Jenna Black - Dark Descendant

Steph’s mischievous smile said she had an inkling what was running through my mind. She draped her coat over the back of her chair, then sat across from me and gave me a penetrating stare. It took every ounce of my willpower not to look away.

Steph leaned back in her chair and crossed her arms. “Something happened,” she said with great authority. “Something other than a car accident. What is it?”

Great. I hadn’t even opened my mouth yet, and already Steph saw through me.

I considered trying to bluff my way through it. When I was on the job, people always seemed to believe whatever pretext I made up, but Steph and her parents knew me too well, and I was rarely able to slip a lie past any of them.

“Yeah,” I admitted. “I’ve got some stuff going on. But it’s not anything I can talk about.” Not without getting carted off to the loony bin, that is.

Steph uncrossed her arms and began tapping the table with her perfectly manicured nails.

“I mean it, Steph. I can’t talk about it. I’m not willfully holding out on you.” Well, not too much, anyway.

She continued tapping her fingers and staring at me, not saying a word. I recognized the ploy for what it was: she was hoping that the pressure of her silent scrutiny would make me blurt something out. It was a tactic she’d learned from her mom, and under normal circumstances, it might even have worked.

The waitress interrupted our silent standoff to take our orders. Neither one of us had even consulted the menu, but then we’d memorized it years ago.

“Are you in some kind of trouble?” Steph finally asked when the waitress was out of earshot.

“I can’t—”

“Talk about it. Yeah, I heard you. I’m not asking for details. I just want to know if you’re in trouble, and if there’s anything I can do to help.”

My throat tightened briefly. There were times when Steph bugged the hell out of me, but she was one of the nicest people I’d ever met. She could have resented me for inserting myself into her family when she’d had thirteen years of being an only child, but she’d been nothing but supportive even from the very beginning, when I’d been a sullen, sulky troublemaker.

“Thanks, Steph,” I said, my voice a bit gruff. “But there’s nothing you can do.” I forced a grin. “Except stop setting me up on blind dates with assholes.”

For a moment, I thought she was going to resist my attempt to deflect the conversation. Then her shoulders slumped in defeat.

“What’s wrong with Jim?” she asked, though her heart wasn’t in the question. “He’s nice, he’s handsome, he’s successful, and he’s single.”

I rolled my eyes. One of the reasons everyone likes Steph is that she’s so good at turning a blind eye to peoples’ flaws. Which is why I should know better than to let her set me up with anyone.

“You honestly think he’s a nice guy?” I asked. “Have you ever talked with him?”

She looked annoyed. “Of course I talked with him. I wouldn’t set you up with someone if I didn’t know him well enough to think you’d get on.”

I bit back a caustic response, realizing that Jim might not have shown Steph the side of him I’d seen at dinner. After all, Steph was a sexist jerk’s idea of feminine perfection, so she wouldn’t have elicited the kind of reactions I’d gotten. She was beautiful, and put a lot of time and effort into keeping herself that way. She was sweet-natured enough that people who didn’t know her might think her weak or submissive, though they’d be wrong. And because she didn’t have my hang-ups about living off her trust fund, she’d never had a career to inconvenience a man who wanted her full attention.

“The problem with you,” I told Steph, “is that you like everyone. I’m a little more particular.”

She laughed. “To put it mildly.”

“No more blind dates, okay? It never turns out well.”

“You never give it a chance to.”

“Please, Steph,” I said, suddenly feeling exhausted again. “I don’t want to fight.”

Steph leaned across the table and squeezed my hand, smiling gently. “We’re not fighting. I’m trying to give you sage, older-sister advice.”

The advice might have been more convincing if Steph’s love life had been any more successful than my own. Beauty and wealth attracted a lot of men, not all of them for the right reasons. Not to mention the men who made the mistake of thinking that because she was nice, pretty, and blond, she’d be a pushover and put up with crappy behavior. The door hit those guys on the ass pretty hard on their way out.

“Since when has giving me advice been a productive use of your time?” I asked, returning Steph’s smile with a wry grin.

“Good point.”

The rest of the meal was much more relaxed. Steph and I stayed away from sensitive subjects and just enjoyed our food. Steph talked about her upcoming charity project, a dinner and auction to support the American Cancer Society, and extracted a promise from me that I’d be there. Steph might not work a paying job, but with the stable of charities she actively supported, she worked a hell of a lot more than most of the nine-to-fivers I’d ever met.

Things didn’t go to hell until we were sipping our after-dinner coffee and picking at the remains of the slice of cheesecake we’d shared. Steph’s phone rang, and she frowned in annoyance.

“I should’ve turned the damn thing off,” she mumbled, but I knew she couldn’t quite bear to do that. The big auction was less than two weeks away, and she had to be available for crisis management at the drop of a hat.

I smiled as I took another sip of my rich, dark coffee. “Don’t mind me,” I assured her. “It could be important.”

She acknowledged my point with a nod, then dug her phone out from her tiny designer handbag. She looked at the caller ID and frowned.

“I have no idea who this is,” she said, but she answered anyway.

Her frown deepened at whatever the caller said. I don’t know what it was about her expression that made me sit up and take notice, but the hair on the back of my neck prickled.

“Who is this?” Steph asked, her voice tight with what sounded like alarm. Our eyes met over the table, and the prickle at the back of my neck turned into a chill of fear.

Steph lowered the phone and covered the microphone with her thumb. “He says his name is Alexis, and he wants to talk to you .”

My hands clenched so hard it was a wonder I didn’t break the coffee cup I was holding. How dare that bastard drag my sister into this? Even without talking to him, I knew his decision to call on Steph’s phone had been a deliberate threat. I used my cell phone for business all the time, so if he’d learned my identity—which he obviously had—he’d have had no trouble finding my number.

I put my cup down so hard that coffee sloshed out and spilled on the table, but I didn’t care. I reached for the phone, ignoring the combination of alarm and curiosity on Steph’s face. There wasn’t anywhere I could talk truly privately, but I got up from the table and moved a few paces away anyway. I was painfully aware of Steph’s eyes boring through the back of my head as I tried to calm myself down enough to talk. The last thing I wanted was to let Alexis know he’d gotten to me.

“What do you want?” I asked, and despite my best efforts, no one could have missed the fury in my voice.

“We didn’t get to finish our conversation this afternoon,” he said, and I could hear how much he was enjoying my reaction.

“I was finished with it even before Blake showed up.”

“But I wasn’t, and that’s all that matters. You are not living in Anderson’s mansion, therefore you’re not covered under our agreement with him. I tried playing nice with you this afternoon, but you made it clear that playing nice wouldn’t work.