Stay the Night (5 page)

Chris caught the scent of something like citrus and dark, sweet violets, and guessed it came from the red wine he was drinking. “Anyone but you.”

White teeth flashed briefly before he picked up his drink and merged back into the shadows.

Chris watched Nacho Man lead Killer Cleavage out of the bar and toward the nearest elevator. “Am I that obvious?”

“You're a quiet, beautiful woman in a loud, ugly place. An orchid among weeds. You define obvious.” He placed his empty wineglass back on the table. “Men have been besieging you since the moment you arrived, yet each time you've politely declined their attentions and sent them on their way. One must draw from that certain conclusions.”

Usually Chris picked up right away on other people watching her—an occupational hazard—so she felt mildly annoyed not to have noticed his interest. “What have you concluded?”

“You came here for me.”

He was either deadly serious, or simply having fun with her. Even with her ten years of experience evaluating what people said, and why, the elegant accent made it hard to judge.

Chris waited to hear more, but he didn't expand on the outrageous statement. Instead he lifted a narrow, long-fingered hand and with a single, sinuous gesture conjured up a cocktail waitress.

He might have the voice, the class, and the moves to be the Magician, Chris thought, but he was too young. The fact that he was British also didn't fit. They knew the Magician had helped himself to rare art collections and museums in seventeen countries, but he'd never pulled a job or sold his goods in the U.K.

Magic Man didn't seem to like the Brits, so it was a safe bet that he wasn't one himself.

“Yes, sir?” The waitress's grin stretched so wide it distorted the shape of her nostrils. “Would you like another glass of wine?”

He shook his head. “A ginger ale for the lady, if you would, please.”

The waitress trotted to the bar, ignoring three other patrons trying to flag her down, and returned in thirty seconds with the soda, which she plopped in front of Chris without a glance in her direction.

“Thank you.” Chris waited until the waitress reluctantly withdrew to attend to another table before she asked the stranger, “How did you know what I was drinking?”

He answered with only a deep, velvet-soft laugh. The resonance of it danced across her skin, as intimate and warm as a lover's whispered secrets.

Slightly unnerved by her physical reaction, Chris drew back.
You're here to work,
she reminded herself,
not to flirt with mysterious foreign strangers in the dark
.

Across from the main bar, the three-piece band returned from their dinner break and positioned themselves behind their instruments. After a short sound test and tuning, the eldest member of the trio switched on the microphone overhanging his keyboard.

“How are we all doing tonight?” The Jerry Garcia look-alike waited a beat, but no one replied. “That's great, that's great. Ladies and gentlemen, we'd like to welcome you all to the Bar with a View at the St. Carlson Hotel in beautiful downtown Atlanta. I'm Greg Martin, and these two crazy guys behind me are Izzie Palerma and Scott Chiznowski, and we are”—he stopped and played the opening chords to the first song of the set—“the Eighties Machine.”

The houselights dimmed, and a disco ball descended out of the ceiling over the dance floor, turning slowly to reflect the multicolored beams directed at it from a circle of flood lamps. Chris automatically blocked out the band's enthusiastic, slightly discordant version of Duran Duran's “Hungry Like the Wolf” and several other nostalgic megahits while she finished her soda. She watched the clientele and studied the furnishings and fixtures, picking out what she thought were the best spots to plant microphones and recorders.

As Chris made her survey, several waitresses, women, and a couple of men drifted over to speak to the man in the shadows. She might have suspected he was dealing drugs, but she saw no exchanges of money or the sly handoffs that were usually involved in trafficking in public. She did overhear the man refuse from everyone who came to him offers of drinks, dances, and company for the evening. Yet everyone he turned away left smiling. In Chris's experience the only people who commanded that degree of deference were either wealthy, famous, or both: actors, rock stars, tycoons, and politicians.

No wonder he thought I came over here to hit on him
.

Whoever the Brit was would have to remain a mystery; Chris had to keep focused on the job. And right now the job had her teetering on the edge of depression and exhaustion. Realizing it was time to go, she took a five out of her wallet and tucked it under the edge of her coaster before sliding out from behind the table.

“Admitting defeat already?”

“Calling it a night.” She saw a woman walking to the ladies' room slow down to stare in his direction. “You shouldn't be lonely for too long. Good-bye.”

She hadn't taken two steps away from the table when a cool, strong hand slid around her wrist.

“Don't go yet, love.”

 

The mortal female didn't resist Robin of Locksley's hold. For this he was glad, absorbed as he became in the texture and warmth of her silky skin against his. From the moment he'd first laid eyes on her several hours ago at the auction, she'd enchanted him. He'd recognized her at once as the art dealer pictured in the advertisement for the gallery's medieval art show, but it had not done her justice.

“There's no reason to stay,” she said.

Along with her obvious virtues she had a manner as direct as a man's and as pitiless as one of Robin's arrows. That, too, he found captivating; it had been centuries since any mortal female had denied him anything.

Of course, he could not tell her that when she had left the auction, he had followed her here. That would frighten her and spoil the game.

“If you go now,” he lied, “we may never see each other again.”

She gently eased her wrist from his grip. “I'll try not to let that ruin my life.”

Her resistance puzzled him. A small percentage of people were slow to be affected by or were immune to
l'attrait
, the scent his immortal body shed to attract and control humans. But his talent, the ability to charm any mortal he touched, had never failed to sway even the most defiant human.

Perhaps it had more to do with her than him, Robin thought. Everything about her attested to her character, from the dignified set of her shoulders and spine to the clever choice of her garments: a businesswoman, her well-cut dark rose jacket and slim skirt said, one who disdained hiding or apologizing for her sex. The pale pink silk scarf she wore knotted around her slim neck suggested that equally delicate lingerie lay beneath the lace confection of her cream-colored blouse.

Many human men had watched her with avaricious gazes during the auction. So many that Robin had not attempted to approach her there.

Perhaps it was due to her legs, which could only be called superb. Robin imagined easing the thin straps of her heels from her feet and sliding the shimmering stockings from those long, curvy limbs. He might have done so had she succumbed to
l'attrait
. Bespelled by his scent, she would not have been able to leave his presence or resist any request he made.

The woman's obvious intelligence and confidence indicated a very strong will. Perhaps she could not easily be swayed by anything, even his Kyn talent. Which would be a problem indeed, for this human female possessed a prize that had eluded him for half a millennium:
The Maiden's Book of Hours
, a medieval illuminated manuscript that Robin had coveted, chased, and lost for more than five hundred years. Now that he knew exactly where it was, he would not permit it to slip through his fingers again.

“It is getting late,” she was saying.

Robin had no intention of allowing her to leave him, not until he further tested her remarkable restraint. “You will never know, then.”

“Know what?”

He took her hand again, lifted it, and brushed a kiss across her knuckles. “What
my
stratagem was.”

The intimate gesture seemed to amuse rather than impress her. “So tell me before I leave.”

Robin wondered how she would react if she knew that he'd deliberately sent the brunette call girl over to distract the last inebriated male who had pestered her at the bar, or that he'd cleared everyone from the tables around him to create an oasis of calm in the noisy club. An oasis intended to bring
her
to him.

“I have endeavored to keep you from discovering”—he turned her hand and touched his lips briefly to the thin blue veins on the inside of her wrist—“that I came here for you.”

At last gratifying surprise slightly rounded her cognac-colored eyes, revealing the glints of fawn and gold in her dark irises. A moment later it was gone. “Seeing as we've never met, I doubt that.”

“In life, perhaps not.” He admired the play of the light cast by the mirrored ball over the strands of fiery hair she'd tamed into a smooth twist at the back of her head. “There are other worlds. Other lives.”

She studied him just as closely in return. “I don't believe in quantum theory, past lives, or reincarnation.”

“Nor do I.” Slipping into the old way of speaking was dangerous, but he didn't care. “It matters not, as long as you will stay.”

“I don't know you,” she replied, her tone remaining maddeningly reasonable, “and I never pick up strange men in bars.”

“I'm Rob.” He gave one end of her scarf a playful tug. “Tell me your name and we'll no longer be strangers.”

“It's Chris.” Her head turned as the music slowed, and the humans gyrating on the dance floor embraced and began swaying together. Without looking at him, she added, “I really can't stay. I have to go into work early tomorrow.”

As she made her excuse, Robin could hear a wistful note in her voice, and saw a glimmer of envy in her eyes as she watched the other mortals dancing.

She might not want him, but she wanted to dance.

“Then we shall not waste another moment.” He laced his fingers through hers. “Stay for this song, Chris. Stay and dance with me.”

She regarded him for the space of ten heartbeats before she turned and led him toward the crowded dance floor.

Robin enjoyed many of the freedoms of this modern era, but none so much as the dances that permitted a man to take into his arms and hold close any woman who gave her consent. During his human lifetime, such scandalous contact would have resulted in the instant ruination of the woman's reputation and an immediate end to her partner's bachelor status, if the woman's father didn't demand other, more lethal forms of satisfaction.

Not that dancing with this mortal was completely safe. As his seneschal so often reminded him, he was Robin of Locksley, immortal Darkyn lord and suzerain of Atlanta. Becoming personally involved with a human and interfering in the business of the mortal world, however superficially or justifiably, endangered him and his
jardin
.

Ever since returning from the Realm, however, Robin had felt restless. He shouldn't have gone to the Kyn's annual tournament, at which the Darkyn gathered to spend a few weeks away from humans in order to live as they had during medieval times. Usually Robin enjoyed the challenges and celebrations that had long ago been their only form of entertainment, but this year too many old tragedies had come back to haunt him. The unhealed wounds of the past had nearly cost him his friendship with Aedan mac Byrne, suzerain of the Realm, as well as Jayr, the woman they both loved.

Entangled with the ugly plots, brutal confrontations, and attempts on the lives of Jayr and Byrne had been the tragedy of Robin's past and his darkest secret. No one but Dr. Alexandra Keller, the
sygkenis
of the American seigneur, Michael Cyprien, had guessed why Robin so loved Jayr, the only child of his long-lost lady, Marian, who had died in childbirth. God willing, no one else ever would discover that Robin was Jayr's father.

Once on the dance floor, Robin guided Chris around to face him, encircling her waist with his free arm while lifting their entwined fingers to hold her hand over his heart. She was tall for a woman; if she moved two steps closer she could tickle his mouth with her curly red eyelashes or kiss the hollow of his throat.

Chris did neither of those things, but stepped back until several inches separated their bodies.

Undaunted, Robin spread his free hand over the gentle curve of the small of her back, where a delicious amount of body heat permeated the thin material of her dress to caress his palm and fingers.

“You feel very warm,” he said, bending his head so that his breath stirred the smooth strands of hair coiled above her ear. If he could get her alone with him, he could question her about the manuscript, discover where it was, and learn what sort of security the gallery would be using to guard it. “Are you uncomfortable?”

“I'm fine.” Chris did not press herself against him; nor did she strain away as she followed his lead. She maintained that respectable distance between them as she danced. She did not look up at him, however, but kept her eyes on the band's gray-haired singer as he crooned the words to the gentle tune.

“It's pretty, isn't it?” she asked. “I think it was the only hit Spandau Ballet ever had.”

“Spandau Ballet.” He'd heard of many dance troupes, but never that one. “I cannot say that I am familiar with them.”

“Before our time,” Chris said. “My mother loved this song.” Her eyes shuttered and her voice changed, growing crisp and impersonal again. “How did you know what I was drinking? Did you ask the waitress or the bartender?”