Chapter Ten
Wash that Man Right out of Her Hair
"Merde." Val laughed as he yanked back the sheet. "What do we have here—Sleeping Beauty?"
Lucy kept her eyes firmly shut, wishing she and her gurney could disappear into thin air. Where was a witch's broomstick when she needed one?
"Well, well, cherie. First I catch you dressing like Elvira, now I find you playing dead in the morgue. Are you trying out to be undead, or just bored?" Val stared, wondering what Lucy was playing at. What was she doing in the morgue with ketchup smeared all over her?
He goosed her. "Rise and shine. And by the way, you overdid the Heinz."
Lucy opened her eyes, the color of her face a match for the condiment in her hair, and Val stared down at her as if she had stepped on his grave. Lines of concern twisted the corners of his mouth. As if she didn't know the gravity of her situation!
Standing directly behind Val was the security guard, whose eyes and mouth were wide open.
Blinking, Lucy sighed. The jig was up, and humiliation was once again her middle name. "How did you know that there really wasn't a dead person under here?" she asked.
Val leaned over and sniffed disdainfully. "How else?"
Foiled, and caught red-handed. And -bodied. And -haired. What wretched luck.
Getting to her feet, she pushed away from Val. "Your nose should be in the Guinness Book of World Records. Are you sure you aren't part werewolf?" she snapped.
She could see a slight grin tug at the corners of his mouth—a mouth she wanted to kiss. Hell's bells! Why couldn't she just forget him? She needed to wash him right out of her hair, along with about thirty gallons of ketchup.
The security guard was scowling at her as if she had stolen the Hope Diamond, and he finally put in his two bits. "You're the lady that pretended to be a doctor earlier." Glancing at Val, he added suspiciously, "Detective DuPonte, I've already had to throw her out of here once. You ought to arrest her for breaking and entering."
"Tattletale," Lucy groused. "And I didn't break and enter. The doors were open, and you weren't at your post."
Hands on his hips, the guard scowled. Pointing a finger at her, he glanced over at Val. "Then arrest her for impersonating a dead body."
Val chuckled. "That's not illegal. Especially here in the Big Easy."
The guard started to protest, and Lucy grinned. A wave of relief washed over her. She wasn't going to be hauled off to jail after all.
Val put up a hand as he noticed Lucy's smile. Whatever chaos she was up to, he was going to nip it in the bud. He said, "However, entering the morgue under false pretenses can get a person into big trouble."
This time, Lucy scowled and the guard grinned.
"Good. I've got a pair of handcuffs if you need them," he suggested helpfully.
Val shook his head, his deadpan expression revealing nothing. "Thanks, Max, but I'll take it from here." And with a motion of his hand, he dismissed the guard.
Lucy could hear the grumbling as Max stalked off down the darkened hallway. Glancing at Val's rather grim expression, and seeing the slight glare in his vampiric gaze, Lucy decided that fleeing the scene of this tiny little crime was probably her wisest course of action. She took three steps backward.
Val shook his head, his blue eyes dark with emotion. "Viens ici! Come here."
Lucy obeyed, took two steps forward, albeit warily.
"What are you doing here, cherie?"
"Would you believe my laundry?" Lucy replied. She hoped that humor would somehow defuse the situation.
"This isn't funny, Lucy. I can take you into the station for this. I probably should." She was up to her pretty little eyeballs in something, and he was going to get to the bottom of whatever crazy scheme she was hatching.
Setting her jaw, Lucy spoke with a confidence she was far from feeling. She held out her hands, her expression defiant. "Do your worst. Haul me in. Beat me with your nightstick." Campbell women didn't back away from danger, even two hundred pounds of mad, sexy vampire. Campbell women embraced danger, they ran toward it. Of course, Campbell women often had short life spans.
"I don't carry a nightstick, and you know it. Merde! I ought to take you over my knee and spank you, is what I ought to do."
"You wouldn't dare. I watch Court TV. I watch Law & Order." But she wasn't so sure. Val looked angry enough to dare anything. "You touch me and I'll scream police brutality. Big-time police brutality. I'll tell all New Orleans that you're a monster. A betraying brute who threatens helpless women with handcuffs and worse."
"Mais oui—yes, you would, wouldn't you? Do you see any handcuffs, Lucy?" he asked tiredly. His next glare was an exact replica of his last. Jeez, the vampire had no range of expression.
Lucy dropped her arms as he shook his head, and he said tersely, "You always were hysterical, and willing to embellish the truth. I remember when I flew to talk to you in San Antonio, and you stood on that balcony screaming at me. You shouted that I should be hauled off by Robespierre, and cursed me for peasant abuse—all when I haven't had peasants on my land in two hundred years. I remember you throwing a vase of flowers at my head and screaming obscenities," Val continued, visions of spanking that pert bottom flashing through his head. Baring that bottom, and then the rest would be… something he did his damnedest to forget.
"You deserved worse, you blood-sucking betrayer!" Lucy waved her finger at him, remembering more of her mama's sage advice: When verbally attacked by an irate male, deflect, deceive, and demand.
"You mistrustful malicious mortal," Val replied. His eyes glowed with the fires of injustice. Lucy made him angrier than any other female in his entire existence, and that was saying quite a lot. "Shut up, Lucy. You don't know what you're talking about."
Lucy glared at him, her hands on her hips. Anger flooded her system like the sugar from four too many Fig Newtons. "Don't you tell me to shut up, you two-timing satyr! Don't talk down to me. Don't act like I'm some blond bimbo you can crush under your feet like some rider-stomping bull longhorn. I expect your respect," Lucy shouted. "No, I demand your respect! And I want none of your irritable male syndrome!"
Val narrowed his eyes. "Irritable male syndrome?" What the hell was that? Well, he'd show her an irritated male, all right. "Merde. You're an expert in deflection and diversion for one so young," he admitted. He still needed to find out exactly what Lucy knew, and listening to his nether region crying out for a hot time in the old town tonight would get him nowhere.
No, he certainly shouldn't be finding her attractive—not in one of her temper tantrums, standing there covered in ketchup. But he was either sick or he had gone too long without mind-blowing sex. Lucy was the only mind-blowing sex he had experienced in over three hundred years, and she was driving him crazy.
"I never said you were a bimbo, Luce," he said with a sigh. "Stop the stalling techniques. What the hell are you doing here?"
"Research," she answered.
"For what?" Val had a sudden glimmer of suspicion that Lucy knew something about the incubus. Earlier today they had discovered the existence of another victim. Fortunately, the woman was still alive, and Christine was interviewing her at this very moment. Hopefully, when Val met back up with his partner at police headquarters, they would both have considerably more information to share about the youth-stealing monster.
"Research… for a show," Lucy lied, trying desperately to come up with some reasonable explanation to be here in the morgue. But it was hard with Val standing there so tall, dark, and handsome, with his unphony French accent. Campbell women could come up with a great white lie or two—or even three, if absolutely necessary—in any situation or circumstance, except where handsome hunks of the walking dead were concerned. Just because Val looked like some pirate out of a romantic fantasy, what with his sexy smile and that dimple in his chin, that was no reason for her to lose her old Campbell common sense.