by Мишель Роуэн
I think if that had happened when I’d still been a normal office gal things might have been different for me.
Instead of going on a shopping spree the next day I would be curled up in a corner of a dark room rocking myself back and forth. Drool may have been involved.
But I wasn’t drooling. It was a miracle.
Or maybe I was still in shock. That was a definite possibility.
But I did want to see Thierry. Actually, I couldn’t wait. I wanted to spend some time alone with him to remind him how much I wanted him in my life.
And not just that. I needed some answers. I had so many questions—about him, about us, about
Nicolai, about the hunters, about everything, really. And getting him alone with no other distractions might just be the prescription for getting exactly what I needed to know to keep me happy and alive.
Yes, relationship issues and murder plots. Let the romantic evening commence!
At the end of the day, I guess there was only one person who needed to be focused on keeping me not dead. And that was me.
Well. And maybe Lenny, too. He had that big knife.
Lenny dropped me off at Haven a few minutes after six-thirty. He said he’d be back to guard the door after he grabbed a burger for dinner. I hadn’t seen Janie since that afternoon. I had a spare key to the place, and I used it to let myself in through the nondescript front door.
I wore my new black dress (frankly, a little itchy) under a new black leather trench coat, and a borrowed-from-Amy pair of black four-inch heels. Black. That was my theme for the evening. But it didn’t look like I was in mourning. Not too many people would wear a dress this low-cut to a funeral unless they were the twenty-something widow of the ninety-year-old billionaire who just went toes up.
I peeled off the coat and draped it over my arm as soon as I stepped inside the darkened club. There was a short hallway before you got into the main area. That’s where Angel the bouncer normally hung out. Walk down the hallway and go through another set of doors, and boom . . . welcome to Haven.
A dark and empty Haven.
I frowned. Maybe George got it wrong. Was I supposed to be there? I knew that nobody usually showed up until about eight o’clock to get things ready for the nine-o’clock opening. The club was silent, still, and vacant.
Then I saw something over in the corner. Candles. Actually, a whole lot of candles. It was the table
Thierry usually sat at when not in his office. The table was surrounded by lit candles that gave off a warm,
flickering glow as I approached.
On the table were two red roses. A bottle of champagne chilled in a silver bucket. Two fluted glasses waited on the white linen tablecloth.
“Sarah. I’m glad you got my message.” Thierry’s deep voice moved through me from head to toes.
I turned around to face him, sucking a breath in at how tall, dark, and delicious he looked. The memory of his kiss early that morning came back to me in vivid, Technicolor, R-rated detail.
I smiled. “Hi there.”
He looked very serious. “I’ve been worried about you today. I tried to call your cell phone but I kept getting George.”
“I know. Sorry about that. I’m fine.”
His gaze trailed down the front of me, then back to my face. “New dress?”
I shrugged. “Since it’s not made of ashes, I’m going to go with a yes. Do you like it?”
“I believe I got my money’s worth.”
“Despite the fact that you really have no idea how much this cost you, I choose to take that as a compliment.”
“A wise choice. Please have a seat.”
I glanced at the table as I slid into the booth. “This is beautiful.”
He shook his head. “I wanted to take you somewhere a little more extravagant, but feel that this is the safest place right now.” He sat down across from me. The candlelight reflected softly in his silver-colored eyes.
“So we have an hour and a half before anyone shows up?”
He poured me a glass of champagne. I noticed that his glass was already filled with what seemed to be his favorite drink—cranberry juice. “Will that be enough time?”
“That all depends.” I smiled. “You know, you could have woken me up last night.”
He gave a small shrug. “You were sleeping so peacefully. And after the shock of what happened, you needed your rest.”
“I really would have made an exception.” I pushed aside my uncertainty and reached across the table and entwined my fingers with his. “Trust me on that.”
He raised an eyebrow. “I must admit, I did consider it. But after listening to your snoring for a short time,
I decided not to disturb you.”
I gave him a stricken look. “Mywhat ?”
“Your snoring.” He gave me a half smile. “Just a soft sound. A snuffle, really.”
“Asnuffle ?” I felt my cheeks start to burn.
He nodded. “It’s nothing to be ashamed of. It’s quite adorable.”
I felt the sexy dress vibe skidding off of me like eggs on a nonstick frying pan. “Idon’t snore.”
“You do. Trust me.” His eyes flashed with amusement and I gave him a dirty look, which only served to amuse him further. Oh, good. I guess I was the entertainment for the evening. Well, a guy who seemed amused by my unconscious bodily noises was probably actually a good thing if I could shake my embarrassment. I don’t snore. I’m almost completely positive I don’t.
The amusement faded from his eyes. “Perhaps this should have waited for a better time. If you want to leave, I’ll understand completely.”
“Things are a little crazy right now,” I agreed. I picked up my glass of champagne. I’d never really acquired a taste for the stuff. Kind of like caviar. But I could fake it with the best of them. “But it was my idea we do this, and I stand by it. Should we toast to anything?”
He raised his glass of cranberry juice. “Anything you like.”
“Okay.” I thought about it for a moment. “To the future. May it be filled with six-hundred-year-old vampires making an exception and waking me up, for which I will make it well worth their while.”
“You know many six-hundred-year-old vampires?”
“A lady has her secrets.”
He smiled and touched his glass to mine. “That is a toast that is sure to come to pass.”
I smiled inwardly. Maybe this date was a good idea after all. I took a long sip of my champagne. It didn’t taste bad, actually. Maybe the stuff I’d had in the past was just the wrong kind. I glanced at the bottle. Roederer Cristal. Hundreds of dollars for one bottle. More depending on the year. Yeah, I’d definitely never had that kind before. That was the kind of alcohol worth fighting somebody for.
Which brought up a subject I should probably get to right away, now that I thought of it.
I put the glass down on the table. “Thierry, do you happen to know any self- defense? Like karate or kung fu or anything like that?”
He studied me for a moment. “Why do you ask?”
“I’m thinking about learning how to protect myself. I’ve considered it for a while, but lately . . . I think it’s the only way I can feel safe being out and about with everything that’s going on.”
He shook his head. “The best way to stay safe is tostay somewhere safe. Right now you have the bodyguards. That should be enough. The only reason you would need to learn self-defense is if you continue to thrust yourself into dangerous situations.”
I shrugged. “It happens. Sometimes it can’t be controlled. Quinn said he’d teach me, but—” I stopped talking and cleared my throat. “How about a little more of that champagne?”
“He did, did he?” He poured me more champagne, but his gaze didn’t leave my face. “You could have told me you’ve been in contact with Quinn since he left town. That you told him where the club was located.”
I found that I couldn’t meet his eyes. Why did I feel guilty? “Why does that matter?�
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“He has ties to the hunter community. Even if he is no longer fully affiliated with them, that doesn’t mean that they aren’t tracking his every move.”
I sighed. “You are such a worrywart.”
He raised his eyebrows. “Aworrywart ?”
“That’s right. You take simple situations and blow themway out of proportion. Quinn’s had a hard life,
you know.”
He nodded, but his expression was cold. “Yes, poor boy. Such a hard life he’s had with his rich genocidal father, spending every waking moment killing vampires while they screamed for mercy. And now to have you as his number-one advocate. Poor Quinn.”
“He regrets his past.”
Thierry took a sip of his cranberry juice. His knuckles were white on the glass. “I suppose I find that one month is not enough to redeem a decade of his previous actions.”
“And how long would be the right amount of time for you? A decade? A century?”
“Sometimes an eternity is not enough.”
I studied his tense expression. “You sound like you’re speaking from personal experience.”
He stared at me for a moment, but didn’t reply. What George had said to me earlier came back:Dig too deep and you may not like what you find .
This date was taking a serious nosedive. I had to turn it back around while I still could and get it back to how it was at the beginning. Focus, Sarah, I told myself. And no more talking about Quinn. Definitely a hazardous topic.
“How about a new subject?” I announced, forcing a smile to my lips after a moment of uncomfortable silence.
“An excellent suggestion.”
“What’s your favorite color?”
He looked at me for a moment, and then started to laugh. “Favorite color?”
I shrugged. “It’s a new subject, isn’t it?”
“I don’t know that I have a favorite color.”
“My guess would be black. You wear a lot of it.”
He looked down at his staple outfit— black shirt, black jacket, black pants. All designer and custom made to perfectly fit his tall, lean frame. “It all matches.”
I nodded. “So you pick black to help you have a no-brainer wardrobe?”
“Why else?”
“It does suit you.”
“You think so?”
“Yes, it gives off that slightly sinister, but very sexy look.”
His gaze moved slowly down the front of my dress. “I see that you are also wearing black tonight. Are you trying to look sinister?”
I looked down to be faced with my cleavage. “Not so much.”
He raised an eyebrow. “So just sexy.”
I slid out of my side of the booth and slid in beside Thierry. “We sort of match, don’t we?”
He paused and met my gaze. “Yes, I suppose we do.”
I slipped my hand under his jacket and against the warmth of his chest. “How much time do we have left?”
He glanced at his watch. “A little over an hour.”
“That should be enough.”
“For what?” he asked with mock innocence, as he slowly ran his fingers through my hair and tucked it behind my ear.
“Maybe that’s enough small talk for one night.” I grinned and moved my hands up to draw his face closer to mine to kiss him. After a moment, I traced my tongue over his fangs—small and sharp, just like mine. Something else that matched.
Thierry could kiss. And this was such a wonderful kiss that whispered promises of things to come, but still . . . there was something missing. It wasn’t like last night. He was restraining himself again. I could feel it. He was only giving a percentage of himself. It might have been 90 percent, but I could tell that it wasn’t a hundred.
But 90 percent of Thierry was 1,000 percent of any other guy I’d ever kissed. If I’d been standing up,
my knees would have gone weak.
I inhaled his cologne. Woodsy, musky, undoubtedly male. Not like some of these fruity, floral colognes men wear that smell like clones of women’s perfume. Thierry’s was different, and I associated the scent with him completely. I slid my hand down to his waist as I buried my nose into his neck.
He tensed. “What are you doing?”
“Smelling you.” My hand moved down to his thigh.
“Why?”
“Because you smell so damn good. And it isn’t just because of my new vampire nose.”
“Your senses are heightening?” he asked.
I nodded. “I’ve noticed smell and hearing,” I kissed him again. “Taste, too. I’m still disappointed that I won’t be able to turn into a bat, but I’m moving on.”
“All earlier than expected,” Thierry said, his expression darkening a little. “My fault, I’m afraid. I never should have given you my blood.”
“If you hadn’t, I’d be dead right now. So I appreciate it.”
“There were other options. I simply wasn’t thinking.”
I moved even closer to him. “You think too much.”
Our lips met again and I allowed my hands to wander freely along his delicious body. I wanted him so badly it hurt. It had been two long weeks since we were in Mexico. And this was so perfect. Why had I doubted things between us?
He grabbed my hand just before it started to make any unladylike maneuvers and brought it to his lips to kiss. “Do you have anything else you wanted to know about me, or were you simply wondering what my favorite color was?”
I smiled at him. “Okay, I do have another question. Where did you get that wonderful cologne?”
He placed my hand on the tabletop and poured me more champagne. “Veronique gave it to me. She has it specially made every year.”
Cold shower. Right here. And I didn’t even have to get wet.
I scooted a little away from him so we were no longer touching. “Veronique.”
“Yes.”
Yes, despite the fact they weren’t together anymore, that woman would always be the dark little rain cloud over our relationship.
“Why don’t you divorce her?” I asked.
My eyes widened. Yikes. Did I really just say that out loud?
Yeah, I did. So what? It’s about time somebody did.
Oh, God. Can I take it back?
Thierry looked surprised at my question. “Divorce?”
I swallowed hard. “Um. Well, it’s not like you two are living together anymore. Your marriage is in name only. Isn’t that what you told me?”
“Of course. But a divorce—”
I shook my head. “No, just forget I said anything. You two have so much history that I guess it doesn’t make sense to get a divorce. I mean, it’s not like you’d ever want to get married again.”
Why was I still talking? Things had been so great a second ago and I had to go ruin it bringing up something that didn’t even matter.
Yes it did.
No it didn’t.
He was going to think I was a completely possessive idiot.
“May I finish?” he asked. I nodded meekly. “As I was saying, divorce would be extremely complicated, due to our unusual circumstances. We were married over six hundred years ago. Any official record of our vows has probably been destroyed. It is not as simple as hiring a lawyer and filing papers.”
“Of course.” I nodded, not looking directly at him. “That makes total sense.”
I seriously had to focus. Forget Veronique. Forget Quinn. There were more important things to discuss.
Including that champagne that I could seriously use another glass of it right about now.
I tried to smile. “Let’s just forget I said anything, okay?”
Thierry shook his head. “It’s true that I have not revealed much about myself personally to you. I will admit that. I am a private man and always have been. But . . . ” His expression tensed and he looked down at the table, then up to stare intently into my eyes. “Sarah, there . . . there are things I wish for you to know about me. Things you must know.”
I put my hand up and shook my head. This was the dangerous territory George warned me about.
“Maybe we should talk about Nicolai.”
That stopped him. He frowned. “Nicolai . . . ”
“Yeah. The reason I’m not immediately hightailing it out of town? You said that he’s dangerous. Why is that? Where do you know him from, anyhow?”
“I will tell you about Nicolai in a moment.” He paused and took a sip of his drink. “But first I want you to know some things about me I should have told you long ago. It simply didn’t seem the time.”
His expression was very grave. I braced myself to hear some horrible news as he looked down at the tablecloth and his glass of dark red cranberry juice.
Then he looked up at me and grabbed my hand so suddenly that it scared me. Instinctively I pulled away, managing to knock my champagne glass off the table. It shattered on the ceramic tiled floor.
“Shit. Sorry.” I slipped out of the booth and crouched over to start grabbing at the pieces, but I wasn’t concentrating completely on what I was doing. I flinched as I felt a slicing pain and realized I’d just succeeded in cutting the tip of my index finger with a broken piece of glass. “Oh, great. Just my luck. I’m sorry, I’m so clumsy.”
Thierry stood up from the booth and grabbed a napkin. He took my hand in his, his brow furrowed. “I broke a glass last night, too. Nobody noticed, but I did. So we’re even.”
I smiled up at him. “You’re just trying to make me feel better.”
He studied the wound. It was deep and the blood dripped steadily to the floor. I had a bit of a love/hate relationship with the red stuff. It still made me squeamish. I’d never been able to watch any of those operation shows on TV, but at the same time, now whenever I saw it, my stomach rumbled, seemingly recognizing it as my main food source. Talk about gross. Welcome to my life.
Yeah, I’d done a great job of hurting myself. I didn’t need hunters. I could probably kill myself by accident before too long. I could just hear the hunters discussing it over a beer. “Yeah, she fell on a sharp pencil while doing a crossword puzzle. It was spectacular!”
He tossed the napkin, unused, to the table. “It will heal shortly.”