The Vampire's Protector. Michele Hauf

      

       She wanted to bite him, to taste his blood and learn if it was as rich and exciting as the man.

      But there was a certain danger in that. Summer had no idea what Nicolo was.

      What would she impart in Nicolo’s mind if she drank his blood? If he were merely human would she drive him mad?

      Couldn’t risk it. He needed her. And she wanted him to trust her.

      “Don’t let this happen,” Summer muttered.

      But they were only words. Her heart had already made a leap. And while that scared her, she was always one to follow adventures. Even the kind Summer had never pursued before, like the adventures of the heart.

      MICHELE HAUF has been writing romance, action-adventure and fantasy stories for more than twenty years. France, musketeers, vampires and faeries usually populate her stories. And if Michele followed the adage “write what you know,” all her stories would have snow in them. Fortunately, she steps beyond her comfort zone and writes about countries and creatures she has never seen. Find her on Facebook, Twitter and at www.michelehauf.com.

      The Vampire’s Protector

      Michele Hauf

       www.millsandboon.co.uk

      To all the orchestra geeks. You rock!

      Contents

       Cover

       Introduction

       Title Page

       About the Author

       Dedication

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

       Chapter 6

       Chapter 7

       Chapter 8

       Chapter 9

       Chapter 10

       Chapter 11

       Chapter 12

       Chapter 13

       Chapter 14

       Chapter 15

       Chapter 16

       Chapter 17

       Chapter 18

       Chapter 19

       Chapter 20

       Chapter 21

       Chapter 22

       Chapter 23

       Chapter 24

       Chapter 25

       Chapter 26

       Chapter 27

       Extract

       Copyright

       Chapter 1

      Summer Santiago followed the scent of dust and dirt down the hallway of a nineteenth-century brownstone nestled in the middle of the tiny Italian village of Cella Monte. The place had been shuttered up and locked for decades. She’d been told so by the village sindaco—the mayor—who had given her a key after she’d explained she wanted to conduct some historical research. She’d flashed her credentials indicating she was an archaeologist who worked for Rutgers University.

      Of course, she had neglected to mention that the research project did not exist. And that she was not an archaeologist. The credentials were a clever forgery. So she’d also touched his neck, with the excuse she was shooing away a bug. But in those seconds of skin-on-skin contact she had used her vampiric persuasion to convince the mayor to cooperate with her and hand over the key.

      Persuasion, or the ability to enthrall a mortal, came in handy for her job. As a Retriever for Acquisitions, a division of the greater Council that oversaw the paranormal nations, she tracked down and obtained objects of magical or volatile nature and handed them over to the Archives for storage.

      This mission rated a mere two on Summer’s scale. One being easy-peasy, ten heart-thumping challenging. Find and seize a violin that had once belonged to the famed composer and musician Nicolo Paganini. The violin was supposed to possess magical power. Possibly even a curse placed upon it by the devil Himself. The electronic dossier Summer had received for the retrieval had been sketchy at best. What little she knew was that rumors hailing from the nineteenth century told if Paganini were to have played the instrument all hell would have been unleashed.

      Apparently, that had never happened, because the world was still relatively the same as it had been in the nineteenth century. It did not abound with creatures from Hell—or Beneath, as Summer and other paranormals referred to that dark and demonic realm. Not to say that demons and other nasties didn’t inhabit the Mortal Realm; they did. But they had insinuated themselves amongst the varied mortal population.

      A man who valued all instruments, Paganini had designated in his will this particular violin be destroyed following his death. Good call. But for some reason it had instead been hidden away.

      The home where the violin had been last seen, according to the Acquisition’s dossier, had been sitting untouched for over seventy years.

      Summer turned the knob on an inner door and opened it wide to a gaping blackness. A chill as cold as winter crept over her skin. A shiver lifted the hairs on her arm. With a thought, she adjusted her body temperature and took a few steps downward into the darkness. Vampires were crafty like that. Able to regulate their body temperature with but a thought. Came in handy during the winter. She hated the cold. If ever a job in a tropical clime were offered in the winter she’d jump at it.

      But she did love a good creepy adventure.

      As she descended the stairs, the wood steps creaked in protest until her purple Chuck Taylors landed on a dirt floor. Darkness sweatered her, and while her sight was excellent, in the absence of light even vampires needed a bit of help. She tugged out her iPhone from her jeans pocket and turned on the flashlight. The beam fell across the imprints her shoes had left in the thick dust on the stairs behind her.

      She was accustomed to decrepit old buildings. She’d grown up with a brother who had liked to explore the darkest, dankest, creepiest of places. And since Johnny had always offered to babysit her when their parents needed the help, Summer had explored right alongside him. Now she was drawn to the unknown and mysterious. And it wasn’t just buildings, but also experiences and people.

      Vampires were not inherently evil. It was difficult enough to deal with the fact she’d been