Min's Vampire (47 page)

“
Not with Micah and me in
the picture. More like fourth in line.”

“
Fine. But he still would
cherish the opportunity to disgrace you, especially so publically.
Delia is a very dangerous liability—”

“
Delia is the woman I’m in
love with!” Gabriel cut across his uncle. “That hardly makes her a
disgrace!”

But Gabriel’s glower diminished at the
weary look in his uncle’s eyes.

“
Don’t delude yourself,”
Dante said as he stood to leave. He clasped his nephew around the
shoulders, his hands warm but firm. “Whether this bit of subterfuge
succeeds or not, she will never be accepted by the family. And for
as long as you keep this relationship going, then you will be
vulnerable.”

Before he left the room he turned back
to Gabriel. “By the way, you should procure a picture of Miss Hart
and display it on your desk. It will look more than a little
strange not to.”

Gabriel grimaced, feeling like he was
choking on his own heart as he fought not to howl with the pain.
“Of course, Uncle,” he said. “Good idea.”

Dante left the room. He hadn’t brought
anything into the room, but Gabriel suddenly felt his office was
cluttered with thoughts he was indeed lending a blind eye to. He
just couldn’t see a world without Delia in it. And if he had to lie
to his parents, and so many more, and if he had to pretend to be
involved with an opportunistic grifter like Lucy Hart, he would
gladly do so. Anything not to lose Delia…

~*~

Life at Four Corners High School
became much more interesting. With Lucy’s far superior and sexier
wardrobe, and the return of her well-coifed and manicured beauty,
what also returned to Lucy was the attention of her fellow man…
and, unfortunately, her fellow women.

Guys followed her around between
classes, swarmed around her at her locker like flies. Some would do
all sorts of wild things to get her attention. Mock grappling
matches, cursing—belittling each other’s characters, athletic
prowess, and manhoods. This she kind of enjoyed. She’d missed
having constant male attention.

In contrast, she disliked the
attention she now received from the female populace at Four Corners
High. Back at her old school, she’d been the queen bee of every
aspect of her high school society. Cheer Squad Captain, Student
Body President (which she’d won by a landslide—apparently a
landslide of fearful, sycophantic, and rather hateful subjects) she
was dating the captain of the football and wrestling squad (same
guy,) and she’d been crowned Homecoming Queen only a few days
before her father had been arrested for tax evasion and immigrant
slave trafficking. All the popular girls had groveled at her Jimmy
Choos—though she now knew they’d both feared and hated her—and all
other girls had fled at the sight of her—more fear and
hatred.

But at Four Corners, her sudden
appearance upgrade had caused an aftershock of overtly hateful
girls, in all social brackets. The Goth chicks made nasty hissing
sounds, and threw little wads of paper at Lucy’s head. The art
chicks and the brain-trust girls joined forces and filled the
girl’s restrooms with derogatory artwork (resplendent with nasty
remarks scrolled underneath) and some rather clever math equations
slandering Lucy with statistics of her obvious whoredome, and
estimates of how buoyant her “Fake Tits” were.

The cheerleaders were more subtle.
They leered and sneered, made mean little quips whenever Lucy
passed by, and even tried slamming her against a bank of lockers
once. They’d tried, but Lucy was well versed (to her now reluctant
horror) in cheerleader war strategies.

There had been two of them—the rest of
the squad was watching from a safe distance. Their first mistake
was they stalked behind Lucy for far too long. By the time they
decided to make their move, Lucy had made them and had her counter
attack all ready. A fake toward the lockers and a quick side step,
then a well-practiced “accidental bump” maneuver she’d mastered her
freshman year, and the two pompom shakers crash landed into their
own trap with two incredibly loud crashes. One got a sprained
ankle, the other a bloody nose. And Lucy flitted to safety without
a scratch, and without anyone but the now seething cheer squad any
the wiser.

Seething or not, the little incident
made the pompom mafia keep their distance, and even though the rest
of the feminine cliques in school still trash talked her, they
didn’t bother her physically.

Lucy had gone from non-existent to
infamous in just a matter of days. And she’d been especially taken
aback by the reason. She’d overheard, while obscured in a stall in
the girl’s restroom, that “That new Lucy girl is such a bitch! I
mean, where the hell did she even come from?”

Lucy sat there confused for a moment
as the two verbally degraded her. Lucy wasn’t new. She’d been going
to Four Corners for almost seven months. And then it hit
her.

No one had even noticed me
before,
she cringed
. And I mean no one.

When the trash talking cheerleaders
left Lucy emerged from the stall and gave herself a long look in
the mirror. Her old self was back in place as if she’d never left,
making Lucy wonder where the Lucy she’d been for the last six
months had gone. Were they the same person, or should she be
mourning her loss?

Meet the once invisible,
now bright and shiny and hated me.

How did I ever get through
high school like this?

~*~

Getting to quit McDonald’s and not
having her family know was a blessing. It afforded her the
necessary spare time to drive to San Bernardino every day, do some
essential shopping, then have dinner with Gabriel in his very
large, very cold office.

Not that the room was cold, literally.
It was just the décor. And since Gabriel was always late, held up
with business meetings and phone calls and e-mails and text
messages, Lucy had quickly become intimate with his
office.

A sleek black desk was neatly stacked
with file folders and a laptop. No pictures—except for the one of
Lucy that he’d snapped with her standing by the window of his
office, and had printed and slapped into a generic black plastic
frame his secretary, Laurel, had found in stock in the supply
cabinet. Lucy liked the photo. The window had bathed her in a most
flattering light, and the confusion that he wanted a picture of her
had conjured in her had lent a kind of innocence to her expression
that Lucy had never seen in a picture of herself before. She just
couldn’t stop looking at it. She wondered if Gabriel ever looked at
it. It was on his desk… but Gabriel was always on the move. A
hands-on kind of CEO, Gabriel was always checking on things in the
company personally.

So Lucy, having passed bored while
waiting for Gabriel in his office, took it upon herself to change
the cheap black plastic frame with a sleek, chic pure silver frame
that she charged to her Enoch Industries charge card.

Unfortunately, the rest of the office
was just as cold and impersonal. Expensive, though glacially
boring, black leather chairs finished the minimalistic extent of
furnishings. Well, there was a matching black leather couch, and
compared to the stiff confines of the chairs, it was a comfy
alternative.

That was where she spent most of her
time waiting on Gabriel to show up. She did her homework, down
loaded songs to her iPhone, and stared at the few framed
photographs on Gabriel’s walls.

At first Lucy had discounted them for
business contacts, like trophies. She’d seen those kinds of
pictures hanging in the offices of every Lawyer her father had
worked with… including her father’s office. Only one photo had sat
on his desk, and that was one of the whole family, posed in their
living room, groomed to the nines, photographed by a professional
and airbrushed to perfection. She’d known Seth had had a zit on
that day, yet it was missing when the photo showed up on her
Daddy’s desk.

But boredom leads to curiosity, and
before she knew it Lucy was examining the collection of wall
memorabilia. To her relief and amusement, they weren’t just the
typical family and business acquaintance photos. The people in the
shots were dressed casually—including Gabriel in the few he was
actually in—and they all looked ridiculously happy. Not posed, but
like you took a candid snap shot at a really fun party where
everybody knows everyone, and they all like each other.

She’d heard of such parties, but had
long ago chalked them up to legend and Hollywood fantasy. But the
people who were in Gabriel’s pictures were different. Whether his
family or his friends (she was surprised he had any,) these people
were having the best time, and they all seemed to really adore
Gabriel.

Looking harder at the shots with
Gabriel in them, she was startled at how little that person seemed
to resemble the all-business all-the-time business suit clad man
she’d gotten to really loath in the last few days.

She was standing on the couch,
balancing herself with both hands against the wall, peering wide
eyed and entranced at a particularly strange shot of a shirtless
Gabriel—she couldn’t get over how beautiful and unbelievably well
built he was… and the deep dark tan he had didn’t hurt
either—leaning against the railing of a sail boat. On one side of
him was a gorgeous young woman in a bikini top and cut off denim
shorts. Lucy recognized her as her shopping partner for the last
week, Elaina. On the other side of Gabriel was another stunning
specimen of young male erotic fantasy. At least four inches taller,
lighter complexioned, yet sporting his own wonderfully tanned,
shirtless torso, the other guy had longer, shaggier hair that
obscured some of his face, and a smile that just radiated
playfulness. He had his arm draped over Gabriel’s
shoulders.

Lucy had discounted her original
assumption that Gabriel was gay when Elaina had let slip about his
girlfriend Delia. But just seeing the two very happy, smoking hot
guys in such a pose, she couldn’t help speculating
again.

“
You’re going to fall.” Lucy
jerked with the shock of hearing Gabriel’s voice coming from right
behind her. She’d slipped her high heels off when she’d mounted the
leather couch, and when she whirled around her feet slipped and she
fell over into Gabriel’s arms.

He held her steady, his face only
inches from hers, but he didn’t seem the least bit
disturbed.

Glacial really is the word
to describe him.

Lucy, on the other hand, was feeling
her pulse rate start to take off, feeling the dense musculature of
Gabriel’s chest through his alarmingly conservative silk dress
shirt. He even smelled good.

His gaze never wavered as he gently
set her down on her bare feet, then gave only the faintest of
smiles as he moved to his desk and hit the intercom.

“
Laurel, has my order from
Szechuan Garden arrived?”

“
Yes, Mr. Enoch. Should I
bring it in?”

“
Yes please…” He gave Lucy a
sly sort of look. “And could you scrounge up a step ladder? Lucy is
finding some parts of my office vertically challenging.”

“
Of course.”

Lucy felt herself blush with
embarrassment.
Vertically
challenged!
“You’re just too tall,” she
retorted lamely.

“
Obviously.” Gabriel moved
over to her again, his smile becoming a little more evident. He
reached up over the couch and took the photograph Lucy had been
admiring from the wall and handed to Lucy.

“
You know Elaina.” Lucy
nodded. “And that big lug next to me is my brother,
Micah.”

“
Brother…”
Okay,
Lucy thought.
This family has a very nice gene pool, so
far.
Then a pissy snit came over her.
“Don’t you think telling me you have a brother would be a good
idea?”

“
Truthfully, I pretend he
doesn’t exist.”

Lucy snorted.
Gabe has a sense of humor?

“
I just mean, he’s younger
and really immature, and ever since I took over the CEO position
from my father, he’s been pissed with me.”

“
Because he’s jealous?” she
asked.

Gabriel actually laughed, and Lucy
stared at him in stunned silence.

“
No, he wants nothing to do
with the family business…” Gabriel’s features softened as he seemed
to fall into his own thoughts. “He just misses…” He looked to Lucy
embarrassed. “He misses how things were before I graduated college
and…”

“
Became a tight-assed
corporate shark?” Lucy offered.

Gabriel grimaced. “Yes, that’s it
exactly.”

Lucy enjoyed getting a reaction out of
Gabriel, even a snarky one. She looked at the picture in her hands
again, and felt sorry for Gabriel and his brother. Especially his
brother.

“
He just misses having a
playmate,” Gabriel said bitterly.

Lucy locked her gaze on Gabriel’s
face, really looking at him. “He misses his brother.”

They stood there for a moment in a
strange, comfortable silence.