The Accidental Vampire (39 page)

"I in good, thanks," Thomas assured him. Offering the man a tip for seeing him to his suite and carrying the knapsack, Thomas urged him toward the door.

"Thank you, sir," the bellhop's mouth spread into a grin that he quickly softened into a more businesslike smile. "Just ring the desk if you need anything. Ask for Jimmy and I'll get you whatever you need."

"I will. Thanks again," Thomas murmured.

Closing the door behind the bellhop, he then turned and stepped back into the sitting room of his suite. Classy, luxurious, tasteful… Nothing less than he'd expect. Aunt Marguerite always had shown good taste.

Moving forward, Thomas collected his knapsack and headed for the door leading into the rest of the suite, intending to place it in the bedroom. The ring of his cell phone made him pause, however.

Dropping the knapsack back on the table, he pulled the phone from his back pocket and flipped it open as he dropped onto one of the love seats.

"Yo?" he said lightly, already knowing who it would be.

"You arrived all right, then?" Bastien asked.

"Of course, dude. The flight was smooth sailing."

"And Inez had no problem finding you at the airport?"

Thomas's eyebrows rose. "Inez?"

"Yes. I called her to meet your plane and take you into the city."

Thomas could hear the frown in Bastien's voice, but ignored it, his mind on his arrival in Heathrow as he suddenly recalled a little dark-haired woman running through the airport, waving. Thomas had noticed her, but Etienne hadn't mentioned there being anyone to meet him so had just assumed she was there to collect someone behind him and kept walking. Now that Bastien mentioned Inez, however, he recalled the pristine and tucked-up little miss he'd met some months ago in his cousin's office and knew she was who had been waving so frantically. She'd been less than pristine and tucked-up at the airport that morning. That woman had looked like she'd just rolled out of bed.

"Thomas?" Bastien said impatiently. "Did she not show up?"

"Yes. She was there," he answered truthfully, a knock drawing his gaze to the door of the suite. Standing, he moved to answer it.

"Good," Bastien was saying as Thomas opened the door. "She's very efficient as a rule, but I did wake her up at five in the morning to collect you and I worried that she hadn't made it there in time."

"Yes, she—" Thomas stopped abruptly as he recognized the woman at his door. His gaze slid over her limp dark curls, her slightly wrinkled clothes, and her makeup-free face with it's irritated scowl. Inez Urso. A very angry Inez Urso, he added noting the fire flashing in her eyes.

When her mouth opened, Thomas instinctively slammed the cell phone to his chest to prevent Bastien's hearing the tirade he suspected was coming. He wasn't wrong. The phone had barely hit his chest when a barrage of words shot from her full, luscious mouth and poured over him. Unfortunately, very little of it was in English. Portuguese would have been his guess. He gathered that was her mother tongue and the language she slipped into when upset, and Inez Urso was definitely upset.

When she began to move forward, Thomas automatically backed up, allowing her into the room. He was too distracted to do otherwise, finding it fascinating how a woman who had looked perfectly plain on first sight could become almost beautiful as she berated him. Her eyes were flashing, her cheeks were flushed with anger, her lips flapping so rapidly they were almost a blur. She was also waving a finger angrily under his nose as she backed him up, something he normally found vastly annoying if the women in his family tried it. But coming from this short woman, he found it kind of cute and couldn't help the smile that tugged at his mouth.

Big mistake, Thomas realized at once. Inez Urso did not like his amusement and her rant took on some real energy. Unfortunately, that's when he became aware of the cluttering coming from the phone.

Thomas scowled down at it, then glanced toward the door closing behind the little barracuda still lecturing him, judging whether he could get her back out of the room long enough for him to deal with Bastien. It didn't seem very possible, at least not without being rude, and Aunt Marguerite had raised him better than that.

Giving up on the door, he glanced toward the one leading to the rest of the suite and back to the woman and then held up a hand for silence. Surprisingly—she obeyed the directive, her tirade ending at once, but then he supposed she'd been close to winding down. At least, her eyes had lost some of their heat, becoming more subdued. Inez was still breathing rapidly from her anger, though, and Thomas found his eyes falling to her slightly heaving chest, noting that with every inhalation, her blouse was stretched tight, almost seeming to threaten to pop a button.

A sharp inhalation drew his gaze back up to her face. Her dark brown eyes were flashing again, her mouth opening to go at him once more. Thomas didn't blame her at all… really… it was perfectly rude to stare at a woman's chest. Aunt Marguerite would be pissed at him too. Still, he didn't really have time to apologize properly, or let her vent with Bastien's voice still squawking into his chest, so Thomas raised his hand again for silence and said, "Hold that thought."

Inez blinked at the order, but closed her mouth and Thomas gave her an approving smile before whirling away and rushing from the room. He hurried through the small dining area in the next room, judged it too close, and continued on into a small hallway with two doors leading off of it. The first led into a spacious marble bathroom, the second a bedroom. Knowing the bathroom would have a lock, Thomas slid inside, closed and then locked it for good measure lest the woman follow to finish her lecture. He then took a breath and raised the phone back to his ear. "Bastien?"

"What the hell was that about?" his cousin growled.

"Oh, I… er… sat on the remote control and accidentally turned on the television. Some foreign film was playing and I couldn't figure out how to shut it off," Thomas lied blithely.

"Right," Bastien said with open disbelief. "What was the name of this movie?"

"The name?" Thomas echoed and then scowled. "How the hell would I know?"

"I don't know, Thomas. I thought maybe you caught it before you turned it off. It sounded terribly interesting. I quite enjoyed it when the woman called the man an idiot for making her drag her butt out of bed at five o'clock in the morning and haul herself down to the airport without either tea, or a shower, only to have him ignore her and march out to get in a taxi and take off to the Dorchester Hotel."

Thomas closed his eyes on a sigh as he recalled Bastien spoke several languages, including Portuguese.

"Hmm," Bastien said suddenly. "That's the same hotel I booked you into. What a coincidence."

"All right, all right, so it wasn't the television," Thomas muttered irritably and then asked, "Did she really call me an idiot?"

An exasperated sigh came through the line. "How could you walk right past her, Thomas?
Why
would you? For Christ's sake, I called her to make things easier for you, and you just—"

"You didn't mention that anyone was picking me up at the airport," Thomas interrupted grimly. "Neither did Etienne. He said you had a plane waiting at the airport and had booked a room at the Dorchester. That's it. There was no mention of anyone waiting for me at the airport, so I just hopped in a taxi."

"Well, when you saw Inez—"

"Bastien, I met the woman once for about three minutes in your office almost six months ago," Thomas pointed out dryly and then acknowledged, "I
did
see her waving and rushing toward me at the airport, but didn't recognize her. I thought she was there for someone else. How was I to know otherwise when
no one told me she would be meeting me,"
he ended, emphasizing every word.

"All right, I get the point. You didn't know," Bastien said.

"Right," Thomas sighed.

"Okay." A moment of silence passed and then a sigh slid from the phone and Bastien said, "I should have contacted you myself and told you she would meet you rather than counting on Etienne. You'll have to apologize to her for me."

"Are you sure you told Etienne?" Thomas asked.

"What?" Bastien asked his voice short. "Of course I did."

"Of course you did, because you wouldn't ever make a mistake. Those are for lesser immortals like Etienne and me."

"Thomas," Bastien said wearily.

"Yes?" he asked sweetly.

"Never mind. Look, she's there to help you. Let her. She knows London and she's a damned efficient woman. One of our best employees. She gets things done, that's why I decided to have her help you."

"'You mean that's why you decided to have her babysit me, don't you?" Thomas asked dryly.

There was a brief silence on the other end of the line, then Bastien took a breath, but before he could speak, Thomas said, "Don't worry about it. I know you think I'm useless. Me, Etienne, and anyone under four hundred years old. So don't worry about it. I'll apologize to her for you and let her help me."

He pushed the off button on the phone before Bastien could respond and tossed it irritably on the marble counter as he headed for the door. He'd grasped the doorknob when a thought made him pause. Releasing the doorknob, Thomas turned back to briefly pace the room.

He didn't want another berating by Bastien's underling. While it was cute and he'd found it fascinating to watch the fire dance in her eyes as she'd spat words rapid fire at him, it would have been more entertaining had he understood some of it. Besides, he didn't know London and this woman obviously did and while he'd like to be able to find his aunt all by himself and be the hero of the moment, the main concern was finding Aunt Marguerite. Common sense said he would probably get farther faster with help, and Inez was the only help on offer. But she was no doubt in a really rotten mood right now and he couldn't blame her. Bastien might owe her an apology, but Thomas felt he owed her something too. He might not have known she was coming to collect him, but the woman had gone out of her way to do so and been ignored and left behind for her trouble. He wished to offer his own apology as well.

After pacing the room twice, Thomas reached for the hotel phone on the bathroom's marble counter.

He punched the button for room service and quickly placed an order, then hung up and moved to the tub. His cell phone rang as he pushed the button to drop the tub's stopper into place, but—knowing it would be Bastien with more orders and instructions—he ignored it and grabbed the bottle of bubble bath off the counter. Thomas dumped a generous amount of the liquid in and turned on the taps, then sat down on the side of the tub to wait for it to fill.

Inez dropped wearily to sit on one of the love seats situated on either side of the fireplace and scowled at the knapsack on the table in front of her. The man couldn't even bother with proper luggage. He was staying in a five-star hotel and checked in with a knapsack. It was the only article of luggage in the room and the only thing he'd been carrying when she'd seen him at the airport.

She glared at the offending article and then realized what she was doing and shook her head, her eyes closing in dismay. She was losing it. Inez never lost her temper, yet here she was not just glaring at luggage, but having greeted her boss's cousin by berating him like a harridan and cursing him in two different languages. Her boss's cousin!

Dear God, she hadn't just lost her mind but probably her job too, once Bastien heard about this. Thomas Argeneau was probably on the phone in the other room right now complaining to him.