term of endearment. “Angel?” he asked cautiously.

“That’s her name.” Sara smiled and kissed the cat again. “It suits her.”

It took all his effort not to roll his eyes or to turn and just leave the bathroom. She wouldn’t understand that sort of reaction. She didn’t know, couldn’t know, wouldn’t know the truth. So he just said, “Nice. Why don’t you take her to the couch and try to dry her off a little better? I’ll get you a fresh T-shirt. You’re soaking wet.”

Alarm skittered across her face for a second before she masked it. “Great. Thanks.”

On the way to his bedroom, Gabriel paused, glancing into his office. His eye was drawn to his absinthe spoon collection. He was wandering into dangerous territory again. He was condemned to be alone, by his own sins. He couldn’t involve Sara, regardless of how tempting a simple friendship with her was. He’d get her a T-shirt and send her home, and maybe tell her she needed to work from her apartment. They didn’t need to be sitting together to sort through research.

But when he came back with a shirt, after digging through three drawers trying to find one that wasn’t too old and torn up, didn’t have a strange phrase on it, and wouldn’t swallow Sara whole like the whale did Jonah, Sara was asleep on his couch. She was stretched out fully, and the kitten was still snuggled in the towel on her chest, out cold like her owner. He couldn’t wake Sara up. That would be cruel, given that she’d been having so much trouble sleeping. He also suspected she was afraid to go outside, that the streets at night had truly terrified her.

So he found a blanket in his closet and put it over her bottom half, below the cat. Then he paced around his apartment, refusing to acknowledge that she looked battered, yet so at peace in her deep sleep. Refusing to see the way the lamplight filtered over her cheek and hid the dark shadows that offended the beauty of her face. Refusing to see the way her delicate fingers dug into the cat’s fur, clinging and cleaving, a desperate need to hold on.

He would not sketch her. He had not picked up a pencil in a hundred and fifty years, hadn’t felt the urge to do so. He did now. His fingers itched, the artist inside him wanting to reemerge and capture the view, the light, the woman, in front of him. He wouldn’t do it.

There was no beauty to be found through the skewed lenses of his sinful eyes.

Police Description of the Crime Scene (Undated), written by William Davidson

The room in which Miss Donovan resided and was murdered was approximately six by ten feet, street facing, single window shuttered. Miss Donovan’s bed was on the south-facing wall, next to the doorway leading to the interior hallway. Bed was an inexpensive wood frame with a thin mattress. Dressing table and chair on opposite wall, covered with various female toiletries. Chair and small table in center of room, facing bed. An opium pipe, one empty bottle of absinthe, second bottle of absinthe one-third empty, empty glass, and spoon on tray on table.