My Dearest Celia,
Looking forward to dinner.
Your humble admirer,
Misha Aleksandr
This time, it was my jaw’s turn to fall open. First of all, there was nothing humble about Misha. Second, damn. Just, damn. I glared at Petro. “You can’t be serious.”
Petro frowned. “I assure you they are the highest caliber of diamonds. However, if you prefer a more classic emerald to match your eyes—”
“We don’t want the jewelry. And we especially don’t want to go out to dinner with some idiot who tried to kill us!”
“Speak for yourself, Celia,” Taran said, admiring the sapphire-and-diamond bracelet she’d already snapped onto her wrist. She frowned at my scowl. “What? It’s the least that rich bastard could do.”
Emme dropped her gaze, blushing as pink as the diamond at the center of her platinum necklace. “Everyone deserves a chance at forgiveness,” she said quietly.
“He tried to have us killed.” I repeated my words slowly. Apparently, though, all it took was something shiny to distract them. Surely Shayna would be reasonable.
Nope.
Shayna juggled her sapphire-encrusted daggers. “Oooh—look. They sparkle in the sunlight.”
Petro cleared his throat. “Forgive me, Celia, but I believe he intended the dinner invitation to be a private rendezvous.”
Petro jumped at my scowl. “I’m not having dinner with him.”
It was then I heard what sounded like a bottle being dropped behind our house. Now what? I jogged around back, slowing to a stop when I caught a wereraccoon rifling through our garbage. A naked wereraccoon in human form. His aroma of bark and dry leaves was unmistakable. I couldn’t believe it. It should have been comical. But I wasn’t laughing.
His hairy legs stiffened. Slowly he raised his head from the large plastic barrel to see me standing there, gawking at him.
“Um. Hi,” he mumbled through a mouthful of food.
He paused before bolting toward the lake like his life depended on it. Because it did. Of course our evil neighbor had to come home from grocery shopping just then. After all, when else would Mrs. Mancuso have had the opportunity to see me chasing a naked man across my front lawn? She crossed herself as I ground to a halt in front of her.
I watched the wereraccoon disappear into the patch of woods as he ran faster than any naked guy with flapping male parts should. Taran’s WTF expression said it all.
Petro’s driver gave a one-shoulder shrug. “Welcome to the supernatural world,” he muttered.
CHAPTER 4
Finding a wereraccoon rifling through your trash sucked. Having a can of Lysol thrown at you while being called a tramp by a woman with enough neck skin to make a purse sucked more. But getting stalked by the supernatural paparazzi just about threw me over the edge. In addition to the wereraccoon and werebobcat, every mystical freak imaginable had made an appearance. I scented them everywhere. They hid in our bushes, peeked in our windows. I even found a werepossum sleeping under our porch.
My knuckles ached from pummeling the two wererats that rang our doorbell in the middle of the night, reeking of witch’s brew and begging for autographs. And I was coming off my sixth twelve-hour work shift in a row.
So when a master vampire showed up on my doorstep, let’s just say I didn’t welcome him with open arms.
“What do you want, Misha?”
Misha frowned, giving him a totally unfair sexy brood. “You’re not wearing my earrings.”
The earrings marked the beginning of the parade of expensive gifts Misha had sent in an effort to apologize for vampire court. “Giving us jewelry and paying off our mortgage doesn’t change the fact you almost had us killed. You can’t buy us, Misha. We’re paying you back for the house.”
“The master sent flowers and candy, too,” one of his idiot bodyguards said from the walkway.
“Oh, yeah, ’cause nothing says, ‘I’m sorry I wanted to torture you,’ like chocolate truffles.” I narrowed my eyes at Misha. “Just tell me what you want.” The corner of Misha’s mouth curved slightly while the two goons behind him exchanged “I have dibs on her liver” glances.
“I came to see you.”
I stood in the doorway in the tank top I’d slept in and a pair of yoga pants that had been begging to go to the big laundry basket in the sky. My wild curls and I had fought. They’d won. I hadn’t showered, and I resembled something the wereraccoon was chewing on before he ran like the dickens. Yet Misha’s hungry gaze swept along my body, despite my hell-on-a-cracker appearance.
I leaned one arm along the doorway and rested my other on my hip, annoyed. “Why? Did you run out of virgins or something?”