by Lori Foster
Katie reread the address out loud just to make sure.
“Yes, this is it.”
“Okay.” Not sure what to do, Katie paid him and climbed out, grabbing her overnight bag. She stared at the building and fought the urge to cry.
She was tired and desperate for a drink, having ignored the urge to feed in her haste to get to England. Michael had checked out of the hotel before she could talk to him, so she had booked a ticket and set out, assuming when she got here she would find Michael. She didn’t have a phone number for him, and now she wasn’t even sure why the hell she had just assumed this was an address for his house, or that he would be there.
Adjusting the floral duffel bag in her hand, Katie decided to go to the office and ask about Michael. Hell, for all she knew he owned the storage facility. There was an ancient woman sitting hunched over a desk, her eyes magnified by her thick glasses as she shuffled through a sheaf of papers.
“Excuse me. My boyfriend is Michael St. Markov, and I believe he has a storage unit here. He gave me this address and a key.” Katie pulled it out of her purse and held it up. “Could you tell me which unit is his?”
“It would be my pleasure, young lady.” She tapped the keys on the computer keyboard in front of her, then squinted at the screen. “Number sixteen. One of the big ones. Just head on down the first row. It’s at the end.”
“Okay, thank you so much.”
Katie clutched the key and headed out, grateful for the cool temperatures and overcast sky of England. She wasn’t used to daywalking, and even though it was early in the day, the fierceness of a Nevada sky would have irritated her eyes and skin. In England it was manageable, and she followed the numbers down the aisle until she found sixteen. Setting her bag down, she opened it and stepped inside the cool, dark interior. There was a light switch on the wall, but she didn’t need it, a benefit of her vampiric vision.
What she saw in the unit made her stop barely a foot in the door, eyes rushing over objects, heart full, tears coming freely and without restraint.
“Oh, God,” she said, running her hand over the desk closest to her. It was her father’s, where he used to sit and pen letters of importance to diplomats and to his advisors. On it was stacked a pile of books.
Katie sifted through them and retrieved the one that was flat and wider than the others. She flipped it open and swallowed hard. It was her sketchbook. She had been seriously lacking in technical proficiency, but she had loved to draw, and her mother had insisted on lessons. In it were poorly done sketches of her sisters standing in the garden, their hair streaming down their backs, smiles of laughter on their faces.
Running her finger over the paper, over those who had been her flesh, so irritating as only siblings could be, but so dear to her, she whispered, “I’ve missed you. I hope you are at peace.”
She was.
Looking around the large room, every inch filled with furniture, objects, and personal effects belonging to her family, some valuable, others purely sentimental, Katie was at peace. She didn’t know how Michael had accumulated all of it, but he had. He had done it for her, salvaged what he could of her childhood and her family and kept it in storage for the day he found her.
It was the most beautiful gesture she had ever experienced, and as she picked up a Fabergé egg and rolled its glossy form around her hand, its intricate patterns just as bright and wondrous as the day it had arrived at the palace, she knew that she would spend the rest of her life with Michael. That their love was as simple and pure and priceless as an artist’s egg.
And she was in danger of crying again, and she didn’t want to. She had a plane to catch.
So she ran her fingers over the egg, the sketchbook, one last time, then backed out. She locked the door to the unit carefully, then went to find a cab.
The man she loved was somewhere between England and Las Vegas, and she was going to find him.
EIGHT
MICHAEL knew he shouldn’t interfere, that he should leave it alone and let Katie live her own life without him, if that’s what she chose. But even after checking out and heading to the airport and flying to New York, he couldn’t stop himself from turning around and returning to Las Vegas and the Paris hotel and getting himself another room. He’d then asked the front desk to call her room for him, but she hadn’t answered. He stared at the desk clerk, debating a minute before asking to be connected to Nick Stolin’s room.
It had only been two days, and he was doubting his ultimatum. Did it really matter if Katie didn’t entirely trust him? That would reappear with time. And wouldn’t it be better to be with her, nurturing that trust, than to be alone and miserable? He had intended to go back to England, but in the end he’d had to return to Las Vegas, hoping for an opportunity to talk to Katie.
“Hello?”
“Hi, is this Nick?”
“Yes.” The voice was suspicious. “Can I help you?”
“This is Michael St. Markov. It’s been a long time, hasn’t it?” He wanted Nick to understand that Michael knew who he was, despite the name change, and that he was friend, not foe.
Surprise was in Nick’s voice. “It certainly has. I hope all is well with you.”
“I’m doing alright. I was hoping you could tell me where Katie is. I’d like to speak to her.”
There was a pause, and then Nick said, “Katie went to England to find you. Haven’t you seen her yet? She called me yesterday to tell me she had landed.”
“What? Katie’s in England?” The desk clerk shot Michael a look of reprimand, but he didn’t care. “Where the hell did she go?”
“To the address you gave her. It’s your house, right?”
“No, no it’s not.” Michael was equal parts elated and appalled. If Katie had gone to England, then surely she wanted to work things out, and that made him ecstatic. But she was currently halfway around the world, which frustrated the hell out of him. “Can you give me her cell phone number?”
“Sure. And can I just say that maybe you two should have exchanged numbers before you both went running off after an argument?”
“Duly noted.” Michael gestured to the desk clerk for a pen and paper, which she handed to him with a frown of disapproval. Whatever. He would give her a tip before he headed to the airport. Jotting the number down, he tore the top page off the pad.
“And Nick? I owe you a lot of thanks. For saving my life. And a huge thanks for looking out for Katie all these years. I’m glad that even if I wasn’t there, she had someone on her side.” That meant a great deal to him, more than he knew how to express. If something had happened to her …
But it hadn’t, and he wanted to focus on the future.
“Not a problem. Now call her.”
“Absolutely.” Michael hung up the desk phone and said thanks to the clerk. Then he pulled out his cell phone and dialed as he strode toward the elevators so he could retrieve his things from the new room he’d been given when he had rechecked into the hotel.
“Hello?” Katie said, sounding breathless.
He stopped walking and closed his eyes. Just the sound of her voice was such a pleasure, its sensual tones easing the stress that had tautened his muscles. “Hi,” he said. “It’s me, Michael.”
“Hey.” A different expression seeped into her voice, one he thought was pleasure, and maybe a little shyness. “Where are you?”
“In Las Vegas. I just found out you went to England. Can we talk, are you busy? I want to apologize for leaving things the way I did the other morning.”
“It’s okay, I understand. And I want to apologize, too, for not trusting you. I should have known …”
There was a pause, and he could tell she was crying. “Oh, honey, it’s okay, it is. It was so much new information all at once, it was overwhelming. I should have given you the time you needed. I want to give you all the time you need, if you’ll still let me. I want to be together, and the trust can be rebuilt.”
Michael stood in the lobby of the overblown
casino and prayed that she would say yes.
“I want to be together, too.”
Ninety years of pain, of worry, of heartbreak and loneliness, washed away under the rush of those simple words.
“And I do trust you. I went to the storage unit. Thank you, from the bottom of my heart, for preserving all of that … for giving me something of my family. It means more than I can ever express.”
He was going to cry. He was going to cry right there in the goddamn lobby. Widening his eyes, he said gruffly, “You’re welcome. I tried to steal what I could in the chaos, but most of it I bought at auction as pieces appeared on the market over the years. I had an advantage in that I knew what was a true piece and what was a fake since I spent so much time with your family. With you.”
“My father would approve of what you did. He would approve of us.”
The whispered words came both from his phone and from behind him, and Michael turned around in confusion. Katie was standing there, her cell phone up to her ear, a smile playing on her full lips.
Michael’s jaw dropped, and Katie felt her smile splitting into an honest-to-goodness grin. “Hi,” she said.
“I thought you were in England.”
“Guess what? I just got back.”
Then she couldn’t speak as she was pulled up into Michael’s arms and he kissed her, a passionate, open-mouth kiss that made ninety years disappear in ninety seconds.
“Will you marry me?” he asked, when he pulled back enough to let her catch her breath.
“Yes. Absolutely yes. Tomorrow if you’d like. Today even.” Katie kissed him again, deliriously happy.
“Why don’t we go upstairs and plan our wedding?” Michael said, with a look in his eye that had nothing to do with reception halls and bridal gowns.
Katie laughed. “I would love to. I love you.”
“God, I love you, too.” He kissed the top of her head.
As they walked to the elevators hand in hand, she asked him, “Did you know Rasputin is in town?”
“Yes, that’s how I found you. I have someone following him, and when I heard he was coming to Vegas to make contact with a bodyguard, his niece, and his thirteen-year-old son, I was hoping that it was you. So I followed.”
Katie frowned at Michael as he hit the up button. She glanced over at a tottering older couple approaching the elevator. Lowering her voice to a level most humans wouldn’t be able to decipher, she said, “He came here because of Nick, Peter, and me? Why? What does he want with us and how did he find us?”
“The necklace. He wants it. It’s very powerful, Katie. It has the blood of every ancient vampire that is walking the earth. He has a matching vial, and with the two, he retains his immortality. He can also read the mind of the person wearing the vial. He’s not really a vampire in the truest sense of the word, because while he craves and drinks blood, it doesn’t sustain him. He needs the magic of the vials.”
They were going up in the elevator and Katie pondered the information. “That’s how he kept my brother from dying and made my mother think he was a miracle worker.”
“Exactly.”
“Why didn’t you tell me when you took the necklace from me?”
“I just wanted to get it off you first to sever the connection with him, and then it didn’t seem like a good conversation for such a romantic morning. I was going to tell you and ask for your permission to destroy it.”
“Of course.” Katie stepped off the elevator, reaching back again for Michael’s hand. She wanted to touch him every minute of every day. “Do you think he’s dangerous? Do we need to try to get the other vial from him?”
Michael shook his head. “I would love to, it would totally disarm him. Make him essentially human. But there’s no way anyone can get that necklace off of him.”
“You’re probably right.” Katie opened her door and turned on the light switch to flood the main room with artificial light.
She stifled a shriek when she saw Rasputin sitting on her couch. “Oh, Lord,” she said. “What are you doing in here?”
“I want the necklace, little girl.” Rasputin rose to his feet and gave her a flat, angry smile. “And don’t play dumb. I know you’ve been wearing it and now you’re not. Where is it?” He moved menacingly to her. “Tell me or I will fuck up your shit quite thoroughly.”
“Back off,” Michael said, stepping between her and Rasputin. “Don’t you dare threaten her.”
Thinking on her feet, wanting to defuse the tension, Katie said, “It’s in England.”
His eyebrows rose. “Oh, really? And how is that possible since you had it here in Vegas two days ago?”
“I just flew to England and put it in a storage unit there with some other personal effects. I wanted to ensure it was safe, so I put it with the rest of my family’s possessions. Millions of dollars’ worth of items.”
“You went to England for less than two days? Don’t fuck with me.”
Katie reached into her purse and pulled out her passport, stepping around Michael. “See for yourself. Stamped with the dates.”
He yanked it out of her hand and stared at it, scowling.
“You can have the necklace if you want. I just wanted it as a memento, but it makes my skin itch. You’ll just have to go get it.”
“Really? You’ll just give it to me?”
“Sure. Technically, I guess it was yours to start with, and you clearly want it. I’m not unreasonable.”
Michael reached out and squeezed her hand. “That sounds fair, R.”
Rasputin hesitated, then said, “Well, thank you, then. Apparently you didn’t inherit your mother’s greed. If you can give me the address, I’ll be on my way.”
“Sure.” Katie pulled out the address. “I trust you won’t take anything else out of the storage unit?”
“Of course not.” He gave her a sly smile. “What kind of man do you take me for?”
One who was about to lose his power. Katie had her eye on his necklace. It was actually resting on top of his shirt, like he had been holding it as he waited for her to come home. The chain was a thin leather strap. He was obviously so arrogant he didn’t think anyone could take the necklace from him.
“Just checking.” She smiled back at him. “Congratulate me. Michael and I are finally getting married tomorrow.”
“Well, that has to be the longest engagement on record. Congratulations. You know I’ve always thought of you as a daughter.”
“Thank you so much.” Hoping she didn’t look as nauseated as she felt at the prospect of touching him, Katie stepped forward and held out her arms for a hug. “Let’s let bygones be bygones, shall we?”
The old lecher didn’t hesitate, but threw his arms right around her and pulled her straight up against his chest in an embrace that wasn’t fatherly in the slightest. Katie could hear Michael making sounds of protest, but she hoped he would give her thirty seconds. Resting her head on Rasputin’s shoulder—and praying she wasn’t contracting lice—she pretended to enjoy the hug, while with her fingernail she snapped the string of his necklace. Another snuggle against his chest and she had the vial up her sleeve.
When she pulled back, Rasputin was grinning. “Well, this is a whole new era for us, isn’t it? I’ll be hanging around Vegas for a few weeks once I collect the necklace, so give me a call when the honeymoon phase has worn off. Hell, before then if you want.”
“I will,” she said, breathlessly, which was a good effect and not necessarily acting. Now that she had the vial, she was feeling equal parts triumphant and terrified he would figure it out.
“Get the hell out,” Michael said, pointing to the door, and scowling to the point that it was a wonder he wasn’t hurting himself. “And my wife will not be calling you.”
“Okay, alright, fine, I’m going.” Rasputin put up his hand and ambled toward the door with a grin. “Enjoy the wedding night.”
He pulled the door closed behind him with a loud slam and Michael strode over and clicked the d
eadbolt in place. “I hate him,” he said. “He’s a vile, disgusting human being. Or immortal being, if you want to get technical. How could you willingly put your arms around him?”
Katie grinned and held up the vial. “So that I could take this.”
Michael looked at his fiancée in amazement, before bursting into laughter. “No way. Sweetheart, you are good.”
She laughed with him. “Now how exactly do you think we destroy these? Where is the other one, by the way?”
“It’s in my room. Let’s go right now before he figures it out.”
Five minutes later they were in his hotel room staring at the two vials lying side by side on the dresser. “They look harmless enough,” he said.
“Yeah. Mine is just a decorative egg, and that is a snake head. Hard to believe there is blood inside these.”
“I guess we should just smash them and disperse the blood. Some down the sink. Maybe some where no one will touch it, like the ceiling. Down the toilet.”
“Let’s get to it.” Katie laid toilet paper under the necklaces, then handed Michael the ice bucket.
He smashed the snake necklace, she the starburst and egg, and both cracked with relative ease from their vampire strength. Within minutes they had tossed what tiny portions of blood there were on the toilet paper into the toilet, and washed the rest down the sink.
“That’s not a lot of blood for like a dozen ancients,” Michael said, staring at the receding wad of toilet paper as it was sucked down into the hotel’s plumbing.
“I guess a little goes a long way. Now wash your hands.”
Trust a woman to be primarily concerned about hygiene. “Good idea.”
They scrubbed all the way to their elbows, and Michael smiled at her. “Have I told you lately how much I love you?”
She grinned back at him. “Not for at least thirty minutes. I think you’re due.”
He leaned over and kissed her, both their hands still covered in suds in the sink. “I love you. Forever and always.”
NINE
