Angel at Dawn (5 page)

Read Angel at Dawn Online

Authors: Emma Holly

Tags: #Ghost stories, #Vampires, #Horror, #Paranormal, #Fiction, #Romance, #Paranormal romance stories, #Motion picture producers and directors, #Occult fiction, #Ghosts, #Occult & Supernatural, #Love stories

Two
U
nable to lie abed while their business remained unsettled, Grace got up bright and early—well, ten-ish, anyway—and drove back to Christian’s ranch. The endless sky was clear as crystal, the temperature milder than she expected for Texas. Willing to use her sex appeal within reason, she wore a dress today: a pretty Dior knockoff with a full skirt and petticoats. The fitted bodice showed off her bust, and the flowered fabric’s green background made her hair redder—something men seemed to appreciate.
Confident she looked her best, Grace knocked briskly on the adobe house’s wide Spanish door.
Her calm was ruined by it taking three tries for anyone to answer. When someone did, it was a trim older man with a sun-lined face.
“Can I help you, miss?” he asked, his drawl twice as thick as Christian’s.
Grace held her spine as straight as she could, the precious document she carried clutched close against her waist. “I’m here to see Mr. Durand. We have business to discuss.”
The older man chuckled. “Haven’t been doing business with him long, have you, honey? Not if you’re coming here at this hour.”
Christian’s gatekeeper wasn’t moving out of the doorway, and he didn’t appear impressed by her feminine wiles. Grace wished she were better at batting her lashes, but it was too late to fix that now.
“Perhaps I could leave a message. If he’s busy with a cow.”
The older man frowned like he was going to turn her away. Luckily, Christian appeared in the shadowy hall behind him. Grace’s stomach did an unsettling flip. He was dressed only in his blue jeans. Both his torso and feet were bare. He didn’t have a lot of hair on his chest, just a thin veil of black over steely muscles and olive skin. The way that hair narrowed to a line and dove past his navel seemed too personal to stare at.
“It’s all right,” he said, sounding as sleepy as if he’d just then rolled out of bed. “I’ll talk to her.”
His guard dog seemed surprised to hear this. “You sure?”
Christian rubbed his palms up and down his face, causing interesting muscles to shift in his arms and chest. His biceps displayed veins Grace wasn’t familiar with. “I’m sure. Go check on the barbwire in the east pasture.”
The older man opened his mouth, shut it, then shot Grace a warning look. “Don’t you overstay your welcome, gal.”
“Cross my heart,” Grace promised, which earned her a harder stare than before.
Sadly, Christian’s manners weren’t any better than his companion’s. Grace surmised he must be a night person like Nim Wei.
“Suppose you want coffee,” he muttered.
He turned, treating her to his fine back view, and padded on long pale feet into a large, viga-beamed kitchen. She would have said it was decorated in “frontier” style, except the cabinets looked like they really might date back to those days. He had the usual appliances, though their color was hard to identify. The room was as dim as the entryway, probably because every shade in the place was pulled.
“Was that man your father?” Grace asked as she followed.
“Roy? Hardly. Though I suppose he acts like one now and then.” He scratched his bare chest, then seemed to remember what he’d come here for—or at least he sort of remembered. He tried three doors before finding the coffee mugs. He took one down like it was heavy. “Roy usually keeps coffee brewed on the stove.”
Grace could tell he did. Even from where she stood, the pot smelled undrinkable. Deciding politeness was the better part of valor, Grace took a seat at the stainless steel and splatter-patterned Formica table. She didn’t ask if Christian wanted to don a shirt. As absentminded as he was acting, he might disappear for good.
“I thought we could talk some more,” she said. “About you starring in our film.”
“Right.” He set a mug half full of ink before her, then glanced unsurely toward the big Frigidaire.
“I
would
like cream,” she prompted, “and sugar if you have it.”
This resulted in more searching and banging of cabinets, but at last Christian unearthed the items she’d requested. He dropped down, with apparent relief, into the vinyl chair opposite hers.
“Don’t cook much,” he said gruffly.
Because this seemed a reluctant apology, Grace found herself smiling. “I brought the script.” She pushed the clipped stack of pages across the table. “I thought reading it might help you make up your mind.”
He took it, blinked a few times, and looked up at her. Grace had to brace against the heart-stopping handsomeness of his face.
“Your name is on the front page,” he said.
 
 
W
hen he mentioned this, Grace flushed the hardest yet, the rush of vibrant color sweeping up her forehead. Nim Wei was right about her blushes being yummy. Though it was too early for his responses to be at full strength, his gums itched in reaction. If it hadn’t been daytime, he’d have been flashing fang. Gritting his still-normal teeth, he focused on her answer.
“I reworked the screenplay,” she said, “so Miss Wei said I should share credit. Film is a visual medium, and the first version was too long and talky. Also, there was too much on-the-nose dialogue.”
“On the nose?”
“That means characters say exactly what they’re thinking.”
“And that’s wrong?”
“It’s not wrong; it’s just boring. For example, suppose your character, Joe, walks up to his gang and says, ‘Charlie, I’m mad as hell because I think you’re trying to take over. Why don’t we rumble?’ It’s more interesting for the audience if Joe picks a fight over something else, and they can guess why he’s doing it on the basis of actions that came before. Even if Joe and Charlie don’t fight, the audience will know Joe’s angry because he’s showing it on his face. They’re more involved if they’re helping puzzle out the story. Plus, it’s more like real life. People rarely tell the truth about themselves straight out. Half the time, they don’t even know what it is.”
Enthusiasm had carried her through this speech, her blood close to her skin for different reasons now. Grace had changed from the Grace he knew, if indeed he’d ever known her. She gave thought to this movie stuff. It was important to her. Unnerved, he felt the metal frame of his chair dig into his shoulder blades.
“I’m not in the habit of putting my emotions on display.”
“But that’s perfect!” Grace responded. “You show and hide them at the same time. Acting in a movie isn’t like being in a play onstage, where you have to play to the farthest rows. The camera picks up every facial twitch and flicker. Every expression can be smaller. Look at you now, if you doubt you’re expressive.”
Christian’s eyes went unnaturally wide. “Now?”
“You’ve leaned away from me in your chair. Your hands are pressing the table hard enough that your fingertips have gone white. You’re not comfortable with me, and your body says your guard is up. That’s exactly the sort of reaction Miss Wei and I want to catch on film. In fact, that guardedness you’re automatically demonstrating is the core of Joe Pryor’s character.”
For a moment, Christian’s brain was jarred clear of thought. It shocked him that she saw so much, that he’d lost his usual blank face in front of her. Needing to distract himself as much as her, he tapped the stack of paper in front of him.
“You really think my reading this script will convince me to work with you?”
“Well, it isn’t Tolstoy, but I figured once you saw it was a story young people could relate to, you’d want to be part of it.”
Clearly, she thought of him as a “young person”—younger than she was, apparently. Christian laughed under his breath. “There really isn’t anything inside you that knows who I am, is there?”
Grace’s brow furrowed. “I’ve always thought the best way for people to know you is to show them what you can do.”
This struck him as the rationale of someone who
didn’t
want anyone getting close. “Don’t you think any number of real actors would appreciate this opportunity more than me?”
“We auditioned them. By the hundreds. A few were all right, but none were magical. You’re magical, Mr. Durand. You have that mysterious something inside you the big ones have, that special spark no one can take their eyes off of.”
“Christian,” he reminded her absently.
They’d leaned toward each other with their forearms on the table, and she’d reached out to cover his hand. Realizing this, her fingers tensed as she prepared to withdraw. Then she stopped. He watched her throat move with a swallow.
“Christian, then. You did imply you wanted to work with me.”
Her fingers felt like ice to his vampire senses, no small accomplishment for a warm-blooded being. He didn’t have to read her to know she didn’t truly want to flirt; she was simply willing to for her job. Feeling abruptly cooler himself, he pulled his hand out from under hers.
“I did express that interest, but not because I wanted to take advantage of you against your will.”
“Of course,” she said, fighting a stammer. “Forgive me. I didn’t mean to suggest you did.”
He suspected they both were lying, which possibly proved her point about on-the-nose dialogue. He turned his head to the doorway, cursing softly in
Schwyzerdütsch.
. He asked himself what would be so wrong about taking advantage. Given what she’d done to him, no matter if she didn’t remember, didn’t she deserve it?
He
certainly deserved something. Needed it, if it came to that.
His legs were sprawled beneath the little eat-in table, his bare feet so close to hers he couldn’t help but register her heat. He wanted to tug at his jeans, his now huge erection uncomfortable. He gripped the table’s molded steel edge instead.
“I’ll read the script,” he said, harsh and low. “Come back tonight at nine. I’ll give you my answer then.”
Grace pushed awkwardly from her chair, the slight human imperfections in her movements unacceptably appealing. “Of course. I’m sorry for dropping in unannounced. I’ll return later.”
“Grace.” His voice stopped her at the kitchen doorway. When she turned, he feared his heart would pound through his chest. The hesitance in her expression, the lush beauty of her features, were exactly as he remembered.
“Yes?” she asked breathily.
He was nearly breathy himself. “When you come back tonight? Be sure you come alone.”
 
 
D
espite his piled-up years, Christian hadn’t read ten pages before he saw what Grace meant about this being a story young people could relate to.
I Was a Teen-Age Vampire
was operatic, with a generous ladling of high school angst. Its central characters were teenagers, the few adults little more than mustache-twirling obstacles to the young people’s seemingly just desires. The villain was Joe Pryor’s father, who locked horns with his son in a classic intergenerational struggle. Age versus youth. Corruption versus ideals. The plot couldn’t have been heavier-handed if he’d written it himself when he was Joe’s age.
He finished the tale in half an hour, with the back of his neck tingling. When he reached the scene where Joe’s power-hungry father slew one of his friends, Christian gasped audibly. The dead boy was called Matthew, and though it wasn’t spelled out, he might have been romantically involved with another gang member named Philip. Matthaus and Philippe had been Christian’s friends when he was mortal—a difference of a few letters. They’d died not at his father’s hand, but certainly at his behest.
Substitute a band of Swiss mercenaries for a motorcycle gang, and it sure looked like Grace was stealing pages from his past.
“Christ,” Christian said and flipped faster to the end.
When Roy returned at noon for lunch, Christian was still slumped in the kitchen chair, his hands feathering slowly across the first page of Grace’s script. The sun that snuck past the edges of the window shades wasn’t strong enough to burn him, only to make him drunk. His thoughts were so sluggish they could have been waterlogged. The effect was pleasant if dangerous: an opium dream for vampires.
Roy gave him a look that said he knew what he’d been doing and didn’t approve. He strode past Christian with a grunt, retrieving a sandwich and a beer from the Frigidaire. Roy didn’t cook any more than Christian did. A woman from town delivered supplies to them every couple days. Roy unwrapped his sandwich, cracked the beer, then took a pull from it. Almost as familiar with Roy’s rhythms as he was with his own, Christian knew he’d be saying his piece any moment now.

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