Half My Blood by Lauren Gilley

Author:Lauren Gilley [Gilley, Lauren]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Published: 2015-06-15T23:00:00+00:00

He shouldn’t be doing this. He should be as far away from this as was humanly possible. But here he stood on the sidewalk, staring up at the sign of one of the most well-known high-end steakhouse franchises. He’d never been in this place. He’d never been anywhere remotely like this place. He didn’t belong here, in his baggy jeans and scuffed boots, with his half-buzzed, half-spiked hair and all the bright rings in his ears. McDonald’s was fancy for the likes of him. He wasn’t fit to be a busboy in a restaurant of this quality.

And yet here he stood. Like a fucking idiot.

With a sigh, he pulled open the door and let himself inside.

There was an airlock that led him to a second pair of doors, these wood and inlaid with frosted glass. Beyond them, the smell of buttered, perfectly cooked steaks curled around his empty stomach and reminded him that he was starving, but too sick at the idea of this meeting to eat anything.

His throat tightened as he crossed the patterned carpet to the hostess station. The place was making a polite go at English library: dark paneled walls, hunt prints, wall sconces, heavy ceiling beams and linen-draped tables studded with glasses and tented napkins, awaiting patrons in the manufactured low light. Elegant, simple, tasteful. Nothing like him.

The hostess glanced up from her podium and gave an obvious start. She was young, her hair pulled back in a tight bun, her uniform crisp and new-looking. She clearly wasn’t used to patrons looking like drummers from failing garage bands, and her mouth worked soundlessly a moment before she stammered, “G-good afternoon. Welcome to Ruth–”

“I’m meeting someone,” he said, to spare her further awkwardness. “Mr. Byron. He should have reservations.”

She consulted her list, cheeks pinking, then nodded. “Yes. Mr. Byron said to expect someone who…” She glanced back up at him and thought better of whatever description Ian had given her. “Come with me, please.”

He followed her down the long narrow dining room, thinking, of course Ian was somewhere in the back, out of the fray. Just on the other side of a decorative panel-wrapped pillar, Ian had a table for two beside the shaded window, a view of the sidewalk that was one-way – no pedestrians could see in, but the filtered sunlight struck his marble face in glorious soft relief.

The man who had established himself as Shaman in Tennessee was cut straight from some European men’s fashion magazine. He had picked a gray suit that fitted him tightly, accentuating his tall slenderness, rather than hiding it, daring anyone to find fault with his lean, dancer physique. His shirt was a pale green that picked up the darker filaments in his pale eyes, and his hair was, as Tango had seen it a few months before, slicked back off his face, behind his ears, and falling in a shiny auburn sheet past his shoulders. His face showed his breeding: cheekbones that could cut glass, narrow, high-ridged nose.

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