A Bite to Remember (13 page)

According to Bastien, the battle that had ensued had paralleled the American battle for independence in a way, but on a much smaller scale. In the end, the European council had just washed their hands of their people in the new world. They hadn’t really had a choice. They weren’t in the Americas to enforce their control.

Jackie steered the topic away from the councils and asked something she’d wondered about since arriving in California. “How much blood do you need a day?”

Vincent hesitated, then said, “Most go through three or four bags a day. Some need more. It varies.”

“And you?” she asked. “How many people do you bite a day?”

“Only one or two a day now.”

“Why do you need less blood?”

“It’s not that I need less, but…” He shrugged indifferently. “I only feed enough to get by.”

“Enough to get by,” Jackie echoed, recalling Tiny saying Marguerite thought Vincent had lost weight when she’d seen him in New York. Obviously, feeding “enough to get by” wasn’t enough. “Why?”

Vincent didn’t pretend not to understand what she was asking, but avoided her gaze as he said, “I’m beginning to find the hunt a terrible bother.”

“A bother?” Jackie asked with concern, positive this was bad.

“Everything seems to be a bother these days,” he admitted with dissatisfaction. “You were right. I didn’t eat before you and Tiny got here. I stopped eating about three hundred years ago. I shouldn’t have, because it helps in building my own blood and reduces the amount I need to feed, but having to eat food as well as hunt became a bother. Food became boring, and hardly worth the trouble.”

“Food became
boring
?” Jackie goggled at him, sure he was joking. She’d never imagined boredom was the reason vampires didn’t eat, and had difficulty believing it. How could anyone think food was boring?

Vincent chuckled at her reaction. “Yes.”

“So you all stop eating eventually because of
boredom
?”

He hesitated, then said, “Some stop eating and some don’t. My cousin Lucern was born two hundred years before me, during a time when size and strength were important. He was a warrior, large and muscular. It takes a lot to keep his muscle mass. He has always eaten as well as fed, and when he tires of eating, he continues to do so out of necessity, to keep his mass. On the other hand, my cousin Lissianna, as a woman, has no such concerns. When she tired of eating, she simply stopped…though, she has started eating again since meeting Gregory.”

“And you weren’t concerned about body mass?” Jackie asked.

Vincent grinned and held out his arms. “By the time I was born, skill was more important than strength in any battle one engaged in. We dueled with épées, or used pistols. I didn’t need the same muscle mass Lucern did to wield his great sword and have never desired to have it. So, when I grew tired of food, I simply stopped eating.”

Jackie tilted her head and eyed him. He made it sound like he was a skinny little guy, but he wasn’t. He wasn’t as muscle-bound as Schwarzenegger, but he had nice wide shoulders and a muscular physique all the same.

She shook her head. “I still find it hard to believe you could find food boring.”

Vincent chuckled at her expression. “Lots of things become boring after a couple hundred years.”

“Like what?”

Vincent raised his eyebrows. “What do you mean?”

“What else has become boring to you? What else have you stopped doing because it seems more trouble than it’s worth?” she explained.

“Sex.”

The answer startled her and Jackie felt herself blush in the darkness.

“Cat got your tongue?” Vincent teased when she remained silent.

“I don’t know what to say,” she admitted. “I guess I find that as surprising as that food could be boring.”

“Yeah.” He sighed. “I was pretty surprised myself. I used to enjoy sex a lot. I was good at it too.”

Jackie
really
didn’t know what to say to that. Vincent said it so nonchalantly, not bragging, just stating a fact like someone
else might say they were good at crosswords. It was hard not to believe it was true. On the other hand, she supposed all men thought they were good at sex, whether they were or not.

Growing tired from treading water, Jackie gave up her position in the center of the pool and swam to the edge a little way down from him. She held on to the side of the pool like he was doing to give her arms and legs a rest as they talked.

“Enough about me,” Vincent said suddenly. “I know your father started the detective agency. What about your mother? What did she do?”

“Mother died when I was four,” Jackie admitted. “I don’t recall much about her. She was a secretary in my father’s company before and after I was born.”

“So your father raised you?” When she nodded, Vincent asked, “So, were you a tomboy, or a girlie girl?”

Jackie smiled with amusement at the question, then blinked in surprise when he said, “I bet you were a tomboy.”

“Why?” she asked warily.

Vincent shrugged. “You were an only child, raised by your father and probably eager for his attention. That usually leads the girl to try to be the son he never had to gain his approval.”

Jackie scowled. She
had
been a tomboy, and she supposed she
had
tried to be the son he never had to gain her father’s attention and approval. Perhaps she was still doing so despite his being dead, trying to be the son he would have wanted.

“Come.” Vincent suddenly propelled himself up and out onto the tiles around the pool. Standing, he then bent to offer her a hand. “You’re starting to shiver; time to get out of the water.”

Jackie realized with surprise that he was right, she
was
shivering. Still, she almost refused his hand, but then sighed and reached up. Vincent caught her fingers and suddenly she was standing dripping wet on the patio tiles. He’d lifted her out one-handed and with no effort whatsoever. Almost before that realization had struck, he’d collected her towel and wrapped it around her.

Jackie shouldn’t have been surprised, but always found it startling how strong and quick immortals really were. She’d decided long ago that most of the time these beings moved at what must seem a sluggish rate for them, probably in an effort to appear normal to the mortals around them.

Her thoughts on their speed and strength scattered as Vincent used the ends of the towel he’d wrapped around her to brush the drops of water from her face. It started out as an almost maternal action, but then his hands slowed and softened and she became aware that his eyes had settled on her mouth and stayed there. His expression stilled, becoming serious. It was an expression Jackie was not used to from Vincent Argeneau. He generally wore good humor and amusement like a uniform, but neither of those masks was on his face now. His expression was solemn, his eyes beginning to glow silver-blue with a hunger she didn’t think had anything to do with blood.

Jackie found herself holding her breath. His body was a whisper away from her own and if she swayed just the teensiest bit forward, her breasts would brush his chest. The idea made a shiver of anticipation ripple down her back and that made Vincent blink and frown.

“Come, it’s chilly tonight and you’re cold.” Vincent
released her towel and took her arm to urge her toward the kitchen door. “Inside to warm up.”

Jackie nodded and led the way, telling herself she was relieved he hadn’t kissed her. All in all, this encounter had been relatively painless, nice even. She hadn’t sensed his trying to read her thoughts, and he hadn’t taken control of her and made her do anything she didn’t want to do. Perhaps she
had
allowed her old fears to make her treat him unfairly. Maybe he was just as nice as Bastien. And perhaps all immortals
didn’t
look down on mortals and set out to use and hurt them as Cassius had done. This was a huge admission for Jackie to make; it shook the foundations of a belief system she’d lived by for years.

Seven

“Perfect timing,” Tiny announced as Jackie and Vincent stepped into the light and warmth of the kitchen. “I’m just taking out the first batch of cookies. By the time you change into dry clothes, they should be cool enough to eat.”

Jackie smiled at Tiny and shook her head as he pulled a sheet of cookies out of the oven. The man had changed into cream-colored joggers and maroon slippers and was wearing the
I’m the cook!
apron again. He was six feet, seven inches and two hundred and eighty pounds of domesticity running about the kitchen in a pink apron and flowered oven mitts.

And he was her best friend in the world, Jackie reminded herself as the scent of freshly baked chocolate chip cookies hit her.

“Tiny, you’re going to make me gain ten pounds on this job if you keep cooking like this,” she complained, drawing her towel tighter around her.

“It’s your fault,” Tiny said with a shrug. “Your hinky feeling made me nervous and—”

“Cooking relaxes you,” Jackie finished with amusement.

“What hinky feeling is that, dear?” Marguerite asked, drawing Jackie’s gaze to where the woman sat leafing through one of Tiny’s women’s magazines full of recipes. Seated at the table, she was a knockout in the short black dress she’d worn to go out with Vincent earlier and didn’t look a day over twenty-nine or thirty. Damn, Jackie thought, there were some real benefits to being an immortal.

“Jackie sometimes gets these feelings,” Tiny explained as he carried his tray of cookies to the cooling rack. “A sort of tension and anxiety just before something happens on a case. She had it earlier tonight.”

“Before something happens?” Marguerite asked with interest.

“Usually something bad,” Tiny muttered as he used a spatula to slide the cookies from the tray to the cooling rack before they began to stick.

“How bad?” Vincent asked with a frown of concern.

Tiny grimaced. “She had it the time I got shot.”

“Shot?” Marguerite asked with alarm.

Tiny nodded. “We were working for Bastien. He suspected someone was sneaking out paperwork and samples of some of the different miracle medicines his scientists were working on.”

Jackie grimaced as she recalled the occasion Tiny was talking about. Argeneau Enterprises was heavily into medical research. It could be a very lucrative field, especially if you saved on expenses by stealing someone else’s ideas and
research. That had been happening at Argeneau’s and the Morrisey agency had been called in to look into it. This was at the start of her father’s illness, when he’d started delegating more important cases to Jackie. She and Tiny had been on the job.

“Well,” Tiny continued. “We had narrowed it down to two suspects and were following one of them after he’d left work when Jackie got her hinky feeling. He parked in a big public lot and left on foot, and we parked and followed. He led us down this alley and Jackie really started getting itchy, but the man was way ahead of us so I was sure it would be all right.” He shook his head. “Then, all of a sudden, two guys jumped out from behind these bins and took a couple of shots at us.”

Tiny scowled. “The bastard knew we were following and used his cell phone to call his buddies and set us up before leading us to the parking lot.”

“Were you badly hurt?” Vincent asked with a frown, but Jackie noticed his gaze had moved to her and was sliding over her as if looking for possible bullet wounds.

“Nah, I was just winged,” Tiny assured them. “But ever since then, when Jackie starts getting her hinky feeling, I get nervous.”

“Has she ever been wrong?” Marguerite asked.

“Never,” Tiny answered solemnly as he finished with the baked cookies and moved to start plopping little balls of batter on the now empty tray.

“Oh.” Marguerite considered that and then frowned as she saw Jackie shiver. “You’re turning blue, child. You’d best hurry upstairs and change.”

“She’s right,” Vincent said, urging her toward the door. “Go change.”

Jackie didn’t need much urging. She was cold and ready to get out of her wet swimsuit. Casting a grateful smile Vincent’s way, she hurried up the hall, then jogged up to her room.

With the thought of freshly baked cookies spurring her on, Jackie made a quick job of changing and running a brush through her still-damp hair. Vincent was in the office when she returned below. She could hear him talking on the phone as she reached the ground floor. Despite the lure of the cookies, she detoured that way to see what was going on. He was hanging up as she reached the doorway.

“That was Bastien.” Vincent stood and she saw that—as fast as she’d been, he’d been faster—he wore tight jeans and a chest-hugging T-shirt.

Jackie nodded. “Is everything all right?”

“Fine. He was just checking on how things were going with Aunt Marguerite here.” Vincent walked around the desk, moving toward her. “I offered to call her to the phone, but he was just heading to bed so asked me to say hello to her for him.”

Jackie smiled at the amusement on his face, guessing that he suspected the going to bed tale was just an excuse for the man to avoid his mother. Bastien had made comments over the years that suggested she could be a bit interfering when it came to her children’s lives. Having lost her own mother when she was young, Jackie wouldn’t have minded some of that interfering herself, but supposed the grass was always greener.

She opened her mouth to ask if there had been any messages from her firm that she needed to know about, but paused as her gaze ran over the spotless desktop.

“What is it?” Vincent asked, noting her sudden stillness.

“Did you move the papers that were on the desk?” she asked, stepping past him.

“No. There were no papers on the desk when I came in,” he said, following her.

“I’m sure I left the employee list on the desk this evening. I planned to work on them tomorrow morn—” Jackie froze again as her gaze landed on the French doors. One wasn’t quite closed. She whirled on Vincent. “Did you turn the alarm off when you came home?”

“No, of course not,” he assured her, then added, “It wasn’t on.”