Insatiable (22 page)

Especially since she’d been having such a strange week.

“Aw, Jon,” she said, her eyes filling with tears. “Thanks so much.” She moved toward him to give him a hug.

“Whoa,” Jon said, hugging her back. “What’s going on? I just said you looked nice, that’s all. What’s with the waterworks?”

Fortunately at that moment there was a knock at the door, and Meena, hastily releasing him and wiping her eyes—worried her mascara was running—went to open it as Jack Bauer barked at her heels, excited that there was a visitor.

A man in a beige windbreaker and a baseball cap, holding a huge black box with a gold ribbon around it, asked, “Meena Harper?”

“That’s me,” she said, and took the box, slipping him the five-dollar bill she was holding.

“Thanks,” he said, and headed back to the elevator.

“Um,” Meena said as he stood there, waiting for the car.

“Yeah?” He looked back at her inquiringly.

“Nothing,” Meena said, and started to close the door. Then she had second thoughts, opened it again, and said, “Just…look out for pepperoni pizza, okay?”

The deliveryman stared at her, uncomprehending. “Okay.”

Meena smiled and closed the door. Then she brought the package inside the apartment, Jack Bauer tripping after her.

“What?” Jon said. “Cholesterol?”

“Choking,” Meena said. She set the box down on the dining room table. “But maybe he won’t now, if he’s careful. Who could this be from?” It definitely had her name on it, not the countess’s.

She untied the gold ribbon and lifted the lid off the box. It was filled with white tissue paper. She parted the folds, then caught her breath….

The leather tote with the jewel-encrusted dragon slinking down the side.

In ruby red.

“It’s the bag,” Meena breathed, holding it in one hand and reaching out to stroke each individual crystal with the other.

“What bag?” Jon asked.

“
The
bag,” Meena said, feeling as if all the wind had been knocked from her. “The bag I’ve always wanted. In exactly the right color. Shoshona has it in aquamarine. But the aquamarine is ugly. The ruby is perfect. Just perfect. Oh, Jon. It’s so beautiful.”

She wanted to cry all over again. She had never seen anything as gorgeous.

“Well,
I
didn’t get it for you,” Jon said. He began to paw through the tissue in the box. “Who did? Is there a note or something?”

“
He
got it for me,” Meena said, not looking away from the bag. “I know he did.”

Only how had he known? She’d never told him. They’d never discussed anything as ridiculous as Meena’s inappropriate lust for a Marc Jacobs bag with a crystal dragon slinking down the front, that she could—by the way—never have afforded.

“Who’s he?” Jon wanted to know, pawing harder. “Lucien? Prince Charming? Is that the cutting edge in morning-after gifts these days? Purses?”

“It’s a tote,” Meena said, opening it to see that the messenger bag strap could be exchanged for an elegant gold chain for evening wear or, alternately, a slim leather strap for more formal business events. “Not a purse.”

“Oh, of course it is,” Jon said, pulling a silver envelope from the depths of the box. “Here’s a note.”

The envelope had the word
Meena
written across it in elegant, slightly old-fashioned handwriting that she instantly recognized as Lucien’s, although she’d never actually seen his writing.

“What’s Mr. Big Pants got to say for himself?” Jon asked crabbily. Meena supposed he was jealous because he’d never gotten anything as tasteful and elegant for any of his ex-girlfriends. She thought she re
called his having bought one of them a bracelet at Tiffany once, only to have her break up with him when she found out he’d bought the exact same bracelet for their mother for Christmas.

Meena put the bag down and ran a nail beneath the fold of the envelope. She pulled out a piece of ivory stationery.

My darling Meena,
he’d written.

She smiled. She’d never been called
my darling
by anyone before.

Meena read the note once and then another time.

Then her eyes filled, once more, with tears. “He’s not coming,” she said to no one in particular.

Jon stared at her. “Wait…you mean to the concert tonight?”

She nodded, not looking at him. She let the note flutter to the floor.

“He’s not coming,” she said again.

Then she turned and walked over to the armchair where she’d been curled up a little while earlier, not writing, and collapsed into it, the tulle skirt of Mary Lou’s Givenchy dress puffing up all around her.

Jon bent to pick up the note.

“Wait,” he said. “Are you
crying
?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me,” Meena said miserably, lifting her knees and hugging them to her chest.

“Well, don’t cry all over the countess’s dress,” Jon advised her. “She’ll probably make you pay for the dry cleaning.” He read the note. “‘
You have slain the dragon
’? What the hell does that mean? How big is this guy’s dick, anyway?”

Meena dropped her forehead down onto her knees and started to cry. “Don’t be coarse,” she said.

“Holy crap,” she heard her brother say in some alarm. “Don’t
cry,
Meen. I know you’ve had a bad week, but he’s not breaking up with you. He’s just got to work. He’ll probably see you tomorrow. I mean, for Christ’s sake. He sent you a really nice note. And a purse.”

“It’s not a purse, it’s a tote. And that’s just it,” Meena said, lifting her tear-stained face. “I never told him.”

“You never told him what?” Jon asked, coming to sit on the arm of the chair after he’d pushed some of the tulle out of the way.

“I never told him about it,” Meena said. “I’ve been wanting that purse—I mean tote—forever. But we can’t afford it. And I never told him. It’s like…” Her voice dropped to a whisper. “It’s like he read my mind.”

Jon raised his eyebrows. “Well,” he said drily. “I could see how that would be upsetting for someone who’s been doing just that to people for fifteen years or so herself.”

“Shut up,” Meena said, unable to keep from laughing a little.

“No,” Jon said. “Really. It must be a real blow to your ego to have to admit there might be someone else out there who can do what you do. Oh, wait…no, never mind. The prince can’t tell when people are going to die. He just has the psychic ability to know what handbag his girlfriend secretly lusts after.”

Meena reached up to wipe her eyes. “You’re not funny,” she said.

“Then why are you laughing?” he asked.

“Okay,” Meena said with a sigh. “Maybe I overreacted. But it’s pretty weird. You have to admit.”

“I think the fact that you spent the night having sex with a prince is pretty weird,” Jon said. “But who am I to judge? So, since you’re going to be home tonight…Chinese food and a DVD?”

Meena smiled. She still felt shaken.

Shaken to her core, actually.

But it was good to have Jon around to ground her.

“Sounds good,” she said.

“Great.” Jon gave her knee a pat through some of the tulle. “I’ll walk over to the video store and pick something out. As a compro
mise, I’ll get something with a romance where stuff also gets blown up. Moo shu sound good? I’ll get garlic chicken, too, for a change. Come on, Jack.” He slapped his thigh, and Jack Bauer, delighted, scrambled after him as he walked toward the wall for the dog’s leash. “We’ll be back in a bit.”

Meena, smiling—though still a little shakily—got up from the armchair and, after Jon and her dog had gone, unzipped Mary Lou’s dress, stepped out of it, and hung it carefully back on the hanger in her closet. She would, she supposed, get some other chance to wear it. It wasn’t such a terrible thing.

She picked up the note Lucien had written to her and read it again. It made her smile and made her heart beat a little faster.

You have slain the dragon.
She didn’t understand what it meant either.

But she liked it.

She decided to take another shower and wash off all the makeup she’d put on—not to mention the perfume. No sense wasting it on Jon. She’d wiggled out of her pantyhose and was padding barefoot over to the bathroom to turn the water on and take off her sexy black slip and panties—she
definitely
wasn’t suffering through those all night if she didn’t have to—when the buzzer on the intercom rang again.

What was this? Grand Central?

She picked up the receiver. “Hello?”

“Hello, Miss Harper,” Roger said. “Delivery.”

“
Again?
” Meena said. “I didn’t order anything, Roger.”

“I know, Miss Harper,” Roger said. “These are flowers. From Mr. Antonescu, the deliveryman says. Not Mr. Antonescu in 11A, but your friend Mr. Antonescu. You know, from the party last night.”

Meena smiled. So much for keeping the doormen in the building from knowing everything about her personal life. “Send him up, Roger,” she said, and put down the receiver.

Flowers
and
the bag? Lucien already had her heart. He didn’t have to keep trying to win it.

She went to her purse and looked in her wallet for a tip for the flower deliveryman. She didn’t have any small bills left. She’d have to see if the flower guy had any change.

You have slain the dragon
.

What did it mean?

Before she had a chance to slip on a robe, Meena heard a sound outside her door. She looked out the peephole. There they were. Red roses. A huge bouquet of them.

Her heart swelled. He was crazy. And too extravagant.

Yes, he was a prince.

But this was too much.

Meena unlocked the door and opened it a crack.

“Thanks so much,” she said to the flower deliveryman. “Do you have change for a ten?”

That was when he lowered the roses away from his face.

And Meena, for the first time in her life, knew that she was the one about to die.

7:00
P.M
. EST, Friday, April 16
910 Park Avenue, Apt. 11B
New York, New York

T
he most amazing thing—to Meena, anyway—was that she never would have guessed he was a killer. Not at first glance, anyway. He was dressed so nicely, in dark form-fitting jeans, a cashmere sweater, and a long, black leather trench. The scarf around his neck looked as if it were made from cashmere, too—at least from where Meena was standing—and brought out the blue in his eyes…the kind of bright blue eyes that wouldn’t have been out of place on some hunky blond heartthrob making his way down a red carpet or paddling a surfboard off a sandy white Australian beach.

They hardly looked like the eyes of a killer.

Except that Meena had known that’s what he was from the moment she’d opened the door and he’d brought the big bouquet of red roses down from in front of his face.

Why had she fallen for that old trick? That bouquet-in-front-of-the-peephole trick? She deserved to get killed just for falling for a trick she’d used a million times herself in her own scripts.

And now here she was, facing down death in nothing but her bra and a black silk slip. She was furious with herself for not having grabbed a robe first, or something she could at least have employed as a weapon…a can of hair spray and a lighter to use as an impromptu flamethrower …even a shoe, for God’s sake, to throw at the guy.

But she hadn’t realized how close she was to death until now, when it was too late. All she’d reached for was her BlackBerry, which in almost any scenario was pretty much useless.

And in this case it was just plain pitiful, unless she wanted to call some cops to come over and be killed along with her.

Because no way was this guy going to let himself be arrested without a fight. She could tell that just by looking at his handsome, pitiless face.

And of course, like any proper assassin, he already had a foot wedged firmly inside the jamb, so she couldn’t slam the door shut in his face. It would just bounce harmlessly off the edge of his steel-toed boot.

The fingers of his right hand rested on a you-know-what. Yeah. It seemed unbelievable, but given everything else that had gone on this past week, Meena realized she shouldn’t have been surprised. It was an honest-to-God
sword hilt.

She held her breath as that blue-eyed gaze drifted toward her.

“I am not here for you, Meena,” he said, in a German-accented voice so deep, it seemed to reverberate through her chest.

How could he know her name? She had no idea who he was. She’d never seen him before in her life.

And yet…she felt as if somehow she’d known him forever.

Maybe that’s how everyone felt when they met their killer.

Or maybe it was just Meena.

He unsheathed the sword. The blade made a ringing sound in the stillness of the hallway, clear as a bell, as it came out of its scabbard.

Meena swallowed hard.

It’s amazing what you think right before you die. All Meena could think, for instance, was,
Wow. No foreplay for this guy.

Then,
Wait, that’s not even funny.

Then,
Although actually, that would make a good line for Victoria on the show.
Then,
But I’m not going to live long enough to write another episode for the show. This is so unfair.

She knew just by looking at her killer’s rock-hard, chiseled profile that there wasn’t the slightest flicker of hope.

But it’s incredible what we’ll do to try to survive.

Meena pried her lips apart. Forced her tongue to moisten them.

“I know you’re lying,” she said. “You’re holding a
sword
. You’re here to kill me.”

“I’m not lying,” he said. “Just tell me where he is, and I’ll let you live.”

Meena had no idea who—or what—he was talking about. She pointed at her purse where it hung on the hook she’d slung it onto after coming home. “Look,” she said. “There’s plenty of money in there. I just went to the cash machine. Take what you want and go. Otherwise, there’s some costume jewelry my great-aunt Wilhelmina left me, but it’s all fake, I swear to you….”

He looked annoyed. Meena felt her heart rate speed up.
Way to go, Meen. Antagonize your killer. That’s smart.

“I already told you, Meena,” he said, his dark blond eyebrows raised a little sarcastically. “I have no interest in killing you. Only him. But if you are going to be difficult…”

Difficult
. He had no idea how
difficult
Meena could be. Especially since she already knew she was as good as dead.

Meena knew then that she had absolutely nothing to lose.

Which was why she chose that moment to hurl her BlackBerry at him with all her might.

Hey. It was all she had. That and her life.

Then she turned around and made a run for it.