Page 50 of Grim’s Delight (The New Protectorate Syndicate #1)
TWENTY-SEVEN
The Bowans lived in a grand four story house in the heart of the oldest neighborhood of United Washington. Built of gray stone with a copper roof that had long since oxidized to a rich blue-green, it was exactly as classy and sophisticated as Dahlia expected it to be.
Nerves tightened her stomach as she stared out the SUV’s window at the ornate stonework surrounding the dark blue front door.
She wasn’t worried about the meeting. After everything, Dahlia was confident she could hold her own with Alastair and Tomas.
What she couldn’t stand was the thought of Felix losing his mind back home.
He wouldn’t risk her safety, but he would do just about anything to get her back. That meant that she had a very limited window in which to resolve this mess before he did something reckless.
Just barely resisting the urge to slap the hand Tomas held out to her after opening her door, she thrust her shoulders back to stride toward the elegant front steps. A massive gold lion’s head knocker glared at her from the center of the door.
Her whole body ached from the crash and she was pretty sure the protective base of one heel had come off at some point, but she ignored it all. It wasn’t like this was the first time she went to work with a broken heel.
Tomas used his long legs to overtake her.
Giving her a slight smile, he opened the front door and ushered her inside a gleaming white foyer.
A grand, domed ceiling soared above a sweeping black marble staircase, and towering pieces of modern art hung on the white walls.
On either side of the base of the staircase were two black tables absolutely overflowing with massive flower arrangements.
Dahlias, she realized with a start. The obviously handmade crystal vases were bursting with her namesake. The sight made an involuntary twinge of warmth take root in her chest.
It didn’t make the way her family had been threatened okay, but she wasn’t heartless. Someone had clearly gone out of their way to put those flowers there. It was sweet, if a little misguided under the circumstances.
Hardly a minute passed before movement at the top of the stairs drew her eye.
A burly older man wearing a pair of glasses leaned over the banister to peer down out at them. His salt and pepper hair was cut short and his eyebrows were thick enough to touch the rims of his glasses when he frowned.
“Tomas, who have you—“ The man blanched. “Good gods, is that our Dahlia?”
She glanced over her shoulder at Tomas, who’d lifted a hand in a wave. “It’s her.”
“Ah!” The man threw himself away from the railing.
He hustled down the curved staircase with surprising agility.
By the time he got down to the bottom, his face was flushed and his glasses had nearly fallen off the tip of his nose.
She noticed instantly that he wasn’t a vampire, but whether he was arrant or not, she had no way of knowing.
A little alarmed by his sudden approach, Dahlia took half a step back. It didn’t do her much good. The man lunged for her. In an instant she was swept into a bone-crushing hug and lifted off her feet.
“Oh, thank the gods. I don’t have to punish Alastair anymore!
” He swung her around, nearly dislodging one of her heels.
A cloud of expensive cologne and the scent of fresh oranges washed over her — not bad, but unmistakably unappealing compared to caramel and smoke and Felix .
Dahlia had to bite back the instinctive urge to claw herself free.
Perhaps seeing her discomfort, Tomas stepped in. He laid a hand on the man’s shoulder and muttered, “Uncle Colin, you haven’t even introduced yourself yet. Maybe the hugs can wait a minute.”
“Oh, you’re right. I’m so sorry!” Colin didn’t sound the least bit sorry.
Her release wasn’t quite immediate, but he did eventually put her down. Stumbling back a step, she smoothed her hands down the front of her dress and eyed the pair of men warily.
Tomas stepped up to introduce them. “Colin, meet Dahlia. Dahlia, this is Uncle Alastair’s anchor, Colin. They’ve been together over a hundred and fifty years.”
“Just celebrated our one hundredth and seventy-second, but who’s counting.
” Colin grabbed Tomas’s arm like he needed to hold onto something if he wasn’t allowed to manhandle her anymore.
“Gods, I just can’t believe it. Look at you!
I saw your pictures but they don’t do you justice.
And you’re smart, too. Tomas, did I tell you?
She’s gotten 4.0s her whole academic career! ”
“Yes, you told me,” he muttered.
Dahlia made a face. “How do you know that?”
Alastair’s dry, cultured voice came down from the top of the stairs. “Because knowing things is what we do.”
She looked up to find the man descending the stairs at a much more sedate pace than his anchor had. There was no ornate cane or expensive coat this time, but Alastair Bowan didn’t need either to be intimidating. His gaze pierced her from across the foyer.
“Dahlia,” he greeted, reaching the bottom of the stairs.
“Mr. Bowan,” she coolly replied.
“Oh, please, you can’t call him that.” Colin blew out an exasperated huff. “We’re family now. You can call him Alastair, but I’m sure he’d be happy with papa.”
Dahlia narrowed her eyes at Alastair. The humor of calling that man anything other than his name, let alone papa, would have to be examined later.
Clearing her throat, she said, “Please forgive me if I’m not feeling particularly warm and cuddly right now. Seeing as you just ran me and my husband off the road, then held him at gunpoint.”
Colin whirled on Alastair. “What?”
For his part, Alastair looked utterly unrepentant. “Tomas is competent. I knew you’d be fine.”
Dahlia put her hands on her hips and demanded, “You complain about the Amauris being reckless with their family, but you don’t think twice about letting your nephew ram your daughter’s car into a guardrail?”
It was Tomas’s turn to receive Colin’s horrified glare. “You did what?”
Tomas put up his hands. “They were spotted at Old Blood and I was told to take the opportunity!”
“Alastair!” Colin jammed a finger in Dahlia’s direction. His low voice became a hiss of disapproval. “That is our daughter.”
“My love, you told me to bring her home. That’s exactly why I did everything in my power to get her back.” A shade of exasperation had finally entered Alastair’s expression. “It worked, didn’t it? I don’t see what you’re complaining about.”
Wrapping an arm around her shoulders, Colin cast a venomous glare toward his partner and began to lead her through the foyer. “One hundred and seventy-two years,” he muttered, “and that man still finds new ways to be an idiot. Sweetheart, I’m so sorry. Please don’t lump me in with him.”
Allowing him to lead her into a modern sitting room, Dahlia replied, “This wasn’t completely against my will. I decided that since neither him or Felix could be reasonable about the situation, I had to take things into my own hands. I want to talk this out.”
“I’ve been saying the same thing for weeks,” he confessed. “All of this fighting could’ve been resolved with a few phone calls.”
“He sank Atlas.” Alastair’s acerbic voice came from the doorway as Colin settled her on a charcoal gray couch. Wisely, Tomas appeared to have made himself scarce.
“And you burned his club to the ground,” she shot back, crossing her arms.
“He kidnapped my daughter.” Alastair strode into the sitting room. The slightest hitch in his step belied the need for the cane, but it didn’t diminish the raw power he exuded as he joined his anchor on the couch across from her.
Sick to death of masculine pride, Dahlia rolled her eyes.
“Let’s not pretend like this has anything to do with me, please.
You don’t know me. This is about your family legacy and your ego.
You don’t like that Felix made you look weak, and Felix doesn’t like that you’re trying to separate us.
Both of you need to get the fuck over it. ”
“You’ve gotten bold since we last saw each other,” he dryly noted.
Dahlia gave him a tight, close-lipped smile. “I’m a Bowan now.”
Alastair draped an arm behind Colin and crossed one ankle over his knee.
“You’re also wrong. This isn’t just about our name and ego.
This is about the fact that my daughter was kidnapped by a family that is notoriously unstable and generally agreed upon as intolerable.
Even if I liked Felix, I wouldn’t have allowed it. ”
“Why? Because you want to be able to sell me off to someone of your choosing?”
Colin laid a hand on Alastair’s thigh. In a firm voice, he answered, “No. We don’t believe in that.
Never have. When Tomas was born, we all agreed as a family that he would get to choose his partner.
You do, too.” There was a pause, then, with a significant look at her throat, “And it seems you have.”
Dahlia smoothed her hair back behind her ear. “If you think this is bad, you should see the other guy.”
Alastair looked like he’d swallowed a mouthful of sour blood, but he didn’t comment on the state of her neck. Instead, he asked, “Can you blame us for wanting to keep you safe?”
“No,” she replied, “but I can call you hypocritical for vilifying Felix when you didn’t think twice about risking my life tonight. Say what you want about him, Mr. Bowan, but he would never intentionally put me in harm’s way.”
“I seem to remember the night we met going differently than you do.”
Dahlia winced. She couldn’t exactly fault him for bringing that up. “I wasn’t supposed to work that night. He had no idea I switched shifts with another employee. If he had, he wouldn’t have let that happen.”
But as she sat there in the sparkling sitting room, locked in a staring contest with her new father and desperate to get back to her husband, Dahlia couldn’t say she would’ve changed things. Getting impaled and turned wasn’t exactly on her bucket list, but Luis was right.