“I am not meeting privately with Serial Killer Guy.”
“Edward and I will be there,” he said. He’d found an empty space and was parallel parking like a pro, smooth, no hesitation.
“You live in the city,” I said.
He killed the engine and turned to me. “Why, because I can parallel park?”
I nodded. “A city where that’s the only parking you get to use most of the time, or you grew up where that was the only parking.”
“Don’t profile me, Anita.”
“Sorry, can’t I just be impressed with your parking skills?”
He seemed to think about that for a minute, then shrugged. “Then just say ‘Good job’ or something, don’t speculate.”
I nodded. “Okay, great job of parallel parking. I suck at it.”
“Country girl,” he said.
“Most of my life,” I said.
“I told you more of my background the first time I met you than most people ever know. I think I thought the whole foster-care-system sob story would soften you up, but nothing makes you soft, not like that.”
“I’ll quote Raquel Welch: ‘There aren’t any hard women; only soft men.’”
“Lie,” he said.
“In the normal world it’s pretty true,” I said.
He grinned sudden and bright in his tanned face. “Since when does either of us live in the normal world?”
That made me laugh. I shrugged. “Never.”
We got out of the car so I could meet Olaf and convince him he still had a chance in hell of ever getting in my pants. Sometimes you lie because the alternative is too awful to think about. Edward, Bernardo, and I all feared what Olaf would do if he ever lost hope of me having sex with him. I think we all knew that if he gave up all hope of my dating him voluntarily, he’d go for something less voluntary. Something that included chains and torture. Someday I’d have to kill Olaf, but hopefully today wasn’t that day. Hopefully.
27
THE BUILDING WAS an old Victorian house that had been divided into apartments. The one that Bernardo led me to was empty, all pale empty walls, and that slightly sharp smell of fresh paint. Bernardo went in first, his broad shoulders and back blocking most of my view. Edward walked into view, face grim, and then they both stepped aside so I could see Olaf.
He stood at the far side of the room, to one side of the bay window. He was watching the street, or watching something. The ten-foot ceilings made him seem shorter than he was, but he was only bare inches from seven feet. In the heeled boots he probably was seven feet. He was the tallest person I’d ever personally known. But unlike a lot of really tall people, he had some bulk to him. It was hard to see in the black jeans and black leather jacket, but I knew there were muscles under the clothes. His head was as smooth and free of hair as ever. Since he had to shave twice a day to stay clean-shaven, I always wondered if he shaved his head, too, but I never asked him. It never seemed important once he looked at me.
Two things startled me when he turned around. One, he was wearing a white T-shirt when all I’d ever seen him in was black. Two, he had a narrow black Vandyke beard and mustache. The color matched the eyebrows that arched thick and graceful over his deep-set eyes. He was too tall, but I could admit that he was attractive until you got to the eyes. The truth of what he was always stared back from those eyes, at least to me. I knew that other women seemed not to see it, but he never hid his eyes from me. When I first met him it had been because he wanted me afraid of him, and later I think he, like Edward, enjoyed that I was one person he didn’t have to hide the truth from. I knew who and what he was, and hadn’t run screaming. I might be the only woman he’d ever met more than once who knew the truth and still managed to have some sort of “normal” relationship with him. Maybe that was part of his attraction to me. I knew.
“So is this the good Olaf, via
He smiled; he actually smiled, though it left his dark, dark eyes almost untouched. They were black to begin with, so it was hard to make them shine. The well-trimmed facial hair framed his lips nicely. It reminded me of one of our vampires, Requiem, who was now second banana to the Master, or rather, Mistress, of Philadelphia, and her main squeeze.
“You like it?”
That he asked my opinion, any woman’s opinion, was real progress for him. He’d been one of the most misogynistic men I’d ever met a few years back, and I met a lot of them. It was progress, so I answered as if he weren’t scary.
“Yeah, I do.” I realized I did. It added definition to his strangely bare face. Most of the men in my life were like Bernardo, all shoulder-length or longer hair.
He moved toward me, still smiling. He moved like he did most things, in a graceful lope. For such a big man he was surprisingly graceful; if I hadn’t thought he’d take it wrong, I’d have asked if he had ever had dance training, but I doubted that would fit his ideal of macho.
He stopped about halfway to me. I wasn’t sure what was going on until Edward touched my arm. I looked at him, and he gave me a look. Oh, I remembered this part. Olaf saw it as weakness to come to me. That he’d met me even halfway was again a lot of progress.
I started walking toward him. The sixty-four-thousand-dollar question was, what was I supposed to do once I got there?
I offered him my hand, even though the last time I’d done that he’d done the double-hand grab up my arm and reminded me of the one and only kiss we’d had, over a body that we’d just cut up. It had been a bad vampire and we had needed to take its heart and head, but he’d acted as if the blood on both of us were an aphrodisiac.
A handshake was still the most neutral thing I could think to offer. He wrapped his big hand around my much smaller one and pulled me into one of those guy hugs. You know, the handshake that turns into a sort of one- shoulder, one-arm hug. But it was unexpected. I went with it, but . . . it would have worked better if there hadn’t been two feet of height difference. It was meant to bring me in against his shoulder, but I ended up pressed to the front of his body with my entire head below his chest, so sort of his upper stomach/chest area. God, he was big.
I had enough guy friends that I’d automatically put my arm around him for the hug, like body memory. His much bigger arm was around me, and what was supposed to be a quick, manly, I’m-not-gay hug turned into more. His arm tightened around me, keeping me against his body. My right hand was in his, his arm behind my back, my left arm around his surprisingly slender waist.
The moment his arm tightened, I tensed against him, my mind going over my options. He’d feel me let go with my left arm, so any weapon reaching was going to be telegraphed big-time.
He held me against him, his arm pressing me close. I was tensed, my heart thudding, pulse racing, waiting for him to do something creepy, and then I realized he was holding me. He was just holding me. Of all the things Olaf could have done, that surprised me most. He let go of my right hand and just hugged me. He just held me close. It was so unexpected that I was at a loss, but my right arm was between our bodies, so that did two things to help my comfort level: It let me keep enough distance that we weren’t pressed completely against each other, and I could touch the butt of the Smith & Wesson in the shoulder holster. His arms tightened across my back almost too tightly; he let me feel how terribly strong he was. He wasn’t shapeshifter strong, but you don’t have to be able to bench-press a car to hurt someone. There was enough strength in his grip to let me know that he could hurt me. I wasn’t sure if he was doing it on purpose, or was simply that unaccustomed to hugging people.
I erred on the side of caution. I snuggled against him with my left arm and body, making that little wriggling motion that girls and some smaller men make. I was hoping it would distract him from the fact that I was using my
