Animal Instinct

by Kate Davidson

  His plan for the time being was to keep Jacquelyn as protected as his considerable resources could guarantee. He had already put every private number that could reach him in her phone, along with Jack’s and one belonging to Vampire Emergency Services. The dozen or so vampires at VES had been more than a little annoyed when he’d told them that they might be getting calls from a human. Thankfully, they respected him enough to agree. The fact that there was a rogue vampire ordering attacks on other vampires’ property hadn’t hurt his cause, either. VES was alert for any news regarding the ‘Left Hand’. They’d done a sweep of the city, hoping that at least one of them would pick up the scent of decaying flesh that came with extreme age. He almost hoped they wouldn’t find him. Liam wanted some time alone with the vampire responsible for Jacquelyn’s attack. VES officials would kill them quickly. Liam wanted to savor the experience.

  Jackie didn’t know what to make of Liam’s face when she saw him in her office. It wasn’t an expression she’d ever want directed toward her, that was for sure. She cleared her throat. Immediately the tight lines around his mouth relaxed as he smiled at her.

  “There you are.”

  “And there you are,” she said, still confused. She felt like she’d missed something important. “You know, it just occurred to me that it’s the middle of the week and you must have work to do. Why are you hanging around here?”

  “My business won’t fall apart if I’m away for a few hours.” He gave her a look that said she might want to adopt that philosophy as well. She noticed that he wasn’t bringing up the conversation they were having before Anonymous showed up. Probably for the best. She wasn’t ready for any emotional confessions. For now, she wanted to take things one cautious step at a time.

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “SO REMEMBER WHEN I told you during Sarah’s first show that a certain conversation wasn’t over?” Izzy smiled from the doorway of Jackie’s office as her friend, startled by her sudden appearance, tried to get up so fast that she nearly fell out of her chair.

  “Well, this is a nice surprise,” Jackie said while trying to recover her dignity after her rather sad attempt to escape from her desk. She really had to stop zoning out when she dealt with paperwork. “I was just paying bills so you’re a more than welcome interruption.” The younger woman in the gold silk suit and ridiculously high strappy black heels continued to smile brightly although she was actively looking for any sign of Jackie’s recent attack. She’d been healing well and Sofie had definitely taken the brunt of it. That didn’t mean Izzy could just forget her friend had nearly died. That was a big reason she’d come out to the ranch without calling. She and Jackie needed to have the talk she’d been putting off for a while.

  “I’m happy to interrupt. You probably shouldn’t be working so hard anyway. Know what we should do? We should have a spa day.” Jackie rolled her eyes and Izzy knew the likelihood of a spa day was very low.

  “You’re starting to sound like Liam,” she complained. “The man has barely given me a moment’s peace. Did you know he sent Jack out here to check up on me? You’d think I was about to shatter into a million pieces or something.”

  “Vampires can be weird about humans. We’re so fragile to them. We only have about eighty years to live in the first place but there are millions of things that can cut our time short. Liam’s just not used to thinking about mortality. I think it’s freaking him out.”

  “That’s too bad. I am a mortal and he’s a vampire. He’s going to have to get used to thinking about it without trying to encase me in bubble wrap,” Jackie muttered, crossing to the fridge to get out a bottle of water.

  “Has he asked about turning you?”

  “No.” Jackie violently twisted the cap off her water. Izzy had brought up a subject that made her increasingly nervous. Liam had been about to say something to her the last time he’d visited. It had clearly been important what with how difficult it had been for him to find the words. The more she’d thought about that conversation, the more she began to suspect he’d been about to ask if she wanted to be a vampire. And she didn’t want to be. Not even a little bit.

  “Have you thought about it?” Izzy asked.

  Jackie realized she was probably coming off as intimidating and struggled to dismiss the tension she felt. “It’s not for me,” she said. “Now, how about we talk about what’s been going on in your life? Any interesting men pop up?”

  “Yeah but that’s not why - ”

  “Really?” Jackie interrupted. “Who is he? What does he do?”

  “His name’s Simon and he owns some restaurants in the city. Before you ask, we’ve only been seeing each other a few weeks and it’s probably not going to work out. He’s way too sweet to be real and he keeps trying to feed me all the things I shouldn’t eat if I want to fit into my clothes.”

  “How does he kiss?” Jackie inquired, trying very hard to look like it was only a casual question. Inside she was nervous. She remembered vividly how Izzy had prized Liam’s kissing skills. The sudden reddening of Izzy’s face made Jackie grin.

  “He’s… Um, he has a very… He always does, uh…. Great. Amazing. Perfect, okay?” She let out a deep sigh before sitting down at Jackie’s desk. “It’s scary. He seems wonderful.”

  “You’re afraid he’s Mr. Right and that something’s going to happen to make it all go wrong,” Jackie said, reading the uncertainty in her friend. It made her smile a little as she took a deep gulp of water.

  “Maybe I am. Is that what you’re afraid of, too?” Izzy asked.

  “What…? Oh, good God, no! Liam is not Mr. Right, Izzy. He has Mr. Wrong tattooed on his forehead. The two of us are friends and lovers but nothing more.”

  “You are drowning in denial right now,” Izzy said.

  “I am not!”

  “Everything you’ve asked him to do he’s done. Even things you haven’t asked him to do! He stopped sleeping with other women. He goes to all sorts of lengths to make sure you’re safe and healthy. Hell, he even replaced Grace with Eve because he knew you liked the woman.”

  Jackie’s mouth gaped open. “He did what?”

  “Maybe he hasn’t said it but you should have been able to figure it out already,” she continued, ignoring Jackie’s interruption. “The man’s head over heels for you.”

  Jackie felt her heart stuttering in her chest. A deliciously warm sensation filled her along with overwhelming panic. “You’re romanticizing us. Liam isn’t the kind of man who falls in love. He’s just not that way. You should know that.”

  Izzy stared at her intently for a minute before her eyes went wide. “Oh, no, this isn’t because of me, is it? You’re not holding your heart back because you think I’ll get hurt, right? Please tell me I’m wrong here.”

  Jackie shifted uncomfortably. “We agreed not to talk about it. He was yours first. I understand that you’re fond of him - ”

  “He wasn’t just mine first. I shared him with half a dozen other girls. Look, I know I threw a fit when you first slept with him. I was being ridiculous thinking that we couldn’t be friends if we were competing for the same man. But we weren’t competing. That’s what I’m trying to tell you, Jackie. I was never in the same league with you and I have to tell you that I’m finally okay with that. You almost died. I can’t let you think that I’m bitter about losing a man who paid me for blood and never in a thousand years would have fallen in love with me.” It was important to Izzy not waste a moment. The universe had sent her a blaring wake up call when it nearly took away her friend. She wouldn’t squander time trying to delicately tiptoe around what she needed to say. And if she had to do that for Liam, too, then so be it.

  “Come here,” Jackie whispered, setting down her water and pulling Izzy out of the chair for a tight hug. “I’m not going anywhere. You aren’t going to lose me for any reason, okay? You’re one of my dearest friends. Nothing will change that.”

  Izzy suddenly realized she was on the
verge of tears. She guessed that was normal. After everything they’d been through a little crying wasn’t unexpected. “Then be happy, okay? After what you’ve had done to you, you deserve a little happiness,” Izzy whispered against her shoulder. “Liam is in love with you. I can see it every time he looks at you. If you could just consider loving him back - ”

  “Don’t worry about it, Izzy,” Jackie said, releasing her from the hug. Her eyes were averted and Izzy could see all her muscles tensing.

  Suddenly it clicked. “Oh,” she whispered. “Oh, you do love him.”

  Jackie closed her eyes. This was what she had been fighting off for what felt like eternity. She had refused to think about it, talk about it or even allow herself to feel it for too long. Now she couldn’t ignore that fact that her feelings for Liam O’Connor were singing through her veins, surging with every beat of her heart. Of course she loved him. How stupid to think she couldn’t or might somehow avoid it. There had been no way to escape loving him. “I don’t want to,” Jackie said at last. It was not a denial. It was the closest to a confession of her feelings that she’d ever come. “I don’t have it in me to do this all again.”

  “Danny is in the past. He’s going to stay there. You need to move forward,” Izzy urged.

  Jackie shook her head. “He’s not as far away as you think. Turns out he’s in the area and I have his number. I’ve been thinking about calling him ever since the accident.” Finally, someone would know she was not such a good person. After saving her life in every possible way, Liam was still not the only man in her thoughts.

  “Oh, my God.” Izzy was stunned. She remembered now that Jackie had seen Danny’s father at Liam’s party but she hadn’t said anything about it after that. She’d just assumed she’d let it go. Apparently more had happened than Jackie had let on. If she hadn’t seen the love in Liam’s eyes when he looked at her, she might even be encouraging her to go find Danny and run off into the sunset. But she had seen it. And she knew that Jackie had the same kind of feelings. Maybe it was young and idealistic but if two people were in love then they should find excuses to be together, not apart. “You can’t call him, Jackie. You have to know you can’t.”

  “I know.”

  “There’s Liam to think of, for one thing. And what would you even say? Sorry for dumping you but I was traumatized after I lost our baby. Oh, yeah, I forgot to mention I was pregnant, too. Sorry about that. And… Wait, what did you say you know?”

  “Yes, Izzy,” Jackie confirmed with a dull flicker of humor in her eyes. “I have a new life. I have no business trying to merge it with my past. It would completely fuck things up.”

  “Oh. Oh, that’s good. So are you going to tell Liam you love him?”

  “No,” Jackie said. “And you aren’t going to tell him, either.”

  “But you love him! And he loves you! What am I missing here?” Izzy demanded. It made no sense for two people in love to just ignore it.

  “It wouldn’t change anything. We’d still just be two people in a relationship.” And one of them would have an even better reason to make the other immortal. Jackie wasn’t naïve enough to believe that love would maintain a relationship where one person was perpetually young and the other slowly decaying. It was better to enjoy what time they had and never mention that dangerous ‘L’ word. Love had a nasty habit of complicating everything it touched.

  “I don’t believe you feel as calm about all this as you’re acting. This love thing is freaking you out, isn’t it?”

  “Deeply,” Jackie admitted. “Now will you let it go?”

  “I want you to be happy.”

  “I am happy!” she said, flinging her arms out. “Look at all I have. Sarah’s legally my daughter, the ranch is safe, I have the chance to reconnect with my father, and I’m in a good relationship with an interesting man. My life is brilliant.”

  “You don’t think love would make it all even better?”

  “I think love would ruin it,” Jackie told her. “Now promise not to tell Liam anything about this conversation.”

  “I wouldn’t do that to you. Promise,” Izzy added when she saw Jackie’s serious expression. “Liam won’t know anything about this from me. He should hear it from you anyway.”

  “Thank you,” Jackie said, deciding to ignore her friend’s last statement. She had made a decision and she wouldn’t be swayed. “Now let’s talk about Mr. Right and how you are not going to sabotage your relationship, all right?” Izzy just rolled her eyes.

  “Walk me to my car and I’ll tell you the whole story.” Jackie wrapped an arm around her shoulders and led her out of the office. Walking through the barn with her friend and talking about new men, she almost began to feel normal again. She wondered how long that would last.

  *

  Sofie frowned at the television screen. Unlike Jackie, who hadn’t found it odd that Liam had been gone the past two days with only phone calls and visitors on his behalf to indicate his continued interest, she felt like something was up in vampire land. The incident with Max had shaken her to the core and made her keenly interested in whatever was going on in the supernatural half of Liam’s life. With her fingers healing she was practically useless working with the horses and Jackie was unwilling to even give her simple tasks to perform. That left her a lot of free time to indulge her new obsession.

  She remembered all the people on the news who had turned up dead and drained of blood. That had been going on when Jackie and Liam’s relationship had first started. The more she thought about the beginning of things, the more she realized. She had met Max very shortly after Jackie had met Liam. He had been so incredibly charming and helpful. So understanding about her past, so interested in her stories about the ranch… He’d been gathering information. That did terrible things to her self-esteem. Still, that wasn’t the point.

  All these things were connected. The suspicious deaths and Max’s spying had to do with the Left Hand, whoever the hell that was. She paid more attention to the news now and what struck her was the death of a young, pretty woman. She was drained of blood and found on the street. The prettiness of her made Sofie think she could easily have served as a donor to the vampires in the city, maybe even Liam. Was that why he was suddenly missing in action at the ranch? Vampire business?

  “What am I missing?” she mumbled to herself. The front door opened and she turned to see Sarah jumping through the door.

  “TGIF!” she called out. Jackie followed the little girl inside, chuckling at her enthusiasm. “No more school! This weekend it’s going to be all horses all the time.”

  Sofie grinned at the announcement. “What about sleep, Sarah?”

  “Sleep is for the weak!” she proclaimed.

  “And for the underage,” Jackie tacked on as she locked the front door. It made her happy when Sarah was so active and happy. She was getting to be that way more often now that she was living at the ranch. Jackie liked to think it was because she was doing a good job as a parent but it might have just been the close proximity to the horses. “Go put your backpack away and get into your britches. We have riding to do.” Sarah skipped down the hall to her room, leaving Jackie with a German who looked overworked despite the fact that she’d been doing next to nothing recently. “So what have you been up to?”

  “Just watching the news,” Sofie said. Her mouth opened and closed a few times before she finally confessed her thoughts. “Okay, another woman’s been killed by a vampire and I was thinking that maybe that’s connected to what happened to us. Someone’s putting a spotlight on the vampires in Los Angeles. Then Max tries to kill you to get to Liam all on account of some guy called the Left Hand. Do you think this is some kind of play for power? Like, what is Liam in the vamp community? Is he just a random old rich guy or something more important?”

  Jackie stared at her dumbly. “I don’t know. I guess there must be some kind of network so they can arrange for donors and meetings. Damn, I wish Izzy had stuck
around. She probably knows all about vamp politics.”

  Sofie let out a quiet sigh. “Yeah, I guess she would.”

  There wasn’t anything offensive about that statement and yet something akin to irritation wiggled its way under Jackie’s skin. “What do you mean?”

  “Well, it’s just that Izzy and I are interested in that kind of thing. Nothing would be more fascinating to me than to have an evening alone with Liam to pick his brain about vampires,” she explained. “But you’re not that way. When you’re with Liam you’re with a normal guy. More or less.”

  “Right,” Jackie mumbled. She never asked any questions about Liam’s past unless she was trying to make a point about privacy. The vampire society wasn’t a total mystery to her. He had offered some information about how things worked but never his position in it all. She hadn’t thought to ask, either. It was as if she avoided anything about Liam’s life that didn’t relate to hers. Was that selfish? Or was she just trying to maintain some normalcy? Shouldn’t she have at least asked where he was born?

  “Aside from that murder there’s nothing much else going on except for that fire up in the hills that started twenty minutes ago. I flipped away from that. I hate fire stories.” People who worked with horses all shared a fear of fire. A ranch owner’s worst nightmare was a barn burning to a crisp with the horses inside, too panicked to escape. But it wasn’t the idea of a fire that was niggling at Jackie’s instincts. The idea of a fire in the hills amongst the glamorous houses and that close to Liam… She snatched the remote and turned the channel.

  There on her television screen was the image of the skeletal remains of a home ravaged by flame. Smoke drifted lazily in the background and firefighters could be seen picking their way around the wreckage. The phone rang somewhere behind Jackie. Its desperately shrill cries just confirmed what she already knew. Despite the state of the house, she still recognized it as the one where she had once been loved into a state of unconsciousness. It had been reduced to embers.