Whatever the reason, from the moment ten-month-old Rose snatched five-year-old Violet’s beloved teddy bear from her arms and shouted “Mine” with far more fervor than any baby should possess, Rose seemed to make it her life’s mission to covet—then take—anything Violet owned. Her latest acquisition? Darren Whitley, Violet’s grad-school boyfriend.
Truth be told, if given the choice, Violet would rather have that ratty old teddy bear back than Darren. She probably would’ve broken up with him eventually even if he and Rose hadn’t…
“He screwed her in your house while you were upstairs sleeping, Vi.”
Well, she was thinking “fallen in love,” but Violet supposed Lexa’s assessment of the situation was fairly accurate, too.
“I don’t see how you can forgive either of them for that shit,” Lexa muttered.
Violet shrugged. “The truth is, I moved on. Yes, it hurt at the time,”—stung like a bitch and damn near crippled her self-esteem for a short time, more accurately—”but in the long run, I’m better off without Darren. And Rose is my sister. I have to forgive her.”
Or at least that’s what her mother told her. Over and over and over again.
Thank God the entire Marchand family only got together on special occasions. It also helped that the lot of them had no problem getting drunk off their asses to tolerate said special occasions. Yep. Her sister’s wedding was sure to have a well-stocked, open bar, and Violet had every intention of making certain her glass never stayed empty for long.
Lexa made an undignified sound and leaned over to dump her empty lo mein carton in the trash can behind Violet’s desk. “At least tell me you’re not going to this dumpster fire of an event stag.”
Violet shuddered. “Jesus, no. And sit at the singles table with the weird co-workers and backwards second cousins no one else wants to sit with? Miles agreed to be my plus one.”
Lexa shot her a wide-eyed look of horror, the likes of which Violet hadn’t seen directed her way since The Great Perm Debacle of ’08. (It had seemed like a good idea at the time, OK? Violet had no idea her fine hair couldn’t handle the stress of a perm and that she’d end up looking like an electrocuted alpaca.)
“You can’t go to your sister’s wedding—where she’s marrying your ex, the ex who cheated on you with your sister—with Mr. Pathetic Rebound!”
Violet scowled at her. “I’ve asked you repeatedly to stop calling him that! There is nothing at all wrong with Miles. He’s a great guy.”
Great was maybe an overstatement. But he was exactly what Violet needed in her life at the moment. Miles was mellow, cerebral, gentle, and safe. But even more important than all of that, he was human. 100% normal, average, human. God knew her brief dips into the supernatural dating pool had been epic fails.
Lexa stared at her, obviously dumbfounded. “Vi, he’s an actuary with a comb-over! He’s a fucking walking cliché!”
“Oh, come on,” Violet cajoled. “It’s not like you to be so shallow. What do you really have against Miles?”
Lexa crossed her arms over her chest and leaned back in her seat. “How much time do you have?”
Violet kept an eye roll to herself. “Give me your top three.”
Lex wasted no time digging into the topic. “Well, first of all, I’ve met him at least a dozen times and he still calls me Lisa.”
So he wasn’t good with names. So what?
“And,” Lexa went on, “no matter what you say, he can spew 40 random statistics about it that no one gives a crap about.”
Occupational hazard, Violet imagined. Work with numbers and statistics all day and it was bound to bleed over into your small talk. Was it sometimes annoying? Sure. But it wasn’t a deal-breaker.
“And his whole demeanor with me shifted when he found out I didn’t go to college. From that point on, he talked down to me like I was a three-year-old. Face it, Vi, he’s a pompous ass.”
Violet frowned, remembering the mini rant he’d recently gone on about the “uneducated troglodytes who didn’t possess a tenth of his intellect” who’d been promoted ahead of him at work. And then there was his refusal to tip service workers because “if they wanted to make more money, they should’ve stayed in school.”
Hmmm. Lexa might have a point with the whole pompous ass thing.
But Lexa didn’t see the whole picture, Violet reminded herself. Miles made her feel calm. In control. He didn’t make her feel the crazy rush of soul-searing emotion that got her in such trouble with…him.
With him she’d always felt like she was spinning, falling, flying, crashing, drowning…it was all too much. Too intense. He’d made her all but desperate to get closer to him. That kind of passion was not something she ever needed to repeat. That kind of passion left a trail of emotional debris in its wake—scars on your soul when you lost it (or when it was dragged out of your life, as the case may be).
That would never be a problem with Miles. And that’s what made him so perfect for her at the moment. In the future? Who could say, really? Maybe he wasn’t Mr. Right. But he made a damn fine Mr. Right Now.
Lexa cocked her head to one side and narrowed her eyes on Violet. “Why are you really with Miles? You have to know you can do better than a guy like that.”
Violet attempted to lift a single brow the way Lexa did, failed miserably, and said, “Who says I want to do better?”
Lexa’s expression shifted into something that looked dangerously close to pity. “You do. At least you always used to. You wanted something better when you were dating—”
Violet shot her a sharp choose-your-words-carefully-because-I’m-your-boss-and-can-fire-your-ass glare that stopped Lexa in her tracks mid-sentence.
Lexa swallowed hard and finished on a mumbled, “He Who Shall Not Be Named.”
Silence stretched out for a few blissful moments, but Violet knew it wouldn’t last long. Logically, Lexa knew Violet would never fire her. Violet could barely operate her iPhone, let alone the scheduling and bill payment systems Lexa navigated so easily. And then there was the coffee to consider…
“So,” Lexa began, carefully avoiding eye contact, “Have you heard from He Who Shall Not Be Named lately?”
Sure I have. He showed up at my house this morning while I was in my Star Wars pajamas and asked me if I wanted to date him again.
But admitting to that would open up a whole can of emotional worms that Violet just wasn’t in the mood to deal with at the moment, so instead, she said, “Have I heard from the man who stalked me, fake-dated me to get information on a patient of mine he planned to kill, drugged me, kidnapped me, and tied me to a chair?”
The man whose hands I can still feel on my body if I think about it hard enough? The man whose kiss ruined me—completely ruined me—for all other kisses?
Lexa offered a weak smile. “Yes?”
“No,” she lied.
Lexa’s shoulders slumped at that. The poor girl couldn’t help herself. She was a hopeless romantic. But Violet was a realist. And as she’d come to learn over the years, a realist was just a romantic who’d had the shit kicked out of her heart enough times to realize love was just not in the cards for some folks. A happily-ever-after ending with Nikolai just wasn’t going to happen.
When Violet didn’t say anything else, Lexa decided to press her luck. “Oh, come on. All of…that business was essentially just a misunderstanding. The Vampire Council wouldn’t have let him go if he was a danger to anyone, and he never hurt you, did he?”
“No. He didn’t hurt me,” she admitted.
Lexa’s eyes softened. “He made a mistake, Vi. He was confused. You know better than anyone what he was going through. Half your patients are ex-Sentry employees, for God’s sake.”
And each one was more damaged than the last, she thought sadly.
“You could always reach out to him, you know,” Lexa cajoled. “I’m sure Mischa has his contact information.”
Call him and be his pathetic little Stockholm-syndrome-having groupie
again? She snorted. “I think not.”
Lexa opened her mouth—no doubt to argue—but snapped it shut when the office phone rang. She held up her index finger, silently asking Violet to continue their conversation in a moment, and picked up the call on her Bluetooth headset.
Violet marveled at Lexa’s quick switch from nagging, mom-like pest to uber-professional office assistant, but then starting noticing additional changes in her body language as the caller continued speaking. Lexa’s spine stiffened as she listened, her gaze lifted to Violet’s and widened, and her jaw clenched ever so slightly. Violet’s stomach sank in response. Those subtle reactions from the usually poised Lexa were the equivalent of screaming and flailing in anyone else.
Great. Now what?
After what felt like a damn eternity, Lexa thanked the caller and disconnected. Taking a deep breath, she said, “That was your neighbor.”
Violet felt a frown line grooving its way across her brow. “Mrs. Copely?
Lexa gave a quick, terse nod. “She came home from the grocery and found your door wide open. The alarm was disabled.”
The frown line grooved deeper. Violet always locked her door when she left for work, and her security system was state of the art. The thought of someone getting into her apartment was bad enough, but someone being able to bypass her security? Well, that was downright terrifying.
“And,” Lexa continued, “she didn’t go in, but it looked to her like the place had been trashed.”
“Well…shit,” Violet muttered. “I guess it’d be overly optimistic of me to assume this break-in was unrelated to my recent death threats?”
Lexa’s lips flat lined. “Probably,” she said, sarcasm dripping from her tongue like venom.
“I suppose I should call Lucas and Harper, after all.”
“This is what I’m saying.”
“Any chance you’ll keep the ‘I told you so’ to yourself on this one?”
“None.”
Violet sighed. “Yeah, I didn’t think so.”
Chapter Three
Observing a staff meeting at Harper Hall Investigations was a little bit like watching someone juggle running chainsaws. It was loud, nerve-jangling, and under the right set of circumstances, extremely messy.
Violet sat at the head of the conference room table in the office suite of Harper’s building in downtown Whispering Hope, pretending it wasn’t at all odd to be the only human in the room with absolutely no paranormal abilities whatsoever. But she was willing to admit to herself it was weird.
Like, really weird. The kind of weird that almost made her want to recant her earlier call for help.
Harper sat at the opposite end of the battered oak table with a pile of papers scattered haphazardly in front of her. There was a stubby pencil that looked like a hungry wolverine had been gnawing on it tucked behind her ear and tangled in her gold-tipped brown curls.
In her faded jeans with giant holes in the knees and a T-shirt that read, “Strangers have the best candy,” Harper looked less like a successful business owner and more like a college student heading into finals week. Or a frat party. Next to Harper, Violet felt like a grandma in her pencil skirt, cardigan sweater set, and tidy French twist.
Harper’s husband, Noah Riddick, stood behind his wife protectively, arms crossed over his chest. And now that she thought about it, Violet wasn’t sure she’d ever seen Riddick sit down. He was always wherever Harper was, on high alert, ready to tear apart anything that got too close to his wife. It’d be romantic if he wasn’t such a terrifyingly imposing man.
If she had to guess by looks alone, Violet would say Riddick was an MMA fighter who posed for Calvin Klein ads in his spare time. But in actuality, he was, like Nikolai, a dhampyre, possessing strength, intelligence, and agility far superior to mere mortals like herself. His freakish good looks—the sexily disheveled black hair, the knife-edged cheekbones, the startling midnight-blue eyes, flawless olive skin—were just a happy genetic accident.
Lucas sat next to Vi with his wife, Seven, on his lap. And while Riddick never seemed to stop guarding his wife, Lucas, it would appear, was incapable of not touching his. It was sweet and kind of disgusting all at the same time.
Seven was Riddick’s sister, and every bit as genetically blessed as her brother, both in supernatural talent and physical attributes. Her delicate, dark beauty was a perfect foil to Lucas’s tousled blond, intense hotness. If she had to slap the title of supernatural Barbie and Ken on one couple, it would for sure be Lucas and Seven.
Across from Lucas and Seven, leaning negligently in his chair while drumming on the table with his thumbs to music only he could hear, sat Benny Scarpelli, one of Harper’s investigators. Benny was a halfer, a somewhat unfortunate combination of vampire and wererat. He wasn’t a bad guy, but his presence always made Violet check to make sure her blouse was fully buttoned, as she was pretty sure he was praying for a wardrobe malfunction.
Harper glanced up from the mess in front of her and said to Lucas, “Did the cops find anything useful?”
Lucas shoved a hand through his hair and sighed. “Do they ever? Once they heard it was Vi’s house, they pretty much phoned it in from there. Cunningham—you remember him, right, Benny?—said she deserved whatever she got for working with the bloodsuckers.”
At least Cunningham had the nerve to say it aloud, rather than hinting at it like the cop Violet had met with about the threats. She knew she should be angered by that kind of blind bigotry, but in all honesty, she was so used to it that it barely phased her anymore. Associates in the academic community, her parents, men she’d dated…they’d all made similar comments.
She hadn’t really ever expected the police to find much, anyway. Their visit to her home had been less than comforting.
It had taken two police detectives and a small team of CSIs about two hours to collect a miniscule amount of evidence and coat every surface of her home in grimy black fingerprint dust. On their way out, they’d offered Violet a few platitudes about doing “everything in their power” to determine who’d broken into her home and destroyed many of her belongings. Their best advice? Try not to worry.
Riiiggghhhttt.
Benny let out a disgusted snort. “Cunningham. I hate that motherfucker. Dirty as shit. You can bet nothing will ever come of that investigation.” He made air quotes around investigation.
Harper frowned. “What about you, Lucas? Did your wolfy senses pick up anything?”
Lucas frowned right back at her. “For future reference, werewolves don’t like to be referred to as ‘wolfy’ anything. And all I can say for sure is that it was a vampire. I could smell it.”
A chill skated down Violet’s spine. She’d suspected as much, but knowing her death threats and trashed apartment were courtesy of one of nature’s most perfectly designed predators was a whole other level of creep factor.
“Any visions, babe?” Riddick asked, laying his hands on his wife’s shoulders.
Violet perked up. Harper had been one of Sentry’s most gifted psychics. If anyone could find her supernatural stalker quickly and painlessly, it was Harper.
“Nope,” Harper said. “Nada. I’m not surprised, though. Anything the perp might’ve left behind for me to get a hit off of was ruined by the cops. The place looked like a herd of water buffalo had trampled through there by the time they were done with it.”
And splat went her hope of the whole thing ending quickly and painlessly.
Fucking hope. You got me again, you miserable bitch.
Seven leaned forward and grabbed one of the photos Harper had taken of Violet’s destroyed apartment. The photo was of the message that had been scrawled across her living room wall with blood-red spray paint. “I’m not a grammar expert,” she began casually, “but I’m pretty sure that should say ‘you’re dead’, not ‘your’.”
“I know, right?” Violet said, doing a palms-up what-the-fuck gesture. “It’s troubling, isn’t it?”
Seven nodded. “I hat
e stupid people.”
“I hate death threats more,” Lucas murmured. “Did you notice anything while we were there, beautiful?”
Seven glanced back at the photos dispassionately. “The amount of stuff destroyed suggests he was doing more than just trying to send a message. The person who did this was angry. Out of control. Emotional.”
Violet swallowed hard, not liking the sound of that at all, but Lucas grinned like a fool. “Very good observation,” he said to Seven. “The PI exam isn’t going to be a challenge for you at all.”
Seven’s blue eyes softened as she smiled at her husband, and suddenly, Violet felt like an intruder in what had just become their own little world. She turned away when Lucas cupped his wife’s neck and planted what looked to be a knee-weakening kiss on her waiting lips.
Violet couldn’t see it but she heard that the kiss went on for another moment or two. She shifted uncomfortably in her seat.
Call your ex-boyfriend and his new wife, who also happens to be an ex-patient, for help, she thought wryly. How awkward can it possibly be?
Pretty damn awkward as it turned out.
“Jesus,” Riddick grumbled. “Why don’t you just gouge my fucking eyes out, huh? It’d hurt less than watching this.”
Graphic and overly dramatic, but also kind of true, Violet thought.
It wasn’t that she begrudged Lucas and Seven their happiness. God knew they deserved it and had worked their asses off for it.
She supposed she was just jealous. Not of Lucas, of course. She wasn’t fool enough to think a relationship between her and Lucas ever would’ve worked out; he was obviously made for Seven. But the partnership, friendship, trust, adoration, love (not to mention lots and lots of sex) Seven and Lucas had? Well, that was something rare that Violet had yet to ever experience, and she wanted it more than she was willing to admit aloud.
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 81
