Page 8 of The Dancer and the Dark
Gavin closed his eyes and muttered, “Then why are you calling me, Tenzin?”
“You should fly to Los Angeles, but maybe not before your meetings, which I assume you are considering canceling at this point. We will land in that infernal machine just before dawn, so there is likely no way you will see Chloe before nightfall anyway.”
Fuck. He hadn’t considered that.
“So finish your meetings so you don’t irritate Marie-Hélène, then have your humans fly you to Los Angeles during the day, and then you’ll see her at nightfall.”
Was he really taking scheduling advice from Tenzin? If he left New Orleans in an hour, he could be in Los Angeles when Chloe landed. Or could he?
Fuck, he was so turned around he couldn’t think. Traveling across the Atlantic always disrupted his internal clock. Gavin threw on a pair of pants and a T-shirt, ignoring the pressed suit that was hanging right outside his day chamber. He stormed up the stairs and nearly ran into Veronica in the process.
She lifted both her hands. “I don’t know what’s going on either, but I am telling you right now that if we cancel this meeting with MHC, you might not get another chance to talk about the telecom project until next year because she will be very, very angry.”
Gavin took a slow breath. “Explain.”
Veronica slowly turned him around and pointed him back downstairs. “Stop. Think. Chloe and I spoke this afternoon—”
“What the fuck is going on?”
“I will only say that there has been a death in her family. She is upset, but she is in absolutely no danger. She’s just very sad.” Veronica continued nudging Gavin downstairs. “Trust me, Gavin. She knows how hard these things can be to coordinate, and she does not want you to cancel a meeting.”
Gavin’s heart sank when he heard that Chloe had lost someone in her family, but Veronica’s practical advice was getting through. “This would be the third time we’ve canceled on Marie-Hélène.”
“And she has rearranged her schedule multiple times to make the meeting tonight work,” Veronica said. “So yes, if we cancel it at the last minute, she will border on livid. You know how mercurial she can be.”
Gavin admired and respected the woman, but she could be highly volatile. He turned and faced Veronica. “She’s fine?”
Veronica’s eyes softened. “She’s not fine; she’s sad. But she is not in anydanger, and canceling this meeting will not get you to her any faster.” She tucked a strand of silver hair behind her ear and patted his shoulder. “Focus on your business. Semis will get you to Los Angeles by nightfall tomorrow, and she’ll be there. I will fly commercial back to New York to take care of the house and Pete while both of you are gone.”
He turned and walked back to his dressing room, growling under his breath. There were many advantages to being a vampire. He didn’t age, his strength was enormous, and his elemental abilities had matured to the point where he could fly great distances swifter than the fastest bird.
But this was the literal dark side.
He couldn’t meet his lover in Los Angeles to hold her in her grief because it would be daylight. He would be sleeping, and even if he wasn’t, he couldn’t expose himself to any kind of sunlight unless he had a death wish. Others would have to care for her in his absence, and it grated on him.
“I’ll take the meeting tonight, but let MHC’s people know we have one night to come to an understanding. They’ve seen the preliminary proposal—a night to hammer out details should be enough time.”
Veronica nodded and shuffled some files in her arms. “Agreed, but I’ll drop that in George’s ear. The preliminaries have all been sent, and this isn’t the first joint venture you and MHC have had. I don’t think you’re going to need more than a night.”
Marie-Hélène clinkedher glass with Gavin’s. “I like everything I am seeing and I believe this partnership could make us very rich. But, my love, like all new ventures, I need to knowwhy.”
Gavin’s eyebrows went up. “Why?”
“Why is this necessary?” Marie-Hélène shrugged. “Nocht is efficient, widely adopted, and from all accounts, secure.”
They were lounging in one of Marie-Hélène’s salons. The velvet-covered walls were hung with impressionist nudes, the lamps were attuned to vampire eyes, and Gavin had taken off his jacket and draped it over the back of his chair when all their assistants and security finally left them alone.
They were waiting on signatures, and as expected, Marie-Hélène wanted a drink and a chat before she put a final pen to the contract. His hostess was sitting sideways on a chaise, her feet up, draped in a brilliant green silk caftan that brought out the gold flecks in her brown eyes.
“Think about what you just said. ‘From all accounts, secure.’” Gavin raised an eyebrow. “So it comes down to a question: How much do you trust Patrick Murphy?”
Her ruby lips turned up at the corners. “Hmmm. An excellent question.”
The lamplight glowed off Marie-Hélène’s brown skin and glistened on her hair, which was piled on her head in a mass of intricate braids. She made no attempt to hide the silver threads running through her braids. She looked like a vampire queen because she was. It was an unusual arrangement to have a neutral arbiter like Marie-Hélène Charmont as the vampire in charge, but in a city like New Orleans, which attracted a huge number of powerful vampire clans and rivals, it worked. She’d kept the peace for more than two hundred years.
“How much do I trust Patrick Murphy?” She tapped a finger to her plush lower lip.
In Gavin’s opinion, Marie-Hélène had been turned when she was at her most stunning. Her face had aged to reflect her character—regal, confident, and playful.
