Yeesh. I thanked the driver, who opened the door with a polite, “ma’am.” As I slid in, I glanced back at the front door to find Daniel looking extremely crestfallen.
My heart thumped regretfully in my chest as Vance slid in after me and that feeling of leaving it behind hit me all over again. “I do say.” He looked me up and down the way Daniel had, but my nipples didn’t eventhinkof puckering this time. “You do look delicious.”
I wanted to smack him and remind him that this was all fake. That I was definitely not on an actual date with him. To explain that the only reason I was dressed up like this was because his messenger had told me it was a formal affair.
According to the girls, a formal affair for vampires was their chance to show off, their wealth, beauty, whatever they prized the most. Everyone would be dressed to the nines. As was I, although I wondered if my nine was more like a six to them.
"Thank you, I think," I replied as Vance gave me a fangy grin.
His choice of words played over and over in my head. Maybe this was a big mistake after all.
TWELVE
Carol
“That was delicious,”I said as I leaned back and rubbed my stuffed stomach. “If we keep eating like this, I’m going to have to go up a pants size.”
Bryan chuckled and grabbed my empty plate. “I love to cook.”
He didn't just love it, he was good at it too. The dinner he'd prepared for us was delicious.
There were freshly baked, hand-made dinner rolls, a kale, cranberry, pecan, and apple salad with a spicy and sweet dressing. For the main course, he'd done chicken piccata on a bed of perfectly cooked buttery and indulgent linguine. Finally, he'd finished with an amaretto cheesecake that was to die for.
He'd give Deva a run for her money if he could enchant food the way she could. As it was, he was acting like he hadn't just served me one of the best meals of my life.
“Good thing it’s not like in the storybooks where vampires can’t eat food,” I said as I watched him clear up. With a satisfied and stuffed moan, I got up and helped. There weren't a lot of dishes since it was just the two of us, but I couldn't stand just sitting there and letting him do all the work, especially since he was the one who cooked.
“That’s no joke. I can live with most of the other parts, even the having to drink blood, but not eating food would’ve been a deal-breaker.” He chuckled and put the last of the dishes in the sink. He stared at them a moment before turning to me. “Come on. Let’s go for a walk.”
The dishes could wait. Of course, that had been my motto most of my life, since I hated to do dishes. “Sounds great.”
From the moment I clapped eyes on Bryan just a couple of days ago, our interactions had been easy. Comfortable. As if we’d never stopped spending time together and there hadn’t been almost two decades separation between us.
“It might’ve been a deal-breaker for me if you’d stopped aging,” I said wryly as we walked out the back door.
"Is that so?" He chuckled. "You don't want to be a cougar with a boy toy?"
"Ugh, no, thank you. That just sounds like way too much work," I teased.
We hadn’t yet approached the complication of the fact that he’d live, well, not forever, but hundreds of years longer than I would. Did I want to be a vampire? Was there a spell?
That would get figured out. It had to. This kind of love wasn’t something to give up on.
“What’s that?” I asked a few minutes into our walk. We hadn’t really been talking, just walking and holding on to one another. I squinted up the beach, the moonlight illuminating something flapping.
“That looks like crime scene tape,” Bryan said. “This must be the place.”
I furrowed my brow and looked over at him. “What place?” He'd wanted to bring me here? To a place with crime scene tape? Suddenly all that heavy food was a weight in my stomach.
He sighed and tugged on my hand. “Come on. I’ll explain.”
We hurried toward the tape, the scene becoming clearer and clearer as we neared. A large square of beach was cordoned off with the yellow plastic ropey stuff. “What is this? What happened?”
Letting go of my hand, Bryan walked around the square. I watched him while he looked at the empty sand. He was visibly upset, with his forehead all scrunched and his jaw tight. “Why is it still marked off?” he asked. “There’s nothing here now.”
"Maybe they think they might still find something?" I suggested, but didn't get a response back. I was growing ever more impatient. “Will you tell me what it is?”
He finally sat on the beach a few yards back from the crime scene, the nearly full moon illuminating the sand. “The man who died here is the one who ruined my life.”
