Читать книгу Newly Fallen - Меган Харт - Страница 4

First night, two candles.

Hanukkah was Lilly Gold’s favorite holiday, not for the exchange of gifts or excuse to indulge in fried foods, but because of the concept behind it. Not necessarily the religious reason—commemorating a war had never seemed festive to her. But bringing light into the world, celebrating by creating sparks in the darkness, had always appealed to her.

So had the idea of a miracle.

It didn’t have to be something as incredible as a lamp burning for eight nights on oil meant to last only a few, or some grand victory over much stronger enemies. Nope, Lilly would be happy to settle for discovering a ten-spot in her coat pocket she’d forgotten from last year, or fitting into her skinny jeans, or maybe nabbing a sexy, out-of-season Louis Vuitton for twenty bucks at a yard sale in the rich part of town. Miracles like that might not change the whole world, but they’d change hers. And she was due for some change, she thought as she struck the match to light the first candle.

Thunder in the snow.

The noise came first, followed a bare second later by the bright white flash of lightning, fierce enough to outline the entire backyard. Blinking, Lilly paused, match in hand, to stare through the glass.

Weird.

With the lights on in the kitchen, all she could see was her reflection, two dark eyes in a pale face surrounded by a mass of dark curls, and beyond that, the cascading sheet of snow coming down as fast and thick as rain. The blizzard had been going on since that morning.

The match burned her fingers and with a hiss she blew it out and dropped it in the sink. Lilly stuck her fingertip in her mouth, sucking gently at the sting, as another boom rattled the window. A second later, another flash of light, so bright this time it seared her eyes and left her blinking away spots.

Wasn’t the lightning supposed to come first?

She gripped the sink’s metal edge, leaning forward to look out the kitchen window but unable to get close enough to press her face to the glass. She could hear the shush-shush of the snow against the house. Could feel the chill seeping through the glass. No more thunder, no more lightning. Lilly pushed back from the counter and lit another match, this time managing to get the shamash, the helper candle, lit before the match burned too low.

She said the blessings and used the shamash to light the other one for the first night of Hanukkah. Then she stepped back to admire the menorah of silver and brass. Her grandmother Lillian had given it to her. It was the most beautiful thing Lilly owned.

She set it in the kitchen window because it had no curtains and was close to the sink, which therefore meant nothing would be likely to catch on fire. Lilly had learned that lesson already, in her old apartment. Sure, by the time the super-hot fireman had arrived she’d managed to put out the flames and clear out most of the smoke, and yes, she’d gained a date out of it, but she didn’t want anything like that happening here in her new house.

Her house, hers alone. The one she’d bought and paid for all on her own, and in which she was spending her very first holiday.

Alone.

Hugging herself, Lilly stepped back to admire the tiny kitchen. Her appliances weren’t old enough to be retro-chic, they were just old, and the cabinets and linoleum would definitely need to be replaced, but all that would have to wait. For now, she was just happy to be making the mortgage payments by herself.

She’d lit that menorah every year since her grandma had given it to her just before dying. Five years. It looked different in Lilly’s kitchen window than it had looked in any other place, and Lilly couldn’t stop the grin from teasing her mouth as she watched the flames flicker.

She turned out the lights to get the full effect. The candle flames reflecting in the kitchen window looked twice as beautiful, but she wanted to see them from outside. That was the whole point of putting the menorah in the window, to share the light with the world. Grandma Lillian had always said it was a mitzvah, a good deed, to share the beauty of Hanukkah candles with people outside who might not have menorahs of their own to light. According to Grandma Lillian, when the world was new everything had been light until the vessels of God’s love had been broken, scattering all the sparks across the Earth. Every mitzvah helped gather up a scattered spark and return it. Good deeds were lights in the darkness, each one helping to make the world brighter.

Lilly put her menorah in the window to share her light with the world outside, but she liked to look at it, too, in memory of Grandma Lillian. So, even though at least half a foot of snow had already fallen and it looked like they were going to get another six inches, Lilly opened the sliding glass door and stepped out onto her tiny deck.

Right into half a foot of newly fallen snow, all the way up to her shins. Shoot, she ought to have taken the time to slide into a pair of boots, throw on a sweater, at least. Preparation was never her strong point—impulsiveness was Lilly’s forte. With a yelp, dancing in the snow, Lilly pulled the glass door closed behind her and braced herself against the wind.

Uh-oh, what if that weird lightning struck again while she was out here? Danny, her most recent ex, would’ve said it was just like her to get struck by lightning in her backyard in the middle of the blizzard. Well, screw Danny, Lilly thought, eyes squinted against the snow whipping at her face.

She hopped off the deck, meaning to cross the miniscule patch of grass she called a yard to stand in front of the kitchen window. Her ankles were already frozen, her feet numb, so when she suddenly slid she was already bracing herself to end up in a pile of snow.

Heat.

“Huh?” Lilly looked down at the bare circle of earth into which she’d stepped. The snow had…melted? The earth was squishy under her toes and in the faint light from the neighbor’s yard she could see small wisps of steam rising from the bare earth. Even the grass looked…burned?

“What the…?” Lilly stepped back, heart thudding, eyes blinking.

The circle, if she stood in the center, looked to be as wide as her arms stretched out fingertip to fingertip in all directions. Though the snow was still falling heavily from the sky, it melted as soon as it landed on the ground. But she wasn’t in the center, she was still on the edge, because in the center of the strange circle was a man.

A naked man.

Lilly looked immediately into the sky, bracing herself for bright lights, more booming thunder, maybe a tractor beam getting ready to suck her up into the mother ship and probe her ass. Nothing but black sky and more pelting snow. She looked at him again. He crouched on hands and knees, his naked back curved and pale and glittering. Yes, glittering, like Edward from Twilight, only there was no sunshine now and the sparkles faded as she watched.

“Whoa,” Lilly said, awed into less-than-eloquent speech. “Did you just transport here, or what?”

Danny always said Lilly spent too much time believing in the unbelievable, too much effort accepting the strange as ordinary. Well, screw Danny, she thought again. She didn’t step closer, though. Not without seeing the dude’s face, at least. He could have tentacles or something super freaky getting ready to suck out her brains.

Earlier, the thunder had rattled the windows in their frames and pushed at her eardrums. Now outside with nothing between her and the sound, the boom pushed Lilly to her knees. She clapped her hands over her eyes, expecting the light to come next, bracing herself to be fried like an egg by the blast. Nothing came but another roll of noise, softer this time, still throbbing in her eardrums and in her stomach. She understood it this time, though. Words. She took her hands away from her face.

“No,” said the man in front of her, lifting his head.

Face-to-face, she could see he didn’t have tentacles or laser beams for eyes. If anything, he had an ordinary face, the kind designed to never get a second glance. In shadows it was hard to make out his features, but Lilly got a hint of dark brows, dark eyes, a curving mouth.

She was soaked and shuddering from cold, despite the freakish heat of the ground under her now muddy hands. All of this was too surreal, yet she heard herself say, “No what?”

“No, not transported,” the man said. He stood, tall, the sleet and snow parting around him, not even touching him. “Fallen.”

“So you…fell.” Lilly turned from the microwave with a mug of hot cocoa in her hand and set it on the table in front of him.

The man, still naked beneath the afghan Grandma Lillian had knitted, looked curiously at the mug, then her. “Yes.”

“From…a…plane?”

“No.”

“From something else?”

He smiled, slow. It was like watching chocolate melt. That sweet, that rich. That good. “You could say that.”

Lilly leaned against the counter, her arms crossed, and eyed him. “Unless it’s super cold where you come from, you’d better drink that cocoa so you don’t get pneumonia. Shit.” She had a very bad, very sudden thought. “Are you going to go all War of the Worlds on me?”

“Hmm? What does that mean?” The man shifted, the afghan slipping on his broad, naked shoulders.

“You’re not going to get sick and die on me if I sneeze, are you?”

“I don’t think so.” He gave her another of those smiles. He lifted the mug to his mouth and sipped, then let out a completely decadent, sensual sigh. “Ah, I had no idea. They told me this would be good, but…”

“They, who?”

“The others who came before me.”

Lilly let out a small, shivery gasp. “Others who came before you? Like, oh, shit…at Roswell?”

He gave her another curious glance. “You are very trusting.”

“Because I let you in, instead of calling the police?” She laughed. “Trusting, or stupid. But my grandma always told me it was important to be kind to strangers, since you never knew who you might be entertaining without knowing it.”

“Your grandmother was a wise woman, and you are not stupid, Lilly Gold.”

“You know my name!” She scooted along the counter a few steps away from him.

“Would you imagine otherwise, that I should land in your backyard without knowing who you were?”

“Oh.” She watched him finish the cocoa. He made another of those moaning sounds and licked his lips, and she watched his tongue. “What’s your name?”

“You could not pronounce my name.”

Lilly laughed, loud enough to offend him if he was the sort to take offense. He didn’t appear to be. He smiled at her while she guffawed.

“You’re kidding, right?” she asked.

He shook his head. The afghan slipped further down, baring his chest. She couldn’t see the rest of him hidden by the table, but she had no trouble remembering what he looked like. Underneath he might be tentacles and scales, but on the surface he was all very, very hot dude.

“I am not kidding. I have answered to many names. You couldn’t pronounce the one I use most often.”

All this was too surreal, even with Lilly’s admittedly very broad worldview. “So what should I call you, if I can’t pronounce your name?”

“You could call me Zachariah.”

“Is that your name?”

“I told you—”

“Right, right,” she said, waving a hand. “Okay, Zach. You show up naked in my backyard in the middle of a blizzard. Tell me, please, what I’m supposed to do with you?”

That smile again. Slow and creamy and rich and delicious. Lilly forgot, for a moment, to breathe.

“Anything you want.”

All this should’ve been too much. Too strange, too crazy-out-there, too…something. But all Lilly could do was watch, fascinated, as Zachariah’s tongue slipped over his lower lip. His eyes gleamed. He had lovely dark eyes.

“Anything?” she asked, her voice hoarse and not sounding like her own.

He nodded, just once, then tilted his head to stare at her with heavy-lidded eyes and that damned smile. “Anything.”

“What if I asked you to leave? Right now?” She pointed with a barely shaking finger at the sliding glass doors. Snow had melted in front of it, from her feet, not his. He’d tracked nothing inside with his bare feet.

“Do you want me to leave?”

He stood, the blanket falling off his shoulders. He might’ve come from some mother ship or some strange planet where they didn’t speak a language she could pronounce, but he looked every inch a human male. Broad shoulders and chest tapering to a lean waist. Strong thighs. Nicely muscled and curving ass she could see as he stepped out from behind the table. Lilly had never been a fan of full-frontal nudity on dudes—too often she felt like giggling at the sight of shrimplike dicks curled tight in shrinkage, or even aroused cocks, bobbing as their owners walked.

But this guy…this Zach, this stranger…

“Wow,” she said, throat dry. “Um…”

He held out his hands and fixed her with a stare she felt unable to look away from. “If you tell me so, I’ll have to go.”

“Is that, like, a rule or something?”

“Something like that.”

Lilly swallowed again. “Why are you here?”

“I told you. To do anything you want. Be anything you want. What you need.”

“Why me?”

At this, he tilted his head again. She thought there might be a flicker of something in those dark eyes, but she couldn’t be sure. “I wasn’t told the reasons.”

She shook her head at this. “What happens if I tell you to leave?”

“I will fail in my task.”

Damn, his voice was as soft and low and deep and rich and butter-creamy as his smile. As his eyes. This wasn’t a battle Lilly could readily win; she knew this about herself, at least, and didn’t try to pretend otherwise.

“And if you fail?”

A definite flash that time. “I don’t intend to fail.”

“You drop out of the sky, naked, and come into my house telling me you’re here to be anything I want, what I need, for crying out loud, and I’m supposed to just accept this? How do I know you’re not just some random crazy stalker freak with a degree in theatrical special effects?”

“You can’t know,” Zach said, “but you should have faith.”

She scoffed at that. In the window, her candles had burned out at last. The wind whipped snow against the glass. There’d be no work tomorrow. The governor had already called a state of emergency, and not even Lilly’s boss would expect her to come out in this.

“I should feel weirder about this. Did you have something to do with that? Are you doing some sort of mind freak on me?”

“I am making this as easy for you I can,” Zachariah said, “but in the end, it’s your own heart and mind that must accept.”

“Right,” Lilly said. She clapped her hands together briskly. “Well, on that note, I’m going to bed. Alone,” she added when he seemed about to speak. “And I’m going to lock my door and sleep with my phone under my pillow. And I have a knife, too.”

“Under your pillow?”

“I’ll put it there,” she said, narrowing her eyes, though she could detect no signs he was mocking her. “You can sleep on the couch.”

“If that’s where you want to put me, then that’s where I’ll sleep.”

Lilly made a low, disgruntled noise, the one Danny had always hated. Screw Danny. She eased past the tall, naked man and down the hall toward her bedroom, half-tensed in anticipation that he’d follow her and half-hoping he would. He didn’t, and in another minute or so she opened her door again to toss him a pair of sweatpants too big for her.

“You can wear these.”

He made a shadow in the hallway. It stretched down to touch her, though he made no move at doing so. “Thank you, Lilly.”

“I’m locking this door,” she reminded him. “Don’t you try anything crazy. And if you’re going to steal something, make sure you break a lot of stuff, too, so I can prove the break-in for the insurance.”

“I’m not going to steal anything.”

She made that noise again, and this time thought she heard a soft chuff of laughter. It warmed her as much as his smile and voice had. As much as the look. He was definitely mind-freaking her, what else could it be?

In the morning, Lilly awoke to the smell of something good. Coffee, eggs. Bagels? She swung her feet out of bed, wincing when her toes touched the cold floor.

In the kitchen, Zach stood over the stove. He wore the sweatpants she’d given him but nothing else. He was thinner than she remembered, but more muscular. When he turned to face her, in the snow-bright light of day, she wondered how she could ever have thought his face was ordinary.

“Good morning, Lilly.”