“I’m starting to think we sound a little ridiculous,” Sofie said.
Izzy’s shoulders slumped as she nodded. “I felt like a moron when I said that thing about parking tickets.”
“He probably does pay them,” Sofie said, trying to sound comforting while throwing the wet paper towel in the trash compactor and crossing to the other side of the kitchen to put the sponge back on the edge of the sink.
Izzy just shook her head and leaned against the counter. “No, we’re being judgmental because we think he’s a threat. Danny has only been back in her life two days and for some reason we think they’re going to elope.” Now that she thought about her attitude she was feeling stupider by the second. Sofie had called her down to the ranch to meet the man who’d been the ruler Jackie used to measure all the men she’d ever known. The plan had been to intimidate him, maybe get him away from Jackie in order to warn him that she was seeing someone and hopefully make him go. Instead they’d been momentarily stunned by his friendliness, further stunned by Jackie’s light-hearted smiles and shocked as hell to learn Danny was planning on setting up his business on Jackie’s ranch.
He would be paying board, bringing in clients and their horses and possibly helping the ranch become better known. It was a thrilling prospect. Sofie especially knew how good this was for Jackie, who’d been worrying about what would happen if Liam had to move on and return the horses he’d purchased from her. They wouldn’t be in the desperate financial straights they’d been in before since Sofie seriously doubted that Liam would make Jackie buy her horses back. Still, the consistent checks for their board and training would be sorely missed. Or at least they would have been if not for Danny.
“So… he is not a bad man,” Sofie admitted, tapping her nails against the stainless steel sink.
“I guess,” Izzy said, feeling incredibly childish as she did so. Honestly, what had she been expecting? This was the man Jackie had loved. It was unlikely that he was anything less than wonderful. “They still shouldn’t get back together.”
“No, that would be a disaster,” Sofie agreed, sticking her fidgety hands in her pockets and leaning against the counter next to Izzy.
“Maybe you should hit on him.”
“What?” she sputtered, jerking upright to turn and stare at her Donna Karan wearing friend. “Are you nuts? I thought we just agreed he was too skinny and polite. Why do I have to go out with him?”
“Because Jackie slept with Liam after me. If I sleep with Danny then it’ll look as though I did it for revenge. That would be awful. But she’d forgive you.”
“You realize that’s stupid, right?” Sofie asked.
All the eagerness went out of Izzy’s face and resignation took its place. “Yeah, I caught that.” They both contemplated their situation silently for a moment. “You live with her. Do you think she’s going to be stupid about this?”
“She’s been cheerful lately. There’s this spring in her step. I heard her whistling Cole Porter songs yesterday. And she hasn’t mentioned Liam once.” Sofie felt the last bit of information was the most glaring evidence that Jackie was being stupid about seeing Danny. Then again, she had just been freed from almost twenty years of guilt and uncertainty. Maybe she was enjoying life. All the same, Sofie missed seeing Liam around the ranch. He’s become a reassuring presence, a reminder that she’d never been crazy for believing in vampires.
“She’s happy,” Izzy said. “She’s happy and we want the man making her happy to get lost. I guess we aren’t being very good friends.”
“It doesn’t feel right with him around but no Liam. It’s… wrong,” Sofie said. Izzy opened her mouth to agree but a knock on the front door interrupted. The two women stared confusedly at the door, wondering if Jackie was expecting someone and had forgotten to mention it. Whoever it was clearly didn’t know it was more likely to find Jackie in the barn during the day than in the house. “Coming!” Sofie called out as she went to open the door.
Standing on the porch was the only other man in Jackie’s life that her friends wished would just vanish in a puff of smoke. Charles MacDougal, who was in no way oblivious to how his daughter’s friends felt about him, offered a polite smile in response to the young German woman’s thinning lips and narrowing eyes.
“Hello, Miss Sofie. Is my daughter in?”
*
“So what do you think?” Jackie asked, unable to hold back any longer. Danny gave a casual shrug.
“Not bad.”
Her eyes widened at his unimpressed tone and had to struggle several moments to convince herself that it was silly to feel such a sharp stab of pain in response to the comments of a man she hadn’t seen for years. Then he turned to look at her with a smile lighting up his eyes. The flood of relief she felt made her scowl. “Very funny,” she muttered.
Danny flung his arm around her shoulders then pulled her against his body in a brotherly squeeze of affection. “You still take everything so seriously, Jackie. It’s adorable.” She gently punched him in the gut. He snickered. “Okay, okay, I’ll tell you the truth. You have a gorgeous facility on your hands. You could host shows here if you wanted.”
“We’ve never been quite that successful. Maybe if you move in that could change,” she hinted, knowing she wasn’t being particularly subtle but not caring, either. The time she spent with Danny made her feel warm and hopeful. It was as though the pain from her past was being slowly chipped away, finally allowing the light to flood in and warm all the places she thought she might be eternally cold. He was a lovely drug that did wonderful things to her mood. And besides that, she knew they would do well if they worked together. It was what they’d always planned. Even if circumstances had changed, that one dream could come true. All she’d wanted was falling into place in a way that was so blissfully simple. There weren’t any emotional hoops to jump through or weird complicated relationships with Danny. She knew where she stood.
She wouldn’t ever say these things aloud. Even she knew she sounded like a moron. Jackie was thirty-seven. She should know better than to hold onto a dream she’d had when she was eighteen.
“I don’t see any reason why I shouldn’t.”
Her pessimistic inner voice was abruptly silence by a triumphant whoop of joy. On the outside, however, she managed to contain her enthusiasm. Jackie smiled warmly at Danny. “Good. Let me know when you want to make the move and I’ll see what I can do to help.”
“Jackie!” Sofie called out from the other end of the barn. She didn’t feel too bad about interrupting since the oh-so-casual way Danny had his arm around Jackie made her want to scream. “You’ve got a visitor!”
“Um… okay? Be there in a minute!” Jackie shouted back. She smiled apologetically at Danny. “Apparently I’ve got a mysterious visitor. Want to tag along?”
“If you’re sure your friends won’t mind. I’m pretty sure they want to kill me - ”
“So you killed them with kindness. Yeah, I noticed the undertones when I introduced you. Don’t mind them. Eventually they’ll get used to you,” she said. “Now come on.” Jackie walked back to the house with Danny by her side and wondered just who had shown up at her door this time.
“Charles?” Danny asked, surprised by the appearance of Jackie’s father in her kitchen. Jackie bit down lightly on her tongue as she realized she’d forgotten to tell Danny that she was trying to construct a relationship with her father. It hadn’t come up during all the reminiscing. “I didn’t realize you were still in town. Didn’t you have to get back?”
“I drove the trailer back up and stayed a few days before I made up an excuse to fly back down here. It’s not as if the missus cares what I do so long as she has what she needs to keep her house running. It’s a surprise to see you here,” he said with a smile for the only other person in the room that the irreconcilable twenty-somethings by the sink hated more than him.
He wasn’t the only one to notice how Izzy and Sofie were both standin
g with their arms crossed and frowns on their faces in the corner of the kitchen. Jackie was torn between laughing and groaning at the pair of them. “Yeah, I decided to call him up. Mend bridges and stuff. Come on and have a seat. I’ll make us some lunch,” Jackie said, gesturing to the table. Charles moved to sit down as Jackie went to the fridge, followed by the grumpy eyes of Sofie.
“I just cleaned,” she said.
Jackie opened the refrigerator while raising an eyebrow in her friend’s direction. “Funny thing about kitchens. No matter how many times you clean them they just end up getting dirty again. Weird, right?”
“But it takes longer if you’re careful,” Izzy put in, emphasizing her words. Danny stood beside Charles’s chair, watching the exchange with a confused expression.
“And even when you have to clean it’s not as bad as it would be if you’d deliberately made a mess of it,” Sofie added, staring at Jackie as if trying to communicate something telepathically.
Danny leaned down close to Charles so he could whisper. “Are they still talking about cleaning or is it something else?”
“Definitely something else,” Charles said, leaning casually back in his seat as though he was watching a mildly amusing game of polo.
Danny, on the other hand, didn’t feel as though he had a right to be a spectator of some secret female conversation. He cleared his throat. “You know, I think I should get out of your hair,” Danny said, slowly making his way toward the door. “It was great seeing you again, Charles. We should catch up over a beer sometime.”
“Of course, lad. There’s a lot of talking we have to do,” Charles agreed with an amused smile. Jackie frowned slightly and closed the refrigerator before she’d even managed to get anything out.
“Wait, I’ll walk you to your car. Sofie, you can get the stuff out for sandwiches, right?” Sofie nodded and earned a glare from Izzy. “Thanks. Be back in no time.” Jackie hurried out the door.
“Oh, well done. Give them more time alone together,” Izzy said. Sofie was about to defend herself when she heard a soft chuckle from Charles. They both turned to look at the elderly man contentedly lounging in his daughter’s kitchen.
“I’d wondered if they’d still be in love with each other. It’s good to see the spark’s still there.”
“No, it’s not!” Sofie and Izzy shouted in unison. Charles eyed the two of them skeptically.
“Is that the sound of denial I hear?”
“No, you didn’t,” Sofie denied, frowning at him.
Izzy let out a huff of breath, walked forward and sat across from him at the table. “Look, here’s the deal. Neither of us like you or Danny. As nice as it is for the two of you to jump back into Jackie’s life just when she’s getting things together, we’re not big fans of absent parents or ex-boyfriends. Jackie’s love life is complicated enough right now without you sticking your head in it. So how about you get your emotional issues cleared up and go home?”
“I agree,” Sofie said, stepping up behind Izzy’s chair. They both stared at the older man with identical frowns and backs straight with tension.
Charles just looked on them with an amused smile. “Very good speech. Now here’s mine. I will be going home but I’ll also be coming back. I plan on coming back a lot. She’s the only child I have that I can stand for more than a few minutes so you’ll just have to get used to this absent father not being so absent. As for your dislike of Danny, I can only assume it’s because you’re friends with that Liam character.”
“He’s a good guy who’s brought a lot of fantastic things into Jackie’s life. She shouldn’t have to settle for ordinary now that she has someone extraordinary,” Sofie said.
Charles shrugged. “We’ll have to leave it up to her, won’t we?” To him, there was nothing better for Jackie than falling back in love with a man who had a natural talent for making her happy.
*
From a radically different point of view, Daniel Wallace’s return to Jacquelyn’s life caused unexpected consequences. Liam was in Jack’s kitchen, made up of stainless steel and glass, when he experienced a moment of vertigo. His head spun and his chest tightened. Then, just as quickly, it ceased.
“Again?” Liam glanced up at the sound of his friend’s voice. Jack was standing in the doorway, looking at him with concern. “That’s the third time and you haven’t even been separated a week yet. What is she doing?”
“Whatever it is it’s making her happy,” Liam said, frowning at the wine glasses on the counter that he’d been filling with blood a moment ago. He could feel her happiness. It was a warm, glowing thing and he knew without a doubt that he was not the cause. It made him want to snarl.
“They should be coming to a decision soon. Then you can go to her,” Jack reminded him, coming closer but making no attempts to touch. The oldest vampires in the city, aside from Liam, had gathered in Jack’s apartment to decide what they would do about Liam’s rather public death. So far things were going in his friend’s favor. No one wanted to break in a new head of Los Angeles when the threat of the Left Hand was still present. It was hard enough adjusting to a new vampire’s rule under the best circumstances. Every head was unique and had different expectations of their vampires. Liam had been one of the most stable heads in L.A. to date, mostly because while he was old he was not drunk on the power he had gathered over the years. The common assumption was that the intention of such a spectacular assassination attempt was to draw public attention, forcing Liam to relocate if he survived. No one wanted to give this Left Hand what he or she wanted and for whatever reason the Left Hand saw Liam as a threat. That made him invaluable to them.
At the moment, Jack was almost more concerned about the bond between Jackie and Liam. It had been so strong that it had nearly killed Jackie and yet a few days after having more blood drained out of her body than was wise, it seemed to be wavering. Liam suffered during the moments when he could not feel her. Whatever was making her so happy sporadically cut his connection to her. Jack knew the fact that it was happiness separating him from Jackie was probably what hurt most of all.
“If she even wants me,” Liam said.
“You’re too stubborn to give up on something you want this much.” Jack took the delicate wine glasses that had been filled with warm blood for their guests off the counter and returned to the gathering in his living room.
Liam stood, considering his friend’s words. “But would she thank me for it?”
Chapter Twenty-Eight
“YOU KNOW I LOVE you. It’s obvious, isn’t it? I am so happy to have you in my life again.” Jackie smiled, feeling all that old love warming her heart. “Don’t tell Ultrano but you’re my favorite boy.”
Giacomo snorted into her hand as he quickly consumed the carrots she offered. She chuckled. “Fine, be the strong silent type. I know you missed me.”
“He’s also pretty happy you saved him from living in a mediocre ranch with inept managers,” Danny said, reaching around to take one of the carrots in her hand. She rolled her eyes when he started nibbling on it.
“I can’t believe you haven’t stopped doing that. They’re meant for the horses. For all you know I could have dropped that on the ground.”
He shrugged. “I like to keep my immune system on its toes. Besides, they’re tasty.” Danny bit into the carrot, which resulted in a resounding crunch. Giacomo looked at him with sad eyes.
Jackie rubbed behind the old horse’s ears. “Don’t worry, beautiful boy. There are plenty more carrots for you.”
“He’s going to get fat with you around. Why don’t you spoil some of your own horses?”
Jackie shook her head and ignored him as he finished off the carrot. She was far too happy loving on Giacomo to get into an argument even if it was all in fun. Recently she’d been nearly submerged in happiness. The good things in her life were outnumbering the bad. It was such a refreshing change of pace.
It had officially been a week since sh
e and Liam had spoken. Whenever she thought too long about that there was a quiet ache in her heart. She concentrated on the good things when that happened. Danny had come back into her life as a dear friend. The four horses he had, Giacomo included, had moved into her barn. She was impressed with them. Danny shared her opinion that Lusitanos were an excellent breed of horse. Two of them were gray dapples with frankly beautiful suspension in their movements if the way they’d pranced once they’d gotten out of the horse trailer was any indication. The third had been far calmer when introduced to his new home but he’d stunned her anyway. She had just about turned green with envy knowing Danny had a Cremello Lusitano. He was a unique creamy shade with ghostly blue eyes. After she’d had her fill of bonding with Giacomo she’d be stalking that horse.
Danny and Jackie had discussed dietary needs and the times when the main arena would be open for lessons. She only had a few students, as did Danny since he was relatively new in town. She was willing to bet that wouldn’t last long. He was always an extremely patient teacher and patience was key with these kinds of things. Their compatibility wasn’t all that surprising. They had spent enough time together working with horses for them to know exactly what the other demanded. Neither of them were the type to cut corners. It made the moving process a pleasure, especially since Jackie was getting a boarder who was up to her high standards.
“I always regretted not seeing this boy grow up,” she said, grinning when Giacomo bumped her elbow to encourage her to keep rubbing his ears. As always, her voice went high and dripped with sugary sweetness when she started talking love to a horse, “You were such a perfect baby. Yes, you were!”
“You would have been proud of what a fast learner he was.”
“I bet. He was such a bright colt. I only had to nudge him a few times to teach him that biting wasn’t allowed then he never tried again. Such a people pleaser,” she murmured as she leaned down to kiss his nose. “We’ll have a baby coming in a few months here. It took me forever to get over not wanting to breed because I’d just be comparing the new foal to Giacomo.”
Animal Instinct Page 27
