"I'll be there," Raphael answered, crossing his arms over his broad chest and sending Dominic a look I hoped to heaven no one would ever point at me. Dominic swirled his cape over his shoulder and swept out the door with a grand flourish, Tanya following sullenly behind.
"Bet he learned that in Dramatic Exits 101," I murmured to Roxy. She snickered in return. I gave Raphael a grateful smile. "Looks like I owe you one."
His jaw tightened. He didn't smile in return. In fact, he looked mad as hell. "Looks like you do," he acknowledged with a terse little nod of his head.
I thinned my lips at him, all thoughts of thanking him evaporating under the glare of those wicked amber eyes. "Let's not be overly gracious about this, shall we?"
He took a step forward—a long step forward; the man had legs that went up to his armpits—and frowned down on me. I have to admit he made a very intimidating figure, but I refuse to let anyone intimidate me with nothing but a bunch of muscles, a handsome face, and eyes that could drop a horse at ten paces.
"I could have lost my job because you insisted on flirting with Dominic. Isn't there an expression that says if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen?"
My jaw dropped. I looked at Roxy to see if she was hearing the same outrageous accusation I was. She didn't seem to, since she had a hand clapped over her mouth and was clearly trying not to laugh. Christian's dark eyes were bright with interest on me, but he didn't seem to be appalled either. I raised my chin, spun around to face Raphael, and let him have it with both barrels.
"Flirting? Heat? Kitchen? Are you mad? Crashing against the wall like that must have scrambled your brains, mister, because there is no way on God's green earth anyone could claim I was flirting with old fang-tooth!"
Raphael took another step forward until we were toe to toe, nose to chin. "You allowed him to hold your hand, and I noticed you weren't fighting too hard to get away. Not to mention you repeatedly batted your eyelashes at me in an obvious attempt to make him jealous. In other words, you showed every sign of a woman who was desirous of a man's attention by putting on a show of indifference to pique his interest. That, Joy Martine Randall, is flirting. I'd appreciate it if you could leave me out of your plans the next time you want to play your little sex games."
"Oh!" I huffed, unable to believe how wrong I'd been about him. I liked him better as the blood-sucking undead than I did as the self-centered, stuffy, righteous, PRIGGISH male he was. "For your information, Mr. So-Stuck-on-Yourself-You-Probably-Attract-Flies, I was not flirting! I do not play games! And I most certainly was not batting my eyelashes at you, so you can get that idea right out of the pudding that passes for your brain!"
"Pudding?" he bellowed at me, outrage bristling from every pore.
"Vanilla. With lumps in it!" I bellowed back.
He took a deep breath, his fingers flexing as he struggled to keep control of himself. Oddly enough, the fact that he was bigger and stronger than me wasn't threatening. Somehow I knew that, try him though I might, he was not the type of man who would hurt me.
"You are the most exasperating woman I've ever met," he growled through clenched teeth. His eyes were things of beauty to behold, but I wasn't about to tell him that, nosiree, not me. A compliment would be the last thing out of my mouth to a man who was so pigheaded he could be served at a luau. "I wouldn't doubt for a moment that you planned this whole fiasco just so I'd lose my job. I had you marked as trouble the moment I saw you fawning all over him." He pointed at Christian.
I stared at Christian in open-mouthed surprise, so flabbergasted I couldn't think of anything to say. Christian gave Raphael an odd look that mingled surprise with anger. I wondered briefly what he had to be angry about; it wasn't him being slandered in such an atrocious manner. My flabbergastedness lasted about three seconds.
"You great big tottyhead! First I'm flirting with Dominic and then I'm fawning on Christian? Is that what you think? Because if you do, you're deranged, you're just one hundred percent deranged! You've got some sort of sex obsession, that's your problem!"
"Unlike a woman who has thrown herself at three men she's met in the space of a single day, I do not have an obsession with sex."
"Three? Three?" I steamed at him.
"I'm the third. Have you forgotten last night?"
"That was different. I have long since changed my mind," I argued, poking him in the chest and tipping my head back so I could glare at him better. "I know your type, all strong and silent and sexy as hell, and believing every woman within a five-mile radius has the hots for you. I bet you even think I'm attracted to you."
"You are the one who said you'd pay me to have sex with you."
"Joy!" Roxy gasped.
"It was a joke," I told her, lying through my teeth. I turned back to Raphael. "I'd just hit my head. I obviously wasn't myself."
His eyes glittered wickedly at me as he dropped his head so he could glower into my eyes. "Very well, we'll forget last night, but that doesn't explain the fact that you're attracted to me now."
"I am not!" I said, outraged at such an idea, refusing to admit that my body was thrumming like a plucked string in reaction to his nearness.
"You are. You're practically begging me to kiss you. If that's not being attracted to me, I don't know what is."
His breath feathered across my face, distracting me for a moment. I bathed in the light of his heated eyes, feeling warm and feminine and very, very aroused.
Damn him.
"If I wanted you to kiss me, Bob, I'd be checking your tonsils right now."
"Is that so?"
He was so close to me, I could feel the heat of his chest as it brushed against me. His eyes burned into mine, our mouths just a fraction of an inch apart as I acknowledged that he was right, I did want him to kiss me, more than anything else I could think of.
"Yes, it's so. I think you're the one who wants to kiss me. Why don't you just give in and say it?"
"You say it first."
"Never."
"I don't give in," he warned just before his mouth brushed against mine.
I drowned in his eyes and parted my lips, preparing for full surrender, but was rudely dragged back to reality when Roxy loudly cleared her throat and said, "Um, guys, you're not actually going to have sex—paid for or otherwise—here in the hallway, are you? 'Cause it sure looks to me like that's where you're headed, and for one thing, I don't want to see it, and for another, I doubt if it would prove to be the experience you want it to be, what with all the people going in and out of the bar."
With an effort I wrenched my lips away from Raphael's and swallowed. Hard. I refused to look at him and turned to give Roxy and Christian a shaky smile. "I'm sorry, Christian, I'm sure you didn't enjoy seeing that, but as you are aware, he started it."
"You're the one who's thrown herself on me. Twice," Raphael rumbled behind me.
"What I see is something that requires a little investigation," Christian replied neutrally, his voice silky with comfort. "I suggest we adjourn to the dining room. Roxanne has very kindly invited me to join you, and perhaps this gentleman would like to do so as well?"
"I've already eaten," Raphael answered, picking up my bag from where it had fallen when Tanya sent me flying. He brushed it off and handed it to me.
I was still charged up, and although I'm ashamed to admit it, didn't want him to leave. So I did the only thing I could. "Afraid you won't be able to keep your hands off me if you have dinner with us?"
I swear steam just about boiled out the top of his head. "Are you trying to bait me?"
I smiled.
"Fine," he snapped, his eyes narrowing. "Since you can't bear to be parted from me"—I made an outraged "Oh!" of protest to that—"I will accede to your feeble woman's ploy and join you, although I have, as I already mentioned, already dined."
"That's OK," Roxy said, taking his arm and steering him toward the dining room. "You can sit and watch us eat. If you stare at Joy long enough, she's bound to spill s
omething on herself. That's always entertaining."
I watched them disappear into the seldom-used tiny dining room (most of the hotel patrons preferring to take their meals in the bar), and looked at Christian. "Have you ever seen anything like that aggravating man?"
"Never," he replied, taking my hand and gently massaging my wrist. A vague sense of warmth and comfort filled me at his touch. I smiled into his dark brown eyes, but he didn't smile back. He just held my gaze captured in his for a moment, then lifted my hand to kiss it. I'd never had a man kiss my hand before, and had always thought it a pretty silly gesture, but with his dark-eyed gaze holding me prisoner, the brush of his lips against my knuckles was anything but silly. Slowly he turned my hand over, his mouth a hairs-breadth from my pulse point.
The room suddenly went gray as a wave of bone-deep hunger slammed into me, sucking at me, pulling me down into its icy hold. I was gripped by it, possessed by it, drowning in a need I couldn't begin to understand. Just as abruptly as it started, it ended, leaving me gasping at Christian as he placed a chaste kiss on my wrist. I pulled my hand back, wanting to scream, wanting to know what was happening to me, needing to understand why my mind was suddenly doing things it shouldn't be doing. Something is wrong with you, a frightened voice in my head cried out. I whirled around, desperate to run away, wild to escape the imaginings of my fractured mind.
Raphael stood in the doorway to the dining room watching Christian. His eyes were hooded, glowing with unspoken emotion, hard and glinting and so full of anger the hairs on the back of my neck stood on end. Slowly he moved his gaze to me, then gestured to the dining room and held out his hand for me. "Shall we?"
I stood sick at heart with the knowledge that I must truly be going mad, and struggled to control my beating heart. Inside my head I was shrieking and screaming and pleading for someone to explain to me what was happening, but outside I stood silent, unable to move lest the stillness break and the madness descend upon me again.
You see visions of vampires. Something is wrong with you.
"Joy? You look like you need to eat. Come, let us have dinner."
Christian's voice was an oasis of calm, but it didn't stand a chance in the wild turbulence that filled my mind. He, too, held out his hand to me. I stared at it, unable to move.
Vampires or insanity—which did I want as an explanation? My mind fractured a little more trying to decide. I put my hands up to my head, wanting to hold it together, terrified that I would lose control over everything important to me. Vampires or insanity? Which was real, and which was my imagination? How would I know which was which? Could I trust myself to recognize reality anymore, and if I couldn't, who would help me?
Your mind can't recognize what's real and what's not, the voice in my head whispered. Something is wrong with you.
"Joy."
Raphael's voice glowed like a beacon in the maelstrom of my whirling thoughts. I fought to control the swelling panic that gripped me, tried to focus my thoughts so they didn't drag me down with them, drowning in a sea of confusion and fear. Desperately I clung to the thought that if I could just have a little time, I could figure things out and make sense of all the disorder.
There is no hope. SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH YOU!
"Joy."
"There is nothing wrong with me!" I yelled at Raphael. "So I have a few visions? So what? Who doesn't? I REFUSE TO GO MAD!"
The words echoed in the long, narrow hallway, disturbed only by the muffled hum of noise from the bar. Shocked that I had yelled out loud, I stared wordlessly at Raphael.
He pursed his lips. "I think you're going to be more trouble than I first anticipated."
Chapter Six
Dinner was a trial. Despite my bellowed statement that I would not allow myself to go mad, I was worried about the disintegration of a formerly sound, if not terribly brilliant, mind. As I saw it, life was offering me two paths: Either I could believe in vampires and live happily ever after, or I could go not-so-quietly insane and have myself locked up. Given those choices, there was really no contest. I took a deep mental breath and told my skeptical self that I was only doing this for sanity's sake.
I would believe in vampires.
During dinner neither Christian nor Raphael made mention of the episode in the hall, a fact that left me wondering uneasily if they were humoring me in order to keep me from going off the deep end again.
I did not like the feeling.
"Oh, come on, have a little din-din. Tell you what, it'll be my treat," Roxy pleaded with Raphael a few minutes later.
"No, thank you. I told you I've already eaten."
"Yeah, but surely you could put away a little something extra? You're a big guy, I'm sure there's room in there for a little pork and sauerkraut, eh?" Roxy grinned at him, nudging me under the table with her toes. I gave her the one-eyebrow. "Yes? You wanted something?" lift, as perfected by the man sitting across the table from me.
"No, thank you."
"How about dessert? The strudel here is really good."
"No, thank you. I don't want anything."
"Roxy, leave him alone."
"Appetizer?"
"No."
"Glass of wine?"
"I don't drink wine."
"Roxy!"
"I can't sit here and eat my stuffed pork and dumplings if he's not going to eat anything!" Roxy declared, frowning at Christian in a meaningful manner until he obediently transferred his attention to the menu. She turned back to Raphael and was going to bait him further, but I made the squinty eyes to end all squinty eyes at her, and for what was probably the first time in her life, she backed off.
"Geez, you guys don't have to look at me like that, I was just expressing a polite interest. Wasn't I expressing a polite interest, Joy?"
"No, you were being obnoxious and pushy. You deserve to be snapped at."
"Oh, sure, you take his side. No surprise there, considering you almost had your tongue down his throat a few minutes ago."
"ROXY!"
"Good, here comes the waitress. Has everyone but Stretch here decided what they want?"
I prayed for an earthquake to open the earth up at my feet and swallow me whole. From the martyred look on Raphael's face, he was praying the same thing.
"So, do you live around here?" Roxy asked Christian once we had placed our orders.
He nodded, his fingers tracing the rim of his wineglass. "I do. About a kilometer west of here."
"Really? What do you do?"
"Roxanne!" I slapped at her hand as she was about to snag the last bit of bread.
"What?"
"It's not polite to grill people. I told you almost everyone but Americans find it invasive to question them about their life."
She grinned her pixie grin at him. "Sorry; didn't mean to be rude."
He smiled as he took the piece of bread she offered. Roxy turned to me with her eyebrows lowered. "Am I allowed to talk about myself, or is that also rude?"
I shot Raphael a "what can I do with her?" look. He lifted both eyebrows in return in a manner that seemed to suggest a gag might be effective. I was forced to agree he had a point.
Christian laughed at Roxy's question, the warm sound rolling around the room and covering everything in a soft blanket of silk. "I'm not in the least bit offended by your questions, although I would much rather hear about what brings two such lovely women to a small corner of the Czech Republic."
"A wild goose chase," I muttered.
Roxy ignored me. "Have you ever heard of a local author named Dante?" she asked Raphael and Christian. The former shook his head.
Christian frowned slightly as he toyed with his bread, rubbing crumbs off the crust. "Yes, I have."
"I thought you might; he lives in this area," Roxy continued, digging through her sizeable purse for a copy of the book she was reading. "He writes the most delicious books about Moravians—vampires, you know—and we're dying to meet him. The books are fabulous, utterly, utterly fabulous, with myste
rious, dark, brooding heroes to die for. You really should read them—not that you'd find the heroes to die for, since you're men, not unless you're…" She glanced up at Christian and Raphael, then back down into her purse. "You really should read them. There are twelve books out now, and there's supposed to be another one in a few months. Drat, I must have left the book in my room."
Christian's brows rose as he looked from Roxy to myself. I gave him a five for effort—he was good, but he couldn't hold a candle to the Browmaster sitting opposite me. Raphael was leaning back in his chair, his arms crossed, a pained expression on his face. I couldn't figure out if he was bored with the conversation or the company. He certainly wasn't contributing much to the conversation. I wondered why, if he was so unhappy, he'd agreed to sit with us; then I wondered why I cared. Just because I was the teensiest bit attracted to the man didn't mean I had to like him.
I shot a look at him from under my lashes. He watched me through half-closed eyes, his expression making blood rush to all sorts of interesting spots on my body. My question as to why he was bothering with us was answered by the interest that flared deep within the glittering slivers of amber.
Christian listened as Roxy recapped the plot of the latest book, continuing to toy with what remained of his bread, looking a bit askance at Roxy's enthusiasm. Raphael glanced at his watch, which prompted me to shut Roxy up and turn the conversation to something that might interest him.
"I really don't think they care about the books, Rox."
"On the contrary," Raphael spoke up. "I'm finding it a fascinating look at what women feel are missing from their lives."
"Missing? What do you mean, missing?" I asked.
He rubbed a finger along his jaw, his lips donning an insufferably smug look. "From what Roxy says, women are the primary readers of these books."
"Yeah, so?"
"And they feature male characters who are dominant and aggressive, especially toward women?"
"They're called alpha males, and what of it?"
A slight smile quirked his lips. "You needn't get so defensive; I was merely pointing out that books whose readership is predominantly female, featuring aggressive male characters and including what I assume are numerous scenes of a licentious nature—"
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