occasionally fur-bearing boyfriend.
“As we say in America, a shapeshifter,” she corrected coldly. “And speaking of Mikhail, if we’re finished here I think we should rejoin him and Jack on patrol. Kat, you coming?”
“Yes, but some nights I don’t know why I bother,” Kat drawled. “When I was a ballbreaking bitch, men were falling over themselves to take me up on my offers, but now I’ve gone all altruistic Healer-chick and just want to save them from an eternity in hell, most of the time they’d rather take their chances with your stake. Still, a girl’s gotta do what a girl’s gotta do, no?” She began strolling to the door, but then turned back to me. “Sweetie,” she said firmly. “The shoes. Get them out of the garbage bag, okay?”
“And if my Dolce sweater that you didn’t borrow is somewhere here underneath all this mess, have it dry-cleaned and give it back to me,” Megan added. “Grandfather, do you want to accompany us on patrol for a few more hours?”
“Nyet, is late for old man like me. Also, Liz asked me to drop by her apartment tonight for glass of wine. I may stay over, so do not worry if I am not home tomorrow morning,” Darkheart said complacently while I tried to forget the Bed, Bath & Beyond shopping bag overflowing with black satin sheets I’d seen Liz carrying when we’d run into each other at the mall. “I will collect garlic wreaths first and then leave.”
“You go, tovaritch. I will collect wreaths,” Dmitri offered, which I suppose was nice of him but not what I wanted to hear. Unfortunately for me, however, Darkheart accepted with alacrity and within minutes I was alone with Russia’s answer to Paul Bunyan, watching him de-festoon my apartment of wild garlic while I tried not to breathe in the, to me, nauseating scent of the small white flowers.
“You lie to sisters and grandfather,” Dmitri said without preamble as he deftly wound Darkheart’s garland lasso around one pumped forearm. His Siberian-blue gaze flicked to me before he turned his attention back to his task. “You have met Jasmine’s lieutenant, da?”
Now, along with the speaking-before-I-think thing I’ve developed growing up with Megan and Kat, I also credit them for my ability to lie at the drop of a hat. It’s a necessary talent, believe me, when you’re saddled with a sister who feels it’s her moral duty to force you to confess when you’ve had some unfortunate accident like breaking Grammie’s favorite Lladro figurine, and another sister who doesn’t see why she should take the heat for said Lladro breakage when she didn’t do it. So if Dmitri had thought he could startle me into the truth with his unexpected accusation, he was sadly mistaken.
“Of course I haven’t met him!” I said, putting a hefty amount of outraged virtue into my tone. “I don’t believe your nerve! What gives you the right to accuse me of lying to my family?”
“This is America, nyet? I have right to say truth when is in front of my eyes,” Dmitri replied, seemingly unperturbed by my impressive outburst. He finished winding up the garland and set it on the back of the sofa. “Besides,” he added calmly, “I cannot stand by and see future Gospozha Malkovich take dangerous risks.”
It took a moment for his words to sink in and when they did I thought I must have misheard him. “Gospozha? Isn’t that Russian for the missus?” I said dubiously.
His back toward me, he nodded as he untacked the last wreath from the window frame. “Da, is correct. From first time I saw you I had strong feeling inside me that you would lead me to my sud’ba, so must be that you and I will be couple one day. These strong feelings that come to me are never wrong,” he said, turning from the window and laying the wreath beside the garland. “My babushka was cygan and from her I inherit gift of knowing future.”
I held up a hand. “Whoa, nellieski,” I said firmly. “We’ve got a lost-in-translation situation happening here. I still think I must be wrong on the gospozha part, but forget that for a minute. What’s a sud’ba, who’s a cygan, and isn’t a babushka some kind of shawl for old ladies to wrap around their heads?”
“Sud’ba is fate. Cygan means in America gypsy, and babushka is grandmother. You are not wrong on gospozha.” His garlic-gathering completed, Dmitri stood facing me, his jeans-clad legs planted slightly apart on the cruddy carpet covering the living-room floor and his arms crossed over his chest so that his biceps came close to ripping the seams of his T-shirt’s sleeves. I was so rattled by what he’d just said that for a moment all I could think was that when he stood that way he looked exactly like the Jolly Green Giant, if the Jolly Green Giant wasn’t green, but blond and tanned and wasn’t jolly but about to stomp the tiny valley-dwellers by his feet to puree.
Then I got ahold of myself. “So when you first laid eyes on me half an hour ago, you knew you and I would do the till-death-us-do-part thing,” I clarified, “because your grandmother was a gypsy and you inherited her crystal ball abilities. Do I finally have it right?” I asked politely.
“Da, except first time I saw you was not half hour ago, but night of battle against Kane and his army,” Dmitri began, but at that point I dropped my pretence of politeness and let the fury that had been bubbling up inside me boil over in a scalding flood.
“Are you insane?” I yelled, striding toward him and grabbing him by his biceps. I tried to give him a shake, but it was like trying to shake concrete. My anger grew. “I don’t know you! I don’t want to know you! The only connection between you and me is that you’re using your family’s underworld contacts to look for my father and as far as I’m concerned, that’s no connection at all! So screw your sud’ba and the cygan it rode in on, Dmitri—not only won’t I be walking down the aisle with you anytime soon, but I want you out of my apartment right now!”
“Your act is good.” With a quick flexing of his muscles he broke my grip on him. “You shout loudly instead of answering my questions, but your anger is enough answer. You have met with vampyr called Lockridge. What I need to know now is whether he already has hold over you.” His gaze chilled to a subzero blue. “You have slept with him?”
My attempt to slap his face was a purely reflexive action, but his reflexes made mine look like I was moving through molasses. My hand was still inches from his cheek when I felt his grip wrap around my wrist. I glared at him, frustration mixing with my rage.
“Maybe it’s different in Russia,” I snapped, “but here in the good old U.S. of A. when a man deserves what’s coming to him he’s supposed to take it. Let go of my wrist, you lug.”
“Not until you answer, l’ubimaya,” he said evenly. “Is vital I know truth on this matter. Has he had you yet?”
The way he said it made it sound all earthy and raw and uncivilized, and suddenly there was something else mixed in with my anger and frustration.
Dmitri Malkovich was a pain in the butt. I didn’t want him in my apartment, I didn’t want him poking around in my life and I totally didn’t buy in to his crazy assertion that the two of us were bound together by some mystical gypsy fate. But there was no denying it, the man was incredibly hot, I thought as his gaze held mine. Every inch of him was solid muscle. His T-shirt fitted him like a glove, his jeans were taut in all the right places, and even though blond men weren’t usually my type I couldn’t help but appreciate how sexily his hair and eyes contrasted with his dark lashes and eyebrows and the tan of his skin.
A couple of hours ago I’d been drooling over the delicious Heath Lockridge. Now I was wondering how it would be with a hard, tall Russian. Not only was I turning into a vampire,
