Something about the Sunwalker, Jack, made me want to believe him. Trust him. I knew it was crazy and probably really stupid, but part of me honestly believed he was telling the truth. The other part wondered if my anti-vamp mojo was on the fritz and I’d finally fallen for some weird vampire glamour that nobody knew about.
“Listen, you gotta stop that if you want me to believe you.” I put on my stern Kabita-voice. It usually worked.
“Stop what?” His voice was getting dangerously loud and this time he ran his hands through his dark hair so vigorously I was afraid he would pull it right out. Instead, it just ended up spiking out in every direction as though he’d had a run in with a light socket. And dammit, it made him even sexier. I groaned. This just wasn’t fair.
“That.” I waved an arm around, nearly upsetting my coffee cup. “Just stop.”
“Woman!” His voice held an edge of warning like he expected me to obey him. I didn’t respond well to being ordered around.
“Don’t you ‘woman’ me, mister. This is the twenty-first century. Not the, the … um. When were you, um …?” I trailed off. I had no idea how old he was and it seemed somewhat indelicate to ask ‘Oh, by the way, how old are you anyway?’
“Turned?” he offered with some irritation.
That worked. “Sure, yeah, turned.”
He smiled a little. I seemed to amuse him an awful lot. “Not long before the Second Crusade.”
I blinked. “Second Crusade? As in the Christian Crusades?”
He gave me a “duh” look.
Good grief. That made him over 900 years old. Talk about having the hots for an older man. This was just ridiculous.
“The Crusades. Right. Anyway, you’re not allowed to treat women like that anymore.”
He looked about ready to throttle me, which was fine. He was causing me a great deal of discomfort. I figured he deserved a bit of the same.
I’d like to point out that I was not really as hormonal as I sounded. I mean, OK, yeah, I sort of had the hots for Inigo, but on a general level, you know. Like, come on, he’s hot. And he’s such a flirt, I just couldn’t help it. It’s like having the hots for … Gerard Butler. He’s extremely yummy, but you knew nothing would ever happen because, well, Gerard Butler was famous and frankly I was not. Same thing with Inigo, except for the famous part. He was Kabita’s cousin and Kabita would seriously kill me.
And now I was having the hots for a Sunwalker. But honestly, could you blame me? I didn’t think so. Hot didn’t even begin to cover it. His extreme hotness was so totally overwhelming I was about to go into serious meltdown any minute. I had to refrain from fanning myself.
I really didn’t want him to know his pheromones or whatever were getting to me. “Listen. Forget it, OK? I’m really tired and I want to go home.” And I needed to think about this whole weird plot twist. “What is it you want from me?”
He leaned in really slowly until he was staring straight in my eyes and I could feel his breath warm on my face. For a minute, I thought he was going to kiss me, but instead he said, “I want you to get my amulet back.”
I sucked in a breath. “OK, right and Darroch?”
The grin on his face scared me a little. “Oh, once you find my amulet, I’ll take care of Darroch.” The way he said it sent shivers down my spine, and not the good kind of shivers, either.
Great. Just great. My client had turned out to possibly be the bad guy and now the former bad guy wanted to wring the current possible bad guy’s neck. Kabita was so not going to be pleased with this turn of events.
“OK, sure. I’ll get back to you on that.”
He gave me a look and I knew defying him would be a really bad idea. “See that you do.” He spun on his heel and strode for the door.
“Um, excuse me!” I called after him.
“What?” he snapped. His ocean eyes were fierce. I had no doubt that this man, this Sunwalker, was still every bit the warrior he’d been 900 years ago.
“Exactly how do you propose I contact you? It’s not like you’re listed in the phone book under ‘Sunwalker.’”
He stalked back to the table and slapped a business card down before spinning and stalking back to the door. I glanced at the card. My eyes widened a little. “You’re kidding right?” I called after him. He stopped and half turned. “You teach piano lessons?” I’m pretty sure he blushed before he slammed out, the bell above the door jangling crazily behind him.
I twirled his business card through my fingers and grinned happily to myself. Beautiful. Suddenly, I was feeling incredibly perky. That big, tough, macho ex-Crusader turned Sunwalker taught piano to little kids for a living. Beyond brilliant. Sometimes life was just way too weird.