Holly remained by the table, biting her lip.
“Come on,” he insisted, waving toward the open door.
Holly shifted uncertainly and then said, “Maybe I should just stay here. Dante and Tomasso could teach me to . . . well . . . do whatever,” she finished lamely, and then rushed on, “And you can visit your parents in peace.”
“Nope.” He shook his head firmly. “Gia and the twins are just backup. Lucian made it plain that you are my responsibility. You’re with me. Besides,” he added with a smile. “I have a surprise for you.”
Holly grimaced and blew her breath out on a sigh. Another surprise. Great. Probably more fish, or flowers, or something to do with nature that she would absolutely hate. Jeez.
Shaking her head with mild disgust, she slapped the blood bag to her teeth and trudged across the kitchen to slip past him through the door.
“Buck up,” he said cheerfully as he opened the door of the SUV for her. “You’ll like this one.”
“Uh-huh,” she mumbled around the bag in her mouth as she climbed into the vehicle. She did up her seat belt as he closed the door. The bag was empty by the time he’d walked around and got into the driver’s seat. Holly pulled it from her mouth and asked, “Where are Gia and the twins this morning?”
“This afternoon,” he corrected, taking the empty bag from her and tossing it in a small garbage bag hanging from the dash. As he started the engine, she glanced to the clock on the dash, amazed to see that it was indeed afternoon. It was just after two o’clock in the afternoon, in fact. Good Lord, it had only been seven when she’d gone to bed. She’d slept more than seventeen hours.
“Gia and the boys went to bed at dawn and are still sleeping,” Justin said, answering her original question as he pressed the button to open the garage door. Reaching for his seat belt then, he added, “Mostly we’re night owls. Our hours just got messed around a bit after the flight here and everything.”
“Right,” Holly breathed, wondering why the hell she’d slept so long. She wasn’t fighting an illness or something, was she? No, of course not. She was a vampire now. They didn’t get sick, according to Justin. But Dante had said something about her needing a lot of blood for a while, and still being in the turn. Perhaps that was the reason for her long sleep. Perhaps the nanos had been finishing the repairs to her brain.
Or perhaps banging Justin all night in her dreams had been exhausting, a naughty part of her mind taunted. Holly choked that little voice in her head and tried to think about something to talk about that wouldn’t lead her to thoughts of her dreams. She continued to try to think of something until they were on the freeway, and finally said, “So, tell me about your parents.”
Holly had considered it from every angle and was quite satisfied that it was a safe question to ask. Certainly, thoughts of her own parents never led anywhere near sex. As far as she was concerned, her parents did not have sex anymore. At least, she didn’t want to think they did, and even the possibility that they might was a complete turnoff.
“What do you want to know?” he asked after a hesitation.
“I don’t know,” Holly murmured. She’d really only asked the question to get her mind off of sex, but now found herself curious and asked, “Were they both born immortal?”
“My father was born immortal,” he said. “He’s an offshoot of the Verdis.”
“What’s that?” she asked curiously.
“The Verdi family, one of the original ancestors who came out of Atlantis,” he explained. “My father’s mother was a daughter of Maximus Verdi, one of the few who survived the fall of Atlantis. She met my grandfather, Niall Brice, a mortal Irishman around nine fifty A.D. He was taken by the Vikings in a raid as a boy. My grandmother bought him, found she couldn’t read him, realized that he was her life mate, set him free, educated him, and when he was old enough, turned and married him. I gather they switched back and forth between the name Verdi and Brice after that. Spending ten years as Verdis and then ten as Brices.”
“Why?” Holly asked at once. “Why switch names at all?”
“We don’t age,” he pointed out solemnly. “To hide that fact, our people have traditionally had to move every ten years or so. They usually change at least their last names as well. Trading back and forth between Verdi and Brice honored both my grandmother’s family and my grandfather’s.”
“Oh,” Holly murmured and wondered if she and James would have to switch between his last name of Bosley and her maiden name of McCord.
“Anyway,” Justin continued, “My father, Aidan Verdi Brice, was born fifty years later.” He was silent for a moment as he negotiated his way off the freeway and then continued. “My mother wasn’t born until the late thirteen hundreds though, as I mentioned. Like my grandfather, she was mortal. Matild Blount. She was the daughter of a shopkeeper,” he added with a smile. “When Father turned and married her, they switched between the names Brice and Blount.”
“No Verdi?” she asked.
Justin shook his head. “I gather my father didn’t like his grandfather, Maximus Verdi. From what he’s said, the man was a bit of an arrogant ass.”
“Ah,” Holly said, and then asked, “And where does the Bricker come in?”
“Brice is Irish for Brick,” he said with a wry smile. “And when my parents moved to America they thought it would be nice to use a more American name, so Brice . . . Brick . . .”
“Bricker,” she said with him, and then smiled. “What are they like?”
She was a little more than curious about that. He was talking about people who were older than America, for heaven’s sake. She didn’t expect them to be like normal people. Well, normal mortal people, anyway.
Justin was silent for a minute and then shrugged helplessly. “They’re a nice, happy couple who love each other and their children and do their best to be good people.”
“Hmmm.” Holly pursed her lips at that. The description sounded like an average everyday couple to her, and it just didn’t seem to her that people who had lived as long as Justin’s parents had could be nice and normal.
“Here we are,” Justin announced suddenly, and Holly glanced out the window to see that they were turning into a driveway that wound through what appeared to be a forest of trees. She eyed the woods they drove through curiously, amazed to find they went on for more than a couple hundred feet before giving way to a large front lawn. But a quick glance showed her that the same woods appeared to surround the clearing where the house and manicured lawn sat.
“So are the woods to keep people out or in?” she asked dryly.
“Out,” he assured her. “Mom and Dad haven’t had to move for decades thanks to those woods. Neighbors can’t see who lives here and don’t notice they aren’t aging. They can just stay here, changing the land title every fifty years or so to be sure that some government worker doesn’t notice anything that might seem fishy to a mortal.”
“Clever,” she decided, shifting her attention to the house itself. It was a very large one-story stucco building painted a sand color. Elegant arches gave way to what appeared to be a shady terrace that ran along the front of the house, giving glimpses of darkened windows in the late afternoon as the sun made its downward journey.
“There was another house here when I was born,” Justin said as he parked the car to the side of the driveway. “They tore it down and built this one about ten years ago.”
Holly nodded at that, and opened her door to get out. She had just straightened in the V between the car and the door when a bark made her glance toward the house. Spotting the large bear of a dog barreling toward them, she released a startled squeal and threw herself back inside the car, pulling the door closed firmly as she went.
Thirteen
Justin peered from the dog galloping toward him to where Holly had been standing a moment ago, and then bent to look into the front seat to see her staring out, wide-eyed with terror.