Any Way You Want It (28 page)

She knew she was probably being completely naïve—that woman in the horror movie who went to the basement to see what the strange noise was—but she didn’t believe Ren meant her any harm.

Nor did Vittorio. Who she’d deduced was the same supernatural creature that Ren was—because he should be long dead too.

She also deduced Ren, and thus Vittorio too, must be a vampire. The name of his band, the Impalers. His penchant for sleeping like the dead, all day. His lack of appetite, for food, anyway.

They all pointed to his being a vampire. Even Emile at the restaurant mentioning Ren’s dislike of garlic. All vampire lore.

Still, Maggie was pretty certain Ren had never bitten her…she didn’t think. She sighed. Who knew anymore?

Maggie stopped at a street corner, peering around her to get her bearings. It was getting dark, and she needed to decide what she was going to do. She still had no idea.

Should she just stay away from Ren? Or should she confront him with her knowledge? Would he think she was crazy? But he was the one who was undead.

She laughed at her own reasoning. The sound was a little crazed. Not good. This was so not good.

Then a thought hit her. What if she approached him with her knowledge and he killed her? Maybe it was one of those situations: “Now you know the truth, so you must die!”

Okay, she really must be naïve and crazy, because she had a hard time believing that one. Why, she really couldn’t say.

She peered up into the waning light to read the street sign. Chartres.

She squinted down Chartres, realizing she was close to the fortune-teller’s shop. Without thought, she moved in that direction.

Bells jangled as she pushed open the door to the shop and stepped inside. The calming scent of sandalwood immediately filled her nose, and she pulled it in deeply. She need calming. Boy, did she need calming.

An older, almost frumpy, woman greeted her from behind a counter where there was a register and several racks of crystal pendants and other mystical jewels. “How are you this evening?”

Maggie managed a smile, although it felt brittle and forced. “Is Hattie in tonight?”

The woman gave her a regretful smile. “She is, but she’s just finished up her last reading.”

Maggie nodded, turning to leave, just as Hattie and another woman stepped out from the back of the store.

Hattie was still speaking to the woman, but she lifted a hand toward Maggie, indicating that she saw her.

Maggie wasn’t sure if that meant she was supposed to wait, but she wasn’t sure what else to do, so she remained, studying a shelf of crystal balls, seeing her distorted reflection in a few of them.

Did Ren have a reflection? She’d been in bathrooms with him, but she couldn’t remember.

Another slightly crazed laugh bubbled up in her throat, but she suppressed it.

Hattie finished up with the woman, telling her that her instincts on this matter were totally right.

Maggie wondered if that was a sign for her too. The woman thanked Hattie, then left the shop with another jingle of bells.

“Hello, Maggie,” Hattie said, surprising her.

Maggie turned to smile at the older woman.

Hattie smiled in return, but Maggie could see her smile was filled with concern. “Come back with me.”

“Oh,” Maggie said, surprised. “I thought you were done for the evening. I don’t want to hold you up.”

Hattie shook her head. “You aren’t. I think we need to talk.”

Another chill snaked through her, a sensation which was becoming very familiar to Maggie today.

She followed the older woman into the back.

“Sit,” Hattie said, gesturing to the chair in her small closet of a room. Maggie did, perching on the edge of the seat, holding herself rigid.

“A lot is going on, huh?” Hattie said, as she took the seat across the round table from her.

You could say that, Maggie thought wryly, but she only nodded.

“I think I should use the leaves again, just to help clarify what I’m seeing.”

Maggie nodded again, regarding her with a little uncertainty. She wondered what Hattie was seeing. Was it as weird as what she was seeing?

As she’d done the other day, Hattie prepared the tea leaves. Maggie turned the cup over, then watched as Hattie peered into it.

“So you did meet the new man.”

Maggie nodded, even though Hattie was stating rather than asking.

Hattie looked up from the cup, narrowing her eyes. “I don’t need the tea leaves to see that. I can sense him on you.”

Maggie frowned at that. “You can?”

“He’s inside you.”

Maggie supposed that should sound slightly naughty, given the things they had done together, but she knew Hattie didn’t mean it that way. And given her suspicions, she did wonder if there was more to them being together; him being inside her. She did feel different since meeting him, but was that really anything supernatural?

Maggie couldn’t contain her own questions, her own need to understand what was going on.

“Can you see him?”

Hattie nodded, looking back into the cup. “Yes.”

“Is—is he…” Maggie couldn’t even say that words. It was just too insane.

“Maggie, you have nothing to fear from your differences.”

Maggie’s breath caught. “What are our differences?”

Hattie smiled at that, her expression indulgent. “You know. And you are right to believe he would never use his…oddities to hurt you. If anything, he wants to share them with you. He has already.”

Maggie paused at that. He had? Then she suddenly knew it was true. Every time he’d made love to her, she felt a bonding, a connection, that seemed beyond anything she could have imagined.

“But I do see here,” Hattie said, again gazing into the cup, “that you have a hard time ahead.

Something that will shake you greatly. And you need to learn to trust totally.”

She shook her head. “And I don’t know if you can do that. The leaves are not clear on that count.”

Maggie frowned. She knew trust wasn’t easy for her, but what could happen that would shake her that much? After all, she was still considering remaining with Ren, and she wasn’t even sure what he was.

“Just remember,” Hattie said, holding Maggie’s gaze, “not everything is as it seems.”

Boy, was that true. Not comforting. Not helpful. But obviously true.

“This is all I can really see,” Hattie said, her voice low and serious. “You have to trust yourself, and you also have to let him sort out what’s holding him back. Give of yourself, and then let the cards fall into place.”

Maggie left Hattie feeling oddly calm, but also still a little unsure. What did she do with all of this information? She walked a little longer, realizing from the darkness that Ren had probably gone to the bar to work.

She headed in that direction, taking her time, mulling over what she would do.

When she reached Bourbon, she picked up her pace, suddenly needing to see him. As she got closer to the bar, she recognized his voice, and that made her feel better. It made her realize that no matter what, she did trust him. Hattie said she needed to do that.

She had to tell him what she knew.

She walked into the bar fully expecting him to be aware of her the moment she stepped into the room. But instead, he continued to sing, not even looking in her direction. There was no sign he knew she was there.

How not vampire-y of him.

Maggie studied him from where she stood in the doorway. He certainly didn’t look like a vampire, or whatever he was. And he’d never bitten her, at least not in the way she’d thought a vampire would. She didn’t think nibbles here and there counted.

She strode over to the stage. She waved at him. He waved back, his expression neither surprised nor relieved to see her. His mouth was set in a grim line.

Did he know she knew? Her heart thumped in her chest, but she calmly walked to the back of the room to find a seat and wait to talk to him.

The set seemed to take forever, but finally Ren did announce they were taking a break. But like the first night, Ren didn’t approach her. Instead he fiddled with the equipment.

Did he know something? He was certainly avoiding her. His demeanor was beyond chilly.

But she wasn’t going to be frightened by his behavior. She walked up to the stage.

“Ren, can I talk to you for a minute?”

Ren glanced at her, almost looking surprised she was still there. She half-expected him to tell her no.

But he nodded, stepping down off the stage.

Maggie headed toward the side door that led to the sidewalk. Ren followed, but she noticed he kept his distance. Even when they faced each other on the street, he didn’t get within arm’s length of her. Something had happened to both of them since last night.

“What’s up?”

Maggie stared at him for a moment. His tone was so cool and disinterested that her confidence wavered.

But she didn’t buckle. Instead she met his aloof gaze.

“I know who you are,” she stated. “Renaldo D’Antoni.”

R en fought to hide his reaction. Shock that she had figured that out. Surprise that she wasn’t recoiling from him in horror. Dismay that after finding out who he really was, she didn’t appear to be willing to let him go, to flee of her own accord.

Didn’t this woman have a lick of sense or self-preservation? And he’d actually believed ignoring her was going to send Maggie packing? If finding out he was a composer who should have been dead 150 years ago didn’t do it, the cold shoulder sure as hell wasn’t about to work.

“You do realize what you’ve just said is crazy,” he managed to say, too stunned to think of anything else.

“Yes, I do.” She sounded so calm, so accepting, that it totally unnerved him. “But somehow, some way, you are him.”

“I don’t know what you are talking about,” he said, trying to add as much disdain as he could.

“Yes, you do. And I think that’s why you are afraid to have a relationship beyond a fling. It is a rather large secret,” Maggie admitted.

Ren stared at her. She really did have an uncanny way of shocking him. She couldn’t wrap her mind around the fact that he found her sexy, that he wanted to have sex with her, but she accepted that he was undead for nearly two centuries.

He frowned at her. She gazed back, regarding him with a calm and contemplative expression.

“So are you a vampire?”

“Maggie—”

“I’m deducing that from the band’s name.” Then realization widened her eyes slightly. She left him to peek in the doorway at the stage. Only Dave, the bassist, was up there, the rest down mingling with the crowd.

“They’re all vampires too, aren’t they?”

Ren didn’t answer right away. Maggie was the first mortal to know the truth about him in over 150

years, and frankly, he didn’t know how to react.

When she turned back to him, to his absolute shock, she reached for his face and tugged up his lip to inspect his canines.

“They look normal.” She didn’t seem relieved or disappointed, just matter-of-fact.

Ren jerked back and glared at her. Not a goddamned lick of sense.

“So are you going to just stand there and pretend you don’t know what I’m talking about?”

Where had the timid, uncertain Maggie gone?

He shook his head.

“No. I’m not going to.”

“And is that why we can’t have something more between us?”

Ren widened his eyes. “Isn’t that enough?”

“Not really,” she said. “After all, you could have hurt me at any time, and you never did.”

“No,” he agreed, and that was why she had to go now—if it wasn’t already too late. He glanced around, half-expecting a car to careen out of control and hit her. Hell, a meteor to fall from the sky. His vampirism wasn’t going to kill her, but her love for him would.

That was his curse. He considered telling her that outright, but from the look on her face, her trust and determination, she wouldn’t listen. She might believe him. Hell, she should believe him.

She believed he was a vampire. But somehow he didn’t think even impending death would deter her. And frankly, he was afraid he was too late. She’d said she loved him…and he loved her too.

So what the hell did he do?

He looked over at the hotel. Maggie’s hotel. The site of Annalise’s death.

He ran a hand through his hair. How the hell did he let this all happen? He’d known he was playing with fire from the moment he saw Maggie.

He had to save her. He had to make sure his curse didn’t hurt her. Kill her. And her death was imminent unless he got her to leave. Got her to fall out of love with him.

He studied her face, seeing her feelings for him clearly in the set of her mouth, in the depths of her eyes. She wasn’t going to walk—and even if she did, she wouldn’t stop loving him.

Wasn’t that something he’d been drawn to about her? The obvious loyalty he could feel in her energy. Maggie didn’t fall in love easily, and she didn’t fall out of love easily either.

What the hell was he going to do?

Maggie stepped up to him. Her small fingers touched his face, grazing his cheek, his hair, back to the curve of lips.

“Is it so terrible to imagine us having something more than a fling?”

He closed his eyes. No. God, no. Then he froze under her caress.

What the hell was he doing?

Maggie rose up on her tiptoes and pressed her lips lingeringly to his.

“I’m not afraid of whatever you are,” she murmured against his mouth.

He pulled back. “You should be.”

She stared at him, her eyes roaming over his face. “I just can’t believe that.”

“That’s what scares me,” he told her honestly. “Maggie—”

She came forward and kissed him again. Damn, he loved ever single thing about how she felt, how she tasted. The small noises she made when he deepened the kiss. But he couldn’t continue this. She couldn’t love him. He had to think of something to stop this.

But he couldn’t think with her so close. With her knowing what he really was. Who he really was.

And that, in and of itself, was wonderful. He had never shared that with another mortal. Not Nancy. Not Annalise. He hadn’t wanted to—yet, Maggie knowing about him felt absolutely right.