Temptation Rising (21 page)

“And this is my hubby, Pete.” Mel kept talking, leaving Kalina to stand alone while she went over to the grill and wrapped her arms around a tall, husky man with dark hair that was more than a touch too long.

“It’s nice to meet you all,” Kalina said, making sure her handshake with Stephen was the shortest of the greetings.

“Mel says you just started working at the firm, in accounting right?” Stephen Johnson with his tall athletic build and crystalline blue eyes asked. He looked like a superhero. Really? His hair was perfect, black and shiny, his eyes so bright they almost looked fake, his face chiseled with iconic perfection. He looked just like Superman, who just so happened to be her favorite superhero of all time.

Unfortunately, that was in the animated dream world of a teenager. Here and now, he was an eerily attractive guy.

“Yes, I did,” she answered belatedly.

“How are you liking it so far?”

“It’s a learning experience.”

Jamia laughed. “That means she doesn’t like it.”

Kalina smiled. “Not really. Let’s just say the jury’s still out.” That was true of a lot of things lately, including the boss she was determined not to like.

“I get it,” Jamia said, then looked up at Eddie with what Kalina actually thought were stars in her eyes.

They were a cute couple. He was thick, not fat, but definitely on the positive side for the possibility. She was shorter, her head full of long bronze-colored braids that reached down her back, a good foot below his. They couldn’t stop touching each other, couldn’t resist the enigmatic pull between them.

Kalina wondered how that felt. How would it feel to be that inextricably attached to someone? And how long did it last?

In the next hour Pete burned two hamburgers before finally giving Kalina one that wasn’t going to leave charred flecks between her teeth. Eddie and Jamia thought it was funny, joking about how Pete was the worst on the grill but how Mel continued to have these get-togethers. Mel’s kids came in and out, the older ones with plans of their own, just grabbing something to eat before they left; the twins had more attractive plans that consisted of sitting in front of the television in the basement watching some sort of cartoon marathon.

After Kalina had finished eating Stephen happily removed her trash and came back to sit beside her.

“Mel must really like you if she invited you to her house. She’s usually a very private person when it comes to mixing business with pleasure,” he said, his fingers wrapping around the neck of a bottle of beer.

“I think she’s really nice,” Kalina responded honestly. “I don’t do a lot of socializing.”

“Is that by choice?”

She nodded and he smiled.

“Maybe I could change that. Have dinner with me?”

He was a nice guy. She should feel something for him, or at least she thought she should. But beyond being cordial, she just didn’t. “We just had dinner,” she said trying to keep the mood light.

“You know what I mean. A date, you and me?”

Him and her. For a few seconds Kalina tried to let that idea take root. But try as she might, she couldn’t see herself with Stephen. Or Reed from the precinct. All she could see was Rome.

“I don’t think that’s such a good idea,” she said even though she wasn’t too pleased about her thoughts returning to the man who seemed determined to ruin every aspect of her life. Because not coming up with any goods on him to make her case just wasn’t enough. No, he’d had to touch her, to kiss her, to make her want, need something she’d never thought to have before.

She did not do relationships—sex maybe, and not even that except solo for a very long time. She’d never imagined being the other half of a couple, wasn’t even sure she’d know how to be with someone on a long-term basis.

And really, what the hell was going on with her? Two men hitting on her in two days was definitely out of the ordinary.

“I get it,” he said with a contemplative look on his face. “You’re already seeing someone.”

“No,” she answered quickly. “I’m not. I mean, I don’t have anyone. I’m just not really into dating right now.”

“You’re not into dating me.”

She sighed. “I’m really not seeing anyone.”

“But you’d like to be. Does he know?” Stephen’s voice was friendly, his eyes just a little pensive.

“Does who know what?”

“That you’re interested in him.”

“I’m not—” she started, then paused. She didn’t know Stephen well. Hell, she didn’t know anybody well thanks to her self-induced solitary status. She could talk to her therapist, but she despised him and would much rather stick toothpicks in her eyes and walk on hot coals then sit on that couch and open up to his sick, leery glare. She was a mess. Beyond a mess really, but Stephen seemed game for listening to her so she figured what the hell.

“I think he knows.”

Still smiling, but not totally happy with her admission, Stephen added, “And? Is he interested?”

“I think, in a way.” Admitting he wanted to sleep with her didn’t really seem like the politically correct thing to say. Besides, how did she explain that she thought that was all Rome wanted to do?

Taking another swallow of his beer, Stephen leaned back in his chair. “He’s an idiot if he isn’t.”

She couldn’t help but smile at the serious way in which he’d said that, as if he really saw something in her he thought another man should appreciate. The thought warmed her, just like watching the other two couples together planted the smallest seed of hope inside her.

Maybe she could be relationship material after all. Drinking her soda she laughed off that idea, because it was ridiculously stupid. Stephen was talking off his fourth beer, he could say anything and not mean a thing. What Kalina knew definitely was that the orphan who was trying to make a difference didn’t need the added stress of falling in love with the wrong man.

Instead she decided to enjoy the moment. She’d wanted badly to come to this cookout, to be included in the normalcy of friends on a Sunday afternoon, just this once.

*   *   *

As night settled over the deck, crowded with folding chairs and plastic-covered tables, a light breeze began to blow. Kalina sat at the table with Mel, Pete, and Stephen.

Lifting to her lips the soda she’d grabbed in exchange for the beer she couldn’t quite stomach, she took a sip. The cool liquid slid over her tongue and down her throat with a gentle motion. She let the taste of lime mingle in her mouth and was just about to say something when she heard it.

A moan, or a groan, or something akin to an animal sound. She looked around, but it didn’t appear that anyone else had heard it. Maybe one of the neighbors had a big-ass dog that could growl that deeply. Somehow Kalina really didn’t think that was the case.

Her body tensed as she sat up straighter in her chair. The sound came again, this time closer, and she wished she’d figured out a way to squeeze the 9mm in her glove compartment into her super-small purse. There was danger, that feeling she knew well as it gripped her insides, sending quick messages to her brain to be on alert. She’d always had this kind of intuition, these feelings that she knew were different from anything anyone around her felt. Right beside her the conversation between Melanie and her guests moved with casual ease, but Kalina’s ears tuned that out, pushed it to the far recesses of her mind. In return she homed in on the sound of whatever was coming, waiting so she could react.

It was the strangest thing, a sense of déjà vu so strong she felt dizzy with it. She would have to fight; her fingers tingled with the notion. But who? She was at a cookout for crying out loud, who the hell was she gonna fight? The brother-in-law who came over thinking he’d been hooked up? The dad who burned her hamburger?

It didn’t make sense.

But at the end of the yard where fat bushes lined the tall tiers of the privacy fence she saw a movement. Just a shadow, but definitely movement. Instinctively she stood, her eyes narrowing, focusing on that spot.

“Hey, you need something?” Stephen asked, already at her side.

“Ah, no. I um, I just need the bathroom,” she replied. “Be right back.”

And then she was gone, slipping through the back door into the kitchen. Walking swiftly through the rooms, Kalina searched for the basement door. It was there, along the foyer wall. She headed down the steps, hearing the blare of what she thought was the
SpongeBob SquarePants
theme music. At the bottom of the steps, she looked to her left into the room that was carpeted and paneled and again filled with furniture, including a big flat-screen television. Matthew was lounging on the couch and Madison sound asleep on the love seat across from him.

Tiptoeing past the doorway, she entered what was obviously the laundry room: cement floor, washer and dryer, clothes hanging or folded all about. But none of that mattered; the feeling that something was out there taunted her. There was another door and Kalina quickly opened it, grabbing a baseball bat she’d spied in the corner of the laundry room beforehand.

Slipping out into the night, she recognized that the adults were still talking and drinking just above her on the deck. She moved slowly, hoping their beer-muddled minds wouldn’t see her creeping across the elongated length of the yard. Using the cloak of darkness and the dense line of bushes, Kalina moved deeper and deeper into the yard until a sound had her stopping.

It wasn’t a groan this time, more like a chuffing she knew was animal-like because she’d heard it before. Last night and that night long ago. Still, Kalina prayed she was wrong. What she thought she’d seen didn’t exist. Moving closer to the bushes, she let that thought play in her mind.

Through the bushes there was a flash of light. Green. Two orbs of green. Eyes?

Her heart pounded in her chest as recognition beat into her brain.

She paused, unable to move another inch.

Eyes in the bushes.

There was a sound behind her and she flinched, turning quickly with the raised bat in hand. What came at her was large and moved fast. But she was faster, swinging until the bat connected with a loud
thunk.
She would have hit it again or at the very least moved closer to verify what “it” was, but she was grabbed from behind.

A hand went over her mouth, another around her waist, pulling her into the bushes she’d thought were her shield.

Kalina struggled, but it was futile as whoever had grabbed her moved quickly. The privacy fence gave way, probably the opening where the trash cans were lined. But there was almost no sound—or maybe they were moving too fast. She felt wind whipping over her skin as if they were traveling at a high rate of speed.

The chuffing grew louder, into a sick-sounding mewl. But her captor kept moving and moving until she was being thrown into the back of a truck.

“Go!” a man’s voice yelled.

The truck pulled off, wheels screeching along the asphalt.

Kalina rolled over on the leather-covered seat, turning until she stared into eyes that freaked her out more than the green ones she’d seen in the bushes. They were gold, like flecks of the sun dropped into the face of a man with skin the color of night.

Now she really wished she had her gun.

Chapter 14

Umberto Alamar walked slowly off the private jet to the waiting black SUV. A different type of breeze hit his exposed skin, a scent of untamed and dangerous land tickling his nostrils. Approaching the open door of the vehicle, he unbuttoned the two buttons of the suit jacket and stepped inside.

Human clothes, he thought, itched like the devil.

The interior of the vehicle was dark and he was alone, as he was most of the time. As he had been most of his adult life. Save for the three years his jaguar mother had stayed with him, Umberto had been parentless, taken in by the females of the tribe, trained by the males to become the leader he was today. One would think at fifty-two years old he would have found some sort of solace in the life that had been chosen for him before he’d taken an initial breath.

But he hadn’t.

He was where he was supposed to be, doing the job that was destined to be his. But it wasn’t enough. He knew this just as he’d known three days ago that this trip to the States was imminent.

Things were changing, long-ago rules were proving deficient in this new battle that approached. And it was on foreign ground that the first spoils of this war would lie.

With a heavy sigh he sat back on the seat, wondering how they’d come to be in this position, knowing instinctively that it would not only be up to him to bring them out.

*   *   *

X greeted the Elder, holding open the door to the SUV that had brought him from the private landing strip in Virginia owned by the Shadow Shifters but titled to a couple of fake stockholders in Rome and Nick’s law firm. With appropriate respect and honor he bowed and waited as the Elder stepped from the vehicle and stayed in that position until a heavy hand clapped onto his shoulder, granting permission for him to do otherwise.

He’d received word from the Assembly just an hour ago that Elder Alamar was arriving. He’d also been told to keep the arrival time and place a secret, until otherwise notified.