Free Tall, Dark & Hungry by Lynsay Sands Page A

seemed more interesting when he considered showing it to Terri. He had an unusual concern for her well-being, and was distracted with the idea of keeping her and Vincent apart that—in truth—had nothing to do with what Kate might think or say. He doubted she'd be pleased if the editor got bit either, but that didn't really bother him. No. He wanted to keep Terri away from Vincent because the very idea of his cousin wooing her under his nose made him sick, because… he was interested in her himself.
    A banging on the window drew his distracted gaze. A driver had gotten out of his vehicle and was now yelling and pounding on Bastien's door. He couldn't hear what the man was shouting—the honking from behind was too loud—but Bastien gathered the fellow wasn't happy with the holdup. He watched the man's mouth move for several minutes, then put the suggestion in his head to shut up and get back into his car. The moment the fellow did, Bastien eased his foot down on the gas pedal and set his Mercedes moving again.
    The incident set his mind going in another direction. He had put the suggestion in the angry driver's mind without any effort. Could he control and read Terri's mind? If he could, she wasn't for him. It he couldn't… He'd have to wait till he got back to the penthouse to see.
    Eager to get home, Bastien put on some speed, cursing the fact that Chris Keyes lived in Morning-side Heights in the Upper West Side, far from his own expensive area of town.
    When he got there, Bastien found he didn't need the keys C.K. had given him. The door to the apartment was wide open. An old lady stood inside, hands on hips as she nattered at a pair of workers carting out chunks of plaster and wood—clearing away the rubble from the fallen ceiling, was Bastien's guess. He entered and approached the woman, presuming she was the landlady. Wasting a good deal of time, he tried to explain to her that he was there on Chris's behalf; then he got tired of reassuring her and slipped into her mind to suggest she not notice his presence at all. Bastien then had to do so with the two workmen as well before being free to move into the bedroom.
    He should have done so in the first place, Bastien thought with irritation as he slipped out of the apartment several minutes later. He had a haphazard collection of clothes stuffed into a gym bag he'd found on the bedroom floor. Tossing the bag on the passenger seat of his car, he started the engine, then paused. The next stop on his list was to collect subs, but he had no idea where those would be sold. Bastien almost got out of the car to ask the nearest passerby where he could find a shop that sold subs, then changed his mind. He'd wait till he was closer to home to ask directions. If the subs were usually heated, which he suspected a meatball sub would be—and for all he knew Terri's assorted sub might be too—he didn't want them to be cold by the time he returned. They sounded disgusting enough without being presented cold.
    Unfortunately, it appeared that sub shops were scarce in the elite section of the city that housed Argeneau Enterprises; and the directions Bastien eventually got made him backtrack quite a fair distance to find what he was looking for. It also appeared that such shops were quite popular, because the line inside was atrocious. Bastien was tempted to leap into people's minds to cut to the front of the line, but forced himself to be patient and wait like everyone else. This wasn't an emergency. He had no excuse for such manipulation.
    Half an hour later, and well over two hours after he had set out, Bastien rode up the elevator to the penthouse suite, carrying the gym bag with the editor's clothes, and a paper bag holding three subs, plain chips, two bags of barbecue chips, two Dr Peppers, and a Canada Dry ginger ale. He'd double ordered Terri's selections, to give himself something to pick at so she wouldn't wonder why he wasn't eating.
    "The conquering hero returns," Vincent