Uncross My Heart

  Magick made him human. Only love can keep him that way.

  After a century of living la vida muerta, Julian Devlin’s closest ally casts a de-vamping spell that leaves him defanged and demoted from his hard-won place in Baltimore’s vampire hierarchy. Disoriented by his transformation, he can’t even find his way home.

  The indignities don’t end there. Before he can explain to the quirky consignment shop owner why he’s hiding in her basement, she’s punched the newly re-acquired breath out of him and smacked him upside the head with her knock-off purse.

  Zoe Boyd’s scream could have peeled paint from the walls—if she could get her heart out of her throat. Common thugs aren’t supposed to have a smile so panty-melting that she finds herself apologizing for scaring him.

  She’s also too busy managing her friends’ love lives to take on an ex-vampire with revamping and revenge on his mind. Until she guides him home and ends up neck deep in his world of trouble.

  As Zoe risks her life to give him back his death, she warms the soul Julian never thought he’d own again. And when he tracks down a devilish witch who can reverse the spell, immortality without Zoe suddenly seems like cold comfort…

  Warning: This novel contains sensual love scenes between a fashion-forward hero and a fashion-unconscious heroine, abuse of Italian loafers, and a few love bites. Don’t worry, freshly sharpened fangs don’t hurt. Much…

  eBooks are not transferable.

  They cannot be sold, shared or given away as it is an infringement on the copyright of this work.

  This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

  Samhain Publishing, Ltd.

  577 Mulberry Street, Suite 1520

  Macon GA 31201

  Uncross My Heart

  Copyright © 2011 by Jennifer Colgan

  ISBN: 978-1-60928-327-8

  Edited by Linda Ingmanson

  Cover by Angela Waters

  All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

  First Samhain Publishing, Ltd. electronic publication: January 2011

  www.samhainpublishing.com

  Uncross My Heart

  Jennifer Colgan

  Dedication

  To my husband, who gives me time and space and unconditional support.

  Without him, my dreams would not be possible.

  Chapter One

  For the first time in over a century, Julian Devlin drew breath into his lungs. The pain staggered him.

  Like bellows made of dry parchment, the long-unused organs protested the expansion caused by his first startled gasp. After so many dormant years, would they split and crack with the effort to fill with air, leaving him to suffocate? Perhaps he’d be better off.

  He stifled a scream of pain before thrusting out his hand to steady himself against the rotting, moisture-laden wall of the sub-basement. Miraculously, though, he survived that first inhalation and the next.

  He’d paused here in this hidden place to get his bearings after fleeing his last battlefield. Once a realm he knew as intimately as his own home, the dark tunnels beneath the city brought him no solace. For he no longer possessed the ability to ignore their musty stench.

  He retched and doubled over, clutching his stomach, which was fortunately empty at the moment. Thanks to that bastard Lambert, now Julian could experience not only the fetid aroma of decay and neglect here below the street, but also the nausea that accompanied it.

  Between his burning lungs, Julian’s dead heart fluttered as he straightened. After a moment of sheer panic, the likes of which he hadn’t experienced in ten-plus decades, the wild staccato regulated itself. The steady thump beneath his sternum only added to the sick feeling that made his ears ring and his normally cool skin damp and clammy.

  He’d have clawed the offending object from his chest, but his strength was gone…quartered by Lambert’s insidious magick spell.

  Impossible! How could the other vampire, Julian’s closest ally, have managed this? How could Enoch Lambert have turned him human again?

  There was little time to contemplate Lambert’s coup, though. Vulnerable—weaker than he’d been over a hundred years ago when he’d been sired—Julian could not afford to wallow right now. He had to reach his own lair and begin to orchestrate his revenge.

  Death would be too kind for Lambert after this betrayal. Julian needed to devise a punishment so vile, a torment so exquisite, that—

  Footsteps echoed in the tunnel, bouncing relentlessly off the dripping cement archways overhead. The shouts of Lambert’s henchmen reached him, galvanizing his shivering human body into action.

  He stumbled forward, unsure for the first time in his existence of exactly which tunnel would lead him home. The long-unused access corridors seemed so dark now that his eyesight had been halved and his instincts dulled from the razor sharpness on which he’d come to rely.

  Yes. Death would have been a kindness.

  Cursing Lambert back to the hell from which he’d no doubt crawled, Julian Devlin did something a powerful vampire should never have to do.

  He ran for his life.

  “I’m going to lock up in a minute, and I’ll meet you there.” Zoe Boyd shoved the front door of Dollars and Sense closed hard enough that the deadbolt would latch and she flipped the knob beneath the door handle. She then slid the chain lock into its holder and lowered the old brown window shade that bore the word CLOSED in sun-faded letters.

  While she worked, the haphazard beat of a new age rock band blared through the receiver of her cell phone, nearly drowning out the voice of her friend Tanya Hayden. Tanya waited for Zoe at a club called Kimono, on the other side of town.

  “I’m all alone here,” Tanya said, the cadence of her words tempered by several wine spritzers. “Bryan bailed on us again.”

  “Bryan bailed? Why?” Zoe wrinkled her brow in concern as she hurried through her tiny consignment shop, shutting off the overhead fluorescents. She, Tanya and Bryan James had been friends since fourth grade, and when one of the trio “bailed” on the others, it was usually something serious.

  “I think he has a new girlfriend and he doesn’t want us to meet her yet.”

  “Is that what he said?” Zoe grabbed her purse and keys from the hook in the back room and jogged down the short flight of cement steps that led to the basement of the shop. She’d asked her landlord Mr. Haverston a million times if he could move the thermostat upstairs so she wouldn’t have to venture into the dark underbelly of the building every evening to lower the heat. A million times, he’d good-naturedly promised her he would get to it one of these days.

  “He wouldn’t tell me anything. I know he’s got a new girl, but he’s been keeping everything hush-hush, like he’s ashamed of us.”

  The hurt in Tanya’s voice transcended the pounding rhythm of the background noise. Tanya had always had a severe crush on Bryan and, though she feigned disinterest in his brief but usually intense love affairs, her pain was obvious to Zoe.

  “I’m sorry, honey. We’ll get to the bottom of it. I’ll be there in ten minutes, and we’ll formulate a plan to drag the truth out of him.”

  Tanya sniffled a bit. “Okay…hurry.”

  “I will.” With a sigh, Zoe snapped her phone shut. Maybe she could convince Tanya to abandon the club for someplace calmer and quieter where they could talk. Her friend needed moral support right now, more than she needed loud r
ock and mixed drinks.

  She tucked the phone into her purse and reached for the pull chain of the overhead light. After the third tug, she faced the cruel realization that the bulb had blown out, and her choices were to waste time replacing it before heading to Kimono or fumble around in the dark.

  Tanya needed her, so the bulb could wait. Certain she could adjust the thermostat by feel, she ventured deeper into the musty cellar. Zoe had learned long ago to just ignore the eerie feeling that permeated the damp basement. Giving in to the heebie jeebies, as Tanya called those strange tinglies at the back of the neck, only made her trips down here last longer than necessary. She always ended up staring into the little-used corners and dark crevices, watching for signs that some ghoulish thing lurked in the gloom, ready to pop out at her.

  Better to get in, complete her task, and get out without contemplating the shadows for too long. She’d almost accomplished that when a hand closed over her shoulder.

  Her scream reverberated against the paint-peeling cinderblock walls and bounced around like a trapped bird. She flailed and gasped, whirling around, fast and furious. Fueled by terror and adrenalin, she managed to slam her balled fist into the solar plexus of her attacker.

  Nevernevernever never ever would she go into the basement again. If she survived this, the heat would just have to stay on.

  That thought sprang fully formed into her panicked brain in the split second between her fist making contact with her assailant and his grunt of surprise. He actually doubled over and, as he reached up to clutch at his chest, a heavy gold watch on his left wrist caught the feeble light from upstairs.

  Zoe seized the opportunity to blindside him with her purse. The three rolls of quarters she’d planned to change into singles at the bank tomorrow went a long way toward leaving the crazed lunatic dazed and stumbling around in the dark.

  After the blow, he lurched sideways, moaning. Now, with a clear path back up the stairs, Zoe bolted. “I have a gun…and a can of mace! I will shoot you and spray you and kick your balls up into your eye sockets if you take one more step, you hear me?”

  Her heel caught in the chipped cement of the first step, and she went sprawling.

  Oh God, oh God, he’s going to kill me! Her brain rebelled, rejecting every self-defense lesson she’d ever learned as she clawed at the broken, uneven stairs in her haste to regain her feet and escape. Rather than yell “Fire!” or retrieve her cell phone and speed dial 911, she let out a self-pitying moan that ended in a sob. This was not how she wanted to die, cornered by some thug in a dark, cold basement. Oh God, oh God.

  “Don’t come near me! I swear I’ll—”

  “I think you cracked my skull.” His statement was rather calm for a lunatic. His voice was deep and melodic, cultured, almost. He must be an uptown thug.

  Zoe screamed again and lurched to her feet, hating herself for not being able to control her fear better than this. Her hands shook, and her knees ached where she’d scraped them on the cement. She had to get away before her terror made her do something stupid.

  “I’m not going to hurt you,” he said between the sound of faint, shuffling footsteps and a deep, weary sigh.

  Hobbled by a sharp pain in her right knee, Zoe had made it only to the second stair. She couldn’t force her trembling fingers to pull her cell phone from her purse, and the pounding of her heart, which was now lodged in the base of her throat, made it impossible to respond verbally. She chanced a peek behind her at the broad-shouldered form standing beneath the useless light bulb.

  “Truce,” he said, holding out his hands, palms forward. Even in the dimness, he looked far too clean-cut to be a mugger. His white shirt gleamed, the collar high and starched above a brown leather jacket, the hem tucked neatly into tan Dockers. His shoes looked Italian, and he wore no tie. The epitome of casual elegance, he belonged on the cover of GQ, not lurking in a moldy basement.

  She let her gaze rise above the well-manicured hand that still rubbed at the center of his chest. Dark eyes of an indeterminate color met hers, and she sucked in a breath. Good lord. He was the love child of Clive Owen and Hugh Jackman. Lantern jaw, cleft chin, sensuous lips. His wounded expression made her want to apologize for allowing him to scare the crap out of her.

  “I really didn’t mean to startle you.”

  “Startle…?” She clamped her lips shut on a nervous laugh. “Oh no. Men crawl up out of the basement and grab me all the time. It’s really no biggie.” Did she really sound breathless and tittering? Come on, he wasn’t that cute. Okay, he was. But that didn’t change the fact that he’d given her a coronary. She leveled her sternest look at him. “I hate to be rude, but who the hell are you and what are you doing hiding down here in the dark?”

  Those lips quirked in a faint grin that made Zoe’s overtaxed heart skip another beat. She’d just threatened bodily harm to the most gorgeous man she’d ever seen.

  “I’m lost.”

  “In the basement? How long have you been down here?” He couldn’t have snuck in from the back. She always kept the door to the alley behind Dollars and Sense securely locked and the alarm set.

  “I came from there.” He pointed to an ancient-looking wooden door that Mr. Haverston had once explained separated the cellar of this shop from the others on the block. According to him, one could travel halfway across the shopping district beneath the buildings through a series of corridors and tunnels, some that dipped down as far as sewer level.

  “Do you always wander around below ground in your Gucci loafers?”

  He glanced at his feet. “Not usually. Look, if you can just tell me how to get to Terrace Avenue from here, I’ll be out of your way. No harm. Honest.” He held up his hands again and graced her with a full-on devastating smile.

  She bit her lower lip and cocked a brow at him. “The best way to get there would be to use the street.” She pointed up. “It’s around the corner and down the block. You can’t miss the intersection.”

  “Thank you.”

  “Sure.”

  He took one step in her direction, his expression questioning whether or not she’d let him up the stairs without going kung fu on him again.

  Zoe hadn’t quite decided if she would or not. He certainly didn’t look dangerous from where she stood now…at least not in the physical sense. His clothes were impeccable despite his surroundings. His fingernails looked clean and professionally manicured. His watch, probably a Rolex, though she couldn’t be sure, sparkled in the feeble light filtering down from the back room, and the Gucci remark had been a lucky guess. Ostentatious wasn’t her style and neither was demure elegance, and he seemed to be a combination of both.

  She’d just about reached the conclusion that she could safely let him pass and show him out the back door, when he stumbled and sank to his knees on the dirty cement floor.

  Panic battled with concern. Had she really hurt him, or was this a ruse to lure her back down the stairs and into his clutches? “Are you all right? What’s—”

  His head shot up, and the look on his face morphed into one of rage mixed with fear. He rose in a fluid motion and lunged for her just as something exploded behind her. The back door of Dollars and Sense crashed open as if the deadbolt holding it closed didn’t exist. The burglar alarm wailed to life, and its red hazard lights came on, casting Zoe’s shadow in bloody relief before her.

  Before she could scream, she fell forward, propelled by the concussion of the force from above as well as her own somewhat stunted survival instincts.

  She landed in his arms.

  Despite his apparent weakness, he was all muscle and he smelled of expensive cologne. Something woodsy with a liberal dose of citrus filled her lungs when she drew in a panicked breath.

  “This way. They’ve found me. We have to get out of here.”

  “They who? Who…they…” Zoe fought against his grip, trying to pry his long fingers from where they’d closed around her wrist. She couldn’t budge him, though, and that left her with no ch
oice but to stumble after him through the old wooden door.

  Shouts came from above, along with the sound of breaking glass.

  Her shop! Everything she’d worked so hard to accomplish seemed to be the target of an ambush of some sort. And she was caught between the gorgeous stranger who lurked in basements and the noisy invasion of who-knew-what from above.

  Demanding that he let her go seemed pointless at this juncture, so, terrified and faced with no alternative, Zoe ran.

  Chapter Two

  Julian had no idea what had possessed him to drag the blonde gypsy with him through the tunnels. His first instinct when he’d come upon her in her flowing peasant skirt and dangling jewelry was to make a meal of her and attempt to assuage the hunger that gnawed at his gut, adding to his weakness.

  Sweet young blood. That taste of innocence, the tang of fresh fear—his mouth watered for it.

  Nevertheless, it hadn’t been hunger he’d felt when he’d reached for her in the shadows. It had been pain and disorientation coupled with his embarrassment at realizing he had no idea where he was. He’d followed what he thought were familiar tunnels for nearly an hour and finally reached a door that led to the connected basements beneath the storefronts lining the streets of Baltimore’s downtown shopping district.

  His home wouldn’t be far, or so he thought. Unfamiliar smells had assaulted him as he wandered, and when he’d stumbled into the mostly empty cement cellar, he’d been overcome with panic. Had Lambert stunted his intellect as well? How could he not know where he was?

  Then she’d appeared. With the bangles on her arms jangling, and her golden curls catching the dim glow that spilled down a crumbling cinderblock staircase into his hiding place, she resembled a parti-colored pixie.

  Vampire instinct had told him to use her. Feed, then discard what remained. Had he been himself and merely weakened from a battle, that would have buoyed his strength and restored him almost immediately to full health. But humans didn’t sustain themselves with blood. What a waste.