Nightwind (22 page)

Lauren shook her head. “You are spoiling me.”

Syntian grinned at her. “That was my intent.” He leaned over and opened the door for her. “Hop in.”

Aware of being scrutinized by her nosy neighbors, Lauren climbed into the low-slung sports car and shut

the door. She turned her head as Syn laughed.

“If I want to know what you’re doing every minute of every day, which one of those busybodies should

I ask first?” He popped the clutch and allowed the Porsche to leap forward. “My sixth sense says the

Black sisters.”

Lauren giggled. “You’d do better with Mrs. Malone, I think. The sisters Black are afraid of men.”

Syntian glanced in the rear view mirror, spying one of the ancient crones craning her neck down the

street to watch their leaving. “Maybe I should go talk to them.”

“Why?” Lauren asked, studying his cleanly chiseled profile.

“They’re going to be seeing a lot of me,” he answered, braking for the stop light at the end of her street

and flicking on his left turn signal. “I just want them to know my intentions are honorable.”

She stared at him, thinking that the sweetest thing any man could have said to her and knowing full well

Syntian meant it. He was being careful of her reputation, didn’t want her neighbors to think her a loose

woman of easy morals. When he turned his head and smiled at her, she saw the concern for her showing

on his lean face.

“Does that surprise you?” he asked, moving into the intersection as the light changed.

“This is all new to me,” Lauren admitted. “If I still had a father and was living at home with him, would

you come ask him for the honor of escorting me?” She had meant it as a gentle tease, but his next words

went straight to her heart.

“That is the proper way of seeking a lady’s company,” he told her. “I’ve already asked your mother.”

He couldn’t have said anything else that would have stunned Lauren as much as those five words. She

stared at him, her face showing her surprise. “When?” she finally managed to ask him.

“Before she left.” He turned right at the courthouse to make the block so he could pull up alongside the

bookstore to let Lauren out.

“And what did she say?” Lauren asked, expecting the worst.

Syntian shrugged. “Let’s just say I charmed her.”

There was nothing to say to that mysterious remark. If anyone could charm her mother, it might well be

Syntian Cree, although Lauren had strong suspicions that no man could ever still the beastess in Maxine

Fowler, especially not after what Mrs. Hellstrom had told her about her mother.

“Is that a shopping list?”

Lauren looked up as he stopped at the red light, became aware of the clicking tic of his turn signal as he

waited for the light to turn green. “List?”

Syntian reached over and tapped the fluorescent orange sticky note clinging to Lauren’s purse. “List,” he

stated.

She glanced down. “Oh, this.” Her laugh was almost apologetic. “I seem to have adopted a cat.”

“Did you adopt him or did he adopt you?”

“He’s been hanging around the backyard for a couple of days now. He climbs up on the picnic table and

stares through the window at me.” She glanced up and noticed the light had changed just as he began to

make his turn on Highway 90. “I fed him this morning, so I guess I own him now.”

Syntian shook his head as he pulled up in front of her store and put on his right signal to let the car

behind him know he was letting someone off. “Cats aren’t owned by their mistress, Lauren, they own

their mistress.”

She opened the door. “You’re probably right.” Stepping out onto the sidewalk, she bent over to thank

him for the ride.

“I’ll come back and pick you up after work,” he told her. “We can go out to K-Mart for the cat stuff.”

“You want to go shopping with me?” she asked, surprised.

“I like shopping with women.” He grinned. “I find it fascinating.”

“You would.”

Glancing over her shoulder as she unlocked the door to the bookstore, she heard him tap lightly on the

sports car’s horn as he turned the corner at the end of the street and disappeared from view.

“You’re a lucky woman, Miss Lauren.” Lauren turned and found Gina Busbee, one of the new sales

clerks staring wistfully down the street. “I’d give anything to have a man like that courting me.”

A dull red infused Lauren’s cheeks and she started to protest, to tell the girl Syntian wasn’t courting her.

But she realized, much to her delight, that that was exactly what the man was doing.

If any of the customers in the store that day noticed the fresh bloom and glowing look on Lauren

Fowler’s face, they didn’t mention it. If they took note of her laughing smile and the easy way that she

made conversation with anyone who entered the store, they certainly didn’t comment on it. And if they

sometimes saw her staring off into space, a dreamy look in her sparkling eyes, they simply didn’t

recognize it for what it was.

But Angeline Hellstrom did when she came to take the day’s receipts to the bank with her.

“Has he kissed you, yet?” she asked Lauren in a whispered aside.

“Certainly not!”

“He will,” Angeline assured her. “When he feels the time is right.” She grinned. “And that man does

know
how to kiss, let me tell you!”

Lauren had to escape to the break room.

When the shiny black car pulled up to the curb just as she was locking up for the night, Lauren felt a

tugging at her heartstrings that she had never thought to ever experience. As the door swung open and he

grinned at her, putting out his hand to help her into the car, Lauren knew a wild, soaring moment of sheer

ecstasy.

“Shopping first,” he said as she shut the door behind her, “then supper, then I’ll take you home.” He

paused, turning so she could see the devilment in his face. “Where I will dutifully wait outside for you

while you change into something really nice.”

“For what?” she asked.

“To go dancing,” he told her, pulling out into the traffic.

“Dancing? I don’t know how to dance!”

“I do,” he said with a finality that left no doubt in her mind that he did and was very good at it, too. “The

man leads; the lady follows.” He glanced at her.
“That
you can do.”

“You’re serious, aren’t you?” she said, her heart hammering in her ribcage. She’d never gone to a dance

the entire time she was in high school and college; had never even been asked to go to one.

“There’s a place over in Fort Walton.”

Her shriek made him turn to look at her. “Fort Walton? That’s forty miles from here!” she said.

“She knows the distance between Milton and Fort Walton!” he said in a voice filled with wonder. “Is

there no end to the woman’s talents?”

“Be serious.”

“I
am
being serious,” he replied. He slowed down for an elderly woman whose right turn signal had been

on for the last five blocks. He glanced at his passenger, his face smug. “You know you want to go.”

Lauren knew she did, too; was dying to go. She shook her head at him. “You’re incorrigible.’’

“I am, ain’t I?”

Everywhere they went inside K-Mart, women followed Syntian with gazes hot with both desire and

wistfulness. That he didn’t look their way, not even once, turned their looks to Lauren with speculation.

“What kind of food should I get him?” Lauren asked, studying the variety of cat food cans on the

shelves. She looked up at Syn. “I read somewhere that cats should eat only canned food.”

He picked up a can of Whiska’s with bits of beef, studied it for a second and tossed it into her buggy.

“That sounds good.” She watched him reading the label on a can of Kal Kan Optimum with chicken and

rice. “And this, too.” He dropped it in the buggy then added several more.

“Are you buying this for Onyx or for you?” she asked with a laugh.

Syntian smiled as he took a stack of Whiska’s from the shelf. “I know what he likes,” was the reply. He

reached for a bag of dry food. “And he likes variety. He’ll want you to add a cup of this in with the

canned food every morning.”

“Oh, he will, will he?” Lauren asked as she watched him push her buggy toward the end of the aisle

where there were bags of cat litter. “What about a flea collar?”

Syntian turned and glared at her as though she had offended him. “He doesn’t have fleas.”

Lauren cocked an eyebrow at him. “How do you know?”

“I just do,” was the tart reply. Lifting a bag of clumping, allergy-free cat litter into the cart, he pushed it

on around the corner, leaving Lauren smiling after him with wonder.

“And do you know what kind of bed I should buy him?”

“He’ll be sleeping with you,” he told her.

“Oh, no!” Lauren answered, shaking her head. “I don’t want to get him in the habit.”

“Of what? Keeping you company?”

“Getting fur on my bedspread!”

He stared at her then shrugged. “He won’t.”

“I’m going to buy him a bed.”

“He won’t use it. He’ll sleep at the foot of your bed.”

They argued about the feline as they took their purchases up to the front. Syntian nixed her idea to buy

flea soap and sprays, worm pills, and any number of other products designed to insure the cat’s good

health.

“He’s an animal, Lauren,” Syn had sighed with exasperation. “A creature of nature, not science. Let him

fend for himself; he knows how to take care of his own needs.”

“But it says on this bottle...” she protested.

“No!” came his firm correction as he took the bottle of fur ball medicine from her hand and put it back

on the shelf with a thump. “He won’t need it!”

Lauren mumbled to herself as the cashier rang up the sale, all the while casting flirtatious looks to Syn

that the man ignored.

“He’s
my
cat,” Lauren muttered.

“You’re
his
human,” Syn reminded her.

“That will be twelve dollars and fifty-two cents,” the cashier told them.

Lauren opened her purse and was fishing for her checkbook when Syntian handed the cashier a

twenty-dollar bill. She looked up, annoyed. “Syn!”

“My treat,” he answered, winking at the cashier.

She didn’t say anything to him until they were in his Porsche and then turned in the seat to take exception

his high-handed actions.

“I know,” he said, holding up a hand to forestall her. “That wasn’t right. I’m sorry, but I just like cats.”

He looked so contrite, or was pretending to be, she thought with a grimace of exasperation, that she

couldn’t argue with him.

“Don’t do it again.”

“No, milady,” he answered, leaning toward her to put a soft kiss on her cheek. When he straightened

up, he smiled into her surprised face. “How does Burger King sound?”

“Do I have a choice?”

“No.”

Lauren sat across from him in the fast food restaurant, marveling that the man never seemed to eat

anything. He pushed his fries around inside the top of the Styrofoam container that held his Whopper

Junior, sipped at his iced tea, played with the sesame seeds on the hamburger bun, picking them off to

flick one now and again across the table. When she giggled, he stopped in mid-flick. Syntian looked up

and saw her watching him. “What?” he asked, all innocence.

“Nothing,” she answered, biting into her Whopper.

He pushed away the food. “I don’t eat human food. I’m really a space vampire, you know.”

Lauren shook her head. “Not possible,” she said around a gob of food.

“Why not?” he challenged, dusting his hands.

“If you were a bloodsucker, you couldn’t come out in the daytime.” She wagged her brows at him.

“You have to sleep during the day, in your coffin I might add, and go about your nefarious deeds at

night.”

Syntian’s chin came up. “Don’t believe all those stupid tales about us. We do some of our best work in

the daytime.”

“Such as?” she countered as she stuffed an onion ring into her grinning mouth.

“Fomenting diseases, polluting the water supplies, introducing corn bores into the crops; that sort of

thing.” He leaned back in his chair and folded his arms across his chest. “And causing the stock market

to decline, of course.”

“When do you sleep?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No need to. We do our raping, ravaging and pillaging at night.” He leered at her.

“Ravishing virgins is right at the top of the list, you know.”

“How come I can see your reflection?” she asked, nodding toward the picture beside him where his

image was showing on the glass covering.

He glanced at himself and the shrugged. “Vampires are required to be exceedingly handsome creatures,

not ogres like the one in Nosferatu. We like to look at ourselves, of course.”

Lauren giggled. “Of course.”

He cocked his head. “And we don’t have pasty faces like Bela Lugosi or bad hair cuts like Frank

Langella or raspy voices like Jack Palance.”

“What about Christopher Lee?” she asked as she sipped at her iced tea.

Syntian’s eyebrows came together in a frown. “What about him?”

“Well,” she said after wiping her lips on her napkin, “Christopher Lee is handsome.”

“Too pale.”

“He’s tall,” she said dreamily.

“Too thin.”

“He doesn’t have a raspy voice.”

Syntian sniffed. “But he has a phony upper class British accent.”

“I think he’s sexy,” she said. She grinned. “And Eric McCormack in The Passion of Dracula! Whoa,

baby! Those eyes, that beard, those sexy lips! The precious little mole on his right cheek!” She sighed

dramatically. “He could bite my neck any time.”