The Devil She Knows Read online

  After thirty minutes she wanted nothing more but to lie on her side and pant. She doubted the hybrid would let her get away with that, though.

  Shooting around the track, Novikov stopped her in a way that she was finding extremely annoying—by grabbing her head with that big hand of his and holding her in place.

  He shoved her back with one good push and Blayne fought not to fall on her ass at that speed. When someone shoved her like that, they were usually pissed. He wasn’t.

  “I need to see something,” he said, still nursing that cup of coffee. He’d finished off the cinnamon twists in less than five minutes while she was warming up. “Come at me as hard as you can.”

  “Are you sure?” she asked, looking him over. He didn’t have any of his protective gear on, somehow managing to change into sweatpants and T-shirt and still make it down to the track exactly at seven. “I don’t want to hurt you,” she told him honestly.

  The laughter that followed, however, made her think she did want to hurt him. She wanted to hurt him a lot. When he realized she wasn’t laughing with him—or, in this case, laughing at herself since he was obviously laughing at her—Novikov blinked and said, “Oh. You’re not kidding.”

  “No. I’m not kidding.”

  “Oh. Oh! Um…I’ll be fine. Hit me with your best shot.”

  “Like Pat Benatar?” she joked but when he only stared at her, she said, “Forget it.”

  Blayne sized up the behemoth in front of her and decided to move back a few more feet so she could get a really fast start. She got into position and took one more scrutinizing look. It was a skill her father had taught her. To size up weakness. Whether the weakness of a person or a building or whatever. Of course, Blayne often used this skill for good, finding out someone’s weakness and then working to help them overcome it. Her father, however, used it to destroy.

  Lowering her body, Blayne took a breath, tightened her fists, and took off. She lost some speed on the turn but picked it up as she cut inside. As Blayne approached Novikov, she sized him up one more time as he stood there casually, sipping his coffee and watching her move around the track. Based on that last assessing look, she slightly adjusted her position and slammed into him with everything she had.

  And, yeah, she knocked herself out cold, but it was totally worth it when the behemoth went down with her.

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  “Let me buy you a drink.”

  She’d ignored the men beside her. Greeted the few come-ons she’d gotten with silence. But that voice—

  Dee glanced to the left. Tall, Dark, and Sexy was back.

  And he was smiling down at her. A big, wide grin that showed off a weird little dint in his right cheek. Not a dimple, too hard for that. She hadn’t noticed that last night, now with the hunt and kill—

  Shit but he was hot.

  Thanks to the spotlights over the bar, she could see him so much better tonight. No shadows to hide behind now.

  Hard angles, strong jaw, sexy mouth.

  She licked her lips. “Already got one.” Dee held up her glass.

  “Babe, that’s water.” He motioned to the bartender. “Let me get you something with bite.”

  She’d spent the night looking for a bite. Hadn’t found it yet. Her fingers snagged his. “I’m working.” Booze couldn’t slow her down. Not with the one she hunted.

  Black brows shot up. Then he leaned in close. So close that she caught the scent of his aftershave. “You gonna kill another woman tonight?” A whisper that blew against her.

  Her lips tightened. “Vampire,” she said quietly.

  He blinked. Those eyes of his were kinda eerie. Like a smoky fog staring back at her.

  “I hunted a vampire last night,” Dee told him, keeping her voice hushed because in a place like this, you never knew who was listening. “And, technically, she’d already been killed once before I got to her.”

  His fingers locked around her upper arm. She’d yanked on a black T-shirt before heading out, and his fingertips skimmed her flesh. “Guess you’re right,” he murmured and leaned in even closer.

  His lips were about two inches—maybe just one—away from hers.

  What would he taste like?

  It’d been too long since she’d had a lover, and this guy fit all of her criteria. Big, strong, sexy and aware of the score in the city.

  “Wanna dance with me?” Such dark words. No accent at all underlined the whisper. Just a rich purr of sex.

  Oh but she bet the guy was fantastic in the sack.

  Find out. A not-so-weak challenge in her mind.

  Why not? She wasn’t seeing anyone. He seemed up for it and—

  Dee brought her left hand up between them and pushed against his chest. “I don’t dance.” Especially not to that too fast, pounding music that made her head ache.

  He didn’t retreat. His eyes bored into hers. “Pity.” His fingers skated down her arm and caught her wrist. He took her glass away, sat it on the bar top with a clink.

  She cocked her head and studied him. “Are you following me?” Two nights. First, sure, that could have been coincidence. A coincidence she was grudgingly grateful for, but tonight—

  The faintest curl hinted on his lips. “What if I am?”

  His thighs brushed against her. Big, strong thighs. Thick with muscle.

  Dee swallowed. So not the time.

  But the man was tempting.

  She couldn’t afford a distraction. Not then. “Then you’d better be very, very careful.” Dee shoved against him. Hard.

  He stumbled back a step and his smile widened. “You keep playing hard to get, and I’m gonna start thinking you’re not interested in me, Sandra Dee.”

  Who was this guy? Dee jumped off the bar stool. “You’d be thinking right, buddy.”

  He took her wrist again with strong, roughened fingers. The guy towered over her. Always the way of it. When you couldn’t even skim five foot six with big-ass heels, most men towered over you. And since Dee had never worn heels in her life…

  The guy bent toward her when he said, “I see the way you look at me.”

  What did that mean?

  “Curious…but more. Like maybe you got a wild side lurking in you. A side that wants out.”

  Maybe she did. The guy sure looked like he could play. After the case.

  “I don’t know you, Chase,” she finally told him, too aware of his touch on her skin. Too aware that her nipples were tightening and she was leaning toward him as her nostrils flared and she tried to suck up more of his scent. “I don’t know—”

  “I saved your life.” A fallen angel’s smile. “Doesn’t that count for something?”

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  Just then he heard the loud reverberation of the chapel’s pipe organ ring out the beginning of Mendelssohn’s wedding march.

  He sprinted back around to the front of the church and slipped inside behind her, just as she began her walk down the aisle. His heart sank, but he shook off the disconcerting feeling and edged as quietly as possible into the end of the last pew once she’d made her way down the aisle. All eyes were on the bride. No one noticed the man in the kilt. He pulled the now crumpled photo of Katie McAuley out of his sporran, and forced his gaze away from the bride and down to the picture in his hands. He needed to find her and start focusing on what he planned to do next.

  He unfolded the photo…and frowned at the face smiling back at him, blonde tendrils were blowing wildly about her face, as were those of the brunette and redhead mates she was clutched between. All three women were laughing, smiling, as if enjoying a great lark. Or simply the company they were in, regardless of location or event. He couldn’t fathom feeling so utterly carefree. Or so happy, for that matter. It was both an unsettling discovery, and a rather depressing one. He enjoyed the challenge of his work, but…was he ha
ppy? The carefree smiling kind of happy? He knew the answer to that. What he wanted to know was when, exactly, had he stopped having fun? He could hear Roan’s voice ring through his consciousness, as if he were an angel—or more aptly, a devil—perched upon his tartaned shoulder. “When did you ever start?”

  And then the pastor began intoning the marriage rites, and Graham’s gaze was pulled intractably back to the woman standing in front of the altar. She turned to her betrothed and he lifted the veil. Graham felt himself drawn physically forward, the crumpled photo in his hands forgotten, as he shifted on his feet and tried his best to—finally—see her face. It was only natural, he told himself, to want to see what she looked like, after talking with her in the garden.

  But why he was holding his breath, he had no earthly idea.

  Then she turned her head, just slightly, and he could have sworn she looked directly at him. His heart squeezed. Hard. Then stuttered to a stop. Only this time he knew exactly why. He looked down at the picture in his hand, and forced himself to draw in air past the tightness in his chest. He distantly heard the pastor urge everyone to be seated. And one by one, everyone did.

  Everyone, that was, except him.

  He turned over the wedding program that had been handed to him as he’d entered the church. He looked at the lengthy name engraved on the front, then lifted his gaze to her. “It’s you,” he declared, his deep voice echoing loudly, reverberating around the soaring chapel ceiling. “Katherine Elizabeth Georgina Rosemary McAuley.” Katie. The nickname that had stuck. He held up the photo, as if that would explain everything, while he stood there, acutely dumbfounded. His mind raced as fast as his heart, as everything suddenly made perfect sense. And no sense at all.

  He lifted the photo higher, stabbing it forward, as if making a claim. And perhaps he was. He felt driven by something unknown, a force he could neither put name nor logic to. If he were honest, it had begun outside, in the garden. It was something both primal and primeval, driven by what could only be utter lunacy. Because clearly, he’d lost whatever he’d had left of his mind. Yet that didn’t stop him from continuing. In fact, he barely paused to draw breath.

  “You’re meant to be mine,” he declared, loudly, defiantly, to the collective gasp of every man, woman, and child lining each and every pew. He didn’t care. Because he’d never meant anything more in his entire life. And he hadn’t the remotest idea why. Yet it was truth; one he’d never been more certain of. It was as if all four hundred years of MacLeods willfully and intently binding themselves to McAuleys were pumping viscerally through his veins.

  Clan curse, indeed.

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  Copyright © 2010 Diane Whiteside

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  ISBN: 978-0-7582-6060-4