He grabbed his coffee and headed for the elevator. He waited a while and took a sip of his flaming hot coffee, only to burn the tip of his tongue. Just couldn't wait, could you? he thought. Now you won't be able to taste anything for the rest of the day.
Finally the large heavy elevator doors slid open slowly. He stepped in and hit the button on the panel marked '17.' No one had stepped in the elevator with him and the doors shut. Up the elevator went, opening only once at floor fourteen for who looked like an executive assistant with five folders in her arms. She made eye contact with him and smiled shyly, reached past him, excusing herself, and pushed the button for the twenty-second floor. She quickly glanced at him again. After all, Anton was a very handsome vampire. He stood six feet tall and was dressed in an expensive charcoal gray suit. The gray of the suit played on his eyes, making them look even bluer than normal. He had a thin, straight noble nose, and short dark blonde hair that was spiky on top.
He smiled at the woman then went back to looking at the numbers count up on the LED display panel above the door. When it hit seventeen, the doors slid open and he headed out and to the right. He walked down the hall and to the left, where he waved at a secretary and pointed down the hall at the conference room. She nodded.
He entered a room with a very long, shiny table surrounded with leather rolling chairs. One of his staff was setting out folders in front of four of the seats and nodded at Anton as he seated himself. “Is the buyer here yet?” Anton asked the busy secretary.
“No, Mr. Larsen, but Porter Simmons is here. He just went to use the restroom a minute ago.”
“Good. No rush. I got here early.” He leafed through the folder that the secretary had left in front of him. "Excellent job," he said and then he looked up at her, smiled, and continued, "Really, very nicely done. Thank you, Sara. Everything looks great."
The secretary blushed and smiled at Anton. He could read from her that she had spent a great deal of time on the material, and wanted it to be perfect and that was why he made sure that he told her how good it looked. His staff didn't deal with him much and he knew that they tended to get very nervous when meetings like this sprang up with 'The Boss' involved.
His staff was capable and professional, and he knew he didn't tell them often enough how nice it was not to have to worry about things when he wasn't around. They worked like a well-oiled machine and he knew just how lucky he was, because it hadn't always been that way.
A minute later Porter Simmons, a stocky man with glasses, entered the conference room. He took care of most of their legal obligations and issues and was absolutely the best in the field at this sort of acquisition.
“Anton, it’s good to see you out and about. You look good. I hope you received my condolences on your wife's death. How are you doing? I know you were estranged, but still, it must be hard. Amy told me to make sure and tell you that if there was anything we could do, to please let us know.”
“I appreciate that, Porter. You are a very lucky man to have such a doting wife. Yes, I received the flowers and your condolences and they were greatly appreciated. It was a shock to lose Libby, but like you said, we were estranged and I suppose that makes it a little easier. Thank you for your concern. Dominic and I are squaring away her affairs still, but all seems to be fine.”
“Well, if you need any legal advice or help, don't hesitate to call me. It's not my specialty, but I do know a few people who could help.”
“Thanks, Porter, I'll do that.”
Porter sat down next to Anton with a cup of coffee and a couple of file folders.
To kill some time, Anton pulled out his iPhone and checked his email messages. A few minutes later, a finely dressed gentleman entered the room. Anton stood to greet the gentleman with his hand extended and said, "Mr. D'Angelo?"
"No. I'm Samuel Birke, the lawyer working with your client and Ms. D'Angelo."
"Good to meet you, Mr. Birke. Glad you could make it in this rain. This is our lawyer, Porter Simmons."
"Thank you, Mr. Larsen. It's nice to meet you. Mr. Simmons, I know you by reputation only. It's a great pleasure to meet you."
Porter stood and shook Samuel's hand and said, "It's nice to meet you, too."
Anton continued, "I hope Ms. D'Angelo did not get caught in traffic. You never know what traffic will be like in this kind of rain."
"Very true, however I think she had more trouble with the rain than with the traffic. Last I saw her she was very wet and headed for the ladies room. I suppose she is drying off."
"Oh dear, maybe I should send Sara in to see if she needs anything?"
"I think it best that we stay out of her way. She did not look very happy when I saw her."
Anton simply nodded and smiled at Samuel.
Another ten minutes went by and the dutiful secretary Sara had come in to make sure everyone had everything they needed, then turned and left the room. A moment later a striking woman stepped into the room in a long, slim fitted black skirt. Her hair was slightly damp. Being a vampire, he could hear that her spiked heel pumps made a squish sound with every step. Her white silk blouse looked to be the driest thing on her and was as sheer as tissue paper over a flesh-colored camisole.
All the men in the room rose at her entrance and when Anton walked forward to introduce himself, her eyes widened as she took him in. "You!"
"Uh, yes. I am Anton Larsen and you must be..."
The woman looked at him with such distaste that Anton was taken aback and stopped mid sentence. Bewildered by her hostility, he tried to finish his sentence, "...Ms. D'Angelo."
She refused to shake his hand and looked at it with disgust. "Yes. I am Juliana D'Angelo and I represent my client Thomas Sinclair on the acquisition of the statuette entitled 'Apathy.'"
Anton motioned towards a chair next to Samuel Birke and said, "Yes. Please make yourself comfortable. Can I get you anything?"
"I think you've done quite enough, thank you."
All the men in the room stared at Anton. Anton shook his head at her statement, like a dog might shake off water from its coat of fur. He was very confused. This woman was so hostile towards him. She did look vaguely familiar, but he couldn't quite place her. She had a slight English accent that suited her. Her eyes were the color of dark blue sapphires, but they showed nothing but malice towards him.
"Okay. No coffee, maybe some tea?"
"No thank you. Let's get straight to it, shall we? Your asking price is grossly over-inflated, Mr. Larsen, and I have advised my client to reconsider pursuing this transaction."
"Okay, Ms. D'Angelo, that is your prerogative, but this item has been highly sought after since the death of its artist and I don't think that your client will find anything of its caliber on this market for much less."
"I don't concur and we will be taking our offer to another gallery."
"All right. I guess this meeting is over then. Sorry gentlemen, to have taken up your valuable time. It was very nice to meet you, Mr. Birke." Porter stood up and so did Samuel, to shake hands with Anton, but Ms. D'Angelo stuffed the folder into her briefcase, ignoring their conversation.
"Ms. D'Angelo, it was nice meeting you," Anton said politely, to which she waved her hand as if swatting at a fly. Surprised, Anton raised his brows then turned to Porter and shook the man's hand and said his goodbyes.
As he turned the corner down the hall, he saw that an elevator was heading down and the doors weren't closed just yet. He made a mad dash for it outstretching his hand to prevent the doors from closing and stepped in, only to find Ms. D'Angelo standing there, seemingly appalled by his intrusion. He smiled coldly at her and hit the button for the lobby. The doors closed behind him and he stared at the numbers above the door as they counted down.
Somewhere between number 12 and 11 the lights in the elevator blinked and a horrid metallic sound rang loud in their ears. The elevator stopped with a jerk that just about knocked both its passengers off their feet. Then there was only the easy listening music in
the background as the elevator sat there between two floors.
Juliana started hitting buttons frantically.
"How is that going to help? Even if it starts, now we’ll have to go to every floor in the building before we get to the lobby. Don't panic. It will start moving any second now," Anton said.
Her sapphire eyes were burning a hole into the side of his head with her stare of malevolence. After a moment he opened the little door with the emergency telephone and grabbed the receiver. It seemed the phone was dead. "Hmm," he said, disappointed. He pulled his iPhone out of his briefcase and called the secretary that he had just talked to upstairs.
"Marlene? Hi, it's Anton Larsen..."
...
"Uuh, no. That's not why I'm calling. I'm...we... I mean, Ms. D'Angelo and myself are trapped in the elevator between floors eleven and twelve."
...
"No, no. We are fine, but the emergency phone in here isn't working so could you please let maintenance know that there are passengers stuck in here?
...
"Thank you Marlene, I appreciate that."
...
"Good then. Goodbye."
"Well?" Ms. D'Angelo snarled at Anton.
"Well, what? We wait," Anton retorted.
She sighed deeply - a most agitated sigh, directed at Anton as if this was his fault. She backed into the corner of the elevator (her shoes squishing with every step), set her attaché down, and crossed her arms over her chest as she stared at the back of Anton.
Anton glanced over his shoulder to find her glaring at him, which made him do a double take. He turned towards her and backed himself into the corner diagonally from her to be as far away from her as possible. Like two sparring boxers, they eyed each other as if sizing up their competition. He set his briefcase down and laid his overcoat atop it.
Ms. D’Angelo never took her eyes off of him. Anton was starting to feel self-conscious and loosened his tie. He hoped he wouldn't be in the elevator for too long with this hostile woman. In an attempt to break the ice, Anton asked, "So, what part of Great Britain are you from?"
Completely caught off guard, she stuttered a few times then in a heavy accent said, "You are bang out of order. What’s that got to do with the price of eggs?"
Stuttering himself now, he replied, "Well, quite frankly, I don't know, but we are stuck in an elevator with nothing to do, I just thought maybe you might loosen up if we talked about you."
"Pardon me? Loosen up? I have no intention of loosening up with YOU. I certainly don't want to share my personal information with a complete stranger and most especially with you."
"I see. Fine," Anton said matter-of-factly. Silence consumed the elevator aside from the easy listening music droning on from the tiny speaker in the ceiling. If he didn't care about revealing that he was a vampire, he would have jumped up and through the escape hatch in the top of the car and agilely climbed out of this predicament, but he certainly wasn't going to do anything in front of this hostile woman.
After several minutes of shifting her weight from one squishy shoe to the next and sighing like a teenage girl, Anton said, "Why don't you just take your wet shoes off? They can't be comfortable squishing every time you move. Besides, I'm getting tired of hearing them squish every time you tap your foot or shift your weight."
If she had looked angry before, then she looked furious now. With this amplified anger, her British accent was even more pronounced as she said, "It's your own bloody fault."
"What is? Your shoes? Are you insane? How am I at fault for making your shoes wet? I don't control the rain or where you step. What is YOUR problem anyway? Are you always this hostile?"
Now she was fuming. He thought flames might shoot out of her tiny nose and he had to admit, he was a little scared given their close proximity. She came at him like a bullet - an inhumanly fast bullet, that is. Her small hand at his neck, nails digging in near the collar of his perfectly starched, tailored dress shirt, she had him pinned in his corner of the elevator. He was shocked more than hurt and he smiled as his face turned a bright shade of red from the pressure of her hand.
“I'd say you just revealed some personal information, Ms. D'Angelo. I take it you're a vampire?”
Slightly embarrassed, she relaxed her hand and pulled away from Anton, retreating back to her corner of the elevator.
Anton rubbed his neck slightly as he smirked.
"What of it?” she spat out. “You're a vampire too. What does it matter if you know?"
"It doesn't. Not in the least," he said snidely.
Her arms were again crossed over her chest and she stood there silently stewing. When she shifted her weight and her shoe squished again, one of Anton's eyebrows went up as he looked at her and then her shoes.
"Fine. I'll take them off," she said angrily and kicked them off nearly hitting him from across the elevator.
"Are you ever going to tell me why you seem to be so angry with me?" he asked.
"As if you didn't know."
"I don't know. Seriously."
She looked rather surprised. "You don't recognize me?"
"What do you mean? You are Juliana D'Angelo. You work for ..."
"No, no. Bloody git. I had to walk three blocks in the rain because of you."
"What are you blathering about? How am I responsible for that?"
"You took my parking place? Remember now? Black Lexus with blinker on, waiting for the parking place you zipped into? Ring any bleedin’ bells?"
"That's what all this is about? A stupid parking place?"
Mockingly she repeated, "That's what this is about? A stupid parking place?" Then she continued loudly, "You're bloody right, that's what this is about! What kind of person takes a parking place that is being waited for, only to shrug them off?" Then she started to mumble to herself with a few loud bloody’s and a few morons thrown in here and there along with a bunch of British expressions he wasn’t familiar with.
"Wow. You are wound up awful tight to have a parking place ruin your day, lady."
"Don't 'lady' me, you, you...what kind of gentleman does that?"
"You're kidding, right? This is some kind of joke, right? Is this 'Candid Camera' or something? You can't seriously be that angry about a parking place."
"You are a moron. A bloody moron. I had to walk three blocks in the pouring rain to a meeting only to find that YOU were the one giving the meeting. I had to dry my clothes and hair in the bathroom with that hand blower drying machine."
"Oooooh. Then you were the very rude drowned rat that I held the door open for in the coffee shop that didn't even bother to thank me. As if I was working there only to open the door for wet princesses who couldn't be bothered."
"How dare you! Why would I say thank you to someone who took my parking place?"
"Well first off, your name was nowhere on that parking place, so I am quite sure it was not yours. Secondly, I didn't even see you until you honked with disapproval, and I wasn't going to get back into my car, just to give you the PUBLIC parking place I was parked in. And lastly, you didn't know I was the 'parking place stealer' when you went walking through the door of the coffee shop, because you never even made eye contact with me until you overheard my comment with your vampire hearing."
"Ahh, whaaa, I, well...but..." She stood there with her mouth open for a minute as Anton gave her a ‘gotcha’ look.
"Okay, maaaaybeeee I didn't thank you for holding the door open for me, but that is still no comparison to what you did to me."
"Really? Are you saying that you NEVER have taken a parking place that someone else might have been waiting for? Maybe you didn't even know until it was too late?"
"Well...um...I....hmm, maybe..."
"Look. I had no idea there wouldn't be another parking place for three blocks. How could I? If I had known, I probably would have given you the parking place. What's done is done. The best I can do now is say I'm sorry and," he bent down and picked up his compact umbrella from the pocket of his
briefcase, "give you a peace offering."
He smiled as he stepped forward to hand it to her, which she reluctantly took from him. She tapped it on her other hand as she started to smile and said to Anton, "I suppose most of this could have been avoided if I had just brought one of these myself."
He smiled smugly, but didn't say a word. After a minute he said, "Well, I suppose I could have been a little more observant when parking, especially in the rain."
This time she smiled smugly then tapped the umbrella in her hand again and looked up at him. He was surprised at how amazing she looked now that there was no animosity towards him. Her eyes weren't the blue of a ferocious turbulent sea, but the warm soothing blue of the sky at twilight. The lines of her face were softer too, now, making her look absolutely lovely even in the harsh fluorescent lighting of the elevator car. He flushed and looked down at his shoes.
"So maybe we should start over?" She held out her hand and continued, "Hello, I'm Juliana D'Angelo, but my friends call me Jules. It's very nice to meet you, Anton Larsen."
He took her hand lightly and said, "Likewise, Jules. It suits you, you know? Jules. That is, your eyes being the color of sapphires and all." He felt immediately awkward at saying something so corny, but she smiled coyly.
"Dorchester,” she said. “You asked where I'm originally from - Dorchester."
"Oh. Dorchester. That's about as south as you can go."
"Yes, quite."
"How did you end up in the colonies?" he joked.
"Quite literally," she said. "I came over in the late 1600s."
"A cougar, then."
"Hardly. Older yes, but I wouldn't categorize myself as a cougar."
"I was joking, you know?"
"Yes, I know."
"It's odd though, I didn't sense you as being a vampire."
"Hmm. Age I suppose. The need to feed lessens as does our scent."
"Making you much more lethal, I suppose."
She chuckled. "Mmm, yes. I suppose that's true."
Bloodstone Heart Page 17
