A VOW TO KILL

Chapter 4

“She’s hot!” Nathan hissed under his breath, looking around to make sure they had not attracted any unwanted attention.

Cain did not need to ask what his brother meant. He knew it was not a compliment, he remembered he too had felt the heat coming off her skin when he had touched her in town two weeks ago. The woman had an unnatural high body temperature. High enough to burn. It was a wonder her clothes were not melting right off her body.

Cain watched as the red skin on his brother’s hand returned to normal. That was cause for concern, if a simple touch could be so effective what else could she do when truly agitated. He suddenly decided he didn't want to find out. At least not in an art show in the old museum.

“Perhaps we can take this discussion outside,” Cain suggested calmly and two pairs of eyes looked at him as though he had lost his mind.

“Are you serious?” Nathan asked. “After this?” He raised his now healed hand. “You want to be alone with her after this?” He sounded completely baffled.

“At least one of you has a functioning brain,” Dalinda drawled with a tight smile.

Cain regarded her in silence. The woman was the definition of hostile and she was not shy about it. But he still wanted to know what she was. He decided to try for charm.

“Your beauty must be impairing our thinking. You are just stunning and... that dress is sinful.”

The look she gave him could only have been described as total disbelief, even her mouth gaped and froze. She blinked and just stared at him.

“Oh man, I am embarrassed to be your brother, that was so ...so bad,” Nathan complained whole heartedly and closed his eyes for effect.

Cain felt like slapping him. He was not helping the situation. His attention was drawn back to the lady as she recovered from her shock and started laughing. She laughed so hard it drew the attention of many people around. Some looked on curiously while others noticed the beauty of the woman laughing and began to stare. That did not please Cain much.

“Ok, ok…it wasn’t that bad, you can stop laughing how,” he hissed under his breath harshly enough for her to hear.

Instead of stopping, she only laughed more. Cain was forced to wait while he frowned at her disapprovingly. Nathan did not make the matter any better by chuckling. Cain felt as though he was surrounded by misbehaving adolescents.

Dalinda finally got her laughing down to a soft chuckle. She looked at the two gentlemen and shook her head slightly, they were not what she had expected. Taking a deep breath to compose herself, she brushed her hands against her dress and straightening invisible wrinkles. Then she turned and started walking away as though nothing had taken place.

Cain was now the one in disbelief. He had not expected her to just walk away like that. He did not dare grab her to stop her. They had both learned a lesson on that front. Instead he quickly fell into step next to her and Nathan followed suit and took the other side.

“What do you think you are doing?” she asked suspiciously with a hint of hostility still lurking in her voice.

Nathan was the first to answer, “You did not answer our question.”

She threw him a bored look before simply asking, “Ever heard of curiosity killing the cat?”

“I thought we had just established we were not cats,” Cain stated calmly.

Dalinda was not pleased by their persistence. And the angrier she got the higher her body temperature rose, it wouldn’t have taken long before every person she came close to started noticing the abnormal heat around her. She stopped walking and turned to face the two men again. She would have guessed they were brothers even without them stating it. They shared a resemblance in looks and build, except the man in a suit was slightly taller and had wider shoulders. Their eyes were also different. Suit man had Golden brown eyes that pulled at her senses. But his brother had warm chocolate eyes.

Dalinda grimaced to herself, disgusted with her line of thought. She had no business comparing the looks of the two brothers much less analyzing what kind of effect they had on her.

“Lady, we are still waiting for an answer,” Nathan said with a flirty smile that was wasted on Dalinda.

Dalinda thanked all that was holy when she saw her friend Deborah walking towards her. She could tell by the young woman’s faltered step and sudden blush that she had noticed the two men and was now doing the math and allowing her imagination to run free.

Dalinda almost felt sorry for her, for these men had nothing to offer her friend except pain and deception. But she was not going to rain over her friend’s parade, especially not in a crowded museum. So she smiled and waited as Deborah walked over with an exaggerated swing of her hips.

“Hey girl, I was looking for you,” Deborah said in a soft voice as she reached them. She spoke to Dalinda but her eyes were on the pair of standing with her. She watched them from beneath her lashes and was doing a very poor job to appear indifferent.

Dalinda rolled her eyes and shook her head slightly in amusement, then decided to make a clean escape from the men for both her good and Deborah’s, she hooked her arm through Deborah’s arm and gently but firmly guided her away from the pair with a smile on her face to lessen the blow.

“Hey, what are you doing?” Deborah hissed in a whisper. Her eyes wide with shock, Dalinda had definitely pissed on her friend’s parade.

“Trust me, they are not worth it,” she responded in a flat bored tone. And stifled another smile for she was sure they could hear her perfectly and she doubted that comment would be taken kindly by their egos.

Deborah looked over her shoulder at the men as they walked away. A clear look of admiration on her face. “You sure…what a shame, that is some seriously nice eye candy.”

Chuckling softly, Dalinda shook her head to her friend. There was no point denying they were attractive, they most certainly were. But she was not going to voice that. Not even with a knife to her throat.

Cain and Nathan watched as the two ladies walked away from them. They could hear their conversation clearly and hoped a name would be mentioned, but it seemed the lady was smart enough not to make such a mistake.

They also could not continue to follow them, the moment her friend had arrived they had known the curvy woman with spiky hair was fully human. And Cain suspected she knew nothing judging by the way the hostile lady had almost immediately taken her arm and pulled her away.

Nathan cleared his throat. “So brother, am I the only one just wondering what the hell just happened here?” He was perplexed and his voice agreed.

“That is the woman I mentioned having had the misfortune to bump into in town the other day.”

Nathan scoffed, “I figured that part out very quickly. Lady has serious issues,” he said with a shake of his head.

Cain couldn’t agree more. He ran his hands over the front of his suit and looked around the Museum. “Would have been nice to hold a talk away from so many eyes, maybe then she would have told us what she was.”

“I highly doubt that.” Nathan laughed. “Ok enough about the mysterious crazy woman, what do you think of the art?”

Just like that, Nathan dismissed the topic of the beautiful hot temper on sexy legs. Cain smiled, he admired his brother’s easy approach to life but some things needed to be taken seriously and knowing who and what the lady was, needed to be taken seriously.

However, it became clear nothing more would be done that night, for Cain could no longer find her in the crowd, the woman had disappeared and he was sure she had done it on purpose.

Cain turned back to his brother. “Come on, let’s buy some art.” They turned as one and began walking towards the stuff. Cain forcefully put the thoughts of the woman aside for the rest of the night. But come tomorrow, he had every intension to hunt her down and find out exactly what was her problem.