Patient Darkness: Brooding City Series Book 2 (11 page)

The two parted and regarded each other silently for a brief moment. Terry took the opportunity to reinsert himself into the situation. “I’ll get the door for you two.”

Brennan hovered his hand a half inch above the small of Clara’s back as he ushered her to go first. She offered a polite smile and stepped forward into the subdued lighting of the restaurant’s foyer. A young woman with perfect posture gave them a cheery smile from behind her podium.

“The name of your reservation, sir?”

“Brennan, Arthur Brennan,” he replied in his best Bond impersonation.

Somehow, she managed not to roll her eyes, maintaining her professional cheer without even blinking. “Brennan,” she said, repeating the name several times as she made a show of checking and rechecking the list of reservations. “I’m sorry, sir, but your name does not appear to be here.”

Clara gave Brennan a worried look, and a thought occurred to him. “Try another name. Sam McCarthy, he’s a friend of mine. He set up the reservation.”

With an almost inaudible sigh of skepticism, the hostess looked again, this time further down the list. His lips parted slightly in surprise. “Sam McCarthy, eight fifteen reservation for two.” She glanced up at the two of them with a false smile plastered on her face. “We are ready for you now. Follow me, please.”

There was an inner set of doors that were opened by other attendants. Inside, the restaurant was alive with the buzz of hundreds of hushed conversations. The hostess ushered Brennan and Clara through the restaurant, past several open tables, until Brennan worried that she was leading them to an undesirable table close to the restrooms. This was not the case, however, as they turned and arrived at a cozy square table situated in one of the corners of the restaurant.

Unlike the other tables, which had somber black tablecloths, theirs was draped in a fine white fabric and already held several flickering candles. It was partially enclosed, with carefully sculpted wood beams and thick blocks of glass that obscured easy observation from others in the restaurant. The walls around the table were hidden by a gauzy curtain, behind which water trickled with a quiet murmur. It was backlit as well, giving a calming blue aura to the area around the table.

“This is beyond cool,” Clara whispered.

They took their seats on the single rounded bench and sat roughly ninety degrees apart. The hostess gave them a more genuine smile this time. “You two have a wonderful meal!”

“Thank you,” Brennan said to her back as she turned and started to glide away.

Clara looked at the empty tabletop and gave a cough of laughter. “I think she forgot to give us our menus.”

Brennan grinned. “I think you’re right.”

“We’ll get them when our server comes, I guess.” She looked at him with dancing excitement in her eyes. “So, Arthur, tell me something interesting about yourself.”

“Something interesting about myself? Like what?”

“I don’t know. Anything. What do you like to do in your spare time?”

“I like to read,” he said. “And I have a good friend that I play pool with sometimes.”

“I love a man who loves books,” Clara said enthusiastically. “I wish I had more time for reading. My grandparents had a place in New Hampshire that we would visit every year, once in the summer and once around Christmas. They had a big, old wooden house down by the edge of the lake, with a screened-in back porch that looked out over the water.” Her smile widened as she thought back to her childhood. “My favorite place in their house was a bay window on the second floor. It was as wide as I am long, and there was a deep ledge where I could sit and read as the sun rose in the morning.”

Clara was a talkative person, Brennan noticed, but he also realized that he liked hearing the sound of her voice. “That must have been nice,” he said.

Her excited eyes turned wistful as she met his gaze. “It was. But now I’m busy working with patients and trying to get a book published and, obviously, dating, and—” Clara puffed a sigh of frustration. “Life,” she said bluntly. “It catches up to all of us, doesn’t it?”

“That it does,” Brennan said, laughing.

A large man with dark brown skin and a gleaming head came by the table with two flutes of champagne held in his wide hands. The white fabric of his chef’s apron was pristine, almost glowing in the accented lighting of their secluded table. “Good evening, folks,” he said, white teeth shining as he placed the glasses down in front of them. Brennan rose to his feet, and he and the chef exchanged grips. “Chef Ray, pleased to meet you.”

“Arthur Brennan. And this is Clara Thompson,” he said, and Clara quickly rose to shake hands with the chef.

“You have a great friend, Arthur,” Chef Ray said. “And any friend of Sam’s is a friend of mine.”

A sense of pride battled with the shock Brennan felt. People either loved or hated Sam, and the latter group seemed more and more prevalent these days, so it was good to see that not all of his bridges had been burned.

“I don’t know if Sam had a chance to explain what’s going to happen here,” Chef Ray continued, “but I’m going to prepare a multi-course meal for you, paired with several wines, and hopefully we’re all going to have a great evening!” He clapped his hands together and beamed at the two of them.

“That sounds amazing,” Clara said, awe evident in her voice.

Brennan nodded. “I can’t wait,” he told Chef Ray.

“Excellent! First, do either of you have any food allergies?”

They both shook their heads.

“And how do you like your meat cooked?”

“Medium rare,” Clara responded.

“Medium well.”

Chef Ray bowed his head slightly and raised his hands. “Perfect. Well enjoy yourselves tonight, and I’ll bring out the first course shortly.”

“Thank you,” Brennan said.

Clara waited until the chef had left before leaning in to whisper. “Arthur…thank you. I promise I can pay for my half, or at least for the wine. But if I’m being completely honest, I don’t usually spend so much when eating out, especially not for a single meal. I hope I am not seeming cheap, but would you mind if we kept things simple from here on out?” A long moment passed, and color rose in Clara’s cheeks. “I’m sorry, that’s implying a second date. I’m being silly, I—”

“No, not at all,” Brennan said quickly. A grin made its way onto his face, in spite of his best efforts. “I’m relieved, actually.”

“You are?”

“Yes!” He laughed and slid slightly closer to her. “It has been a long time since I last saw anyone, and I want you to enjoy tonight.”

“You’ll have to give my thanks to your friend for setting this up.”

Brennan laughed. “I definitely will. Though I gave him a hard time earlier today, and I think him saddling me with a seven-course meal is his way of getting back while still looking out for me. Next time, I’ll make a home-cooked meal for us.”

Clara’s eyes shined as she looked into his. “Perfectly fine with me,” she said. She lifted her glass and took a gulp of champagne. “You cook?”

“I make ingredients interact with appliances and produce slightly more edible things,” Brennan said, eliciting a laugh from Clara.

“Mmm, impressive. I’m afraid to admit that I have more of a green thumb than a culinary hand.”

“Where do you garden, in a city like this?”

Clara laughed again, a fantastic sound to Brennan’s ears. She moved her handbag and sidled a little closer to him. “Like I said, I don’t have much recreational time. When I was in college, I helped out with tending to the gardens for academic credit, and before that I was always running around in my mother’s flowers in the backyard.” Clara shook her head, still smiling. “She always hated when I did that.”

“Why is that?”

“I think she was afraid I would step on one of her precious flowers. She would import bulbs and seeds from all across Europe and create the most beautiful natural arrangements with them. I realized at some point that I could win her affection by planting instead of playing, and I was surprisingly good at it.” She shrugged. “I guess it stuck.”

A woman with dirty blonde hair appeared with two additional glasses of white wine. Chef Ray came out at that moment and delivered two lightly steaming bowls to the table.

“To start you off tonight, we have a French onion soup with gruyère cheese and caramelized onions, served in a brandy broth.”

“Sounds delicious,” Brennan said.

Clara moved her empty champagne flute to the side and picked up the other glass. After a polite sip, she sighed appreciatively. “That is
really
good.”

Brennan drank a mouthful and squelched the scowl that came to his lips. His late wife had been a fan of white wines, but Brennan had never developed a liking for them.

“So,” Clara said after a second sip, “what is it like to be a detective? You must see a lot of exciting things.”

“That’s one word for it,” he said.

“How would you describe your job?”

“There are moments of excitement, sure, but those are surrounded by a lot of paperwork. Mostly, it is stressful. It’s a pretty unforgiving job, and there are a lot of opportunities to get yourself shot.”

“See? Excitement!”

Brennan smiled at her tongue-in-cheek humor. “After it happens once, it’s not a process you’re eager to repeat.”

“So has it happened to you?”

“Getting shot?” Brennan thought about the botched rescue mission he and Sam had staged a few months ago. In their attempt to save Bishop, she had in turn become
their
salvation, taking out a ruthless drug lord in the process. “A couple times.”

“When was the most recent?”

“You seem very interested in this topic,” he joked.

“I work with victims of trauma,” Clara said. “I can imagine very few things that would be more scarring, psychologically and physically, than a bullet wound. It sounds like that would be an awful experience, but your job sounds so much more exhilarating.”

Brennan became intensely aware of how closely they were sitting. Over the course of the conversation and with the help of some wine, their hands were now just barely overlapping on the bench space between them. He let his fingertips brush against the edge of Clara’s hand and wander over the smooth skin. They delicately traced the outline of her fingers before intertwining with them. He took another sip of the Riesling, this time not caring about the taste.

“This is nice,” Clara said softly. She edged a bit closer, and her breath intermingled with his.

“I almost died,” Brennan blurted out. The words fell out of his mouth before he could realize what he was saying. “A couple months ago.”

Clara’s hand stopped moving, and her head moved fractionally backward. Her eyebrows knitted together in consternation. “What happened?”

“We were solving the homicide of a pharmacist named Nettle. The kid was barely out of college, with no prior arrests to his name. He would never have been a blip on anyone’s radar if he had kept his nose clean.” Brennan sighed heavily and took a big sip of wine.

“I’m guessing he didn’t do that.”

He shook his head. “Nettle became a middleman provider for a drug lord, and when he tried to increase his share of the profits, things turned violent.”

“I think I read about that in the paper.”

“What didn’t make the headlines is that our coordinated strike on two possible locations for their storage depots went belly up. We lost half a dozen men, and my partner, Bishop, was taken hostage. It took us hours just to track her down, and thankfully she was still alive then.”

“That’s awful! Why didn’t they kill her as well?” Brennan gave Clara a sharp look, and she held up a placating hand. “Don’t get me wrong, I am glad they didn’t, for your sake. But why keep her alive?”

Brennan shrugged. “Any number of reasons. I think they just recognized her face from poking around the pharmacy, and then again when she showed up at the warehouse. I was jumped, too, but they only saw me once before the hospital.”

“The hospital?” she asked in alarm.

“Oh, no, not for me. Well, yes, I needed a hospital
afterwards
. What I mean is that we tracked down the location where they were holding her and, well, we staged a rescue.”

Clara smiled in relief, and admiration shone from her eyes. “How did you know to find her there?”

Brennan stopped midway through another bite into his breadstick. It had been Greg who had found her, with a patch on his arm and the detached voice boardwalk psychics used while gazing into crystal balls. Except
his
vision had been real, against all doubts, and it was a startling revelation which Brennan had withheld even from Sam.

His best friend had joined him in the rescue op, without question, yet he was never made aware of the truth. It was that act that made Brennan realize now how fiercely loyal Sam could be. But the fact that Greg could be exposed—as either a patch addict or as a “freak” with a power like Brennan’s—meant that he couldn’t reveal the truth of how they found Bishop.

“We received an anonymous tip,” he lied easily. “The caller said they had seen a woman matching Bishop’s description being taken into the abandoned hospital uptown.”