Barbie & The Beast (3 page)

P
, for pervert.

Out of habit, Barbie tugged at her little burgundy jacket and straightened her skirt by running her hands over her hips. Waiting
for the head rush to subside, she patted her shoulder-length and hopefully still-straight brown hair, making sure it was in
order, then squinted in an attempt to see the man who had carted her through the graveyard.

She couldn’t see diddly, other than a very tall outline; it was too dark to fill in the rest. And though she was all ears,
she couldn’t yet hear Angie’s protests. At all.

There was no sound of approaching footsteps, no
ching
of glasses or clink of beer steins. There was no sudden blaze of lights, followed by shouts of amusement over her predicament.
No
Surprise!
You know. . .
Party time!
Nothing.

Rotating slowly, eyes wide open, as if that would help her to see through the surrounding blackness, Barbie peered out from
where the mysterious guy had set her. The only thing she could almost make out was a tall headstone not far from where she
was standing. A headstone, as in a gray marble thing with a decaying body beneath it.

Goose bumps reared up then dribbled down her back like pinballs over metallic speed bumps. The tiny hairs at the nape of her
neck stood up. Could she have been wrong about this? Had she been insane to humor this guy? Where the heck was Angie?

“So,” she said as Old Mr. Suspicion crept into her consciousness and rooted there, warning that this mystery guy might truly
be some kind of weirdo, even if he did possess a few nice attributes.

She began again. “Where exactly is the party?”

Darin Russell faced the girl in the dark and put one hand to his throat. Something was clawing at him from the inside out.
Something, he acknowledged with a shudder, that he had learned only with great difficulty to get a handle on.

His pulse was racing. The burn of raw nerve endings caused his fingers to curl. A familiar numbness accompanied his attempt
at facial expression, and the muscles under his clothes strained at the cloth.

Nothing out of the ordinary here, he thought facetiously— except that these things were happening a bit early.

And wasn’t that the damndest thing? Usually it took a full-on flood of moonlight to instigate the twitching, on the nights
when a full moon rode the skies.

He glanced up. Cloud cover hid the huge silvery orb that wasn’t quite full, he knew well enough. . .yet he had to clench
his teeth to keep them from chattering. His free hand had closed more tightly over his windpipe as if to choke off unnecessary
sound. All was dark. The dark before the storm. Yet for the lack of light he was truly grateful, because the woman standing
next to him wouldn’t be able to see the hunger in his eyes.

Easing up on his throat, he smiled wistfully. By his calculation there were twenty-two more hours until the moon would take
him. Twenty-two more hours until he would shed this semblance of Darin Russell and become what he was destined to become—a
wolf, for frig’s sake. Kid you not. A damned wolf.

The thought still gave him pause. Hell, he’d never get used to the idea. Who, after all, would have thought it possible? Who,
if they hadn’t experienced it firsthand, would believe? But it was true: a mingling of man and wolf blood flowed inside his
veins.

Jesus. It was insane, and a physical impossibility, as far as medical sources were concerned. Animals and humans could not
share one body. Animals and humans possessed no characteristics that would enable them even to mate or produce offspring.
Yet here he was, Darin Russell, a werewolf. An anomaly to beat all anomalies. It was a truly wicked twist of fate.

Was it a nightmare? You bet. Though the realization of what he became each full moon was no longer the shocker it once was.
Still, he did often wonder if he’d ever be fully comfortable inside his skin. Hell, as he and the wolf became more familiar,
the wolf had begun to assert itself, with no lunar prompting. The wolf was trying to gnaw its way to the surface right now.
Sniffing out pleasure, sensing excitement in the air, Wolfy wanted to muscle in, to be a part of this. Wolfy wanted a mate
as badly as Darin did.

Stand in line!
Darin wanted to shout, right before uttering a swift and silent prayer of thanks for those twenty-two hours he had left.

“The party,” he said, sensing the woman’s need for clarification, “is in the opposite direction.”

“So what are we doing here?”

Darin glanced more carefully at Barbie. That was her
name, at least according to her friend. But what ever her name, she shouldn’t have been in a graveyard after dark, promise
of a party or not. Women should know better. Dark places were dangerous.

He laughed to himself, even though this wasn’t funny. He had decided that Barbie and her friend needed a good scare to make
them see the possible perils of Miami after dark. The very
real
possible perils. And because ultimately he was the gentleman he had told Barbie he was—and a worse thing as well, admittedly—who
was more qualified to teach them that lesson?

He just hadn’t anticipated she’d turn out to be so fun, feel so nice on his shoulder, or that she’d be not nearly frightened
enough, in spite of his antics. He could feel her attention even now.

She had felt very nice, indeed. Long legs, smooth and silky. Lean arms. Low, slightly husky voice that floated over everything
like an oncoming summer storm.

A wayward pulse like a runaway rocket hit Darin in the chest, along with another thought. Maybe a woman who went through life
with a name like hers, with its connotations and association with the Mattel toy, would be sensitive to other people’s problems.
His in particular? A strange current buzzed through the air all of a sudden. Ridiculous thoughts rode that buzz, like, could
this Barbie be the one?

He sucked in his cheeks to withhold sound and warned the looming beast to back off. No. It couldn’t be that easy. After searching
the world for someone, to quite simply find her in his own backyard? In his lair? Impossible.

Although the night was still, Darin wished desperately for a breeze, a hurricane, anything to whisk his ponderings away. Instead,
more thoughts came.

Fairy tales suggested that every person has a soul mate somewhere on the planet, someone fate intended as your
partner if you could find them. This seemed a nice idea, this soul-mate theory, but with millions of people in Miami alone,
and cities more or less similar in size stretched out all over the world, what were the odds of stumbling across yours?

How about in a cemetery?

In the dark?

The answer was, the odds were just too great to contemplate. There were too many variables, too many people, and too little
time to sort through them.

Toss into this fantastical soup the fact that he was nowhere near the normal all-American male, not by a long shot, and that
he would require special handling, a truly open mind, and a ton of empathy from his mate, and. . .well, such fairy tales
seemed no more than moon gazing.

Soul mates? He and this woman named Barbie? Wishful thinking, and hopelessly naive. Inconceivably romantic, even for him.
Nevertheless, his heart was now beating at a million strokes per minute inside of his chest. His body was urging itself to
call forth the changes early, was on the cusp of full-blown arousal.

Weird.

The wolf was causing this trouble, really. Wolfy, so close to his time, wanted action, not small talk. Wolfy wanted to nuzzle
Barbie’s long, swanlike neck. Wolfy and Darin were in complete accord.

Darin paused midthought. Could he actually do that? Change a day in advance? Invite the curse early? Let it out completely?
He’d never wanted to before. He had never tried.

Not a good precedent, he decided. Three nights each month of being separated from everyone was bad enough. Going through the
physical changes required for the wolf to take his turn would never get easier. And what would Barbie do when her abductor’s
skin stretched and his bones began to crack? A horrible thought, that! Best to contain the
beast until its turn to appear. For now, it was interesting enough to know they both wanted her.

Barbie.

“Is it far?” she—Barbie—asked, her human eyes unable to process the dark, Darin knew. She was trusting him to set the course.
He had labeled himself civilized.

Civilized, for Christ’s sake.

“We almost there?” she queried. A sensual voice. Very sexy.

“Not even close,” he admitted. “I’ve taken you in a circle.”

She chuckled. He heard it, though she tried to hide the sound by turning her head.

Barbie was amused? Not frightened? Could she tell he was interested? Laughter again rose within him, the laughter of freedom,
of expectancy, of pleasure and hopeful victory. It was the laughter of the wolf. Dampness gathered on his forehead—a beastly
sort of hot flash—and he shook it off with a stern inner warning. He could not give in to the beast now. It would be for the
wrong reasons entirely if he did. He must not give in.

“I know for a fact this cemetery isn’t huge,” Barbie said, sounding only the slightest bit perturbed. “How could there be
a long route back to the middle?”

“Looks can be deceiving,” Darin replied, his body now feeling odd everywhere, his fingers beginning to ache from the inside
out as beastly claws worked their way toward the surface.

Deceiving? And how!

“Really? I never would have thought,” Barbie remarked. “They must take their cue from the deceptive lights back there.”

“Do I note sarcasm?” Darin coughed to smooth his voice and took hold of Barbie’s hand. Soft fingers. No ring on the significant
one. Barbie was available.

“Sarcasm is in my arsenal of things to offer,” Barbie told
him, tugging back her hand and adding, “Actually, I can’t take credit for that line. I read it somewhere and have been hoping
I’d get to use it someday.”

Darin smiled grimly. Wouldn’t Barbie be surprised to find out what he had in
his
arsenal? Wouldn’t she be surprised after twenty-two hours fled by, when the moon showed its face, when his body began to
tear at the seams with no holding back? She’d be surprised, all right. She’d run like hell, and he’d let her. Heck, he’d push
her. Wouldn’t he?

All of a sudden, he wasn’t so sure. All of a sudden, he wanted to throw his head back and howl. Why? Because the beast knew,
as he did, that this woman was special.

Still, howling? Definitely not a good idea. Howling tended to scare people in a very bad way.

Of course, wasn’t that what he’d intended in the first place—Fright Night at Forest Lawn, for women lured to this place by
bad judgment? Party-boy pranksters were scary enough, whether or not they were human. He took Barbie’s hand again.

“That’s a little tight,” she complained. She was right: his grip was too firm.

“Maybe you’d prefer bumping into a gravestone or two? Bang up those skinny knees?” he said, grinning like a goon in spite
of his inner juggling act.

“Hey! Getting personal there!” Barbie warned. “And you couldn’t possibly know what my knees are like.”

“Don’t worry,” he laughed. “I like skinny knees.”

“They aren’t skinny. They’re shapely. Very shapely. I inherited them from my mother. I wear short skirts sometimes to show
them off.”

“Shapely and
skinny
,” Darin corrected, almost to himself, thinking how much he’d like to see those legs in the daylight, and how much fun it
was to tease her.

“Not!” Barbie argued. “What did you do, cop a feel when I was all sack-of-potatoes back there?”

“I had to hang on to something.” Working really hard to stifle a growl and keep human words coming, Darin muttered, “Shit.”

This isn’t hell, he told himself for the millionth time. This affliction of his was not hell on earth. It was life. It was
a
life, anyway. There was nothing he could do to change it.

“Spilt milk,” his parents had told him, stunned to see what the wolf bite in the old forest had done to their child. “No use
crying over it,” they’d told him quite courageously.

Man, he wasn’t sure if they’d treat it so simply if
they
had been bitten. At times the situation was a real bitch. It certainly was hell on relationships. And he wanted a relationship.
The little furballs in his bloodstream wanted a relationship. The wolf definitely wanted one. He had waited a very long time
for someone with potential, and now Barbie was here, against all odds, by his side.

So, what was everybody going to do about it?

Barbie took the time to press hair back from her face, seeking a better view of. . .well, nothing, considering the darkness.
Scalp prickles signaled a possible goof-up in her choices to this point. A floaty feeling the consistency of fog crept upward
from her feet to her legs. A matching lightness filled the space between her ears, the space where her brain should have been—the
brain that should have warned her about attending this stupid party before she’d opened the car door.

Stubborn. That’s what she was. She hated parties. She’d chosen to ignore the blitz of flashing internal red lights this time.
Well, she usually ignored them, truth be told, preferring to label this trait “open-minded.” Let this be a lesson.

“Why are we here in this spot?” she repeated, deciding that more useful information would be a very good thing, and that remaining
ladylike might not cut it.

“I wanted you to myself,” the mystery guy said simply.

It was entirely possible, Barbie reasoned, that such overt behavior was acceptable at these odd parties, and that this guy
had simply eaten one Trisket too many. That this was male testosterone running rampant at the thought of all the unattached
women freaked out by their surroundings. Could it be something so simple?

“Why?” she asked, wriggling free of his grip, taking a hands-on-hips stance in an attempt to cop an attitude and wishing she
had brought a purse. And not just any purse, but Angie’s. There would at least have been a compact in there with a lighted
mirror, if no penlight. With light of any kind she could have stolen a peek at her abductor. Not that looks made much difference.

Well, actually, looks were a start, she admitted.

“Why me?” she asked, telling herself not to take this abduction personally. Probably anything in a skirt would have done it
for this guy.

“I told you. I liked your voice,” he replied, fairly straightforwardly, it seemed. But it had to be a crock.

A wayward tendril of annoyance latched on to one of the icy pinballs halting midway down Barbie’s spine, a rise of annoyance
that was usually bad for anyone on the receiving end. This guy really did not want to mess with her. The Bradley family could
attest to what might happen if she were to actually become angered. Think Scots-Irish temper. Think Cuisinart. Think barbed
tongue, then add a dash of whirlwind.

“A guy who carts people around on his shoulder like a farmer hauling a sack through a graveyard likes my voice?” she snapped.

“Not people. Women,” he corrected.

Barbie could almost imagine him grinning. The cad! His beastly behavior should have triggered a heated response by now. She
should have been fully agitated, in fact. But, oddly, her annoyance hadn’t risen past a simmer. The whole anger thing had
kind of fizzled.

Unusual. Annoyance had never vanished before. Maybe the fizzle was in reaction to the guy’s great laugh and easy manner. In
spite of everything, he seemed almost likable— in a spicy, silky, strongman sort of way. Besides, hadn’t her parents always
warned about her temper being a major fault?

“Bro-ther.” Barbie gave her head a shake. Reasonably sure that she couldn’t have been suckered so easily into something perilous,
she had to admit that she really didn’t perceive any danger here. Outside of the initial shock, the whole silly abduction
could be seen as humorous. To a mental patient.

“You’re a farmer, then?” she asked sarcastically.

“Nope. No farmer. Never even seen a farm, actually,” he replied—but that was all. The guy was a virtual wellspring of information.

“Insurance broker, maybe?” Barbie asked, deciding to play Twenty Questions.

“What do they cart around?”

“Your money.” She tried again. “Car salesman?” Oh please, she prayed. Anything but a car salesman.

“Nope,” Mr. Communication replied. “Not even warm.”

Not even warm? Barbie tapped her nails on her hip. “Doctor?”

“Nope.”

“Lawyer?”

“Nope.”

In her head, Barbie went through the old song.
Rich man, poor man, beggar man, thief. Doctor, lawyer. . .

“Indian chief?” she suggested with a snort.

“Graveyard keeper,” he replied, and Barbie felt any remaining questions sink like a torpedoed tanker.

“You’re bluffing,” she charged.

“Not entirely.”

“Which part of not entirely? The graveyard part or the keeper part?”

“I work here, keeping track of what goes on in this cemetery, part-time. It’s an odd profession, and not something you hear
about every day—but someone has to do it, don’t you think?”

Barbie couldn’t keep the skepticism out of her tone. “A
graveyard keeper? In a dinner jacket? Odd sort of dress for an outdoor profession, isn’t it?”

“I was about to rustle up an evening meal.”

“And you thought you’d carry someone around for a while to build up an appetite?”

After flinging those words his way, Barbie bit back a second round of sarcasm. The floaty, tingly sensations she’d been feeling
were now hovering around her thighs. Floaty thighs had a way of distracting a person to the point of nearly forgetting which
number of Twenty Questions they were on.

Distracted, she lost her desire to harass him. She’d have to work hard to plump back up the balloon of skepticism. Because,
truth be told, she didn’t feel at all panicky or annoyed. All in all, this whole scenario—the dark, the gravelly voiced guy
in a choice suit who obviously had a brain bigger than a Cheeto—might truly be better than what she’d been expecting at this
party.

Interesting.

Was it too strange for her to see this odd meeting as opportune? A little sexy? Nope.
Way
too strange. Not opportune.

Don’t even think sexy.

“So, you’re not the welcoming committee from the party in the opposite direction?” she asked, deciding once again it was time
for more information. One year as a high school teacher plus a couple of months with her ex-boyfriend Bill the BS-er really
did fine tune the crap-o-meter. Surely she’d know if her companion lied.

“Afraid not,” the guy replied.

Barbie waited for the expected, and heretofore absent, attack of panic that every woman in her situation should have exhibited,
but it didn’t kick in. “You do
know
about the party?” she prompted.

“Yes,” he said. “I do.”

“Were you at the party?”

“Afraid not. I was keeping an eye on it from a safe distance. Doing my job.”

“Yes,” Barbie conceded. “Graveyard keepers would have to protect their graveyards from the threat of frat boys with ghoulish
appetites. I’m with you on that. Still, I was thinking of possibly attending that party, you know.”

“Didn’t sound much like that to me,” he said. “But I thought I’d pull you out of range—rescue you, just in case.”

“That’s a bit presumptuous, don’t you think?”

“Can I ask why you were thinking of attending the party in the first place?”

“Why does anyone go to a singles party?” she tossed back. “Having a party in a graveyard is strange, I admit, but we didn’t
know it was in a graveyard until we got here. Dagger Street, end of the block, was the only direction we had. Imagine our
surprise.”

“You say strange, not spooky,” the guy noted. “You’re not afraid of cemeteries?”

Barbie shrugged. “My aunt is in one, as are my grandparents. I’d hate to think cemeteries weren’t happy resting places for
my loved ones.”

“Ah.”

The guy didn’t respond further. While waiting out the silence following this breathy contribution, Barbie had an uncanny desire
to touch her abductor. A hand to his arm, maybe. To make sure he wasn’t a ghost or a zombie raised from the dead by her comment
about stray heads.

Feeling her hands rise, she fought them back down to her sides.

Bad hands!

Also, bad scene, she decided. Certainly a strange one. Time for retreat. Nip this strangeness in the bud. Although this guy
hinted at potential and smelled nice, he just wasn’t offering up any good answers. There was, despite her willingness
to wait and hear real explanations, nothing to be had here.

She truly would have had to be desperate to consider the viability of a graveyard acquaintance, anyway. A terrific voice,
a wide set of shoulders, and a nice jacket weren’t enough of a foundation for a relationship. There was nothing here to use
as a building block for a Cape Cod home with that white picket fence. To think otherwise because the guy seemed reasonably
agreeable would be chancy, stupid, and lame. Desperate, even.

Where did graveyard keepers sleep, anyway? she wondered. That question opened up a whole new can of beans.

There was only one thing to do, she concluded: run. Of course, in a tight skirt and heels, running wouldn’t be pretty. Dammit,
she should have worn pants.

“No more questions?” asked her mystery man.

Barbie took the fact that her feet hadn’t moved as a very bad sign.

“I suppose this
is
awkward,” he went on, voice all smoky and sincere and doubling up on the velvet quotient. “Maybe you can think of this whole
situation as a little intervention. As a Good Samaritan merely saving you some trouble.”

Though Barbie squinted harder, trying to see him, her search turned up a big fat zero. It wasn’t that the darkness was completely
unbroken. Up in the sky came a faint glimmer of stars. The headstone beside them seemed to give off a whitish glow. Still,
she couldn’t see what she most wanted to see.

“You still here?” the guy asked.

Little electric charges were crackling over Barbie’s skin in response to his presence beside her. A heat-seeking missile could
have found him, no problem. He was fire in human form, hot enough to cause her hair to curl. She had to ground herself, quickly,
before the word
retreat
became a distant memory.

Maybe just one brush against this guy’s pecs? After all, darkness worked both ways.

A light touch on her arm made Barbie jump. The guy had beaten her to it. She hadn’t been prepared.

“Please tell me you aren’t a pervert,” she said with a shiver. When her mystery guy laughed again, quite heartily, she asked,
“Was that a yes, you are a pervert?” trying to reacquire her Barbie-does-formidable stance.

He sighed. “No pervert, Barbie. Trust me, that party was not for you.”

She ground her teeth. Although he was probably right, although she and Angie had already decided that very thing, what right
did he have to hurry their decision along?

“The folks there aren’t very nice,” he added, as if he’d read her thoughts and would explain. “I wouldn’t have wanted any
friend of mine to attend this particular fete.”

This guy she didn’t know and couldn’t even see would protect her and Angie from a. . .fete? Was that unbelievable bull,
or was it. . .gallant? She found herself waffling.

Amid the waffling, her scalp began to tingle, as though little alien antennae were sprouting outward from her brain, trying
to get a handle on this guy. Her body was reacting to him on some basic level, suggesting he might be someone she’d want to
know. Nice guys were rare in Miami. Especially nice single guys.

No. This new reasoning was stupid. Pure female silliness. Long-awaited hopefulness hijacking her checklist. Her antennae had
gone over to the Dark Side. The man was little more than a blur, a sexy voice in the night. If Angie—

Oh God! The sudden remembrance of her friend caused an instantaneous melting of Barbie’s sense of sport. Was Angie out here
somewhere having a similar conversation? Had Angie tackled her own caveman by now? Her friend wasn’t possessed of the Barbie
Bradley adventure genes, except when
it came to her wish list for—men. Barbie sure hoped Angie had been abducted, too, because if Angie had been left alone, hating
the dark and disliking deserted places, she’d very likely be scared stiff. What had she been thinking, playing along with
this oddball abduction when her best friend was out here somewhere? A good kick to this guy’s shin, something right out of
Tae Bo, might do wonders if he planned to keep her here any longer, or against her will.

“Where is my friend?” she asked curtly. “Is someone carting her around, too?”

“It’s possible,” the guy beside her replied.

“You don’t know?”

“An acquaintance of mine seemed interested.”

Barbie opened her mouth, closed it, opened it again. How large was this graveyard, anyway? She couldn’t hear anything beyond
her own heavy breathing. Certainly she should have been able to hear Angie calling if Angie needed help.

“I’d better find my friend,” she said stiffly. “Thanks for saving us.”

“You’re entirely welcome,” the guy replied in a tone like warm chocolate fondue. “It’s such a shame though,” he added, “that
we couldn’t have met under better circumstances.”

“Yes, well, my friend might not be my friend much longer if I don’t get back to her. Do you know how hard it is to find a
best friend? If you do know, you’ll take me to her.”

“By all means, if that’s what you want,” he said.

“It
is
what I want.”
Sort of.

Well, she should have wanted that. She definitely should not have been thinking about the invisible guy’s pecs, which were
ripped and gleaming, she was sure, somewhere under that jacket. But she was. She shouldn’t have been picturing him shirtless,
taut skin aglow with a light layer of sweat as he hoisted hammer and nails for a start on that white wooden fence. But she
was.

Stupid thoughts! Asinine. For all she knew, the guy had little red horns poking out of the top of his head. Sideburns. That
jacket could be plaid.

Yet, her antennae were standing straight up, producing a very strange feeling in and around her eyeballs. Every cell in her
body seemed to be at full attention, yammering for a sudden move in her abductor’s direction. Even after covering her ears
to stifle all that yammering, Graveyard Guy’s heat continued to blast away at her mental acuity. There was just something
about him.