“So you liked the piece?” It wasn’t gloating. Sometimes a girl needed to hear she’d done a great job—especially when she worked for a guy like Hollander. He could be an abrasive perfectionist, an I-dotter and T-crosser, with no tolerance for error or half-baked reporting.
“You nailed it.”
“Did it land above the fold?” Front-page placement where everyone could see your byline was the gold star she was aiming for. Hollander looked away and her gut toppled from golden-yummy glow to sour and squishy.
“It was good, I give you that. Good enough for the front of the op-ed section in tonight’s edition.”
“Op-ed!” The damn doughnut flew out of her hand as Kristin gestured with frustration. She watched it skitter across his desk, leaving a trail of chocolate icing and cream filling. She tried to quell her disappointment over the story placement and the loss of her doughnut.
“That was a solid piece, not opinion.” And apparently, not good enough. Again. “It should’ve at least made the news section and you know it.”
Hollander’s fleshy mouth transformed into a flat line as he scooped the doughnut with the edge of a piece of paper into his trash can. “First of all, Reed, I don’t have to explain my decisions to you.”
Whoa. Time to back up a pace. “Granted,” she said, striving to keep the disappointment from her voice. “But I’d still like to know why.”
“Something else came in early this morning that was a direct contrast to your piece. Thought the two-dogs-over-one-bone setup might pump up reader interest, so I ran them side by side in the opinions section.”
Someone else at the paper must have thought her idea wasn’t that lame in the meeting or they wouldn’t have been writing about vampires. Bradley? He was sneaky enough to try something like that. “I thought you didn’t even want to run a piece on vampires, and now you’re telling me you ran two?”
“It’s popular culture. Latest fads and what people think of them, why they get into them. How far they’re willing to go into their fantasy. Fascinating stuff. Readers will eat it up.”
Kristin locked her gaze with her editor. “Who was the other reporter?”
“Freelancer. Dmitri Dionotte.”
A sizzle of anger and heat speared through her, splitting her in two. She’d let that jackass kiss her, touch her, when all the while he’d been planning to undercut her with an article to her very own paper. He was devious, hot, underhanded, hot, completely untrustworthy, hot, and in for a big piece of her mind. He’d stolen her story idea plain and simple. Dammit.
Kristin didn’t even bother to respond when Hollander yelled for her to turn in another home run by tomorrow’s deadline as she stalked out of his office.
Twenty minutes later she was sitting outside Sangria still fuming. “Low-down, rotten …” She threw a withering glance at the closed door as she climbed out of her car. Taking a deep breath, she pushed on the club door. Locked.
That snapped a little of the wind out of her self-righteous sails. Of course the club wasn’t open at nine-thirty in the morning. Confronting Dmitri would have to wait until tonight. Which wasn’t nearly soon enough.
She strolled in from the night as if she owned the place, her long legs encased in tight dark denim finished off with black high-heeled boots. A soft red sweater skimmed the swell of her breasts and slouched off one shoulder, exposing so much of her neck and collarbone that it screamed vampire bait. She looked sexy as hell and decidedly pissed as she scanned the semi-crowded room. Dmitri hid a smile.
It was a good crowd for a Thursday night. Too early for most of his clientele, but enough people to make Kristin have to work at finding him in the darkened room as he sat at the bar.
He’d anticipated her anger. In truth, he’d counted on it. She stalked straight toward him, a delicious pink suffusing her skin. He felt the throb of her blood, heard the thudding as her heart pounded in both anger and anticipation. A surprising mix of hunger and lust rumbled deep in his gut. He hadn’t been prepared for that.
He shoved the sensation away, focusing instead on the intensity of her blue eyes. “Ciao, bellissima.” He didn’t dare move from his seat at the bar. In this agitated state, he’d likely move too fast and scare her.
She tossed her purse onto the bar and glared at him as she slid onto the bar stool, bringing them eye to eye. Lightning flashed in their depths as she leaned forward. “Why’d you do it?”
“Perhaps if I knew what the accusation was regarding?” he murmured coolly, picking up his glass to drink. Her gaze flicked to the red liquid for an instant before locking onto his face once more.
“The article you wrote for my paper.” “Ah.” He set the glass down, running his finger around the rim of the crystal and making it sing.
She crossed her long legs, her booted foot bouncing with impatience. “When did you develop an interest in journalism?”
He fixated on her eyes. Cobalt blue rimmed in a darker blue the color of a midsummer midnight sky on the edges of her irises. The artists of the Renaissance would have been enchanted with her. “About the same time I met a journalist worth being interested in.”
She seemed to soften under his stare. He could easily call her to him, make her forget every other thought in her mind if he willed it. But that was a game for other vampires. Dmitri broke the lingering gaze between them. Until now he’d successfully avoided having any kind of infatuation with mortal or vampire, a kind of self-inflicted penance for being something he’d never wanted to be.
She brushed the wispy bangs from her eyes, her fingertips resting against her forehead. “Look, I don’t try and run your club, so I’m asking you nicely—butt out of my newspaper.”
This softer side of her rattled him, bringing out protective urges he didn’t need or want. Having her angry with him, active and vibrant, was much easier. He couldn’t resist the urge to goad her. “Your paper, is it? Funny. Hollander seemed to be the one in charge, and he liked my article well enough to run it today.”
The heated tint returned to her skin and with it, his own blood lust. Her eyes sparkled with challenge, reflecting the flash and strobe of the lights off the dance floor. There, that was better.
“This is my job. This is what I was born to do, and if you think I’m going to let you louse it up, you’re in for a big surprise, buddy boy.” “I thought you might react like this.” He picked up the glass and took another sip. The packaged blood barely took the edge off his increasing thirst. The scent of cinnamon that cloaked the air around her was hotter, spicier than he recalled. He remembered what it had felt like for his heart to pound at the sight of a beautiful woman. Remembered it only intellectually. His ribs curled around a cold stone replica of what remained of his actual heart. But his sexual interest in this woman was startling, and not welcomed. Not here. Not now. And not her.
“Angry. You bet.”
“I was thinking irrational, but angry works too.”
“Irrational? How about we stick to the facts here. Fact one, you knew I was working on a vampire story. Fact two, you undercut me.”
She was fighting the anger, trying to be rational, striving for calm. But he could feel her frustration and aggravation vibrating in the air, spiking it with the hint of pepper. “I see.” And he did. She was all about the job, just like him. Focused. Dedicated. And not about to have anyone, particularly him, undercut her or stop her upward climb at the newspaper. “So you’re afraid of a little friendly competition,” Dmitri needled.
Kristin huffed. “If this is how you treat your friends, remind me never to sign up to be one.”
He threw her a thousand-watt fangless smile. “Would you like a drink?”
“Is that supposed to be some kind of apology or a peace offering?”
“It can be both, if you like.”
Her shoulders relaxed and Dmitri found he couldn’t resist the urge to touch her. He grasped her hand and began massaging small circles into her palm. Her skin was hot and a thousand times softer than silk
under his sensitive fingers.
“Why did you do it?”
“Maybe I wanted to get your attention.”
She snorted and glanced away for a moment, clearly uncertain what to do with his obvious interest. “I doubt you have to work to get most women to pay attention to you.”
“Ah, but you aren’t most women, are you?”
Her eyes narrowed, raking over him, assessing him. Appreciation was there. So was desire. Despite her rejection of his advances the night before, she was as intoxicated by him as he was by her. Ultimately it could come to no good. It was just one of the reasons many vampires didn’t often choose a mortal mate.
“So where do we go from here?” she asked, her tone betraying her warring interest and distrust.
“That depends entirely on you.”
Kristin got the feeling from the way he was looking at her that he was talking about far more than just her investigation or the article. His eyes were hot melted chocolate, and she had the completely irrational desire to dip herself into them. Hell, he even smelled like dark chocolate. He was far too rich for her blood. Kristin tried to think of all the reasons she should abstain from chocolate. And sexy men. And competitors in the newspaper business.
It was going to be hard to stay away from Dmitri because she needed him. Needed him for this story. The story she hoped would win her the coveted Pulitzer, let alone the front-page-above-the-fold position that was quickly becoming a subsection of her holy grail.
“Look,” she said evenly, keeping her eyes on his nose instead of drowning in chocolate or looking lower to his all-too-sexy mouth. “We can help each other. You obviously have a thriving club here. But who would say no to more business? A bigger crowd? I can do that for you. Stir up interest in vampires, make people curious enough to come and see for themselves how this is all so—” she waved a hand vaguely “—interesting. You know more about what’s going on with this subculture than anyone else I’ve run into. What’s the harm if I give you a little coverage?”
He didn’t answer right away, just gazed at her, which unnerved her. She’d never had a man look at her so intently before. “People are threatened by things they don’t understand.”
“So basically you’re saying you’d rather people didn’t know the truth.”
“That’s not what I said at all. Obviously I need to be a bit more specific for you.” He leaned in closer, crowding into her space and bringing his sexy mouth far too close for her comfort. Her skin suddenly seemed a size too small and her lips tingled. “You’re meddling in things you can’t possibly understand. You could get hurt. And I’d like to avoid having that on my conscience.”
Kristin snatched up her purse. She was still boiling mad that he’d gotten her bumped to the opinion page, and a bit pissed at herself for being so undeniably attracted to the guy. There was only so much civility she could muster, especially when he was blocking her access to another story and tampering with her libido. “You know, under that slick cultured exterior you’re a Neanderthal just like the rest of them.”
His eyes narrowed dangerously. “Them who?”
“Men. You think you can take whatever it is you want, do whatever it is you want, and womankind is just supposed to step aside and let you because of your—” She sputtered, waving her hand in the general direction of his groin. “That. Well, news flash. Male or not, I’m good enough at my job to be able to find out what I need to know with or without your help.”
Faster than she could blink, Dmitri had her hard up against him, his arms locked around her in a way that made everything within her squirm.
“What do you—” she shoved at his hands “—think—” she pulled at his fingers “—you’re—” she dug into him with her fingernails “—doing?” Nothing worked.
She glared up at him, but his face was perfectly smooth, his manner unruffled, as if she was no more than a kitten fidgeting about in his grasp. His dark eyes seemed to deepen, widen, sucking her in and making everything else in the room fade away.
“I’m keeping you from making the most dangerous mistake of your life. Listen to me. You’re going to go home now. You’re going to leave the Bloodless Murders up to the authorities to figure out, and you are going to stop writing nonsense about vampires.”
She blinked. Then giggled. “I’m sorry, I don’t mean to mess up your macho-guy routine, but that isn’t going to work on me. I’m going to do whatever it takes to do my job, and you can’t stop me.” Hell. The glamour had been completely ineffective on her. Her mind was far stronger than he’d anticipated.
His arms slackened enough that she was able to pull out of his hold and walk away. She glanced back, but the bar stool where Dmitri had been only an instant before now sat vacant.
“What did you expect, Sunshine?” she muttered to herself, using her dad’s favorite pet name for her. “You wanted weird, you got weird.” She shook her head and made for the door.
The crowd pushed in and a large man dressed in a black leather duster and sporting a shock of brilliant, nearly platinum-blond spiked hair and startling red eyes, knocked into her shoulder. She stumbled back a step with the force of the blow and went down, landing on her butt.
He turned, offering her a long tapered hand. “Sorry, my apologies.” He pulled her to her feet, then gave her a quick nod, before disappearing into the crowd, his long duster blending in with people dancing and swaying to the music.
She moved to brush herself off and realized there was a crumpled slip of paper tucked into her hand. The guy had slipped it to her when he’d helped her up.
Kristin spun around, searching for his distinctive hair somewhere in the crowd. How many Billy Idol look-alikes could there be in this bar? Like Dmitri, he was nowhere to be seen.
That was until she turned around to face the door. Dmitri suddenly stood between her and the exit. To say he blocked her way wasn’t accurate. He was bigger than any linebacker she’d seen in the NFL. There was no way around him. She instantly moved her hand with the note behind her back, not trusting him as far as she could throw him.
“Let me see it.”
She cocked her head to one side. “See what?”
He peered at her, his eyes boring into hers. “The note in your hand.”
“What are you talking about?”
“Tsk, tsk. Really, Miss Reed, lying hardly becomes you.” He’d captured her hand before she had time to take another breath and had pried it open, despite her best efforts to keep it clamped onto the scrap of paper. His touch burned like ice, and made her shiver.
“Let’s see what your secret admirer had to say.”
Kristin rose up on her toes to read over his substantial bicep.
WANT THE TRUTH? FIND WHAT YOU’RE LOOKING FOR. Below that was an address to the industrial section of town.
He growled. Literally growled.
Kristin inched away from him and closer to the door.
“Where, precisely, do you think you’re going?” He wasn’t even looking at her when he said it.
“Me? Home.”
He spun around and grasped her wrist firmly. “I may not know you well, but I know you well enough to know you have every intention of going to that address at the first opportunity.”
Kristin glanced at her cell phone. “It’s ten-thirty and that address is in the industrial section of town. Just how stupid do you think I am?”
“Not stupid. Hungry. You want to break a story so badly you’d probably sell your dog to get it.”
“I don’t have a dog.”
His mouth lifted at the corner in a mocking grin she suddenly had the urge to smack off his face. “And I didn’t sell him either,” she added. “Regardless, I’m going with you.” “Oh, no. You screwed me out of a front-page slot once, buddy boy. I’m not letting you do it again.”
“So you’re afraid that if I sent in an article to Mr. Hollander he’d choose mine over yours this time?”
Kristin snorted. “Not a chance.” Deep down he’d hi
t a sore spot. She knew she was a good writer. That wasn’t the problem. But was she better than Dmitri? She hadn’t even had the chance to see what he’d turned in that had tackled Hollander’s good sense.
“Let’s call a truce. We’ll go together and each write our own story. Then let Hollander decide. May the best man, or woman, win.”
“I don’t partner up.”
“Obviously.”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
He raised a brow as if to say, I have to explain it to you? My, you are in dire straits.
Kristin huffed. “All it means is this series is my baby. I’m doing the work, so I’m taking the credit,” she said.
Dmitri put up a hand in mock defense. “By all means. I’m just going along for the ride to make sure nothing strange out there is more than you can handle.”
“Because you’re supernatural yourself?”
He stared at her.
Kristin pushed past her anger and worry. As badly as she wanted to give him the slip and go to the address, she knew going alone would be risky. “Fine, but you don’t get in my way and I won’t get in yours. Deal?”
“Agreed.”
“And I get to drive.”
Something flashed in his eyes, then quickly disappeared, making her heart pump a little harder. “If that is what is required,” he said.
“Good. I’ll meet you out front.”
He didn’t let go of her hand. Kristin glanced down. “You can let go of me. I said we could go together.”
She looked up and met an unwavering dark gaze. “I do not take you for a fool, Miss Reed. Please do not mistake me for one.”
His hand around her wrist, he walked her out to her car, his touch sending arcs of electricity zinging up her arm with every fast-paced beat of her heart.
By the time she’d driven there, and left a message on Hollander’s voice mail, giving him an update, it was eleven. The temperature down by the docks was noticeably cooler and tinged with the smell of kelp and fish wafting off the water. She shrugged deeper into her coat.
The Truth about Vampires Page 5