For the first time in years he felt a pang of jealousy, the kind that used to precede a flood of bitterness when he’d been at school and heard the other boys going on about their family vacations. Not that he begrudged her a family where he had none, but he wanted to be in that photo, a day in the life of holding her tight, mugging for a camera.
Stop. But the want sliced through him anyway, cold and harsh. There would be no photos. Their relationship could not possibly end that way, and he’d learned a long time ago that fantasies only made reality worse.
“Yes!” Annabella shouted. He turned as she emerged, waving a small package in her hand, a set of spidery fake eyelashes. As if her natural ones needed any help. “Now just let me run the garbage down the hall, and we can go.”
“I’ll do it,” he said. No need for her to carry the trash when he was there.
“No, no, I take out my own. But can you…uh…watch me from the door?”
Of course he’d watch her; he wasn’t taking his eyes off her until she was out of danger. He’d have followed her, but his earplug beeped, and he let her drift down the hallway, plastic bag in hand, so she wouldn’t be bothered by the security details for the night’s performance.
It was a simple, but comprehensive plan: Annabella would dance, opening a way for the wolf to return to his Otherworld territory, per his wishes. Segue soldiers would be in the audience, backstage, and surrounding the building, exit strategy in place for Annabella, should anything go wrong. City Center personnel had been briefed about extra security posing as stage crew and were cooperative with Segue’s measures. Custo would be side stage, prepared to give the wolf extra incentive should Annabella attract his interest again.
“Custo here.”
“We’re in place,” Jens said. “We have the stage area covered and seventeen operatives with tickets for tonight’s performance.”
Custo stood in the apartment doorway while Annabella ducked down the hall. He leaned out when she rounded the corner. With an abrupt clatter of metal noise, she was headed back toward him. She held up a finger, mouthing “one minute” and knocked on a neighbor’s door.
He nodded to her, but spoke to Jens. “I want minimal disruption to the flow of things backstage.”
Jens’s com crackled again. “Where will you be?”
Custo thought that had been understood, but it bore restating so there was absolutely no mistake. “I’ll be with Annabella.”
Annabella stopped at her neighbor Peter’s door and signaled to Custo that she needed a minute. Yeah, right. She needed way more than a minute; the way Custo looked at her had the liquid heat in her blood short-circuiting her brain. She got no relief since he had to stay nearby to protect her, to keep the wolf in the shadows. Her dependence was as unsettling as her attraction to him.
She had to concentrate on Giselle. The rest of the world, Custo-the-angel included, she couldn’t entirely trust. All that was too different, too strange, too frightening to grasp. She had to focus on what she knew.
But, heaven help her, if not for the looming performance, she could easily do something very stupid. She almost had earlier that day. He’d just looked so good and smelled so good, and then he’d felt so good, better than anything she’d ever imagined with or without the aid of movies and steamy fiction.
Her sanity was hanging by a thread. Only dance could save her.
But first she had to deal with Peter.
She rapped on his door. Guilt had her gnawing on a fingernail, a habit she’d taken great pains to break. Talking to him was torture, but he’d worry if she didn’t show up at her place for a few days without letting him know. She always had in the past. And he’d been so good to her when she first moved into the building, so green to the city that she almost backed out of her lease to live with a bunch of other dancers when she really wanted to be on her own.
Peter opened right up, his expression avid.
“Annabella.” His voice was deeper than usual, almost gruff. He reached out a hand to touch her, but must have thought better of it because he dropped it back to his side to grip his thigh. And he was shaking.
“Hey, Peter…I just wanted to let you know that I’m probably not going to be around for the next few days. I’m…um…” Annabella heard Custo on his call, something about stage security, and glanced toward him.
Peter leaned his head out to look himself, and abruptly pulled back, wincing in pain. Yeah, Custo was hard to compete with, especially with that possessive lock his gaze had on her.
Peter’s expression changed from excited to betrayal. “I don’t understand,” he said, almost a growl. “We should be together. You came to me.”