“A pixie like you might have just blinked in here.”
“Then I can blink out the same way.”
“I’m still offering to conserve your mystic energies.”
“Acting the gentleman doesn’t become you, and any attempt at simulating one is wasted on me since I’m hardly a damsel in distress. And if you’re offering in order to score points with Johara, forget it.”
“There you go again—assigning such convoluted motives to my actions when I’m far simpler than you think. I’ve decided to go to the party, and since you’re going, too, you can save your pixie magic, as I have a perfectly mundane car parked in the garage.”
“What a coincidence. So do I. Though mine is mundane for real. While yours verges on the supernatural. I hear it talks, thinks, takes your orders, parks itself and knows when to brake and where to go. All it has left to do is make you a sandwich and a cappuccino to become truly sentient.”
“I’ll see about developing those sandwich-and cappuccino-making capabilities. Thanks for the suggestion. But wouldn’t you like to take a spin in my near-sentient car?”
“No. Just like I wouldn’t want to be in your near-sentient presence. Now ann eznak…or better still, men ghair eznak.” Then she turned and strode away.
He waited until she exited the room before moving. In moments, his far-longer strides overtook her at the elevators.
Kanza didn’t give any indication that she noticed him, going through messages on her phone. She still made no reaction when he boarded the elevator with her and then when he followed her to the garage.
It was only when he tailed her to her car that she finally turned on him. “What?”
He gave her his best pseudoinnocent smile and lobbed back her parting shot. “By your leave, or better still without it, I’m escorting you to your car.”
She looked him up and down in silence, then turned and took the last strides to a Ford Escape that was the exact color of her jacket. Seemed she was fond of red.
In moments, she drove away with a screech right out of a car chase, which had him jumping out of the way.
He stood watching her taillights flashing as she hit the brakes at the garage’s exit. Grinning to himself, he felt a rush of pure adrenaline flood his system.
She’d really done it. Something no other woman—no other person—had ever done.
She’d turned him down.
No…it was more that that. She’d rebuffed him.
Well. There was only one thing he could do now.
Give chase.
Three
Kanza resisted the urge to floor the gas pedal.
That…rat was following her.
That colossal, cruelly magnificent rat.
Though the way he made her feel was that she was the rat, running for her life, growing more frantic by the breath, chased by a majestic, terminally bored cat who’d gotten it in his mind to chase her…just for the hell of it.
She snatched another look in the rearview mirror.
Yep. There he still was. Driving safely, damn him, keeping the length of three cars between them, almost to the inch. He’d probably told his pet car how far away it should stick to her car’s butt. The constant distance was more nerve-racking than if he’d kept approaching and receding, if he’d made any indication that he was expending any effort in keeping up with her.
She knew he didn’t real
ly want to catch her. He was just exercising the prerogative of his havoc-inducing powers. He was doing this to rattle her. To show her that no one refused him, that he’d do whatever he pleased, even if it infringed on others. Preferably if it did.
It made her want to slam the brakes in the middle of the road, force him to stop right behind her. Then she’d get down, walk over there and haul him out of his car and…and… What?