by Mary Hughes
See? “We’re not settling dow—”
Glynn’s expression stopped me, a gut-jarring combination of sad and wistful.
Well, hell. After hearing he was an orphan, I couldn’t quash that hope, even in fantasy.
But maybe I could derail things a little. “Glynn’s leaving after the show’s over. He lives in Iowa.”
“He does not sound like an Iowa boy.” Otto, instead of calling me directly on it, started sweeping, a sort of nonverbal accusation. The fact that he was sweeping sidewalk apparently didn’t bother him. “He sounds Welsh.”
Glynn said, “You have a good ear, Mr. Stieg. I spent my childhood in Wales. I still make my home there several months out of the year.”
I blinked. “But I thought—”
“Mr. Elias is my employer. I’m based there but don’t live with him.”
“I didn’t know.”
“You didn’t ask.”
I winced. A very basic, simple question I hadn’t asked because I didn’t wanted to get any closer to this gorgeous, blue-eyed Welshman. Because I had a duty and dreams that needed protecting.
But protecting dreams didn’t mean being an ass. “I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right.”
“Gut, gut, you are reconciled. Now for the making-up sex, ja?”
My jaw cracked pavement.
“I’ll get Junior home safely,” Glynn said.
“Wunderbar, wonderful.” Uncle Otto whirled merrily. “I’ll be off with my sausage, liebchen, and you’ll be off with your young man. Auf Wiedersehen!”
“Uncle Otto! Glynn’s not my young—”
Glynn put his hand on my shoulder. His big, warm hand. Damn, the man’s blood was hot. I wondered what all that blood would feel like inflating his big hot—yeah.
Otto’s round form whizzed down the street on its pointy feet like a top. Or maybe a tornado, cuz I sure felt like I wasn’t in Kansas anymore. “You shouldn’t have said that.”
“Why? It’s only the truth. I will get you home safely.”
“Not that. The young man thing. Otto’s twirling home to call Pop, who’ll tell Mom, who’ll brag to Dolly Barton, and then everyone in town will think you’re my boyfriend.” When he stared at me blankly, I added, “Significant other. Suitor. Steady Eddy. Relationship partner. You know. Boyfriend.”
“Would that be such a bad thing?” The wistful look was back.
“You don’t understand things here.” I started west. “Once we’re hooked up, it’s forever, get it? All over but the shotgun and wedding cake.”
Glynn fell in beside me with a comfortable glide. “You don’t want wedding cake?”
“It’s not…look. I don’t want the wedding.”
He stared at me like I’d announced I was doing a remake of The Room.
“I can’t start a new family. I already have a family and family obligations.”
He gave me a strange look. “I thought you hated family. That you felt home was a cage.”
“No. I love my parents and I’m happy to do my daughterly duty. But I also have dreams. I’m trying to make them both work. It’s not easy.” Crossing the river, I stopped. “Adding another family would make it impossible.”
Glynn stood there, watching me with that strange look on his face.
I leaned on the bridge, facing the cop shop. “Speaking of smothering family, why are you here instead of doing your hovering routine on Mishela?”
“She’s safe at our rooms.”
“Oh. Good.” I cleared my throat. Time to sell our idea. “We talked after you left about the attacks. We’re wondering who the real target is, since both Dumas and I were attacked.” Which reminded me. Elena knew about last night, but she didn’t know about tonight. I started south, toward the police station. “Mishela and I came up with a plan.”
“Where are you going?” Glynn’s stride quickly caught him up.
“Huh?” Plan thoughts derailed. “Oh. To report my attack to Elena.”
“No need. Julian would have told her.”
“Why? Hunka-hunka hotlove didn’t experience it firsthand, did he?”
“Hunka—what did you call Emerson?” Glynn’s tone turned very dark and kinda prickly around the edges.
I snuck a look at him. Thunderstorms danced in his eyes, a definite shade of foreboding. “Nixie got real lucky in the mating lottery. Maybe I’m just a mite jealous. You don’t want to hear what I call Bo Strongwell.”
“You don’t want a mate, but you’re jealous of Nixie’s?”
“I still have hormones, right? Now about Mishela’s and my plan—”
“No.”
“But you haven’t even heard it yet.”
“I won’t like it. It will involve risk to you or Mishela. Putting you in danger hurts me. Putting Mishela in danger means Mr. Elias will lecture me. Either involves great pain.”
“Hey, what do you call a bunch of topless women accordion players? Ladies in pain.”
Glynn closed his eyes briefly.
“Get it? Ladies in pain? Like Lady of Spain, which is a big accordion piece—”
“Perhaps we can just walk silently for a while.”
“But I haven’t told you my plan.”
“No.”
We argued all the way to the police station. The cop shop main entrance is on First and Adams. Most have a locked inner door, but this was MC so we went right up to the detective pen on two. Elena wasn’t in. Her partner, Detective Dirk Ruffles, was.
Elena called him Columbo without the cute, always “one more thing” (he talked nonstop). Skinny and potbellied, Ruffles looked like a strategically shaved chimp stuffed in a Robot Chicken suit. A yellow fedora added to the gangster chicken—er, chic. But he was a damned fine sax player, and we could have used him in the pit if he hadn’t worked nights.
Ruffles gave us a big wave when he saw us. “Hello, Junior. I was just cleaning my gun. Well, since my uncle has my gun locked in his safe, I was actually cleaning a picture of it. But I make sure to get it really clean by dismantling it, although one of the prongs on the picture frame broke and I had to use a paperclip to keep the glass from falling out, and did you know Oprah has a Web site?”
Dirk had a voice that rasped like a fart under a wool blanket. I suddenly wanted to poke a pencil in my ear canal. “No, I—”
“Well, she does, and you can watch videos of her. I was watching her on her Web site and cleaning my gun, and wondering if Oprah would have used a paperclip or something else, although maybe she would have bought a new frame, or better yet made one from scratch because she’s a goddess—”
“Hey Dirk, I have a crime to report.” Interrupting was rude, but I couldn’t wait for Dirk to stop talking because, like his favorite TV, he was on 24/7. “Where’s Elena?”
“Oh, she’s out with Mr. Strongwell on their ‘neighborhood watch’ wink-wink.”
“Their what?”
“Neighborhood watch,” he said, his wispy mustache puffing with each syllable. “Wink. Wink.”
While I was blink-blinking over that, Glynn latched on to my elbow and wheeled. “Thank you for your time, Detective.”
“I’m not done.” I dug in my heels but got swept along with Mr. Whitewater Rapids anyway. So when we reached the door, I grabbed the frame. That worked, but probably only because he didn’t want to rip my limbs off.
Glynn said in my ear, “It’s clear we won’t get help here.” His breath tickled the small hairs, making me shiver.
“Yeah, but…” But something was strange. Dirk wasn’t the fastest cash register in the universe, but he was steady. And very, very literal. The only way he’d do a wink-wink was by parroting someone else. I turned back. “You know about last night’s attack? Three guys—”
“Three men wearing pantyhose masks attacked Michael Dumas, Mishela Elias, Glynn Rhys-Jenkins, Junior Stieg. One man in trench coat and full mask attacked and carried off Dumas.”
Oh yeah, Dirk had a great memory too. Well, he’d have to, to
recite Oprah word for word.
“The trench coat attacked again tonight,” I said. “He was watching Mishela, so she was probably the intended kidnap victim, but I surprised him and he carried me off instead.” I filled in the details.
Dirk nodded seriously, but when I finished he said, “Maybe he just wanted Miss Mishela’s phone number for a date.”
“Great idea, except for the mask-wearing bit. And Mishela’s underage.”
“Oh, well, with vampires, age is always hard to tell,” he said brightly.
My brain did a pole vault and puke. “With what?”
“It’s hard to tell the real age of a vam—”
“He means the neighborhood watch,” Glynn interjected smoothly. “Vampire is a sort of code word for monsters.”
“And that relates to Mishela how?”
“She’s Iowa Watch. We have a loose confederation. I’m a member as well.” His face was all bland honesty, but something in his voice said Mr. Truth was screaming a bit on the rack…which made me think of being stretched out under Glynn, him making me scream—
“That would explain those guys attacking,” Dirk said. “They’re rivals to the Watch.”
“Rival watches?” I could practically hear the capital letter he put on watch but didn’t understand it, and shot an incredulous glance between the two of them. “Neighborhood watch gangs, and you’ve got watchland warfare?”
Dirk nodded. “The Watch protects us against a gang of vampires—”
“There’s a gang.” Glynn cut Dirk off—24/7 Dirkus Uninterruptus—simply by raising his voice. Wow. Glynn could have done some serious damage onstage. “They’re monstrous people, code word vampire, who oppose the efforts of the neighborhood watch. They make random attacks to disorganize us.”
“Disorganize the loosely organized neighborhood watches? Uh huh.”
“It sounds innocent but it isn’t.” Glynn took my arms. “The gang may have connected you with us, which is why I’m worried about you being alone after sunset. You need to go home and stay there.”
“No, I need to tell Elena what happened.”
He looked over my head at Dirk. “You’ll see that Elena gets Junior’s report?”
“I don’t know about seeing, Mr. Glynn. But I’ll tell her. As soon as I tell her about my gun. Oh, and the yummy sandwich I had for dinner, Colby and ham on rye, lightly toasted and then fried in an inch of butter…”
My stomach growled. Which reminded me I’d burned tons of calories, not only running courier but blowing my little gutsies out at the show. And getting snatched.
“…which melted the cheese until it ran into the butter and fried crisp and golden—”
“Good, thanks!” I held up fingers in the universal Please God, stop. “Okay, let’s go.” I could only hope that when Elena returned, Dirk managed to wedge my info in somewhere, because I had to eat now or implode.
And somehow get Glynn to explain about vampires. “Now about your neighborhood watch—”
“You’re hungry.” Glynn nudged me out the door with a hand splayed on my back like a blanket. Nice, warm, protective blanket. Hand. Whatever. “Shall we get something at the Caffeine Café?”
“What?” Warm hand warred with vampire in my head, but both were eclipsed by FOOD. Unfortunately, I didn’t have much of a budget for eating out. “I have food at home.”
“I’ll pay.”
Glynn was offering to take me out—like a date?
“Besides, I’d enjoy your company.” His voice held an overtone of wistful.
That wistful note decided me. Besides, free food. Added bonus, it’d give me time to work around to the v-subject. Maybe even get him to listen to my plan.
The Caffeine Café was on the same block as the Wurstspeicher Haus, around a couple corners on the Fifth side. We passed my home on the way.
Mistake.
“Junior, there you are.” A jolly elf head thrust from the upper window. No shutters banging first, so he’d been lying in wait. “Your Uncle Otto called.” He gave Glynn the evil eye. “Who is your young man?”
I suppressed a sigh. “This is Glynn, Pop. But he’s not ‘my’ young—”
“Hello, Mr. Stieg,” Glynn said. “I’m taking Junior to the Caffeine Café for a bit of a meal, if you don’t mind. My treat.”
“You’re paying?” My dad’s lips pursed as his gears worked. Rehearsals made me hungry, and if my fuel went on someone else’s dime, alles was gut. “I suppose that’s okay. But you’ll have her back within the hour, verstehst du?”
“I understand, Mr. Stieg.”
As my dad banged shutter, I said to Glynn, “You speak German?”
“Enough to get along.”
“English, German, Welsh…anything else?”
“I learned some Spanish traveling Mexico. A bit of Portuguese in South America last year. Oh, and some French when I was in Quebec.”
If only I could travel half that much. “Aren’t you full of surprises? There’s such a call for linguistics in Iowa?”
“Mr. Elias sends me around. I’ve picked up a few things in my lifetime.”
“Except a home.”
Glynn shrugged. “Perhaps that’s why he sends me to so many places. To see if I find any of them to my liking.”
“That’s perceptive.” And it was the heart of Business Truth #5, “Tell the customer, not what you want to jabber about, but what they need to hear”. It’s not about what you need, it’s about what the customer needs. Or in this case, the employee.
“I never told Elias about my past, but he knows anyway.”
And Business Truth #6, “Keep your eyes open and on the customer”. I could see why Elias was a big guy in the business world. Although he lived in little Coralville. I frowned. Big guy in little Coralville? How did that square?
Well, Coralville was a suburb of Iowa City, home of the University of Iowa. Sure. That made it more urban than its population size would imply.
And Meiers Corners was just outside Chicago, one of the US big three.
That shook me.
We reached the café. I trotted straight to the bar and rattled off half the menu to the night barista, Tammy, tacking on hot peppermint tea to drink.
She shot my order back to the kitchen, drew a pot of hot water, threw in the tea and set it in front of me without looking up. “I’ll bring your food when it’s ready. Next.”
Her eyes lifted. Her pupils dilated, and she brightened like a nova. “Hel-lo, handsome.” Her expression slipped into something sheer and silky. She leaned against the bar, plumping her cleavage outrageously. “What can I get for you?”
“A Red Special.” Glynn was surveying the room. If he saw her smile or cleavage, he wasn’t reacting to it.
“Sure thing, hot stuff.” Tammy’s stare was below Glynn’s belt. Maybe she’d heard he could give amazing orgasms against doors and was checking out his door-hanging tools. “Say, haven’t I seen you at Julian’s? I’m a tenant. Did you move in recently?”
“Visiting. We’ll wait for our order over there.” Glynn took me by the elbow to a table farthest from the bar.
“You’re living at Nixie’s?” I said.
“Mishela and I are Emerson’s guests.”
Almost immediately, Tammy sashayed over with Glynn’s drink, a thick, reddish liquid that looked like tomato juice. “Anything else I can get you?” She cranked her smile from nova to super, directed at Glynn but not at his face.
He stared hard at her. My ears heated, and I was about to excuse myself despite being starving when he said, pointedly, “Anything else that I need, Junior can provide.”
Whoa. I’ve heard of double entendres, but that was entendre stripped buck naked.
Tammy’s wattage didn’t change. “Sure. Let me know if I can help. In the meantime, I’ll go see what’s delaying her order.” She winked and sashayed away.
Help? I tore three packs of sugar into my tea. Fortunately the sweet, hot liquid calmed me enough to remember why I wante
d to trap…I mean socialize with Glynn. Vampire and plan. Time for Business Truth #2, “Focus on the job at hand”. I picked the direct approach, hoping a hard hit would score me information. “I don’t buy ‘vampire’ as a code word for monstrous people. Dirk’s too literal.”
“Oh?” Glynn raised an eyebrow, a sort of facial shrug. “Well, you know Detective Dirk.”
A soft block, the best counter to the hard hit. Sometimes Glynn’s mysterious druid thing got annoying.
“And here comes Tammy with your food.”
Misdirection, the perfect follow-up. I wondered if he’d gone to business school too. Of course, Kai Elias as a boss was a top-level education in itself.
Tammy settled my soup and salad on the table. “The tuna melt will be out in a minute.” She eyed Glynn. “It’s really hot.” Her sashaying away would have done a cat in heat (or a salesperson with a quota) proud.
But Glynn was watching me, not the waving ass-flag. I tucked in.
“How can you eat all that this late?”
“I burn a lot of energy playing pit,” I said between bites.
“Oh? How do other players cope?”
“Pit chocolate. But wind players can’t cuz it gums up the pads and valves.”
“And Nixie?”
I grimaced. “Has a toothbrush. The cheat. Why do you care?”
He grimaced. “I don’t know. I just do.”
“Well, stop it. You’re heading west next week. And hopefully I’m heading east soon after that. So unless you’re into one-night stands…” Which reminded me of last night’s stand against the door. “Just stop it. Now, about the vampire remark—”
“I can’t stop it. Believe me, I would if I could.” He cast one elbow over the top rail of his chair, a relaxed sort of posture except for the tension in his big body. “I’m not into one-night stands. You don’t want commitment. What’s left?”
My mind was still churning on one-door…I mean one-night stands. “Orgasms,” I said and blushed. Bulled on. “I owe you one.”
“You don’t owe me anything.” He stared out the window.
Well, this was going nowhere fast. Good thing we weren’t contemplating a relationship. It’d be short-lived, frustrating and painful, like a cheap underwire bra.
Damn. Underwear.
