"Aidez-moi?" I asked her as I avoided impalement on Tanya's fingernails. "You want someone to help you? What about me?"

With a movement too fast for me to follow, Raphael grabbed Dominic by the fancy ruffled poet shirt he wore and slammed him against the bar wall. Tanya came at me again with a frustrated shriek, but I grabbed both her arms and held her off.

"Remember your position!" Dominic screamed as Raphael snarled and lifted him off the floor with one hand. Christian jumped in and wrestled Tanya away from me, pulling her away and holding her until she calmed down.

"Remember who I am, St. John! You will have nothing without me, nothing! I can break you with just a word!"

Brave words, considering it was Raphael who was holding Dominic impotent with only one hand, but to my immense disappointment, the words seemed effective. Slowly Raphael let Dominic slide down the wall until he was once again on his feet. Dominic smiled a completely repulsive smile full of gloating, and with exaggerated gestures straightened his shirt and striped vest.

"It is a wise man who knows when he has met his master," Dominic crowed, turning to retrieve a furious Tanya from Christian.

Employer or no employer, I hoped Raphael would punch him, but other than flexing his fingers, he did nothing. His face was tight and expressionless, and grudgingly I gave him full marks for control.

Dominic's gaze settled on me as I stood next to Roxy. He smiled and dropped his eyelids in what I'm sure he thought was an extremely sexy look, but which really just made him look dopey. "And you, mon ange—I will see you later tonight, eh? I promise you, I will fulfill all your darkest fantasies, no matter how extreme."

Tanya made a wordless noise of protest.

"Oh, goody," I said with irony that I doubted he would appreciate. "It's been eons since I saw a really quality vampire-staking. So glad you've volunteered."

The muscle over his eye twitched again, but he held on to his leer. With a showy bow to me, he flashed his canines at everyone and stalked to the door.

"Raphael!" Dominic paused at the door, but did not bother with the courtesy of turning around and facing Raphael when he spoke to him. "I expect you to be on the grounds before opening."

"I'll be there," Raphael answered, crossing his arms over his broad chest and sending Dominic a look I hoped to heaven no one would ever point at me. Dominic swirled his cape over his shoulder and swept out the door with a grand flourish, Tanya following sullenly behind.

"Bet he learned that in Dramatic Exits 101," I murmured to Roxy. She snickered in return. I gave Raphael a grateful smile. "Looks like I owe you one."

His jaw tightened. He didn't smile in return. In fact, he looked mad as hell. "Looks like you do," he acknowledged with a terse little nod of his head.

I thinned my lips at him, all thoughts of thanking him evaporating under the glare of those wicked amber eyes. "Let's not be overly gracious about this, shall we?"

He took a step forward—a long step forward; the man had legs that went up to his armpits—and frowned down on me. I have to admit he made a very intimidating figure, but I refuse to let anyone intimidate me with nothing but a bunch of muscles, a handsome face, and eyes that could drop a horse at ten paces.

"I could have lost my job because you insisted on flirting with Dominic. Isn't there an expression that says if you can't stand the heat, stay out of the kitchen?"

My jaw dropped. I looked at Roxy to see if she was hearing the same outrageous accusation I was. She didn't seem to, since she had a hand clapped over her mouth and was clearly trying not to laugh. Christian's dark eyes were bright with interest on me, but he didn't seem to be appalled either. I raised my chin, spun around to face Raphael, and let him have it with both barrels.

"Flirting? Heat? Kitchen? Are you mad? Crashing against the wall like that must have scrambled your brains, mister, because there is no way on God's green earth anyone could claim I was flirting with old fang-tooth!"

Raphael took another step forward until we were toe to toe, nose to chin. "You allowed him to hold your hand, and I noticed you weren't fighting too hard to get away. Not to mention you repeatedly batted your eyelashes at me in an obvious attempt to make him jealous. In other words, you showed every sign of a woman who was desirous of a man's attention by putting on a show of indifference to pique his interest. That, Joy Martine Randall, is flirting. I'd appreciate it if you could leave me out of your plans the next time you want to play your little sex games."

"Oh!" I huffed, unable to believe how wrong I'd been about him. I liked him better as the blood-sucking undead than I did as the self-centered, stuffy, righteous, PRIGGISH male he was. "For your information, Mr. So-Stuck-on-Yourself-You-Probably-Attract-Flies, I was not flirting! I do not play games! And I most certainly was not batting my eyelashes at you, so you can get that idea right out of the pudding that passes for your brain!"

"Pudding?" he bellowed at me, outrage bristling from every pore.

"Vanilla. With lumps in it!" I bellowed back.

He took a deep breath, his fingers flexing as he struggled to keep control of himself. Oddly enough, the fact that he was bigger and stronger than me wasn't threatening. Somehow I knew that, try him though I might, he was not the type of man who would hurt me.

"You are the most exasperating woman I've ever met," he growled through clenched teeth. His eyes were things of beauty to behold, but I wasn't about to tell him that, nosiree, not me. A compliment would be the last thing out of my mouth to a man who was so pigheaded he could be served at a luau. "I wouldn't doubt for a moment that you planned this whole fiasco just so I'd lose my job. I had you marked as trouble the moment I saw you fawning all over him." He pointed at Christian.

I stared at Christian in open-mouthed surprise, so flabbergasted I couldn't think of anything to say. Christian gave Raphael an odd look that mingled surprise with anger. I wondered briefly what he had to be angry about; it wasn't him being slandered in such an atrocious manner. My flabbergastedness lasted about three seconds.

"You great big tottyhead! First I'm flirting with Dominic and then I'm fawning on Christian? Is that what you think? Because if you do, you're deranged, you're just one hundred percent deranged! You've got some sort of sex obsession, that's your problem!"

"Unlike a woman who has thrown herself at three men she's met in the space of a single day, I do not have an obsession with sex."

"Three? Three?" I steamed at him.

"I'm the third. Have you forgotten last night?"

"That was different. I have long since changed my mind," I argued, poking him in the chest and tipping my head back so I could glare at him better. "I know your type, all strong and silent and sexy as hell, and believing every woman within a five-mile radius has the hots for you. I bet you even think I'm attracted to you."

"You are the one who said you'd pay me to have sex with you."

"Joy!" Roxy gasped.

"It was a joke," I told her, lying through my teeth. I turned back to Raphael. "I'd just hit my head. I obviously wasn't myself."

His eyes glittered wickedly at me as he dropped his head so he could glower into my eyes. "Very well, we'll forget last night, but that doesn't explain the fact that you're attracted to me now."

"I am not!" I said, outraged at such an idea, refusing to admit that my body was thrumming like a plucked string in reaction to his nearness.

"You are. You're practically begging me to kiss you. If that's not being attracted to me, I don't know what is."

His breath feathered across my face, distracting me for a moment. I bathed in the light of his heated eyes, feeling warm and feminine and very, very aroused.