White Lies (The Arcane Society #2)(37)
Author: Jayne Ann Krentz

She ended the call and set the phone on the table.

“I’m thirty-two years old,” she said. “I can’t believe I’m still having conversations with my mother about where I will sleep. Do men have conversations like that with their mothers?”

“Can’t speak for all of the other males on the planet.” Jake crunched a chunk of blood-red bell pepper between his teeth. “But I sure as hell don’t.”

“Lucky you.”

He sprinkled salt over the vegetables. “Doesn’t mean there isn’t some pressure, though.”

She almost laughed. “I find it very hard to believe that anyone, even your own mother, could apply serious pressure to you, Jake Salter.”

“Never underestimate a mother when it comes to that kind of stuff.”

“What pressure does your mother apply?”

“She’d like to see me get married again. She’s after me to register at arcanematch.com.”

“Are you going to do it?”

“I’ve been thinking about it,” Jake said. “It’s not like I’ve got anything to lose, right?”

Her heart sank. He might just as well have come straight out and told her that he didn’t see any future for the two of them, she thought.

“Guess not,” she said.

“Ever register yourself?” he asked.

“Tried it once.” She drank some wine and lowered the glass.

“I’m getting a bad feeling here,” Jake said. “I take it the matchmakers at Arcane House didn’t come up with a match?”

She wrinkled her nose. “Let’s just say that being told that you are unmatchable with any other member of the Society is hard to take, even for an optimistic, upbeat, positive thinker like myself.”

“Are you still registered?”

“Good grief, no. It was too depressing getting that stupid little ‘Welcome to arcanematch.com, Clare Lancaster. Sorry, no match yet. Check back later’ message.”

“Think you’ll give it another try someday?”

“What’s the point?” she asked.

“You might get lucky,” he said.

“I doubt it. And I’m really not in the mood for any more rejection at the moment.”

Chapter Twenty-two

Clare came awake very suddenly from a dream in which Valerie Shipley was hunting her through an endless series of spa chambers. Each room contained a bottomless pool. In the dreamworld she knew she had to keep running, hoping to find a way out, but Valerie was closing the distance between them.

Valerie’s gone. Let it go.

The image of Valerie’s dead body floating in the turquoise blue pool refused to fade.

Think of something else.

She lay still for a moment, orienting herself to the unfamiliar bedroom, trying to pinpoint whatever it was that had awakened her. Eventually she turned on her side and looked at the clock.

It was just after midnight.

She had a vague memory of tumbling into bed almost immediately after dinner. Sleep had come, hard and fast, her body shutting down so that it could recover from the long, difficult day. But now the effects of the wine and exhaustion had worn off. She felt unnaturally alert and restless.

Shoving aside the covers, she got to her feet and padded barefoot to the sliding glass doors.

She pulled the curtains aside. The underwater lights were off. Half the pool lay in heavy shadows cast by the walls of the house. The other half was illuminated by the brilliant desert moon. When she saw the dark figure in the opaque, silvered water she stopped breathing for a couple heartbeats. Not again. She really could not deal with any more bodies.

Belatedly she realized that the person in the pool was not floating; he was swimming toward the far end, where the shadows were deepest, with smooth, powerful, controlled strokes.

Jake.

Impulsively she went into the bathroom, pulled on the robe she had borrowed from the Glazebrook house and went back to the glass doors.

She unlocked the slider, opened it and stepped out into the night.

The air was a pleasant temperature now. The stones that paved the pool terrace still radiated the warmth that had been absorbed during the day. She walked to the edge of the water.

Jake had seen her and changed direction. He swam to the side and looked up at her. Moonlight gleamed on his wet hair and sleek, powerful shoulders.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yes. Slept like a log until a few minutes ago.”

“Bad dreams?”

She hesitated. “Only to be expected under the circumstances.”

“A swim might relax you so you can get back to sleep.”

“I didn’t bring a swimsuit with me.”

“You don’t need one. The lights are off. You can’t see anything under the surface at night.”

Automatically she glanced down into the water below his chest. He was right. She could not even see the dark outline of his body.

“Well,” she said, thinking about it.

“Haven’t you ever gone skinny-dipping?”

“Actually, no, I haven’t.”

“Try it. You’ll like it.”

The note of sensual amusement in his words stirred something deep inside her. She realized that she wanted very much to be in the water with Jake.

“All right,” she said. “But you’ll have to turn around while I get in.”

“I wouldn’t have taken you for the shy type. Pretend you’re on one of those European beaches where everyone is nude.”

“I’m not sure I’m capable of that degree of imagination, but I’ll give it a shot.”

She walked around the edge of the pool into the dense shadows at the far end. Feeling more than a little reckless and uncharacteristically, excitingly brazen, she untied the robe and tossed it onto a lounger.

She kept an eye on Jake, who was treading water at the opposite end. He was in the moonlit section, so she could see that he had his back to her.

Quickly she started down the steps.

Jake turned around just as the water reached her knees. She wasn’t sure how much he could actually see in the shadows, but if even some of the rumors were true, his night vision was much better than average.

“No peeking,” she yelped. She crossed her arms over her br**sts and immediately sank neck-deep into the warm water. “You promised.”

“No, I didn’t.” He made his way slowly toward her, cruising with the grace of a sea serpent. “I would have remembered a stupid promise like that. You ordered me not to look. Different matter entirely.”