Cora snorted. “Well maybe that was your first problem. You can’t solve everything by throwing money at it.”
“That’s for damned sure,” he muttered under his breath.
She sat back in her chair, shifting so she could stare at him. With his head dropped and his shoulders sagging, he looked like a kicked puppy. For some reason he had been so excited about taking her out, and now she felt awful about the dejection on his face.
She sighed, really hoping that she wouldn’t regret her next words.
“Okay, here’s the deal. You said Tressa and Raven decided this,yeah? I’ll give you one more shot. Ifyouhad planned to take me out somewhere, where would you go?”
A wide grin lit up Saiden’s face, and Cora felt like she could live for days on that smile. It called to her, hypnotized her, promising her the happiest of days and most sinful of nights. It was a smile that she would follow to the ends of the earth.
A moth chasing after her flame.
Chapter thirty-one
Saiden
Derrick is going to kill me,Saiden thought when he bit into his slice of garlic pizza, and a massive drop of grease landed on his thigh. He didn’t know much about fashion, but he was pretty sure Armani was one of the high-end brands that his cousin had specially tailored. Saiden didn’t want Cora to feel uncomfortable as the only one eating, though, and he would gladly destroy Derrick’s entire wardrobe if it meant he could prevent that.
Besides, it wasn’t like his cousin couldn’t afford to replace them. At least Saiden had taken the shirt off. In fact, the minute Cora said she wanted nothing to do with his original plans, he’d started unbuttoning the uncomfortable garment. His black undershirt was decent enough for where he was taking her. The tight shoes followed right after, and he thanked Lilith that he always kept a spare pair of boots in most of his cars. Had plans not shifted, he doubted he would have made it to San Francisco before he lost all feeling in his toes.
But better than removing the overly stiff shirt, better than removing the painful shoes, was the look on Cora’s face when he pulled the convertible into The Old Merc. More than just the best pizzeria in theFall River Valley, the Merc was one of those small-town places where you could just relax, kick your boots up, and not give a shit about anything for a while. Plus, he’d known the owner’s family for years, so he didn’t even need to bribe them to get the corner TV changed to some horror flick that Saiden had never heard of. Cora squealed a bit, so he imagined House on Haunted Hill must be somewhat decent. He wouldn’t know because his eyes never left her face for a second.
He cherished the moments when her attention was fixed on the television because it gave him the opportunity to just stare at her. To memorize the soft lines of her face. The slight glow to her amber eyes. The way her lip twitched when someone screamed on the TV. Almost as if she enjoyed the scenes where the characters made dumb decisions and were murdered for it.
His bloodthirsty little horror fiend. She was more suited for the life of a vampire than anyone he’d ever met. And yet…
He rubbed absently at his chest, trying to banish the painful thoughts. He told himself he wasn’t going to think about it. Wasn’t going to put that kind of pressure on their time together.
There would be plenty of opportunities for panicking later.
The credits started rolling on the film, and Cora kicked back in her chair, rubbing at her tiny tummy like a grizzly bear ready for their winter nap.
“That might have been the best pizza I’ve ever eaten,” she proclaimed with a near sexual tone to her voice.
He hid his amused grin behind a napkin as he wiped at his mouth, wondering if she realized how blissed out she looked.
Now if only he could get himself ranked higher than greasy food on her list of moan-worthy things. He was pretty sure after last night that he was on the list somewhere, but she had yet to tackle him with the same ferocity as melted cheese on bread.
“And you know what was so good about it?” she said, leaning forward conspiratorially.
“What?” he asked, meeting her in the middle of the table.
“We didn’t have to get on a damn plane for it.”
He laughed as she settled back into her seat, but something tickled at his brain. A curiosity he couldn’t quite shake.
“Why do you hate flying so much?”
Cora seemed fearless about so many things that her aversion to something viewed as universally safe was mind-boggling.
A shadow clouded her face, and he kicked himself for being the one to put it there.
“I didn’t always,” she answered softly. “After I was diagnosed, my dad flew me all over the country to see the best specialists he could find. I think eventually I started to associate airplanes with needles and doctors, and it just grew from there. Now I’m terrified to even set foot in a plane. It really sucks because going on trips with my dad when I was younger was one of my favorite things. It’s always sad when you lose something you love, you know.”
Oh, he knew. She had no idea how much he knew.
He wanted to ask more questions about her father. Baylin relayed how her mother died in a car accident when Cora was still a baby, but her relationship with her father was the one thing his brother hadn’t figured out. How one day they were happy and the next she moved down to L.A. with Jinx, never to speak to him again. Her father wasn’t vampire wealthy, but he certainly had the means to keep her living in a much nicer place than the hovel he’d seen. Given what he’d spent on specialists trying to help Cora, Saiden doubted her dad just decided to randomly cut her off. Which meant Cora had done the severing. What did her father do to warrant such a reaction?
