“Okay,” she said with a small shrug and a smile, “which one’s mine?”
“This one,” he said, holding one of the cups out to her.
Eleanore took it and her fingers brushed against his as she did. Sparks of energy thrummed through her fingertips, into her arms, and then raced across her chest. It was far more intense than it should have been and Ellie froze in place at the contact. Neither of them said anything; finally, she cleared her throat and turned the cup around in her hands. “How did you know what I like?”
“I saw your drink on the desk at the bookstore,” he said softly. His voice sounded tighter than it had a moment ago. His green gaze had darkened and his attention had focused on her like a pinpointed laser beam. “I would be fine with just having coffee on the front doorstep, but I’m afraid that if you don’t let me in soon, we’ll have to contend with people coming up here to ask me for autographs.”
Even as he said this, Eleanore caught the distant sounds of teenage girls giggling below in the courtyard. She stepped back through her doorway and invited him in. “Say nothing about my state of dress or my lack of furniture and I might let you stay longer than it takes me to down this coffee,” she warned him.
Daniels stepped past the threshold and into Eleanore’s apartment. She watched him with some trepidation as he glanced around, taking in their surroundings. Ellie’s apartment wasn’t exactly cheap; it was in a better part of town and somewhat gated. Plus, hers was a corner suite with a fireplace, which not all of them had.
But she never spent much on furniture. It seemed pointless to her to waste money on something she might have to leave behind at any given moment. There was always a chance that the people around her would begin to notice she was different. And then it would be time to pick up and go, so she was always ready.
She wondered what Daniels, the famous and very wealthy movie star, would think of her minimalist decor. He probably had a mansion.
“Have a seat in the living room and I’ll go change,” she told him.
She walked into the kitchen and pulled a mug down from one of her shelves. Then she tried to steady her hands as she poured her coffee from the paper cup he’d handed her into the mug and popped it into the microwave. She took a deep breath and returned to the living room, where he was still standing beside the couch, taking it all in. She brushed nervously past him and made her way down the hall to her bedroom.
Ellie shut the door behind her and hurriedly pulled off her pajamas. Then she pulled on a pair of jeans and a T-shirt and quickly ran a brush through her hair.
When she returned to the living room, it was to find Daniels standing before a pair of plywood shelves she had put together and placed in one corner. One shelf held all of her CDs. The other contained hardback and paperback books.
He was reading the titles of the books when he glanced up at her entrance.
His head turned and his gaze instantly pivoted to her once more. Eleanore felt her face and ears grow hot.
The hint of a smile began to curve Daniels’s lips. “You like Valley of Shadow,” he said, holding up one of her CDs. An image of a cemetery covered the front and in the center of the graveyard stood a single man dressed in black, half of his face hidden by a black mask. “Fan of the Masked One?”
“Who isn’t?” she replied with a faked shrug of nonchalance. “He has the voice of an angel.” It was probably pathetic, but she was so inexperienced at flirting, she was grateful to have something else to focus his attention on.
Daniels stared at her intently for a moment and then smiled a slow, enigmatic smile. “You’ll get no argument from me,” he said as he turned and slid the CD back into its slot.
Ellie watched as the muscles in his back and arms bunched invitingly with every CD he removed and replaced. The
schlick-schlick-schlick
sound of their shuffle filled the air in the room with a tense kind of static. In that moment, she was struck with the surreal realization that Christopher Daniels, tall and gorgeous and replete with hard-cut muscles, was actually in her apartment and appeared to be honestly interested in what she liked.
What were the chances?
She cleared her throat. “I’m going to get my coffee,” she told him. She had backed up a step to head for the kitchen when Daniels stopped what he was doing and turned around to face her.
The green of his eyes was so piercing and intense in that moment, she nearly gasped. Instead, she lifted her hand, almost protectively, and found her fingers lightly brushing the hollow of her throat. “Your eyes are so green,” she said before she could stop herself. Her blush deepened, inflaming her face.
Stupid!
Christopher’s grin was intensely pleased. “They get that way.”
She felt like an idiot. With a good amount of effort, she forced herself to pull her gaze from his and focus on his coffee cup. “Does yours need warming up?” she asked. Her eardrums began to hum with the sound of blood rushing through them and her voice sounded hollow.
He glanced down at the paper cup he’d placed on the coffee table. “No.” He looked back up at her, capturing her eyes with his. “Thank you. I’m good.”
She nodded and hurriedly spun around. Once she was in the kitchen, she leaned against the refrigerator and tried to catch her breath. Her heart was thrumming wildly in her chest; she could feel it beating frantically at the pulse points in her wrists and temples.
Good God, what the hell is he doing to me?
She rolled her eyes and bit her lip hard.
Get a hold of yourself, Ellie
, she mentally scolded.
He’s just a human being, just like you, just like everyone. He’s just a guy. So calm the hell down!
A few minutes later, she had gotten herself under enough control that she could face him again. She returned to the living room holding her steaming mug with both hands. Her fingers were fidgeting around the porcelain, but at least it kept them busy.
“You’re a fan of manga, too,” he said with a nod to the plethora of colorful trade paperbacks on the shelf.
She smiled nervously. “I’ve taken to reading newspapers backward.”
“Poe?” He gestured to the black leather-bound tomes.
“I do love Poe.”
“And vampires.”
At this, she froze. Daniels smiled a “got you” smile and turned to gesture to the title of the nearest paperback book. “
Slave to a Vampire: An Erotic Compilation of Stories About Vampires and the Brides They Claim
,” he read aloud.
Eleanore’s blush was back and as furious as ever.
Daniels sat down on her couch and pulled a single magazine from under the picture book on her coffee table. On the cover was a photograph of him as Jonathan Brakes—fangs, glowing eyes, and all.
Ellie shrugged noncommittally and stubbornly plastered an innocent expression on her face. “I got that magazine for the article on Tim Burton,” she said in a matter-of-fact tone.
Daniels’s brow arched. He glanced down at the cover and searched for Tim Burton’s name. It wasn’t on the cover. She knew that already. He opened it and searched the table of contents. Ellie shifted from one foot to the other, trying not to let her embarrassment show. Burton’s article was on page twenty-three. “I’m surprised you knew it was in here,” Daniels said. “What with all of this eye candy in the way.”
Eleanore said nothing to that. Instead, she took another sip of her coffee and tried to hide her face behind her mug as she did so.
On the couch, Daniels opened the magazine up to his own article, which was easy, since the magazine had been opened to that page so often it now did so automatically. Daniels shot her another knowing glance and Ellie felt like sticking her head in a hole. Then he began reading. “Christopher Daniels came out of the closet today when he announced to the world that he has a crush on his costar, Lawrence McNabb, the tall blond actor who plays Daniels’s enemy in
Comeuppance
.”
“It does not say that!” Eleanore exclaimed, coming forward to put her coffee mug down on the table in order to snatch the magazine from him.
He was faster, though, and moved it to the side so that she nearly fell on top of him. She barely managed to brace herself on the arm of the couch, and she caught his wicked grin when she only just prevented herself from landing in his lap. “So you
did
read it,” he said.
Eleanore hastily straightened and crossed her arms over her chest. That did it. She had been nervous as it was, but his teasing had now put her on the defensive. “What are you doing here?” she asked him. “And how did you find me?”
Daniels dropped the magazine on the coffee table and leaned back to drape his arms over the back of the sofa. Ellie’s gaze flicked to his thick arms and then flicked back to his face. She couldn’t help it. He hadn’t missed it, though, and his smile broadened.
“The truth?” he asked.
“It’s usually preferable,” she said tightly.
He nodded and leaned forward, resting his elbows on his knees and lacing his fingers together. His gaze never left hers. “I had my agent track down your address. I just needed to see you again.”
She felt her brow furrow. “Do you always track down your dates this way?”
He smiled a winning smile. “You’re not my date. You turned me down, remember?”
She mulled that over. It was true enough.
“I also didn’t know how else to meet you,” he admitted then, with a sigh. He leaned back once more into the sofa and shrugged. “If I return to the bookstore where you work, everyone will recognize me and you’ll end up on the cover of
People
magazine. Call me crazy, but I had this impression that you wouldn’t appreciate that kind of publicity.”
Ellie blinked. Then she looked away. She was caught off guard by this small confession. He couldn’t be more right, of course, but she wondered how he knew. Was it that obvious? Or did it have something to do with the storm? With her healing little Jennifer?
The questions were back again. They were always there, it seemed.
Suddenly, she felt very weary. “Fair enough,” she finally said and sat down in the love seat opposite him. As she sat, the light caught the gold band on his wrist and reflected off it.
She frowned a little and cocked her head to one side. “That’s an interesting bracelet. Where did you get it?”
Daniels looked down at his wrist and seemed to think very carefully before answering. “I’ve had it for years,” he said. “It was passed down to me from my father. It’s supposed to be magic.”
Her interest was piqued now. Being that she could call lightning from the skies and control fire, magic—or rather,
power
, at least—was something she happened to know a little about. “Oh?”
Daniels looked back up at her, once more trapping her gaze in his. He considered her in silence for several tense moments and then licked his lips. “The writing on the outside tells a tale,” he explained. “The bracelet was made by God for his four favored archangels. The magic in the wreath possessed the ability to bind a magical being’s powers within their body.” He paused and looked back down at the bracelet as he slowly turned it over. “At least, that’s how the story goes.”
Eleanore glanced at the beautiful gold band again. She’d always loved a good tale of fantasy and magic. “What kinds of beings?” she asked. And then she added, “What kinds of powers?”
Something dark flashed in Daniels’s eyes and he suddenly seemed to be seeing Ellie all the way down to her core. “You name it,” he said softly. “Vampires, werewolves, angels, and demons. Take your pick.”
Ellie frowned. “Why would an
angel’s
powers need to be bound?”
Daniels looked down at the band on his wrist and chewed on the inside of his cheek; she could see the slight indentation as he did so. He was mulling something over. Finally, he looked back up. “Angels are like humans in that they’re unpredictable,” he told her. “You never know when one might turn on you for no good reason.” He smiled a rather cryptic smile and shrugged.
“Which archangels are his four favorites?” Ellie asked next. She wasn’t feigning interest for his sake. She really wanted to know.
“Michael, the Warrior Archangel,” he told her softly. “Uriel, the Angel of Vengeance; Gabriel, the Messenger Archangel; and Azrael,” he finished, his tone dropping a touch, “the Angel of Death.”
Eleanore spent several seconds too many trapped in that verdant gaze and then managed to rip her eyes away long enough to once more study the etchings engraved on the bracelet. She wasn’t a religious person, but she was familiar with the names, of course. It was impossible not to be, especially since she worked in a bookstore.
However, something about the tale didn’t make sense. It felt . . . incomplete. She supposed it didn’t really matter. Fiction and fantasy were like that.
Finally, realizing that she hadn’t said anything in too long, she blinked and pulled her gaze away to stare at the coffee table. “If it was meant for archangels, then how did you end up with it?” she asked, playing along with the story.