Chapter Sixteen
The underground community of Ţărână
6:33 P.M.
Charlize gave the Bolognese sauce bubbling on the stove a light stir and checked the linguine boiling in the stock pot. She was going Italian at the restaurant tonight, and everything was looking ready for the doors to open for the dinner crowd at seven o’clock, just half an hour away.
Her assistants bustled behind her, rolling out fresh dough for the mini pizzas.
Marissa strode into the restaurant, a clipboard tucked under her arm, her daughter, Maylie, propped on the other hip. “Last night’s opening was a smash success,” she announced, smiling brightly. “You ready for a repeat performance tonight?”
“You bet.” Charlize returned her friend’s smile.
Marissa had been a saving grace during Charlize’s first month out in the community, making sure Charlize was introduced around to new people and got involved. Her life was pretty good because of that. She had friends, a rewarding career, shared hobbies.
Just no man.
And no sex.
Yeah, her, every guy’s wet dream, was living the life of a nun. She’d never been so lonely for a man in her life, and, frankly, she was doing a damned poor job of dealing with it. Who the hell was she if she wasn’t big, bold, bawdy Charlize who could fuck whoever she wanted, whenever she wanted? She gave the sauce another stir, more vigorous this time. See? She didn’t even know who she was anymore…what kind of way was that to deal?
Maybe she should join a mah-jongg group. No, she should take up knitting, then she could sew her vagina shut, useless thing.
Masturbating to her heart’s content wasn’t working. Those orgasms were minus the warmth, smell, and feel of a strong male body, and in the long run did little to lessen her stress and nothing at all to relieve the loneliness. At this point, she was so desperate to heat up her sheets, she was actually considering—considering—hooking up with her only option. The major hold up, of course, being that she couldn’t just make Breen her fuck buddy like she wanted. She’d have to try and have a relationship with him, and, barf.
Although…
Breen was a good guy, right? Whenever they’d run into each other, he was always completely and absolutely nice to her. He never uttered a single word of complaint about her refusing to be with him, even though a mate’s rejection was incredibly brutal for a bonded male to take—she was coming to understand this as she learned more about Vârcolac culture. She kept waiting for him to trip up, drop the nice guy con-job, and lay into her with all the resentment he had to be feeling. But so far…he just continued to surprise her by being steadfastly quiet.
Did that make him a kabocha squash?
She was starting to think no.
During her brief encounters with him, she’d come to discover that his minimal responses actually conveyed a lot. He wasn’t unemotional. He just expressed things several layers down. When he got on the elevator at the same time as she did, he would look at her with deep curiosity stirring in the depths of his pupils. Nothing prying. Just a desire to know her better. When he carried her bags into her apartment, he paused to look at her for a long moment, the intensity in his eyes speaking of how much more he wanted to do—provide for her, protect her, be her man. After he fed from her, he was at his most intense, staring at her with dark, sensual eyes, his lips parted, a warm tension rolling off him. The soul-level, particle-deep wanting would be back…and that’s what always threw her.
It reminded her that there can be no halfway within the bonded relationship.
But all the way could only end badly. If she went all the way and threw in her heart all the way, she’d just end up getting hurt. Breen being a vampire was supposed to—hypothetically—make him different. His physical bond to her, according to the almighty manual, created some kind of a special closeness between them. But she just couldn’t believe it all the way. She was unable to push past her deeply held belief that all men were really the same, vampire or not, biological bond notwithstanding. At their core, men were insecure—oh, the famous fragile male ego—and so unreliable.
And unreliable equaled a bad end.
Caring for people hurt, and she was done being hurt. Period. Done.
She cleared her throat, dislodging the sudden lump there, and told Marissa the restaurant was reserved solid from opening to closing.
“No surprise.” Marissa beamed, then added, “By the way, I’m putting in a supply order with the Travelers.” She waved the clipboard. “So I need to know if you want anything.”
“How fresh can you get fish?” Charlize was eager to try some nouveau American cuisine. “And I’m talking, off the docks fresh.”
“I can probably arrange that. Here—” Marissa held out her daughter to Charlize. “Take Maylie for a sec.”
“Uh…” But apparently the sight of a slobbery pudge-face and the puppies-made-out-of-rainbows smell of a baby had the power to bring latent maternal seedlings out of dormancy even in Charlize. She took the kid and naturally propped her on a hip. The lump in her throat returned with a vengeance. She hadn’t held a little girl since her sister was young.
Marissa scribbled notes on the clipboard paper.
Charlize gazed into Maylie’s long-lashed silver eyes. “Hi,” she said.
The one syllable greeting produced a toothless grin on the baby that fireworked a burst of sunshine in Charlize’s chest and, oddly, also made her feel like she needed to pee. Probably just the inner workings of her nethers becoming confused over the sudden rush of maternal warmth down there. She’d never thought about having a baby of her own. But then, she’d never really figured she deserved one, not after…
Charlize stomped her foot on the nasty grub of a memory that was trying to dig its way up and out.
“Okay.” Marissa finished her notes. “So I’ve put you down for—”
Jacken pushed inside the restaurant.
Charlize automatically took a step back.
A large man with rocks for fists, Jacken was the type of guy who seemed to have baggage hanging from meathooks in the dark closets of his mind. Even in one of Charlize’s vilest moods for rough ‘n’ nasty sex, she would never have gone for a man like Jacken. She had a completely adequate supply of her own baggage—thanks, Mom! Although she could bend enough to give him major brownie points for having a great bod.
Marissa didn’t look glad to see him either. She pointedly checked her wristwatch. “It’s dawn topside.”
“Yes,” he said.
Marissa set down the pen on top of the clipboard, her movements deliberate. “Dev always texts me as soon as he’s on the elevator platform heading home. I haven’t received any messages from him, and now you’re here.” She held Jacken’s gaze for a long beat. “The team didn’t make it back, did they?”
“No.”
Marissa crossed her arms. “What else?”
A muscle moved back and forth in Jacken’s jaw. “They never showed in the topside safe house, and we lost the signal on their tracking devices.”
“All the signals?”
“Yes.”
Marissa’s throat bobbed.
Charlize looked between Marissa and Jacken. She wasn’t exactly sure what was going on.
“I’m sending up Wilson and Ty to search for the men now,” Jacken said. “I don’t want to wait till sunset for answers.”
Wilson and Ty were two Dragon males who’d given up their work as topside cops to live down in the community with their Vârcolac mates. Charlize forgot what their main jobs were down here, but they helped out the warriors with security issues up top during daylight hours when needed.
“Okay,” Marissa said quietly. “Have you told Chelsea and Pandra?”
“Yes. As soon as I know something more, you wives will.” Jacken paused. “Sorry.” He left.
Whey-faced, Marissa turned toward Charlize. “Are you okay?” she asked in a scratchy voice. “Do you want to close the restaurant tonight?”
Close the restaurant? “I…” Charlize floundered. She didn’t know what to do. Or think. Or feel. “I’m not sure. What did all that mean?”
“Well.” Marissa cleared her throat. “Maybe the team simply didn’t have time to get to the safe house, so they’re shut up somewhere else…someplace where their tracking devices don’t work. This could all be nothing.”
“Okay.”
“In fact, it is nothing.” Marissa conjured up a brave smile. It was pretty sad, how fake it was. “You should keep the restaurant open.”
“Okay.”
Little Maylie patted Charlize’s cheek and said, “Maaaaaa.”
Marissa reached for her daughter.
It was one of the hardest things Charlize ever had to do, but she gave back the kid.
By the restaurant’s closing time, Wilson and Ty had returned from the topside Lakeside house, reporting on evidence they found indicating the Spec Ops Team’s presence there: earpieces, microphones, and cells had been left in a crushed pile in the middle of a living room floor.
The situation was no longer being considered as possibly nothing.
In apartment 4B, Charlize stood in front of the large plate glass window in her living room and stared down at the Water Cliffs. Now at midnight, the upper pools were dark and still, their glassy surfaces reflecting the ferns and palms above them, but the large, ground-level pool was tinted with colored lights.
Charlize watched as green faded and blue took over. A moment later lavender appeared.
Her chest felt shredded from tiny piranha teeth of panicky worry nibbling steadily at her heart. Her husband-who-wasn’t-really-a-husband was missing and probably for a very bad reason.
Charlize slammed her eyes shut. Damn her. Was she learning impaired or something? Because, really, how many times did life need to bash her over the head for her to get it?
People let you down.
No one ever did what they said they were going to do.
It didn’t matter if people fouled up because of doing some man thing or the special closeness turned out to be a big lie. Whatever the reason, if people said they were going to stick around, they didn’t. They walked out the door on a mission, then didn’t come back. They took off on a bender and didn’t return for three days. They ran out into the street, then didn’t come back, ever.
This was exactly why relationships were a pot of piss. Stress. Charlize wrapped her arms around her waist, hugging herself. Fuck it. Let ’em all not come back. See if I care.
Below her, the pool bloomed red. Like blood.
Her spine pulled taut as a rubber band stretched toward snapping. Blood so red it looks black painting the grill… The nightmare that stalked her. She put a hand over her eyes, blocking out the view. No more.
No more caring. No more hurt.
No more thinking about the nice guy with a chip in his fang.