She never got the chance to protest his interruption because Marc pushed back his chair and stood.
The two men eyed each other for a long, strained moment, one dark and mysterious and intense, the other fair and frank and just as intense. They took each other’s measure, each evaluating the situation and the other man while the maître d’ hovered in the background, clearly unsure of what he ought to do and whether or not he could pull it off even if he decided.
Finally, Marc’s mouth quirked in amusement, and he held out his hand. “Marc Abrahms. I take it you’re a friend of Regina’s.”
“Yes, a…close friend. Dmitri Vidâme.” He shook Marc’s hand politely, but his other hand moved from the back of Reggie’s chair to the shoulder left bare by her strapless evening dress.
Marc acted as if he didn’t catch the movement, but Reggie felt sure he noticed. Damn men. They could always read each other’s shorthand.
“We were just about to have coffee,” Mark remarked. “Would you care to join us?”
That was going a little too far. Reggie shook her head. “That’s really not—”
“Thank you.” Dmitri squeezed Reggie’s shoulder to silence her. He only had to look back at a waiter, and a third chair appeared at the table. He sat.
Marc, too, resumed his seat, and the waiter poured three cups of coffee before beating a hasty retreat to the relative safety of the kitchen.
Reggie ignored the coffee, infinitely more interested in glaring at the two men. They ignored her and the coffee.
“So, where are you from, Dmitri?”
“I was born in Novgorod, Russia, about one hundred eighty kilometers southeast of St. Petersburg, though I have lived in many places during my life. I have called New York home for many years now.”
Christ, they were treating this like a cocktail party! Reggie glared at them both, but neither one was paying her any attention.
“And what is it that you do?” Marc asked, tempting Reggie to kick him under the table. He didn’t even blink. He just shifted his legs out of her reach, making her wish she’d worn steel-tipped combat boots rather than sexy, strappy sandals.
“I have a variety of business interests,” Dmitri said, “but currently my most absorbing interest is of a more personal nature.”
Marc observed the look Dmitri gave Reggie, watched the silent exchange between them, and sighed. “Yes, I imagine it is.” He signaled to the waiter and quickly paid the bill. “It was very interesting to meet you, Dmitri; and Reggie, I had a wonderful time.” He stood. “But I do have to run. You two enjoy your evening.” He grabbed his jacket, shrugging into it while Reggie shot to her feet.
“But what about the opera?” she asked, feeling awful about Dmitri’s behavior.
Marc smiled, and when he spoke, his voice was wry. “I don’t think the opera would work for us, Reggie. But I wouldn’t want you to miss it. Why don’t you and Dmitri go and enjoy yourselves?”
Reggie was still trying to wade through all the double entendres when Marc extended two tickets to Dmitri, who refused with a shake of his head.
“Thank you, but it is not necessary,” Dmitri said. “I maintain a private box of my own. Regina and I will be using it tonight. You should keep your tickets.”
“It’s not like I’m going to use them.” Marc sighed, but he slipped the tickets back into his jacket pocket. “I guess the box will just have to sit empty for the night. Now, if you two will excuse me, I’m going to go home, pour myself a nice big glass of bourbon, and see if I can catch the last few minutes of the game.”
He walked away before Reggie could protest again, so she turned to Dmitri, intending to take her embarrassment and frustration out on him.
“I like this Marc fellow,” he said, before she could speak. He rolled right over whatever she had planned to say, bundling her into her coat and pushing her gently toward the exit. “But I do not like that you would think to encourage the interest of another man, milka.”
“I wasn’t encouraging anything,” she groused, standing obediently at his side while the doorman hailed them a cab. “It was just dinner.”
“It was a date. And my woman will not date any man but me.” The slamming of the taxi door behind them punctuated his words, and chased whatever she had been planning to say right out of her head.
“Your woman?”
“Of course. In fact, I believe we already had this discussion. Several days ago.”
“Oh, we did, did we?”
Any other man would have listened to Reggie’s tone of voice and realized that cracking sound he heard was the thin ice under his big, clumsy feet. Dmitri, though, merely nodded pleasantly.
“Well, you’ll have to forgive me if I don’t recall,” she bit out, “since I would have expected any man of mine to have actually contacted me at least once in the last three days. In the age of telephones, cell phones, e-mail, text messaging, and, oh, being PSYCHIC, that doesn’t sound like too much to ask to me!”
“Yes, I apologize for my neglect, dushka. This has been a very busy week for me.”
Reggie just stared at him, her mouth gaping open until she imagined she looked something like a landed bass, only with better lipstick. It took her at least three blocks to collect herself.
“Busy? That’s it? That’s your only excuse?”
Dmitri shrugged, his expression blank and his gaze hooded. “I have many responsibilities, Regina, both professional and personal. Sometimes, what I must do must take precedence over what I wish to do.”
Reggie’s rage nearly blinded her. “Right. Well, it’s funny you should say that, because right now what I wish to do is strangle you; but since you’re not worth going to prison over, what I must do is get the hell out of this car and wish you a nice rest of your life!”
Chapter 17
Having spent the entirety of the past seventy hours or so in a futile search for a mad vampiress he knew perfectly well was safely ensconced in a comfortable prison in the land of his birth more than five thousand miles away, Dmitri could safely say he was not in the mood to argue with his mate. Since last seeing her, he’d been living on little blood and less sleep, and if he hadn’t known about her “date” this evening, he would likely be out right now, combing the city, interviewing vampires, and listening to Graham whine about how bored the Lupine had become with his life and the women he dated.
When Jean-Paul Sartre had declared that “Hell is other people,” he’d clearly been referring to a werewolf with a bad case of sexual boredom.
Therefore, when Regina began to rage at him for not having contacted her in three days, Dmitri could admit he might have overreacted. Just a smidge.
Calling on powers he’d technically never admitted to having, Dmitri seized the mind of the cabbie, remotely skidded the taxi to a stop at the curb, and grabbed his mate by the shoulders before she could so much as look at the door handle. With deliberate gentleness and inexorable strength, he pressed her back into her seat, then fisted his hands in his lap. If he touched her now, he knew he might explode.
“Do not test me, Regina Elaina,” he growled, and when her eyes widened, he could see red flames in his own reflected there. “I am half a breath away from dragging you out of this vehicle, pinning you to the nearest available flat surface, and demonstrating very graphically why it would be a serious miscalculation on your part to continue provoking me.
“I have known you for less than a week and already you have pushed me further than any other woman I have ever met. All day, every day, you invade my thoughts when I should be working. You tempt me to forget every responsibility. And twice in this time you have deliberately sought to torture me by making engagements with other men! I ask you, Regina, what is a man supposed to do with a woman like you?”
“You’re supposed to talk to me!” she screamed, thumping him on the chest with one tiny fist, then doing it again, and again until she was pounding on him with all her delicate might. “You’re supposed to make me forget all the reasons
why you scare me so much that I can’t even think straight except when you’re touching me!”
Dmitri looked down, shocked right out of his anger to see his sweet, gentle Regina reduced to violence. He watched for the space of a full breath until—to his horror—her face crumpled and she began to weep.
“Milaya,” he groaned, brushing aside her fists and wrapping his arms around her to drag her bodily and resisting into his lap. “Hush, katyonak. Lyubov moya, please. Do not cry.”
For a handful of seconds Regina continued to struggle. Then he felt the resistance leave her and she melted against his chest and clung.
Dmitri cradled her to him as if she were something precious. To him, she was. He placed his cheek atop her head and stroked her bright, silky hair with one hand, all the while murmuring to her in a hushed, jumbled mix of English and Russian. Only half of what he said made any sense; the rest of it consisted of nonsense words and calming sounds that served no purpose other than to stop her crying before she shattered his heart into a thousand tiny pieces.
For long minutes, Regina continued to cry as if her world were tumbling around her. When she finally began to quiet, he reached into his jacket pocket and produced a neatly folded square of white linen. He pressed the handkerchief into her hand and waited while she wiped her face and sniffled.
“I’m sorry,” she hiccupped, avoiding Misha’s gaze and turning to repeat the apology to the driver in the front of the cab. “I’m sorry. I don’t know why I lost it like that—”
Dmitri took her chin between his fingers and turned her face back to him. “Do not worry about the driver, dushka. I am sure he has seen worse, and I will give him a handsome tip if he acts as if none of this ever happened.”
And it didn’t hurt that Dmitri’s push at the driver’s mind would prevent the man from remembering that any of this had happened.
“Still, I am sorry. I shouldn’t have made a scene. It’s just—” She blotted her eyes again and shook her head. “I guess I’ve been more stressed out than I realized. Meeting you really turned my head upside down. And then there was the thing at the bar with Gregory and me passing out and the argument we had and Ava busting into the apartment. And when you didn’t call, I thought—”
Dmitri placed a finger against her lips to stop her babbling. “It is all right, dushka. Everything is fine. I owe you an apology of my own. I meant it when I told you I have been very busy this week, but that is no excuse for my neglect of you.”
Her frown told Dmitri that his mate was not yet quite ready to forgive him for that slight. “What were you doing that was so important you couldn’t even leave a message on my machine?” she demanded. “Or even just popped into my head. I admit that it’s taking me a little while to adjust to the idea that my—” She hesitated. “That the man I’m seeing has ESP,” she finally managed, “but I am working on it, and I think I’ve come a long way. So I don’t think it would have been out of line for you to send me a little ‘thinking of you’ buzz now and again.”
Dmitri debated with himself for a moment over what to tell her. On the one hand, his instincts told him that his mate was to be sheltered and protected at all costs; but on the other, his intellect warned him that his Regina would not appreciate being kept completely in the dark. He felt obligated to tell her something, especially after seeing how upset he had made her with his silence.
Plus, there was still the problem of Yelisaveta or her imposter. As long there was a rogue out there with a bloodthirsty streak, he did not want his mate involved in the situation. Call him a chauvinist, but he simply couldn’t stand for that.
In the end, he settled on a very carefully edited version of the truth.
“I am afraid that part of why I was out of touch over the last few days has to do with that man you used to know.”
Regina frowned, confused. “What man I used to—” Realization dawned. “Do you mean Greg? What on earth could he possibly have to do with you? We broke up more than six months ago, and even if we hadn’t he’s not the sort of guy you’d have to be worried about. I mean, he’s no threat to you.”
“I am not the one he threatened, dushka.”
Dmitri watched her face carefully and saw when memory began to tickle at her consciousness.
“I’m not afraid of Greg, Misha,” she said slowly, almost as if she were trying to convince herself more than him. “He may be a low-down, slimy, faithless jerk, but he never hurt me physically.”
“Didn’t he?”
“No. I told you—” Regina broke off and her eyes widened. “That night at the bar. He was talking about us getting back together. We went outside where it was quieter. I told him no, but he just kept at me.”
She shook her head and paused. Her gaze turned inward as she replayed the fragmented memories in her head and tried to make sense of them. Dmitri had seen it many times before. The human mind had an uncanny ability to rationalize, to convince itself that what it thought was impossible could not be true and that what it knew to be logical must be the only alternative, no matter how false or misleading. The Others had relied on that particularly mortal trait for millennia.
“He attacked me,” she breathed, raising a hand to her throat and meeting Dmitri’s gaze once more. “I thought—he must have tried to strangle me. I remember being afraid and having trouble breathing. Then I must have passed out.”
That explanation suited Dmitri. It was close enough to the truth to fit in with what she actually remembered, and it provided a good foundation for what else he was about to tell her, so he nodded.
“I know you did not remember his attack until now,” he said, “but I saw it happen. I was on my way to meet you at the bar when I heard noises in the alley. I went to investigate and found him pinning you to the wall. I only thank God that I reached you in time. I pulled him off you, but he ran before I could summon help.”
Regina shook her head. “Why didn’t you call the police?”
“I could not. All I could think of was that you were hurt and shocked and that I needed to take you home where I knew you would be safe. But once I calmed down, I realized I could not let Martin get away with treating you like that, so I tried to track him down.”
“Oh, Misha!” She laid a hand on his cheek. “Please tell me you didn’t do anything stupid like beat him up because of me!”
“I did not,” he answered truthfully. “Though I cannot say that was not my intention. He hurt you, milaya, and he frightened you. This is not something I can allow.”
“Misha, what did you do?”
He mustered a regretful-sounding sigh. “I did nothing, dushka. By the time I was able to locate him it was too late.”
She frowned. “What do you mean?”
“Dushka.” He took her hands and clasped them between his own. “I know your heart is tender, so I am afraid you will be saddened when I tell you that Gregory Martin is dead.”
Chapter 18
“Dead?” shock hit Reggie hard, leaving her dizzy and breathless for a long moment. “How? Misha, what happened?”
He frowned at her. “I was not involved in his death, Regina.”
“I know that,” she assured him, realizing how her questions had sounded. Honestly, the thought that Dmitri might have killed someone never occurred to her. She had every confidence that if he had gotten to Greg in time, he would have pounded some sense into her ex, but she never considered that he might seriously harm the man. “I didn’t mean to imply you did. I just—this is such a shock! How did you find out?”
He hesitated. “I was told by someone who knew I’d been trying to find him.”
“Do you know what happened?”
“I believe he had become involved with some unsavory characters over the past few months,” he said. His answer came easily, but Reggie couldn’t shake the feeling that he was holding something back.
“My God, I can’t believe it.” And she couldn’t. Greg might have ranked high among the scum of the earth and she might occasionally
have wished that he would come to an ignoble end, but Reggie had never really imagined him the victim of a killer. “Was it some kind of—of…hit? Was he involved in something illegal?”
Dmitri shook his head. “I am afraid I do not have those kinds of answers, dushka, but I suspect that may have been the case.”
“I can’t believe it,” she repeated. Then a new thought occurred to her and she felt herself pale. “Oh, my God, I wonder if the police are going to want to talk to me? I mean, we did break up a few months ago, and on TV they always suspect an ex-girlfriend! And if anyone saw us have that argument at Captain J—”
“Hush. I am certain you are not a suspect,” Dmitri said. “I had hoped to spare you from any upset, but I understand that whoever killed him must have overpowered him, something you obviously could not have done, milka.”
He sounded so certain and so firm, that Reggie felt herself relaxing against her better judgment.
“Still, they might assume that I asked someone to do it for me,” she speculated, but the fear had drained out of her. Somehow when Dmitri held her, she found it impossible to be afraid of anything, and that was the only thing that frightened her.
“I think you worry too much.”
He spoke firmly, and Reggie understood that the subject was closed. Really, what else was there to say about it? The news had shaken her, even shocked her, but when she examined her feelings more closely, she realized that the stirrings of sadness she felt had more to do with her regret that any person had to die unnecessarily than with the fact that she had once had a relationship with Greg. She felt sorry for him, sorry for whatever people might miss his presence in their lives, but she couldn’t bring herself to grieve. Their relationship had ended long ago, but even more than that, being with Dmitri had taught her that whatever she and Greg had shared in the beginning…even that hadn’t been love.
Love sat with her now, calm and strong and watchful. It hadn’t taken weeks or months to develop, and it didn’t care about logic or common sense. It didn’t even care about mind reading or secrets or possessive, macho attitudes. All it cared about was Regina and Dmitri and the way they fit together like two pieces of a puzzle finally joined.
One Bite with a Stranger Page 16