Pale Stranger (PALE Series) (9 page)

After three hours of work I stumbled out of the living room where Benson had put me so our conversations didn't drown out one another. I suspected he didn't want to see me break down at each call. His sharp ears caught my shuffling feet in the hall, and he found me in the kitchen drowning out my stress with a nice, tall glass of water. I caught him leaning against the doorway with his arms folded across his chest and a big grin on his face. "Tough time?" I nodded; my mouth was full of water. "What do they teach kids in college these days?"

I gave myself a big gulp of water before I replied. "How to drink and fall asleep in uncomfortable classroom chairs," I quipped.

"Anything I need to know about?"

"Yeah, one of the ladies said Mr. Somebody couldn't work with any of the times you gave me, so you needed to call him back at some number." He looked alarmed at my lack of specific information, so I waved my hand toward the living room. "I wrote it down."

"In your shorthand?" he teased.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, but I translated it into English after I was done talking with his secretary," I assured him.

"And did you get through the pile or still need to earn the large salary I'm paying you?" he asked me.

"Got through, and I'll have to add on a stress tax," I replied.

He raised an eyebrow. "Stress tax? Sounds serious."

"And seriously expensive," I added. "It brings my daily fee up to, oh, about a million dollars."

Benson smirked. "Is that all?" He took out his wallet and thumbed through the bills. "Did you want to be paid daily or at the end of the week?"

I drooled at the sight of all those one hundred dollar bills flashing by beneath his thumb. "Whenever's good for you," I whispered.

He stopped his torturing of me, snapped shut the wallet and destroyed my dreams by stuffing the container back into his pocket. "Then I'll wait until the end of the week. That will ensure you stay here that long."

I glared at him. "That's a dirty trick."

He shrugged and crossed his arms over his chest. "All's fair in love and wallet."

I faked outrage and insult. "Fine then, be that way. Is there anything else you might want, your Royal Highness?" The moment I saw the lecherous look cross his face I knew I'd made a terrible mistake. "Not that," I scolded him.

Benson sighed. "Then I having nothing more for you to do today, Angel."

I clapped my hands together. "That works great for me because I need to go to the library for some research."

"College students still go to the library?" he wondered.

I rolled my eyes. "Yes, we're not all Neanderthals," I countered. He gave me a disbelieving look, and I hung my head. "All right, the professor is making us because he wants citations from real books and not Wikipedia."

"The class must have been devastated to learn the news," he mused with an evil smile.

"You're telling me. I expected some of them to burst out crying because they had to leave their dorms to do it," I quipped. I glanced at my watch; almost four. "But anyway, I'll leave you to your exciting job on the phone and go to my exciting homework in the library."

I whipped past him, but not fast enough to escape his hand that shot out. I turned and found him with a worried expression on his face. "Joking aside, if you want the money now I can pay you."

I smiled and patted his hand before I removed it. "I'm sure I can survive for five more days," I assured him. "And I'll be back tomorrow, so don't worry about that."

He grinned and nodded. Then I was free to go to my gas-guzzler of a car and drive back to campus. The college was a decent-sized place of a couple city blocks, and that wasn't including the dorms. Somebody had actually planned out this place and set the library in the middle of the campus to give easy access to all the degree workers. The library had three floors that were open to the public, and the fourth was closed off except with special permission. That floor held the dustiest and moldiest of the books, and thus they were the most expensive.

Thankfully I didn't have any research that needed dusty books, and I wandered my way to the geology section on the second level. The floors of each level were slick linoleum except for the sitting areas with the tables. Those had carpets so the students couldn't slide the chairs around the tables in races. Now they took the trays from the food places and pulled those along the grassy areas like sleds.

The floors were open in the center so being on the top floor you could look down over the railings to the other ones below it. The geology section ran along the balcony of the second floor, and like a studious student I went straight to it, but not without finding trouble on the way. The trouble was some rough-housing assholes whose brains were mush from all the alcohol. They decided the library with its maxes of bookshelves was the best place for a game of tag. I climbed the winding stairs that went straight up to all the levels, and collided with one of the players being chased by the tagger.

They zoomed past, but I lost not only my patience but my balance. My hands flailed for the stairs railing and missed, and I felt myself fall backward into the abyss of a fall with a broken neck at the finish line. I had an angel on my side in the form of a tall, husky figure who caught me on the fall back and saved me from a long drop with a quick stop. I glanced up at my savior, a handsome young man of twenty-two with short blond hair and a smile that dazzled me. "Easy there," he teased me as he righted me onto the second floor. "It's a hard floor at the bottom."

I shakily smiled and looked myself over for any bumps from the collision; everything was where it should have been. "I didn't really plan for a one-way trip down," I replied.

"It looks like it. You'd better sit down." He led me over to the tables and I collapsed in one of the hard chairs. He sat down opposite me. "You need me to get you anything?"

"No, but you can tell me your name so I know who to thank," I answered.

"It's Will Tanner. Now are you going to tell me who I just saved?"

I held out my hand. "I'm Trixie Calhoun." He gave my hand a good shake, though not any harder than I was still shaking from the near-death experience. "So what are you in for?" He stared at me blankly. "What are you majoring in?" I rephrased.

"Oh, the social sciences. You know, psychology and sociology," he told me. I would run into a handsome guy who probably wanted to study me rather than date me. "And what's yours?"

"Rocks, and I was going to be doing some boring research with them before that hit-and-run," I replied.

He flashed that smile again. It was mesmerizing, like a certain pair of blue eyes. His physique was powerful, with strong, tanned muscles and tight-fitting clothing that showed off all his curves. His golden hair was even lighter from a lot of sun exposure, and he had an easy, friendly manner to him. I physically jolted myself from my thoughts; without realizing it, I had compared Will with Benson. Will was the complete opposite of Benson in his dashing, tanned body and outward demeanor, and he still had brains enough to be going to college.

"You're looking me over like I'm your next meal," he teased me.

I sheepishly grinned. "Sorry about that, just thinking about-well, about other stuff."

He leaned across the table and dropped his voice. "I hope it's some good other stuff."

I blushed; this guy was really forward, but that wasn't something I hated too much so long as he didn't grab my ass like some of the customers at the diner. "Maybe it was, and maybe it wasn't."

He glanced at his watch and frowned. "I guess maybe we can find out later. I have to go to a study meeting with a friend." He pulled out a folded slip of paper and handed it to me. "When you can pull yourself from your rock books, give me a call." He left, and I opened the paper; it was his phone number and address. He lived off campus on a well-known party street, but then most of the streets were party streets if college students lived there.

I pocketed the paper and resumed my studies, but managed to get revenge on my would-be assassin. The idiot taggers were still playing a few minutes later when I sat at the end of the table looking through some books. I saw them running down the tables toward me and recognized the attempted murderer. When he flew by my foot happened to slip out from beneath the table, and the guy went flying face-first into the rough, cheap, commercial rug on the floor. He slid for a yard and clutched his face in pain before he swung around and glared at me. His face was one long rug-rash, complete with little pebbles from the other students walking on it all day.

"What the hell did you do that for?" he screamed at me.

I put on my best confused expression. "What? I didn't do anything. You tripped because you were running."

My fake expression didn't work; he scrambled to his feet and rushed me. I dove over the table in time to escape his clutches, and kicked some books back in his red face for good measure. He howled at the pain, but that didn't stop him from running around the table after me. I wove in and out of the tables with my pursuer close at behind, but I had the upper hand. My body was nice and skinny, but his was bulky; he had a hard time squeezing between the people at the other tables, and by the time we'd gone past a half dozen tables he had a dozen people chasing him.

They tackled him and people came out of the bookcase woodwork to see what was the matter. Somebody tossed a chair, and the brawl began. I dodged chairs and stepped over overturned tables to snatch my bag and hightail it out of there. I heard later it was the biggest fight ever to take place in the library; even larger than the Great Computer Chair War of '08. I hurried home before the cops arrived, and was a good little girl for the rest of the evening.

CHAPTER 9

"So have an exciting time at the library?" Benson asked me the next day.

I shrugged. "Not really. Just read some books, met a guy after an assassination attempt, and started a library-wide brawl that ended in three concussions, a lot of broken chairs, and even more broken fingers." He blinked at me in bewilderment, and I shrugged. "All right, maybe I exaggerated the number of concussions, but the fight did spread to most of the floors of the library."

"You met a guy?" he slowly repeated.

I rolled my eyes; that would be the one thing he'd pick up on. "Yeah, he caught me before I fell backwards on the stairs."

"He must have left an impression on you to mention him," he quietly commented.

"Well, he did save me from the floor making an impression on me," I pointed out.

I noticed Benson was stiff. "No doubt good-looking."

As evil as it sounds, I had a hard time not snickering; Benson was jealous. "I'm afraid so."

"Tanned and intelligent?"

"Right on both accounts. He is a college student, after all."

"That doesn't imply intelligence," he countered.

I folded my arms across my chest and frowned. "So what am I, chopped liver?"

"You're my Angel, but today you need to be my chauffeur, too," he replied.

"Your chauffeur?" I had to make sure I heard him right; he was actually going away from the house, and only for the second time since I'd met him.

He nodded. "Yes, I need to go to my business to attend a very important meeting." He pulled out an address with directions. "This is where we need to go. Do you need any other instructions?"

I shook my head; I knew the city much better than the country. "Nope, this'll work just fine. It's just a few blocks from my campus."

"Good. Let's get me ready for the trip."

We went through the sunblock ordeal, but he didn't try to ravish me. I was disappointed, but he was distracted by this meeting and only wanted to hurry to the city. He dressed in his black attire and led me through the side door of the kitchen and under the thick canopy that led to the garage. Inside was a black car with the rear windows heavily tinted and a dividing glass between the front and the back. "We can communicate via intercom," he explained to me.

"And here I thought I'd have to learn Morse code," I teased. Things must have been serious because his stoic face didn't crack a smile. He slid into the back and I slipped behind the wheel, noticing first that there was a tag over the rearview mirror that denoted a handicapped person on board. That must have been how he got away with having such darkly tinted windows.

I drove out of the garage and onward to victory, which in this case was not getting lost and stuck in traffic for an hour. I followed the instructions to the letter and we arrived at a broad, forty-story tall office building. I drove around back to a parking garage and found his spot; it was prime real estate at the front closest to a side entrance of the building. I parked the car and, since I didn't know how to use the com system, knocked on the glass. "We're there," I called to him.

I heard his door open, and I hurriedly stepped out. With a briefcase in hand Benson looked like a real businessman, if a businessman was trying to imitate the invisible man. Without a word he led me to the side door and into the building. We entered the lobby, but there was a ninety-degree partition that hid us from prying eyes. Close at hand was a private elevator which had a sign beside the doors; For Official Use Only. I felt pretty official when Benson called the elevator to us and we stepped inside. This wasn't your normal, metal-walled elevator, either; it had soft padding and no annoying music. The doors closed behind us and Benson tapped the number for the top floor.