by Lynsay Sands
Drina shook her head and stood to grab her suitcase and toss it on the bed. She wasn’t used to having someone reading her mind. She was old enough most people couldn’t. And she definitely didn’t like it. She would have to guard her thoughts more carefully, she supposed, and then stopped thinking altogether and just concentrated on quickly changing into a pair of white joggers and an equally white tank top.
“Good night,” Stephanie mumbled, as Drina closed her suitcase and set it back on the floor.
“Good night,” she whispered back and crawled into bed, then turned out the light and lay down. Even as she did, Drina knew she was about to spend a very long night fretting over what to do about Harpernus Stoyan. She’d heard of reluctant mortal life mates, but this was really one for the record books. Only she could wind up with a reluctant vampire life mate.
Harper didn’t think he’d been asleep long when he was suddenly awake again. Frowning, he peered toward the window, noting the sliver of bright sunlight trying to creep around the edges of the blackout blinds. He listened for what might have disturbed him, but silence curled around him like a blanket. He was actually dozing off again when a muffled peel of laughter brought his eyes open once more.
Frowning, he sat up and listened more intently, but the house was silent, without even the sounds of creaking stairs or floorboards reaching his ears. No one was moving around inside the house, he decided, but then another laugh reached his ears, and he turned toward the window, where he was sure the sound had come from. Harper peered at the blinds for a moment and then slid out of bed and padded across the floor to the window, which looked out over the garage and driveway at the back of the house.
Sunlight streamed in the moment he tugged one of the slats down, and Harper blinked against it, squinting until his eyes adjusted. He then scanned what he could see of the driveway and backyard. It was a moment before he found the source of the sounds he’d heard, and then Drina came into view on the sidewalk beside the garage. She was slip-sliding her way toward the driveway, her running shoes giving her no traction on the icy concrete. Her clumsy efforts elicited another peel of amusement from somewhere out of sight.
Stephanie, Harper decided, sure it was the girl even though he couldn’t yet see her. Turning his gaze back to Drina, he frowned as he took in her winter wear. She wore jeans, which were fine, but the running shoes were completely unsuitable, and her coat was far too lightweight for this weather. She also had no gloves or hat on, which suggested to him that she hadn’t been prepared for a Canadian winter when she’d set out on her journey from Spain.
She’d probably thought she would just attend the weddings in New York, spending most of her time in the hotel, the church, or cars and wouldn’t need heavier gear, he thought, and then winced as a snowball suddenly shot from somewhere off to the side and slammed into the back of Drina’s head. The hit took her completely by surprise and made her jerk. In the next moment, her feet went out from beneath her and she was on her behind on the icy concrete. She was also cursing a blue streak in Spanish that he could hear even over Stephanie’s uproarious laughter.
Concern rushing through him, Harper let the blind slat slip back into place and hurried out of the room, pausing just long enough to pull on a pair of jeans as he went. Once downstairs, he almost rushed outside bare-chested and in just the jeans, but the chill that hit him when he opened the kitchen door, and the sight of the snow-laced screen door, made him rethink that and hurry to the closet in the pantry. Still, he was quick about pulling on boots and a coat, and didn’t bother doing up either before rushing back through the kitchen and out onto the deck.
The walkway was empty, and there was no sign of either female as he crossed the deck. For one moment, Harper could almost have believed he’d imagined the whole thing he’d seen from his window, but then he spotted where the snow had been disturbed by Drina’s fall, as well as the footprints leading around to the driveway. He followed them quickly around the garage, and stopped abruptly. Stephanie was in the front passenger seat of the SUV, bent over and peering at something under the driver’s side, but it was Drina’s derriere waving around in the open driver’s door as she fiddled with something under the dashboard that brought him to a halt.
The woman’s butt was snow-covered and bobbing about like an apple on a river’s surface as she worked at whatever she was doing. It was an interesting sight, he decided, and then gave his head a shake and continued forward, becoming aware of their conversation as he approached.
“Are you sure you know what you’re doing?” Stephanie was asking, half-amused and half-worried. “I could always just creep in and find the keys.”
“I have done this before,” Drina assured her from under the dashboard, her voice sounding annoyed. “I can do this. It is just that your cars seem to be wired differently than ours in Europe.”
Stephanie snorted at the claim. “I hardly think they wire them differently. How long ago did you last do this?”
“Twenty years or so,” Drina admitted in a mutter, and then cursed in Spanish, and added determinedly, “I can do this. We will go shopping.”
“Is there something I can help you ladies with?” Harper asked, pausing behind Drina’s bobbing derriere and just resisting the urge to brush the snow from it. Really, her butt must be cold, encased in snow like that.
Stephanie glanced to him wide-eyed, but Drina stiffened, her bobbing stopping altogether. She stayed frozen for a moment, jerked her head upward, cursed as it slammed into the steering wheel, and muttered under her breath as she backed out of the vehicle. Of course, he was right behind her and didn’t move out of the way quickly enough. Her rear end rammed into his groin, and she trod on his feet.
Gasping an apology, Drina immediately stumbled forward again to get off him, lost her footing, and started to go down. In his effort to save her from the fall, Harper managed to get his own feet tangled up with hers and found himself crashing to the icy pavement with her.
“Are you all right?”
Harper opened his eyes at that concerned query and turned his head to see that Drina had pushed herself to her hands and knees beside him and was eyeing him worriedly. Her coat was open despite the cold, revealing a low-cut silk shirt that gaped slightly thanks to her position. It left him an extra-ordinary view of full, round breasts encased in a lacy white bra that looked rather fetching against her olive skin.
Blinking, he tore his gaze from the delectable sight and glanced past her to Stephanie, who was nearly killing herself laughing in the SUV, and then he sighed and said dryly, “I’ll live.”
“Hmm.” Drina’s eyes drifted down to his bare chest, where his coat had fallen open, and he saw one of her eyebrows rise, but then she scrambled to her feet and offered him a hand.
“Sorry,” she muttered as she helped him up. “You startled me.”
“My fault,” he assured her, taking a moment to brush himself down. He then straightened and glanced to the open door of the SUV. “What were you doing?”
“Er. .” Drina flushed guiltily and turned back to the vehicle. “I need boots and a heavier coat, and Stephanie needs a few things too, so we were just going to head out shopping.”
“Hmm.” His lips twitched, and then he said, “So you were going to hot-wire the SUV?”
Drina clucked with irritation at being caught, and then said with exasperation, “Anders has the keys, and I didn’t want to disturb him to get them.”
“Ah.” Harper glanced from her embarrassed and defiant face to the vehicle and back, and then he asked, “Do you have a license to drive here? Or even a Spanish driver’s license?”
“Bah!” Drina waved the question away. “We don’t need them. If a police officer tries to pull us over, we just control them.”
“Ah, yes.” Harper nodded. He’d expected as much and explained apologetically, “But you can’t do that in Port Henry. You can anywhere else, even London, but not here.”
“What?” She glanced to him with surprise.
<
br /> “Lucian promised Teddy that his people would follow the laws while in Port Henry, and none of us would use mind control on Teddy or his deputy,” Harper explained.
Drina narrowed her eyes, and pointed out dryly, “Which isn’t promising he won’t himself.”
“No,” Harper admitted with a grin. “But Teddy didn’t catch that at the time.”
“Hmm,” she said with irritation, and then glanced to Stephanie’s worried face and grimaced. “Don’t worry. We’ll still go. We’ll just call a taxi.”
Stephanie looked dubious. “Do you think they even have taxis here? I mean, it’s a pretty small town.”
Drina turned to him in question. “Do they?”
“Actually, I don’t think they do. Or at least if they do, I haven’t heard of one,” Harper admitted, and when Drina’s shoulders began to sag with what appeared to be defeat, he found himself saying, “I can take you in my car.”
She appeared as surprised as he was by his offer. Truly, Harper had no idea where that had come from. He’d just blurted it without really even thinking first.
“Don’t you sleep during the day?” Drina asked with a frown. “Speaking of which, what are you even doing up?”
Harper just shook his head and turned away to start back up the drive, saying, “I’ll just throw on a shirt and grab my keys and wallet and be right back.”
“My laughing woke him up, but he didn’t want to make us feel bad by saying so,” Stephanie announced.
Drina turned to glance at the young girl in the SUV. Seeing that Stephanie’s attention was on Harper as he hurried across the deck toward the kitchen door, Drina quickly swiped up a handful of snow off the SUV’s roof and worked it into a ball as she asked, “Which laughing woke him? Your laughing when I was slip-sliding around on the sidewalk? Or your laughing when you hit me with the snowball, and I went down like a ton of bricks?”
Stephanie turned an unrepentant grin her way. “It was funny,” she began, and then her eyes suddenly narrowed and dropped to search for Drina’s hands.
Realizing the girl had read her mind and knew what she was up to, Drina quickly shot the snowball at her, but Stephanie was faster, whirling and ducking at the same time so that the ball missed her and hit the passenger window instead.
“Too slow,” Stephanie taunted.
Drina shrugged. “That’s all right. I’ll get you when you least expect it.”
Stephanie chuckled, unconcerned by the threat, and slid out of the SUV to walk around and join her. “He has a nice chest, doesn’t he?”
He certainly did have a nice chest, Drina thought, and she’d been hard-pressed not to simply throw herself on top of it and drool all the way down to the top of his jeans when she’d seen it. But she’d restrained herself, and now merely shrugged, asking, “You noticed his chest, did you?”
“Not really. Mostly I noticed that you noticed,” Stephanie responded with amusement.
Drina rolled her eyes with disgust. This being easily read business was going to become a serious pain in the arse at this rate, she decided.
“You played it cool, though,” Stephanie praised her. “He didn’t even have an inkling you were drooling inside.”
“I wasn’t drooling,” Drina assured her dryly.
“Oh, yeah. You were,” Stephanie said on a laugh.
Drina sighed. “All right, maybe a little inside.” She shrugged. “What can I say? It’s been half a millenniun since I’ve even noticed a man’s chest.”
Actually, it had been longer than that, she realized and hoped to God her hymen hadn’t grown back in the intervening years.
“Oh my God! That doesn’t happen, right?”
Drina blinked at that horrified exclamation and glanced at Stephanie with confusion. “What?”
“The nanos don’t. . like. . fix your hymen after it’s been broken so that every time you have sex it’s like the first time?” she asked with a bone-deep horror that left Drina gaping.
“Good Lord, no!” she assured her. “Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”
Stephanie sagged with relief, and then explained, “You were just thinking you hoped yours hadn’t grown back.”
“Oh, I-That was-I was just having a sarcastic, self-deprecating minute in my head. Gees.” She closed her eyes briefly, opened them again, and said solemnly, “Girl, you have to stay out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head,” Stephanie said wearily. “You’re talking into mine.”
Drina frowned, pretty sure she wasn’t trying to talk into her head.
“So why don’t they?” Stephanie asked suddenly, a frown tugging at her lips.
“Why don’t who what?” Drina asked, confused again.
“Why don’t nanos repair the hymen when it’s broken?” she explained. “I thought their job was to keep us perfect and all.”
“Not perfect. No one is perfect,” Drina assured her. “They’re programmed to keep us at our peak, the best we each can be as individuals.”
Stephanie waved that away impatiently. “Right, but if you break a bone, they fix it. Why wouldn’t they fix the hymen if it was broke?”
“Well-” Drina paused, her brain blank, and then shook her head helplessly. “I don’t know. Maybe the nanos don’t think the hymen is something that needs fixing. Or maybe the scientists didn’t think to include the hymen as part of the anatomy when they programmed them,” she suggested, and then grimaced, and added dryly, “I’m just glad as heck that they don’t repair it.”
“I know,” Stephanie groaned. “That would be vile.”
“Hmm.” Drina nodded and gave a little shudder at the thought, but then glanced at her sharply. “Have you had sex?”
“No, of course, not.” Stephanie flushed with embarrassment.
“Then why so horrified at the thought of the nanos replacing the hymen?” she asked, eyeing her narrowly.
Stephanie snorted. “I read. It’s not supposed to be fun to lose your virginity.”
Drina relaxed and shrugged. “It’s different for different people. For some it’s painful, for others not so much, for some there’s blood and others not. It may be all right for you,” she said reassuringly, and then frowned and added, “But. . you know. . you shouldn’t rush out there to find out which it will be in your case. You have plenty of time to try stuff like that. Plenty of time,” she stressed.
“Now you sound like my mother,” Stephanie said with amusement.
Drina grimaced. She kind of felt like her parent in that moment. Certainly, she suddenly had a lot more sympathy for parents having to give the sex talk. Dear God, she couldn’t even imagine that conversation.
“Fortunately for you, my mother already gave me that talk,” Stephanie said with a grin.
“You’re reading me again,” Drina complained.
“I told you, I’m not reading you. You’re kind of pushing your thoughts at me.”
Drina frowned and turned to ask her to explain what she meant, but paused to glance toward the garage as one of the doors began to whir upward.
“Harper must be ready to go,” Stephanie commented. “You should let me take the front seat.”
“I should, should I?” Drina asked with amusement.
“Definitely,” Stephanie assured her. “We don’t want him to think you like him or start worrying about life mates and stuff. Wave me that way as we approach the car. That way Harper will think you didn’t care to sit in the front with him.”
Drina smiled faintly but just nodded. It couldn’t hurt, and she didn’t care if she was in the front or not anyway.
“And you should sit right behind him, not behind the passenger seat,” Stephanie whispered as the garage door finished opening, and they saw Harper waving to them from the driver’s seat of a silver BMW.
“Why?” Drina whispered back, using the excuse of closing the still-open door of the SUV to delay approaching the car.
“That way, every time he looks in the rearview mirror, he’ll see you
,” she pointed out.
Drina peered at her with surprise. The kid was smart, she thought, and knew by the way that Stephanie smiled widely that she’d heard the compliment. Chuckling, she slid her arm around the girl and used it to steer her toward the car.
“You can sit in the front if you like,” she said with amusement, steering her that way, and then breaking off to move up the driver’s side of the car herself.
“You’re sure you don’t mind?” Stephanie asked with feigned concern, pausing beside the passenger door.
“Not at all,” Drina said dryly and had to bite her lip to keep from laughing when the girl grinned at her over the roof of the car, out of Harper’s view. Shaking her head, Drina opened the back door and slid in behind him.
“Thank you, Harper. This is really sweet of you,” Stephanie said as she slid into the front seat. “Isn’t it sweet, Drina?”
“Very,” she agreed mildly.
“It’s no problem,” Harper assured them, smiling at Stephanie, and then meeting Drina’s gaze in the rearview mirror and smiling at her as well. “Just tell me where you want to go, and we’re there.”
“Well, Drina insisted we had to stay in town because she doesn’t know her way around, so we were just going to go to Wal-Mart. But with you driving, maybe we could go into London,” Stephanie said in a rush.
“I don’t think so, Stephanie,” Drina said firmly when Harper hesitated. “It isn’t just that I don’t know the area. I think it’s better that we stay in town until we’re sure no one trailed you guys from New York. Here we at least have the house relatively close and can call Teddy Brunswick if we need help.”
“But there are so many cool stores in London,” Stephanie protested. “We could go to Garage or the Gap or-”
“I’ll tell you what,” Harper interrupted. “How about we try Wal-Mart today for the necessities, and then maybe later in the week we can venture out to London if you don’t find everything you need here in town?”
Stephanie heaved out a sigh. “Oh, all right.”
