Undertaking Love

Chapter Thirteen




‘I guess I should say thank you again.’

Gabe followed her along the aisle into the kitchen. ‘Go on then. I’m all ears.’

Marla reached for the coffee jar, but then thought better of it and grabbed a bottle of wine down out of the cupboard instead. ‘You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?’

Why did saying thank you have to feel like such a huge admission of defeat?

She knew she owed him that much: he hadn’t called the police about the window last week, and now he’d gone undeniably out of his way to make Alaric and Gelvira’s wedding day perfect.

‘You’re welcome, Marla.’ His soft laugh excused her reluctance to verbalise the apology, but somehow it made it worse too. Did he have to keep displaying that vein of decency and making her feel like a fool?

She reached down a glass from the top shelf, sighed and reached for a second.

‘I believe you, by the way,’ he said, as he leaned back in his chair. ‘About the window, I mean.’

‘Thank you. I may want your business closed down, Gabe, but I’d never stoop that low.’

She turned from the counter and held out a glass towards him.

‘What’s this, an olive branch?’

Marla sank down into the chair opposite him and kicked off her heels with a heavy sigh. The cool stone of the kitchen floor felt fabulous against her tired feet. It had been a long, long day and she was done in.

‘Nothing’s changed, Gabe, but we don’t have to be archenemies either, do we? We can be grown up about our differences.’

He clinked his glass against hers. ‘I like the sound of being grown up.’

Marla suddenly felt bolt awake. She wound her fingers around her glass to stop them from shaking, and took a swig of wine for good measure. Gabe’s accent was enough make a nun’s knicker elastic twang, so she could easily justify her own physical reaction to him. It didn’t really mean anything. Besides, she hadn’t eaten since breakfast. The butterflies in her stomach had more to do with lack of calories than Gabe’s edibleness.

‘Have you lived in the UK for long?’

Marla cast her mind back, glad that he’d steered the conversation into more serene waters.

‘Fifteen years or so, I guess? My mother married a doctor and followed him here under the delusion of becoming lady of the manor.’

‘I take it it didn’t work out then?’

‘It was never going to,’ Marla answered. ‘Robert was husband number five. He’s lovely actually, I still meet him every now and then for coffee. He’s a specialist over at the general.’

She sighed. ‘It’s a shame Mom couldn’t settle here. She grew sick of the weather and decamped back to the States within four years.’

‘But you stayed?’

She nodded. ‘I was studying by then. And … other stuff.’ She shrugged. ‘You know how it is.’

He didn’t actually, but he’d very much like to.

‘Do you miss it? The States?’

‘Sometimes. On the holidays, mostly. Halloween, Thanksgiving, that sort of thing.’

She swallowed a mouthful of wine and stared out of the window. ‘But I’m pretty settled here now. The climate suits my skin. Unlike my mother’s.’

He looked at the luxurious red waves that fell around her shoulders and had to hold down the urge to wind them around his fingers.

‘I take it the red comes from your father’s side then?’

Marla smiled. ‘And the freckles.’

Gabe took her comment as an invitation to study her face, and this time he couldn’t hold back. He reached out and traced his fingertip lightly down the dusting of freckles on her nose. ‘I like your freckles.’ He refilled their glasses to cover the loaded silence that followed. ‘Do you see much of your dad?’

Marla laughed, slightly hysterical with misplaced lust. ‘You’re kidding. He’s always off on another exotic honeymoon.’

‘I’m starting to see why you opened a wedding chapel.’

‘He’s in Bermuda with wife number six at the moment. Or it could be Hawaii with number seven … I’ve lost track.’

Gabe whistled. ‘That must have made for interesting Christmases.’

Marla rolled her eyes. ‘You have no idea.’

She picked at the edge of the wooden kitchen table and winced as a rough splinter caught the tender cut on her finger from the rose thorn. ‘And are you upholding the family tradition with a string of ex-husbands littering your past, too?’

She flinched. ‘No. I’m breaking the pattern and staying single.’ He nodded slowly and dropped his gaze to their hands on the table. ‘You’re bleeding.’

They both stared at the little bloom of blood on her fingertip and knew what was supposed to happen next. There wasn’t a convenient box of tissues on hand to blot it, and no one interrupted them with a well-timed knock on the door. Gabe’s warm hand closed over hers, and Marla’s breath hitched in her throat. He lifted it to his lips and sucked her fingertip gently. He didn’t take his eyes off hers and for a few seconds Marla felt as if he could see right inside her head, see just how much she wanted him to carry on. She’d been right all along. He was a vampire, and he’d glamoured her into submission. This was not her fault.

Jesus, his mouth was hot. And wet. And way, way too sexy to pull away. Up until that moment in her life, Marla had no idea about the secret vein that ran directly from her fingertip to her *oris. But as Gabe circled his tongue slowly around her to seal the wound, each little suck on her finger fired off an answering volt of electricity between her legs. She closed her eyes, afraid he’d be able to see it there. Or did he know already? Marla squirmed in her seat, too turned on to get her breath properly. Or to care. On an erotic scale of one to ten, it was an eleven. Twenty. To infinity and beyond. The knuckles of her hand bumped against his jaw, rough stubble against soft skin. She suddenly wanted to know exactly how good that stubble would feel against her skin in much more private places. Her inner thighs, for instance. She almost cried out in protest when he slid her finger from his mouth and placed a whisper kiss on her palm, a barely-there trail of his tongue against the vulnerable pulse point inside her wrist. She never wanted to open her eyes again.

But if she had, she’d have seen a very dejected Rupert turn and slope away from the window, where he’d just spent the most crushing five minutes of his entire life.