“And,” he reminds me, “there was Stephen.”
I nod. “Yes. There was Stephen.” A human I thought I could build a future with because he knew and accepted my true nature. But he was human, after all, and love was no competition for the lure of a public career that I could never, as vampire, be a part of.
I poke his chest with a finger. “And you were right. A match between a human and a vampire is doomed from the start.”
“Oh. So, I’m the consolation prize.”
I reach up and kiss him, urgently, passionately. When I pull back, we’re both breathless. “Does that feel like a consolation prize?”
He puts his arms around me and pulls me closer. “So, tell me, Anna, what really brought you here today?”
I slide my hand down his abdomen. “You mean besides this?”
He laughs. “Besides that.”
“Max.”
“Max?” He pulls back so he can see my face. “What does Max have to do with us?”
“He told me you were the one.”
His voice softens. “Before he died?”
“No. After.”
Frey doesn’t laugh or express incredulity. In fact, his expression grows thoughtful. He and I have been through so much together—faced witches and skinwalkers and rogue creatures of every denomination. The idea that I may have been visited by a man who was once a lover, who was killed in front of me while saving the life of a young girl, who proved to be as strong and bravehearted as any human I ever knew, all this he accepts with a nod and a tightening of his arms around my shoulders.
“Then I owe Max a debt of gratitude,” he says.
“We both do.”
CHAPTER 2
MARCH
I PULL THE JAG INTO THE PARKING LOT AND reluctantly shut off the engine. my business partners, david and tracey, are already in the office. I know because I’m parked right next to David. He and Tracey have taken to driving together and I can tell where they spent the night by whose car is in the lot. This morning, it’s David’s big, yellow Humvee.
I should have been inside by now, too, knee-deep in tax reports. The not-so-fun side of a successful bounty-hunting business. To make it worse, the sun is bouncing off the bay with the intensity only a cloudless San Diego spring day can generate. I want to be outside basking in it—not trapped inside, working.
But duty calls.
Halfheartedly, I drag myself up the path to the door.
Tracey looks up and smiles a greeting, but David frowns.
“You were supposed to be here an hour ago. We have to get this stuff to the tax attorney by noon.”
I slump in my chair. “Yeah, yeah. What do you want me to do?”
He hands me a fistful of receipts. “Sort these by date.”
I take the pile and spread the receipts on the desk. Mechanically, I sort.
Boring.
“We’ve had a good year,” Tracey remarks, her eyes zeroing in on the bottom line of an income statement.
“Too good,” David grumbles. “And if we don’t get this tax stuff to the attorney by noon, what hard work giveth, the tax man will taketh away.”
“I hear you, David. Look. I’m sorting, I’m sorting.”
David drops his eyes back to the pile of paper on his side of our partners’ desk. Tracey has pulled a chair up so that they are seated side by side and it strikes me what a good-looking couple they are. David, ex–football player, six feet six inches tall, still the same weight and shape he was when he played for the Raiders. Tracey, ex-cop, bundle of energy, her auburn hair pulled back in a ponytail. I can’t remember why I was skeptical of her when David first brought her on board. I had no reason to be. We even have the same fashion sense—each of us perennially dressed in jeans and T-shirts. That in itself should have been enough to bond us.
David looks up, catches me watching him. But instead of making some comment about how I’m not working, his expression shifts from irritation to sly mischief.
Uh-oh. What now? I brace myself.
“So, Anna,” he says. “You went out of town last weekend.”
“Did you do anything special?” Tracey pipes in, batting her lashes.
What the— I shift my gaze from Tracey to David, narrow my eyes. “Why don’t you tell me? And since when have my weekends been a topic of conversation?”
David leans back in his chair and laces his fingers behind his head. “Since you started spending a lot of time with that friend of yours in Monument Valley. Is there something you want to share with us?”
“Like what?”
“Like is it getting serious between you two?”
I frown, sifting several variations of “none of your fucking business” through my head until I come to the realization with a start. It is their fucking business. They are my partners and my friends. I turn that old frown upside down. “Yes.”
David almost slips backward off his chair. Scrambling to regain his balance, he grunts, “Wow. That’s a first. He’s not just a fuck buddy? You actually admit you have a serious relationship?”
Tracey leans forward, all big eyes and girlish enthusiasm. “Ooooh. Tell me about him. When will I meet him? What’s he like?”
I have to mull that over in my mind. There are more things I can’t say about him to my human business partners than I can—like the fact that he’s a shape-shifter, that his other form is panther, that his son is already manifesting his powers as a shape-shifter years ahead of the curve, that he’s saved my vampire ass more than once over the past year and a half I’ve known him.
I draw in a breath and meet Tracey’s gaze. “He’s generous, handsome, strong. Has tremendous endurance.” A wink to her here. “Has a five-year-old son that I’m crazy about. And he loves me almost as much as I love him.”
I hear a gasp from David. “Holy fucking shit. You sound like a girl.”
“She is a girl, stupid,” Tracey snaps. “Jesus.” She turns to me. “He sounds wonderful. And I’m getting so jealous. When do I get to meet Mr. Wonderful?”
“In two weeks. His son has a school break the middle of March and they’re spending it here.”
“What’s his name?”
“Daniel Frey.”
“Frey lives in Monument Valley now? And he has a son?” David asks, startled. “Since when?”
I forgot that David met Frey several months ago. They spent some time together at a local bar while I slipped out to attend to some vampire business. “He moved a while ago. I didn’t find out about his son myself until just recently.”
A white lie. Frey told me about his son the same time he distracted David so I could sneak away. I did just meet John-John, though, right after Christmas.
“Wow, that’s so romantic,” Tracey says.
David sticks a finger in his open mouth and makes a gagging sound. “Jesus. Is this what I’m going to have to listen to in the office now? You two hard-asses cooing like characters in a romance novel?”
I get out of my chair and cross to his side of the desk, leaning down so we’re eye level. “I have just three words for you,” I growl. “Gloria. Fucking. Estrella.”
“Who’s that?” Tracey asks.
Color floods up David’s neck.
I grin. “Ask him to tell you about her sometime,” I reply. “Now that’s a story out of a romance novel.”
David grows suddenly quiet, busying himself with a stack of papers he’s probably been through a dozen times.
“Who’s Gloria Estrella?” Tracey repeats. Then she stops. “Wait a minute. The Gloria Estrella?”
You can see the gleam of recognition spark in her eyes. “You told me you had dated a Gloria, but Gloria Estrella? She was your ex?”
“That was before you moved to San Diego and joined SDPD,” David blurts. “It’s been over for a long time!”