The Naughty Nine: Where Danger and Passion Collide

by Nina Bruhns

  “Uh-huh.” Ry bent his head and sucked vigorously on his water through a straw. Giselle could tell that he had to struggle to keep from bursting into laughter. The poor man. She should help him with that. Giselle kicked him under the table.

  “Ow. Watch it," Ry said.

  “So sorry. Just crossing my legs,” Giselle said sweetly.

  Ry mumbled something inaudible.

  “Well, as I said, I was very pleased to hear from you,” Giselle said.

  Lester smiled wanly in response. Marissa glowered.

  “You said in your email that you might have something for my article.”

  “Yes," Marissa said. "Lester thought you would like to write about the tragedy. Perhaps something about the discrimination suffered by paranormal beings under the U.S. legal system. Discrimination against beings, such as we, is tolerated without any guilt or censor whatsoever in this country.”

  “Are you a vampire too?” Giselle looked from Lester to Marissa.

  “Yes. I am a member of the second-class citizens who this country spits upon. We are the last-accepted prejudice. We are at the mercy of the Man. We are oppressed by the Man.”

  Giselle turned to Ry and whispered, “Did she just say ‘the Man’?”

  “My shins don’t want me to answer you.”

  Giselle turned back to Lester and Marissa, a smile plastered on her face. She tried for a mixture of pleasantry and sympathy in her expression. “Yes. It sounds terrible,” she said. “When I get back to New York, I’ll talk about your situation with my editor and see if the magazine will authorize an article. But it doesn’t sound like it would fit with the subject of my present piece. I’m here strictly to investigate and document a ghost phenomenon.”

  Marissa’s eyes turned from vacant to hard and glaring. “Lester is very disappointed,” Marissa said, and Lester nodded. “He’d hoped that someone he thought was one of his,” she choked, “best friends—” Lester pressed a hand to Marissa’s arm. “His most special friend in the world, would want to help him in this time of tribulation.”

  Lester thought she was one of his best friends? His most special friend in the world? The poor man—er—vampire. They’d only had one date and a series of email contacts. He must have no friends at all.

  “Of course, I want to be all the help I can.” Giselle fidgeted with the straw in her water glass. “As soon as I’m finished with this ghost article, I’ll talk to Willie about the tragedy.”

  Giselle felt guilty for offering nothing more. She felt like a horribly bad friend.

  “Does Lester know any ghosts in town?” Giselle asked tentatively. Yeah, go ahead and use the poor pathetic vampire for information after refusing to do anything for him. Was that any way to treat your best friend?

  Lester wrote on the napkin in front of him just two words, ghost and door. Marissa spoke to him in some language Giselle did not understand. Lester shook his head several times, looking stern. Marissa visibly composed herself and then spoke. “Lester wishes to give you information, even though I say you are unworthy of his affection and favor. Lester says there is a ghost who opens the door at an abandoned mansion on Oglethorpe Avenue to whoever knocks upon the door at midnight.” She wrote jerkily on a napkin and thrust it toward Giselle. “This is the address.”

  “That’s ridiculous. I’ve lived here all my life. There’s no truth to that story.” Ry practically frothed at the mouth as he said it.

  What had triggered such a strong response?

  “Where did you get such a stupid story?” Ry continued.

  “Ry,” Giselle said. “I’m sure Lester has a very good source. After all he is a vampire. He’s imbedded in the paranormal community. He no doubt has mystical powers we can’t even imagine that would allow him to detect a ghostly presence at a location. Right? Tell him, Lester…Marissa?”

  “We heard about the ghost during the haunted Savannah walking tour we took when we first moved here.”

  Silence. Then Giselle turned to Ry. “See, they have it on the best authority.”

  Lester and Marissa rose in concert. “We must go,” Marissa said in a flat monotone accompanied by a morose glower.

  Giselle and Ry stood also. Lester embraced Giselle again, kissing her on both cheeks. Then he gave Ry a small bow.

  Giselle felt terrible and called after Lester as the glum couple walked away. “Call me. I’m at the Great Eastern. I’ll talk to my editor about your story. Bye.” She sat back down and let her forehead fall to the table. Ry chuckled.

  She weakly turned her head to the side. “You were a big help.”

  “Glad to be of service.”

  It was Saturday at 8:54 p.m.

  A Girl, a Guy and a Ghost: Chapter Five

  Giselle pondered the question: How do I deal with the feeling that I'm a horrible, human being with no redeeming features? She quickly came to a conclusion. Eat dinner of course.

  Ry opted for the salmon and Giselle for pasta with Alfredo sauce. An expensive white wine completed the meal. It made Giselle feel a lot better as she took another delicious, savory bite.

  “So you’re the vampire’s special friend. Does that mean you have a rare blood type?” Ry’s green eyes sparkled.

  “Shush it! You’re making my sauce curdle.”

  His full lips taunted her with more than words as they opened and he placed a piece of salmon inside between white teeth. The way he chewed was even sexy. Ry sipped from his glass of wine. His tongue came out to lick a few drops from his lips. Ooooh, that tongue. The man had a dangerously talented tongue.

  This was business. Dammit. She couldn’t just sit there gazing at his tongue. Talk about something.

  “So tell me about yourself,” Giselle said.

  About to take another bite of salmon, Ry stopped and arched a brow suspiciously. “What do you want to know?”

  “Tell me about your childhood. I told you about my parents. Tell me about yours.”

  He didn’t look pleased at the suggestion.

  “Come on. What are you afraid of?” she goaded.

  “Well, okay, after all, you are buying dinner.”

  “I am?”

  “Yeah, I get expenses along with my daily rate. Dinner is an expense.”

  “Oh, all right. Maybe I should have taken the skunk up on his invitation. At least he was going to go Dutch.”

  “But he would have demanded sex after dinner. I won’t.”

  “Oh, yeah.” Demand away, big boy. “You are a better deal.” Dammit. Silence. Think about anything except sex. Sex, sex, sex… “Stop it!”

  “Stop what,” he said, startled.

  “Uhmmmmm. Stop evading the question. Tell me about your childhood.”

  Ry wiped at his mouth with his napkin and put it back in his lap. “Let’s just say my mother had, and for that matter has, very high standards, especially for her family.”

  Demanding.

  “She expected a lot of me as a child. She always wanted me to excel.”

  Domineering and critical.

  “She could be quite assertive.”

  Pushy and overbearing.

  “My father disappeared when I was ten. My grandmother always blamed my mother. She thought my mother had driven her son away.”

  A royal bitch. “I see.” Memo to self, Avoid meeting Ry’s mother. “She sounds…interesting,” Giselle said. “What about your father. What was he like?”

  “I don’t remember him as being anything much. I remember him being there, until he disappeared of course. But I don’t remember him having any kind of personality. He just did what Mama told him.”

  Ry’s voice trailed away into silence. He sat there, lost in his own thoughts, and it didn’t look like they were happy ones. What a great topic choice, Giselle. What other cheerful subjects could they talk about over dinner? The Holocaust? World famine?

  Maybe she could think of something similar about her own family to comfort him with.

  “My grandmother sounds a lot like your mother
. She always nagged us about something. You knew she loved you if she insulted you.”

  “That was never the case with my mother. When she insults you, she means it.” He clenched his jaw and frowned. His expression was grim.

  Well, that didn’t work. “Excuse me, I’m going to the, uh, ladies’.” Giselle stood up.

  “Yeah, okay,” Ry said. She could tell he hadn’t heard her.

  Stupid, stupid, stupid, Giselle. She walked with unseeing eyes to the ladies’ room. She had a brief impression of white tile and chrome fixtures as she went into the first of the three stalls.

  She didn’t even have a chance to turn in the close space to lock the stall door when the lights went out, leaving the windowless room in complete blackness.

  Without warning, the metal door of the stall came pummeling inward, slamming into Giselle with high velocity force. Her arm took the brunt of the hit, stinging. Pain went up the elbow into her shoulder.

  She felt a figure taller than her barrel though the now-open stall door. A hard palm struck between her shoulder blades and sent her flying forward. Then she was jerked back as rough hands encircled her throat.

  Giselle clawed at the hands and found them covered by gloves. Unable to make any impact on them, her own hands flew wildly to the face of her attacker, trying to gouge at the eye area.

  “Ugh.”

  Triumph flared in her when she heard the attacker’s grunt. But triumph was short-lived. The attacker threw her forward again and Giselle’s knees rammed the toilet bowl. Her automatic instinct was to try to prevent her body from falling, so she put out her arms to brace herself. As she did, her palms struck the cool tile on the back wall.

  The attacker took advantage of her vulnerable position, grabbing her shoulders and shoving her. The attacker forced her down, down, down. Her face hit the water in the toilet bowl and a crack sounded as her skull struck the porcelain.

  Impact sparks ignited in her brain.

  Struggling against the iron grip of her attacker to no avail, Giselle’s face was pushed deeper into the toilet. Her face submerged, she tried not to breathe in.

  Giselle continued to flail with her hands, but in this position she made no impact on the figure behind her. However, she did manage to hit the toilet’s handle. The water flushed around her, swirling, then rushing down the pipe.

  The bowl was empty for precious seconds. At least she could breathe now. But then the water came rushing back up.

  Giselle held her breath again. She couldn’t believe her life was literally going down the toilet. The newspaper headlines would read, Death by Swirly.

  She found the floor with her hands and tried to push up against her attacker. Nothing. Gripping the toilet seat, she pushed back. No impact. The figure continued relentlessly pressing her face into the water. Thrashing from side to side, Giselle began to lose consciousness. She couldn’t hold her breath much longer.

  Giselle’s panic increased and her hands continued to fumble about blindly. Her questing fingers encountered an object with a long handle to the side of the bowl. She grabbed it and felt along its length until she found a bristly end. A toilet brush.

  Giselle clutched the handle and thrust the brush up and over her head at the attacker as hard as she could. It moved like a dagger. A slimy, germ-ridden dagger. The impact jarred her arm. The attacker grunted and the gripping hands dropped away from the back of her head and neck.

  Jerking her head out of the toilet bowl, Giselle came up gasping and coughing. Maddened, she stood and turned in one motion. Giselle punched, kicked and scratched at the dark, shadowy figure in front of her. She felt the attacker backing away as she advanced.

  The attacker, continuing to retreat, tried to fend off Giselle’s furious, but expert, martial arts technique. Really. Okay—not. But the attacker retreated. Giselle continued swinging. She and the attacker tumbled out of the stall. The figure struck a blow to her left shoulder that knocked Giselle to the side and into the bank of sinks.

  Giselle righted herself and fumbled around with her hands in front of her. She found the wall and felt along it until she discovered the light switch. She clicked it on. The room was empty except for the demented-looking, wet raccoon reflected by the mirror. Glancing this way and that, Giselle saw nothing there. No raccoon was in the room with her. Giselle was the demented raccoon.

  Her hair dripped icky toilet water. A ring of black encircled her eyes, disproving the advertising that touted the waterproof quality of her mascara. Her white peasant blouse now clung to her like a second skin.

  Torn between the humiliation of returning to the table with a strong resemblance to crazed vermin and the fear of the attacker’s return, Giselle chose fear and exited without attempting to fix her appearance.

  Restaurant patrons turned to stare as she passed them, and not in the head-turning way a girl enjoys. The walk seemed to take forever. Finally, she saw Ry in the distance. A beacon, a haven.

  “Did you fall in?” he asked.

  A jerk.

  She stared at him, unspeaking. Shock, no doubt.

  Understanding dawned and he jumped out of his chair and took her into his arms. She buried her face in his shirt and cried.

  “Are you okay, sugar? What happened?” he crooned.

  “Ermmmmm.” His shirtfront muffled her voice. He gripped her arms and pushed her away to look at her face.

  “What happened?”

  “Someone tried to flush my head down the toilet.” She choked it out.

  “While it was still attached?”

  Giselle looked up at him wide-eyed, sniffed a couple of times and then full-fledged sobs broke out.

  “Oh, sugar,” Ry said. “I thought you were joking, I’m sorry. I was trying to be funny too. I thought it would make you feel better.”

  “Well, it didn’t,” she cried.

  “I see that now. I’m sorry.”

  Giselle snuffled a bit, no longer sobbing.

  “I was totally wrong.”

  Giselle sniffed once. The tears stopped.

  “I grovel at your feet with my wrongness.”

  A wan smile from Giselle. “As long as you’re groveling, I’ll forgive you.”

  His touch, protective and comforting, soothed her. One hand was on her neck. The thumb of his other hand caressed her cheekbone. If she didn’t feel so horrible from crying, she could be enjoying this.

  “I better go see if there’s any sign of the person who attacked you.” Ry started to move away, but Giselle clung to him, her nails digging into his back.

  “No, don’t go. They’re already gone.” Giselle felt him relax against her. “Now can I have your shirt?”

  “What? No. You’re all wet with toilet water.”

  “The toilet water was clean. Besides, look at me.” Giselle pulled back.

  “I am. That style is very fetching. You should go with it. You don’t need my shirt.”

  Giselle looked down, pointedly down at her translucent wet blouse and then back at him.

  At her glare, he grumbled, “Oh, all right. Don’t ever say, I wouldn’t give you the shirt off my back.”

  * * *

  Forty-five minutes later, Giselle emerged from the bathroom of her hotel room. She had showered and quickly blown her hair dry. She’d dressed in black v-neck tee with black Capri pants. Casual. But the black said Ghosthunter. Okay, perhaps it just said “depression.” Fresh makeup had been a must, including a reapplication of the offending mascara. Nevertheless, Giselle swore to write a letter to the company about their false claims at her earliest opportunity. Perhaps she should have taken a photograph as evidence. Too late now.

  On entering the bedroom, she saw Ry lying across the room’s bed, still shirtless. This might be what a heart attack felt like. This man was dangerous to her health. His chest, toned and tanned, monopolized her vision. His pecs perfectly muscular, not muscle-bound, had a light sprinkling of blond hair. Scrumptious. And his abs? Yummy. Perfect. Just as she’d suspected in the janitor’
s closet at the restaurant.

  Why did she suddenly long for fuzzy pink handcuffs and a riding crop?

  Giselle closed her gaping mouth. She hoped there was no drool. Quick check. No. Thank God. She’d experienced enough humiliation for one night. Correction, one year.

  “Here’s your shirt.” She held up the garment in her hand, trying to look away but not succeeding. “I don’t want you to get cold.” Please put it back on before I do something embarrassing.

  “No thanks. You keep it,” he replied with a lazy drawl as he continued to lounge against the white bedspread, being treacherously sexy.

  “I told you the water was clean,” Giselle responded.

  “So you say.”

  She couldn’t ignore how glorious he looked lying across her bed. “I know why you don’t want it back. You just want me to admire your chest,” she tried to joke.

  “I don’t want you to miss my fabulous back.” He said with a laugh as he got off the bed. He stretched his arms out wide and made a one-hundred-eighty-degree turn. “Well, what do you think?”

  “I think you’re,” magnificent, beautiful, superb, “insufferable.”

  Ry chuckled and returned to a reclining position on the bed.

  Ooh, dangerous territory.

  “While you were in the bathroom I made a few calls,” Ry said.

  Busy ogling him, she almost didn’t register his words. She blinked. “Oh, right.”

  Giselle had described the entire altercation to Ry as they walked from the restaurant to her hotel. At his prompting, she had given every detail she could remember. She felt intensely frustrated that she wasn’t able to give any kind of physical description of the attacker. She could only say he or she was tall, very strong, and now covered with icky toilet brush gunk.

  Ry had assured her he would contact a friend on the police force, and arrange for her to make a statement about the two attempts on her life, so that they could begin an investigation.

  Drawing her down to sit beside him on the bed, he put an arm around her. “I talked to my friend on the force. I spoke to another friend who is going to be doing some computer research to determine if anyone has been pulling information on you, trying to trace you. For example, credit card statements to find out where you’re staying. Stuff like that.”