Dez sat on the edge of her seat while Beatrice stared at her. “Uh…there may have been a mystery or two that we worked on, yeah.”
“And did you solve it? I mean, how does that work? That’s got to pay pretty well, right? It’s like hiring a private detective to find something. Only it’s someone who knows rare books! Do you think he’s looking for an assistant? I would totally dig something like-”
“He’s kind of a loner, to be honest.” Kinda. “I doubt he’d hire…someone to do that stuff when he could just do it himself.” She did wonder who he had doing his computer work for him. Did he just use amnis to get random people to search online? That wasn’t very ethical. Maybe he did need-
“Yeah,” Dez sighed. “I totally get why you’re so hung up on him though. A good-looking Italian book collector who solves historical mysteries? That’s just…”
“What?” Implausible?
“Hot. I can’t believe Mano’s not insanely jealous of all the time you’re spending with him.”
Beatrice felt her face heat up, and she caught Dez’s wide-eyed look.
“He doesn’t know, does he?”
She shrugged. There was no way on God’s green earth Beatrice was telling Mano that she was working alongside a five-hundred-year-old vampire who was linked to her missing father and was the sire of the monster who had kidnapped her. There was no way she was telling anyone any of that. They’d think she was insane.
“Oh, he’s going to be pissed, B!”
“Why? The research is done.” And her heart still ached over it. “Why would I see him anymore?” She shook her head and continued quietly. “He’ll probably leave town again now that he has it.”
Dez frowned. “I thought you said he bought a house?”
So he had, and she’d been asked over for dinner more than once by the persistent Ben. It was both despicable and adorable that Giovanni seemed to have Ben on his team in his attempts to win her back. She had to admit, the boy was charming.
As was his fake uncle.
“So he’s probably going to use Southern California as a base for work if he did that,” Dez reasoned. “It would be a good one. Easy airport access and lots of international flights to both Europe and Asia. Big research libraries and plenty of resources.”
“That’s true.”
“And a cute librarian he’s obviously still got the hots for.”
“Shut up, Dez.”
“Not on your life.”
Beatrice was still thinking about what Dez had said when her best friend dropped her off at her empty house. Would Giovanni leave? What if he really was serious about staying in her life? What did that mean for her? For him? For her relationship with her incredibly loving but clueless boyfriend? Mano had a dive in the morning, so she was alone when she picked up the shoebox she had brought from Houston five years before.
Beatrice opened the lid and pulled out a picture of her and her father. Stephen De Novo’s dark brown eyes stared at her. She still missed him so much. It was worse knowing he was out there somewhere, and she just couldn’t find him. What did it all mean? Why had he never come? Maybe her father didn’t trust Giovanni, but couldn’t he trust her? What was the secret he was still running from after fifteen years?
Was Giovanni her best chance at finding him?
Had Lorenzo already found him?
Would Giovanni’s son find her again?
She shook her head and replaced the lid on the old box, shoving it back on the bottom of the bookshelf in the living room. She didn’t have room in her life for another mystery. She had built a good life. A safe life. She didn’t want to be pulled into the chaos of the past.
But when she closed her eyes that night, a dulcet laugh haunted her dreams, and her father’s eyes pleaded with her to find him. Beatrice woke with a start to see the moon shining through the narrow window of her bedroom. In her drowsy state, she looked for Giovanni beside her.
Just as it had been for the past five years, he was nowhere to be found.
Chapter Five
Los Angeles, California
November 2009
Two weeks.
Giovanni’s immortal life was measured in two-week intervals.
After her find at the library, Beatrice had given him two weeks to prove they could be friends again. While he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with only that, he realized she still had doubts about his intentions, so he tried to back off and give her some space. They had been friends first, and he could be a friend again.
For a while.
So they met for coffee and conversation. She came to dinner at the house with Ben acting as an enthusiastic chaperone. Giovanni waited outside the library when she worked late just to walk her to her motorcycle.
And at the end of two weeks, she told him he was allowed to be in her life…as a friend. So he gamely ignored her racing heart every time she saw him and the loaded looks she cast his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking and pretended to be Beatrice’s friend for a while.
Two weeks turned into four, and they met for coffee a few times each week after her judo class. She had recently begun practice with a new teacher.
“Pete’s so good. I mean, he kind of beats me up-”
Giovanni couldn’t contain the low growl, and she shot him a look.
“-but in a good way. Since I’ve changed to this studio, I’ve made a lot more progress. And I’m a lot stronger. They focus on conditioning more than my old place.”
“You look stronger. And your balance has improved.”
She smiled. “I love judo. It’s so much fun. Have you ever studied martial arts?” She laughed. “Do you even need to?”
“My physical conditioning with my father was based on the Spartan agoge, so I learned about most military and fighting techniques that way, but Tenzin trained me more on hand-to-hand fighting styles. I picked up whatever she taught me, which was a strange mix of ‘do whatever will kill your opponent the fastest,’ and her sire’s form of wushu, or kung fu, as humans refer to it.”
“Cool. Tenzin’s the one who recommended I take tai chi when I first moved to California. That’s kind of what started me out. I still practice.”
“Tai chi?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded, letting a smirk cross his lips when he thought about his old friend.
“And Mano studied martial arts in the military. He still does some kick boxing. Sometimes we practice together.”
He made no response, choosing to ignore the existence of the boyfriend whenever she brought him up.
Beatrice had told Mano that Giovanni was an old friend from Houston who had recently moved to town and a mutual friend of Carwyn’s whom she had worked for in the past. He had a feeling that the boyfriend was clueless about more than his and Beatrice’s past relationship.
He leaned toward her in the crowded café. “So you really haven’t told anyone? Not even Dez? About your father or Carwyn or…anything?” He blew on the fragrant coffee he held, heating his breath to heighten the scent since it had cooled.
“No, I didn’t tell anyone. What would I say?” She lowered her voice. “Oh, hey, Dez, you know my friend, Carwyn? He’s a thousand-year-old Welsh priest who hunts deer and drinks their blood. Oh, and my father is a vampire, too, but I haven’t seen him for almost fifteen years so I don’t know what he eats. And I was kidnapped by a vampire once, but don’t worry, my boss-who I was kind of involved with, but not really-rescued me with his two best friends, one of whom can fly and the other who can tunnel underground like a giant gopher.”
He shrugged. “Seems totally believable to me. And we were most definitely involved.”