Hear Me When the Sun Goes Down

by Lisa Olsen

  “I’ll call you later, Bits,” Rob promised, dropping a kiss to his sister’s temple.

  “No you won’t, but I’ll forgive you,” she replied with a twinkle in her eye. “Take care of Anja. When the time comes, don’t worry about me. Won’t be no danger coming to my door.”

  “I’ll try to keep that in mind.”

  We escorted them to the door, hugs were exchanged, until it was only Rob and me left. We stood there watching each other, a smile on my lips as we heard the girls clomping down the stairs in their boots, haggling over whether or not hot chestnuts were in order.

  “Is there anyone you don’t try to take care of?” I asked when their voices started to fade. “You were a bit hard on Laveda.”

  “She’s family. I don’t like to see her mixed up in that crowd.”

  “What crowd, my crowd? She’s also a grown woman, capable of making her own decisions.”

  “It’s dangerous, her being around vampires.”

  “Why’s that?” The Bird in Hand might not be my favorite place, but it was the most regulated place I’d seen for feeding. Plus, she wasn’t even a feeder, so it was probably even less of a risk for a bartender.

  “You liked her, didn’t you?”

  “Of course I did. Why would that possibly be a bad thing?”

  “Everybody likes her, vampires in particular. She gives off a scent that’s particularly alluring, don’t tell me you didn’t notice it.”

  “I thought that was you,” I smiled, pulling him closer.

  “It can be dangerous among those that don’t like to take no for an answer. Laveda likes to think she can take care of herself, but one of these days she’ll end up in over her head, mark my words.”

  “Then maybe it’s for the best that she’s coming back with us. That way you can keep an eye on her.”

  “I’d rather keep my eyes on you.” The silence loomed between us as we both realized at the same time we were utterly alone for the first time in forever. “Hullo,” his voice rumbled through me as he pressed me up against the door.

  “Hi,” I whispered, our breath mingling as we drew closer, drawing out the moment so that I actually moaned the instant his lips touched mine. The song swelled between us as we finally gave in, the kiss no less sweet without the tang of danger that haunted us at the mansion.

  “I’ve missed you,” I breathed when he left my lips to nudge the underside of my jaw with his raspy cheek, mouth seeking the tender skin at my neck.

  “I’ve been right here the whole while.”

  “Not like this.”

  “No, not like this,” he agreed, his hands moving lower to slip under my sweater as his hot breath fanned over my moist skin.

  “Are you sure your sister won’t mind, us using her apartment like this?”

  “She ought not to, I pay for the place.”

  Not that I would have stopped, mind you, but the thought still went through my mind as his fingers urged my sweater higher, and I reached for his belt. The sound of a key in the lock registered, my jaw dropping in shock.

  “Are you fucking kidding me?” Rob muttered. He went still, hands pressed on either side of me to keep the door shut. “Whoever it is better sod off or I’ll be calling down a load of violence you ain’t never seen the likes of,” he growled menacingly enough that I sincerely hoped it might be someone else out there, but it was Laveda’s voice who came through the door.

  “Sorry to be a bother, but have you got the flash car downstairs, parked near the corner?”

  Rob’s head cocked to one side, as surprised at the question as I was. “Why?”

  “I don’t suppose it matters to you, but there’s a bloke messing around with it. Thought you should know.”

  A string of curses left his lips as he pushed away from the door, headed straight for a window. Tamping down my frustration, I unlocked the door, giving Laveda a grateful smile.

  “Thanks, Laveda, you did the right thing in telling us.”

  “No worries, just doing my part.” She darted a quick look in at Rob and turned to go. “I’d better be on my way.”

  I shut the door and joined him at the window. Sure enough, there was a guy down there leaning down to do something on the driver’s side by the front wheel well. “Can you tell who it is from up here?”

  “Naw, it’s too far. You stay put, I’ll go check it out.”

  Okay, so I know I should’ve stayed up there, but I really wanted to see who was monkeying around with our car. Besides, what if there were more of them laying in wait?

  I caught up with Rob in time to see him approach the guy who was still bent over the car. “Oi, what you doing to my car?” Rob demanded, pushing at his shoulder.

  The guy wore dark pants made of parachute type material and a white singlet, his arms bare despite the chill of winter. Short blonde hair was matted and uneven, as though he’d forgotten to comb it for a few days, and his eyes were trained at Rob’s feet.

  “Answer me, what the fuck were you doing to my car?” Rob shoved at him again, and the guy gave a limp shrug. “Right then,” Rob’s hand fisted in the guy’s shirt and his other elbow cocked back, but I reached him in time to keep from throwing a punch.

  “Hold on a sec. Let me talk to him while you go check the car.”

  Rob was distracted enough by my appearance to forget to be mad at the guy anymore. “You’re meant to be upstairs where it’s safe.”

  “And you’re not supposed to beat the crap out of every guy who comes near us. It’s not even your car anyway, you signed it out at the mansion.” I turned to the guy, wondering why he wouldn’t look up at us. “Hey, what’s your name?”

  “Nigel.”

  “What are you doing with our car, Nigel?”

  “I wasn’t doing nothing,” he mumbled, eyes still trained on the ground.

  “What’s this then?” Rob said, coming up with a small magnetic device he fished out from under the wheel well. “You been tracking us?”

  “Had to,” Nigel said with another shrug. “He said we was to watch you at all costs, but I didn’t know what else to do if you was to split up again. Mickey’s already off with the other two.”

  I caught a whiff of his scent on the breeze then and recognized it right off the bat. Werewolf. “Who said? Brody?”

  “Ain’t supposed to say.”

  I caught his chin, forcing his head up until I had his full attention. “Who sent you after us, and why?”

  His blue eyes flared with panic as my will caught hold of him, but then the fight went out of him, his responses wooden. “Jakob sent us to look after you, see you safely back to the mansion. Said we was to keep out of sight, Mickey and me, but I wasn’t sure what to do when you went into the building. I figured I’d slip a kit onto the car and track you up into the building when you didn’t come back out straight away.”

  Jakob sent him? Rob let out a blistering string of expletives at the revelation, and it took me a good couple of minutes to recover enough to ask the next question.

  “What about your friend, this Mickey, he’s tailing Gunnar and Tucker?”

  “That’s right, miss.”

  “Does Mickey know where you are right now?”

  “No, only that I’m followin’ you two.”

  “I can’t believe this,” Rob muttered, sending a stray can skittering across the street with a well placed kick and I reached for his hand.

  “It’s fine, I can fix this.”

  Rob immediately tore his hand from mine. “Can you? Can you fix Jakob sending spies after us at every turn? This can’t be a good thing, him not trusting me to do my job.”

  “Maybe we’re overreacting. Maybe this is more about his paranoia than anything else. You know how he is about keeping me safe.” I turned to the were, making extra sure I had a good hold on his will. “Nigel, I want you to listen to me. You followed us to Portabello Road where Rob watched over me like a hawk while I shopped. After a while I picked out a human and fed, with no mishaps, and then
we went to Pandora’s Cross to meet up with Gunnar and Tucker. We were never here, and we never talked. Do you understand?”

  “I understand,” he repeated.

  “Good, now take this tracker thingy and go sit in your car until we leave.”

  Neither one of us spoke as we climbed into the black Mercedes, the minutes ticking by as we sat in silence before I ventured to say something.

  “So much for our rendezvous, huh?”

  Rob didn’t reply, his attention wholly focused on the mirrors, where I assumed he watched Nigel watching us.

  “I’ll talk to Jakob,” I tried again. “I’ll tell him we don’t need the extra protection detail, we can handle it on our own.”

  “We can’t let on that we know about this,” he snapped, his mouth turned down into a deep frown and I recoiled from the anger there.

  “Why are you so mad?”

  “Because I let myself be too distracted by you not to notice we was being followed. Maybe Jakob has the right of it and I can’t do a proper job of protecting you no more ‘cause I’m too close to see clearly? What if it’d been someone else stalking you and I didn’t see them coming?”

  Was that what he was so worried about? “Of course you can, you’re all about keeping me safe.” I reached out to lay my hand over his on the seat between us. “We don’t have to let this ruin our night together, you know. We could go back upstairs, they don’t know we’re not having an innocent visit with your family.”

  “We can’t.” Rob shook his head, but he didn’t pull his hand way. “Don’t you see? We don’t know who else could be out there. We don’t know who might see us, and who might report it back to him.”

  “It can’t be as bad as all that. We have no reason to suspect he’d send anybody other than Nigel and his buddy.”

  “We had no reason to suspect he’d send anyone after us at all, yet here we are.” He wouldn’t look at me, no mater how much I willed him to in the intimate confines of the car.

  “There has to be a way. I know we’re exposed out here, but somewhere. We could go for a drive… we could…”

  “I just… I can’t.” Unable to resist any longer, his hazel eyes swung around to meet mine, the heat there palpable even in the shadows. “No matter how much I want…” The air fairly crackled between us, each fighting the magnetic pull to come together. “It can’t happen, the risk is too great.”

  I felt it like a physical loss when he looked away, the engine giving a low roar as he started the car. “I can fix this. I promise I’ll find a way.” There had to be a way, otherwise what was the point of anything?

  Rob held my hand in the darkness for long seconds before he pulled away to attend to the shifter. “Let’s go meet up with Gunnar and Tucker.”

  Chapter Eleven

  I knew I should be patient. I knew I should wait.

  I’d never been ruled by my hormones before, and being undead, could I even really place the blame there anyway? But the more the universe conspired to keep Rob and I apart, the more I burned to be with him.

  I was good for the rest of the night. We picked up Gunnar and Tucker at the bar, stayed for a single drink and then skedaddled back to the mansion so I could make my meeting with Faust and Erlendur. I even sat at Jakob’s side for an hour, hoping to get a chance to talk to him in private about leaving for California, but it wasn’t in the cards. If I had to hear – bide a moment, petal, this is important – one more time, I thought I might lose it and tear out a handful of his perfect blonde hair.

  Then I tried waiting for him in our suite. It figured the one time I actually wanted him there he was a no show. Bridget kept me company playing cards, though my heart wasn’t really in it and she won eighteen hundred and twenty seven packs of gum off of me.

  Rob was tired and cranky by the time I got changed for bed, and I couldn’t honestly blame him. It was a terrible blow to him to learn about Jakob’s extra guard detail. He barely said two words the whole night and made up his bed on the couch instead of staying up with me for a last cup of cocoa after Bridget left.

  Jakob came in soon after that. As I lay in my room, listening to the sounds of him getting ready for bed, I wondered if I should go bother him now, or if he might take my appearance in his bedroom as a different kind of sign. He didn’t come visit me, and I admit, I was grateful when I heard him settle down.

  I had something else in mind, something that kept me from sinking into oblivion as the night wore thin and the sun contemplated its undoing. I’d never tried it before, but I knew it was possible for a vampire to enter another’s dreams. Jakob had done the same to me not all that long ago, and that meant there was a chance I could do the same with Rob.

  In dreams we could be together without fearing Jakob’s discovery. In dreams I could tell him those three little words he’d asked me never to say out loud. In dreams we could both have everything we wanted, at least for a while. What did I have to lose?

  Moving slowly, so as to avoid the clumsiness that tended to invade my limbs like a zombie plague in the late hours of the night, I tiptoed out into the sitting room, wincing as the chair creaked from my weight. Rob’s chest rose and fell smoothly, with no sign that he’d heard a thing.

  Only how the heck was I supposed to slip in there? The best I could do was try to mirror the actions in Dreamscape, that creepy sci-fi/horror movie from the eighties with lousy effects and a pretty hot Dennis Quaid as a psychic who could put himself into other people’s dreams. Only I didn’t have the benefit of any psychic powers.

  Or did I?

  I could compel people with a single thought. Never mind the fact that I couldn’t compel Rob or his family, I had to give it a shot. Sitting in the chair, I closed my eyes, matching my breathing to Rob’s, concentrating on the slow, steady beat of his heart until I felt like every breath I took was linked to his. I slipped into his unconscious mind, the dream arresting my senses as I was thrust into a world of color and music instead of the dark sitting room.

  We were in Pandora’s Cross, Rob’s favorite bar where everyone seemed to know him. The place was crowded, the dance floor packed with bodies, swaying to Sentimental Journey. Rob sat at his usual table, all alone, drink in one hand and a cigarette in the other. As far as I knew, he only smoked when he was very upset, and I wondered why he felt the need to smoke in a dream, where he could do anything he wanted.

  I thought about approaching him and asking for a dance, or even insinuating myself into his lap, but chances were he wouldn’t go for it and I didn’t want to break the cover of the dream. Besides, I wanted to tempt him into breaking his rigid control in a place without consequences.

  Flexing my will inside the dream, I was suddenly wearing an evening gown of slinky white satin, my hair long and smooth, Veronica Lake style over one eye, no trace of my singed locks in sight. Long gloves reached my elbows, and multiple loops of pristine pearls encircled my throat. Instead of going to his side, I wended my way through the crowd to the stage. I didn’t even have to speak to them to get them to play the song I wanted, Embraceable You. This sneaking into dreams was pretty shiny!

  Rob blew out a long plume of smoke and came to the edge of the stage, the crowd of dancers obscuring his way from time to time before he reached me. I sang the last few bars to him alone and when the song was over, he held out his hand to help me down from the stage, the band already starting in on the next song, Harlem Nocturne.

  “I thought I told you not to single me out any more,” he said, but there wasn’t a real hint of censure behind it.

  “I thought I was singing to the crowd.”

  He raised a single brow. “Were you?”

  “No.”

  A faint smile curved his lips, and he picked up a flower from a passing tray, tucking it behind my ear. “There, now you’re a picture.”

  This was a side of him I rarely got to see, and never in public. It had me smiling back at him like a loon, gathering my courage to say what I’d come to say. “Thanks, I…”
/>   “Dance with me,” he said, already pulling me up against him, swaying to the beat of the music.

  It had been far too long since we’d last danced, the last time I’d been too tipsy to appreciate it, really. I’d almost forgotten how well we moved together on the dance floor. Rob was a contradiction in so many ways; his rough exterior and powerful presence masking a surprisingly tender appreciation for beauty and simpler times. It made sense though, he was light on his feet in combat, of course it could translate onto the dance floor.

  “Sing… just for me,” he commanded, and I smiled against the shell of his ear.

  “I always sing just for you.” I gladly hummed along though, the song familiar to me from old reruns of Mike Hammer. I could almost believe we were in an old noir movie, with the music and the setting. I felt like some gangster’s moll, hopelessly head over heels with her hired muscle. All that was missing was Jakob in a Fedora, chomping on a cigar while he watched us dance through slitted eyes.

  Rob spun me out with a great flourish, pulling me back up tight against his body as the last note hung in the air. I didn’t recognize the song that came on next, but it felt like everyone around us moved in slow motion to the languid trumpet strains. He’d lost his smile, replaced by a hunger so sharp, I thought he might take me right there in the middle of all those people. At that moment I might not have cared.

  Instead, he caught up my hand, pulling me outside, through an employee entrance to the darkened alley. An overhang protected us from the worst of the rain, which fell in sheets to splash on the cobblestones.

  The door had barely clicked shut before Rob pulled me back into his arms again, his mouth slanting over mine as he pressed me up against the building. The bricks were hard and cold against my back, but I didn’t care. I was entirely too focused on the heat before me, the wonder of his mouth and the feel of his hands on my body.

  But I wanted more. With a surge of strength, I pushed back, flipping him against the wall as I pinned him there. I split his shirt open, buttons flying, my gloved hands sliding against his skin, revealing his chest, smooth and healthy, the scar not having taken a permanent hold in his mind yet. The stupid gloves kept me from feeling his skin and I let go of him to reach up and tug one of them free with my teeth. I tossed it aside in the alley and started in on the next one.