Even Vampires Get the Blues: A Deadly Angels Book by Sandra Hill

Harek would be impressed by such things, but some men were like that. If he was looking to cash in with her, he was in for a rude awakening. She lived on a second lieutenant’s salary. “Wait until you see the wedding reception being planned by the bride’s family. Now, they are probably, as you say, reeking of gold. My parents are wealthy, too, depending on your definition of wealthy. Millionaires are a dime a dozen these days, I’ve been told.”
    He nodded. “I recall a time when a handful of gold coins could buy a longship.”
    “What?”
    “Never mind.” He was still surveying the room, probably mentally tallying the net worth of the whole gathering. Maybe he was really poor and unaccustomed to such excess.
    She shouldn’t be so judgmental.
    Maybe she was more like her parents than she’d thought.
    “Listen, Harek, don’t be offended by my parents or some of the others here.”
    “Because I am not wealthy?”
    She shook her head. “No, the money is inherited. They’re intellectual snobs.”
    He frowned in confusion. “I’m intelligent.”
    “Yeah, but you don’t have doctor in front of your name, or a bunch of letters after your name.”
    He was still obviously confused. “Why would that matter? Degrees are easy enough to obtain. I have an IQ of 200, but do you see me proclaiming that fact to the world? Why would I? My brothers would clout me aside the head with the flat side of a broadsword if I did.”
    “Nobody has an IQ of 200,” she remarked with boozy irrelevance. She was beginning to feel the effect of her one glass of wine on an empty stomach.
    He arched his brows at her in disagreement.
    Despite herself, Camille kept looking over at Julian and Justine, who had garnered a small crowd, the men shaking his hand in congratulations and the women patting Justine’s big belly.
    “Can I assume that is one of your near-husbands?” Harek asked, following the direction of her stares. He was too perceptive, or else she was too transparent. Probably the latter.
    “Yes. Dr. Julian Breaux, a heart surgeon, is my third ex-fiancé. And that’s Julian’s wife, Justine. She used to be my best friend, since nursery school.”
    “The third, huh? How long ago did you end the engagement?” he asked.
    It was nice of him to assume that she was the one who’d broken the engagement, which she had been. With cause. But Camille didn’t want to talk about it. In fact, if it wouldn’t be too obvious, she’d like to slip out of the room and go somewhere to get drunk, or at least mind-numbing buzzed. None of this was Harek’s fault, though, and she didn’t want to be rude to him. “Six months ago,” she replied.
    “Six . . . ?” Harek looked at Julian, Justine, and then Camille. “Ah!”
    It didn’t take an IQ of 200 or even 100 to figure that one out.
    “And they expect you to stand here and pretend naught is wrong?” he asked.
    She wasn’t sure who the “they” was that he referred to, but she nodded.
    “I do not think so,” he said. He placed his half-empty wineglass on a sideboard and took hers out of her hand, as well. Then he took her in his arms and kissed her soundly, long and openmouthed and wet—there might have been tongues involved—until her knees started to buckle. The silence around them was loud as cymbals clashing. Even the music seemed to have paused. Only then did he wrap an arm around her shoulders and lead her toward the still open doorway.
    “Prince Charming to the rescue?” she inquired. When he didn’t respond, she asked, “Are you going to be my Prince Charming, or something?”
    “Or something.” She could see that anger simmered just beneath the surface of his stony face. On her behalf? That was nice. Not necessary, but nice.
    “Where are we going?” she whispered, trying not to notice the stunned guests they passed. Or Julian, the louse.
    “Does it matter?”
    She thought only for a second before answering, “Hell, no!”

 
    Chapter 6
    The morning-after