And there were parts to that truth they’d never be able to understand. “Ma, please, don’t cry. I’ll make it up to you, I swear. As soon as Willow’s born and she’s able to travel, we’ll bring her home. You can spoil her rotten all you want.”
Anna Grace bumped her shoes together and pushed her potato salad around on her plate. “I don’t want her to be rotten.”
Eric draped an arm around her shoulders. “She won’t be, munchkin. She’ll be tall and beautiful, like her mother, and she will absolutely adore you.”
“Really?”
“Yes, she will.” Eric raised his gaze to mine. “Our rings were inscribed and not something we can easily replace. I think we should try to recover them.”
Pop thumped back in his chair, a speculative gleam lighting his gray eyes. “You know who’s got them?”
“I know exactly who has them. It’s figuring out where they’re held and retrieving them that will be a problem. Marco might be able to help.”
Ma wadded her napkin up beside her plate. “Marco?”
“Our boss’ right-hand man,” I explained. “He’s good at solving problems.”
Eric’s sensual mouth stretched into a slow, wicked smile. “That’s one way of putting it. He’ll be here tomorrow night. Business. We can talk then and work out a plan for getting our rings back.”
Yeah, that sounded peachy, especially if it meant taking Oriana and Fen down a peg or two.
“Wait,” Charity said. “I thought you were a professor or something.”
“What we do for Elizabet and Marco isn’t exactly a job.” Eric patted Anna Grace’s back. “Eat, munchkin. As soon as I help Jason into a bath, you and I can go look at that rocket you want for your birthday.”
Her eyes lit up and launched into a babble of questions for her new hero. Her excited chatter smoothed over the awkwardness still hanging in the air, something Anna Grace had always been good at. I wrapped my hand around Ma’s and squeezed gently. My hand to God, I’d never meant to hurt her, and I vowed then that I never would again.
Chapter Fifteen
Mid-morning the next day, Eric rode into town with Ma to rent a car and run errands. Apparently, Marco had volunteered to take our car back to the wolves we’d borrowed it from while he was in Minnesota on business.
I snorted and ran a rag over the coffee table in the living room. Yeah, right. Marco was flying halfway across the country on business. More like he was still pissed about me and Eric being kidnapped and wanted to make sure his protégé and favorite fuck buddy was still in one piece. The car was just an excuse to see us.
At least he’d be bringing new credit cards for us. Not for our personal accounts, no. We’d had those shipped here. Hopefully, they’d arrive in the next few days. What Marco was bringing were company cards, a failsafe to be used only in an emergency.
Like being kidnapped, tortured, and stranded.
The screen door slapped shut and Pop trod through the kitchen and into the living room. “You rub that wood any harder and your ma’s not going to have any furniture left.”
I dropped the rag on the table. “Sorry. I wasn’t really paying attention.”
“Housework will do that to a man.” He hitched a thumb over his shoulder. “I could use a hand with the tractor.”
“Anything to get out of dusting.”
A chore I’d undertaken in a feeble attempt to apologize to my mother. It hadn’t worked, though she hadn’t hesitated a minute to take advantage of my remorse. While she and Eric were in town and the girls were in school, she’d assigned dusting everything I could reach to me.
I plucked at my running shorts, chosen for their ease of wear. “I need to put on jeans and a long-sleeved shirt.”
Pop scrubbed a hand over his mouth. “Well, I guess between the two of us, we can handle that.”
We did, but it wasn’t as easy or smooth as when Eric helped me. He was three inches or so shorter than Pop and smaller framed, but he was fucking strong.
Vampire blood. Gotta love it.
And we’d have a chance to sip some of the best when Marco arrived later. True, he wasn’t a vampire, but he was so close to turning, the variance between the strength imbued by his blood and Elizabet’s was nearly impossible to discern. I’d sipped from both of them. Other than the taste and the way the blood hit my tongue, their blood left me in exactly the same condition, floating on cloud nine with a raging hard on. That hadn’t changed when my legs stopped working, and hadn’t that been a kick in the nuts.
We finally wrestled all of me into skin-covering clothes. Pop sagged onto the bed, hands on his knees, and wheezed out a breath. “Eric does that every day?”
“Yup. Helps me in and out of the bath, too.”
Pop grunted. “You sure you don’t have something to tell me?”
“Come on, Pop. You already know what he is to me.”
“Feels like there’s a lot more.” He slapped his palms on his thighs and stood. “Tractor won’t fix itself.”
I grinned and followed him outside, protected from the sun’s harsh rays by my clothing and one of the humongous, black umbrellas Ma had set out for me and Eric to use. Pop and I hunkered down over the tractor in the equipment shed and sorted out its internal workings over a serious discussion of the Minnesota Twins’ standings.
I loved Eric, I really did, but this was a huge gap on his part. What kind of man wasn’t into sports? When I explained Eric’s lack of interest to Pop, he grunted and shook his head, man code for wuss.
Eric wasn’t a wuss, exactly. His parents had just pushed him into more intellectual pursuits, chess and debate and academics. I was trying to help him fill in the gaps, but sometimes, it felt like an uphill battle. At least he tried, and maybe that was the important part. Having him at my games meant a lot to me. Understanding what actually happened on the court could come later.
We hadn’t had a chance to talk yesterday. As soon as he’d settled me into the bath, Anna Grace had pounded on the door and yelled for Uncle Eric. Those two had taken to each other faster than ducks to water. She’d stolen him away for a good hour, between him helping me in and out of the tub. After that, he’d helped her and Charity with homework, brought his cloud drive up on the family desktop and showed Ma pictures from his and Gianna’s wedding, and debated the wisdom of government-subsidized farming with Pop.
Yeah, Eric was trying, or maybe he just fit in better with my family than I’d ever dreamed a man could.
Di was the single black spot on the weekend. She’d dragged in an hour before curfew and slunk off to her room, scarcely acknowledging any of us. I’d about had enough of her, and we’d only been there a couple of days. How the hell did Ma and Pop deal with her all the time?
Ma and Eric came back around lunchtime. As soon as I heard the car engines, I grabbed my umbrella and rolled around the house. Ma had already slipped inside by the time I got there. Eric was waiting for me on the porch, spare umbrella in hand.
I wheeled up the ramp onto the porch. “How was town?”
“Same as it was yesterday.”
“You and Ma have fun?”
His hands tightened around the umbrella’s handle. “Has she ever said anything to you about being sick?”
“She gets a cold every once in a while. Usually snaps right out of it. Why?”
“She had a doctor’s appointment today. It’s probably nothing.”
“That’s what you said the last time I asked. She’s my ma, Eric. If something’s wrong—”
“I told you, it’s probably nothing.” He inhaled a sharp breath, let it out slowly. “Marco will be here not long after sunset.”
“You’re nervous.”
“No. Ok, yes, a little.” He flopped into a rocking chair and rested his elbows on his widespread knees, one hand dangling, the other twisting the umbrella around. “He’s going to want a suck and fuck.”
“And…?”
“I don’t want to hurt you that way.”
“Eric,
baby, it doesn’t bother me when you have sex with other people. Maybe if you weren’t a vampire-in-training, I’d worry, but you are. You need sex when you feed. When are you going to come to terms with that part of your life?”
He closed his eyes and pinched the bridge of his nose. “I thought I had.”
“Not even close, lover.”
“Ok, so it bothers me a little.”
I laughed long and hard. “Christ, that’s an understatement. If you can’t manage being honest with me, at least be honest with yourself.”
“You know, sometimes you’re a pain in the ass.”
“That’s what you love about me. Speaking of.” I held my hand out to him, hoping he’d meet me halfway. “I’m sorry about the other night.”
He threaded his fingers through mine, the way he always did. Familiar and right. Solid. “I started it, Jase, me and my insecurities. When I saw him, I just…” He rolled his shoulders, shrugging off whatever had come between us, maybe, or maybe just trying to come to grips with it. “You know I can feel everything, that I don’t shut you out the way you do me.”
“Hey, now. I don’t shut you out.”
“Yes, you do. You deliberately close yourself off to me, try to hide what’s in your heart and your mind, but it comes through anyway in bits and pieces you resent sharing. When you saw him, your body reacted.”
I shook my head slowly. “You know I can’t control that. Christ, Eric, I can’t even feel it.”
“Does that really change what happened?”
“Ok, so I’m attracted to other men.”
He let go of my hand and pushed himself into a stand. “It’s this man that bothers me.”
“No, it isn’t. You hate when I have sex with Marco.”
“That’s different.” I snorted, and he rounded on me, his hazel eyes hot. “Yes, it is. Marco will do anything he can to get to me, including seducing you.”
“It’s hard to seduce the willing,” I said drily. “And we need what he has. If you’re not going to get it from him, I have to, but that doesn’t explain your overreaction where Mike’s concerned.”
“Is that what you think I’m doing, overreacting?”
“How else would you explain it? You let the cold man out, Eric.”
“Not on purpose. Meeting Mike, feeling what you felt for him. It caught me off guard. The cold man used my emotions to wiggle out of his cage.”
“If that’s all it takes—”
“He was your first! I look so much like him, we could be brothers, and you think that’s a little thing?” Eric dropped back into the rocking chair, shoulders slumped, head down. “Tell me the truth, Jason. Are you with me because I resemble him?”
“What? Where did you get a fucked up notion like that?”
“It wasn’t a big leap. I’m not exactly your type.”
Hurt leapt into me, faster than the wind heralding a tornado. “Yeah, my type. That’d be anybody willing to spread their legs, right? I guess that really does leave you out, since you hate fucking men and all.”
He winced. “Ok, that was low and I’m sorry for saying it, but I told you. I didn’t mean it like that.”
“Stop lying to me.”
“Jesus God, Jase, just hear me out.” He blew out a breath and fixed his gaze on the porch’s floor between his feet. “I never expected to love a man, ever, not sexually, and I especially never thought I’d love a man who wasn’t Devin. But you, you snuck up on me, wriggled your way into my heart. I love you, God, so much, but I always knew you were with me because of Gigi. I always knew that, and now, I meet the man who seduced you when you were a teenager, the man who showed you what you could be, and he’s like me, slender and intellectual and older, and I have to wonder if I got it all wrong. What if you were with me because you couldn’t have him and I was there, vulnerable and weak and—?”
“Stop. Christ, Eric, just listen to yourself. Where is this coming from? You know how I feel about you. You know what I’d do for you, what I’ve done for you. Hell, I committed myself to you in front of witnesses, risked alienating my family and losing my scholarship, and now you doubt me? How could you for one goddamned second believe that what’s in my heart isn’t genuine, that I don’t love you for who you are, not because of Gigi or Mike or any other goddamn thing. Christ.”
“Jason—”
“No, Eric. This ends right now. You’re the strongest man I know, the smartest, but right now, you’re being so fucking obtuse, I could wring your neck. When are you going to believe in me the way I believe in you?”
“I do,” he said softly. “I know you’ve got my back. I know I have your loyalty. It’s your heart I can’t pin down.”
I sagged into my chair. “My heart has been yours since that first night, yours and Gigi’s. I wish I could give it all to one of you, Eric, I really do. That’s not the way I’m made, but you gotta believe me. I don’t give a shit about Mike Ridgeway. He’s my past, something I left behind when I met you. You might look like him, but I promise you. There’s no comparison. If there were, I never would’ve left Minnesota.”
“Ok. I’m sorry. Jesus God, am I ever sorry.” He bounced his knees, jiggled the umbrella. “He really was trying to recruit you. I plucked it right out of his head.”
“But why? It’s not like I’m anything special. I mean, beacons are common and there are better catches than me.”
He brushed a thumb along the side of his nose and the corners of his mouth tilted up. “Not for me.”
I huffed out an exasperated breath. “You’re admitting that now, in the middle of figuring out Mike’s motives?”
“You needed to know. Besides, we don’t have to figure Mike out. He’s going to tell us everything.”
There was an unspoken or else tacked onto Eric’s words. If curiosity hadn’t been burning a hole in me, I would almost have felt sorry for Mike, but the questions won out. I wanted to know why Mike had inserted himself into my life. And, he might know something about why Oriana had attacked me and Eric.
We went inside and hounded Ma for a while, then Pop came in and the four of us had lunch together. Eric’s mind was caught up in a slow, thorough analysis, of what, even I couldn’t tell. He’d been wrong about me closing myself off. I hadn’t, not in the way he’d thought, but I had sifted out the emotions filtering through our bond from him to me and withheld some of my own, had been since Gianna’s near death. It was long past time I stopped doing that, if only so he’d always know that what I felt for him was deeper than anything I’d ever experienced before.
Half an hour before sunset, a heavy fist hit the front door. Ma excused herself and answered it with her usual bustling energy, scurrying out of the room before any of us could even get up. The door squeaked open and a low, male voice growled out a greeting.
Ma giggled.
I rolled my eyes at Eric. Marco’s here.
He shrugged. Yeah, ‘cause there was nothing anybody could do about the way Marco affected people, just like there was nothing I could do to keep my youngest sisters from glomming onto Eric.
He shifted Anna Grace off his lap, and we went into the hallway. Ma and Marco were chatting by the front door, in full view of the rest of my family gathered in the living room. His black t-shirt and worn jeans stretched tight over bulging muscles and he’d pulled his shoulder-length, midnight hair into a stubby ponytail at the base of his skull. A small, black duffel was slung over one shoulder. Ten to one, nobody but me and Eric had noticed it around Marco’s height, build, and sharply chiseled features.
“Wow,” Charity whispered.
“Yeah,” Di said, her voice breathy.
Anna Grace bounced off the couch and pattered into the hallway on bare feet, Pop right behind her. “He’s glowy inside, too.”
“Yes, he is, munchkin.” Eric swung her up and settled her on his hip. “Marco, this is Anna Grace, Jason’s youngest sister. Charity and Diana are in the living room, and this is Henry, Jason’s father.”
Marco i
nclined his head in a respectful bow. “A pleasure to meet you.”
“Likewise.” Pop leaned a shoulder against the doorframe separating the living room from the hallway. “Eric says you’re here on business.”
Marco’s brilliant blue eyes settled on Eric and his thin lips twisted into a knowing grin. “In a manner of speaking.”
Ma’s hands fluttered around her chest, like she didn’t know what to do with them. A first, if memory served. “Marco was just telling me about his flight. I was about to offer him something to eat.”
“Thank you, Kathy, but I can’t stay. Eric and I have business.”
Her goofy smile slipped a notch. “Oh, well. Maybe another time.”
“The very next, on my honor.”
Eric handed Anna Grace off to Ma. “Can we have a minute, please?”
“Sure. It’s her bedtime, anyway.” Ma shot a pointed look at Charity and Di. “You, too.”
Charity huffed and flounced off the couch. “Why do we always have to leave right when the good stuff is happening?”
“It’s a burden of childhood,” Pop said. “Now, scoot.”
“Yes, sir,” she said, and she skirted by Marco, eyes wide and curious, and took the stairs two at a time toward her room.
Diana strolled into the hallway, every inch the runway model she yearned to be, and walked slowly up the stairs without speaking.
Eric’s amusement filtered to me through our bond. Like she has a chance with him.
I propped an elbow on the arm of my chair and rubbed a finger over my half smile. No woman would ever compare to Elizabet in Marco’s mind. Her beauty wasn’t what had snared his devotion, something my sister would never understand.
Pop cleared his throat. “I’ll head up and tuck the girls in.”
“Please stay,” Eric said. “This won’t take long.”
Marco slid the duffel off his shoulder. It thudded onto the hardwood floor by the door, clanking slightly as it settled. He crossed his arms over his chest and jerked his chin at Eric. “Show me.”
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