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1.
“Mr. Kalamack,” the living vamp says as he approaches Trent, “I hope you haven’t forgotten our deal.” He lays a vice grip hand on Trent’s shoulder, though for all appearances it looks casual to anyone watching.
Trent tenses and Rachel, beside him, notices. The vamp, however, fails to notice the dolled up redhead in the pale green dress sitting beside Mr. Kalamack . “Hey buddy,” she says. He ignores her. “I said hello.”
He looks at her briefly with the air of swatting away a fly. “Honey, please, the men are talking.”
“No, you aren’t,” she says, laying a delicate hand on his and sending a burst of line energy through him. Not enough to do any real damage, but definitely enough to get his attention. Wide-eyed, the vamp looks down at her. “If you need to talk to Mr. Kalamack, I’m sure you know how to contact his secretary.”
Mumbling something incoherent, he walks away looking steamed.
When Rachel locks eyes with Trent, the tips of his ears are still red but now, he’s smirking.
2.
“This way,” he says, placing his hand just too low to be friendly on the small of her back as he leads her through the crowd. They stop when someone recognizes Trent, as they always do.
“Trent, good to see you,” says a dark-haired woman who smells so overwhelmingly like redwood that she must have been spelling until she walked out the door to the gala.
“Dahlia,” he says, all charm and grace. “It’s been too long. How are Bryant and Cassidy?”
“Growing up too fast. And I heard the news about your daughters. You must be thrilled. How are they?”
“They’re visiting with their mother on the West Coast. Growing like weeds. I can’t believe how big they are.”
“Do…elf babies grow very quickly?”
Neither of them miss the way her nostrils flare as she trips on the word, but neither does Trent miss a beat. “It seems so. I was the youngest in my family so it caught me rather off guard.”
When Dahlia leaves, it’s clear Rachel is still fuming and trying to hide it. Still, she steps closer to Trent than is strictly necessary and whispers, “Don’t let her get to you.”
3.
“And how long have you two been an item?” asks the older philanthropist in the bright emerald dress at the intermission of King Lear looking between Trent and his radiant, red-headed date tucked close to his side.
“Ah, no, Ms. Morgan is my—”
“We’re not—”
Trent laughs his polished politician’s laugh, putting some space between him and Rachel. “Ms. Morgan is watching out for me while my head of security is on the West Coast with my daughters visiting family.”
Within minutes, they’ve closed the gap between them again.
*
“This is all the food they’re serving?” Rachel asks at the opening night reception after the show. She looks dismally at the tiny pistachio-crusted salmon bite.
Trent smiles. “I always eat before I come to one of their events. The food looks fancy, but they’re too stingy to serve a real meal.”
“Thanks for giving me a heads up,” she huffs.
Trent laughs quietly, barely a puff of air. “Do you want to get a real dinner afterward?”
Even in the dim light, he can see her cheeks color as she tenses. “It’ll be almost midnight by then, I’m not going to keep you from sleeping—“ She cuts off at his raised eyebrow. She groans. “Yes, please. I’m starving.”
4.
Trent hands up his phone and looks conspiratorially at Rachel. “Do you have anywhere to be?”
“No, I’m yours for the night,” she says, and there’s a pause before she starts rambling. “I mean, I cleared my schedule because I didn’t know how long you had to be at the casino. And, y’know, the last time we were at a casino together…”
“My best friend tried to kill me?”
“Yeah, that.”
“Maggie just told me she’s making waffles. Stay for dinner?”
Rachel clenches her jaw. “Will there be more of that strawberry sauce?”
Trent’s booming laugh fills the tiny car. “I’ll make sure there is.”
*
“How can these waffles possibly be so good?” Rachel asks, cutting another piece drowning in fresh strawberry sauce. Trent watches the pleasure on her face as she eats, eyes closed and blissed out. It makes his mind wander places it absolutely under no circumstances should, especially not with the way Ellasbeth keeps hinting harder and harder that she’ll be coming back with the girls at the end of the month and her increasingly suggestive comments about getting back together.
“I’m glad you like them.”
5.
“You’re early,” Rachel says, startled and more than a little flustered. She’s barefoot, jacketless, with spelling stuff strewn all over the kitchen.
“Jenks let me in,” Trent says by way of non-explanation. He looks around the kitchen. “Do you want help cleaning up?”
“No, it’s fine. Just—“ she looks around with a pained expression “—you’re going to have to wait because I can’t leave this stuff out like this. Ivy will kill me.”
“No problem,” Trent says, looking up at the cabinets. “Where do you keep the coffee?”
Trent brews a pot while Rachel cleans, and the companionship is somehow more familiar than it should be.
“What were you making?” Trent asks from where he’s perched on the counter, legs swinging as he sips his coffee while Rachel darts around the living room gathering her things.
She pulls on her second heel, then taps the side of her leg. “Splat pellets,” she says, pulling back the slit of her skirt to reveal the edge of her thigh holster.
Trent raises the mug to cover his face and takes a long, slow sip.
+ 1
Trent walks into the kitchen that’s more familiar than it was a few months ago, finding Rachel dressed for something that was certainly not bowling.
“You look nice,” he says, looking down at his watch to hide the flush he can feel creeping up after her once-over. He doesn’t like the way Ivy has gone still and he makes quick work of leaving the room, waiting for Rachel at the top of the hall. Sheepishly he whispers, “Did I set Ivy off?”
*
Trent breathes a sigh of relief when Rachel says her line is fine. He wishes he could be relieved for more noble reasons, like that the city would be safe, but mostly he was going to be really sad if their date turned into work.
“You’re already ahead of me on this. Good. That frees up our conversation tonight. I’d like to wedge something to eat into the schedule too.” He winces internally. He sounds like he’s planning a business lunch. This woman makes him stupid. “That is, if you don’t have other plans.”
She looks at him strangely, and his heartbeat quickens. “I could eat, sure.”
The pleasure in his stomach is almost too much to bear. With new spring in his step, he rushes to open the passenger door.
*
“Is this a date?” she repeats.
Fuck . This, of all the times, Jenks didn’t blab.
Trent had known when she’d walked out in business clothes that she had not, in fact, figured it out, but he had been lying to himself the entire drive, hoping the giant hints he was dropping would get the point across.
“I want it to be,” he says, finally, so nervous that he feels like he’s liable to start shaking like a leaf.
*
“We’re on a date” he tells the man behind the counter proudly, and then internally cringes again. Trent was graceful and smooth in conversations—some would almost call it his defining feature—except, unfortunately, with women he was attracted to. It didn’t happen often, but he’d made an ass of himself more than once. The only reason it had gone anywhere with the were who trained his horses was that she had been happy to take the lead and, after sticking his foot in his mouth more than once, he’d been happy to follow.
But it’s fine. He can get through one date without messing it up. And even if he can’t, this ends tonight.
*
Trent indulges himself, eyes lingering on her collarbones and the sweep of her neck. He could have kissed her so many times the last three months. Nearly had kissed her more than once. It had been unnerving to sit so close to her in his tiny sports cars, breathing in her sweet meadow scent. Sometimes, when she relaxed, she leaned just enough toward him that he would barely have had to move to close the gap…
He’s an idiot.
But he’s an idiot on a date with Rachel Morgan, and he’ll be damned if he’s going to waste it thinking about should haves.
Before him, Rachel shakes her hips in celebration of a strike. She turns and waggles her eyebrows.
“Your move, Kalamack.”
Goddess help him, he wants her so badly.
*
“That sounds lonely,” he says, watching his fries carefully, because he’s rapidly lost the ability to look anywhere but her mouth. Three months of self-restraint fallen apart like wet tissue paper after a couple of hours of bowling.
“Not really,” she says, and he looks up at her face because he’s fairly certain she’s lying. And she is lying, he’s certain, because she has the worst poker face of anyone he’s ever met. But looking at her was a mistake, because all he can do is stare at her sweet, downturned lips and think about how desperately he wants to kiss her.
He would give this woman anything, anything she wants, he thinks.
So when starts to coax him into trying the puddle of ketchup in her basket, a suggestion that feels even more dangerous than kissing a demon in public, how on earth is he supposed to refuse?
*
They discuss the future. She breaks his heart. She touches his knee. The world explodes.
*
The horrendous knot in the pit of his stomach anticipating an ugly custody battle with Ellasbeth shifts its focus when he realizes how shook up Rachel is.
She offers to let him leave, as if anything in Cincinnati could possibly convince him to do so. He tucks a strand of her beautiful hair behind her ear. “I’m glad we did this.”
“The date right?” she asks in a feeble attempt to lighten the mood, stymied by her trembling voice. “Not the…this?”
He reaches past her to grab her some water, making no effort not to brush against her. “I can honestly say that a date is nothing like working with you.”
She hands back the water bottle, looking from it to his mouth. He checks his watch. He heard Edden say it would be five minutes. They have, at most, a minute.
Trent’s resolve crumbles.
He closes the space for the first time in three months and kisses her.
She sighs into the kiss and before he can react, before he can do anything but register the sound, Rachel slides off the stool and presses against him. She catches him when he stumbles, and even through his haze Trent is sure that it is the single most staggeringly hot thing he has ever experienced. She twines a hand into his hair and, all thoughts gone from his mind but her sweet meadow scent, he groans into her mouth just as—
“You fucking animals!” the woman he’s already forgotten about screams. Rachel’s tongue dances across the seam of his lower lip, and the stymied groan turns into a growl. He keeps kissing her even as the woman yells, “There are three dead vamps on the floor and you’re making out?”
He sends a dart of energy through her just before she pulls away to answer the woman. But through it all, she never drops Trent’s gaze.
When they finally separate, a chill goes through Trent that has nothing to do with the loss of body heat.
He is going to find a way to make this work. He has to.