On the Prowl (16 page)

“What exactly did the Council have to say to you that they neglected to say on Friday night?” he asked, holding up a hand to delay Robert from closing the car door and driving away.

Stefan snorted impatiently. “Just as before, they
said
very little. They asked intrusive questions about our people, questioned our motives for moving to the city, and generally made themselves look ridiculous. It was a waste of time, and mine is still of some value.”

“That sounds just like the other night. They didn’t mention anything new? Any new theories about who might be behind the attack?”

“Nicolas, who they think is behind the attack was never in doubt. They are convinced it was one of us, either you, or me, or Gregor. I can’t imagine there’s anything that could change their minds outside of the real culprit stepping forward and confessing. On the other hand, they have no proof to back up their suppositions, obviously. We all know we’re innocent. Eventually, the Council will realize that there’s no proof to be had, they’ll throw up their ineffectual hands, and they’ll move on. You should put them out of your mind and concentrate on your new mate.”

“You might be able to ignore it when someone accuses you of an attack on a head of state, Father, but I’m not quite so laissez-faire about the matter.” He leaned down into the car, his face set in grim lines. “I resent the hell out of the fact that the Council is trying to blame me for a crime I didn’t commit. I intend to prove that I wasn’t behind it, and then I intend to tell them exactly how little I care about the political power they think they wield. When I’m done, there will be no doubt in the mind of anyone on the Council that I wouldn’t take one of their jobs if they paid me for it.”

“Oh, relax, Nicolas. You sound ridiculous,” Stefan dismissed him. “You invest too much importance in the whole matter. As I said, the whole thing will blow over soon enough, and if it doesn’t … well, since none of us are guilty, the only alternative left to the Council will be to turn on themselves and tear each other to pieces. It would be no great loss, as far as I can tell. I’ve seen better organization at some of the properties we’ve pulled out of bankruptcy.”

Nicolas stepped back and shook his head. Clearly, his father really didn’t care about the accusations, beyond the annoyance he felt at having his schedule disrupted. Maybe that was what came of sixty years of playing the arrogant despot. Was that what Nic had to look forward to in another thirty? He grimaced.

“Now, go home, and put this entire matter out of your mind.” When Robert shut the car door and walked around to climb back behind the wheel, Stefan lowered the window halfway and leaned forward to get in one last jab. “I expect to hear I’m to be a grandfather within the next two weeks, Nicolas. Get to work.”

Nic watched the sedan disappear down the street and shoved his hands into his pockets. He’d love nothing better than to work on making those grandbabies his father seemed to want so badly, but in order to do that Nic would have to get close enough to touch his mate. Without her cutting off any important parts of his anatomy. Judging by the mood she’d been in when he’d left her, he thought his chances of that happening were what might politely be called slim-to-none.

He turned away from the Vircolac club and continued his way down the block, walking in the same direction he’d taken before he’d spotted his father. Until Nic figured out the way to make amends with his furious mate, he thought it might just be safer to keep walking. With any luck, he’d formulate a strategy before he reached Delaware.

*   *   *

“Oh, no, he didn’t.”

“He did. I can’t believe I’m saying this, but he so did.”

Saskia and her guest sat curled up on opposite ends of the sofa in the cozy den of her new apartment, sipping cups of coffee and marveling over the idiocy and unmitigated gall of her darling mate. It had taken her a good thirty minutes and half a plate of the cookies she’d dug out of the cavernous pantry to bring Corinne up to date on the saga of her war with Nicolas, but she’d finally gotten through the fight they’d had in the spare room. Now Corinne stared at her with eyes so wide she looked like a cartoon character.

“Oh. My. Lord.” The reporter shook her head slowly. “I mean, I got he was dumb from when we talked yesterday, but I had no idea he was
this
dumb. How did you keep from just killing him?”

“I think it had a lot to do with the fact that I was unarmed at the time. And since there’s no fireplace in that guest room, there weren’t any useful weapons near to hand.”

“No weapons? Excuse me, but aren’t I talking to the girl who can turn into a five-hundred-pound Siberian tiger anytime she darn well feels like it? Sweetie, you
are
a weapon.”

Saskia made a face. “Maybe, but you’re forgetting that if I do that, Nicolas can turn himself into a
seven
-hundred-pound Siberian tiger. It’s not like I have some sort of unfair advantage. If anything, it’s the other way around.”

“Oh, right. There go my fantasies about what it would be like to have the upper hand over a man once in a while.”

“If you’re looking for stories on that subject, don’t come crying to me.”

Corinne reached forward to pat her hand. “Don’t look so gloomy, sweetie. You’re not alone in the man trouble arena, you know. Far from it. Every woman I know, including the stupid-happy ones—hell, especially the stupid-happy ones—had to whack some sense into her man before he was any use at all.”

“Think they could give me some pointers? Because I just told you about the last time I tried that. We gave each other a set of ridiculous ultimatums, remember?”

“Yeah, that strategy probably wasn’t destined for success, but that doesn’t mean you can give up. I mean, not unless you’ve decided he’s not worth it.…” Corinne trailed off and looked at Saskia curiously.

“I don’t know,” Saskia said, feeling hope and doubt and anger and confusion all bounding around inside her like puppies on speed. “I thought he was worth it. I mean, I’ve always thought he’d be worth it, but—”

“Uhhhh-ohhhhh.”

“Uh-oh?” Saskia repeated. “What-oh?”

“You’ve been holding out on me,” the reporter accused, her lips curving into a teasing smile. “Nicolas Preda isn’t just your fiancé; he’s your girl crush!”

Saskia felt her cheeks burst into flame, which made her immediate denial lack a certain something.

Like credibility.

“Girl crush?” She tried to make the words sound as implausible and distasteful as fat-free chocolate. “I don’t even know what that is.”

“Sure you do. Everyone’s got a girl crush, the boy you just fell madly and passionately in love with somewhere before the age of twelve. Mine was Jimmy Devellano. He lived next door to my aunt Renata. I was ten; he was fourteen. In his mind, I didn’t exist, but in mine, we were going to get married, move to Long Island, and have, like, five kids. And die of old age before thirty-five, of course. Most girl crushes never go beyond writing your first name with his last name over and over and over in your notebook while you’re supposed to be working on math problems, but some of us get luckier than that.”

Saskia shoved aside a mental flash of her childhood diary, the pink leather and little gold lock concealing line after line of “Saskia Preda” written in a loopy childish hand. “That’s just ridiculous. I never had a girl crush on Nicolas.”

Which was the truth … sort of. Saskia had never had a crush on her fiancé. She’d just had the infinite bad luck to fall in love with him at the age of eight and had never managed to find her way back out again.

“Don’t lie to a new friend, Saskia. It will set our relationship off on the wrong foot.”

Saskia gave an inarticulate cry and dropped her head to the sofa cushions.

“What is wrong with me?” she groaned, banging her head a few times for good measure. Too bad the cushion wasn’t a brick wall. Maybe that would knock some sense into her.

“A man,” Corinne shot back. “I thought we’d already established that.”

“That, and the fact that I must be an idiot to still be here angsting about it. The way he behaved was inexcusable. I should just cut my losses and leave, right?” She raised her head and looked to her friend for agreement. “Right?”

“If it was that easy, why did you call me and ask me to come over here to talk you out of it?”

“That’s not why I—” Saskia gave up and set aside her empty cup to rub her hands over her eyes. She laughed helplessly, mostly at herself. “I had to ask you to come here because he told me I wasn’t allowed to leave the apartment without his permission.”

Corinne sucked in a deep breath, held it for a moment, then exhaled, her lips pursed in consideration. “Okay, setting aside for the moment the complete assholery of that whole ‘without his permission’ bullshit, I’d say it just proves the point that after he left the apartment you called me to come keep you company instead of grabbing whatever wasn’t nailed down and running as fast as you could go in the opposite direction of wherever he went. Am I right?”

“You’re right.”

“So, what does that tell you?”

Saskia made a disgusted sound, this time directed entirely at herself. “That I’m a spineless idiot with pathetic taste in men?”

“Stop that.” Corinne frowned at her. “No one is allowed to call you spineless, Saskia Arcos, least of all yourself. A spineless woman would never have stood up to her big, bad fiancé in the first place, let alone handled him as neatly as you did this morning in his office. You’re a long way from spineless. What you are is, well, kind of submissive.”

“Submissive?” Saskia couldn’t have felt more shock if the other woman had reached out and punched her. “I’m submissive? Since when?”

Corinne shrugged. “Can’t say. I haven’t known you that long. But judging by your personality and what you’ve told me about your family, I’m going to guess since you were a twinkle in your daddy’s eye. There’s nothing wrong with it. Some people are just born that way.”

“I am not submissive. Whips and chains? So not my thing!”

“Good; that will leave more for Reggie.” Corinne chuckled. “I’m pretty sure she and Misha wear out the ones they’ve got pretty regularly. Oh, stop blushing. Reggie isn’t ashamed of who she is, and you shouldn’t be, either. Not that I’m saying you’re exactly the same. There’s more than one kind of submissive in the world, and I’m pretty sure you and Reggie are completely different kinds. Reggie’s a sexual submissive. She likes her man to dominate her in the bedroom; it turns her on. You’re more of a … well, I don’t know what the technical term is, but you’ve just got a submissive personality.”

“You’re contradicting yourself,” Saskia grumped. “You’re the one who just told me I wasn’t spineless.”

“That’s because you’re not. Look, stop getting hung up on the terminology and just follow along with me, okay? When I say you’re submissive, I’m not saying you’ll just let anyone who wants to walk all over you. That’s not submission, it’s pathologically low self-esteem, and it’s the sort of thing that requires years of intensive therapy. You just have the sort of personality that means you’re perfectly happy not to run the show, you know what I mean?”

Saskia just stared at her.

Corinne sighed. Setting her mug on the coffee table, she leaned forward as she tried a different explanation. “So far, we’ve only known each other a couple of days, right? But let me tell you all the different ways you’ve demonstrated to me, in that short period of time, that you prefer not to take the dominant role. Ready?’

No, she wasn’t, but she nodded anyway, because that’s what Corinne seemed to expect.

“Okay, first, when we met at the party, you were perfectly sweet and polite. In fact, you’re like a small-talk guru, but that was as far as you took it. I was the one who put us on a first-name basis, not you. If it were up to you, we would have exchanged a couple of words of chitchat and gone our separate ways. You might have thought later that I was nice and wondered if we would have had anything in common, but you would have left it where it was. Am I right?”

Saskia frowned. “It was my engagement party. I had responsibilities. I couldn’t just think about who I felt like talking to most.”

“Mm-hm. Who threw that party, by the way?”

“What do you mean, who threw it? My parents did. It’s tradition. The bride’s parents always throw the couple’s engagement party.”

“Right. But who did the planning? Drew up the guest list? Chose the location? Picked the food?”

“My parents. They wanted to be certain we included everyone who might expect an invitation, and it only made sense to have it at the Predas’ new hotel. But I certainly did my share,” she hurried to add, starting to feel uncomfortable. “I consulted over all the major decisions.”

“Of course you did. It was a lovely party. And I meant it about those mushroom things.” The woman smiled, but her gaze remained serious and focused. “Second, after we talked a little bit and developed a rapport, I was the one who gave you my card. I passed you my digits, thereby offering the possibility of us making contact in the future and potentially exploring the possibilities in friendship. If we’d been in a bar and at all inclined toward lesbianism, the correct terminology would be that I picked you up.”

That startled a laugh from Saskia, and Corinne grinned back.

“Not that you’re not gorgeous,” the reporter continued, “but I’m unfortunately straight and madly in love and lust with my sexy fiancé. But this brings us to point number three—even after I gave you my card with all of my contact information on it, I am still the one who made the next move by calling you the next day and suggesting that we get together and you let me introduce you to my friends.”

Saskia did not like the direction where this was heading and she struggled to find some way to refute Corinne’s points. Which, unfortunately, were all true.

It took Saskia a second, but she did manage one point in her favor. “You did call me, but I was the one who suggested coffee!”

See! See!
she wanted to shout.
I’m not just a passive follower! I can do stuff, too!