My Immortal (Seven Deadly Sins #1)(6)
Author: Erin McCarthy

"I think in June." Marley swallowed her disappointment, a sick churning suddenly starting in her gut. God, Lizzie really was missing. She hasn’t realized how much she had been counting on arriving here and discovering Lizzie, oversexed and perky as usual, happy to see her.

But Lizzie wasn’t here. And no one knew where she was.

His eyebrows shot up. "So long ago? I’m not sure I can remember who was here in June, but I can ask around if you’d like. Maybe someone will recognize her." He looked at the picture again. "This is you, yes?" He tapped her face in the photo, half hidden behind Sebastian’s round apple cheek and her own sunglasses.

She nodded absently, wondering what she needed to do next. Call the police and file a missing persons report. Then what?

"Your son?" His eyes were unreadable, unemotional.

"No. Lizzie’s son." And Marley felt guilty even looking at him in a picture. She knew he was happy and healthy staying with their cousin Rachel and her husband. They had three kids under the age of eight, and Sebastian was benefiting from a stable home environment where he was loved and well cared for. But Marley still felt ashamed that from time to time she had resented that it was Lizzie who had a child, when she herself wanted one so desperately.

That had been the only rift in their relationship, when Sebastian had been born and Marley had offered to raise him. Lizzie had balked, angry, offended, but here it was two years later and she had dumped her son with Rachel. Sometimes Marley wondered if that was meant to be a slap to her.

"You look a more natural mother than your sister," he commented, handing the picture back.

Marley bristled as she tucked the picture back into her purse, her need to defend her sister greater than her own personal resentments. "Lizzie tries to be a good mother, she’s just young."

"I’m sure. Is the child missing too?"

Damien didn’t sound worried, just mildly curious. Marley found herself disliking him, even as she acknowledged she was being unfair. If he didn’t know Lizzie, he had no reason to feel the same concern that she did. "No, her son is fine. He’s with family."

"That’s good." As he spoke, he glanced down at her chest, she was sure of it. She hadn’t imagined that, and he actually lingered, really studying her br**sts in her tight T-shirt, making her shift her feet in discomfort. It was absolutely the wrong time for him to behave like that, and even worse was that her own body reacted positively to the attention. Marley bit her lip and shifted her purse in front of her chest.

"Do you have a child, Marley?"

The way he said it, his faintly accented voice hypnotic, his eyes caressing, made her cheeks grown warm. It was none of his business, but she found herself answering. "No. I’m a teacher, first grade."

He laughed softly, the sound unexpected and not pleasant. "That doesn’t surprise me in the least."

It sounded rude; it felt humiliating. Maybe he meant nothing by it, but all she could hear was a good-looking man saying it was totally obvious to him that she would be a spinster teacher, a dried up cliche, a woman afraid of herself and her own sexuality. That wasn’t true at all. She hadn’t found a man she really connected with, that she could love, and that was nothing to be embarrassed about.

Which didn’t explain why her cheeks got hot and she fought the urge to explain herself. "Look, will you just call me if you find anything out about Lizzie?"

"Of course. Give me your card and I’ll let you know if I hear anything."

"I don’t have a card." She’d just told him she was a grade school teacher. She didn’t walk around passing out pencil border business cards. That was not in the budget. "Do you have some paper?" She started digging in her purse for a pen.

"Just come into the house and I’ll put your numbers in my PDA."

"Okay, thanks," she started to say, but he was already walking away, moving across the lawn in the opposite direction of the house. She scrambled down the steps and followed him, wondering where he was going.

In a second it became apparent he was headed to the round, white towerlike structure. The pigeonnier, she had to assume. He opened the door and stepped inside, not really waiting for her. Marley hesitated in the doorway. The round room was a living area, complete with a thick couch slip-covered in white cotton, blue pillows tossed on it, and, set at a prominent angle from the one window, a modem steel desk with a laptop computer. The walls were stark white painted bricks, and the decor was sleek, focusing on texture instead of color. Except for a very prominent piece of art, framed in gold, its somber blues and grays a splash of cloudy color on the otherwise blank wall.

Damien tossed his MP3 player down on the desk and lifted a PDA out of its charger. "Phone number? Cell? E-mail?"

She rattled off the necessary info and watched him quickly and efficiently enter it. He glanced over at her, dark eyes expressionless. "I’m sorry, what did you say your name is?"

"Marley. Marley Turner. My sister is Elizabeth Turner." Not that she believed for one minute this man could help her. He said he didn’t know who Lizzie was—and he didn’t really care.

But she was too worried not to push a little harder. "Do you think someone might remember her?"

He studied her for a second, then shook his head slowly. "Maybe, but to be completely honest, I doubt it. People don’t come to my parties to remember anyone or anything. They’re here to forget, to hide in the dark with total strangers."

There were so many questions she could ask. Like why did he encourage that kind of behavior in his own house? What was he hiding from? And what could anyone possibly achieve or gain or forget by having sex with strangers they didn’t care about and were only using for selfish distracting pleasure?

But that wasn’t any of her business. All she was concerned with was finding her sister and hauling her back home where she belonged. Where Marley was determined to keep a better eye on her in the future.

Knowing all of that didn’t prevent her from wondering what exactly Damien did at his parties, wondering if he participated or if he was just an observer, a perverted ringmaster.

"I appreciate you trying at all," she said, annoyed at her crude thoughts, wanting out of the small room, away from this man with the dark green, charming, sinful eyes. He could have sex with three women at once and it was totally irrelevant. People were depraved, and she couldn’t change that, not even in her own sister.

"You know I can’t help you, don’t you?" He suddenly pushed a button on his organizer and tossed it roughly on the desk, scattering some papers resting there. "I want to help you, but I can’t. I’m sorry, I really am. But we can’t always do what we’d like, and we don’t always get what we want."