a handful of bills on the table. "I'd better let you go home and get some sleep."
"We don't have to go," Leanne replied. "I'm a bit of a night person myself."
"Then we have more in common than a love of horses," Jason replied dryly. "Perhaps we could go to a late movie tomorrow night?"
"Sounds good."
"I'll pick you up at the stage door."
Leanne gazed into the depths of his eyes and felt the instant connection between the two of them, as if their souls had found each other after traveling through years of darkness.
She had been born for this man.
The thought entered her mind, quiet and unshakable, like the answer to a prayer.
Part 1 Chapter Three
He fed early the next night, his eyes closing in something akin to ecstasy as he emptied a bag of whole blood into a glass and slowly drained the contents, enjoying the taste of it on his tongue.
Only yesterday, he had contemplated putting an end to his life. It would be so easy to terminate his existence, so easy to stand out on the terrace and watch the sun come up one last time.
So easy, but oh, so painful.
Now, as he dressed, he wondered, as he often had in the past, if he possessed the courage he would need to face such an agonizing death.
But it was a moot point. He no longer wished for death. Life was new again, exciting, and all because of Leanne. During the long hours of the day, as he slept the sleep of the undead in the basement of his house, her image had drifted across his mind. That, in itself, was strange, he thought. Never before had his rest been disturbed by images of anyone, living or dead. But even during the heat of the day, when he usually slept the deepest, he had seen her face, heard the sound of her voice, yearned for the touch of her hand.
Restless, he wandered through his house, trying to see it through her eyes. She would no doubt find it strange that there was no food in the house, that there were no mirrors to be found, not even in the bathrooms. He could easily explain the security bars on the doors and windows. After all, crime was everywhere. The old paintings, the ancient books and scrolls, would not be so easy to explain, not on a cop's salary.
He had collected quite a few masterpieces in the last three hundred years. Paintings thought lost in the wars that had ravaged France and Spain resided in the bedroom; sculptures believed to have been destroyed graced his library. He had one of Shakespeare's original plays, signed by the Bard himself. His basement was crowded with ancient scrolls, with furniture and clothing from ages past.
Perhaps he should have told her he was an antiques dealer. But it was easier to say he was a cop, that he worked the graveyard shift and slept days, that he worked weekends and holidays, and was therefore unable to attend the picnics and parties to which he was occasionally invited.
He paced the floor for an hour and then, unable to wait a moment longer to see her, he drove to the Ahmanson Theater and bought a ticket.
The play mesmerized him, as always. He'd lost count of how many times he'd seen it, had long ago stopped wondering why he found the production so fascinating.
Lost in the dark, he became one with the Opera Ghost, lusting after the fair Christine, knowing in the depths of his aching heart that she would never be his.
He heard the anguish in the Phantom's voice as the Phantom watched Christine find comfort in the arms of the handsome Vicomte de Chagny, felt the deformed man's pain as he cursed her.
But he had eyes only for Leanne. Her presence called to him until he was blind to everyone else on stage, until his pulse beat in time to hers. He felt her excitement as she sang her lines, felt her triumph as the crowd applauded.
As soon as the final curtain came down, he left the theater, eager to see her again, to discover if she was truly as beautiful as he remembered. Surely her eyes could not be so green as those he'd seen in his dreams, her skin could not be so pale and unblemished. No lips could be so pink and well-shaped; her hair could not be so long, so thick, as he recalled.
And then she was there, walking toward him, smiling