Lover's Bite. Maggie Shayne

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      “She has secrets, that one,” Topaz said. “How about Seth and Vixen?”

      “They haven’t checked in yet,” Reaper told her. “Have you, um…Have you heard from Jack?”

      She hesitated and glanced Jack’s way. She got the immediate impression that he was listening closely to her conversation. He wouldn’t have any trouble hearing Reaper’s end, given all vampires’ heightened senses. “Actually, he’s here with me.”

      “Tell him I said hi,” Jack said.

      She didn’t. Reaper could hear the greeting for himself. He sighed, and said, “Be careful, Topaz.”

      “Believe me, I am.”

      4

      “Oh, hell.”

      Jack rejoined Topaz at the checkout counter of the 7-Eleven, having ditched her just long enough to place a call of his own. She was handing the cashier a wad of bills to pay for her shampoo, conditioner and the dozen other beauty supplies she’d insisted she couldn’t get along without for one more night, things she hadn’t packed because it was “so much easier to just buy them here.”

      At Jack’s muttered curse, Topaz shot him a quick look over her shoulder. “Anything wrong?” she asked.

      He didn’t speak out loud, because he didn’t think the checker had made the connection just yet and he certainly didn’t want to encourage her to. Take a look at the tabloid in the rack—upper left slot, he told Topaz mentally.

      Frowning, she glanced at the rack of magazines and newspapers standing beside the cashier. Jack had no doubt that the banner headline and side-by-side photos of Topaz, back in her mortal days, and her mother, caught her eye just as quickly as they had caught his. When her eyes widened, he knew for sure.

       DAUGHTER OF LEGENDARY ACTRESS RETURNS FROM THE GRAVE TO AVENGE HER MOTHER’S MURDER

      She blinked in shock and quickly grabbed the issue, folded it over the sensationalistic front-page headline and dropped it onto the counter. “This, too,” she said. He thought her voice seemed to quiver. Not so much that a mortal would detect it. Maybe not even another vampire. But he was more attuned to her than most—than anyone alive, he imagined. And that realization bore some further thought, but not right then.

      The cashier nodded and snapped her chewing gum. Looking bored, she continued ringing up purchases and stuffing them into a bag.

      Topaz gripped the plastic bag by its handles and hurried out of the store. Following, Jack hit the key ring button to unlock the car before she got to it, and by the time he slid behind the wheel she was in the passenger seat with the newspaper unfolded on her lap.

      “Listen to this,” she told him as he started the car. “‘Tanya DuFrane, daughter of the legendary actress Mirabella DuFrane, vanished a decade ago. It was rumored at the time that she had been very ill, and most of Hollywood assumed she simply wanted to die in privacy. However, a reliable source claims that Ms. DuFrane is alive and well, and has returned to L.A. determined to learn the truth about her mother’s death.’” She looked up at Jack. “It goes on, sensationalistic blatherings about how Mirabella was shot and—” She lowered her gaze to the paper, scanning it again. “A half-dozen crackpot theories as to who did it and what became of her body. The fact that an eyewitness has seen me, and that I appear to be in ‘the pink of health.’The pink of health. Do I look pink to you?” As she asked the question, she ran her fingertip over the pale skin of her forearm.

      “Does it say where you’re staying?”

      “No, but it’s implied.” She ran a finger down the column of text. “Here. ‘The younger Ms. Du-Frane appears to be retracing her mother’s steps on the final night of her life.’” She clenched her jaw and muttered “Idiots” through her teeth.

      “Do you think Rebecca Murphy…?”

      “There hasn’t been time,” Topaz said. “We only left her ten minutes ago.” She shook her head. “No, it couldn’t have been her.”

      “So who else have you spoken with while you’ve been here? Who else even knew you were coming?”

      She shrugged. “You knew.”

      “Oh, come on, Topaz, be realistic.”

      “These rags pay a lot for this kind of garbage. And it wouldn’t be the first time you betrayed me for money.”

      “It wasn’t me.” He was wounded, actually, that she could even entertain the thought. He wished he could look her in the eyes or delve into her mind to determine whether she believed him. He tried, but she was blocking—not deliberately, he thought. It was anger and mistrust keeping his mind from probing the depths of hers. Digging any deeper would take more concentration than he could muster up while simultaneously driving and trying to think of convincing arguments.

      “I gave you information to help you. Why would I do that if I were going to turn around and throw roadblocks in your way?”

      “Oh, come on. You convince me you’re on my side to find out more facts to sell, then stab me in the back.”

      “Topaz, I knew where you were staying, and I knew why you had come out here before I ever arrived on that villa’s doorstep. I could have sold that information to the tabloids without ever setting foot in California.”

      She lowered her head. “Maybe that’s not all you’re after.”

      He sighed, frustrated as hell.

      “If you want to convince me, Jack, just tell me why you’re really here.”

      He was quiet for a long moment, so long that he could feel her speculation, practically hear those wheels turning in her mind. She thought he was taking his time so he could make up a good lie, he realized. Say something, you idiot, he told himself.

      “I have never felt remorse before. Not in all my years of conning women. Never once. But I felt it with you. I thought it would go away, but it’s been getting worse instead of better. And there’s more. I—I’ve missed you.”

      She was staring at him, probing. He wished he could let down his guard, let her dig around inside his thoughts and see that he meant what he said—but there were too many things she couldn’t know.

      “And besides all that, I kept getting the feeling that this mission of yours could be dangerous.”

      “So you want me to believe you’re selfless?”

      “Hell, no! I thought by coming out here, helping you do this thing that means so much to you, I might somehow atone for my sins and these feelings of regret would go away.” He thumped a palm on the steering wheel. “I don’t like feeling this way, Topaz. It’s affecting my work.”

      “Your work?”

      “Yes, my work. How am I supposed to move on to the next mark if I have to worry that I’ve somehow developed a conscience?”

      She drew a breath, then blew it out slowly. “I suppose that’s at least…plausible.”

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