Читать книгу Fury Calls - Caridad Pineiro - Страница 11

The knife slipped, nipping the pad of her index finger.

Meghan cursed as a small droplet of blood welled before immortal healing took over and the wound quickly closed.

“You’ve been decidedly clumsy the past two weeks,” Diego said from behind her, causing Meghan to jump. “And antsy.”

“It’s just the pace of things. There’s been a lot of work lately.” She didn’t meet his gaze as she walked over to one of the sinks and carefully washed the knife and her hands. Not that such a little bit of blood would cause problems to any humans. She just didn’t want the health department on her case if they paid a surprise visit.

Diego stepped in her path, blocking the way back to her workstation. “Has he been bothering you?” he asked in tones low enough that only she could hear.

To emphasize the question, he cocked his head in the direction of the back of the kitchen, where Blake was hard at work removing trash-filled bags from the garbage cans. As he hefted the bag, his muscles flexed. The hairs on his arm were golden in the light cast by the backdoor bulb.

She remembered the feel of all that muscle and the soft hair quite well, but drove those distracting thoughts from her mind. She had been having too many of those kinds of thoughts lately.

“No, he hasn’t. Just hello and goodbye,” she replied, almost slightly irked by Blake’s decided lack of attention.

A chuckle escaped Diego as she brushed past him and back to her workstation, her mentor following close behind her.

“I have to confess. I didn’t expect him to last a day, much less two weeks.”

As she resumed chopping the vegetables for a mirepoix, she nodded. “I didn’t, either. Especially since you’ve given him every crap job in the book.”

“Man’s on a mission,” Diego proclaimed, before he sauntered away, hands tucked into the pockets of a designer suit that screamed old money. Way old money, Meghan thought; there was still much of the wealthy Spanish lord in Diego’s attitude and attire.

Much like there was still much of the punk in Blake.

She glanced in Blake’s direction, but he had already headed out to the alley. She resumed her work, but her mind was half on Blake, and when he returned, she watched him work out of the corner of her eye.

He did every menial task he had been assigned. Even when the other vampire chef intentionally spilled a pan of sauce across Blake’s apron and the floor, he minded himself and did just what he should, although inside of her, she perceived the heat of his anger thanks to the special sire bond that they shared.

She hated that bond, a constant reminder of what he had done. Of the life to which she had been condemned by a man who still managed to intrigue her on some level. A man who had, as Diego noted, gone on a mission to prove that he could be good.

So far, all he had managed to prove was that he was determined, she thought.

After cleaning up the spill, Blake returned to the back of the kitchen where he ripped off the apron, stuffed it into the laundry bin and escaped into the alley.

She wondered if he would return or if that had been the final straw, but after a quarter of an hour, he stormed back in and snagged a clean apron from a stack of fresh laundry in the pantry. Then he resumed work.

Meghan did the same, turning her attention to the osso bucco she was preparing and then the next. The pace was grueling; the restaurant had developed a regular human clientele as well as a vampire following that kept on coming back, even with the deadly incident two weeks earlier.

The disturbing event in the private dining room had created a buzz in their community for days, but beyond that nothing else had happened. No one had a clue as to why the two vampires had decided to feed to their deaths. No one even seemed bothered by it. Why should they when their worlds were regularly filled with blood and violence?

But it bothered her.

She could still recall the sight of their naked, bloody bodies. The awful slurping sound as they had fed to the death rang in her ears time and time again.

Forcing those troubling recollections away, she finished up the last of the orders and then started on a few dishes for the kitchen staff that would take care of cleaning and closing up for the night. It had become a ritual for them to share a meal and some conversation before completing their chores.

She was laying out the food on the table with the help of one of the busboys when she noticed Blake at the door to the alley. Another of the helpers—one of the dishwashers that Blake regularly assisted—had stopped Blake by the door.

“Vamos, mano. Stay. She makes a great spread and we could use your help to clean up,” the man said in cajoling tones and placed a few friendly claps on Blake’s back.

Blake hesitated, looking from her to the man and then back to her again, well aware that Diego had put her in charge of the kitchen and that if she wanted him to go, he would be dismissed.

“We could use the help tonight. There’s a lot to clean,” she heard herself saying. She wondered what had possessed her to issue the invite. By now she knew that anything involving Blake didn’t end well, but in the past two weeks, she had sensed a difference in him. A determined difference that she now felt compelled to acknowledge.

He smiled at her invite, but it wasn’t his cocky self-satisfied grin. Warmth filled his features and reached up to his ice-blue eyes, which glittered with relief. Inside of her, the connection between them flared to life once again and she experienced his emotion. She almost physically felt the loneliness slip from him as he walked to her workstation, grabbed some of the food she had waiting there and walked the plates over to the table.

She wiped her hands on her apron and returned to her station, and then Blake was immediately behind her, helping her pick up the rest of the food she had made and serve it to the crew waiting to finish up for the night. With the long day behind them and the late night still ahead, the food disappeared quickly amid snatches of conversation, sating the human’s hunger.

As for herself, Blake and one other vampire, an older immortal who was their sommelier, they would have to quench their thirst for blood somewhere else. But the experience of sitting with the others, like she might have with her family back home, made her forget about the needs that the food wouldn’t satisfy.

She wondered whether Blake felt the same and watched as he ate some of the roast chicken she had rubbed with thyme. He must have noticed her interest since he picked up his head from the plate and said, “Tasty, love. Better than me mum used to make.”

His mum. She wondered what his mother had been like. What she might have thought about a son…

Who drained an innocent young woman until she was dead.

Who had only just gotten his first paying job in a couple hundred years.

“It’s not what you think,” he said, earning the curious glances of those seated around the table who had picked up on the vibes between the two of them.

“Is something up, Meghan?” the vampire sommelier asked, more attuned to their connection than the humans at the table.

“No, Bruce. Everything’s just fine,” she lied, but the meal had been ruined for her.

She remained quiet, as did Blake, while the others finished up their dinners, but she sensed he still had more to say to her. To his credit, he chose to keep silent as they cleared off the table and proceeded to finish up for the night.

Since Diego had entrusted her with the kitchen and because of all that he had done and continued to do for her, she always made a point of making sure everything was perfectly in order.

Satisfied, she told everyone to call it a night, and the few remaining people straggled out the door, Blake included, leaving her alone in the kitchen.

She took a few minutes to glance lovingly at the space—her space—pleased by the current state of her life, vampness notwithstanding. If there was one blemish on what might be her idea of Happy Ending it was her immortal status. She hadn’t quite had that on her list of what to do before she died.

Of course, thanks to Blake she hadn’t even hit item number one on her list of what to do before she died. Normally anger would rise at him and at her situation, but tonight a mix of sadness and satisfaction came instead.

She had to acknowledge that if not for the whole undead thing, she would be back in the Midwest doing something other than what she wanted to be doing. If it hadn’t been for Blake she wouldn’t have trained to be a chef and she wouldn’t have started to receive some notice of her skills from the local papers.

The door to the alley opened and Blake walked back in.

He stopped short as he saw her standing there. “Sorry, love. I didn’t mean to intrude. I just needed to clean up before I left.”

“Go right ahead.”

As Blake walked to the sinks by the pantry, she did as well, pulling off her dirty apron and chef’s jacket and tossing them into the laundry bin.

From the corner of his eye, Blake admired all her curves beneath the loose checkerboard chef’s pants and the small black tank top she wore, reminiscent of what she had worn on the day they had first met. Desire rose and he soaped up and scrubbed his arms and then splashed bracing cold water over his face, hoping to quell the need she would not appreciate.

He was about to reach for a towel, but she was there, handing him one, challenging his control.

“Thanks.”

As he toweled down, he noticed that she had slipped on a tight-fitting denim jacket and loosened her blond hair from the French braid she usually wore while she cooked. She looked so young. A pang of guilt rose up—thanks to him, she would always be that young.

Some women might have liked that, but not Meghan. In the last four years he had come to know that much about her—she feared little. He suspected that was why after her initial reaction to being a vampire, she had settled into immortal life.

With the damp towel, he motioned to the kitchen. “This seems to suit you.”

She crossed her arms and the action plumped up her already generous breasts, dragging his gaze there. Aware of his interest, she immediately changed her pose and said, “It wasn’t quite what I had planned for my life, but I like it.”

He tossed his dirty towel into the laundry bin. “What had you planned on, love?”

“You mean what had my parents planned for me,” she said. Before he could respond, she continued, “Going back home after college. A nine-to-five job somewhere with the requisite husband, house and a few kids.”

“Can you say ‘boring much’?”

Blake hadn’t expected that she would reply, but he sensed her pique as he walked to the pantry, snagged his black leather jacket from a hook on the wall and slipped it on. When he turned, she was so close, he nearly knocked her down.

He took a step back to give her some space, but she advanced on him and poked him in the chest. “So I suppose you had so much more planned for your life. Tell me, Blake. What did you want from life?”

She probably wouldn’t understand, but he gave it a shot. With a long heartfelt sigh, he said, “Just to survive, love. Just to survive.”