I fought the urge to laugh. “Well in my book, fifteen still qualifies as a kid. Or do you prefer young lady?”
“He’s like only one grade above me, but he totally thinks I’m a kid.”
“One grade and about a hundred and ten years.”
She rolled her eyes, as if those numbers meant absolutely nothing. “There’s nothing wrong with liking a boy who’s a little more mature.”
“Allie...”
She stayed silent and prickles of warning danced over my skin. “He really is too old for you,” I pointed out. “Not to mention the fact that he’s a vampire.”
She stared at me, her expression showing no reaction at all.
I sighed, and tried to call out the big guns. “If nothing else, you’ll get old and he won’t. You sawHighlander, right?”
“Huh?”
“Highlander,” I repeated, shocked by her blank stare. “You’ve really never seen it?”
“Is it one of those really old movies you like?”
“Really old? No. But it wasn’t made in the last five years if that’s what you mean.”
“Does it suck?”
“Allie!”
“Well?”
“I get that you’re not in the best of moods, but do not dis one of my favorite movies.”
Her mouth twitched. “Is it one of those movies that’s only on VHS that you keep in the box in the attic?”
“Now you’re just being disagreeable,” I said, making her burst out laughing. Which, considering I’d come up here to cheer her up, was a good thing. “It has lots of good fight scenes. We could break them down. Plus, Sean Connery, and that’s never a bad thing.”
“Yeah?”
“Would I lie?”
“You might,” she said.
“Actually, why don’t we see if we can find it? I’m sure I have it around here somewhere, if not we can rent it.”
“A movie afternoon? Can we make popcorn?”
“Why not? We’ll have a lazy Sunday. But we need to get Timmy down for a nap or see if Laura will babysit. In this family, he’ll learn all about fighting and pointy things soon enough, but the longer we can hold him off the better.”
“I’ll call Aunt Laura and take him over while you find the movie. Can Mindy come watch, too?”
“Why not?”
“Awesome. And Mom,” she added, pushing off the bed, “I love you.”
And that, I thought, was the core of what really mattered.
CHAPTER 15
San Diablo’s Greatwater mansion is a once-stately mansion that had fallen into serious disrepair through neglect before my husband and his partner in real estate, Bernie Dorsey, had bought it as an investment property. Now, it’s fallen into serious disrepair through the antics of that bitch Lilith who’d been hell-bent on not only walking the earth herself, but on planting her boyfriend in my first husband.
