“Oh, I went to live with my grandmother, Tilly. She died not so long ago.”
“You've had to endure a great deal of loss, Olivia. What was she like?”
“She was the nicest person I’ve ever known. Without her, who knows how I would have ended up.” Feeling a little choked up, I added, “I miss her every day,”
Noticing my shivers, Robert moved closer to me, then pulled the throw blanket off the back of the sofa. He smoothed over the tops of our laps. “You warm enough?”
“I am now. How about you?”
He shrugged. “I don’t feel temperature the same way humans do. The only time I ever feel cold is when I need blood. But even then, I have to be starving.”
I laughed softly. “It’s strange; I sometimes forget you’re a vampire. But then you go and say something about drinking blood or sleeping through the day or hanging out with Charles Darwin or whoever, and I remember.”
“I like that you forget. Some humans, it’s all they can think about,” he said. “Tell me more about your childhood with Tilly.”
I turned so that I could look him in the face. “Why are you so interested in my life?”
“Other than the obvious reasons that you’re a beautiful woman and I enjoy your company, your mortal life is—”
“Mundane?”
“I was going to say wholesome. You forget how long it’s been since I’ve been human. It makes me nostalgic for the good old days.” He chuckled softly at his sentimentality. “We have a couple hours left of our evening together, anyway. We might as well make use of it. I’m being sincere when I say I don’t know anyone like you, so your stories are entertaining, even if to you they seem ordinary.”
“If you say so,” I said, though I could appreciate his outlook. “Good thing we’ve got so much time left, because we’re going to need a lot of it if you want to know about Tilly and me. Though I can’t guarantee you’ll find anything I say interesting.”
He grinned. “I’m all ears.”
“As long as your promise to tell me about your background in return?”
He pretended to consider the proposition. “You drive a hard bargain, Taylor, but okay.” It was funny, the way he’d addressed me by my last name . Robert was old-school in so many ways, yet he could be unexpectedly modern.
I sighed, traveling back in time mentally to my childhood in Pelville, a place I didn’t often visit because the memories were bittersweet. It was going to be uncomfortable, discussing my impoverished background with a debonaire billionaire like Robert, yet I somehow knew he wouldn’t judge.
“After my parents died, I was brought to a mobile home park to be with Tilly,” I began. “It may sound like a downgrade, a little girl moving into a tiny trailer to live with her grandmother, but the lifestyle I’d had with my parents was . . . shaky. They had me young, as teenagers, and they never fully grew up—one day they were kids, the next they had a kid.Children raising children, as the saying goes, though I was the only child they ever had.
“My parents got married at Pelville City Hall when my mother was five months pregnant with me. I’ve only seen photos of the ceremony once, which was enough. My father scowled during the whole thing like he was being sent to the electric chair. My mother didn’t look much happier, but at least she’d tried to pretend.” I stopped to take a sip of water.
“They must have loved each other at some point, though, for her to have gotten pregnant with you.”
I clucked my tongue and stared at Robert disbelievingly. “Over a hundred years old, and you’re this naive? You do know that it doesn’t take love for humans to make a baby, right?”
He laughed at that.
“Anyway, my parents partied a lot, did drugs. Probably because they were both so miserable. We got evicted every couple of months, so we were always moving from one motel to the next. With Tilly, I got stability I’d never had before. We had nothing, but it felt peaceful.”
I stole a look at Robert, who didn’t appear bored. On the contrary, he seemed captivated, like he wouldn’t dream of interrupting. I couldn’t help thinking of Nick, who’d frequently half-listened to me and would have been scrolling through his phone the second he realized my narrative didn’t revolve around him. It was an amazing feeling, to now beheardby a man I wanted.
“Tilly brought me up me the best way she could on what little we had,” I said. “Funny thing is, she was the daughter of millionaires in New York. She grew in a mansion.”
Robert’s eyebrows shot up in surprise. “How did she go from such wealth to a trailer in Florida?”
“Everything that happened was because her parents were elitist old-money types who cared about keeping up appearances above all else,” I said.
“I’ve known a few of those in my day,” he commented dryly. “My maker is a little like that. My love for him will always be unconditional, of course, but he’s such a snob.”
I laughed. “I can’t wait to hear about him. If it’s not against some vampire law to talk about it?”
He smiled at the question. “It isn’t, but I want to hear more about your life first. You’ve only just started.”
