Chapter Twelve
Ramsey wandered upstairs to a familiar scene, Nadine sitting on the island stool, watching Marcos as he made dinner for her. While she waited she tinkered with a cell phone, her head down and face scrunched in determination.
“What’s up, boss?” She kept her nose in her phone, not sparing him a glance.
He grunted his response.
Marcos opened the stove and pulled out a glass pan. From the smell he assumed lasagna. “I trust you slept well, sir?”
“It’s so crazy that you call your grandfather, ‘sir’,” Nadine said with a snort.
“When I was growing up it was respectable to call one’s elders—even a father or grandfather—‘sir’. Besides, saying, ‘I trust you slept well, great-great,-great,-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great—”
“Oh, geez. Stop it already. I get your point.”
“…would be very tedious,” Marcos added.
“I seem to always wake up just in time for the important conversations,” Ramsey grumbled. Mewlissa meowed and wound her way through his legs. He lifted his foot to rub her stomach. When would the stupid cat learn not to approach him while people were around?
Marcos cut into the lasagna with a spatula and placed a hefty portion on a plate. “Grandmother called,” he said nonchalantly. “She said that you visited her last night.” He slid the plate in front of Nadine.
Nadine looked up long enough to thank him, but went back to messing with her phone. Ramsey didn’t understand the gadgets. They seemed to change and get smaller with each passing year. One day he guessed that the communication devices would be small chips implanted in humans’ ears.
“I don’t know why you talk to her.”
“Because she’s my grandmother, and family means a lot to her.”
Ramsey let out a snort. If family meant so much to her she wouldn’t have abandoned their children, but he kept that to himself. “Don’t visit her anytime soon unless you want to spend eternity drinking blood. The poison that she took a long time ago addled her brain. She isn’t right in the head, and you know it.”
He put another portion of lasagna on a fresh plate. “Angelina knows how I feel about that, and she respects my wishes.” Ramsey glared at Marcos, and Marcos met his eyes then sighed. “I’ll cancel the dinner date that I had planned with her for this evening.”
“That would be wise.” Ramsey started through the kitchen. He didn’t know why he got up tonight. Maybe he would stay in his pajamas all night and watch television? He’d seen Nadine do that plenty of times when she “wasn’t feeling it today”.
“Oh, Ramsey,” Nadine said with a mouthful of food. “You had a visitor today.” She scooped another forkful of food in her mouth.
He stopped and watched her. When she just stared at him and chewed slowly as if he could now read her mind, he raised an eyebrow. “And?”
“Danya Evans. Pretty name.”
He kept his face impassive. He didn’t want anyone to see the emotions flickering inside of him. He’d woken up knowing that she was back home and resuming her life without him already. The thought had left him sick and empty. He knew that her visit was short-lived and they both would go on living without ever seeing the other again, but he hadn’t expected it to hit him as hard as it did.
It’d been a blow. Not only hadn’t he gotten the chance to tell her goodbye, he’d sent her away. The look of hurt on her face when he’d told her to leave was the first thing he saw when he closed his eyes to sleep and before he opened them this evening.
“What did she want?”
Nadine kept her eyes on him, judging his reaction with a hawk-like mentality of a nosey kid. “She didn’t say, but I think she wanted to give you her digits or something.” Nadine shrugged. “She seemed really flustered. Don’t know why.” She pushed her cell phone toward him. “But you’re welcome.”
He wanted to ask what ‘digits’ meant, but Nadine would only rub his ignorance in. He would ask Marcos later. “And why am I thanking you, Nadine?”
She nodded toward the phone and he swiped it off the counter. On the screen was a contacts page with seven names listed: Angelina, Celine, Danya, Krista, Marcos, Nadine, and Vallus. “What is this?”
She giggled. “It’s your new cell phone. Welcome to the twenty-first century!”
He handed it back to her, but she pushed the phone away and shook her head. “Naw, it’s about time you got a cell phone. You have a psychic link with Marcos because he shares your blood, but if I want to get in touch with you I have to call Marcos and he has to do some Vulcan mind-link thing to reach you. It’s a pain.”
“You can contact me, too.”
She dropped her fork in surprise. “Wait. What?”
He nodded toward Marcos. “The same way that he does.”
She spun the chair around to face him. “Shut the front door! Do you mean that I have the same mind abilities that you and Marcos have?”
Oh, he was probably going to pay dearly for this later. Ramsey nodded anyway.
Nadine glared at Marcos, and he shook his finger at her. “Don’t get upset with me. I wanted to tell you a long time ago, but Ramsey forbade it.”
She turned her ire on Ramsey. “Why? Do you know how many times I wanted to contact you and didn’t because I didn’t want to disturb Marcos?”
He gave her a flat look. “So you didn’t want to disturb Marcos, but you wanted to disturb me?”
She lifted a shoulder. “Marcos doesn’t follow The Bachelor.”
Ramsey threw up his hands. “And neither do I!”
Nadine grumbled under her breath. “But we watched it that one time and I was hoping to get you hooked so that we could talk about it together.”
“Exactly why I didn’t tell you about our link before,” he pointed out.
She humphed and crossed her arms. “I have a good mind not to show you how to use your cell phone now. Here I was trying to do something nice for you by putting on appropriate going-to-the-mall clothes.” She swiped a hand down her outfit. Black jeans, black cut-up t-shirt, and biker boots. “Just so that you could keep in touch with your lady friend, who by the way is quite the moaner. I had to stick cotton in my ears just to get a few hours of sleep.”
“Oh, my,” Marcos fussed. “I’m so glad that my hearing isn’t what it used to be.”
Nadine held up her hands and spread her fingers. “Marcos, it was, like, super loud.”
Ramsey really hadn’t taken anyone hearing them into consideration. The last time he’d brought a woman home neither Marcos nor Nadine had been born yet, and he’d been living by himself. “Nadine,” he warned her.
“But getting back to my point.” She motioned to the phone that Ramsey cradled in his hand, too afraid that if he gripped it hard that he would crush it. “I haven’t seen you happy in well, like, forever, and I thought that you would want to stay in touch with her.”
Nadine was a pest. But a pest he enjoyed having around. Wait. He frowned. “I’m happy. Sometimes.”
Marcos choked, and Nadine tilted her head to the side.
He was happy. Wasn’t he?
Not really. He’d been constantly thinking about his own mortality and Marcos for the last sixty years so maybe he hadn’t been in such a good mood lately.
Ramsey looked at the phone and ran his finger across Dani’s name. When he did another screen popped up showing her picture, phone number, and address. “How did you get all of this?”
“Social media.” Nadine took another bite of her food. “Oh! I made you a Friend Book profile. You can stalk her online if you want.”
Ramsey let out a snort. “I have no idea what that is, and I’m sure that I don’t want to either. Besides, I don’t want to stalk her. She’s gone her way, and I’ll go mine. My world is too dangerous for her anyway.” But even as he spoke, he ran his finger over her picture and stared. In the picture her head was back in mid-laugh. Who had she been with? Who’d taken the picture? A lover? A grumble of jealousy passed through him.
Nadine pointed her fork at him. “But yet you brought me into your world.”
“Correction. Marcos brought you into it.”
“At the time I believed living with us was a lot safer than you staying on the street.” He raised his chin. “That was my decision, and I’m sticking to it.”
“Thank you, Marcos.” Nadine reached across the island and patted his hand. Despite their age difference the two had a bond that couldn’t be denied. Marcos had long given up the idea of having children of his own, but with Nadine he had treated her as if she were his own. Marcos would be devastated if something happened to her.
Then he remembered Angelina and her flunkies. “Nadine, as a matter of fact, don’t leave the property for the next couple of days.”
She dropped her fork with a clang—again. “What?” Her voice raised in outrage. “You can’t be serious. I was going to a party tonight.”
Ramsey shook his head. “You were targeted last night. Until the threat has passed you have to stay on the property.”
Angelina may have given him access to her house by letting him pass through the wards, but Ramsey did not reciprocate the feeling. His wards specifically targeted her and her fledglings.
Nadine turned her pleading to Marcos. “You have to help me out here.”
Marcos shook his head. “If Ramsey thinks you’re in danger, you can’t expect me to go against that. You can miss the party tonight. You’re still young.” He wiggled his fingers in her directions. “I’ve suddenly became psychic. Woo, I see many other parties in your future.”
Nadine rolled her eyes and dropped her head into her hand. “Ugh, and exactly what am I supposed to do here? Being stuck in the house isn’t fun at all.”
“I didn’t say that you had to stay in the house. Just on the property. You can go swimming, play tennis, play horseshoes. Or stay indoors and play on those videos games that you like so much.”
She pretended to gag. “Please don’t mention the swimming pool anymore. I saw and heard what you and your girlfriend were doing in that pool last night and can I just say, ugh. Chlorine does not kill all cooties.”
“Oh, my goodness,” Marcos said under his breath.
Ramsey held his arms in front of him, palms forward, as if he could block what she’d just said. This was definitely not the conversation he’d intended to have this evening. “Wait. You spied on us?”
“Spied! What? Seriously.” She started gagging again. “I was in my room. You know the one right above the pool? As soon as it started I couldn’t move fast enough. I was struggling to close my window, trying to block out all the sounds. I still heard enough to make me throw up in the back of my mouth. You’re, like, two thousand years old, my boss, and kinda like my brother, father, grandfather or whatever.” She had another fit of gags. “Like, ew.”
He stabbed his fingers through his hair. “The last time I checked this was my house. I can make love wherever I see fit.”
She squinted and pointed at him. “And must I remind you, mister, that you use that mouth of yours to drink blood from my wrist?” She shuddered and drive heaved. “Gr-oss.”
Ramsey rolled his eyes and held out his phone. “Just teach me how to use this thing.”
It had taken Nadine an hour to show him everything about the little gadget. Well, what he wanted to learn anyway. There was the social media app that Nadine had signed him up to and friend requested Dani. She had accepted within a few minutes, which made him happy because that meant she wasn’t mad at him for not saying goodbye. At the end of his session he had three friends: Nadine, Marcos, and Dani. Nadine had informed him that Vallus wasn’t on Friend Book so he couldn’t send him a request. Ramsey was more technologically advanced than Vallus was. That also made him happy. He wasn’t the last vampire living in a different era.
Ramsey had one friend request waiting for his response. It was from Angelina. He’d ignored that one. He didn’t have any more time for Angelina. He was too busy going through Dani’s pictures and posts. Nadine had called that stalking. He called it recognizance.
Dani had posted pictures of her trip to New Orleans … with no mention of him. He went through all her posts. Pictures from Bourbon Street. Scroll. Pictures from the Aquarium. He downloaded one of her kissing the glass where a stingray so happened to be stuck to on the other side. Pictures of the swamp tour. Scroll. She’d been tagged in a picture of the three of them eating at Drenda’s. He saved that one, too.
Her status was single. Luckily. What would he have done if he’d found that she was taken? Probably found her boyfriend and liberated his soul from his body. Nadine did warn him that people change relationship status like they change their jeans. He would check it again tomorrow night.
Ramsey then perused through all her personal history, wondering why anyone would want all of their business out there. It took him thirty minutes to find out more information about her than she’d told him over the course of two days.
She was single. (And she’d better stay that way.)
Her mother had died when Bride was a baby. (That must’ve been sad for her to lose a parent so young.)
Her father was a retired prison warden and loved to fish and camp. (He seemed happy in the pictures that she’d posted.)
Dani, Bride, and her dad seemed close. (There were a ton of pictures of them at various events. He’d download most of them.)
She had a small mutt that she’d rescued from the pound. (Her name was Libby. The dog was cute but not cuter than Mewlissa.)
She was close to her coworkers. (She had pictures of them at the hospital. Everyone was in scrubs. and she posted about them often.)
So much information, right for anyone to see. Baffling.
After he’d learned everything that he could about Dani, the only thing left to do was contact her.
But should he?
His world was dangerous.
Hell, he was dangerous.
All good sense told him to shut off the phone and give it back to Nadine. Well, maybe figure out how to print all the pictures that he’d downloaded, then give the phone to Nadine.
He lay on his bed, the same bed where he and Dani had made love the night before. He curled the sheet in his fist and brought it up to his nose and took in a deep breath. The smell of her essence filled his nose. It would be a miracle if the sheets ever got washed again. He didn’t want to remove the evidence of what they’d done from his life—not yet anyway.
Sometimes he didn’t have the sense that God gave him.
He found her contact information and opened up a text message. Nadine had given him a crash course in texting, making him practice with her first.
Hello
He waited. Maybe he should’ve put who the text was from?
Hello. This is Ramsey.
How many Ramseys did Dani know?
Hm.
His vision flashed red. He would kill every other Ramsey she knew.
This is Ramsey Moreau. From New Orleans.
Nadine showed him how to tell if she’d read the message and what it would look like as she typed her response.
Nothing.
After fifteen minutes of staring at the phone, he put it down. What if she didn’t want to have anything to do with him? After all, he was the one who’d left her in the street in the middle of the night.
Then the phone chimed. He scurried to retrieve it and read the message.
Hey.
You made it home safely?
As soon as he hit “send”, he wanted to take it back. Of course she’d made it home safe. Her Friend Book post specifically said, “Made it back to LA safe and sound.” He looked for a delete message button, but couldn’t find one. Too late. She already read it. Ugh, she probably thought he was an idiot.
Yeah, landed earlier.
He chewed on his lip, trying to think of something else to say. She started typing a new message. He waited for her to finish. Impatiently.
Soooo… did you handle whatever you needed to handle last night?
He winced.
Sorry about that. If I’d known that was going to happen I wouldn’t have had you with me. I shouldn’t have put your life in danger.
I was worried about you. I didn’t know if you were going to be okay.
Worried about me?
He chuckled to himself.
Those were newbies. They couldn’t do much to harm me.
Because you’re big, bad Ramsey?
A smile stretched across his face.
Exactly.
I stopped by your house on my way to the airport…
So I was told. It would’ve been nice to see you before you left and I apologize for not seeing you home safely.
Nadine told me you were sleep.
She gave me the message.
He waited for her response. His message was left on read, but she wasn’t typing. Three minutes went by. Should he wait for her to answer? He read his message again. There really wasn’t a need for her to reply. He tapped his leg with his free hand. What else could he say to her?
Marcos made his way down the hall and to his room. There was no mistaking who it was. Marcos had a slow heavy gait while Nadine’s was usually a flurry of movement.
Marcos would’ve liked to have said goodbye to you too.
Well, he hadn’t said anything about it, but Ramsey was sure that if he could’ve if he would’ve.
Who is Nadine? I mean, you don’t owe me an explanation or anything. But it was a little weird. If she’s your girlfriend it would’ve been nice to have a head’s up.
He frowned. What would’ve ever given her the idea that Nadine was his girlfriend of all things?
Nadine is a donor.
Writing that didn’t feel right.
She’s more than a donor actually. She’s a kid that Marcos brought home two years ago for us to take care of. I guess she’s family now.
Blood donor?
One of them.
Oh. I thought she was a girlfriend.
No.
Um, so do you have one?
A girlfriend?
Yeah.
I think I’m too old for girlfriends.
Okay, old man.
That’s not what you were calling me last night.
>blush<
Damn right.
So what’s on the agenda for tonight?
Nothing, but suffer through jet lag.
Do you want company?
I think I’m confused. From who?
Me.
I’m back in LA.
I’m well aware of that.
LOL. Sure.
What does LOL mean?
Laughing out loud.
Why?
Because I’m in LA and you’re in NOLA and you’re asking me if I want company like you can come here tonight. I’m almost two thousand miles away and it’s a three-hour flight.
I’ll be at your place in an hour. It that okay? I still have to shower.
Sure.
For real? You want to see me again?
Absolutely. Why would you think that I wouldn’t want to see you again?
Because of me your life was in danger.
You mean those two assholes? Pft. I wasn’t worried at all. I knew you would handle it.
His chest swelled with pride.
I won’t let anyone hurt you again, I promise. They know to stay away from you.
I know. And thanks.
I’ll be there in a little bit.
Do you need my address?
No. See you in an hour.