made me realize his calmness was eroding. “I can’t fault your sister for not being able to put you down, but I’m not going to lose any sleep tonight after I dust you, lady.”
He stepped around the back of the MINI as he spoke and aimed the nail gun at where I’d been crouching. His head jerked up when he saw I wasn’t there, but his reaction came too late.
I jumped off the car’s roof and crashed into him, falling with him to the ground. Grandfather Darkheart’s weeks of training might not have turned me into a vamp fighter like Megan, I thought grimly as I rammed the point of my stake to Jack Rawls’s throat and glared down at him from my sitting position on his chest, but it definitely gave me an edge in a parking lot brawl like this.
His body went rigid. He stared up at me, and even in the poor light I could see implacable hatred in his eyes as blood traced a thin line from the point of my stake to his collar. “Do it,” he said, his voice hoarsened by the pressure on his throat. “Go ahead and plunge it in. If you don’t I’ll do it myself.”
He moved so fast I almost didn’t have time to react. His head jerked sideways toward the stake, and even as I pulled back my weapon in shock I saw the trickle of blood deepen. I felt him brace himself to repeat the maneuver and I did the only thing I could think of to prevent him.
“Stop that!” The stake was instantaneously reversed in my hand—another move that Grandfather Darkheart’s training had drilled into me—and as I shouted the command at Rawls I smashed the blunt end of the wood into his cheekbone. His head rocked sideways with the strength of my blow, and I sensed him gathering himself to break free of me. I hit him again, ignoring the blazing pain in my wounded hand, and then slammed the solid yew-wood stake against his temple a third time with all the strength I could muster. He went limp, the tension I’d felt in his body extinguished as instantly as a lightbulb being turned off.
“You’ve killed him,” I told myself through numb lips. “That’s what comes of going all altruistic and trying to save a man from himself, instead of sticking with what you know and being a ball-breaking bitch.” I wiped my bloody hand on my hiked-up dress—the fact that I only felt the tiniest pang as I did so was proof of how distracted I was—and pressed my thumb to the side of his neck.
His pulse was slow but steady. Relief swept through me. I peered closer at his neck and saw that the small puncture mark from my stake was closer to his jawline than his jugular, and that the bleeding had already slowed.
“You’re not dead,” I told his unconscious form. “I like that in a man, but what I’d like even more is not having to worry about you trying to kill one or both of us. I guess I could keep knocking you out every time you show signs of coming round, except that would mean I couldn’t ask you questions.” I stood up and looked down at him. “And I’ve got questions, sweetie. Lots of them, starting with how you knew the one thing about me that I haven’t dared tell anybody.”
Stepping over him, I walked to the front of the MINI and reached inside to the console. I popped the trunk and hastened back again, flicking a wary glance at Rawls’s prone body as I passed him. Ask me how long two coats of OPI polish plus a base and topcoat take to dry and I can tell you to the second, but predicting how long a man who’s gone down for the count will remain down isn’t my area of expertise.
However, I did have some handy gadgets relating to one of my areas of expertise in the small overnight case I always carried with me. Minutes later, having used them and a few other things on him, I surveyed the results of my handiwork with satisfaction.
“There’s something about a man in handcuffs that always gets my motor revving a little,” I murmured. “But just because a girl’s got a wicked side doesn’t mean she’s a vamp, Jack—or at least, it doesn’t mean she’s turned into a vamp yet. If you’d known that much about me, we might have ended up using these handcuffs in a completely different scenario tonight.” I’d straddled him as I’d cuffed him to the MINI’s bumper and tied each of his legs with lengths of tough nylon rope to his own vehicle, which I’d moved up behind the MINI. Now I sat back on his chest and narrowed my gaze at him.
When I’d seen him earlier I’d been distracted, first by Terry and then by the confrontation with my sisters, and I certainly hadn’t taken note of his physical attributes while he’d been trying to shoot nails in me. Jack Rawls wasn’t a bad-looking man, I realized belatedly. He was in his late twenties, although by the leaned-down look of his jaw and the sun-squint lines interrupting the tan at the corners of his eyes, they hadn’t been twenty-eight or twenty-nine indulged years. His black hair was growing out from a close trim and I got the definite impression it would be ruthlessly cropped back again the minute it started to get in his way. Not drop-dead gorgeous like Jean-Paul, or all moody and wolfishly sexy like Megan’s Mikhail, I decided, but definitely handcuffs-to-the-bedposts material. Somehow, though, I didn’t think he was the type to go for that, even if we’d met under more conducive circumstances.
“Kansas farmer stock?” I hazarded as I waited for him to come to. “Idaho? From your accent, I’m guessing you’re from one of those flat states where people do Norman Rockwell things like going to potluck suppers and having chores. It’s not only the accent, it’s the whole grim determination thing you’ve got going on, as if staking me is a duty you can’t shirk. Such a shame, sweetie. As I say, these handcuffs could have been put to much better use.”
“I don’t sleep with vampires.” As if he’d been conscious for some seconds and had simply been waiting for the right moment to startle me, Jack Rawls opened his eyes and stared emotionlessly at me. “I meant what I said. Kill me. I’m not interested in eternal life, vamp.”
Without warning he jerked his arms powerfully toward his body and tried to do the same with his legs, like a mustang lunging desperately against restraints. I grabbed two handfuls of his T-shirt and tightened the grip of my bare thighs against his rib cage to avoid being bucked off as he tried to break free, expecting him to continue his fight for a few moments before realizing it was doing him no good. But he surprised me again. Just as suddenly as he’d exploded into movement he stopped—as if, I thought with sharp interest, he’d been in similar situations in the past and recognized when it was of more benefit to conserve his energy than to continue resisting uselessly.
I made a note to add his familiarity with restraints to the list of subjects to explore with the mysterious Mr. Rawls, but my first question was a deliberately distracting one.
“Police issue cuffs, courtesy of a detective on the Maplesburg P.D. who liked playing good cop/bad girl with me,” I told Rawls. “Or was it bad cop/bad girl? Anyway, they’re not toys, Jack, and I got the rope I tied around your ankles from the trunk of your car, so you’re not going anywhere until I say you can. I also ran over your damn nail gun, so don’t bother trying to think of some way you can reach it and use it. Speaking of your car, I’ve got to ask—what’s an upstanding, vampire-hating carpenter like you doing riding around in a vampmobile?”
“I got a deal,” he said tonelessly. “Its last owner died in it.”
When I’d moved his vehicle, I’d turned off the bright headlights, leaving on only its parking lights. My back was toward them but they shone full in Rawls’s face, so I could see every flicker of expression that crossed his features, if there’d been one. But there wasn’t. The only indication of his state of mind came from the cold hatred in his eyes as he stared up at me.
Now, cold hatred isn’t the usual expression men have when they look at me. Unbridled lust, hopeless infatuation, puppy-dog pleading—those are some of the ways men look at me. Even when I’d dumped Terry this afternoon, I’d seen in his eyes that if I’d crooked my little finger as he’d stormed out, he would have turned right
