Single White Vampire (Argeneau #3)(12)

He came up with a couple of doozies as he hurried home.

Fortunately, she hadn't done any of them by the time he returned. She was up and trying to rouse him, though—that much was obvious the moment he opened the front door. He could hear her shouting and banging on his office door all the way downstairs. Rolling his eyes at the racket she was making and the panic in her voice as she called his name, Lucern pocketed his house keys and jogged upstairs. He came to an abrupt halt at the top of the steps.

Dear God, the woman didn't just eat rabbit food, she wore rabbit slippers.

Lucern gawked at the ears flopping over the furry pink bunny slippers she wore, then let his gaze slide up over her heavy, also pink and fuzzy, housecoat. If he didn't already know she had a nice figure, he wouldn't know now. Then he caught a glimpse of her hair and winced. She'd gone to bed with wet hair and had obviously tossed around a lot in her sleep; her hair was standing on end in every direction.

On the bright side, she obviously didn't intend on stooping to seducing him into doing any of those publicity things she was so fired up for him to do. Oddly enough, Lucern actually felt a touch of regret at that realization. He didn't understand why. He didn't even like the woman. Still, he might have been open to a little seduction.

"Good evening," he said when she paused in her yelling to take a breath. He found himself gaping again, as Kate C. Leever whirled around to face him.

"You! I thought…" She turned to the locked office door, then back to him. "This door is locked. I thought you were in there, and when you didn't answer, I…" Her voice trailed away as she took in his expression. Suddenly self-conscious, she pulled the edges of her ratty old robe together as if he might be trying to catch a better look at the flannel nightgown showing at the neckline. "Is something wrong?"

Lucern couldn't help it; he knew it was rude, but he couldn't stop the words from blurting through his lips. "Dear God! What is that goop on your face?"

Kate immediately let go of her robe and pressed both hands to her face, her mouth forming an alarmed "Oh" as she recalled and tried to hide the dry green mask.

It was obviously some sort of beauty treatment, Lucern deduced, but Kate didn't stick around to explain exactly what sort. Turning on her heel, she fled back to the guest room and closed the door. After a heartbeat, she called in a strained voice, "I'm glad you're all right. Mostly. I was worried when you didn't answer my knock. I'll check on you again in an hour."

Silence then filled the hall.

Lucern waited a moment, but when he didn't hear the sound of footsteps moving away from the door, he decided she was waiting for some sort of response. "No" was the first response that came to mind. He didn't want her checking on him. He didn't want her here at all. But he found he couldn't tell her that. She'd appeared terribly embarrassed to be caught looking as she had, and really he couldn't blame her; she'd looked awful in a cute, bunny type way.

He smiled to himself at the memory of her standing there in his hall looking like hell. Kate had looked bad—but in the sort of adorable way that made him want to hug her… until he'd seen the cracking green mask on her face.

Lucern decided not to further distress her with the "no" she no doubt expected and instead called out "Good-night" in an uncomfortably gruff voice. As he moved to his office door and unlocked it, he heard a little sigh from the other side of her door, then a very small "good-night" in return. Her soft footsteps padded away. She was going to bed, he thought.

There came a snap, and light fingered its way out from under the guest room door. Lucern paused. Why were the lights on? Was she resetting her alarm clock for an hour from now? The silly woman really did intend to check on him every hour!

Shaking his head, he stepped into his office and flicked on the lights. He'd give her fifteen minutes to fall asleep and then go in and turn off the alarm clock. The last thing he needed was for her to be pestering him all night. Although it did occur to him that if she didn't sleep much tonight, she would probably sleep longer in the morning to make up for it, which would give her less time to nose around on her own while he was sleeping.

No, he decided. She'd said she wouldn't poke around, and he believed her.

Mostly.



Chapter Three



Kate poked around.

She didn't mean to. In fact, she had made plans for the day which definitely did not include poking around—but, well, the best-laid plans and all that. They always went awry.

Kate woke up at ten a.m. Her first thought was to wonder where she was. Her second thought—once she recalled where she was and why—was "Oh, shit, the alarm didn't go off." Sitting up in bed, she reached for the alarm clock to look it over. It was set to the off position. Kate frowned at the thing, sure she had reset it after checking on Lucern the first time. She distinctly recalled resetting it and turning it on. But it was off. She set it back with a frown. Had she woken up the second time just to roll over and turn it off? That must be it, she realized and grimaced to herself.

"Way to go, Leever. The one excuse you had to stay here, the one opportunity to ingratiate yourself with the man, and you blew it." Her thinking had been that surely he couldn't oust her after she'd gone to the trouble of rousing herself every hour to be sure he was all right. But now that she'd failed at her task, he'd have her out of there by noon—if he hadn't written all night as he'd claimed he was going to do. If he had written all night, he might not wake up until two or three o'clock. Which meant she'd be out of there by three or four.