Insatiable. Meg Cabot

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      Chapter Thirteen

       10:00 P.M. EST, Tuesday, April 13

       910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11A

       New York, New York

      What is this?” Emil walked into the spacious master bedroom he shared with his vivacious and slender wife, holding a printout of the e-mail he’d found on his desktop.

      “Oh, hon,” Mary Lou said as she breezed by on her way to her dressing table. “That’s just a little Evite I sent out to all my girlfriends for the dinner party I’m having in Prince Lucien’s honor on Thursday.”

      Emil felt a small but persistent sensation in the center of his belly that was not unlike being poked over and over by someone with very long nails … a sensation with which, as it happened, Emil was not unfamiliar.

      “You sent out an e-mail about the prince?” he said. “You do realize that if this message falls into the wrong hands, it could jeopardize everything?”

      “Oh, don’t be such a ninny,” Mary Lou said. “I only sent it to my very best friends. Whose hands is it going to fall into?”

      Emil fought for inner patience.

      “The Dracul, for one?” he said drily when he could speak again. “The Palatine Guard, for another? Not to mention the humans? All the people who’d like to see us, not to mention the prince, destroyed?”

      “Oh, pooh,” Mary Lou said. She sat down in front of the large mirror behind her dressing table and began removing her makeup. “You’re being melodramatic. No one wants to destroy us anymore. The prince has the Dracul under control. The Palatine Guard don’t know where we are, and the humans love us! Look at how popular we are in books and on the TV. Why, if everyone found out, I’m sure I’d be invited onto Oprah as a special guest.”

      “Mary Lou!” Emil stared at her reflection in astonishment. “Someone is killing women! All over town! No one is going to be inviting you onto Oprah while women are being killed by a member of our brethren. And the prince isn’t going to want a dinner party in his honor. He’s going to prefer to keep a low profile while he’s in town, trying to find that killer.”

      “I have so many beautiful, intelligent female friends,” Mary Lou said, gazing thoughtfully at herself. “Why shouldn’t I show them off? The prince has been alone too long.”

      “Lucien’s not here,” Emil said, feeling as if he were drowning, “to find a wife. He’s here on business. The murders—”

      “And if he should happen to meet a nice girl,” Mary Lou said, interrupting, “while he’s here, would that be so terrible? Apparently he hasn’t had any luck in his own country. But you know we have the most amazing women in the world right here in the good old U.S. of A—”

      “Mary Lou.” Emil stared uncomfortably at his wife’s bare shoulders. “You understand that you’re putting me in a terribly awkward position. Lucien asked that I not mention his arrival to anyone, and here you are sending out e-mails to everyone on your cc list, an e-mail that could be traced back—”

      “Not everyone,” Mary Lou said indignantly. “Just my best single girlfriends, and a few of the married ones so as not to make it look obvious he’s being set up. None of them is employed by the Vatican, for goodness sake, or members of the Dracul. I just asked Linda and Tom, and Faith and Frank, and Carol from your office, and Becca and Ashley, and Meena from across the hall.”

      “Meena?” Emil was confused. Many things about his wife confused him. He was certain that even if they spent an eternity together—and it already felt like they had—he’d never fully understand her. “The prince … and Meena Harper? But she’s—”

      “Why not?” Mary Lou gave her naturally curly—and still naturally blond—hair a flip. “At first glance she may not seem like his type, but I like her. She’s got that cute little figure, and a pixie cut suits her. Most women can’t pull it off, you know, but she works it. And if the prince likes her, just think how grateful he’ll be to us. Besides,” she added with a shrug, “all she does is work to keep her and that no-good brother of hers financially afloat. I think she needs a break.”

      “She likes her job,” Emil said, thinking of all the times he’d seen his neighbor in her pajamas barefoot in their floor’s trash room, disgruntledly stuffing heavily crossed-out script pages down the chute to the incinerator.

      Well, maybe she didn’t always like her job.

      “Oh, sure,” Mary Lou said. “The soap opera thing. But do you think she’d work if she didn’t have to?”

      Emil thought about this. “Yes,” he said.

      “Well, that shows what you know about women, which is nothing. Look at those ladies she writes about on Insatiable, Victoria Worthington Stone and her daughter, Tabby. Victoria’s never had a job in her life, except for that time she was a model. Oh, and a fashion designer. Oh, and when she was a race car driver, but that was only for a week before she crashed and lost the baby and was in that coma. Those aren’t even real jobs. They say you write about what you wish would happen to you. So, obviously Meena wishes she didn’t have a job.”

      “Or,” Emil said, “she wishes she were a race car driver.”

      “And Prince Lucien would be able to provide for her.” Mary Lou went on, ignoring him. “And since the prince likes writing, the two of them already have something in common.”

      “It’s a very different kind of writing,” Emil said. “Lucien writes historical nonfiction. And anyway, he made it very clear when I spoke to him that he wanted to keep his visit under the radar. We’re at a very critical time with the Dracul. These murders—”

      “Oh, stop being such a worrywart,” Mary Lou said. “No man wouldn’t want to have dinner with a lot of pretty ladies.” She laughed and turned to poke her husband in his belly, which stuck out ever so slightly over the СКАЧАТЬ