"The ice cream theory ..."
"The flavor you choose can be very telling. It will show me all your hidden agendas," he said, a somber tone to his voice, though his face hid a grin in the shadows of the lights peeking in from his window.
"Well, h.e.l.l. Now I"m afraid if I pick strawberry, it means I"m some kind of nymphomaniac."
"It does."
Phoebe giggled, enjoying the firm caress of his fingers entwined with hers. "Then it"s chocolate. Though, you wouldn"t have known that by the way I steamrolled you like you were a Jimmy Choo vendor."
Sam frowned. "d.a.m.n."
"What?"
"Chocolate means you"re a repressed serial killer."
Her head fell back on her shoulders in a snort of more laughter. "Then I guess Nina better watch herself."
"I"m a vanilla fan, personally."
"That"s why we"re here on this bench instead of in your bed, Sam McLean," she joked, not at all embarra.s.sed that he"d turned down her invitation to rock his sheets. In fact, the more she adjusted to his rejection, the better it felt. And while his chivalry could all be an act, he"d prevented her from doing something out of character, and for that, she was grateful.
He tipped her chin up and smiled. "Broccoli or green beans?"
"There"s a vegetable theory, too?"
"Oh, yeah. And it"s even more important than the ice cream theory."
"If I choose broccoli, does that mean I was bullied in high school?"
"No. It means you"re hotter than I thought you were."
She grinned, pushing a thick strand of her hair behind her ears. "Then, duh. Broccoli. Now it"s my turn. Okay, heavy metal or cla.s.sic rock?"
"Don"t try to fool me, Ms. Reynolds. There"s no music theory."
"No, that"s true. I just want to be sure if I"m stuck in some car on a road trip with you I"m not forced to listen to Jimi Hendrix in the honeymoon stage of our budding relationship. You know, the one where everything you do is oh so adorable, but after six months makes me want to grind my fangs down with a band saw?"
He made a mock hurt face. "You don"t like Hendrix? What kind of American are you?"
"The kind who can only take so many mindless, drugged-out guitar frets before she wants to spork her eardrums out. And you can diagnose that answer however you like."
His shoulders sank comically. "You disappoint me. Wait, you"re a Celine Dion girl, aren"t you? All romantic and weepy. I should have known."
She used her free hand to flick him in the shoulder. "No. My heart does not go on and on. While I appreciate the greatness of her velvet chords, she"s no Tom Jones."
"You mean, like the *What"s New p.u.s.s.ycat?" Tom Jones?"
"That"s exactly who I mean. And if you mock my love of *Delilah," *She"s a Lady," *Help Yourself," and *I"ll Never Fall in Love Again," I might be pushed to find something made of wood and insert it into your chest. My mother loved him, and she pa.s.sed that love down to me. I wear it with pride."
Sam tucked her arm under his and drew her close enough that she saw a vague twinkle in the deep brown of his eyes. "I can live with Tom. He is, after all, the king of the panty raid. A man has to respect that. I like punk-some techno. But I"m more a cla.s.sic rock guy than I am heavy metal, and my first choice would be cla.s.sical. Paganini, Beethoven, Vivaldi."
"You were a band geek, weren"t you?"
"I was a violin geek."
"You can really play the violin?"
"I can really play. Someday, if you"re kind to me, and you keep Nina from beating me up, I"ll rock your socks off with my mad string skills."
So Yo-Yo Ma hot. "Television? Favorite shows?"
"Huge fan of detective shows. Especially old reruns of Murder, She Wrote and McMillan and Wife. Also a big Burn Notice fan. You?"
"Soap operas. They"re my guilty pleasure."
He popped his lips. "I"d have never guessed. I should have been suspicious when all you talked about was Alejandro Esteban Juarez Iglesias"s love child with Dr. Marina Deveraux. How was I to know they weren"t friends of yours?"
Phoebe giggled. Okay, some of it was absurd, but it was a comforting absurd. "When my grandmother watched me after school, I"d come home, and she"d always have a plate of freshly baked cookies, a gla.s.s of milk, and her finger to her lips to shush me because she was watching her *stories.""
"Some fond memories, I gather?"
Phoebe"s smile was wistful. "So fond I can"t put it into words." She gave a shrug to ward off the losses she was feeling so distinctly in her life right now. "Favorite book?"
"Is Hustler considered a book?"
"Only if you skip the centerfold and learn all the big-boy words from those supposed articles they boast. And it"s not like it"s Breastie Babes. I would have instantly lost respect for you."
Sam chuckled. "Phew. Then I"m good to go. Breastie Babes is so low rent. So why personal stylist? Or is that a stupid question, considering even your face mask was the exact shade of black as your jeans tonight?"
Her smile was fleeting. "After a rough, rebellious period in my life when I discovered I really wasn"t doing the grunge/goth look any favors, I let out the real me. I love fashion, makeup, hair. All the things girls love, except I never had the vision or creativity to create any designs of my own, and I hate to sew. But I do know what looks good on people. I know what"s flattering to all different types of body shapes, colors, et cetera. But try telling that to your college-minded mother. So I got a marketing degree, decided I didn"t love my boring office job, and fell into personal stylist by way of Mark, who was forever telling his friends about me at the day spa he worked at. I did a bunch of makeovers on the weekends for a while and word got around. So I saved my makeover money while I worked my day job, and three years later, here we are. Mark and I went into this fifty-fifty, and just recently, we"ve been getting some more prestigious clientele."
Sam smiled his approval, and she basked in the glow. "Impressive. A self-made, up-and-coming millionaire."
"Well, I wouldn"t exactly label me millionaire, but I"m not in the local shelter, and it hasn"t been without its battles. There are those who say my job is frivolous. I"m not curing cancer, yada, yada, yada. But if you feel better about how you present yourself to the world, how you feel about you, inside and out, I don"t see the shallow in that. I see the joy in finding someone"s self-esteem and teaching them to make good use of it. And I can still climb a tree, so don"t think for one second because I love the color pink I can"t wallop your a.s.s at a good game of touch football."
Sam"s finger wrapped around a strand of her hair, twirling it about his finger, sending a wave of awareness along her flesh. "You are an odd dichotomy of feminine tomboy, Phoebe Reynolds. I admit, it fascinates the s.h.i.t out of me to watch you get up in Nina"s face like some kind of gangster out to cap her one minute, and in the next fix your lip gloss. Fearless and s.e.xy rates high on my list of likes."
Everything about Sam rated high on her list of likes. "So why entomology?"
Now Sam"s smile was fond. "My seventh grade science teacher, Mr. Evans. I was, for lack of a better word, a real a.s.sclown as a kid. My parents didn"t know what to do with me. I was forever in the princ.i.p.al"s office. But Mr. Evans changed all that when he decided to harness my energy in a positive way and throw me into his after-school bug-collecting program. His theory was that I didn"t need a good grounding, I needed a hobby. So short of ending up in detention for six months after I let the pet frog loose in his cla.s.s to impress Mary-Margaret O"Shea, I had no choice. I think my interest came at first out of respect for him. He didn"t want to get rid of the problem by booting me from cla.s.s, and he was the first teacher who cared enough to realize I wasn"t being challenged academically. He saw my hijinks were a result of total boredom, and he was right. Shortly into that year spent with Mr. Evans, he encouraged the school to test me and I was placed in some gifted cla.s.ses because of it. The rest of it just fell into place. He taught me a healthy respect for looking deeper into things we don"t always understand on the surface. So while bugs are mostly just annoying, I feel like they get a bad rap when some of them do nothing but good for the planet."
She frowned. "Yet, you work in pest-control research?"
"Well, there are bad bugs, too. They destroy crops, carry viruses. So I consider myself an advocate for healthy human to bug relationships."
Phoebe"s head had begun to drift toward Sam"s shoulder. He smelled delicious and warm-and above all else, safe. "How old are you?"
"Thirty-eight."
"Favorite movie?"
"Zack and Miri Make a p.o.r.no."
Her eyes were so heavy, but she wasn"t ready to let this intimate moment go just yet. "Of course. After your chosen reading material, how could I have thought something as boring and without meaning as Terminator was your thing?"
"I like a good comedy. Life"s too short to not have a good laugh."
His words whispered a faint but distinct sort of disappointment in life. But how much disappointment could an entomologist have suffered? "Newsflash, Mr. McLean. Our lives aren"t so short anymore."
"Well, let"s hope that"s true, Phoebe Reynolds."
Boo, hiss. Reality. Phoebe slumped against him, not only fearful, but fighting that bone-deep weary she"d unsuccessfully fought the night before. "I"m very afraid, Sam."
He trailed a finger along the bridge of her nose. "I"m man enough to tell you, I am, too, Phoebe. What"s going on at O-Tech is very scary indeed." Sam detangled himself from her slumber-heavy body and scooped her up. "For now, Vampire Barbie, it"s time for all good undeadlings to be in bed."
With a swift few steps, he was placing her on his big bed with a tender touch. Phoebe latched on to his sweater and pulled him to her, pressing her lips to his ear, and letting his silky dark hair tickle her nose. "One more thing before I pa.s.s out."
His eyes gazed down into hers, deep and lovely when he bracketed her body with his hands; his smile was doting when he pulled the covers under her chin. "What"s that?"
"Favorite cereal ..." she muttered, wanting to pull him closer when he lifted his head, but unable to move her arms.
His grin was devastatingly handsome, even from beneath her rapidly closing eyes. "You want me to say Fruit Loops, don"t you?"
She managed a husky giggle. "No. That would mean you"re a s.e.x addict, and my nymphomaniac strawberry ice cream would definitely conflict with your Fruit Loops s.e.x addiction. Never the twain can meet-not unless it"s in a seedy, back-alley hotel where the bed gives you ma.s.sages for fifty cents."
Sam let his lips drop low, so close to hers, if she had an ounce of energy left, she could easily capture them. "Peanut b.u.t.ter Cap"n Crunch."
No way. That was her second favorite. Second only to Frosted Flakes. And she wanted to say so, but her lips were in not-gonna-happen mode.
Her final thought before she fell into this strange vampire sleep was how warm a simple connection to Sam by way of cereal made her feel.
That and the light kiss he pressed to her lips.
A kiss that held promise. One she hoped they had the chance to explore.
"SO did you get it?"
Sam flashed a manila folder at Phoebe, and smiled. "Did you doubt I would?"
She slumped down in the pa.s.senger seat of his SUV, obviously fighting the pound of her temple from the late afternoon sun. Her fingers went to her nose, where Nina had slathered on sunscreen. Sam could sympathize-his head ached, too, and his skin stung, but it was bearable.
A full eight hours of sleep really did do a vampire good. Less than that and you were just treading water until the lifeboat arrived. His senses were muted and dulled by it, and that wasn"t acceptable. Not now.
She nudged him, making him want to take back last night, pull the car over, tear off her cute outfit, and drive his tongue between her legs. Clearly, those senses weren"t so dull. "How did you get past Nurse Ratched?"
Sam started the car with a quick turn of his wrist. "Nurse Ratched?"
"Yes, Nurse Ratched. You know, the beast who mans the desk like she"s manning a nuclear warhead?"
He grinned, pulling out into traffic, his eyes twinkling with amus.e.m.e.nt from behind his dark sungla.s.ses. Sam kept his eyes on the road, forcing himself to look anywhere but directly at Phoebe. He couldn"t tell her he"d flashed his FBI ID to get what he wanted. It hadn"t been. What was hard here was lying to everyone.
He had to hope that Dr. Hornstein"s nurse, whom he made an imaginary date with for the first of next month after he got back from Russia, wouldn"t contact the FBI until he didn"t show up at Antoine"s for dinner and a bottle of Chianti, her favorite wine.
That"s when she"d realize he"d conned her and try to contact his superiors. While he"d used one of the fake IDs he"d had made when he wanted to keep the powers that be from knowing he was investigating off the clock, it wouldn"t be long until they put two and two together and figured out he was one of the only agents in New York right now.
Until then, it was their little secret that Nurse Leona had copied this woman"s files and handed them over to Sam with a flirtatious smile. That should buy him some time to tap into some decidedly shady resources and not tip off the agency while he was at it. "I gave her the infamous Sam McLean smile and she was like b.u.t.tah, baby."
"So many gifts bestowed upon you. How do you do it?" she teased, flipping open the folder to scan the files in it, her long, slender fingers folding back the thick ream of paper.
"It"s the geeky-hotness burden I bear."
Phoebe grew silent, her mouth falling open as she thumbed the files and read. A mouth he wanted to devour while he slammed her up against a wall and drove his aching c.o.c.k into her.
Thank Jesus for vampire sleep. Had he been human, after last night, he"d have never slept with all the mental images of Phoebe running around, offering herself up naked in his head. With vampire sleep, you didn"t have a choice in the matter. You pa.s.sed out. Period. Which left him unnerved.
Because of his training, he was a light sleeper, always at the ready, always prepared. The only consolation he took in this vampire thing was that if someone did attack while he slept, more than likely, it wouldn"t be with a wooden stake.
Still, he had to be careful. He most especially had to be careful with Phoebe. To sleep with her was not only dangerous to her emotions and probably his, too, but dangerous to his cover. When they made love, it would be only after he told her what he was doing in New York at O-Tech to begin with and showed her that Sam the Entomologist was just a part of a personality that had more complexities than a strand of DNA. He wanted her to know the real Sam before she slept with him. It was the single decent thing he could do in all of this mess.
The pang in Sam"s gut, the one filled with burning apprehension over her reaction to his undercover status, reared its ugly head again. Yet, he managed to tamp it down when Phoebe said, "Her name was Alice Goodwin, she was sixty-two, and she was diagnosed with Alzheimer"s. Oh, dear G.o.d. What are they doing to these people, and what a coincidence that of all the people to find dead, it was someone I knew. Why would she be at O-Tech?"
Sam forced himself to remain silent. He had not a single clue. How random was it that Phoebe had known this woman? And, yeah. What had Alice been doing at O-Tech? "Maybe she knew someone there? Worked there?"
"Not unless you hire hairdressers at O-Tech."
"She was a hairdresser?"
"She was. Retired and living in Brooklyn."
"Yet, she was seeing a specialist in Manhattan?"
Phoebe"s auburn nod was slow. "She was referred to Dr. Hornstein by a Dr. Barry in Brooklyn. Dr. Hornstein"s one of the best neurologists in the country. My physician referred me to him after I was diagnosed. Anyway, she has no emergency numbers listed, no family if the notes here are right."
"You have a home address listed in there?"
"I do." She read it off to him, her plump lips distracting him.
"I say we give it a flyby," he said, typing it into his GPS.
"Like detectives or something?"
His hands clenched the steering wheel, but he managed a charming smile. "Detectives: The Night-Dweller Squad."
Phoebe giggled that giggle that created a warm spread of something in his stomach. The stomach he wasn"t supposed to be able to feel anything in anymore. Her laughter was tender and husky, sweet and soft, and it did things to his nonexistent heart that hadn"t occurred for him in a long time. Not since Helene.
She dropped the file on her knee and gave him an impish grin. "Very Starsky and Hutch. But promise me this, I get to be Hutch. Starsky was just icky hairy."