Tina ignored him. “Why didn’t you tell me about this sooner?”
Harper shrugged. “It wasn’t important. I dumped him, and that was that.”
“He’d be dead if we were in Sicily,” Mickey mumbled around a mouthful of linguine. “Good riddance.”
Riddick stared as everyone around him turned and symbolically spit on the floor.
“Where’s Romeo these days?” Teresa asked. “Like a hero from a Harlequin, that one is,” she told Riddick, who felt a new frown line coming on.
“Sooooo hot,” she went on. “You should hook up with him, if he’d have you.”
Harper glanced at Riddick, and he would have sworn she blushed. His gaze narrowed. He knew that look. She had hooked up with Romeo. At least once.
Not that he didn’t understand it. Seers and slayers hooked up all the time. Hell, who else but a slayer could understand what seers went through on a daily basis? Even he and Cecelia…well, that was a road he was better off not traveling. The point was that Harper could do a hell of a lot better than Romeo Jones.
Not that he was jealous. No way.
He sighed. Christ, now he was lying to himself. That couldn’t be a good sign.
“Romeo is irrelevant,” Harper said instead of admitting what Riddick already knew to be true. She wrinkled her nose. “And he is not at all hot.”
Selena blew out another puff of smoke and chuckled. “You’re kidding yourself, hon. I’d lick that boy like an ice cream cone.”
Nicotine, ice cream, and Romeo Jones. Riddick did shudder at that.
“Yeah, well, you can have him,” Harper said. “If you can get him away from his cheap Vegas whore, that is. He took off with her and stuck me with the business and all of his debt.” She raised an eyebrow at Teresa. “How’s that for your soooo hot Harlequin hero?”
“That fucker,” Marina said at the same time Uncle Mickey said, “If we were in Sicily, he’d be dead already. Good riddance.”
This time the spitting didn’t faze Riddick.
The Romeo issue might be over for them, but he wasn’t soon to forget it. He might just have to make a trip to Vegas…
Tina looked disappointed, but not terribly surprised. “That one I didn’t even need to read. Didn’t take an empath to see the twist in him.”
Empath. No wonder she’d been staring at him like she could see into his soul. She probably could.
“I know, Ma,” Harper said. “I knew it was a risk when I started the agency with him. I just didn’t have many other options at the time.”
“What are you going to do?” Tina asked.
Harper thanked the waiter by name as he filled her glass before answering her mother. “I’ll keep working. I’ll figure something out. It’ll be fine.”
Her mother smiled at her. “That’s my girl.” She turned to Riddick. “She’s always been independent.”
Marina snorted. “It’s easy to be independent when you don’t ever need help. She always gets her way eventually. She’s charmed.”
“Oh, please,” Harper said with a groan. “I do not always get my way.”
Riddick lowered his head to hide his smile. The fact that he was sitting here at all proved she generally did tend to get her way.
Selena’s laugh faded into a wheeze. “Puh-lease. You forced Tina to change your name when you were six, then forced the rest of us to take an oath never to speak the old name again.” She leaned toward Riddick, who instinctively leaned back to escape the cloud surrounding her. “Now I ask ya, if that’s not a girl who always gets her way then who is?”
He turned back toward Harper, still trying to process all the information her family was spewing. “Your name isn’t Harper?”
Harper opened her mouth, but Tina beat her to the punch. “Technically, yes, it is. We legally changed it. With any other child, I wouldn’t have agreed to do it. But Harper was always so sensitive about everything.” She lowered her voice and added, “I think it was because she was an overweight child.”
Harper groaned and threw her hands up. “There it is. I knew that would come up. It always does.”
“Jesus, Ma,” Michael said, shaking his head. “Why don’t you just tell him what pretty grandbabies he’d give you and scare him off for good?”
Tina blinked. “What did I say now?”
“You just told a potential boyfriend she used to be a cow.”
Uncle Mickey leaned over and smacked Michael with an open palm to the back of the head.
“Hey,” Michael yelped, “what the hell was that for?”
The Godfather pointed at him with a be-ringed pinky. “Don’t call your sister a cow.”
“I didn’t! I said she used to be a cow.”
Tina’s chin lifted. “I don’t see anything shameful in being a little overweight. She grew out of it. Just like she grew into her head.”
Riddick’s gaze went back to Harper when she banged her forehead on the table.
“She used to have a huge head,” Marina explained, digging a fork into her rotini. “I mean huge. Like Nancy Reagan, mutant-huge, you know? It was really kind of freaky. But she grew into it. Eventually.”
Tina smiled fondly. “We had to have her Easter bonnets made special for years. My little Butterball. Do you remember the time…”
“Whoa,” Harper interrupted, holding up her hands in supplication. “Let’s just clear the air here. Okay, yes, I’m divorced. I married James Hall when I was barely legal and ditched his miserable cheating ass a year later. I got engaged to he-who-would-be-dead-if-we-were-in-Sicily a year after that. That engagement lasted all of three months.” She had to pause and suck in air, having said all of that in one breath. “I hated my name when I was growing up because it was so easy to make fun of, and because kids suck and can be really creative.”
Riddick opened his mouth to speak, but she cut him off with, “And before you ask, no I won’t tell you my old name. Finally, yes, I did grow into my head, and my metabolism sped up when I hit puberty.”
She turned on her mother and added, “To reiterate, Riddick is not my boyfriend, we only worked together on a police case, so everyone can stop picturing a little replica of him on a wedding cake next to a little replica of me.”
Tina opened her mouth, but Harper shushed her. “And before you ask, yes I’m still working with the police occasionally, and no, I have no immediate plans to stop, find a nice Italian boy, or settle down.”
Her gaze moved from one family member to the next. “Does that about cover it, or are there any other embarrassing tidbits you’d like to discuss in front of Riddick?”
After a long pause, Selena said, “The blonde highlights? Not so much real.” She stuck her tongue out at Harper, who gave her the finger.
“She snores like a buzz saw,” Michael added helpfully. “And she’s afraid of clowns.”
Harper glanced at Riddick, her cheeks red. “You can’t trust anyone who wears that much makeup,” she grumbled. “They’ve obviously got something to hide.”
“She was the only girl in PS 279 history to get kicked out of the Brownies for fighting.”
“That wasn’t her fault, Marina,” Tina said. “You know that horrid little Sparacino girl was asking for it. When she told the troop leader that Harper ate all of those Girl Scout cookies herself, why, even I wanted to beat the tar out of her. And I did have a few choice words with the little brat’s mother. You remember her, don’t you, Mickey? She was the tart who always washed her car in a bikini in front of the house where God and everyone could see?”
Mickey nodded and dabbed at his mouth with his napkin. “Yeah. Fat ass. Nice rack, though.”
Harper banged her head on the table a few more times as her family members debated whether or not Amy Sparacino had been asking for a swirly, which Riddick learned—thanks to Michael— involved having her head flushed in a toilet.
Riddick crossed his arms over his chest and leaned towards Harper while the swirly debate continued. “Is it always like this?”
“No,
” she answered dryly, lifting her head. “Sometimes they talk about me like I’m not even here.”
He shook his head as he surveyed these people who ate dinner together every week and talked about their lives and loves and tribulations, and he’d never felt more conspicuous.
Because no matter how much they picked on her for the way she lived her life, Riddick knew Harper could call on any one of these people, day or night, and any one of them would be there for her. Had he ever had someone like that in his life?
He imagined he should be envious or jealous, but no matter how much he searched, he just couldn’t find those emotions within himself. It was all too outside of his experience to fathom.
“You’re very lucky,” he said quietly.
She glanced over at him, startled, then turned her gaze back to her family and smiled. “Yeah. Maybe I am charmed…and cursed. Kind of…semi-charmed, I guess.”
“Semi-charmed,” he repeated.
“Is that how you feel about being a slayer?” she asked. “Blessed with the strength and speed, but cursed with all the other crap that comes with it?”
His gaze fell to her mouth, then back up to her bright, curious eyes. Against his better judgment, he reached out and tucked a stray curl behind her ear, letting his fingertips graze her smooth cheek. Her eyes widened slightly and she drew a deep, slow breath. He supposed the answering spike in his blood pressure and the fact that for once, he didn’t feel like hunting, might mean he was feeling a little blessed.
“Only recently, Harper,” he whispered. “Only recently.”
Chapter Seventeen
Harper set a beer in front of Riddick, slid onto a barstool next to him, and took a sip of her drink to toast their successful survival of a Petrocelli family dinner. Such a function had sent lesser men running for the door.
She glanced over at Riddick, who still looked a little tense. The tension wasn’t obvious to anyone who didn’t know him, but to her, the set of his shoulders gave him away.
She had no idea what else she could do loosen him up. After all, she’d already persuaded five couples to move out of their seats so Riddick could sit with his back to the corner. He hadn’t asked her to do it, but she knew he’d feel better if she did.
Leaning toward him so he could hear her over the band, she asked, “Do you like the place?”
His eyes moved around the bar systematically. Obviously, he couldn’t shut off his slayer instincts with this many people around him. “It’s fine,” he answered without looking at her.
Clary’s Pub was way better than fine. Great live band, no drink minimums, no yuppies allowed, dollar margaritas on Tuesdays, right next door to Petrocelli’s…what wasn’t to love? If Riddick couldn’t appreciate this place, he was worse off than she thought. Oh well, she’d just have to distract him.
“Do you want to dance?”
“I don’t dance.”
Now there was a shock. “Oh, come on. It won’t kill you.”
He glanced in her direction. “It wouldn’t kill you to tell me your real name, either.”
“Point taken,” she muttered.
After a few moments of awkward silence while she mentally groped for a new topic, she asked, “So, after meeting my family, do you still think I’m crazy?”
He gave her a crooked smile that made her heartbeat stutter. “Harper, after meeting your family, I think you’re saner than you have any right to be." He took a drink. "So, did you find out what you wanted to know about me from your mother?”
Harper blinked. “What makes you think I wanted to know anything from her about you?”
“Because you're not dumb, and a not-dumb woman—especially one with an empath for a mother—would find out everything she could about a guy like me.”
She sighed. “Guess there’s no point in lying about it. Want to know what she said about you?”
“Not really.”
“You are no fun whatsoever. I’ll tell you anyway. The truth is that she didn’t say a thing, which tells me everything I need to know.”
“Whatever makes you happy, I guess.”
That was as good an opening as she was ever going to get. “Do you still think that working together would be a bad idea?”
He went back to surveying the crowd. “It’s the mother of all bad ideas.”
“Why? I think we were pretty good together.”
When his eyes caught hers again, longing flickered in their depths, so intense her heart—not to mention certain other parts of her body—ached.
Then he blinked and the look was gone, replaced by his normal, guarded poker face, the one that gave absolutely nothing away. Oddly enough, that made her ache too. Just in a different way.
“That was luck.”
Harper snorted. Everything had gone wrong, and there wasn’t anything lucky about what they’d had to do to rescue Dylan. But they’d still managed to pull everything together when it really counted.
“It wasn’t luck,” she argued. “We’re just good together.”
This time it was Riddick who snorted. “I’m not good with anyone.”
Harper took a deep breath and a fortifying swig of liquid courage. Okay, there was never going to be a good time to ask what she really wanted to know, and she wasn’t any good at beating around the bush, so after another gulp of beer, she blurted, “Areyouatallattractedtome?”
He looked so adorably stunned for a moment that her own humiliation was almost worth it. Almost.
“I mean, I’m kind of attracted to you”— all bow to the Queen of Understatement—“and I thought maybe I’d noticed a little…zing…of something between us”— oh, God, kill me now, he looks horrified—“and I wondered”— why the hell can’t I stop talking? —“if you felt it too, or if I was just imagining things.”
Harper decided it was a good thing slayers didn’t have heart attacks, because Riddick looked like he could blow a blood vessel at any moment.
After a few more agonizing moments of silence, Riddick cleared his throat and said, “You’re not imagining anything.”
Immense relief and nervousness slammed into Harper in equal measure. Thank God, was her first thought, which was quickly followed by, what the hell are we going to do now?
When it became clear that Riddick didn’t intend to elaborate on the matter, Harper prompted, “Don’t you think we should talk about that?”
“God, no.”
Her jaw went slack. What kind of testosterone-stunted logic was he using? “What do you mean ‘no’? Don’t you—”
“Having fun, kids?”
Harper and Riddick swiveled on their bar stools to look at Mischa who—in her pristine white blouse and preppy khaki capris—looked patently out of place in the dimly lit pub.
“How long have you been here?” Harper asked her friend.
Mischa shoved her tortoiseshell glasses up with her index finger. “Long enough,” she answered dryly.
“How’s Cane doing?”
“Fine. Getting dog hair all over my new chenille comforter.” She turned her attention to Riddick. “Hello, Riddick.”
He gave her a half nod. “Mischa.”
Harper’s inner drama queen screamed for more emotion from the two drollest people on earth, but that obviously wasn’t going to happen. “While I hate to break up such a heartwarming reunion, what are you doing here, Mischa?”
“I got a call from an old contact of mine a while ago,” Mischa told them. “Phoenix is a bit upset about his men and the kid.”
And of course by a bit upset, Mischa meant raging, scary-ass, psycho-insane pissed. Harper might be a drama queen, but Mischa was nothing if not the High Priestess of sarcasm, which usually tickled Harper shitless. But not tonight.
“Does he know it was us?” Harper asked, already knowing the answer.
Mischa nodded. “Someone ratted you out, and it wasn’t his men. They’re still recovering in a holding cell, from what I hear.”
“Benny,” Harper and Riddick said in ster
eo.
Harper glanced over at Riddick. His expression remained as impassive as Mischa’s. Was she the only one who was freaked out to be on a serial-killing vamp’s shit list?
“What do we do now?” she asked. “What do you think he’ll do now?”
He stared at her for a minute, expressionless. “Do you want me to sugar coat it for you, or do you want it straight up?”
Harper fought down a wave of nausea. “Dealer’s choice.”
“Phoenix won’t come after me.”
He met her gaze steadily, giving her time to comprehend his meaning.
She gulped. “You mean he’ll come after me to get to you.”
He nodded and drained his beer in two deep swallows. A muscle in his jaw ticked, and only then did she notice he wasn’t as calm and cool as he’d like her to think.
Somehow that didn’t make her feel any better.
Well shit. “For the record, from now on, I want the sugar-coated version,” she grumbled.
His expression bordered on pity. “That was the sugar-coated version, sunshine.”
Double shit.
“I’ll call a few other ex-watchers,” Mischa said. “Maybe one of them has heard something about Phoenix’s plans or where he might be now.”
Harper looked back to Riddick for more words of wisdom and comfort—not—and found that his attention was focused elsewhere.
She squinted, trying to follow his gaze. “What’s wrong?”
“Vampire,” he answered.
Her eyes landed on the back of a tall man with shoulder-length black hair. He was leading a pretty little redhead out the pub’s back door. And when he spared one glance over his shoulder, Harper caught a glimpse of the vampire’s face. “Riddick, that’s…”
She trailed off because Riddick was gone.
Mischa tugged at Harper’s sleeve. “Was that…”
“Yep,” Harper answered as she leapt to her feet. “That was him. But Riddick doesn’t know that.”
Harper didn’t even stop to see if Mischa was behind her as she rushed for the door. If she didn’t stop Riddick, things were going to get ugly in the alley behind Clary’s, and not just for the little redhead who’d walked out of the place with the oldest vampire in the city.
Harper Hall Investigations Complete Series Page 10