by Lynsay Sands
“When will the divorce be final?” he asked. So far everything Marguerite had said was true, but . . .
“Two weeks,” Nicole answered stiffly and then corrected herself, saying, “Actually, thirteen days now.”
“And counting?” he suggested. “I don’t know whether to say congratulations or not. I doubt in your childhood dreams you fantasized that some day you’d marry your prince and divorce his ass as quickly as possible.”
His words startled a laugh out of her and Nicole shook her head, her body losing much of its tension for real this time. “No,” she agreed. “That was never in my agenda.”
Jake nodded and peered out the window again, trying to figure out how to ask about the furnace, the blocked doors, the gas grill and the fireplace. It was trickier to ask about. It wasn’t like he could say, “So have any near explosions lately?”
“Have you been married?”
He glanced to her with surprise at the question and shook his head. “No.” Jake glanced out the window again and then admitted, “I got close once, though.”
“What happened?” she asked curiously.
“My family,” he muttered.
“Your family?” she prompted.
“Yeah,” he said, thinking back to that time. He almost stopped talking then, but realized that his situation wasn’t all that dissimilar to her marriage and admitted: “My family has trouble with boundaries. They were concerned and . . . looked into things.” They’d looked into her mind, but he could hardly say that. On the other hand, Jake didn’t want to flat-out lie to her if she was a possible life mate. It didn’t seem a healthy way to start. Sighing, he said, “And through their looking into her, they found she was more interested in my money than me.”
Jake sensed Nicole glancing sharply toward him, but continued to look out the window and simply waited.
“Really?” she asked finally as she braked at a stop sign, and he heard the suspicion in her voice.
“Really,” Jake assured her solemnly, turning to meet her gaze. “She’d already taken two men for their money; one in a palimony suit, one in a divorce. I was to be victim three.”
“But your family saved you from that,” Nicole said quietly and shifted her attention back to the road. As she turned onto the cross street, she said, “You’re lucky.”
Jake frowned at the soft words and admitted wryly, “I’m afraid I didn’t see it that way at the time. I was just pissed at their interference when they confronted her and sent her on her way.”
“Why?” she asked with surprise.
Jake shrugged. “I was in love . . . and sure that it was different with me, that she loved me and they misunderstood what had happened in the first two relationships.” He grimaced and glanced to her to admit, “I was young and foolish then I guess.”
For some reason his words made her laugh. Raising his eyebrows, he asked, “What?”
“Jake,” she said on a laugh, “I know Marguerite said you’re older than you look, but you look twenty-five. How old were you then when you were so much younger? Sixteen?”
He smiled crookedly, remembering only then that he looked much younger than his fifty-eight years. Well, that was a fly in the ointment, wasn’t it? She now probably thought she was older than him. Certainly, she’d addressed him just then with the condescension of someone who thought they were older if only by a year or so.
“Well,” Nicole said now. “You’re very lucky your family intervened. It saved you a lot of heartache.”
“Oh, I still got the heartache,” Jake said dryly, recalling that time in his life. He’d been thirty-eight and the advanced age hadn’t made the heartache any easier to handle, and he suspected that heartache was the reason he’d never let anyone close again. Shrugging that aside for now, he said, “What they saved was my bank balance.”
Nicole smiled slightly and shrugged. “Well at least that insult wasn’t added to the injury.”
“That sounds like the voice of experience,” he said mildly, hoping to get her to tell him about the incidents Marguerite had told him about.
“Yeah. Loads of it,” she said, and then shrugged as if shaking off a bad cloak and said more cheerfully, “On the bright side, I had enough sense to go for counseling so I don’t wind up a nasty and bitter man-hating divorcee.”
“True,” Jake agreed. “I gather in divorce one partner or the other often goes crazy and does stupid things.”
“That’s what the gas guy said,” she said, her mouth tipping at the edges.
“The gas guy?” he asked.
“Yeah, I had a little trouble with the gas grill when I first moved back.” She shrugged and added, “And the furnace, and the fireplace and the doors.” Nicole grimaced and waved those worries away. “I had a run of bad luck for a bit, but it’s all good now.”
“Right,” Jake said quietly, pretty sure that Marguerite had told him the truth about her near misses after all. So, Nicole was in danger and did need looking out for, and she was a possible life mate for him as well, which was no doubt why Marguerite had put him on the job. Who better to look out for his possible life mate than himself, right?
Jake peered at her solemnly. Short, voluptuous, pretty with a nice smile, big brown eyes and long blond hair. Obviously, her father wasn’t Italian. Not with that long golden hair and the last name Phillips. He knew for sure the mother was Italian, though. She was the sister of Marguerite’s cook/housekeeper, Maria.
God, more Italians to deal with, he thought with dismay. As if the Nottes weren’t enough. Of course, he was a fine one to talk. His grandfather had been full-blooded Italian. It’s where his parents had got the name Stephano. His father had been very close to his father and had named him after the old man. His middle name, Jacob, came from his mother’s grandfather.
“You’re staring at me again.”
Jake blinked at that comment from Nicole and glanced away. “Sorry. I wasn’t really staring. I mean, I might have been looking at you, but I wasn’t really seeing you. I was thinking of my family and that I have Italian in my background too.”
“Do you?” she asked with surprise.
“Yes. It’s where I got my name.”
Nicole raised her eyebrows at that. “Forgive me, but Jake Colson doesn’t sound very Italian.”
“Oh, no, well, Jacob is my middle name. My full name is Stephano Jacob Colson Notte,” he admitted reluctantly.
“Really?” she asked with interest. “So how come you go by your middle names instead of Stephano Notte?”
Jake hesitated and then said, “Rebellion I guess. My family intervened one too many times and I rebelled and rejected any connection with them in response.” He frowned and admitted, “I guess it wasn’t a very mature response. It wasn’t like what happened was their fault, but I blamed them. I also didn’t want to be anything like them. Notte was my stepfather’s name. I reverted to my father’s last name and my middle name and—”
Realizing what he was saying, Jake caught himself and closed his mouth. He had never wanted to be immortal. He’d told himself that he didn’t want to be turned because being mortal was better. He could run around in the sun and go swimming in the daylight and attend a normal school with other kids. He’d never wanted to be a bloodsucking, brainwashing vampire. But after finding him dying on the office floor, his boss, Vincent, in a really very selfless move, had given up his one turn to save Jake’s life. Four days later he’d woken up an immortal . . . not by his own choice.
Jake hadn’t reacted well on finding out he’d been turned. He’d been furious to have his life turned upside down that way. He’d also been furious because suddenly his family was tiptoeing around and gently trying to offer him assistance afterward. Jake hadn’t wanted that help, or perhaps it was more correct to say he hadn’t wanted to need that help. Jake had always known who he was and what he’d wanted, and suddenly he’d been as lost as a boy, needing to be taught how to feed, how to control his hunger, how to read and control mortals, the best
techniques for living with as little exposure to sun as possible, how, how, how. Jake had felt like a cripple, someone with a mental deficit . . . and he hadn’t liked it. So, basically he’d reacted like a teenage boy, and—
“Ran away?” Nicole suggested and when he glanced at her sharply, half suspecting she’d read him, she said, “You changed your name and ran away here to Ottawa to punish them, maybe.”
She was right, of course. He’d changed his name and run away from his home and his family like a kid. Wow . . . he was such an ass, Jake realized suddenly and shook his head.
“We all act like idiots at times,” Nicole said quietly. “We’re human. We have emotions and those are sticky and confusing and rarely logical so we do stupid things.” She shrugged, and turned off the car. “Welcome to the human race. You’ll make many more mistakes before your life is done. Accept it, deal with it, and move on.”
Jake stared at her blankly until he realized she was undoing her seat belt.
“What are you doing?” he asked, glancing around with a frown.
“Going into the bank. Do you want me to leave my key here so you can turn the engine back on and have the heat?”
“No.” He undid his own seat belt. “I could use a short walk to stretch my legs. I’ll come with you.”
She shrugged and opened her door to get out and Jake quickly did the same on his side. He scanned the parking lot as he walked around to meet her at the front of the vehicle and walked her inside, but didn’t see anyone. Inside, he settled in one of the chairs where he could keep an eye on her as well as the parking lot outside while he waited. A lot of his job was watching and waiting. The bodyguard job, not the cook/housekeeper job. Jake was finding this cover surprisingly challenging. His mother might think he was a good cook, but she was a mother and as such was delusional when it came to her sons. He suspected most mothers were.
As far as Elaine Notte was concerned, he and Neil practically walked on water, or could if they wished. However, if today had done anything, it had proved to Jake that he couldn’t cook worth a damn. He’d stayed up all night, silently prowling the house and repeatedly checking on Nicole as she worked. When she’d moved through the dark house to seek out her bed just before seven that morning, Jake had retreated to the shadows, seeing her but not being seen. Once she was safely in her room he’d then gone to the kitchen to consider what to make for brunch for the two ladies when they got up.
Jake had made pancakes, intending to keep them warming in the oven until the gals got up, only to throw them out when they came out looking like Cajun pancakes. He had never been served pancakes as black as the ones he’d produced. And he’d destroyed one of Nicole’s frying pans in the effort.
He’d followed up that effort with French toast . . . with the same results.
Omelets had been his third effort, but they had been a sort of congealed mess: half raw, half blackened, and wholly crunchy from the eggshells that had somehow made their way into the mix.
Marguerite had come out as he was inspecting that effort, his clothes covered with everything from flour to eggs, and his face wreathed with disappointment, and had taken pity on him. She was the real person behind the lovely, fluffy, perfect omelets they’d had that morning. She’d called a local restaurant and had them delivered. Marguerite apparently couldn’t cook worth a damn either. But then the last time she’d cooked had been in medieval days. She’d only recently returned to eating and had a cook/housekeeper to manage the cooking.
Five minutes after Marguerite had left for the airport and Nicole had gone down to her studio, the doorbell had rung. Jake had rushed to answer it, expecting it to be Cody and his boys to handle the security system, but instead it had been a courier with a delivery. Jake had signed for it, surprised to find his name on the package. He’d taken it upstairs to find that it contained three cookbooks. Cooking for Dummies was the first book. The titles did not get more encouraging after that.
After greeting Cody and his men and showing them around, Jake had left them to work with the admonition not to bother Nicole in the studio and had retired to the kitchen to go through the books looking for something to make for supper. Something easy that he couldn’t burn or completely destroy. He’d been on his third and most successful effort, the peppercorn steak sauce, when Nicole’s scream had drawn him downstairs. He’d been just finishing it off when she’d come up and announced she was going out.
As her bodyguard Jake had to go with her, but there was another reason. He’d pretty much emptied her refrigerator and freezer with his failed attempts at cooking that morning and afternoon. He had to replace the food, or explain where it had all gone. But that was going to be tricky shopping with her. How the devil was he supposed to explain that he was picking up a carton of eggs when she’d had a full carton that morning? Never mind the onions, cheese, and various other foods he’d run through.
Jake contemplated the matter briefly as he watched Nicole slowly make her way toward the front of the bank line, and then suddenly pulled out his phone and punched in a number.
“Dan?” he said a minute later when his call was answered.
“Yeah buddy. This you, Jake?”
“Yeah, listen, Hank gave you a couple days off, right?”
“Of course. He always gives us time off between gigs.”
“Yes, he does,” Jake agreed, and then asked, “How would you like to make a couple hundred bucks for an hour or two of easy work? Maybe only an hour,” he added.
“I’m listening,” Dan said with interest.
Jake glanced toward the line to see that Nicole still had a long wait ahead of her. For once in his life he was grateful rather than annoyed that banks never had enough tellers. Turning his attention back to the phone, he said, “Okay, here’s the situation . . .”
Nicole gazed over the pest control section with pursed lips. Her choice was catch-and-release traps or sonar. There were other options, but she just couldn’t bring herself to deal with killing the poor little buggers. On the other hand, catching and releasing them outside so that they could run back into her house the first time she opened the garage door didn’t seem that sensible, so the only real option appeared to be the sonar repellent thingies. She peered at the containers, reading the promises on them and then tossed several in the shopping cart with a shrug. She hoped they worked. She didn’t want Jake quitting because of mice in her house.
That thought made her think of the man and she smiled faintly as she recalled his suggesting she go get her other tasks done and perhaps have a cup of coffee while he managed the shopping. Nicole had been trying to think of a way to make the same suggestion so that she could come get mousetraps without him. His suggesting it had worked even better. She’d handed him the cash she’d taken out at the bank and left him at the grocery store to come next door to the Canadian Tire.
Nicole tossed several more of the sonar things in the cart and then wheeled away to explore the rest of the store. She didn’t really need anything, but she had time to kill after all, so rolled up and down the aisles, looking at this and that and buying things she didn’t really need but that looked interesting or useful. When she got to the till and watched the items rolling up the conveyor belt toward the cashier, she had to wonder if they didn’t have some sort of subliminal persuasion on some of the signs in the store. Certainly, she seemed to have a lot of stuff there and she wasn’t sure why she’d grabbed half of it.
Once through the checkout, Nicole returned her cart and headed outside with her bags, surprised to find it was dark again. She glanced at her wristwatch, grimacing when she saw that she’d been in the store browsing for an hour. It was just after 4:30, but the sun set early in late November. Nicole hated that. It had just been making an appearance when she’d gone to bed just before seven that morning and now it was already setting. It felt like there was no daylight at all this time of year. But then she supposed it would help if she didn’t sleep through it.
Nicole didn’t at first see t
he car. It seemed to come out of nowhere as she crossed the parking lot. One moment there was nothing, and the next, bright lights were glaring at her from a car roaring toward her. She never would have got out of the way in time. Even as she realized that, something hit her from behind and nearly knocked her right out of her boots.
Nicole landed several feet away on the snowy pavement, grunting when something heavy landed on her back, and then gasping when she was pulled into a bumpy roll, her back riding over something bulky before she was rolled facedown on the ground again with that bulkiness covering her once more. The move got her a good distance away from the car that swept past without slowing.
“Are you okay?”
She heard the question, but was so stunned by the speed and violence of what had happened that Nicole was slow to respond. In the end, all she could manage was a weak nod as she tried to catch the breath that had been knocked out of her. The warm body above and behind her moved away and Nicole eased to her hands and knees on the cold hard pavement, realizing that her wrists were still through shopping bag handles when the action dragged them across the cold ground. She wheezed a breathless thank-you when someone caught her under the arms and lifted her to her feet like a child.
“Deep breaths,” the unfamiliar voice said. “I probably knocked the wind out of you. Sorry.”
Nicole released a breathless laugh and shook her head. He was apologizing for saving her life.
“Thank you,” she gasped finally, managing to straighten fully. She glanced to the man who had helped her, noting fair hair and a concerned smile. She managed a crooked smile in response and said, “Really. Thank you. I thought I was a goner.”
“You nearly were,” he said, his smile fading. His gaze shifted to search the parking lot.
Still struggling for breath, Nicole followed his gaze. The lot was as empty and still as it had been when she’d come out of the store. They were the only two people in the parking lot at the moment. There wasn’t even a car light to be seen, and the car that had nearly mown her down was either gone, or had parked and shut its lights off to blend in with the others.