“What’s he doing here?” The woman aimed the hair dryer like a gun.
Rose whirled and whacked Jack playfully on the shoulder. “You bad boy, I told you we can’t do it in here. Shoo!”
“Come on, baby, you know I get off on shower action.” Jack yanked the plug out of the wall and leered at the woman holding the dryer. “Time to go, lady. Unless you want to watch?”
The woman backed away. “That’s disgusting!”
Jack slung an arm around Rose, held his breath, and waggled his tongue in her ear. Oh, hell. His breath went out with a whoosh as heat swept over him. “Whoa,” he managed, rubbing lasciviously at his crotch. He ogled the woman. “Hey, I’ll even do you if you want. I’m the best. Ask my gal here.”
The woman grabbed her clothes and hair dryer and scurried off.
“This gal here thinks you’re revolting,” Rose snapped—but her flushed cheeks and hard nipples told another story. She clamped her mouth tight, clearly struggling to control her fangs. Jack smiled sourly. If summers with his dad and his brief time with Titania had taught him one thing, it was how to tell when a vamp was turned on. Or majorly pissed off.
“It got rid of her.” Jack ripped his consciousness away from Rose, did a quick check of the shower stalls, and turned on the second shower. “Take your clothes off. Hurry up.”
Rose glared. “I’m not undressing while you gawk.”
“What if they both come in here? You need to provide maximum distraction. Don’t try to convince me you’re shy.” Crap. Why was he being such a jerk? You should be ashamed of yourself, son. Both his parents were talking now.
Rose’s voice shook. “You don’t know anything about me. Turn the other way.”
“There’s no time. If you want to save Juma, just do it.” He pulled the neighboring shower curtain partway open and arranged himself against its pink and green pattern and folds. “You can’t be all that different from any other woman. I think we’ll both survive.”
I’m scum. He held himself still and let the camo take over.
“I want you dead,” Rose said.
“You’re not the only one,” Jack replied.
Rose turned the water off and stepped into the shower to undress, reaching out to hang her clothes on the hook. She didn’t need to hide her nakedness as much as the bizarre and ominous pricking of tears. Already Stevie was yelling his way down the hall. She turned the water back on just in time.
“Juma, I’ve had it with your monkey tricks! You’re going home and staying there if your grandma has to chain you down.”
He ripped the shower curtain open.
“Hi, Stevie.” Rose draped herself against the shower wall and looped him with allure, drawing even his peripheral vision away from the next stall.
Stevie said not a word. He stared. He drooled. A fist materialized from the shower curtain next door, and for the second time that day Stevie dropped like a brick. His handheld tracker crashed to the floor and rolled.
“Get dressed.” Jack reappeared and stepped across Stevie’s unconscious form. He patted the thug down, untaped a knife from Stevie’s shin, and scooped up the tracker. “I’ll have Cindy tell you what to do next.” Without once looking at Rose, he took off down the hall.
Cindy showed up as Rose was tying her sneakers. “Wow, the guy’s out cold. Jack asked Walt to tie him up and put him in the laundry cart. Jack’s got it all planned. He’s so cool!”
“Uh-huh.” Rose concentrated on her shoelaces. “He’s very impressive.”
“Don’t you like him?” Cindy said. “He’s awfully impatient, but underneath he’s an angel. He saved my life. I mean literally saved it. Two minutes more and I would have been dead. He got me this new job and a new life, and I’ll always be grateful. That’s what he does. Saves people—abused women and children mostly.”
Something ridiculously like jealousy stabbed at Rose, followed by a swift pulse of shame. She tied the second shoelace and stood up. “That’s very commendable, and I would be perfectly happy to like him, but he’s been rude to me from the get-go. Once we’re in Bayou Gavotte, I’ll never have to see him again and it’ll be all good.” She led the way out. “Where’s the blond guy in the purple shirt? Is Juma okay?”
“She’s hiding in a cupboard. The blond is snooping around your van. Jack needs you to distract him, but the guy has a gun.”
Rose shrugged. “I’m used to guns.”
“Aren’t you scared?”
“Sure, but what choice do I have? We can’t let them take Juma.”
An eighteen-wheeler had parked in front of her van, hemming her in. The blond leaned against the side door, messing with his cell phone. He was taller than Stevie, slim but beautifully muscular, and pretty good-looking if you went for blonds.
The old man from the restaurant sat on a bench by the long, bare, concrete-block wall, smoking a cigarette. An audience. A complication, too, but one for Jack to handle. She focused on the blond thug and threw out a few tentative strands of allure.
“So, we meet again.” Biff straightened and clapped his phone shut, eyes narrowed. Without an emergency to distract him, he was a different man. “Smile for me, baby,” he said in a voice both sexy and deadly. Ah, this vibe she recognized. This she could handle.
Biff chuckled nastily. No wonder he felt familiar, considering the number of mobsters she’d met while she was Lou’s mistress. “You’re a vampire, aren’t you, sweetheart?”
Rose flashed her fangs and sashayed closer.
The old man creaked off the bench and shambled toward them, knuckling his eyes. “Well, I declare. Never seen such a thing in my en-tire life.”
“That explains it,” Biff said. “Poor old Stevie couldn’t help himself. You even had me going for a second there at the hotel.” Rose moved closer, undressing him with her eyes, and the guy put up his hands and whistled sadly. “Sorry, baby, but I’m not available just now.” He reached in his shirt pocket. “But hey, when I’m free, I’d be happy to oblige. Call and ask for Biff.” He handed Rose a business card with nothing but a phone number.
“What the hell?” She glared at him, scrounging up more allure.
“Call me. Please.” He tsked. “Damn shame. Meantime, where’s the girl?”
Rose ripped the card in two and tossed it to the ground. She whammed all the allure she could muster straight at the gunman.
“Fuck.” Biff staggered against the van. “I told you, I can’t oblige just yet.”
“It’s now or never, butt head,” Rose said, pissed off at him, at herself, and especially at Jack, who was witnessing her failure. She thought she’d gotten good at managing her allure. She’d grown up without help or guidance from other vamps, and if it hadn’t been for Lou letting her practice on him…
Seemingly, she hadn’t done as well as she thought. She couldn’t crack this dude, and she’d almost made Jack pass out earlier. What if she’d really harmed him? Shouldn’t he sidle out from behind the van any second now?
The old man toddled steadily forward, and a flurry of pigeons took off whickering from the gutter that edged the roof. Rose searched for a stupid line to hand the blond.
She didn’t have to think hard. “I don’t give second chances.”
The blond groaned. “Sorry, baby. I just can’t. Where’d you hide the girl?” He pushed a button on his phone and sauntered toward the building.
Panicking, Rose stormed past him and planted herself in his path. “She went with some trucker. What girl could possibly be more interesting than me?”
“Don’t get me wrong. She ain’t interesting at all.” He grinned at the old man and trailed a finger lightly down Rose’s hair toward her breast. “Ain’t she something, Grand-paw? Yum.”
Rose slugged him. He laughed and fended her off.
“If I’m so tasty, why not take a bite?” Rose smashed herself against him, running her free hand under his jacket. “Better yet, I’ll take a bite of you.” She let her fangs slot all the way down.
&nbs
p; “Hot diggity,” the old man said. “This is better than the movies.”
“She sure does have pretty fangs. Watch it, baby, you’re getting too close to my gun.” He pushed her hand away. Set her aside.
Jack didn’t want her, either. Was she losing her touch? “That’s not the kind of gun I’m interested in,” she said. The old man hobbled closer, a long, bony finger leading the way.
“I don’t think you’re her type, Grandpaw.” Biff indicated the truck stop with his chin. “Seen a girl in there? Bratty sixteen-year-old?”
“Yep, she tried to stab some guy with her comb. The waitress took her away to the kitchen.” The old man twisted his head upward, leering horribly. His finger inched toward Rose’s fangs. “An honest-to-goodness real-life vampire.”
“Do not touch me!” hollered Rose, swatting his hand away, and then finally, finally, she saw Jack. She jerked the old man aside as Jack leaped off the roof of the truck stop and knocked Biff flat into the pavement.
Jack landed neatly without looking at Rose or the old man. “Sorry it took me so long.”
An apology? From Jack?
“It was a slow climb with only one good arm, but you stalled him perfectly.”
Approval? A compliment?
Still not looking her way, he searched the thug, taking the gun, the cell phone, and one of Biff’s business cards. “Thanks very much for the ride. I’ll take Juma the rest of the way. You’re free to leave.”
Rose steadied the old man and plunked him back on the bench. So what if Jack had apologized? So what if she’d done something right? It was over.
Chapter Five
While Jack and Walt dumped Biff in a laundry cart and rolled it into the eighteen-wheeler, Rose dug an oversize T-shirt and a pair of sweatpants out of her suitcase and went inside the truck stop to change.
Juma stomped up to her. “Jack says he’s taking me the rest of the way in his Jeep. I don’t want to go with just him. I want to go with both of you.”
“But he can take you somewhere safe.” Rose led the way to the ladies’ room. “I’ve never been to Bayou Gavotte before. I don’t even know where I’ll stay. He can protect you from those thugs, and I can’t.”
“That’s what I thought at first, but you’ve been doing good so far,” Juma said eagerly. “Both of you together. Cindy says you and Jack make a great team.”
Rose stripped and changed clothes. “Maybe, but he’s going his way and I’m going mine.”
“Then I want to go with you.” Juma bit at the peeling polish on her nails. “I don’t trust him. If I tell him my name and address, he’ll dump me someplace to wait like a sitting duck while he goes straight to my grandma, and she’ll put on her helpless-old-lady act and be all shocked about how Stevie treated me, and then she’ll make me come home.” When Rose hesitated, Juma’s expression darkened into bitterness. “I get it. You don’t really want to help me, either. Jack said you weren’t mad at me, that you were just pissed off at him, but obviously he was wrong. I’m better off on my own. I’ll take care of myself. It’s not like I haven’t been doing it my whole life.” She sulked her way back down the hall.
“For cripes sake, give me a second to think things through,” Rose said, following her. “Maybe we can work something out.”
In the kitchen, Jack tossed back another coffee. A dozen hundred-dollar bills in a secluded corner had persuaded Walt to drop the thugs near Jackson. Another hundred had sent the transmitter to Texas in another eighteen-wheeler. Now that the adrenaline rush was over, Jack’s headache and lassitude had returned.
Meanwhile, Cindy laid into him. “I’d keep my mouth shut because it’s none of my business, but I owe you, so I have to tell you when you’re acting dumb.”
“You don’t owe me anything,” Jack said.
She wouldn’t leave it alone. She shoveled their breakfast into Styrofoam containers and bitched. “Rose is so nice, and incredibly brave, and yet you’ve been rude to her ever since you met.”
“Did she tell you that?” he asked, on the defensive and supercilious because of it.
“Don’t be a jerk, Jack! Don’t even pretend to be a jerk.”
“Cindy, don’t make me out to be anything special.”
“You are special! You have a responsibility not to be messed up. There aren’t enough good people around. I don’t know what Rose has done to deserve your being so unkind, but—”
“Exactly. You don’t know, so butt out.” Oh, shit. He handed her a napkin. “Cindy, don’t cry. You don’t understand.”
“You’re right, I don’t.” Cindy blew her nose. “Tell me, and maybe I will. What has she done to you?”
She forced me out of camo. She helped herself to my blood. But he couldn’t tell Cindy that. Fortunately, she was perfectly ready to keep on talking.
“You and Rose work so well together. Look how you took those two guys down.”
A fluke. Two flukes. Three, counting this morning. Besides, he worked alone.
Cindy poured orange juice and coffee and kept on trucking. “You know who gets the credit for that? She does, because she put up with your crap for a good cause.”
“Hey,” he said feebly, “I have to put up with her, too.” But Cindy only narrowed her eyes, so he said, “I’m sorry, but it’s none of your business. It’s between Rose and me.”
“Then do something about it, you big dope,” Cindy said.
Back in their booth, Rose watched Juma unearth a bottle of truly horrible nail polish from her bag. The girl had a sense of style—her clothing and artfully cut black hair showed that. But the purple polish was ghastly. Still, fresh ghastly was better than chipped.
Juma shook the bottle. “I’m scared of Jack.”
“Don’t bullshit me,” Rose said. “I’m already on your side. There’s nothing scary about Jack.”
“There is too! You heard what he said. One measly chance! Nobody can be that perfect. Even a little white lie for a really good reason doesn’t get past him.” Juma grimaced as she repainted her nails. “And those harsh eyes of his totally creep me out.”
Huh, Rose thought. That’s one thing I really like about Jack. But there was no point liking anything at all about him, so she told Juma, “Lies get complicated. It’s better to stick with the truth.”
“Not when nobody cares what you think, or feel, or want. Not when they think the truth is impossible.” Her eyes met Rose’s and dropped again. Doggedly, she coated each dreadful nail.
Rose said, “If I promise not to think it’s impossible, will you tell me what’s going on?”
“Maybe,” Juma said.
“I am doing something about it.” Jack hovered inside the kitchen door, itching to be gone. “I’m going to thank her for the help, say good-bye, and move on with my life.”
Cindy stuffed the containers into paper bags and flung cutlery, salt, and pepper in after them. “I believe in giving people a second chance.”
“Look where that got you,” Jack said. It was a low blow. What was up with him today?
She rammed the cups of coffee and orange juice into cup holders. “I said a second chance, not a hundredth. I know where I went wrong, and I’m not afraid to admit it. I’m not afraid to change.” When he said nothing, she put her nose in the air and pushed through the swinging kitchen doors into the restaurant. “Suit yourself.”
“I’ll do exactly that,” Jack said, “if those trucker friends of Rose’s hurry up and bring back my Jeep.”
“What do you mean, you disabled the Jeep?” Rose shot a glance toward the kitchen doors. Jack still hadn’t emerged. “I asked you to hide it, not hurt it.”
“Whoops,” the burly trucker said. “Does this mean I won’t get my kiss?”
“What did you do to it?” Rose demanded, hands on hips, frowning him down.
“Well, ma’am, we figured the bad guys wouldn’t be able to take the kid if their vehicle didn’t work.”
“That’s Jack’s Jeep. They stole it from him. He needs it so he
can leave.”
“Whoops,” the burly guy said again, grinning now. “It’ll only take him an hour or two to get road service and make it operational again. It’s just a couple of flat tires and the battery.”
“The battery still works,” said his lanky friend. “He can have it back if he asks real nice.”
“Serves him right,” the burly trucker said. “He wasn’t treating you the way he should.”
Rose flung up her arms. “That’s why I want him to leave in his own vehicle.”
The burly trucker said, “Don’t I get my kiss?”
Rose glowered at Jack as he came out of the kitchen. “We have a problem.” She plowed right into the explanation.
Cindy dumped the bags of breakfast on a table and broke out laughing, and Juma joined in. The two truckers sniggered at the entrance to the restaurant, still hoping for their kisses, and Rose bit her lip, because it was funny, or would have been if it didn’t kill Jack to utter a kind word now and then. If he didn’t detest her for no reason at all. It wasn’t her fault the truckers were so eager to help her. It wasn’t her fault she was a vamp. It hadn’t been her fault when she was born, it hadn’t been when she hit puberty, and it wasn’t now. She folded her arms and waited, daring him to dis her again.
He sighed and shook his head. His lips twitched ever so slightly. He snorted, and then he laughed, and suddenly his face was open and almost cute. “Looks like the joke’s on me.”
Then he caught Rose’s eye. The openness vanished and the fleeting sweetness was gone.
Cindy stopped laughing. “Look, Rose, if you really can’t stomach another minute of Jack, he’ll stay here until he gets his Jeep fixed.”
“It’s not that simple,” Rose said. “Juma wants to come with me, which is fine, but I’m not equipped to protect her on my own.” She took a bracing breath and looked squarely at Jack. “I have to pick up the supplies my boss is shipping to your place. How about you give me directions, and I bring Juma to a safe house and stay the night with her, and come pick up the supplies tomorrow? We’ll find a more permanent solution for Juma then.” She felt Juma stiffen and put an arm around her. “Calm down. We’ll work it out.”
A Taste of Love and Evil Page 6
