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Six months later I was walking in a farmer’s market, basking in the smell of flowers and freshly baked bread and a last few moments of anonymity.
It had been a hell of a time for me in many ways both good and bad. I had marched into the office of John Kurtz, the best agent around, darting past his security and secretary like a baby mama looking to score some DNA. I made it into his office where he was talking with a well-known director.
I looked at both of them and said, “I’m Kaitlyn French. I’m your newest client. You may not remember taking me on, because you haven’t yet. But I know you will.”
John had laughed out loud. The intense little man sitting in the chair across John’s rosewood desk had asked me to stand in the bright sunlight coming from the windows. I had and he had gotten very close to my face, surveying it like it was a work of art and he was looking for minute cracks. Then he handed me a script and asked me to read a few lines with him.
I did. The part called for me to be angry and I was plenty that. It called for me to be hurting and I damn sure was. It was a role made for me. When I’d finished reading the few lines he’d asked for, I was shaking from adrenaline and emotion. The looks they gave me had been cautious, like they weren’t sure if I was crazy or not. So I pushed all my feelings into a little box and put on my best, winning actress smile. The director handed me his card. John shook my hand and told his secretary to get the necessary paperwork.
The very next day I was screen testing for that role. They wanted to see how I looked on film and lo and behold I got the part. It was a supporting role, but a major one, in a major film. It would be released in cinemas worldwide tomorrow.
Filming had been exhausting. Because of the time crunch, I had been on set pretty much non-stop. In the beginning of the movie I had just played a bitchy goth girl. Easy enough. It was the end that had been hard, playing too close a parallel to my real life. The screenplay had my character falling in love, as it turned out, with the villain of the story. She disappeared for half the movie, and when the main female and male leads found her again, she’d been used and abused, imprisoned and driven insane so that she believed she was still in love with the man who had hurt her. The director praised the complexity I brought to the role, the character’s struggle to know what she really wanted or needed. Yeah, I wonder where I pulled that from?
It had only taken a few takes to get it down, and for that I was grateful. I wasn’t sure I could do it again without breaking apart completely in front of the whole cast and crew.
I’d kept to myself for a few weeks after filming ended but now I was finally starting to feel better. I was starting to feel more myself and damn if I wasn’t excited for the premier. That and John had me working hard. The work kept me from dwelling on my past too long. From dwelling on Owen, and the hole he’d left in me.
Things were good. I had a brand new agent, one of the best who was determined to push me to new heights. I had just finished filming four television appearances and John was already negotiating my role in three new films. More than that, I liked him. He seemed like a genuinely good man. He’d called me up once or twice once filming was over, asking how I was doing and checking if I was ready for more work. I never had to ask, as long as I said I could take it he always had work for me. Frankly, I wasn’t turning down anything at this point. I wanted to the work, I wanted to be busy. I was living more comfortably than I had in a long time. I still hadn’t told my parents that I thought I was going somewhere. I didn’t want them to say ‘I told you so’ if I failed. Still, I was making the effort to call them, and to mend some of the relationships I’d ruined when I left home.
Harvey, on the other hand, was found dead in his office. The coroner ruled it a massive heart attack. I don’t know if the ring was buried with him or not and it is not a question I ask myself. Some things you can’t explain or find logical little boxes for. Some things you don’t want to have to answer. Or answer for or to. Life was mostly normal though. I still jumped at shadows, but I hadn’t seen anything supernatural since my release. I sometimes felt like I was being followed, particularly at night. I sometimes thought I saw people who looked like they didn’t belong in this world but to be honest it’s hard to tell in Hollywood. I don’t ever try to get close enough to look in their eyes. I’d started to see all kinds of things in the dark, now that I knew vampires were real. That meant anything was possible. It was enough to make me jumpy after dusk, and sometimes kept me awake at night. Not that I could sleep anyway. I was always too busy waiting for the night to bring Owen back to me.
I still have a scar on my throat.
“Strawberry?”
The single word knocked me from my reverie. I turned back to see a grocer holding up a tray of strawberries to sample. “Try one. Best you’ve ever tasted. Get two punnets for the price of one.”
The man standing in the stall held out the plump and juicy fruit. I stared at it, my heart aching. He called again to another passerby and my eyes closed, remembering the way that word had fallen from Owen’s lips.
Had anything ever been as sweet as that? In all that had changed in my life, in all the good I’d found, I still missed him. My eyes opened to see the stallholder looking at me carefully. He held out the sun-warmed fruit. “Here, try it.”
I placed the ripened berry between my lips. It broke open between my teeth. Juice spilled across my tongue, filled my mouth and tears broke from my eyes. I turned away to hide them.
“It’s so sweet.” I licked the juice from my lips, savoring the flavor.
I waved the stallholder away. I wasn’t going to buy from him, not today. Maybe tomorrow I’d be back and pick up enough to make something divine. Or perhaps I’d just eat them as they were while I read a book in the bay window.
Truth was though, I just couldn’t eat strawberries anymore without crying my eyes out, wishing Owen would come back to me.
I turned my back quickly so I could wipe my eyes, and behind me I caught sight of a familiar face, staring at me through the aisle between stalls. My heart stuttered to a standstill.
I’d had false sightings too many times before. Owen haunted my dreams and my waking life, too. I thought I saw him everywhere but when I chased him down it would be some perfectly ordinary guy looking back at me. One of them had asked me out, one had given me a look that said I was nuts, and one had been so startled he had dropped his bag of groceries.
The man turned away in an instant and started heading off through the market. It was broad daylight. I knew it could not be him, but I had to follow him anyway.
His hair was a lighter shade than I remembered Owen’s being, and shorter. He was muscular without being bulky and moved with a lithe grace. It was the way he moved that inflamed a tiny bit of hope in me and impossible desire. Owen had always moved with such precision. He was never clumsy or out of sorts. The set of his shoulders and length of his strides just seemed familiar. He wore a grey shirt rolled up to the elbows that showed his tanned arms off to perfection. Tanned? It wasn’t him. It couldn’t be. There was no forgetting the pallor of Owen’s skin.
I almost left it at that, when the man flicked his face around quickly to check behind him, meeting my gaze.
It was him. My heart clenched like a fist then bloomed back open. My head spun. It was him. There was no mistaking it, no mistaking those lips or high angles of his cheeks. Even from a distance I could see the blue of his eyes. I remembered how they had faded away from black to periwinkle. It was him, of that there was absolutely no doubt. He was as magnificent a man as...
He was human. That thought hit me and staggered me. That was what his grabbing his chest had been all about, his heart had begun to beat again for the first time in centuries! My blood had restored him to his human form and what had I gotten in return for that? Two grand, a new wardrobe and abandoned like a one night stand? I have lousy taste in guys. I should have known he would be no better than the rest of them. Anger suddenly ripped through my heart. It didn’t override my desire for him, it just made me want to smack him as much as I wanted to kiss him. And I really wanted to kiss him.
Why was he here? It had looked as if he had been following me but as soon as I spotted him he had turned away. Had he been keeping tabs on me? Was it possible he missed me as much as I missed him? I wasn’t sure it was possible.
He was walking away faster than before, his arms swinging by his side. I could not hesitate because if I did I would lose sight of him, perhaps forever.
I pushed through the crowd, throwing apologies over my shoulder to those I bumped. He crossed the hot parking lot and I ran after him, my heart beating so hard and fast I was sure I was going to simply topple to the ground. I wet my lips with my tongue and called out.
“Owen.”
He kept walking. My heart plummeted. I caught up and grabbed his arm. He swung around to look at me, his face carefully blank and his eyes inscrutable. I may have been an actress, but he had always been able to mask his emotions so well. I faltered a little, but I knew it was him. Unless he had some progeny in the world he’d never told me about that was his spitting image in human form...
“Can I help you, Miss?”
“It’s me.” I ran my gaze over his face, the face I had once hated to see and had missed so much since it had been gone from my sight. “It’s me, Kitty.”
“I’m sorry. I think you have me mixed up with someone else.” He withdrew his arm carefully and gently.
“The hell I do. I know it’s you, stop pretending it isn’t.”
“I’m not who you think I am.” His voice held an aching tenderness. His eyes were kind and warm but there was hurt under that, I could see it. Why was he hurt? He wasn’t allowed to be hurt when he was the one who left me! I was hurting too, dammit. Couldn’t he see that? Didn’t he care?
Tears as corrosive as battery acid sprang to my eyes and my throat filled with a salty lump that would not let me speak let alone refute his words. I had been mistaken before but not this time. I knew him, knew him all too well.
He turned away, reaching for his keys. I heard the locks on the sleek black sports car disengage and I knew this was my only chance. Not only would he drive away from me he would likely leave LA and my chances of ever finding him again were slim to none.
I said, so low that I knew those around us could not hear but he could, “Don’t you turn away from me. You face me dammit. You turn around here and face me. You owe me that, vampire.”
His shoulders slumped and he turned back toward me. Guilt creased his features and he met my eyes, “Strawberry,” he sighed. “You always were too persistent.”
I fell onto his chest, swallowing away the sob that rose. The solid warmth of his body met me like a wall and I welcomed it. He was real, he was there and I hugged him so tightly I could hear his back creaking. The warmth of him was what really struck me. Every time I had touched him before I had expected it, only to find his skin cold and inhuman. Now it was hot, sunbaked. I could even smell a faint whiff of sweat and leather, probably from the car seats. Good smells, living smells.
“It really is you.” I said. “And you’re really human?”
He stiffened in my arms but I held on, not letting go. Like hell I was going to let him go again.
He let out a long sigh. “Yes. Something in your amazing blood changed me. I had felt the change coming, the slow progression of my humanity coming back to me, but almost didn’t believe it until that morning after we made love. I walked into the daylight, and I did not burn. You made my heart beat again, and you gave it something to beat for.”
I looked up into his eyes. “Then why did you leave me?”
“When I found myself human, I also found that I had fallen in love with you. In that moment I realized the tragedy that had befallen me. How could you ever forgive me for what I’d done to you? How could you, when I could never forgive myself?” He looked away from me. He wouldn’t meet my eyes, but for that moment it didn’t matter. I rested my cheek against him, listening to the soft, steady thump of his heart.
“You... fell in love with me?” Trust a girl to focus on that part.
“Heart, body and soul.” His voice was barely a whisper, like his confession pained him, stealing his breath. “But I knew you could never love me in return after the crimes I had committed against you. I had done you such wrong, I had to let you be free of me. I had to leave.”
“You were a monster,” I said. I saw him flinch and look away again. I reached a hand to his chin and turned him back to face me. “Were a monster. I love the man who was trapped within the monster. I love Owen Raine, not the vampire that possessed you for so long. You are human again, and it doesn’t matter what the cost was. I don’t love the monster that imprisoned me. I love the man who set me free.”
He held me, crushing me to him as if afraid I’d disappear. My face pressed into his chest and I could hear it, his heart beating. It was a steady drumming below my ears. I loved the sound. Closing my eyes, a hundred days and nights seemed to flick before my eyes, falling asleep bathed in moonlight to the sound and waking up to the brilliant morning sun with it still steadily beating by my ear. I picked up one of his hands and held it to the sun, the sunlight turned it red, outlining the veins below his skin.
He smelled of cologne, something subtle and expensive, but the coppery scent of blood had left him. He was a human, a man, and the one I wanted to love forever, for the rest of our natural lives.
“What are you even doing here? I mean, why? Why have I found you again now?” I asked, breathlessly.
“Can I make a confession?” Owen said softly.
“Confess away.”
Owen’s eyes darkened with concern. “I’ve been keeping an eye on you. I’m sorry, I know that’s not the done thing these days, and I don’t want to seem strange or overprotective or possessive. I had reason to be worried about you. If your blood was at all as appealing to other vampires as it was to me, I considered you could be at great risk if you ever crossed a vampire’s path again.”
“I suppose that makes sense,” I rolled the words slowly off my tongue. I had often wondered the same thing. It made me feel special, and safe, to know Owen had been worried about me. “Except that no vamp was going to steal me away from a daylight market, now would they?”
Owen grinned bashfully. “Mostly I’ve had some men I hired keep you under surveillance. But when one reported some suspicious activity, I had to come myself. I needed to know, after all you’d suffered, I just needed to know you were okay. I needed to see you. Perhaps the more honest truth was that I just could never let my Strawberry go, as much as I knew I should.
“I’m sorry. I didn’t want you to see me too,” he said, pressing his lips into my hair. I could feel the warm trickle of a tear on my face but it was not mine, it was his. “I did not know how to handle all the emotions that came with being human again. I did not know how to be human, maybe I never did. Your blood changed me, made me something far better and I can’t believe you would ever be able to look at me and not see the vampire that had harmed you.”
I leaned back to look at him. He looked confused and I felt a mischievous smile steal across my face. I stepped back, feeling his hands clutch at me for a moment before reluctantly giving way and allowing me to move freely.
“What if we just start over?” I held out my hand to shake his. “I’m Kaitlyn, Kaitlyn French. I’m an actress and I am not doing too badly at it. I like food, especially good food, cats, and happy endings.”
He smiled, a smile that sent arrows of lust slicing into my heart. “I’m Owen Raine. I’m a multimillionaire businessman who currently lives on a ranch with horses. I like grocery shopping because every time I go there is some new and wonderful food to try. I just learned how to use a computer in order to keep up with the world better. I googled you, just so you know. I recently began to hang out on the beach and I have learned to like dining in restaurants.”
“It’s nice to meet you,” I said shaking his hand, both of us laughing at each other.
He twined his fingers through mine. His smile was full of the boyish ruefulness I’d only seen once before and I cherished it. In the touch of his fingers, his skin hot against mine, and the way his blue eyes saw into me, I knew that he felt the same way about me as I did about him. He’d said it, sure, but neither of us were the best with words. Our souls resonated with each other though, proving the truth in both our hearts.
The day shone down on us as he pulled me in for a slow, tender kiss. I wanted to keep that moment forever, but knew I didn’t have to. I had Owen again, and he loved me, and I loved him, and everything was right in my life.
Never before had I felt so loved.
Now and forever, I belonged to him.
His strawberry.
He whispered in my ear. “I noticed your credit for your new movie says Kaitlin French. I like it. Sounds less like a porn star.”
“Oh, bite me.”