by Juliet Lyons
I glance up into his beautiful blue eyes. They are rounded with worry, though whether it’s because of my break-in or because he’s suggesting we spend the night under the same roof isn’t clear. Attempting to lighten the mood, I smirk. “Are you in the habit of inviting victims back to your apartment?”
His eyes widen. “No. No, that isn’t—” He breaks off, chuckling. “No. This is the first time, and the last too. Hopefully. I would suggest you stay with a friend or family member but…” He trails off midsentence.
“But what?”
“I’m trying to think of a way to say it that doesn’t sound arrogant.” He narrows his eyes, worrying at his bottom lip.
Oh Lord, to be that lip.
Finally, he holds up his hands in surrender. “There is no way, actually. The fact is, no one can protect you like I can.”
I sit back in the seat. “Wow,” I tease. “Is this the part where I’m supposed to swoon?”
His cheeks turn decidedly pink. It’s a good look on him. Though let’s face it, everything is.
“I did try putting it differently.”
“How about he’s a vampire and I’m a vampire so our strength is equal?”
He leans back on the chair, flinging an arm across the seat beside him. Our conversation has gone from CSI to Dinner Date in seconds. “That does sound better, doesn’t it?”
“Yes, Inspector Big Head, it does.”
His twinkling gaze meets mine, a smile that could—and probably does—break hearts lighting up his face like sun through rain clouds. “I’ll remember that one in the future.”
We’re silent for a few seconds, eyes locked. The restaurant’s sounds—the hum of chatter, the rattle and clink of cutlery—fade into the background. I look away, forcing myself back to reality. So he has a nice smile. So what? I’m sure beneath his white-knight-in-shining-armor act, he’s a dog the same as the rest of them.
“Shall we?” He flicks his eyes toward the door. In some alternate reality, we’re on a date and he’s suggesting we skip dessert to go home and bang each other’s brains out. In that faraway land, he is the vampire I hooked up with online, not the psychopath from last night. But as usual, I’m stuck in the realm where I unwittingly date married guys and murderers.
“Okay. But first, I have to go back for my things.” I push back the chair, and it scrapes noisily on the wooden floor, like nails down a chalkboard. The flirty vibe dies.
As we make our way across the busy street to my flat, I begin to feel nauseous at the memory of my belongings strewn around. The rain is heavier now, spattering onto my face and hair, and suddenly I’m so bone-tired I want nothing more than to crawl inside a dark hole and sleep.
“I’m not sure going back to the apartment is a good idea,” Vincent says, scanning the street. “Are you sure there’s no way you can manage with what you have?”
I shake my head. There is no way I’m willing to stay a night in this man’s apartment without my toothbrush, killer or no killer. “I’m quite sure,” I say.
When we reach the entrance, Vincent takes off his suit jacket and drapes it around my shoulders. An enticing aroma of musky man hits my nostrils, soothing my nerves.
“I can’t keep taking your jackets,” I say, looking up at him. The wet weather has done marvelous things for his appearance. His dirty-blond hair is damp, sticking to his forehead as if he’s just stepped out of the shower, droplets of rain clinging to his eyelashes.
“Vampires don’t really feel the cold much,” he says. Then he looks toward the narrow flight of stairs that leads up to my flat. “Are you ready?”
With him by my side, I’m ready for anything. “Yes.”
“I’ll go up first, if that’s okay. Just in case.”
He leads the way along the narrow passage and begins climbing the steps. “What’s the shop below?” he asks, glancing over his shoulder to make sure I’m following.
“A hair salon,” I say, trying unsuccessfully to drag my eyes away from the sight of his steely butt and long legs moving in front of me at eye level. “I came back to London in such a rush, it was all I could find that wasn’t infested with rats or miles away from the tube. Where do you live?”
“Farringdon.”
Of course he does. Farringdon is prime living for rich city dwellers like him, and trust me, he’s rich. No one throws Prada suit jackets around like they’re picnic blankets if they aren’t loaded.
“Do you have a flat?”
“Yes. But to be honest, I barely seem to spend any time there. I have a house in France too.”
At this point, it hits me—he has a girlfriend. There is no way on God’s Earth a man who looks like him, owns property, and holds down a steady job cannot have a girlfriend. I decide to tear off the Band-Aid. Get the disappointment over with while I’m already at my lowest ebb. “I hope your girlfriend won’t mind me staying at your place—or your wife, I mean.”
He pauses for a brief moment, and I almost stumble into him. “Oh, she won’t mind,” he says slowly. Even though I can’t see him, I get the impression he’s smiling.
There it is. My heart crashes into my scuffed Converses. I can picture her already: her name is Lucinda and she’s a dancer with legs up to her eyeballs. She probably even looks good in gym gear.
Bitch.
“She won’t mind,” he continues, “because she doesn’t exist.”
“Well, it’ll only be for one night anyway, so—what?”
We reach the top of the stairs and he waits for me to catch up—both physically and mentally. “I live alone. I don’t have a girlfriend.”
“You mean not one that lives with you?”
“No, I mean not at all—no girlfriend, no wife, either in London or Brazil.”
When he says the bit about Brazil, I go weak at the knees. It’s the sort of comment that seems loaded with hidden meaning, and yet, when I repeat it tomorrow on the phone to Laura, it won’t seem of any importance. Life will be a lot easier when there’s an app that picks up on potential flirting and records conversations for later dissection. I mean, they send people into space and they can’t manage a simple voice recorder—puh-lease.
All I say is “Oh.”
Though I feel his gaze on me, I eyeball the door instead, trying to hide the fact this is the best news I’ve heard since, well, ever. Then a sudden panic grips me. What if he’s gay? Please, Lord—no.
Luckily, he mistakes my inner conflict over his sexuality for anxiety about going inside. He ducks to make eye contact, his blue eyes soft and calming. “If it’s too much, you could call a friend to come and get your things.”
“No, it’s okay. You’re coming in, aren’t you?”
“Of course I am. I’ll be right here.”
“Okay, E.T. Let’s do this.”
“E.T.?” he asks in an uncertain tone.
“The movie? E.T. says to Elliott, ‘I’ll be right here,’ at the end.”
“Never seen it.”
I lay a flat palm on the door, feigning horror. “You’ve got to be kidding me.”
With him close on my heels, I push open the apartment door and flick on the light. I must have expected everything to have magically tidied itself in my absence, because I recoil in horror at seeing my stuff flung about everywhere.
“Sweet mother of fuck,” I whisper.
Considering I don’t have many belongings, what with abandoning most of my clothes to avoid hefty excess baggage charges on the way back from Australia, the person who broke in did an admirable job of screwing around with everything I do own. Aside from the smashed photos and the upended coffee table, the TV is lying facedown on the carpet and my books are scattered about like leaves after a hurricane. I ditch my handbag on the carpet and weave through the mess to my bedroom. It’s in a similar state, only instead of books strewn around the room, it’s clot
hing.
Vincent knocks gingerly on the open bedroom door, feet firmly the other side of the threshold. He seems to fill the whole frame with his broad-shouldered body. It’s a sight to behold, let me tell you. “Are you okay?”
I swallow a sob, sniffing loudly. “Yeah. It’s just weird, knowing someone’s been here, touching my stuff.”
He nods, running a hand through his rain-damp hair. “You should probably pick up your personal items first—passport, ID cards.”
I glance up at him, realizing he’s still not coming in. “Why are you out there?”
A pink glow climbs his cheeks. “It’s your bedroom, Miss Hart. It wouldn’t be right for me to enter.”
“Exactly what year did you say you were born in?”
“I didn’t. But it was the eighteenth century.”
I grin. “Ah. You’re worried about my reputation.”
He laughs throatily, the sound rumbling like a distant clap of thunder. “Old habits die hard.”
I eye his perfect frame—the ridges of muscle visible through his white shirt, slim hips, long, lean legs. “Evidently,” I mutter.
Vincent takes a tiny step into the room, staring around him. “When I came up, it didn’t look as if they’d taken much, but you should probably check your valuables.”
I pick up his gray jacket, hung on the back of my chair, and toss it to him. “There, now we’re both wearing one.”
He catches it one-handed, fixing me with a smoldering blue gaze. “They look better on you.”
I spin around, unable to maintain eye contact, a blush creeping up my neck as I yank open the little drawer in my bedside cabinet to take out my passport and other documents. My hands tremble as I hold them aloft. “Still here.” How on earth am I going to cope with a whole night under the same roof as him? I’ll have to tie myself to the bed to keep from slipping into his room and licking his face. “I’ll just pack some clothes and things.” I still can’t meet his eye.
“I’ll wait in the lounge,” he says, and I breathe a huge sigh of relief as he steps out of the room.
As I’m hauling my suitcase from under the bed, I get a whiff of something unpleasant, a tart odor, like spoiled meat. I sniff again and impulsively wrench back the duvet cover, sending clothes sailing through the air like ghosts. I scream as loudly as I wanted to last night in the dark alley, when Jeremiah Lopez was bending over me and my vocal cords were frozen. Because there, lying beneath my covers, a sticky splatter of congealed blood clinging to its mottled-brown fur, is a large dead rat.
I’m so horror-struck by the rodent I barely notice the note beside it, torn from the pad on the refrigerator, the cupcake motif obscured by a dark, spiky scrawl. It’s only when Vincent bursts into the room that I absorb what’s written:
Sorry I missed you today.
Chapter 5
Mila
Vincent doesn’t stop apologizing the whole way over to his apartment in Farringdon.
“I should have smelled it,” he repeats for the hundredth time. “I don’t understand why I didn’t.”
I glance across the car at him. The streetlights illuminate his features, accentuating the exquisitely carved lines of his profile. There is a tiny bump on the bridge of his nose I haven’t noticed before, an imperfection that only heightens his masculine looks.
“I only smelled it because I was under the bed pulling out my suitcase,” I explain again. After noticing the rat and reading the note, there had been an awkward moment when Vincent stepped forward to put his arms around me. He froze, hands midair, as if realizing what it was he was about to do. The alarming thing is, I was going to let him.
When we stop at a traffic light, he turns to me. “I’m a vampire. I should have realized it was there.”
“Even if you had, there wasn’t a lot you could do. Besides, I’m sorry to say it’s not the first rat I’ve had in my bed.”
Vincent lets out a hearty chuckle. “Are you always like this?”
“Like what?”
He drums slender fingers on the steering wheel. “Prone to making light of serious situations.”
Of course, I’d been absolutely terrified—and still am—after seeing that dead creature rotting away on my fifty-quid Egyptian cotton sheets. Even without the note, I would have known it was left there by Lopez.
I shiver, a cold dread settling around my shoulders like a fog. “I think maybe it’s a defense mechanism.”
He nods, tearing his eyes from me as the traffic lurches forward again. “It’s incredibly lucky you stayed out all day.”
We lapse into silence, each of us contemplating what would have happened if I had been home when he showed up. I begin to wonder what happens from here. Will they shut me up in some witness protection program? Change my name to Mandy and ship me off to Scotland? Laura is right—this could only happen to me.
I sigh, sinking low into the buttery leather of the seat. “This car really doesn’t suit you,” I say suddenly, staring out the window at the shuttered shop fronts.
He glances across at me. “How so?”
“You’re too young. In looks anyway,” I add, as his brows shoot up with amusement. “Usually men who drive cars like this are middle-aged and bald, and they’ve ditched their wives for some younger woman. Trust me, every time I see a fancy car and check out the driver, that’s what they look like. Every time.”
His eyes twinkle. “So I’m an anomaly, is that what you’re saying?”
“A total anomaly.”
Somewhere between the dead rat and the Porsche, I’d lost my shyness around him. Now it’s full steam ahead on the babble front. He doesn’t look like he minds too much though.
“What car should I drive, Miss Hart?” he asks.
“An Audi,” I say, not missing a beat. “A black or dark blue one. And there should be a space for your suits to hang in the back.”
He laughs. “I’m a cop, not a traveling salesman. What about you?”
“What about me?”
“Have you got the right car for your image?”
I look down at my frayed gray top and jeans. I still haven’t had a chance to change since this morning. “Considering how I’m dressed now, I’d say it suits me to a T. Not that I dress like this all the time,” I’m keen to point out. “I was too traumatized to coordinate clothing this morning.”
“That’s understandable,” he says, pulling off the main road onto a deserted side street. We roll to a stop beside a metal barrier. “This is where I live.”
I glance up at the building. It’s one of the newer ones, all sharp angles and gunmetal-gray panels with glass balconies jutting out of huge oblong windows. In the glow of the city lights, the whole building glistens like iron. An iron home for an iron man—well, an iron vampire.
Though I’ve never hankered after one of these serviced places myself, I know enough to appreciate that living in one costs a small fortune. I’d put money on it that inside there is a range of luxurious facilities—gym, spa, pool. It’s an unusual choice for a Met Police inspector who claims not to be home much.
Vincent maneuvers the Porsche down a spiral ramp into a low-lit parking garage and pulls into a space. The other cars down here are just as impressive—Maseratis, Ferraris, and Lamborghinis line the concrete walls.
“Oh, how the other half lives,” I mutter as he shuts off the engine before slipping from the vehicle in a gray blur of movement.
Before I know it, he’s beside me, opening the passenger door and offering me an outstretched palm as if we’re courtiers arriving at a ball. Not needing to be asked twice, I give him my hand. His warm, rough fingers briefly curl around mine as he helps me to my feet. I stand on the concrete, slightly dazed, while he lifts my suitcase from the tiny trunk and pulls up the handle.
“The elevators are that way,” he says, motioning across to a pair of red doub
le doors. It takes a few seconds to catch on that he’s waiting for me to walk ahead. I’m not sure I’ll ever get used to this good-manners thing. Scott’s idea of gentlemanly behavior had been occasionally closing the door while he was on the toilet. But then, that’s to be expected from a total douche.
Vincent follows me through the door to the elevators. “Which floor?” I ask, jabbing the call button.
“Top,” he says.
I shake my head, smiling.
“What?”
“Like in Pretty Woman—it’s the best.”
He narrows his eyes in confusion, murmuring “Pretty woman” under his breath.
“The movie,” I explain. “Julia Roberts is a call girl and Richard Gere is this rich but lonely man she falls in love with, and he stays in a penthouse suite even though he hates heights, because it’s the best.”
“Never seen it,” he says, shaking his head.
“You really need to stay in more.”
He chuckles. “I don’t own a TV.”
I widen my eyes dramatically. “Oh my God. No wonder it took you people so long to be accepted into society.”
The elevator pings its arrival, clashing with his burst of laughter as the steel doors slide open. He steps aside again, politely waiting for me to step in ahead of him. As the doors close and the elevator begins to climb, my stomach rumbles loudly. All I’ve eaten today is a sandwich at Laura’s.
Vincent obviously hears the growl because he says, “You’re hungry. I’ll order you something when we get upstairs.”
“They even have room service in these buildings?”
A corner of his mouth lifts. “No, but there is a set of takeout menus in my kitchen drawer.”
“What about you? Do you eat?”
“Sometimes, though we don’t need food or drink to survive. I guess you could say I’m a social eater.”
“How about blood? Do you have a fridge lined with bags of the stuff?”
He looks horrified. “Christ no. That’s pure fantasy.”
I snort with laughter. “You were pure fantasy until a few years back.”
