by Jianne Carlo
Cupping Stephanie's elbow, he shot Dardin a hands-off, this-woman-is-mine glare and then relaxed his narrowed eyes and shifted so he faced Stephanie. Responding to the curiosity evident by the slight line forming between her brows and her puckered mouth, he said, “They're coneflowers, and the orange ones are scented. You'll like 'em. This is supposed to be a two-person deal, Stephanie. We need to stick together.”
Crap.
He sounded like an overprotective, jealous idiot.
Easily distracted by visual images, Stephanie studied the flower bed lining the driveway; her lips curled, her eyes crinkling at the corners as her smile widened.
“What an astonishing contrast of colors—the burnt orange and the royal purple.” She studied the daisylike coneflower petals as they bowed under a sudden gust. “We have a scene in the movie where Valentine discovers he has a nose for wine. These colors would have really stood out. Now I wish I'd taken Christine up on that offer to see this place before starting production.”
“Case of spilled milk now, isn't it? Didn't they burn the final DVDs the other day?”
“They did,” she replied.
Moving his hand to the small of her back, Eli guided her forward, grinning when a glam-flam reporter with big hair and even bigger lips snagged Dardin and held him hostage to a microphone and a camera-toting assistant. Not wanting anyone else to capture Stephanie's attention and pissed at this sudden surge of possessiveness, he plucked one of the fragrant coneflowers and stabbed it into her hand.
As she inhaled, her forehead furrowed for a few seconds, and then she said, a note of triumph in her voice, “It smells like Celestial Seasonings Mandarin Orange tea.” Twirling the blossom, she stopped and raised it to his nose. “Smell.”
“Orangey,” he agreed. What self-respecting man drank tea, for Christ's sake?
“Let me guess.” Slapping her palms to her hips, eyes mere slits, she jeered. “Macho salesmen only drink coffee.”
They stood staring at each other, the crowd milling around them going unnoticed.
Feeling like a thirteen-year-old in wanting to make her take it back, he tried to think of a drink other than coffee or bourbon that might fit into the preppy-male mold she seemed to favor, and hit a blank wall.
“Damn it,” she muttered, her voice grouchy and scratchy. Her gaze dropped to the left of his Hermès handcrafted shoes. “This is going to be a very, very long weekend.”
Long, long tortuous weekend, if the current condition of his aching dick and balls were anything to go on. And the little head, which took control the second Stephanie got within touching distance, wouldn't stop peppering his mind with lusty images—her naked under him, his face buried between her thighs, his tongue laving her raspberry-tipped tits.
Chapter Two
“Eli,” she said, his name sounding so sweet, his prick nearly combusted. “I think you have a problem.”
He followed her stare, which fixated on his crotch, and he strangled the groan before it left his throat. No longer held together by the lone button, the jacket's sides had widened, and his pants bulged, pulling the material tight over his obvious arousal.
“I'll walk in front of you. Stay behind.” Stephanie strode forward, one slim leg following the other. “You can hit the men's and adjust things once we're inside.”
Huh? What gives, Steph? Why're you doing this for me?
“Can you hear me?”
Eli near about swallowed his tongue when she swept her hair to one side, exposing the snowy skin of her nape, a trio of shorter hairs feathering the flesh there. Warm color tinted the top of her ear.
The two of them walked in tandem ahead of the crowd, Stephanie leading but staying close so her body blocked a straightforward view of his groin.
Her swaying backside distracted him, and he answered on autopilot. “Yeah. Why?”
“I went to your office the morning after the party. You and the other sales guys were in the coffee room. I heard what they said about you nailing me.”
The blood in his body froze in place.
“I also heard what you said.”
They passed through the open double doors to the château as she uttered that wonderful piece of news. A mixed multitude of guests, waiters bearing trays, black-clad studs serving wine, jammed the room they entered. Dusk arrived, casting shimmering darkness in corners and nooks.
Circling his fingers around her wrist, Eli drew Stephanie to an arched entryway, then strode down a wide hallway until he found a closed door that opened. She didn't resist him, didn't drag her feet or try to pull away. Shutting the door, he spun around to find her staring up at him, whiskey irises appearing lighter in the gloom of the windowless room.
“I said you had a great rack.” Tearing at the knots the breeze had jumbled in his hair, he said, “They took me by surprise. I'd no idea anyone had seen us go into my office. Honey, it's guy talk.”
“I am not your honey.” She lifted her chin, mouth canted tight and fierce, hands balled at her sides.
“That's why you wouldn't return my calls? That's why you took the three dozen roses I sent you and threw them into the trash?” At her moue of surprise, he continued battering the walls she'd erected. “And that's why you let it be known that my performance was vastly disappointing?”
“Stop hollering at me.” She spat the words at him. “And it was disappointing. You never even kissed me. It was worse than when I lost my virginity. It's supposed to be better the second time around.”
Eli's shoulder blades slammed against the door as her words registered. “The second time?”
She stamped a stiletto-clad foot. “Forget it. Forget we ever had this conversation.”
“Oh, man, did I screw up.” He grabbed her hand when she tried to jog around him and open the door. She wriggled and squirmed when he closed his arms around her, and he tucked his face into the crook of her shoulder and neck. “I'm a complete asshole. You have every right to hate me.”
“I don't hate you,” she whispered. “I wanted to, but I couldn't.”
I owe you one, big kahuna.
Unable to resist, Eli licked her nape.
She shivered but went still, and her head tilted ever so slightly. Opening his mouth on her flesh, drinking in the sugar and spice of her scent, he suckled, and when she swallowed a noise in her throat, he scraped her neck with his teeth and drew in skin. Her arms climbed his chest and settled on his shoulders.
The guitar strains that began Steppenwolf's “Magic Carpet Ride” shattered the sounds of their soft panting and her choked-back whimpers. After a three-second delay, Eric Clapton's voice singing “Tears In Heaven” attempted to merge with the gut-cramping rock and roll.
Great.
Both their cells rang in unison, his vibrating in his top jacket pocket, hers strumming a poignant guitar from the purse she carried.
“They'll ring again,” he said, lifting away from her silky skin. The faint tang of her perfume filled his nostrils, and Eli couldn't resist sniffing again and savoring the intoxicating scent of Stephanie, ginger and spice.
Evening had fallen, and all he could make out were the honey brown irises rimming her dilated pupils. She blinked a couple of times. Cupping her jaw, he continued, “I wish I could see you clearly. Promise me we'll talk later? Steph?”
She nodded into his palm, the almost undetectable movement making him want to pound his chest and howl. All he needed was this crack in her fortress.
Her arms dropped from him, and she stepped back. “Oh gawd. The interview.”
“I'll get them to switch around the time,” he promised, confident he could deliver. Not for nothing was he the number one salesman in the country.
Fumbling along the wall, he flicked a switch, and light skittered low radiance through the room from a lamp kitty-corner to them. Eli couldn't take his eyes off her; he'd mussed her hair, and she had the just-tumbled look of an aroused woman, pink staining the ridges of high cheekbones, slanted eyes a tad unfocused.
&n
bsp; Knowing they'd be interrupted no matter what he did, Eli edged her sleeve from her bicep to her shoulder and then straightened his jacket. “If we don't go, they'll send out a hunting party. You know the way Genevieve works.”
Genevieve Drummond, the château's public relations manager, had a well-deserved barracuda reputation.
“I know.” She threaded her fingers through her brown locks, her spine stiffened, and she held her head high. “I'm ready.”
Eli and Stephanie didn't speak as they made their way back to the main lobby, but the silence between them this time proved neither oppressive nor uncomfortable.
A hypnotic, rhythmic drumming vibrated through the wooden floor and the walls and traveled through his veins to throb low in his stomach. The cadence escalated, the beat acquiring a tempo that accelerated his heart and provoked sinister images of the little boy riding the tricycle in the movie The Shining rounding corner after corner, and Jack Nicholson's spine-tingling cry of “Heeeeere's Johnny.”
They rounded a corner and halted.
Incense and the aroma of coconut oil smeared the smoke-filled room.
A man the size and height of an NBA player and dressed in African garb—a long, flowing robe of scarlet and onyx—dominated the center of the room. He wore a red Kufi cap on his bald skull. Arms lifted to the carved ceiling, he brandished a massive ruby heart that pulsed rhythmically, a deep rumble vibrating through the room as the numerous tiny veins entwining pink tissue clamped and pulsated when the organ contracted.
Five women in similar dress, all topping six feet, circled the man. They wore their hair in spectacular cornrowed weaves intertwined with tiny green beads, and sported numerous strands of necklaces of the same hue and texture around their necks.
“What the hell?”
“Banda drumming,” Stephanie explained. “It's part of a voodoo ceremony. There are different types of drums and beats associated with different spirits. Banda drumming is associated with Baron Samedi.”
“Who?”
“Did you see Live and Let Die?”
“Is that the Roger Moore Bond with Jane Seymour that begins with the funeral in New Orleans?” The slithery sensation at the back of his neck intensified. Eli massaged the knotted tendons, to no effect.
“Baron Samedi is the evil guy in the cemetery at the end,” Stephanie stated.
“That guy holding the heart's supposed to be Baron Samedi?”
“Maybe not Samedi himself, but he's a houngan asogwe, a high priest,” Stephanie hissed as she shuffled closer. “That's a voodoo heart.” Her fingers clamped his forearm, the nails digging into his skin. “Those women are priestesses, or mambos.”
His gut's alarm bells clanged, and some primordial instinct Eli couldn't control had him hankering to hurry Stephanie out of the room, to whisk her back to the safety of the city and the hotel. He gritted his teeth.
Stow it, Gallagher; stop the melodramatic overprotectiveness.
Which idiot in marketing conjured this sure-to-backfire publicity stunt?
“Promo,” he murmured, curling an arm around her waist. “The title of the film is Valentine Voodoo.”
“The movie's strictly PG, Eli. It's meant for the under-ten crowd. Our hearts are friendly and cute. That isn't,” she retorted, angling a chin at the houngan. “The visuals are incredible, though. I want to take a closer look. What are those women holding?” she asked, squinting and peering at the nearest voodoo female.
“Cloth dolls. Stick with me.” He shouldered through the sardine-packed room, keeping a firm grip on her hand. Before he reached the houngan, her fingers were torn from his. Women and men jabbed and jarred his back, his chest, his sides, and a rising panic shuddered through him when his frantic sweeping of the crowd yielded nada, nothing, no sign of Stephanie. Elbows stabbing bodies, he managed to swing around and caught sight of Stephanie being dragged by one of the mambos toward two of a series of shadowed arches.
His pulse thundered faster than the loud pounding punctuating the spasming of the heart the houngan held aloft. Eli's protective instincts went into overdrive. Shoving people aside, he halted in front of the two hallways leading from the octagonal chamber. Spying a slash of turquoise at the far end of the nearest archway, he broke into a furious sprint and raced down a corridor devoid of humanity.
“Stephanie,” he yelled, rounding a sharp bend and skidding to a stop, his shoes squeaking on the wooden flooring. Eleven feet ahead, a backlit stained-glass window reflected emerald, topaz, and amethyst brilliance. The air held a taint of musty fungus, and as his eyes adjusted to the hallway's gloom, he glimpsed narrow beams of light on either side of the churchlike pane.
“I'm in here, Eli.” Her voice came from an open doorway on his left.
He found Stephanie kneeling on the floor, fingers entwined, thumbs rubbing back and forth.
“She said she had something to show me, and she dragged me here,” Stephanie mumbled.
“Who?”
“The mambo.” She glanced up at him, and his throat skydived to his stomach at her quivering lower lip and the sheen of moisture glazing her slanted eyes. Waving one arm, Stephanie pointed. “Look, Eli.”
At first he didn't notice the flickering candles or the two cloth dolls. A frisson crawled from one shoulder blade to the other when he took in the pentagram formed by mosaic tiles and the small clay pots with lit flames at the apex of each point.
“Look at the faces of the dolls,” she whispered.
No hint of pink showed in her snowy complexion. Stephanie's gaze never strayed from the cloth dolls in the center of the symbol. Eli bent one knee to the ground.
“Don't touch them with your hands. They're voodoo dolls, derived from the way the religion is practiced in New Orleans and central and west Africa.”
“Shit,” he muttered as the cartoonish features came into focus. “It's you and me. What the hell—”
Stephanie batted his hands away when he reached for the fabric figures. “Don't touch them. The magic is stronger if either of us touches one.”
“It's fucking obscene.” A bloodred penis half the size of the male doll stabbed into the rose-shaped genitalia between the sticklike legs of the female.
“Burn them,” she ordered. “In there.”
Eli traced her pointed finger to a massive shale fireplace five feet to their left.
“Why?”
“Once the dolls exist and we acknowledge them, whoever made them can bend us to their will, make us sick.”
“Steph, you can't honestly believe that,” Eli argued, dredging his hair with all ten fingers, the only way he could resist the urge to snatch the dolls.
“I researched voodoo the regular way for the movie, through the Net, books. But I have a friend who's Haitian. Martine explained that once the doll exists, the power to hurt exists. I'm not normally superstitious, but Eli…” She looked up at him, the pupils in her eyes so dilated, her irises formed a thin amber nimbus around onyx circles. “This scares me. Burn them, please.”
The figures took a long time to incinerate.
While he built the fire, Eli replayed the events of the past twelve hours in his mind; his photographic memory filtering and sifting through the nine-page backgrounder marketing had given him before he left for San Francisco. The spin on the occult aspect of the movie focused on cute, “Love Potion No. 9” musical numbers with a five-second scary boo—not this sinister aspect of voodoo.
He suppressed a gag when the plastic faces glued onto the dolls gave off an offensive stench. They opened the French doors leading to a wide stone balcony and wandered into the corner of the broad terrace. Grateful a strong gust carried the aroma away, he hugged Stephanie from behind, one arm curving her waist, the other lightly resting below her neck, while he stared unseeing at the winking lights of the wineries dotting the Napa Valley.
Is she as freaked-out as I am?
“What do the dolls mean? Why the exaggerated genitalia?”
“We're going to be lovers.”
Eli snorted. “Nostradamus, they're not. We've already been together, Steph. It's no great leap to us being together this weekend.”
Her rear end, which had been cozily nestling his groin, lifted away. Eli stifled a curse and grumbled, “Hell. Why can I never do the right thing where you're concerned?”
“I am not going to be one of your women, Eli Gallagher—”
Cupping a hand over her mouth, he muttered, “There hasn't been another woman in my life since last fall, since September fifth, to be exact.”
“That's the day I joined the company.” She twisted in his arms.
“Don't I know it? You had me, as the phrase goes, at hello,” Eli grumbled. “Now's not the time or the place for that discussion. We've been gone for over thirty minutes, honey. We have to get back in and mingle. Stick close to me, okay?”
“No need to tell me twice.”
Eli stayed glued to her side all evening. Together they worked the room, did the niceties with the firm's clients, chatted with film distributors, agents, and a couple of lesser-known voice-over stars who did the cartoon and animation circuits. He grew aware of the most minor of her nuances: the slight stammer she acquired when asked too personal a question, the way she leaned in closer to him without moving her feet when too many people crowded around, the tug and play of her teeth on her bottom lip whenever another woman flirted with him.
The château's estate manager and two friends joined them for the ride back to the city. Eli tamped down his rising irritation when they arrived at the hotel and the manager insisted on a drink. Stephanie pleaded tiredness and left him and the manager in the lobby.
It took him thirty-seven minutes to get rid of the man, thirteen minutes to change out of his suit and text Stephanie to make sure she wasn't asleep and five more minutes before he stood in front of her door, head bowed while he gathered his wits. Before he could knock on the door, it opened, and Stephanie stood in front of him wearing faded denim jeans and an extra-large T-shirt decorated with flowered graphics from one of the movies Studio G had worked on.
“Hi,” she said. Skin scrubbed clean of makeup, molasses eyes fringed by thick mahogany lashes that curled at the tips, she smiled up at him and stood to the side. “Come in. I've been waiting for you.”
