Tall, Dark & Hungry(25)

"I just met her today," Bastien protested.

"Hmm. Love's a funny thing and often hits hard and fast. As you well know," Vincent said solemnly. "Besides, I said falling in love—not already there."

On that note, he turned and entered Lucern's bedroom, leaving Bastien alone in the hall. He'd been referring to Josephine when he said "As you well know." Vincent and Bastien had been close friends at the time he'd met and fallen in love with her. Vinny had witnessed Bastien's pain as Josephine had rejected him and called him a monster. Until then, Bastien had enjoyed the social whirl and the wild times the human world had to offer. It was after she broke his heart that he'd lost interest in it all and immersed himself in the family business. He had worked hard at accumulating money ever since. Money was the cornerstone of life; it never let you down or judged you; and money never said no.

Unfortunately, his close friendship with Vincent had been one of the things Bastien had let fall by the wayside in his determined drive to bury himself in the demands of business. He hadn't really noticed its absence until this evening. His cousin's teasing and cajolery tonight had reminded him of what he had been missing these last three hundred years or so. He'd been missing a lot. It was time to make up for it, but cautiously. Bastien had no desire to get his heart broken again.





Chapter Five

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"Isn't it a beautiful day?" Terri asked, sucking in a deep breath of the fetid New York air as if it were an elixir.

Bastien nodded in agreement, even managing not to grimace. "Beautiful."

"The sun is shining. Birds are singing. I love springtime."

She sounded like a Disney character, he thought with irritation. Next she'd break out in song. An ode to the sun.

"Sun." Bastien muttered the word as if it were a curse. How could he have forgotten about the sun? He was a bloody vampire! And yet he'd made plans and invited Terri on an outing where he would spend the day wandering outside. And sunlight was in huge supply. It was a beautiful spring day, an uncharacteristically hot and sunny spring day. Bastien wouldn't even be surprised to hear that there were people sunbathing all over the city, their skin being eaten alive by the sun's rays. As was his. The only difference was that his body was working in overdrive to continuously repair and replenish itself. Were he like others, his skin would just be aging by the minute. Instead, his body was dehydrating by the second.

On top of that, while Bastien had intended on packing a cooler full of blood to bring with him on this trip, he, the details man, had forgotten to do so. Not that this really made much difference, he supposed. He could hardly have walked around, bag of blood in hand as casually as others carried bottled water. Bastien had imagined he would just slip away every once in a while to replenish the much-needed liquid he was using at such an accelerated rate, but now that he was here, he saw how difficult that would be. He would have been reluctant to leave Terri alone in the neighborhood they were presently in.

"Bastien?" Terri asked, calling him back from his thoughts. "Are you going to stand at this table all day?"

He grimaced. This table at this particular flea market had a canvas awning, and he had been standing under it for several minutes. It was the only booth that did have one, but he couldn't stand here forever. He'd have to brave the sun again sooner or later, if only to go home. And he supposed that would be the smartest thing to do, but he really, really didn't want to end this outing so prematurely.

Bastien had woken up at six o'clock this morning and hopped eagerly in the shower, his mind on the day ahead. He'd found himself whistling as he showered and dressed, then made his way out to the living room to find Chris Keyes still on the couch, but awake and looking rumpled and miserable. It seemed the editor had suffered a fitful night on the sofa, waking and dozing off, then waking again, unable to do anything else since he didn't know which room he was supposed to have and would have had trouble getting there on his own anyway.

Bastien had listened with little interest to the man ramble about his rough night, until he heard mention that Terri was fetching a glass of water from the kitchen so that he might take another painkiller. Leaving the editor alone in the living room, he'd immediately headed to the kitchen. There Terri was rinsing out the cup she'd fetched water in the night before. While she'd run fresh water into it, Bastien had asked her about attending a couple of flea markets with him, surprised at how nervous he felt. It wasn't until she'd turned bright, interested eyes on him and told him she'd love to go that he'd felt himself relax.

Assuring her that he'd take her out to breakfast before they went anywhere, Bastien excused himself. He rode the elevator down to the floor holding the Argeneau offices, and quickly wrote up a list of instructions for his secretary to find when she arrived on Monday. He hadn't wanted to forget to have her take care of finding out if there were any relatives that Mrs. Houlihan might have gone to in the city, or to arrange for his kitchen to be stocked, and to have her cancel any business meetings scheduled for the next week. After setting the note on her desk, he'd returned to the penthouse to be informed by a sighing Chris Keyes that Terri had gone to her room to shower and change.