“It could have been an accident.”
He looked at her as if her elevator couldn’t possibly be going all the way to the top.
And maybe it wasn’t.
“Do you truly believe that?”
“I don’t know.” She rubbed her aching temples. How long had it been since she had slept? Or ate? She couldn’t even remember. “Christ, I’ve gone way past my crazy threshold. This day couldn’t get any worse.”
“Never tempt fate, querida,” he warned softly. “It’s a lesson that I learned at my peril.”
She snorted as her gaze skimmed over his dark, knee-buckling beauty. His bronzed features were just as elegant, just as exquisitely carved as they had been two centuries ago. There wasn’t even a strand of gray in the thick black hair to mar his perfection.
“You don’t look as if you’ve suffered over the years.”
Something dangerous flashed through his dark eyes. Dangerous enough to make her take a hasty step backward.
“You have no idea, sweet Anna,” he said coldly. “But for now I’m more interested in discovering who’s trying to kill you and why. Do you have any enemies?”
She licked her dry lips, realizing she had touched a nerve that was best left alone. What she knew about vampires might fit into a thimble, but it seemed an overall good policy not to provoke one. Not when they were standing alone on a dark street.
“I’m a lawyer who battles the world’s most powerful corporations on a daily basis,” she admitted. “I have an endless list of enemies.”
“Any who want you dead?”
“No, of course not. That’s ridiculous.”
“You’ve lived over two centuries,” he pointed out. “You were bound to piss off a few people.”
Anna grimaced as she thought of the endless years she had lived in near solitude, taking menial jobs to survive, and constantly moving from one town to another to avoid notice.
“Until the past few years I’ve lived very quietly. It’s not easy to explain why I don’t age while everyone else around me grows old.”
The coldness faded from the black eyes. “Yes, I’m somewhat familiar with the problem.”
Oh, right. He would be. Anna briefly wondered just how old Cezar was. A few hundred years? A few thousand?
She shoved away the thought. It made her head spin. After all these years immortality still seemed like a strange, absurd dream.
“At last I decided I was tired of hiding,” she continued. “If I’m going to live forever I should at least do something to make the world a better place.”
The wicked amusement returned to the dark eyes. “By fighting corporations?”
“And what do you do?” she charged.
He flicked his gaze down her slender body, lingering on the plunge of her neckline. “I protect beautiful women from the things that go bump in the night.”
Anna swallowed a small groan as she could tangibly feel the heat of that sinful gaze. Cezar had always been able to seduce with a mere glance. “I’ve told you that I don’t need you to protect me.”
“Well that’s too bad, because that happens to be my current job.”
“Job?” She frowned at his odd choice of words. “What the hell is that supposed to mean?”
He reached out to tap the end of her nose. “Precisely what I said.”
She smacked his hand away. She didn’t believe for a moment that he was some sort of Good Samaritan who went about protecting women. Hell, he was the thing that went bump in the night.
“Then consider yourself fired.”