Fangs for Nothing (3 page)

Then he jerked his head slightly and his dark eyes shifted in the same direction.

Josie Lynn frowned. Was there something actually wrong with this guy? Maybe he wasn’t quite right. Some of her anger subsided.

Then he did it again, a little more adamantly this time, and she realized he was silently gesturing to the tall, latex-clad woman next to him. So the kiss had been for this chick’s benefit. Although from the sour frown on the woman’s heavily made-up face,
benefit
might not be the right word. She looked pissed. And she had a crop.

Josie Lynn took a step away from her, slipping on some of the slimy sashimi.

The pirate reached out and caught her elbow to steady her, but she jerked out of his hold.

Okay, now Josie Lynn was truly pissed, too. She so did not need to be a part of this guy’s drama. He could use someone else to make the plastic-encased woman jealous, or scare her away, or whatever he was doing. She didn’t care. She did, however, very much care that she was now standing in the middle of over a hundred dollars’ worth of sushi-grade yellowfin.

She started to open her mouth to tell him so, but caught herself. If he were just some random drunken jerk, she probably would have socked him in the gut and given him a very sharp, very pointed piece of her mind. But this wasn’t just some drunken jerk; this was a guest at the wedding.

Assaulting one of the guests, physically
or
verbally, was not going to get her the stellar reviews she needed from the bride and groom. Presumably they liked this guy, since they’d asked him to be a part of their special day, and complaints from him could be the kiss of death for this job, literally. So, even though she wanted to gag on her own smile, she forced a wide, charming one toward the pirate-turned-kissing-bandit.

“You know I love our moments, too, but not while I’m working, sugar plum,” she cooed, mocking the ridiculous endearment he’d used, then dropped a pointed look at the mess around her. “It makes me clumsy.”

She couldn’t quite keep the annoyance out of her voice, even as she continued to smile.

“I am sorry about that, cupcake,” the pirate said, his dark, intense eyes twinkling with amusement. He was enjoying this.

God, she hated men.

He started to crouch down to clean up the mess, but Josie Lynn placed a hand on his arm; she noted the feeling of his bicep, bulging lean and hard, under his puffy shirt.

“No, honey bear, I’ll get it,” she said, annoyance clear in the tightness of her words, but this time directed more toward herself than at him. How could she be thinking about his damn muscles when profit was scattered all over the floor and stuck to the bottoms of her shoes? She might have blown this whole gig.

No,
he
might have blown it. Damn men.

But he stopped and stood, towering over her.

She dropped her hand from his arm, flexing her fingers as she did so, as if that would banish the memory of his lean strength and how much she’d liked the feeling of him. It didn’t work, but she gathered herself enough to wave over Eric, one of the college kids that worked for her.

“Get a broom and dustpan,” she told him, her no-nonsense demeanor somewhat returned. “And a mop.”

Eric nodded, but didn’t rush off quite as quickly as she would have liked. Making minimum wage only earned minimum speed.

So, even though she wanted to get away from this man as soon as possible, she had to wait, not wanting to leave the mess unattended. All she needed was someone slipping on raw fish or getting puree on their fetishwear.

She shot a glance to the woman in the shiny PVC catsuit . . . of course, the puree would wipe right off of that.

“I can wait here until he returns,” the pirate said, and this time when Josie Lynn met his gaze, she saw what looked like flashes of remorse in his dark eyes. That wasn’t much compensation, however.

But rather than respond to him, she remained rooted in the middle of the mess and scanned the courtyard for the bride and groom. As long as they still appeared happy, she should be okay. No harm, no foul. Aside from being out the pricey cost of the tuna. She could hardly charge them for an appetizer no one got to eat.

“I am really sorry, cupcake,” the pirate said from closer beside her, his husky voice no longer dripping with the syrupy-sweet quality he’d used earlier.

Josie Lynn stopped her search of the crowd and raised an eyebrow at him, not quite believing his apology. Men like this only said they were sorry when it furthered their cause. She’d seen it a dozen times . . . the last time less than three weeks ago.

Damn, men were bastards. Especially the good-looking ones like this guy. With deep, intense stares and roguish smiles. And who kissed a woman until she was senseless. And who probably made love to a woman as if she were the only one in the world who’d ever mattered to him.

Dear, freaking God, what was she doing? Imagining how this man made love? She needed to get a grip. A very serious grip.

Fortunately, her employee finally moseyed up—with only a broom and dustpan, but it was a start. And she could get away from this jerk.

But she couldn’t resist having the last word.

“No worries, sugar pie,” she said to the pirate, her voice taking on all the sickening sweetness his had lost.

Then, on an impulse, she sank her fingers into the cascade of ruffles on his chest and dragged his lips down to hers. She kissed him hard and thoroughly.

“Enjoy the rest of the party, sweet cheeks,” she cooed, before turning to head back to the kitchen, not needing to make direct eye contact with her employee to know he was sporting a bemused expression.

She didn’t slow her departure even as she slipped slightly on a chunk of tuna still stuck to her shoe.

Of course by the time she reached the kitchen, she wasn’t feeling so self-righteous. Why the hell had she done that? Really? After the mental lamenting about needing to be nothing but professional? Why would she potentially cause another round of raised eyebrows? And what if rubber-bound Barbie with her crop and black lipstick trotted over to the bride and groom and told them their caterer was busy playing kissy-face with the wedding pirate?

“And this, Josie Lynn, is why you are destined to be the Queen of Bad Decisions,” she muttered to herself. She needed to use the damn brain God gave her.

And not for evil.

She pulled in a deep breath and tried to focus on the chaotic kitchen. She couldn’t take back her behavior—or his, but she could finish this wedding with a bang. And that didn’t mean banging a pirate.

Even though she could imagine it. His body had felt really nice against hers. And surprisingly, he sort of smelled like the sea, fresh and manly and a little salty.

She felt her body react, nipples hardening, moisture gathering between her thighs.

Enough!
She shook her head. “So, the Queen.”

“Huh?”

Josie Lynn turned to her other employee, a slender, pretty blonde who was sadly reinforcing all dumb blonde jokes. Apparently minimum wage got her minimum speed with Eric and minimum intelligence with Ashley. And as soon as she noticed what Ashley was doing, all thoughts of kissing pirates and poor decisions vanished.

“Ashley! What are you doing?”

The blonde made a startled squeak and dropped the food syringe she was holding.

“I—I’m filling the éclairs with cream.”

“No,” Josie Lynn said slowly, “you are filling the éclairs with a crawfish and crab cheese sauce.”

She snatched up a pastry bag filled with vanilla bean and Grand Marnier crème and shoved it toward Ashley. “This is the right filling.”

Ashley gave her a pained look, but Josie Lynn barely acknowledged it, instantly counting the number of desserts ruined beyond repair.

Only a dozen. Thank
God.

“I’m so sorry, Josie.”

“No worries,” Josie Lynn said, realizing that response was becoming the mantra of the night. “Just do the rest with this filling.” She pushed the metal bowl filled with more crème toward her employee. “Please.”

“Of course,” Ashley said. “I’m so—”

Josie Lynn raised a hand to stop her apology. “No worries, just finish the rest and I’ll finish the minicrepes.”

Which are filled with the crawfish-and-crab cheese sauce
, she finished silently. And sarcastically.

“You can pull this off,” she said quietly to herself, determined to make this her new mantra of the night. “You can pull this off.”

Chapter Three

THE WEDDING CRASHERS

J
OHNNY
looked at the crappy punch on the table and said to Wyatt, “Seriously? This is a dry wedding? Who the hell has a dry wedding in New Orleans?”

“A dominatrix, apparently.” Wyatt glanced around the courtyard before lifting up his pants leg. He had a flask strapped to his calf. “But I was prepared.”

“You should have told me.”

“You should have read your invitation. It said it right on there they weren’t serving booze.”

“I barely glanced at it.” Johnny wasn’t fond of paperwork. Or details. He wondered where Lizette was off cursing him at the moment. So he had beaten her to the apartment that morning. His apartment. Which contained
his
stuff, he might add. And so he had broken off the locks her goofy henchman had installed and liberated his drum kit. They were his drums and he had gotten them off of Keith Moon back in the sixties. They were sentimental, not to mention the most expensive thing he owned by far, including his car, and he was not about to let Dieter take a crap on them or whatever he was planning to do in there. In his apartment. Where he paid the rent. And did he mention it was
his
apartment? He was not going to feel guilty that he might just be making life slightly more difficult for her. She was the one making his life difficult.

Especially when she did things like walk over grates and have her skirt blow up where he could see her slim, milky legs.

“So Stella told me about the VA being up your ass,” Wyatt said, retrieving his flask.

“Yeah. I ditched out on a meeting with her tonight. I figured if she’s going to be taking her sweet time clearing this misunderstanding up, I can take my sweet time giving her answers.” Johnny wasn’t sure why he was having such a strong reaction to Lizette, but he suspected it had to do with the challenge she presented: so buttoned up, yet so feminine. That might explain the weird reason that he had dreamed about her all day while he had slept, and why he’d woken up with a giant erection and the vision of Lizette wearing librarian glasses while riding him like a mechanical bull dancing in front of his eyes.

It had made him edgy, and now he had every reason to believe this wedding reception was going to suck. At least the exchanging of the vows had been short and to the point, though he could have done without seeing Saxon crawl down the makeshift aisle.

“That may be slightly counterproductive, but I can understand your frustration.” Wyatt unscrewed his flask and eyeballed the punch. “Do you think whiskey would taste good in that shit?”

Johnny eyed it. “Is that sherbet floating in there? That stuff is gross. It’s like swallowing a lump of phlegm.”

“Saxon loves the stuff.”

“Saxon is a moron.” Johnny normally loved that quality about him. It made life with him around highly entertaining. But at the moment, he would have preferred an open bar with top-shelf liquor. Or even cheap liquor. “Can I just have a sip of that straight? Please? I’ll give you five bucks.”

“You don’t have five bucks. The VA froze your assets, remember?”

Like he could forget. “Thanks for reminding me.”

But Wyatt took pity on him and handed him the flask. He took a nip off it, glancing around the reception. It was an odd assortment of vampires and mortals, the bride a vision in white leather, her crop whizzing through the air at random intervals and smacking the wall, causing Saxon to giggle. Saxon himself looked like a middle-school girl at her first dance, wearing skinny jeans, Converse, and a tuxedo T-shirt, his long blond hair crimped.

He looked happy.

Zelda looked happy.

Cort and Katie looked happy.

Wyatt and Stella were happy.

Johnny was happy they were all so goddamn happy.

Yet he couldn’t help but feel less than happy for himself.

He was, for lack of a better word, lonely. Which wasn’t an emotion he ever really felt. He was a social guy, and he surrounded himself with people. Friends, women, his sister. He was the guy who sat in the bar talking to the bartender, bouncers, and shot girls for hours, long after his shift playing drums for the night was over. So it was very unusual for him to feel like this. Maybe it was just all this coupling up and settling down that was going on around him. At least he still had Drake as his token single friend. They would have to start hanging out more while everyone else was at home getting laid.

Huh. That was not the least bit reassuring of a thought. Sex with a hot woman or trolling around with Drake. He would have run for the street and married the first woman in sight if those were really the only options, but unfortunately, marriage was a long time, and Johnny had generally found himself allergic to commitment. Which didn’t really make sense, because it wasn’t like he craved change. He hadn’t moved in five years, had lived in New Orleans for thirty, still enjoyed his sister’s company, and wore a pair of jeans he liked until they disintegrated. Even all his one-night stands over the years had turned into friends-with-benefits relationships. He’d never once had a true, never-see-her-again hookup.

So why had he always been so reluctant to commit? He had no idea. He had faked his own death to avoid a more serious turn in his relationship with Bambi. He’d never even lived with a girlfriend. The very idea seemed really . . . intimate.

“What’s it like living with Stella?” he asked Wyatt. It had only been two weeks since his sister had moved in with the bass player, and he was curious if they were still in love, or if toothpaste disputes had already killed the burn of passion.

But Wyatt grinned, his smile so wide and goofy, he rivaled Saxon for a split second. “Dude, it’s amazing. Everywhere I look, she’s there, either literally, or just there in the sense that her stuff is, and her personal touch on my apartment.”

Oh my God.
That sounded like hell on earth. Johnny couldn’t imagine looking in every direction and seeing the same woman over and over. It would be like watching
The Notebook
every day for a millennium. “Can I have that flask again?”

He took a long drink.

Then he forced himself to say the right thing, which was all true, but it didn’t change the fact that his hand was shaking just a little. “Well, I’m happy for you guys, I really am. Stella is a lot looser with you. She’s happy, bro, and I thank you for that.”

Wyatt clapped him on the shoulder. “Thanks, man. And your turn will come, you know.”

“I hope not.” Johnny figured he was working on being more responsible and less impulsive, and that was hard enough as it was. Adding a serious relationship on top of all that just might make his head explode.

“Don’t you ever want to wake up and just know that you’re going to turn and the woman you love is lying next to you?”

Johnny stared at his friend, who looked like he’d not only been struck by Cupid’s arrow, but had also eaten it. “I’m moving away from you because now you’re starting to get on my nerves. Go find my sister and cuddle. I’m going to find Drake and then maybe a bridesmaid to flirt with.”

But when he saw Drake, who had been forced to wear a puffy pirate’s shirt at the bride’s request in his role as best man, Johnny decided there would be no picking up women for Drake that night. He’d be better off flying solo.

There was no band, which seemed a little criminal to Johnny, but then again, as far as he was concerned, the best band on the street was theirs, and they weren’t going to play Saxon’s own wedding. Though Johnny could have tolerated the DJ a little more if he hadn’t been alternating between Frank Sinatra and booty-grinding music, neither of which put him in a better mood than his current state. Wandering through the courtyard, ignoring the food that had been set out for the mortals, he narrowly missed getting hit by a leather whip as he passed the head table.

Darting out of the way, he saw that one of Zelda’s bridesmaids was grinning at him, flicking her wrist teasingly, whip in hand. She was wearing a top hat covered in black and red feathers, and she had drawn black tears trailing down her face in makeup and had smeared her lipstick across her cheeks like she was bleeding. There were further fake bloodstains on her substantial cleavage, and as she grinned, he noted that her tooth was blacked out. Or maybe it was really missing. Possibly a whip injury. In any case, Johnny immediately rethought his bridesmaid project. Flirting with a cute girl was usually a foolproof method of improving his mood, but this was one scary bridesmaid. She clearly wanted to hurt him.

Johnny gave her a half smile, then got the hell out of the range of her weapon. He may be a vampire with excellent healing properties, but that didn’t mean it felt good to have his ass whipped.

Turning, he contemplated strangling himself with the leaves of a banana tree, and wondered when the last time was that he’d truly had fun. Probably at his own wake, if he had to be honest with himself. That had involved laughs, gambling, dancing, bull riding, and a spontaneous wedding that wasn’t his. Unfortunately, he was the only one who remembered it. He had been hoping that tonight would be a great night, given the potential of a vampire marrying a dominatrix. Instead it was like cirque du freak meets Lawrence Welk. There were actually bubbles floating down from the misters, and if he wasn’t mistaken, there was a transvestite dressed like Cher making her way across the dance floor with a very determined stride.

And Lizette Chastain was coming through the archway from the street into the courtyard, her posture angry as she marched straight toward him.

Shit.

Johnny contemplated hiding, but she had already spotted him. Besides, he was trying to be more mature. Which meant that when he ditched out on a woman and completely disregarded her rules, he needed to stick around and take responsibility for it instead of hiding. Hey, growing up didn’t happen over night. He was taking baby steps.

“Mr. Malone,” Lizette said, her voice clipped as she stepped right up to him, dressed in a suit that, while a lighter gray, was essentially the same one as the day before, though she was wearing lower heels with a splash of red on them.

“Ms. Chastain, it’s a pleasure to see you again. What brings you to a wedding you weren’t invited to?” He turned so that he moved under the archway, away from the view of the majority of the courtyard. She shifted as well, and they stood under the red, uneven bricks of the arch, the twinkle lights and dull volume of the wedding to his right, the dim light from Chartres Street on his left. Her lips were pursed in agitation and again it struck him at a completely inappropriate time how attractive she was. Everything about her was delicate. Except her expression.

“You are not a gentleman,” she accused him.

He wasn’t sure that he had ever claimed to be one. Growing up potato-poor in Ireland, he had learned that his fists spoke volumes, and that stealing a loaf of bread filled his hungry belly faster than trying to find work that didn’t exist. Then when he’d come to the States with Stella in the twenties, he had taken those lessons and applied them to running with the Chicago mob. In his immortal life, he had set aside crime and violence, and had established a pretty firm personal code of ethics, but that didn’t mean he knew a whole lot about which fork to use and putting out his pinky and shit like that.

So he just agreed with her. “Probably not.”

She gasped. “We had an agreement to meet at seven, and you did not attend our meeting. Not to mention that Dieter informed me you have stolen your drum set.”

“I can’t steal what I already own. Look, I didn’t want to deal with this today. I’m sorry I no-showed on you, but I didn’t want to sit there and answer questions for five hours when I had a wedding to go to. If I have a key to my apartment, and can tell you where everything is, and a couple dozen witnesses can back me up that I’m Johnny Malone, I don’t see what the big deal is. Just take me off the list and we can forget this ever happened. You can even keep the twelve hundred bucks if it will get the VA off my back.” The longer he spoke, the more irritated he felt. Seriously, where did they get off?

“That is not the way it works, as we discussed.” It was clear she was struggling to contain her frustration.

“Well, why do I have to follow their dumb rules anyway? I didn’t vote for any of those douchebags. This isn’t a democracy.”

Her face blanched. “We exist to ensure we
continue
to exist. Rules are in place to guarantee the safety of each and every one of our kind.”

“I think we’re doing just fine on our own. Here in New Orleans, people don’t give a shit if you’re a vampire. It’s cool to be a vampire, hip even.”

“You tell people the truth?” She sounded shocked to the core, and she actually swayed a little on her heels.

“No, not outright. But if we did, no one would believe us. They would just think we were pretending. Being a ‘vampire’ is part of a fetish lifestyle. People get fang implants and drink blood and dress Goth all over the city—and all over the country for that matter. This isn’t the Middle Ages, it’s a freaking great time to be a vampire. We’re trendy.” He had to say, he loved it. It made life a lot easier than trying to be something he wasn’t. “I think it’s awesome that Saxon could marry a mortal. If she makes him happy, he should enjoy it while he can.” Before Zelda got old and wrinkly and couldn’t lift her crop anymore.

“This is a
mixed
wedding?” Lizette looked like she might faint.

He frowned. “Sweetie, that sounds racist.”

“We can’t marry mortals. We can’t. It’s the antithesis of everything the VA stands for. I am shocked at the utter disregard for rules and self-preservation going on here. I can only tell you that my report back to my superiors will recommend a full investigation into the coven here and your misconduct.”

Oh God.
And he meant that most sincerely. He had just accidentally opened up Pandora’s Parisian box in the form of Lizette Chastain, and everyone he knew was going to kill him if the Vampire Alliance suddenly showed up in New Orleans, taking attendance and inspecting their quarters. “I think
coven
is a strong word. We’re just a cover band.”