“I didn’t expect to see you here today,” I managed at length. “You’re certainly looking... better.”
His dark eyes sharpened with interest.
“Ah,” he said. “So you remember that after all, do you?”
My heartbeat jumped a tick or two, pounding a little harder in my chest. I could feel my face start to flush at his reaction. Not for the first time, I was grateful for my dusky complexion’s ability to hide pink cheeks.
“It’s not really the sort of thing you forget,” I retorted.
Jesus Christ. I was playing one-upmanship games with a vampire. What the hell was I thinking?
Both men remained silent for a moment until the business guy looked over at his friend. “You two know each other, Rans?”
I filed the name away. The vampire formerly known as fake Hugh Grant studied me silently for a moment—taking in my face, my reaction. His serious expression disappeared then, replaced with a smile that was one part reckless and two parts dangerous.
“Not yet,” he said, his accent caressing the words.
I was still burning holes through him with my eyes, and I had to admit that the Hugh Grant comparison really only worked when it came to the voice. My disjointed impression from yesterday had been accurate. He had darkly beautiful features—symmetrical and sharply cut. The effect was softened by the sweep of his very fine, very smooth black hair, which fell into the sort of messy waves that rock stars probably spent hours perfecting.
He didn’t strike me as the type to spend hours in front of the mirror with his hair. He did strike me as the type to get himself shot through the chest and then gatecrash an innocent waitress’s day off to drink her blood. But, of course, I might be a bit biased on the subject.
He tipped his head to one side, still regarding me with interest.
“Meet me after your shift is done,” he said with casual confidence.
I frowned at him, my heart still pounding. “Why would I possibly agree to that?”
It wasn’t that I was afraid of him, exactly, but that didn’t mean I trusted the guy either. Still, something had changed in me yesterday. Some epic, glacial shift inside my soul.
Those ice-blue eyes saw right through me. “You’ll agree because you’re dying of curiosity,” he said. “And because you weren’t supposed to remember me.”
Arrogant bastard. He was one hundred percent right, too. What I was about to agree to was crazy. I couldn’t call the cops about him. I couldn’t even drag some poor coworker along with me to act as backup, unless I wanted them to see me babbling about vampires and gunshot wounds. Yet I was going to do this anyway.
“Okay. I’ll come,” I said after a moment’s hesitation. “I get off shift at six... but I have a couple of conditions.”
FOUR
“CONDITIONS?” THE VAMPIRE echoed, watching me with well-hidden amusement. “Very well. Name them.”
“I’ll only meet you in a public place,” I said, thinking fast.
“Of course,” he replied easily. “There’s a bar across the street. It should be well enough attended after six p.m.”
I nodded. “All right. Make it six-thirty, though.”
“Fair enough. And your additional conditions?”
I’d been mentally running through the list of people I knew decently well. It hadn’t taken long. “I’ll be arranging check-ins with a friend. If I don’t contact her every ten minutes, she’ll call the police with my description and have them come to the bar.”
I wasn’t entirely sure that the police would even agree to do something like that, but I made myself hold that glacier-deep gaze evenly, my chin tilted up, fake confidence oozing from every pore.
He probably didn’t buy it any more than I did.
“Very sensible,” he replied, without any overt indication that he was mocking me. “We have an agreement, then. You get my friend his lamb chops, and I’ll meet you across the street at six-thirty, ready to hold a conversion in neat, ten-minute increments between phone calls.”
All right, so he probably was mocking me. I could still be the bigger person here.
“Certainly,” I said in my brisk waitress’s tone. “I’ll get this into the kitchen right away. Can I get you some bread while you wait?”
“That depends,” he said. “Is there garlic butter?”
His companion gave a soft snort. “We’re fine without bread, thank you,” said the man in the suit, shooting Rans what I took to be a quelling glance.
The corners of Rans’ eyes crinkled. “Yes, quite. Though that merlot can’t come soon enough. I do so enjoy a nice, full-bodied red.”
I shot him an unimpressed look and pivoted on my heel.
Despite the early hour, the restaurant started filling up. I delivered the merlot and the whiskey sour, and later, the lamb. My interactions with table twenty-six were the picture of professionalism, but those speculative blue eyes were seriously throwing me off of my mental game. Was the other guy a vampire, too? Did vampires request that their lamb chops be cooked to medium? Did they eat lamb chops and steamed vegetables in the first place?
The pair took their time, but didn’t linger unnecessarily once the one-sided meal was finished. I presented them with the check and took the businessman’s proffered credit card, making a mental note of the name—Guthrie Leonides—as I ran it. He signed the receipt when I returned to drop it off with his card, and I watched the two of them from the corner of my eye as they prepared to leave.
Rans pulled a green bill from his pocket and dropped it on the table, then the two of them headed for the door, not looking back. I glanced at the clock in the kitchen to see how much time I had before my six-thirty meeting.
It was three forty-five. A little less than three hours to go.
“I can do this,” I whispered as I walked to their table to
