The Hunted (Blood Series Book 0)
Page 3
Chapter 2
Darby woke to find Harry standing on her chest and meowing his squeaky high-pitched meow. It was hard to breathe with all that...ummm, male furriness standing on her. She pushed him to one side and he jumped to the ground with a thunderous ker-thump. He obviously had assumed that pushing him off her meant she was going to get up and feed him. When that didn’t happen, after about one hundred and eighty seconds, he was back on the bed and threatening to get on her chest again.
“Gee whiz, Harry! It’s Saturday. Can’t I sleep in just a couple of minutes on the weekend?” The insistent meowing told her his answer – Not in my world, sister. Seeing that she was indeed getting out of bed, he triumphantly jumped down, tail raised high, and waited by the door – just in case she changed her mind.
Darby got up slowly and headed for the bathroom. Just to make sure that she didn’t forget about him, Harry endorsed his presence with a couple more high-pitched meows and pushed the door open.
Rubbing the sleep from her eyes, she said, “Geez, can’t a girl have some privacy?” As if answering her, he meowed. No, and on that point, it ain’t nothing I haven’t seen before.
She shook her head with disbelief, washed her hands, and headed to the kitchen to feed the hairy monster.
Now that Harry was happy for the moment, she made the coffee and headed for the front door to get the paper.
Unlike her sister, she had taken on this morning ritual from her father. The man was adamant about having his coffee and paper before he could cope with the new day.
She could see that it was overcast, as usual for this time of year, so close to the coast. Often the fog here would not retreat until noon or one o’clock, but it made for lovely, cool mornings. She opened the door and there on the welcome mat was a single lavender rose with a tiny card attached to it with a yellow silk ribbon. She bent down and picked up the flower, looking both ways out the door as if the person who left it there had only just done so and might be lurking in the bushes.
She carefully untied the pretty yellow ribbon, and there written in beautiful calligraphy was:
Darby,
I look forward to our tryst this evening. Until then, please accept this rose as a token of my adoration.
Devon
A tryst? What the heck is that? Oh man, does that mean it isn’t a date – I mean lavender is for friends or sympathy, right? I knew he was too good to be true; he’s already sending me sympathy flowers so he can break it off with me in his oh, so gallant manner. But he did call it a date last night, didn’t he?
Her mind was racing a hundred miles a minute. She went back in the house, focused on finding a dictionary when she realized she had totally forgotten to get the paper, which was still at the bottom of the porch stairs. She shook her head and went back to the door and opened it.
She looked both ways in hopes that no one had seen that she had flipped out just a second earlier. She ran down the stairs, grabbed the paper, and ran in the house, still looking over her shoulder for the lurking phantom delivery gnomes – like garden gnomes, but sneakier.
Safe inside the house, she dropped the paper on the couch along with the eloquent note and set off searching the bookcase for the dictionary. Finally! There you are, she said to herself as she grabbed the huge book and threw it, too, on the couch. She shuffled off to the kitchen to get that cup of coffee and saw Harry cleaning his face and looking quite satisfied with himself.
Shuffling back to the living room in her bunny slippers, she sat down, put her coffee on the coffee table, and looked at the beautiful writing on the card again. She set it down on the coffee table very gently as if it were a piece of fragile glass that might chip if she set it down too roughly.
She grabbed the heavy dictionary and started to hunt down the T’s. TE, TO, TR, Tryst, Ah, here it is. Part of Speech: Noun. Definition: (here we go) Meeting during a love affair. Synonyms: appointment, date, assignation, engagement, meet, meeting, rendezvous, union. Wait…. Go back. Definition: Meeting during a love affair. Oh my God, that’s got to be the most romantic thing I’ve ever seen, she thought to herself. Hmm, since I was wrong about “tryst,” let’s look up flower color meaning on the computer.
She grabbed the laptop that was sitting on the coffee table and Googled the words: lavender rose meaning. And there it was in black and white – Lavender roses: means love at first sight. The onset of yet another swoon came over her. Dear Lord, this man gets better and better with every passing second.
She grabbed her coffee and melted back into the cushions of the couch and sighed in pure delight. She never even touched the paper that very special Saturday morning.
The rest of the day was a blur of cleaning the house, fluffing pillows, adoring the lovely note, which was now on the fridge attached with a Scooby-Doo magnet. The tiny yellow silk ribbon was lovingly tied back on to the card.
The rose was put in her grandmother’s heirloom bud vase and was set on the coffee table for all to see. Then it was off to the store for toilet paper, napkins, kitty food, kitty litter, sodas, and munchies.
There was a quick stop at the bookstore to see how things were going there and check for messages. There was a message from Rowan, of course, apologizing profusely about not showing up the night before and going on about an amazing guy she met. Oh Boy! Darby thought skeptically.
Next stop, the video store to rent whatever the hot new movie of the week was. Finally, all of her running around was done and she headed back to the house. She noticed that in her new neighbor’s driveway was a very sweet brand-new Audi R8, black and sleek and sexy – cha-ching – but Dang, if it wasn’t a beautiful beast, she thought to herself. She turned to her little pride and joy of a car – A 2001 electric blue Honda Prelude. Okay, so there is no comparison but it was the last year that Honda made a Prelude, she thought proudly.
She popped the trunk to get the groceries out and remembered the day when she came home with the car. So proud of herself – her first brand new car. She was beaming when her dad had inspected it, kicking the tires and looking under the hood. “It’s kind of...purple,” he’d said.
Insulted, she retorted, “No Dad, it’s Electric Blue.”
His eyebrows went up. ”Hmmm, why did you get a stick shift?”
“I don’t know, Dad! I guess I just like having something to do with my feet and my right hand while I’m driving,” she said, defensively, as she rolled her eyes in annoyance.
Nodding, he said, “It’s nice.” That was the seal of approval. He was an engineer and never seemed to get too excited about anything. ‘It’s nice,’ was the best she was ever going to get from him. Though he never said it out loud, her mother told her later that he was as proud as any dad could be. He’d gone to work, bragging to all the other guys how his little girl bought her very own “brand new sports car” without any help from him.
With that thought in her mind and a proud smile on her face, she grabbed the groceries and went inside. She put all the groceries away and changed the kitty box. She headed for the bedroom and put the clothes she was going to wear for the “tryst,” on the bed next to Harry. He was presently sleeping on his back, belly exposed and head on the pillow. She looked at the clock – it was only 4:05 pm – what was she going to do for the next 3 hours? She lay on the bed next to Harry and rubbed his belly.
The doorbell rang, waking her. She looked at the clock and the time was 6:30 pm. She must have fallen asleep. Harry jumped off the bed, disgruntled by the disturbance and Darby got up and headed for the front door. Halfway to the door, she rubbed her eyes and suddenly it occurred to her, Oh no, I bet I have bed head. She ran both hands through her hair in an attempt to comb any crazy looking strays into obedience before opening the door. The doorbell rang again. I’m coming, I’m coming, she thought.
She opened the door to find a nervous looking Devon. She was a bit confused but said, “Hi, I’m sor
ry I fell asleep. You’re a little bit early but if you want to come in...”
He interrupted her, “I’m so sorry, Darby. I’m going to have to cancel our date.”
“Oh. Okay. Is everything okay?”
“Ummmm, well there’s been an emergency. A friend of ours needs our help and well… I just… well, we need to go right away. Can I take a rain check on that date?”
“Yea. No problem – another time then,” she said trying not to sound too disappointed. But like anyone in the same position, she thought of about a hundred other reasons why he was really canceling. After all, the excuse didn’t sound very convincing. Then again, they’d only had one evening together; it’s not like they were joined at the hip.
As she pondered all this, Devon’s expression looked as though he was listening to her thoughts. He was obviously very uncomfortable with lying and he did it rather badly. He said, “I’ll call you when it’s sa.., I mean, when I get back to make arrangements. Can you write your phone number down for me?”
“Oh, sure!” She walked to the table where the answering machine sat and picked up a pen and a notepad and jotted down her cell and her home phone. “Here you go. I hope everything is okay with your friend.”
“My what? Oh right, our friend. Yes. I’m sure everything will be fine. Blake and I will just be gone a few days. Again, Darby, I’m so sorry. I hope you didn’t go to any great trouble.”
“Me? Phhhht! Naw! No big deal. Don’t worry about me. Harry will keep me company,” she chuckled just as Harry sprinted out the front door and into a bush across the street. Great! Make me look bad why don’t you, she thought. “Okay, so I guess I’ll see you around; have a safe trip.”
“Goodnight, Darby,” Devon said, and he was gone. She shut the door and sat down on the couch. Saturday night all alone, not even the cat wants to hang out with me. At least I’ve got a movie to watch.
About ten minutes after their goodbye, she heard the sexy car leave the driveway next door. Wow, he wasn’t kidding. Hope he’s not running as fast as he can away from me. With that she took some Ben and Jerry’s Cherry Garcia out of the freezer, grabbed a spoon and the movie, and went to her room.