Kieran’s hand dropped down to his hip, where the high powered all-way communications bud was clipped. “You know how to reach me if you need me.”
“Thank you, yes. Good night, Kieren.”
“Night, ma’am.” He gave a deeper nod to her. “I’ll wait until the door is locked once more.” He stood back to let her father in.
Christopher stepped into the apartment and Deonne shut the door and locked it. Then she took a deep breath and turned to face him.
He was examining the apartment, wandering around the main room and studying the furniture and fixtures, much as she had done a few hours before. But she had not picked things up and put them back with a little moue of disapproval, nor had she worn the slightly disparaging air.
“The Scandinavian thing is somewhat passé as a form of décor, isn’t it?” he asked, turning to face her.
“Not in Scandinavia.” She crossed her arms. “You didn’t hop a semi-ballistic just to critique my accommodations, father.”
He gave a last look out the windows and swiveled to face her, one hand on his hip under the heavy overcoat he wore. There would still be snow coverage in the Alps, of course. “You haven’t communicated with the family in over three years, Deonne. You very nearly disappeared except for rumors here and there of your doings. After years of silence, you find it odd that I would want to visit my daughter when I finally get a solid lead on her location?”
“Yes, I do,” she shot back. “Today isn’t the first time I’ve been on the nets. You could have dropped everything and dashed to see me at any time over the last three years. Why now, all of a sudden?”
“You’ve been mysteriously absent from the nets for a while.” He lifted a brow at her reaction. “Ah, you thought I hadn’t been paying attention. For nearly six months you all but vanished after appearing regularly on all the hottest links.”
Deonne drew in a long, slow inhalation. “And what has that got to do with anything? My career is my business. You went to great lengths to make sure I understood I was to stand on my own two feet. Well, I’m standing on them just fine, no thanks to you.”
“I encouraged your independence,” he told her. “That isn’t the same thing as severing all ties to the family.”
“What family? There’s only you and you haven’t exactly screamed about my silence until now.” She gave him a stiff smile. “Or are you really going to try to convince me that Petronella misses me?”
His third wife was younger than Deonne and a cliché in looks, self-centeredness and intelligence. Deonne couldn’t stand the vapid, childlike woman and had no idea how Petronella felt about her. She frankly didn’t care.
Christopher frowned. “Petronella is my wife. You will speak about her with the respect she is due.”
“Because she married you?” Deonne laughed. “Why are you here? Don’t lie this time, father, or I will call Kieren back and have you tossed out of the building and be damned to your dignity or that fine coat you’re wearing.”
He smoothed a hand down the coat, telling her he was proud of the garment. He was as much of a clotheshorse as she was. Of course—she was like him. She had grown up hearing how much she looked like her father and how much like him she was. When she was a teenager, she had been ready to commit murder in order to prove exactly how much she wasn’t like him.
The years since and a lot of distance had confirmed that she had inherited her father’s drives and genes. That was unavoidable. But there were certain personality traits she had worked for years to subvert and suppress, if not change altogether.
Her father looked at her now with a gentle expression. “Dee, please. I’ve come a long way. Can you drop the shield for a while?”
Deonne hesitated. That warm expression of his. She recalled that from long ago, when they had sat in his study, watching the nets and discussing her week, over hot chocolate on a Sunday morning. A throb of homesickness for days gone by swept through her.
The tumblers on the front door of the apartment turning and unlocking sounded unnaturally loud in the silence spinning between them. Deonne turned to face the door, almost surprised by the sound, which seemed to break the little spell. Worse, she saw annoyance flicker across her father’s face, which told her how close she been to letting herself be sold by his false warmth and sentimentality.
Again.
Justin strolled in like it was the middle of the day, not close to dawn. He showed no surprise to see Christopher in the main room, or Deonne up and dressed. He walked straight over to Deonne and kissed her temple. “I’m sorry I stayed out so late. Miss me?” He looked into her eyes and smiled one of his warmest smiles. Unlike her father’s, Justin’s smile was real and the warmth genuine.
Deonne scrambled to understand what Justin was doing. He had never, never openly greeted her this way in front of anyone before. Now, with her father in the room—
Kieren. Kieren had warned Justin. Justin was offering her…what? Protection? Moral support? Both, she decided.
She smiled back at him, genuinely touched, then looked at her father.
Christopher Rinaldi was scowling.
Justin nodded at him. “Under the circumstances, it would be stupid to pretend I don’t know who you are. Kieren is the very best at what he does and he wouldn’t let a stranger into this room if I wasn’t here. So I know who you are. That puts you at the disadvantage.” He stepped away from Deonne and looked at her. “I’ll leave it up to you if and how you introduce me.”
“Of course she’s going to tell me who you are,” Christopher said. “Considering the way you just greeted her, I think I deserve a name at the very least.”
Justin gave him a small smile. “Given the reason you’re here, you should consider yourself lucky if Deonne gives you that much.”
Deonne had spent years watching her father deal with business associates and clients, studying his face and the different expressions he used to soothe, to manipulate. She had unconsciously found herself using many of them when she had first started out in professional communications, until she had learned to recognize what it was she had been doing and use the techniques deliberately.
So now she watched her father hide the surprise that raced across his face and adjust his expression to show a swiftly growing anger instead. “How dare you…!” he spluttered and let the sentence dangle.
There was enough fury and implied threat than any normal man would have leapt to fill the unfinished sentence.
But Justin wasn’t a normal man. He simply stood and waited her father out.
Christopher looked at Deonne. “Who is this…man…you’re cavorting with?” he demanded.
It had been her intention, initially, to introduce Justin simply by his name and perhaps explain his status as a vampire later, when she better understood the strange currents Justin had brought swirling into the room. The disdain in her father’s voice changed her mind. She kept her tone neutral. “A friend,” she said simply.
Christopher’s faded blue eyes locked with hers. “I see,” he said, his voice as level as hers. She recognized that tone. He was mentally rolling up his sleeves and prepared to fight this out.
He looked at Justin. “I would like time alone with my daughter. I have travelled a great distance to be with her.”
Deonne snorted. “You hopped on the next available semi-ballistic. It didn’t even dent your pocket change. Why do people make sitting in a chair sound like such a hardship? Distance is just distance. It’s not like you were deprived of food or water. You probably sucked back schnapps while you were in free fall.”
Christopher didn’t shift his gaze from Justin. “Nevertheless, I did travel here specifically to seek Deonne out and speak to her. Alone.”
Justin touched her arm. “Deonne?”
She knew what he was asking. “I would rather you stay, please,” she told him.
Justin looked at Christopher and shrugged. “I don’t know you. I know Deonne better than anyone on this hemisphere of the world right now
. I will do what she asks over and above anything you might request of me.”
Christopher’s jaw flexed and his gaze grew icy. “Are you, or are you not a vampire?” he demanded.
Gloves off completely, Deonne realized. He wasn’t holding back.
“Does it matter?” Justin asked curiously.
“Of course it bloody matters,” Christopher snarled back. “My daughter has one of the brightest futures any human on this planet could ask for–”
“Then we agree about something, at least,” Justin told him smoothly.
Deonne raised her hand. “Just a moment. If you two are going to argue about me in the third person while I’m standing right here in the room with you, then you can both get out. I’m not the latest objet d’art on the auction block. Damn it to hell!”
Justin picked up her hand. “My apologies, Deonne.”
“Do you have to do that in front of me?” Christopher asked.
“Do what?” Justin returned, genuinely puzzled.
Christopher’s mouth curled up in distaste. “Touch her.”
Deonne could feel her jaw loosening in shock as she stared at her father.
Justin lowered her hand gently, also studying her father. Unlike her, he showed no shock at all. “And there lies the rub,” he said softly. “It wasn’t danger to her career that got you into that semi. It was proximity to vampires.”
“This is none of your business,” Christopher told him shortly. There was a vein throbbing in his temple.
“Deonne made it my business by asking me to stay.” Justine pushed his hands into his pockets. “Me being vampire makes it my business whether she invited me to stay or not.” He declared his vampirism flatly, with no hesitation or embarrassment or the coyness he usually exhibited when revealing it. Deonne might even have thought he was proud of the fact, except for the discussion they’d had a few hours before.
Christopher was growing angry. His nostrils flared and the sight provoked memories that Deonne had forgotten…that she had been glad to forget, now that they came flooding back. Most of the memories featured her standing in her father’s home office, listening to him lecture her in his precise, clipped tone, his words cutting and sarcastic, while he dismantled her latest efforts in school work, homework, sports, and later, her sprouting career, pointing out her flaws, errors and weaknesses and why what she had attempted had failed – even if it had been a success.
Her father could always see the downside.
He was getting ready to blast someone now. She didn’t know if he was angry enough to give Justin the benefits of his withering lecture, or if he would pour it all over her, but Christopher was going to vent on one of them and Deonne was suddenly tired of it.
“Why don’t you tell me why you’re really here, father?” she asked quickly, before Christopher could let loose. “It’s not just because you’re a bigoted vampire hater, or you would have come and hauled me out of their grip six months ago.”
Christopher let out a gusty breath of air. “How dare you speak to me that way.”
“I dare, because it’s the truth and you know it,” she snapped back. “Father, you woke me in the middle of the night without warning. You’ve insulted my friend, his race, Swedes and their décor, my security chief, and you’ve only been in the country for, what? An hour? You used to be better than this at diplomacy.”
Christopher pushed his hand through his thinning hair, ruffling it, and Deonne knew she had ruffled his composure just as much in order for him to discard concern about his appearance. “What do you want me to say?” he asked, after a long silence.
“The truth usually works well,” Justin suggested.
Christopher scowled at him. Then he sighed. “Very well,” he said, looking at her. “I want you to come home, Deonne. Come home with me now. Tonight. This morning, I mean.”
Deonne stared at him, trying to encompass that Christopher Rinaldi was actually speaking the words that once upon a time she had fantasized about hearing. “What?” she asked, sounding vacant and stupid in comparison. “This is a joke, right?”
She glanced at Justin to catch his reaction to this extraordinary development.
He wore a small, wise smile. It even seemed cynical. “Tell her the rest,” he said.
Christopher scowled at Justin. “Does he really have to be here?” he asked her.
“Yes,” she said flatly.
“Ask him to tell you the rest,” Justin said, still not raising his voice above the even, placid tone he’d been using all along.
“What ‘rest’?” she demanded, looking at her father. “What else could there be?”
“Just the money,” Justin said.
Her father’s nostrils flared again, but then she saw something majestic: She saw her father fight to bring himself under control. He breathed and swallowed back his ire, his gaze on the floor. Then he lifted his gaze back to her face. “Your…friend…naturally uses the most unflattering phrase he can reach for.”
Deonne stared at him, bewildered.
Christopher held his hand out to her in supplication. “I wronged you, all those years ago,” he said. “I know that now. I came here to make amends.”
Justin snorted.
Christopher ignored him. “I have arranged a transfer of five million credits to your old credit card…you still use it, don’t you? It’s the first step in my plan to make up for the years we’ve lost.”
Deonne was genuinely speechless.
“If you go back with him, of course,” Justin said. “If you don’t, he’s going to rip the money out of your account quicker’n a lizard on a hot tin roof. Care to lay a bet on it, Deonne?”
Deonne could feel her heart drop into the region around the bottom of her stomach with a breathless little freefall that made her feel sick, as she realized that this was a horrible possibility. She speared her father with an accusatory glance.
Christopher was glaring at Justin, his fury glowing a deep red across his face.
Deonne moaned, clutching at her heart. “Justin is right, isn’t he?” Her lips were thick and uncooperative.
Christopher tried to haul in his anger. He tried to recover and slide on a civilized mask. She watched him do it as he turned his face to look at her. When had he become so transparent? Or had she learned how to read him, finally, after all these years?
“Get out,” she whispered.
“Deonne…” Christopher began, using a warm, conciliatory tone.
She shook her head. “No.”
“Dee…”
She looked at Justin. It wasn’t exactly a plea for help, because in all the years she’d had to deal with her father, there had never been anyone who could stand up to him, including her. But she couldn’t bear to look at her father now, to see the held-back fury behind the veneer of civility. The worst was that he seemed to think she was ignorant…that she couldn’t see hiss crass manipulations for what they were.
Had she simply grown up? Or had she out-grown him?
So she turned her gaze away from her father and looked at Justin instead.
Justin’s eyes narrowed. “Right,” he said, his voice still the same even, reasonable tone he had been using all along. “I think we’ve had about enough of this.” He moved over to Christopher’s side and took hold of his arm. “Come on, mate. You’re out of here.”
“I bet your pardon?” Christopher said. He looked down at Justin’s hand on his arm. “Take your hand off me at once.”
“I will, in about sixty seconds. Either you walk through that door under your own steam or I push you through. Your choice. Fifty seconds.” Justin glanced at Deonne. “Could you do me a favor and punch in the security code? It’ll save me a couple of seconds.”
She wanted to protest over this manhandling of her father but really, he had brought this upon himself by behaving so badly. It was about time he got to suffer through the consequences of his actions instead of everyone being too scared of him and tiptoeing around him and letting him get a
way with boorish crap. It took a vampire with their centuries of experience dealing with bullshit combined with their physical strength to overcome him.
She hurried over to the door and punched in the security code again. The door unlocked with the same heavy mechanical thud as before. She remembered Kieran’s instructions and cracked the door an inch or two and looked out, before swinging it open wider.
There was no one in the passage, so she stepped out of the way.
“Thirty seconds,” Justin told Christopher Rinaldi.
“I see I am not welcome here,” Christopher said. He moved his head, as if he were trying to stretch and clear his throat. “I am more disappointed in you than any words I say can possibly express, daughter.”
Deonne held herself rigid, as if that would stop his statement from sinking any deeper than surface level.
Christopher moved toward the door and Justin shadowed him all the way there. Her father glanced back at her once before he stepped through. “They will destroy your life in so many ways. They don’t stop at just blood, Deonne.”
“Get out,” she said, for the last time. She had to fight to keep her voice low and contained or she would have screamed it.
Christopher didn’t try for the last word, or even a last glance. He just strode through the door as if he was heading out for coffee and would be back in a moment, leaving Deonne standing at the door and Justin on the other side.
Justin shut the door gently behind her father, leaving them alone.
Chapter Nine
Stockholm, Sweden, 2264 A.D.: Justin lifted up his hand and considered his fingernails. “That was…interesting.”
Deonne cleared her throat, but had nothing to say. She needed to think, first. She needed to absorb what just happened. She went over to the chaise longue and sat on the square end, looking out the window. Pale streaks painted the night sky. It was close to dawn already.
Justin settled himself on the low arm of the chair opposite her. “You called your father a bigot,” he said.
Deonne wince. “It was deserved.” She tried to meet his gaze. There was no judgment in Justin’s expression and that made it easier. “I had no idea he was…like that.”
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