Devil at Midnight (39 page)

He stretched farther into the engine, exposing two tantalizing dimples at the top of his hindquarters. Grace’s mouth did its best to go desert dry. Maybe he sensed her attention, because he spoke. His voice was dark and smooth, with just a hint of a Texas twang.

“Told you on the phone I wasn’t interested. All dozen times you called.”

“You never heard me out,” Miss Wei said.

Mr. Durand straightened, braced his arms on the side of the open hood, then slammed it down with a bang. Grace’s heart began to beat faster as she took in how broad his shoulders were. A snug-fitting and oddly spotless white T-shirt clung to his tapered back, making very clear the fact that he didn’t have an ounce of fat on him ... exactly the way Grace liked her men, to be truthful. Despite Mr. Durand’s leanness, the muscles under that clean white cotton rippled with contained power. His hair was long enough to need tying back, and just as black and shiny as the finish on his car. His hair would have to be cut, of course; leading men couldn’t run around looking like Indian braves. For herself, however, Grace liked the ponytail.

As if to warn her how much she liked it, her panties dampened in a hot, quick rush-a tad embarrassing, she thought. If Mr. Durand looked this good from the front, she might be in trouble. Grace prided herself on always behaving professionally.

“I’m not an actor,” he said, still not turning to her employer. ‘ And if I were, I wouldn’t star in no damn flick called I Was a
Teen-Age Vampire
.”

“It’s bound to make heaps of money.”

“I don’t need money,” he snapped.

“You owe me, Christian.”

“I don’t owe you shit,
Naomi
.”

It wasn’t so much his language as his unabashed hostility that had Grace sucking in her breath. The sound wasn’t loud, but Mr. Durand spun around like lightning on hearing it.

He was facing her then, and his eyes went wide. Grace’s heart slammed her ribs, but he seemed more shocked than she was. Knowing pretty well how she looked, she was used to men reacting to the sight of her. This man’s response took the cake from them all. His head jerked back like someone had popped a knuckle sandwich into his chin.

He bit out a word she thought meant
shit
in German.

“Well,” Miss Wei purred, her gaze shifting back and forth between them. “Isn’t this interesting?”

Grace’s brain recovered enough to realize that Mr. Durand’s face was movie-star gorgeous, which probably accounted for why her pulse was pounding like a jackhammer. Oh, he didn’t resemble James Dean or Marlon Brando, but he had that can’t-take-your-eyes-off-him charisma. She judged he was about Dean’s age, early twenties or thereabouts, a little lined from working outdoors but still young enough to pass for eighteen. His coffee dark eyes smoldered with hypnotizing hints of gold. His lips were thin, it was true, but a girl could slice her heart on those high cheekbones. Even his arms were sexy, the muscles graceful as they hung loosely at his sides. And, by golly, he was
tall
-six feet and then some, she was willing to bet. Neither the recently departed Dean nor the still-rising Brando could pretend that.

Best of all, from the toes of his cowboy boots to the dashing widow’s peak of his hair, Christian Durand screamed
dangerous
..

“You’re right, boss,” Grace said, before she could worry how it would sound. “Every red-blooded female in America is guaranteed to sigh over him.”

 

 

C
hristian couldn’t wrench his attention from the woman who’d traipsed uninvited into his barn with Nim Wei. She was the spitting image of his Grace, lost to him for—Christ-nearly five centuries. This woman was a little older, but every year had given her a blessing. Her face had character to go with her prettiness: a shadow to make her glow shine brighter, a stubbornness to her peach soft jaw.

Her tidy outfit of pedal pushers and crisp white blouse was ridiculous, of course, a girl playing dress-up as someone far more serious and less sensual than she was. Her figure, on the other hand, was precisely the sweet temptation he remembered: a buxom, narrow-hipped torso set atop a pair of showgirl’s legs. This woman’s hair was shorter than Grace’s, waving only to her shoulders, though it was the same deep, dark red.

Movie actress hair, he supposed.

Vampire that he was, with all the knee-jerk responses that went with that, he’d started hardening the instant he saw her.
Hardening
wasn’t the word for what he was doing now. Running his eyes up and down her very warm-blooded beauty had his prick screaming for mercy inside his jeans.

It didn’t care that she couldn’t truly be his lost beloved. It was chomping at the bit to burn down this barn with her. On the bare floor right in front of him sounded fine, with his pike shoved up her pussy as far as it would go. He winced as his cock struggled harder against his zipper, but the erotic images wouldn’t stop. It had been too long since he’d let loose with a woman. He had too little trouble imagining this gal’s ankles around his ears.

“This is Grace,” Nim Wei said in that insinuating voice of hers. As distracted as he was, he marveled that he made out the words at all. “She’s my close personal assistant. If you agree to star in my movie, you’ll be seeing her every day.”

The girl seemed startled by her employer’s promise, but she stuck out her hand gamely.

“Grace Michaels,” she said. “I’m very pleased to meet you, Mr. Durand.”

The name belatedly registered.

“
Grace
?” he repeated, abruptly hoarse. His normally cool palm turned fiery where she clasped it.

“Michaels. But please call me Grace if you like.”

He couldn’t release her hand. Her name was Grace, and her eyes were as clear and green as a peridot. All the times he’d stared into them rushed back like yesterday. He remembered these very fingers touching him with such kindness he’d feared he’d cry, remembered the way her ghostly energy could tingle straight up his cock. The nerves there were tingling now jangling, really, like a telephone ringing off the hook. Grace wasn’t a ghost anymore. She was as solid as the ground under him. Lord help him, if she brushed against him, his dick was going to erupt.

“Christian,” he said, having to push his name past the constriction inside his throat. “My name is Christian. Please call me that.”

“Christian,” she agreed nervously.

When she attempted to tug her hand back, his fangs punched down from his gums, reacting precisely as if she were prey fleeing. Her accelerated pulse was lub-dubbing in his ears, a siren song he wasn’t certain he could resist. Alarmed by his out-of-control responses, he let her go and stepped back.

Grace massaged her palm as if he’d hurt it.

“So?” Nim Wei said to him.

He looked at her, and he had no idea what she was asking. He wasn’t even certain what he felt. However it had happened, this was Grace, the same Grace who’d promised him forever and then abandoned him in his darkest hour. His face flashed hot and then icy. Did he hate her? Did he love her? Did he simply want to fuck her without stopping for the next ten years?

The painful surge of blood to his groin told him the answer to that was affirmative.

“Christian?” Nim Wei said, her lithe little arms folded. “Are you going to help me make this movie or not?”

She
doesn’t
know, he thought. Not who Grace was. Not
what she
means to me.
All
she knows
is that her
assistant
has my
cylinders
running hot
.

Grace couldn’t have remembered Nim Wei, either, or she wouldn’t be trotting after her like a faithful girl Friday. Hell, the prissy sweater she’d tied around her shoulders was the same shade of powder blue as Nim Wei’s scarf. The witch of Florence was Grace’s goddamned mentor, as if Nim Wei weren’t responsible for half the trouble that befell them both back then.

All of which boiled down to Grace not remembering him.

He stared into her wide green eyes, his immortal heart contracting in his chest with an emotion very much like terror. She wasn’t putting on an act. He saw no recognition in her expression. She was flushed; attracted, unless he was mistaken, and embarrassed because of it, but only in the way—how had she put it?—any red-blooded American girl might be.

Without realizing it, he’d folded his arms in an echo of Nim Wei’s posture. He caught a flash from Grace’s mind of how he looked with his muscles bulging in the white T-shirt. That definitely didn’t help his blood pressure drop. When Grace extended her hand to touch his bare forearm, her fingers were trembling.

“We’d both consider it a favor if you’d agree,” she said. “Miss Wei needs an ace in the hole to break out of making B movies.”

“And you think I’d be your ace.”

“Oh,
absolutely
,” Grace breathed, her enthusiasm momentarily teenager-like. “I know you’re inexperienced, but we could coach you. A person’s presence is what matters for most movies. Acting is something plenty of folks can learn.”

“And
you
could coach me,” he said.

Grace shot an uncertain glance at her boss before turning back to him. “We both could. Or we could hire someone. Whatever you’re comfortable with.”

Despite feeling more discomposed than he had in five centuries, despite loving the peaceful life he’d built for himself out here, Christian sensed a rare canary-eating grin rising up in him. Love Grace or loathe her, he couldn’t hate the idea of having her at his beck and call.

As the grin spread across his face, threatening to bare his fangs, Grace tensed warily back from him.

“
You
coach me,” he said firmly, “and we might have a deal.”

 

ANGEL AT DAWN