“Burned my house down? Is that something you’re considering?”
I shook my head as he opened the door to the office and gestured for me to go inside, but I didn’t argue about his misplaced chivalry as I entered. “I’d never burn your house down. It’s my dream home. Though I might find a way to lock you out of it so I can keep it.”
Poppy was sitting at her desk and her head came up when we entered. She smiled at me. “Good morning, Cari.” Her eyes moved to Daniel, who was still standing just outside with the door open.
“You coming inside, boss?” she asked. “Or do I have to come out there to get my coffee?”
Daniel blinked and stepped inside, carrying Poppy her coffee.
She winked at him. “Thanks, boss.” After she took a sip, she put the cup down. “You have a visitor. She’s in your office.”
“I know,” he answered. “I smelled her perfume from outside.”
Poppy shrugged a shoulder and took the box Daniel held out to her. “I tried to talk her into waiting out here, but she refused. I figured you wouldn’t appreciate blood in the carpet, so I stopped arguing.”
“Thanks for your restraint,” he answered, his tone dry.
He turned and walked down the hall toward his office.
“Go with him,” Poppy whispered.
“What?” I looked at her. “What’s going on?”
“Leona is waiting in his office,” she murmured. “Follow him. You’ll keep him calm.”
Calm? Daniel was the calmest person I’d ever seen. Well, person may have been the wrong word since he was technically a vampire. Still, he could have wrung my neck with two fingers when I slapped him in the woods, and he didn’t.
“Just go,” Poppy hissed.
I quickstepped down the hall to Daniel’s office. The door stood open, and Daniel was walking around his desk. A woman sat in his big leather chair behind the desk. My first thought was that she could not be old enough to have a son Leo’s age. My second was that she looked like a screaming bitch.
Her long blonde hair was pulled back into a tight, high ponytail. Her make-up was flawless, and she wore diamond earrings the size of dimes.
But her golden eyes were cold, and her bright-red lips wore a slight sneer as she looked up at Daniel.
“I didn’t realize you wanted my chair so much, Leona,” Daniel said.
I looked at him in surprise. He didn’t sound like himself. He sounded ice cold and…scary. Like he was imagining yanking her out of that chair by her ponytail.
His face gave nothing away, but his eyes sparked with green light for a brief moment.
“No need to lose your temper, Danny,” the woman purred. “Since I had to wait quite a while for you to show up, I decided to be comfortable while I did.”
She rose to her feet, and I saw the rest of her for the first time. She was taller than Daniel and her lithe figure was wrapped in a sleek navy blue sheath dress that hugged her body.
Leona drew even with Daniel, who barely stepped back in time to keep her from bumping into him and came around the desk. I realized that she was taller than him because she wore four-inch spike heels. Her chilly golden gaze fell on me where I still hovered by the door.
“This must be the human my son told me about.”
The way she said it was as though I were a smear of dog poop on her shoe. Definitely a screaming bitch.
“Your son tried to attack her, Leona. Completely unprovoked. All she did was stand in the doorway, much as she’s doing now. She didn’t say a word, didn’t scream, didn’t do anything else.”
The woman shrugged her shoulder and lowered herself into the chair that faced his desk with one graceful motion. “Considering how the townspeople feel about humans, I was surprised by the violence of your reaction.”
“We don’t have to like humans, but we also don’t slaughter them,” he replied back, his voice still frigid.
My heart sank at his words. I realized that, at some point, I’d stopped seeing him as a monster but as a man. But he still only saw me as a puny human. Not even an individual, but as a thing.
