Page 5 of The Devil and the Dancer
She pressed her face into his shoulder. “I’m never going to hear the end of this.”
“No.” He chuckled. “If I could get the angle right, I’d take a picture.”
He watched her laughing against his shoulder, ridiculously pleased that she was sleepy and silly and walking home with him. That she trusted him. That she looked at him and didn’t see a monster but a man.
Oh, fuck me. Gavin felt his heart thump twice.
He didn’t just want Chloe Reardon. He was in love with her.
2
Chloe watched Ben stride through the loft, tossing phone chargers and batteries next to his backpack on the couch.
“We’ll be in pretty remote areas at times, so use the satellite phone if my mobile doesn’t work.”
“Uh-huh.”
“From what I’ve heard, nothing is reliable. Not power. Not cell signal. I’m bringing the solar chargers, so we should be fine with the satellite phone.”
“But only for emergencies,” Chloe said. “Tell Tenzin I’m not calling her to report on the flowers blooming.”
“I’ll let her know, but…”
“No! Enough. She’s obsessing.” It was true. Tenzin didn’t do slight interest. If something caught her attention, that interest quickly turned into obsession. In the year Chloe had been living at the apartment, she’d seen it happen half a dozen times.
“That’s what she does.” Ben shrugged. “And you have to admit the garden does look really good.”
Ben had relented and allowed Tenzin to plant a full garden on the roof, including fruit trees, a water feature, and a fire pit.
“Just tell her she has to trust that I will not kill all her plants. She’s showed me what to do at least a dozen times. And you guys are going to Puerto Rico, not Kathmandu.”
Ben squinted. “Do you know where Kathmandu is?”
“Do you?”
“Nepal.”
Chloe threw a balled-up sock at him. “Fine, know-it-all. Still, it’s like four hours from New York, not the ends of the earth. I’ll survive without you two.”
“If you need money—”
“I have access to Tenzin’s account here.”
Tenzin’s mind-boggling account.
Chloe had no idea how much money Tenzin actually had, but the account Chloe used to pay bills and run Tenzin’s financial life was… intimidating. Chloe could buy a modestly priced home in Queens with the cash Tenzin kept available.
But most of the time Chloe tried not to think about how much Ben and Tenzin spent on anything. She knew how much the remodel was—roughly—but Ben had instructed the builders to send all bills to him. Everything in New York City cost a fortune, even for someone accustomed to Los Angeles. So she gritted her teeth, let Ben pay for everything, and plotted how long it would take for her to get her own place.
Not that she didn’t like living in the loft. She was ridiculously grateful, enjoyed working for Tenzin, and often felt like she had the entire place to herself. Tenzin had been unusually quiet the past six months, Ben was gone a lot, and Chloe was often the only one awake during daylight hours.
She was slowly making new friends. She and Arthur had grown close again, though the hilarious designer was somewhat obsessed with her employers. Gavin spent a lot of time with her, but he was more comfortable in the bar or at his place.
He’d once muttered something about “territories being a bit complicated.”
I like it when you get territorial.
The memory brought a flush to her cheeks. Chloe had no idea what Gavin meant by territories. She had no idea how a lot of stuff in the vampire world worked. She didn’t want to know too much. She had her people—and her vampires—but she did not want to get deeper into the sticky politics of immortal life.
