Jeanne Stein: Chosen

She’s looking at me with keen eyes. Before I can react, she’s raised a hand to touch my face. “Very good bone structure. Are you a model, too?”

“She could be,” Lance answers, putting an arm around my shoulder. “But what she does is much more exciting. She’s a bounty hunter.”

Adele’s eyes widen. “Like Dog? I watch his program all the time on TV.”

Lance moves us toward the door. “Yep. She catches the bad guys just like Dog.”

“Uh—not exactly.” The image of Adele thinking me a female Dog spouting Jesus and counseling skips on clean living is too bizarre. And what would that make David? His tart-tongued, bleach-blond wife?

Now that’s an image.

The current passing between Lance (or is it Rick?) and this tiny woman has my head swimming. She’s emitting a fiercely protective air toward him. There’s a story here, and I can’t wait to hear it.

Lance smiles down at me. You will.

Adele shepherds us through the entryway and into a kitchen the size of Rhode Island. We keep walking—through a dining room bigger than the entire first floor of my cottage and a living room with glass walls that look out over a swimming pool, and finally, she opens another door and gestures us inside.

“I know you must be tired from the drive. I have drinks waiting for you on the side bar. Rick, you have several messages on the desk. The boys are in town for the weekend. They’re having a party tonight at Melvyn’s.” She cocks her head to the side and looks me up and down. “I do hope you brought evening clothes, Anna.”

Another abrupt change of subject that knocks me off kilter. She’s like a train leaving a station and I have to run alongside to keep up. “Evening clothes?” Except for the jeans I have on, all I brought were two pairs of shorts and a couple of T-shirts.

Adele plunges ahead with an airy wave of a hand. “No matter. You’re what—a size four? I’ll call Stephen. Luckily, you look like an Armani type—nice shoulders, narrow waist. I’ll have him bring some things for you to try. Now, what’s your shoe size? Seven and a half? Eight? I’ll have him bring an assortment of Jimmy Choos—or would you prefer Blahnik?”

Lance moves to Adele’s side, taking her arm and turning her toward the door. “You choose. Anna and I are going to wash the road dust out of our throats and relax a while before I return any calls. See that we’re not disturbed, will you?”

Adele smiles and nods and leaves us with a bemused parting glance. Lance closes the door, turns an imaginary lock and nails an imaginary board over it before turning to me, swiping a hand across his forehead. “Whew. Alone at last.”

I hardly know which question to ask first. I settle on, “Who the hell is Rick?”

Lance smiles and moves to stand in front of a mahogany-framed fireplace. He looks at me, arms crossed over his chest. With hurricane Adele gone, I have my first opportunity to look around the room. It’s dark-paneled, full of heavy, overstuffed leather furniture, one huge desk and a fireplace with a coat of arms over the mantel.

Lance hasn’t moved. Since he seems to be making a point of something , and that something must be near or on the fireplace, I step forward for a closer look. He glances over and up.

The coat of arms?

I’m about to remind him how much I hate games when I’m rewarded with a thumb jab.

Okay, the coat of arms.

It’s a huge crest, a gryphon or phoenix in the center surrounded by three arrows and a Latin inscription. The only word I recognize is a name—DeFontaine.

“I don’t understand. Whose house is this?”

“It’s mine.”

“DeFontaine? That’s not your name.” I frown. “Is it?”

Lance laughs. “You didn’t really think my name was Lance Turner, did you?”

His laughter ignites a spark of irritation. “Why the hell wouldn’t I believe your name was Lance Turner?”

The tone of my voice squelches his amusement. He backtracks with a quick, “That was stupid. You wouldn’t have any way of knowing Lance is a professional name. I’m sorry. I should have told you before.” He winces. “My real name is Broderick Phillipe DeFontaine. Any doubt now why I don’t use it professionally?”

He lets his voice drop, waiting for the recognition to hit.

It does. It would to anyone who has been around for the last hundred years or so. “DeFontaine? The South African diamond people?”

A nod.

“You’re a member of the DeFontaine family.” Now I’m not only startled, I’m shocked.

Another nod.

I take a closer look around the room—at the sumptuous appointments, the art in gilded frames, the leather-bound books lining the walls. Even the smell of the room is subtle but rich. A blend of citrus potpourri and old money.

Jesus. Did I know this guy at all?

I turn my gaze back on Lance. I feel as if I’m seeing him—Lance or Rick, short for Broderick, I assume—for the first time.

I know a lot of rich people—and rich vampires. Rich , however, doesn’t begin to describe the net worth of a family that, until recently, controlled the diamond business. And had for hundreds of years.

“I don’t know how to feel about this.”

Lance is smart enough to remain silent. He shows that he knows me a hell of a lot better than I do him. He’s reading the confusion that could easily shift to anger with the wrong prompting, the wrong word, so he does nothing. He stands very still and waits for me to come to my own conclusions.

Part of me feels he should have told me who he was sooner. Part of me wonders truthfully if it makes a difference. Lance or Rick, this is the man who healed me, then trekked across ten miles of desert to help me bury the vampire who attacked me.

“Jesus.” This time I say it out loud. “I can’t wait to see what you get me for my birthday.”

Lance’s laugh is a mixture of relief and delight. In two steps, he’s across the room and at my side.

I hold up my hands and gently push at his chest. “Whoa, there, cowboy. Not so fast. I have a shitload of questions.”

He takes a step back. “Ask away.”

Adele mentioned drinks on the sideboard. A glance around and I spy a bar set up. A cooler, a bottle of white wine in an ice bucket, red wine and glasses. “Any beer in that cooler?”

He’s there and back faster than my eyes can follow with two open bottles of Corona and a plate of lime slices. He holds one of the bottles out to me and waves me toward the couch.

I take the beer, squeeze a lime slice through the neck of the bottle and take a swig, debating which existence to question first—past or present, human or vampire. I sink into plush couch cushions, arrange myself so I can see Lance, watch him, read his expressions, and jump in.

I decide to start with something easy, something mundane to gauge his reaction. “How did Adele know we were coming?”

Lance is surprised. He expected something more Annaish. Like, “What the fuck is going on?” I can tell because his mouth turns down and his eyebrows jump up. He recovers quickly and replies, “I called her from the house this morning. When you went inside to get the sheet.”

“How?”

Understanding sparks his eyes. “On the telephone. No magic involved.”

“Who is she? She seems to know you pretty well. Does she know what you are?”

He shakes his head. “That I’m vampire? No. But she knows I’m—not normal. She’s never asked what I am, and I’ve never offered. She is the granddaughter of an old family friend. Her parents worked for us in South Africa. I used to keep up with the family and when I came to the States forty-five years ago, she was just a baby. She attended college in the East. We saw each other once or twice. After graduation, she came to California for a job. It didn’t work out. I had inherited this place, so I asked if she’d like to live here, manage the house when I was away, take charge of the staff when I was in residence. It was supposed to be a temporary thing. She stayed on.”