19

HE’D really enjoyed Surfer’s Paradise. He wasn’t going to examine whether it was because he’d liked the people he and his lady became there, no matter how insulated a bubble it took to accomplish it, or because he was nursing a gut-level uneasiness about Brisbane.

Though Brisbane wasn’t Melbourne or Perth, it was sizable to him after having spent so many years in the Outback, with only occasional forays into places like Elle’s.

Danny’s place just outside the city was a large home, dating from the eighteen hundreds with traditional architecture. The house was raised on stilts to promote airflow, and possessed wide, shady verandas. Tropical vegetation was cozied up to it like a beautiful nature sprite’s lush green hair, dotted with splashes of color from blooming bushes and clusters of artlessly scattered flowers.

Despite its size, the house captured the same quiet peace he’d felt at her place in Surfer’s. He was given a guest room with floor-to-ceiling windows that overlooked a garden. While he was used to the sweep of wildflowers after rains in the desert, the vibrant color of everything was absorbing and overwhelming at once, from the royal blue and gold of the carpets that didn’t have a constant layer of dust to sweep off, to the ruby red of flowers the size of his hand on the bushes below his window and the bright green of the lush ferns. Even at Surfer’s, there’d been enough of a monochrome theme between sand and ocean to help him ease into a different environment.

Bemusedly, he also found several changes of clothes, slacks, shirts and collars, appropriate to diverse occasions and his size, waiting in the wardrobe for him. The room even had a private bath.

It underscored again that he was traveling with a woman of tremendous wealth, which gave him some discomfort, particularly when she seemed to be picking up the tab for everything. He’d had to argue to pay for his own meal and beer when they went to a restaurant, and she laughed at him for it, reminding him he was her employee. Which, of course, he was.

In the desert, you saved my life. You think I don’t know you’re the type of man who’d work ten jobs to care for his family?

I don’t need that. I need other things from you.

And do I provide them, my lady?

She’d given him a leisurely glance, that distant smile. “In spades.”

Still, he felt damned uncomfortable with it, though he wasn’t quite sure why. And he paid for the bloody beer.

Lady D, as she was known to the staff, had her own private wing, and it was clear no one ventured there unless invited. She underscored that herself when, arriving just before dawn, she left him with a lingering kiss and smile, and told him the maid would show him to his room. Then she disappeared.

As he prowled the room, he found himself tempted to reach out, try to speak to her. The bed looked solitary, lonely. He’d stay on the floor in his swag.

Bugger it. If she liked her alone time, he couldn’t cast stones, could he? When she wanted him, she’d let him know. That suited him fine. It wasn’t like he’d had the time to get so used to her company he couldn’t do without it.

Dev, find the pen and pad in the desk. There are people I need you to contact today, arrange for their stores to be open after dark. Use my name and they’ll agree.

Startled by her intrusion into his thoughts, he assumed, with some relief, that she hadn’t heard them. He jotted down the names and stores she noted; then, before he could speak further, she added, If you have any difficulties, see the staff and they’ll help.

Also, please check over the house accounts and review maintenance with the property manager, Mr. Forbes. As my third-marked servant, you would oversee the maintenance and operation of all my properties. He sensed a smile in her voice then.

That should keep you busy, but be sure to get some sleep. I’ll be up by sunset. Be ready to go with me.

Keep him busy. Bollocks, she had heard his thoughts. However, it hadn’t escaped his notice that part of this trip was about exposing him to the wide variety of things a third-marked servant was supposed to know and do, to see if he could handle it.

Right. Because, whereas being the bait for some psychopathic vampire’s three-day game wouldn’t faze him, knowing he had to inventory a pantry might send him screaming.

The echo of her laughter in his head had his gut easing, if not his loneliness.

For the next two nights, he revised his opinion of shopping as a leisure pursuit. A human woman could be singleminded in the pursuit of her goal, he knew, but a vampire female was dedicated to the hunt, and tireless. At the end of the evening, when they got in, he was exhausted by all the choices, decisions and—he shuddered—color swatches, such that he practically staggered, falling facedown on his swag. Almost exhausted enough to ignore the fact she was shutting him out of her room and sometimes even her mind, far more than she’d done before.

Hell, he missed her. And of course she knew it, so there was nothing to talk about. She was doing it for some mysterious purpose of her own, and he had too much pride to act shirty about it. But not too much pride to stay around and endure it.

Sometimes when he woke during daylight, he had to put his hand in his shorts, wrap his fingers around himself and imagine it as her.

One thought of her sweet mouth closing over him, her hands digging into his thighs, and he exploded in a matter of seconds. It didn’t fix the gnawing in his gut, though.

He got cranky about it, truth be told, though he didn’t know if his irritation was primarily with himself. So he did his job. He handled the transportation details, coordinating with a freight company to have the items they would truck out to the station coincide with their return. Thinking ahead, he noted that they might also have items returning for consignment, and after he described some of the antiques and rich appointments Ian had preferred, the proprietor was more than happy to coordinate the details of that with him as well.

“Well, that’s done,” Danny said, as they stepped out of the drapery shop into the darkness of the near midnight time. “And thank God. You were starting to be grumpy. Next time I’ll carry a few lollipops in my purse for when you get fussy. Of course”—she arched a brow at him—“the assistant to the proprietress in there seemed to perk up your spirits considerably.”

“We were just chatting while you two discussed taffeta silk versus cotton. Floral versus animal prints.”

“We did not discuss animal prints. And you won’t distract me. You were flirting.”

“She was just a nice girl, love. I was being nice back.” It had been . . . nice to talk to someone simple and down to earth, who was going to university and liked going to the pictures with her friends on Saturday mornings.

Dev looked up to see Danny studying him with that doll’s mask of hers, but at his puzzled regard, she turned away. “You’ll be relieved to know our shopping trip is over. Tomorrow night will be for fun. Alistair is expecting us to join him and Lyssa for cocktails.”

“Not dinner?” Dev tried to keep his tone bland, but she cocked a brow at him.

“Not dinner.”

“No decapitations planned.”

She stopped, looked back over her shoulder with narrowed eyes. “Not yet. But that could change.” He smiled, but when he moved to her, intending to offer his arm, she’d sidled off a few more steps, and was peering down the street. Dev followed her glance.

There was a man leaning up against the wall, smoking a rolled cigarette. A stockman on holiday probably, since he was wearing the clothes of one and looked as if he’d wandered out of one of the pubs at this late hour. He gave Danny a thorough, appraising look as she stopped there in the flood of the streetlight. In return, she cocked her head, the lamp catching the considering look in a predator’s eye.

“I’m feeling hungry,” she mused. “But for something a bit different. Wait right here in the shadows, Dev. Where he can’t see you.” Before he could respond to that, she was moving down the street. As she came toward him, her walk changed to a provocative saunter that couldn’t be mistaken for anything but an invitation. No decent woman would be out this time of night unescorted, anyhow. The man straightened from the wall. If he’d been a smarter bloke, he would have been wary, for she didn’t look like any kind of whore. Of course, he hadn’t been any smarter that first night, had he?

Dev set his jaw, tried to cross his arms and lean back against the wall, almost a mirror of how the man had been standing. It wasn’t his business if she wanted some variety in her meals.

Except, for her, the taking of blood brought the same pleasure as sex. She’d said so, hadn’t she?

That wasn’t why he took after her. He wasn’t sure why his feet were moving, but they were. When he got into the alley, she’d turned toward the stranger, her face lifted as if she might take a kiss. Dev gripped her upper arm and pulled her away from the muddled bugger.

“Rack off,” he snarled at the man. The stockman needed no further invitation, apparently registering the blood in Dev’s eye, the feral amusement in Danny’s. But when he’d disappeared, that amusement disappeared. Reversing their grips, she slammed Dev against the brick so hard, his breath left him in a grunt. He tried to shove at her, but then he was gripping her waist, for she’d seized his jaw, jerked his head to the side and pierced him, her body pressing against him from neck to groin.

“You want to be mine,” she whispered. “You are mine.”

“No.” He denied it, even as his body betrayed him, hardening against her, his hands under the shirt now, curling into her flesh.

He didn’t want her feeding on others. Didn’t want her to seek another man’s flesh, his heat, to nourish her. Jesus, he was torn between being a moony, lovesick calf and wanting to cut and run.

Maybe she had the same problem, for with an oath, she pushed away from him, wiping at her lips with the back of her hand, her irises tinged with red.

Withdrawing his handkerchief from the jacket he wore, he reached out, slow, careful-like, for her expression was that of a spitting cat. She let him touch her, though, wipe the blood off the back of her knuckles. Keeping his gaze on that, he spoke, low.