Watercolour Smile by Jane Washington Page A

that dipped low in the front and showed a short stretch of perfect, pale midriff. Her lips were ruby red, her makeup artfully applied. As she walked toward me, I found my stomach dropping through the ground. She was tall and willowy to the extreme, like a supermodel; and the way she walked was reminiscent of a jungle cat’s slow stalk.
    “You must be Seraph.” She regarded me quickly, the hint of a Russian accent assaulting my ears, and then she seemed to dismiss me, obviously not floored by my appearance the way I had been by hers. “Let’s go.”
    I got into her fancy car without hesitation. If she was my ticket to Silas, I’d swallow my insecurities and go along with it.
    “So how do you know the guys?” I asked, fiddling with the hem of my shirt.
    “I only really know Silas.” Her voice was smooth and rough all at once, with the kind of timbre that rolled over your hair in the wrong direction. “Miro calls me in when he gets crazy like this. But Si and I grew up together in Ukraine.”
    “Cool.” Si . “Wait—Ukraine?” Not a Russian accent after all.
    “Yes.” Her lips quirked down into a pouty frown. “Weston used to send him away for each school term. He spent more time with his mother, Yvonne, in Odessa.” 
    She didn’t ask me how I knew them, so I decided to keep quiet. I fiddled restlessly until we pulled to the side of the street opposite the bar.
    “You should wait out here,” she advised me. “I’ll get him and bring him to the car.”
    “Okay,” I said as she got up and began her cat-stalk to the bar.
    As soon as she reached the door, I was up. I ran after her and opened the door, slipping inside behind her and inserting myself into a booth right beside the door, with a clear view of the rest of the room. There were a bunch of guys in the booth beside me, and one of them leaned over to say something to me.
    “Shh.” I waved an urgent hand at him, my eyes trained on Hunter.
    She spotted Silas almost immediately, and so did I. He was hunched over the bar with his back to us, his knuckles resting either side of a glass. Dried blood was crusted over his hands and everyone in the place seemed to be giving him a wide berth. How had he managed to get into a fight already? Or had he simply punched something? Hunter slid into the stool beside him and ran a hand over his back. I watched her red fingernails scratch lightly over the material, her pale hand contrasting with the dark material. His whole body seemed to tense, and I clamped a solid iron barricade over the rise of possessive anger that threatened to boil right up and consume me.
    He turned slightly, giving me the back of his head as he glanced at Hunter. I wanted him to turn his attention back to the bar and ignore her, or better yet, tell her to leave. Instead, she dipped forward and fastened her mouth to his, and he allowed it. I was glad that my brain couldn’t seem to compute what was happening, because my solid iron barricade had just tumbled like it was made of cookie crumbs. Hunter leaned back, and I could see the confusion in her expression, mixed with annoyance. Silas didn’t move, and she tried to lean forward again. I jumped up, but his hand shot out at the same time and she went flying back off her bar stool, crashing into someone standing behind her.
    A hand caught my arm and tugged me back into my booth seat. Shocked, I glanced at the person who had pulled me back. He was a few years my junior, the youngest in their group—and certainly too young to be sitting in a bar. They seemed to be a family, the father was opposite me, and the two older brothers beside the younger one; they all had the same cornflower hair and blue eyes, with squared-off jaws and wide foreheads, displaying various stages of age in their similar features.
    “Wouldn’t do that, darlin’.” The father across from me gestured toward Hunter, who was flame-faced now and putting herself to rights. “Never get involved in a lovers’ spat with a