by Alyssa Day
He folded his arms across his chest. “I’ll pay you a million dollars.”
“Let’s talk,” she said.
3
William lay on his back on one of the wooden rafters in the attic of Amy’s carriage house home and realized that the weird feeling in his face was from the permanent smile that seemed to have formed on his face since he’d met her the night before. He didn’t know why he’d mentioned the curse. There was no way that Amy or any other witch could break it.
The idea of a million dollars had piqued her interest, though, and the gleam in her vividly violet eyes had intrigued him even more. She was bold, his Amy, even with her worn, baggy clothes and wild hair. Especially with her wild hair, in fact, because it brought visions to his mind of exactly what she would look like after he’d bedded her.
If moonlight had flattered her, daylight did her true justice. He hadn’t expected the warm honey-caramel skin, or the rich black gleam of her hair. And those eyes—he’d never seen eyes that shade of purple in all his hundreds of years of travel. Her lips were plump and kissable, and his hands practically itched to reach under that shirt and touch the round breasts that he knew were beneath it.
On second thought, his hands didn’t practically itch. They actually itched.
Damn.
She must be working some magic right now; probably a protective spell against him. The rest of her family hadn’t shown up yet, but she’d assured him that they were on the way when she pushed him out the door. They were to meet in an hour at Olde Town Square, at the Garden City Perk coffee shop, where, she’d told him, he would explain everything.
Everything. Ha. He would explain next to nothing, but she would never know. She was fierce, and he liked it, and he wanted her, but that didn’t mean he’d surrender any of his secrets. His face relaxed as his smile faded--not permanent after all.
Which didn’t surprise him.
Nothing was.
Amy stared at the vampire across the shiny white tabletop in the coffee shop, ignoring the tantalizing scent of the gingerbread latte she held, all but forgotten, in her hands. “Your name is William Pemberley? You’ve got to be kidding.”
He shrugged, but she could see the amusement in his eyes. “I met an author at a party. She was shy and hiding alone on a balcony, and I was bored with the company indoors. We shared a snack and talked for a while about her latest story, and I liked the name of the house.”
She didn’t even know where to start with how wrong that was. But maybe she was being too suspicious; it was one of her many flaws. “When and where was this?”
“The first decade of the 1800s, I think. England. Why?”
“You met Jane Austen and you—you—wait.” She stopped, struck by a horrifying thought. “You shared a snack? Did you drink Jane Austen’s blood?”
He raised one silken dark eyebrow. “You seem to be obsessed with this woman. Was she an ancestor of yours? And no, I did not drink her blood. She had cake. I stole a bite. It was all very innocuous.”
Another woman bumped into their table, and Amy suddenly realized it was the third time it had happened in the fifteen minutes since they’d been there. She looked up in irritation to see that two women wearing matching workout clothes and matching lustful expressions were staring down at William, who hadn’t even noticed them.
“Move along, this is a private conversation,” she told them, glaring until they grumblingly complied. She turned the glare on William. “Does that happen to you all the time? Women staring at you like you’re some kind of rock god?”
He took a bite of his cinnamon donut and then smiled. “Totally hot, remember? But let’s not be hypocritical. The same thing happens to you, too.”
She snorted. “Right. It’s the frizzy hair. Makes men wild.”
“Yes,” he said, leaning forward and staring at her so intently that—for just a moment—the rest of the room fell away as she fell, dizzied, into his gaze.
No. No.
She shook her head to shake it off. Maybe he was trying some vampire crap. She sneered at him. “Don’t even think about trying to enthrall me, buddy. I knew what you were doing to Rose, but I let it happen because I wanted her out of there, not because you were putting one over on me, got it?”
He blinked, but then that dangerously sexy smile peeked out again and she had to clench her hands into fists to keep from reaching out to touch his lips.
Madness.
“I think I do ‘get it,’ as you say,” he said, and she heard a touch of British accent beneath the words and suddenly got a full-on visual of him standing on the deck of a pirate ship, sailing into the wind, nothing but the stars to guide him.
“Because I’m batshit crazy, apparently,” she muttered. “Pirates, for Pete’s sake.”
Before William could answer that one, the door to the coffee shop flew open and a force of nature blew into the coffee shop.
“Oh, boy. We’re in trouble now,” Amy said, but before the vampire could answer, the force of nature had arrived at their table.
“You put one fang on my niece, and I’ll blast you out of existence,” Sue Cardinal told William, shoving her dozens of bangle bracelets up on her arms like a man preparing for battle would roll up his sleeves.
William, no slouch when it came to manners, evidently, jumped up out of his chair and bowed.
Amy didn’t bother to stand up, but she did roll her eyes, which sort of counted as manners, when one was a Cardinal witch. “Aunt Sue, we’re having a conversation. In the middle of the day, in a coffee shop. There’s no need to get dramatic. No fangs, no problem, okay?”
Sue shot a scathing glance at Amy. “You stay out of this, Amaryllis. You have never shown good judgment when it comes to danger, bad boys, or unicorns. I don’t want to have to write to your mother.”
Amy groaned and dropped her face in her hands.
“Amaryllis?” William’s voice was laced with amusement. “And you mocked me for William?”
“Shut up. We’re all named for flowers. It’s a Cardinal witch thing,” Amy snapped at him, before turning to her aunt. “Look. We’re just discussing a simple business proposition. Don’t call me Amaryllis. And the unicorn was more than a decade ago, can we all let that go now?”
Rose’s mom might be dressed like a hippie, but she was smart and she was tough, and all of the cousins had always known better than to try to put one over on her, but Amy was nearly thirty years old and she didn’t need her Aunt Sue to rescue her.
Aunt Sue, sadly, didn’t feel the same way about it. She raised her hands—to do something unpleasant to William, no doubt—and Amy had suddenly and completely Had. Enough.
So she froze her.
In fact, she shifted in her chair and froze the entire room, just to give herself a couple of minutes to think.
The sound of slow clapping jerked her back around to face the vampire, who was not frozen. Not even a little.
“Nice trick, but what happens if somebody on the street decides to come get coffee? Can you freeze all of Garden City?”
Amy’s mouth fell open, and William grinned at her. “Problem, Amaryllis?”
She jumped up out of her chair, briefly debating throwing it at him. “But last night! I froze you in the cemetery. How--"
He stepped carefully around the still form of a man wiping his child’s mouth with a napkin and moved closer to Amy. She backed up. Not because she was afraid of him, exactly. More that she was cautious.
Yeah. That was it. Cautious. She’d stick with that.
“I let you think I was frozen, because it seemed to be a better idea than letting you know your magic didn’t work on me. I didn’t want to frighten you,” he said.
Just when her brain started to explode at the idea that he’d frightened her, she noticed that he was scratching his arm and his beautiful, perfect face had broken out in blotchy red patches.
“Nobody frightens me,” she said, giving him her best flat-eyed P.I. stare. “What’s wrong with you?
Scurvy? Plague? Pox? Hang out with too many floozies back in the day?”
She almost fell over when a flush of dark red appeared on those gorgeous cheekbones of his. She’d embarrassed him.
She’d embarrassed a vampire.
What the heck was going on?
“Quickly, because I sense your magic is about to dissolve, would you allow me to give your…forceful…aunt a tiny suggestion, so that she might go home and not remember much about this for a time? If we’re to discuss my proposition--"
“And my million bucks,” she put in.
“Exactly. We might need to be free of distractions.”
Amy started pacing back and forth, next to Aunt Sue, avoiding the spilled juice next to the child’s stroller. “You won’t harm her?”
Just for a second, William’s eyes darkened with an emotion that Amy might have thought was hurt in a human, but then his face assumed an expression of bland politeness. “Certainly not. It will only last for a few hours.”
She thought about it for a little bit, but only a very little bit, because he was right, her freeze spell was powerful but short-lived, and she really, really didn’t want to be in the middle of an argument with her favorite aunt right now.
“Okay,” she conceded. “Be ready.”
“I’m always ready.” His golden eyes glowed hot, and Amy’s breath caught in her throat, but then everyone in the café started to stir, and the moment was gone.
“I’ll just pick up donuts for tonight,” Aunt Sue told Amy, never even looking at William.
The two of them watched as Sue headed for the counter, smiling and saying hello to a few people on her way.
“That must come in handy,” Amy said, grudgingly impressed.
“Occasionally,” William admitted. “As does this.”
Before Amy could shout or fight or run, he clasped her arm in one strong hand, and the room dissolved into a whirling storm of light and sound around them. Wind whipped her hair out of her face and the world fractured into a kaleidoscope of sharp impressions she could feel and taste and hear. Music, somewhere far away, and the scent of roasting meat; snatches of whispered and shouted conversations rolled around her—around them—and she realized she was clutching his shirt as he held her in his strong arms against the warm muscled hardness of his chest.
When the whirlwind slowed, and then stopped, she was too dizzy to move without falling, and she looked up into the dark amber of his eyes.
“What did you do to me?” Her voice was no more than a whisper, and she began to repeat herself, but he shook his head slowly.
“What did you do to me?” He looked stunned, as if she’d been the one to pull some heavy-duty magic on him, but instead of jumping away from her and firing questions at her--which was exactly what she’d been planning to do to him—he bent his head to hers until their foreheads touched.
“I’m going to kiss you now. Is that acceptable, beautiful Amy with the magical eyes?”
She took a long, deep, shaky breath. He was all but surrounding her with his body, caging her in with his arms, and he was so damn beautiful, and it had been so damn long since she’d kissed anyone worth kissing. For one aching moment, she wanted to forget that he was a vampire.
But she was who she was: a Cardinal witch. And she’d be damned if she’d let some vampire get the upper hand. So she smiled up at him and finally gave in to the impulse to touch his perfect mouth, and then she gave him his answer.
“No.”
4
William caught himself, an inch from her lips, and forced himself to release her and step back. She’d said no, and no had always been no to him. There were plenty of willing women in the world, or so he tried to remind himself.
Difficult to do when the scent of her was surrounding him, a touch of vanilla and spice that tantalized his senses and made him want to bury his hands in all that lovely long hair and pull her to him, ever so slowly, until the softness of her body was nestled against the hardness of his own.
“As you wish,” he said, instead, not understanding why she hiccupped out a little laugh at his words. He raised an eyebrow.
Amy just shook her head. “Guess you don’t watch a lot of romantic movies?”
His lip curled. “Fortunately, my crushing boredom with life hasn’t yet reduced me to that.”
She laughed at him, but she was scanning the space, examining the room. Probably mapping the exits. She’d said she was a private investigator, after all.
“You should turn around,” he said, wanting to see her face.
With a suspicious glance at him, she slowly turned until she was facing the floor-to-ceiling window with the best view in the city.
She gasped a little, quickly stifled, but he felt a tingle of warmth in his chest that he’d been able to surprise her.
“Is that--"
“Manhattan,” he said, walking over to the silver coffee service on the table to pour her a cup. She seemed to love the foul stuff.
“And so this is--"
“My penthouse at the Four Seasons.”
He added cream and sugar and handed her the delicate china cup. “Let me know if this is acceptable.”
Almost without thinking, she took a sip of the coffee and then backed away and stared up at him with wide eyes. “This is good coffee.”
“I’m glad.”
“And we’re in Manhattan, at your penthouse suite in the Four Seasons hotel,” she continued, sounding a little dazed.
“As I said.”
“My Aunt Sue is okay?”
“Completely unharmed.”
He allowed himself to study her closely; noticed the minute trembling in the hand holding the cup. Saw the way she leaned forward, almost on the balls of her feet, as if she’d bolt any second.
She wasn’t afraid of him, but she wasn’t unafraid of what he’d done.
“How?”
“I have a little bit of magic, too.” He stood, unmoving, still and wary, a predator trying to coax his prey out of the shadows.
She drained the coffee cup, put it down on the table, and headed for the balcony. “Okay, magic man, let’s talk about my million dollars, how you can be out in broad daylight, why magic makes you itch, and just exactly how you just whisked us from Ohio to New York in the space of a minute.”
William froze, but this time it had nothing to do with magic, just like Amy Cardinal had nothing to do with being prey. She had brass balls, so to speak, this one.
And he was absolutely sure that he liked it.
They wound up walking instead of staying in his rooms, of course, because Amy had more energy than it seemed possible she could contain in her small body. She’d admitted that she’d never been to New York before, and the combination of excitement and the brisk October wind whipped bright color into her cheeks. He told himself that it couldn’t possibly make her beautiful, but he knew he was lying, which he made it a practice not to do—even to himself.
Especially not to himself.
But she wasn’t interested in him, beyond the million dollars and the puzzle of a vampire who could do magic that she hadn’t seen before. There was no need to put his pride on the line, let alone his emotions.
Not that his emotions were involved with this woman he’d only met the night before.
That would be ludicrous.
She stopped so abruptly that he ran into her, nearly knocking her into the Japanese family waiting at the crosswalk to cross into Times Square.
He caught her arm to steady her and then bowed an apology to the tourists. “Sumimasen.”
They bowed and smiled, assured him that his apology was unnecessary, and then moved on to take photos or ride the tour bus or do any of a thousand other things that tourists liked to do in New York.
“I preferred Times Square when it was horses and carriages and women in long dresses,” he said, sighing a little.
“Yeah, but it was a lot muddier then, and there was horse crap all over the place,” Amy said, shrugging.
William glanced down at her and then stumbled, because she was smiling at him. A real smile, not a cautious, fake, or defiant smile. An actual smile that reached her warm, dark eyes and turned the lovely curve of her cheek into a sonnet.
A cold, dark place deep in his chest opened up--just a fraction--enough to let a glimmer of light touch the hidden echoes tucked inside him. Navigating the world on his own, decade after decade, had taught William to bury his truths in the shadows and never let anyone see beyond the surfaces that he’d so carefully constructed. But now, for some undoubtedly insane reason, he wanted to fling open the doors to those dark places in his soul and let the clean, bright autumn winds scour them clean.
Make him whole again.
An almost-electric shock sizzled though his body, searing nerve endings along the way, and he realized he was in more danger from this one small witch than he’d been in years. Perhaps centuries. He told her none of that, of course.
Instead he returned her smile, struggling to remember what they’d been talking about before her smile had cracked open his world.
“Horse crap.” There was some metaphor or symbolism or warning there that he didn’t want to think about, but it made him laugh all the same. “Yes, well. Centuries of horse crap, as you put it, and now decades of automobile exhaust. I’m not sure which is the better option.”
They followed Sixth Avenue for a while, headed to Central Park, and he pointed out museums and other interesting sights along the way. She was fascinated by all of it, asking questions and taking pictures with her phone; acting like any ordinary tourist, instead of like a witch who’d been abducted by a vampire.
“Why?”
“Why what?” She snapped another photo, this of the large globe sculpture at Columbus Circle, and then turned to him. “I don’t suppose you want to pose over there by the globe, so I can take your picture, do you?”
He bared his fangs at her, just a little, and made a sound that almost came out as a growl. “No, I don’t suppose I do. Why are you being so agreeable about all this? After the way you acted in the cemetery, I thought you’d be beating me up. Or at least trying to escape.”
