The Taking (Seven Deadly Sins #3)(30)
Author: Erin McCarthy

The smile he gave her, the corner of his mouth tilting up, told her he knew precisely what she was doing—that she was bolting.

“Sure.”

So what if she was running? It was the smart thing to do. A man like Felix flirted just to flirt, it meant nothing, and she wasn’t savvy or experienced enough to play that casual game. She was too emotional, too easily attached to people. Or so her therapist had told her.

It was probably true. She was incredibly invested in the people she let into her life, and she wasn’t a good candidate for meaningless flirting. In retrospect, it wasn’t hard to see how she had wound up married after a brief six-month relationship. She sought attachments.

Tugging down the bottom of her shirt, Regan dropped her legs to the floor. “Are you sure you don’t want a drink? Just a soda or something?”

He shook his head. “I don’t need a drink.”

“It’s not a problem,” she protested, standing up. “I stocked the fridge this morning. I have water, all the soft drinks, beer, wine.”

“Don’t wait on me,” he said. “I’m not thirsty.”

Puzzled by his choice of words, Regan shook her head. “It’s not a big deal. What would you like?”

“Nothing,” he said through clenched teeth. “I don’t want anything.”

What the hell was that supposed to mean? It sounded like he was talking about much more than a stupid bottled water. “Okay,” she said, mystified. “I’ll be right back. I need a Diet Coke.” Then she thought about going downstairs to the kitchen by herself and hesitated. “But before I go, please tell me you don’t see a rash on my face.”

The corner of his mouth turned up as he reclined on her sofa, one arm up along the back. “No rash.”

“Maybe I was still dreaming when I thought I saw the rash,” Regan mused as she wandered back over to the photos she’d been hanging, deciding to forgo the soft drink. “They are really vivid dreams.”

“Most dreams are. We just don’t remember all those details by the time we wake up.”

Regan stood there, not sure what to do with herself. Or him. She had called him, he had shown up, and now she had no clue what to do with him. “That’s true.”

Then they fell into silence, the music she’d been listening to an obnoxious frenetic pulse surrounding them. It was only adding to the agitation of her mood and she hit the OFF button on her iPod remote.

“You’ve done some unpacking,” Felix commented, rising to his feet and strolling to the center of the room. “It looks good. Very black-and-white, but I suppose that’s no surprise.”

“What do you mean?” Regan frowned at him. She looked around. She did prefer neutral-colored furnishings, a lot of ivory with black and beige accents, but she went in for texture more than color. She had natural elements like a sisal rug, a chunk of coral on her coffee table, and white feathers holding a cluster of bird eggs under a bell jar.

“You’re very black-and-white. Your clothes. Your personality. It stands to reason that your decorating would be the same.”

“You make that sound like an insult,” she said, turning to pick up another photo to hang—black—and—white at that. “I think it’s soothing. The room is harmonious. And if I was totally black-and-white, I wouldn’t be scared of the weird things that are happening in my house. I would explain them away logically or I would embrace them. The fact that I’m both anxious and excited about it proves I look into the shades of gray.”

“I suppose that’s true,” he murmured, coming up behind her and taking the framed photograph from her. He studied it, and the one on the wall, and then flipped through the stack she had piled up to hang.

Felix did a small circle, looking at additional larger pieces of art she had propped on the floor against the wall, waiting to be hung. “You collect cemetery art. That I didn’t expect. Is death so very black-and-white to you?”

Regan couldn’t even answer the question because she was struck dumb by the fact that he had called her photographs a collection of cemetery art. She hadn’t even really realized that all the photography and art she owned was in fact images from cemeteries. She had always been drawn to the still quiet beauty of the monuments, the statues, and the crumbling tombs, and was well aware of each individual purchase. But to say that indicated she was a collector of cemetery art, well, that made her uneasy.

“I work in historic cemetery preservation and restoration,” she said. “That is what the fund-raising party at my house is for. So it only stands to reason that I would be drawn to photographs of them.”

But while the words were logical, she doubted the veracity of them herself. How could she have never noticed that her interest was at the exclusion of all other subjects? Why was it that she had never bought one green pastoral scene? Even her largest piece, one she considered to be a portrait, was actually that of a weeping angel statue in the Metairie Cemetery.

“Sure, that stands to reason. It’s something that is clearly important to you. But why? Why does restoration of historic cemeteries matter? Why shouldn’t we just let them crumble to the ground tomb by tomb, the heat and humidity restoring the bricks, the marble, the bones of the interred back to the earth?”

It was a question her mother had asked her many times, though not in the same way. Her mom had always suggested she save historic homes instead of dirty old cemeteries. She had never bothered to try to explain it to her mother, but she turned and looked at Felix. Maybe he would understand. He certainly seemed open to different ideas, if his choice of occupation was any indication.

“Because they’re beautiful, peaceful tributes to humanity. When they were built, each tomb mattered to the people who built it. They invested money, time, love into erecting a place for their loved ones to spend eternity, and it seems the height of disrespect to just let them, and the remains they contain, be destroyed.”

“I see. Do you know much about Victorian mourning practices?” he asked, not looking at her, but arranging the photos on the table in a grid.

“No, not really.”

“Before the Victorians, before anyone really understood how disease was transmitted, when someone died their body was discarded as quickly as possible. The thought was to get them as far from the living as possible so they didn’t spread death. The fear of death was greater than the fear of showing disrespect to a loved one. Then in Victorian times, even though they really had no better understanding of disease, they created elaborate death rituals, huge, lengthy periods of mourning, and the interest in spiritualism and contacting the dead rose. What they were afraid of was life, living without the dead.”