Downbeat (Biting Love) (20 page)

Boys. I rolled my eyes. “Then why did Luke go upstairs? And why didn’t he report Dr. Vilyn’s body?”

“I tell you, that wasn’t me,” Luke said. “I don’t lie. Ask Logan.”

I listened really hard. The music in his voice said he was being truthful, but I’d follow up with Liese first chance I got.

Dragan shut the hood. “Well, Steel. While this has been entertaining, I must take Raquel home.”

“I have to talk with you first.”

“Talk on the way.” Dragan steered me with a gentle arm into the passenger seat; no modern man chivvied me quite the way he did.

Luke followed. “It’s about that society ball. You’re going, right?”

“Yes.” Dragan leaped into his seat and started the car. The deep-throated engine growled into a stately twenty mph. “With Raquel.”

“No.” Panic jumped into my throat.

“Yes.” He glanced at me, his hands relaxed on the wheel. “You must learn to fly, little dove. The ball is a perfect opportunity to learn.”

“I’m not a dove. I’m an aardvark or a kangaroo or…or some land animal—”

“Guys, please!” Luke sauntered next to us with his hands in his pockets, somehow not only keeping up with the car but making it look like a simple stroll. “I don’t care what animal anybody is. I have a major problem and I need help. I need
your
help, Zajicek.”

“Oh?” Dragan raised a black brow at him. “I charge for favors.”

“Oh?” Luke raised a mirrored brow, exactly the same with a sarcastic twist. “How disappointing. I thought you said we were friends.”

Dragan laughed. “
Touché
. What is your problem?”

“I’ve been…coerced into escorting someone to the ball.”

“You?” Dragan laughed harder. “The untouchable Steel? You let no one near you, not since you were a fledgling.”

“Yeah, well, someone got inside my guard. It happens to the best of us. And the worst of us.” He gave Dragan a particularly black look.

“Not to me, my friend. Who has that much sway with you? A past lover? A dear donor?”

“I’m still not sure how it happened.” His dark look dissolved into a confused stare. “But I’m taking Rocky’s mom.”

“We’re both going to the ball!” Mom popped out a table leaf and set it next to the wall. “I’m so excited.”

I was helping Mom clean up from the dinner party. Dragan had dropped me off at home as promised. I sneaked inside, hoping she’d gone to bed, but I found her bustling around. She’d put away the food and washed the dishes but had waited for me to help her with the table and living room.

And to exult…and maybe gloat…about Luke taking her to the ball.

We pushed the table halves together and walked it back against the wall. As Mom chattered, I slipped into the kitchen, found my glasses and put them on. She was so excited. I hurt to let her down. If only I hadn’t had that experience in eighth grade. If only she hadn’t been part of that fiasco.

“Mom…” I finally broke into her enthusiasm, blinking behind the thick lenses. “I’m not going.”

“What? Of course you’re going. Why wouldn’t you go? It’s a lovely event and you have a marvelous date. Why, Maestro Zajicek is even a VIP for the ball, isn’t he? Why would you not want to go with him?”

I pushed the nose piece of my glasses up. It was because he was a VIP. Because it was right and proper he have a confident socialite on his arm, not a bumbling wannabe. I shrugged. “How did you manage to talk Luke into escorting you, anyway?”

“As a good hostess I kept the conversation going after you and the maestro and then Julian left. I asked Luke what he was doing while he was in town. He replied he had nothing to do while waiting for his brother and sister-in-law to have their babies. Nothing. So I suggested we do something together sometime, and of course he agreed.”

“Of course,” I echoed faintly. Like a sitcom rerun, I could see where this was going.
Nooo, Lucy.

“Then I asked Nixie what she was doing and she said Julian had a couple tickets to the Grand Vienna Woods Ball they couldn’t use because their poor baby girl has colic. So terrible.” She clucked sadly. “I hope the little tyke grows out of it soon. Well, as soon as I heard ‘two tickets’ I immediately thought of you. You’re working all the time, never having fun and Luke is a nice looking young man. But then Dragan called me on his cell phone to ask my permission to take you.”

“B-but he just asked me tonight.” I think my eyes bugged out at her. I know they felt a bit strained. Hopefully he’d called her when he’d first gotten the motel room key. Because if he’d phoned after his hot kisses and hotter thrusting…

My face must have shown what I was thinking because my mother’s eyes narrowed at me in a shrewd frown. “He wanted to let me know you were all right and that he’d bring you home presently. Well, since I knew you were nicely taken care of, I asked Luke whether he’d go to the ball and he said he would like to go to watch Maestro Zajicek.” She paused putting the placemats into a box labeled
Rocky’s Art
and beamed. “Probably he wishes to learn conducting techniques.”

More likely he wanted to practice his decapitation techniques. “Dragan is conducting the opening waltz.”

“Exactly. He is eminently watchable. But I couldn’t let poor Luke go alone, could I?”

“Sure you could. Luke is a grown man. He can take care of himself.”

Mom
tsked
. “He’s a stranger in town. Besides, a fellow that handsome? He’s man bait to all the single women. He needed protection.”

Man bait
? That sounded like something Nixie would say. I wondered how much my punk imp friend had cemented Luke’s fate. “You were going to throw
poor Luke
at me, remember? I’m as single as they get.”

“That’s different, isn’t it? As that great German philosopher Kautilya said, ‘The enemy of my enemy is my friend.’ But of course, now you’re going with Dragan and I’m going with Luke, and everything has worked out for the best.”

“Um, Mom….” Where did I start with the not-bestness of all that? I sighed. Might as well skip to the upshot. “Problem is, I don’t want to go the ball. It’s for sophisticates and I don’t think I’ll enjoy it.”

“Oh, of course. I understand.” She breezed past me. “Luke and I will have to watch Maestro Zajicek without you.”

“Yes, that’s…wait, what?”

“I said we’ll go without you and keep an eye on the maestro.”

Her keep an eye on Dragan? Who’d keep an eye on
her
? “No, that’s not—”

“I’d better call Dolly Barton’s salon and make an appointment. A man like Luke has certain expectations, you know.”

Oh flutefarts. It would all end in tears, but I was not one to shirk my duty, especially where my mother was concerned. I stepped up to the plate. “Make the appointment for two.”

Monday after I got home from work, Mom and I went dress shopping at our local thrift store. I planned to wear my ankle-length velveteen concert skirt and bought a pretty shawl-neck blouse to go with it for three bucks. Mom got a poncho-style dress that was…well, colorful was kind; honestly it looked like a rainbow had vomited. She also got a multi-strand gold bead necklace that went past bling into blang-blam-zowie territory. Eh, it made her happy.

Tuesday night was orchestra. On the way in I peeked through the newly repaired door into the sanctuary. No dead bodies, yay.

Rehearsal was…stimulating. Dragan left the podium to check a bowing with the Wicked Witch, and when he got back his baton was broken. I think I was the only one who saw the blond flash.

Didn’t faze Dragan. He did the whole rehearsal
with his bare hands
. I felt every stroke, every caress of those long, elegant, expressive fingers. Every cue made my undies boil.

Strangely, he didn’t try to talk to me at break or arrange a meeting later. As I left rehearsal I looked for him, just in case, but he wasn’t waiting to be discovered in the hallway. That might have been because my chaperones, Julian, Nixie and Luke, packed around me like chess pieces protecting their king. As they hustled me to my car, I couldn’t have tripped on the uneven sidewalk if I tried.

My friends shoveled me into the driver’s seat, then stood there and waved as I pulled away from the curb. They stood staunchly waving until I was around the corner and they were out of sight.

I sighed. I loved them dearly but after Dragan’s hot cues and steamy looks I could have used another lesson. Guess it’d be solo practice for me.

As I was resigning myself to a night alone, Dragan jumped in front of my car.

Chapter Twelve

I freaked, jammed on the brakes and tried desperately to stop, but I didn’t have a vampire’s lightning reflexes. I hit him.

Or I would have hit him. He burst into mist the instant before I made him road
pâté
. My car finally jerked to a halt. I sat there, stunned.

He materialized with a pop outside my window. I nearly jumped out of my skin. He tapped politely on the glass and waited for me to buzz it down before leaning in. “Don’t say anything. I don’t want us to be interrupted by well-intentioned pests. I mean
friends
.” He spoke in a low voice, almost whispering. “Heaven grant my enemies such friends. Go forward two blocks and make a right. I opened a parking space for you.”

Vampire ears must be extraordinary, if Julian and Luke could pick up normal voices a block away. Although that meant all I had to do was holler and my pests in shining armor would come running.

Knights. I meant knights.

While Dragan scared me with his popping out of nowhere and his hustling me places I’d never been before—both externally, like the fancy restaurant, and internally, like the dark, damp spaces in my sexual psyche—I was curious. Hadn’t he gotten me out of his system Sunday?

Besides, I could always holler later.

I took my foot off the brake, drove two blocks and turned right. Dragan kept pace with me, much as Luke had. I glanced at the speedometer. Twenty. Twenty-five. Thirty. I glanced at him again. He wasn’t even breaking a sweat. Vampires were kinda scary…and really intriguing.

The parking space he’d found, or made, as the cars looked a little crumpled—how strong were vampires, anyway?—was big enough to drive into straight, a miracle in that neighborhood. I turned off my engine and got out. “What do you want?”

“You.” He swept me into his arms for a brief kiss that set fire to my lips. “But that will have to wait. You don’t feel comfortable going to the ball on Saturday. I will take you to dinner and teach you dining etiquette.”

“How do you know I’m going to the ball?”

“Please.” The word held a note of arrogance. “The minute you made a beauty appointment with the amusing Dolly Barton, the whole world knew it.”

“Ah. Liese always did suspect she had a timeshare on a spy satellite.”

“Who said anything about sharing?”

“Um, right. Okay, I admit I’m going. But why teach me about eating? This is a dance, right?”

“There’s a dinner as well.”

“Crud. I’ve just remembered an appointment for that day—”

“Raquel.” He cupped my face between his hands, his palms warming me from my chin to my crown. “I wish I knew what caused your dread of society events.” He searched my eyes as if he could read the horrors there. “I am so, so sorry for whatever it is you endured. But this time, you’ll have my help. Do you trust me?”

“Well…yes.” I was surprised to find I did. Conducting, he was solid; as a flute player I felt I was in excellent hands. Maybe that had translated to the personal sphere.

So, because I thought there was an infinitesimal chance I could pull it off with the proper training and help, I said, “Okay. Take me to dinner.” His joyous smile sent my heart soaring.

His car was parked at the end of the block. When he
vroomed
out, I heard a distant baritone shout, “Zajicek!”

Poor Julian.

Half an hour later, Dragan pulled into the car port of Konrad Richtig’s, an elegant German-themed restaurant. I knew of the place even though I’d never eaten there; their sauerbraten, made of the finest grain-fed veal, was to die for, and even their vegetarian options were fancied up with things like caramelized onion and garlic-toasted pine nuts.

He tossed his keys to the valet parking attendant along with a twenty. “Two spaces, please.”

Yikes. Rich restaurants were not only out of my comfort zone, even the amenities were prohibitively expensive. It reminded me I was wearing my rehearsal getup of jeans and a white sweatshirt, its lace collar and cuffs added by my mother in a fit of “exploring other mediums”.

Dragan opened the heavy restaurant doors and allowed me to enter first into the dark hallway scented heavily with oiled woods and old money.

A gentleman stood behind a walnut podium, sashed up in a Count Cristo stiffsuit—the
maître d’hôtel
. He took one look at me and his eyes bulged in outrage.

Dragan swept in behind me, his expensive black coat encasing his broad shoulders, his long hair flowing as if an adventuresome wind had run loving fingers through it, that silver lock marking him as Somebody Special.

The sun came up on the
maître d
’s face. “Maestro Zajicek, how extremely good to see you again. Your table is this way.”