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How could she not freak out if she saw who they really were?
“Perhaps it’s best if you leave,” he finally said. Something about her made him trust in the fact that she wouldn’t share the revelations of this evening with anyone. Maybe because she couldn’t comprehend the idea of vampires. Maybe because no one was likely to believe she’d just met two of them, were she to tell anyone.
He was resigned to the fact he’d botched the whole evening. Was monumentally pissed off at himself for it, but what could he do at this point? Best to cut his losses and hope his Shana White obsession would end sometime soon. This century, at least.
But just as he was berating himself and fighting off the fury that warred with the peculiar liberation he felt over her knowing his deepest, darkest secret, she went and shocked the hell out of him.
Pulling away from the door, she took two steps toward Jane. Her mouth opened and she appeared to search for the right words. She gave up and took a couple more steps forward. Jane stayed where she was, shooting a perplexed look over her shoulder—toward Drake—before her attention returned to Shana.
Jane said, “You’re not scared.”
Again, she didn’t pose a question. Drake guessed she’d tapped into that mysterious part of Shana’s existence once more, connecting with her soul in a way Drake would never understand or experience himself, much to his dismay. He’d never been as envious of Jane’s gift as he was tonight, wanting very much to share that intimacy with Shana himself.
She said to Jane, “I just realized you would have gone for my jugular long before this. If that was your intent.” She set her purse on the edge of the desk, as though offering a truce, a white flag of sorts—silently telling them she wasn’t about to turn tail and run, or divulge their secret.
Drake found this interesting. His eyes narrowed on her as she took another small step toward Jane.
“Yvette said you’re both very mysterious. You keep to yourselves, for the most part.”
“It’s not that we don’t like humans,” Jane said, her tone somewhat contrite. “That’s not the case at all, in fact. We live in your world and we respect your rules and your boundaries. We don’t drink human blood. I never have and Drake gave it up centuries ago.”
He could practically see Shana’s mind churning as she processed what Jane had said, chewing over every bit of evidence presented, laid out right before her very eyes.
When her glowing amber gaze landed on him, Drake felt a powerful reaction that made him jolt in his seat. As though she’d touched him physically and his body had reacted innately and lustily to it.
“When I tripped earlier,” she said to him, “and you lifted me up… It was effortless. Like I weighed no more than a feather. And you didn’t miss a step.” She seemed to replay that moment in her mind before continuing. “I felt normal. With both of you. Like, for the first time in my life, I fit in with someone. Well, two someones.” She looked back at Jane and smiled. “I can’t explain it. It’s not like how I feel with Yvette and Finn. I adore them, but there’s something about Yvette that just makes me feel so…subpar.”
“She’s stunning, yes,” Drake said in a quiet voice. “Gregarious and brilliant. They both are. But there’s a sensual exuberance you ooze that’s as emotionally stirring as it is sexually arousing. It’s impossible to escape or ignore. It’s captivating. Especially to us.”
Jane added, “I suspect those women you were always jealous of were actually jealous of you.”
“Oh, no,” she was quick to say. Her gaze dropped to the floor again and her teeth clamped down on her trembling lower lip, as though she’d just recalled some deeply painful memory from those days in the orchestra.
Jane took the two steps forward that closed the gap between them.
Drake sat up straight, alarmed. “Jane.” That one word was a warning she didn’t heed.
Instead, she reached for Shana’s hand and again enveloped it with hers.
Shana glanced up, hesitation in her eyes. As though she were certain she should pull away, but was reluctant to do so for some unfathomable reason.
Jane said, “You simply don’t see what others see. Not just when it comes to how they view you, but you don’t see what’s around you either.”
“I—” She gave Jane a perplexed look, as though unsure of Jane’s meaning. Or perhaps she got it and didn’t know how to respond. Drake watched the exchange with great interest, no longer on high alert. He knew where Jane was going with this and he suspected it just might be therapeutic for both women.
“You voluntarily hide,” Jane said. “You chose to be alone, with only a few select friends. You’re wonderful at expressing your feelings with your written words and your music, but do you ever express yourself verbally? Do you ever say what you’re feeling or seek what you want or need?”
“It’s all very superficial,” Shana suddenly said, her voice hard and flat—a direct contradiction to the pain that flashed in her eyes. “I mean, all I ever wanted was to fit in. To look like the girls and the women I was surrounded by. To not be different. And I know that’s selfish, because I had a gift they wanted. But I would have gladly traded—”
She shook her head sharply and turned away, yanking her hands from Jane’s loose grip in the process.
“I was blessed with a beautiful gift,” she continued as she returned to the desk and picked up her handbag, clearly on her way out the door again. “But it didn’t feel like a gift when I was forced to play six hours a day and spend the rest of the time learning five different languages and studying with tutors. I was whisked away from my home in Mexico when I was just a child, and catapulted into European culture where I had no friends and there was no one else…like me. Not even in Italy. I always seemed so out of place.”
She looked back at them and said, “There was never any question, until I was of legal age, that I would play and I would tour. From the moment I held a violin in my hands—when I was just four years old—my fate was determined for me, by people who didn’t even know me. My parents willingly turned me over to a world-renowned maestro and a nanny he hired to care for me, and I rarely ever saw them after that. My entire existence revolved around playing, traveling and being tutored. It was…horrifically lonely.”
Drake fought the urge to go to her and comfort her because he could see the sheer agony in her eyes. He suspected Jane resisted as well.
Shana said, “I know it sounds like I’m ungrateful. I’m not. I just…I never wanted any of it. I didn’t want to be famous. I wanted to be normal and have a normal life. I didn’t want to sleep in bedrooms that were the size of most people’s apartments. When I was old enough to no longer need a constant chaperone, I was all alone in hotel suites that rivaled small mansions. I didn’t want that isolation, but at the same time, I didn’t really know how to make friends.”
