I was about to offer my help when I was interrupted.
“You were expelled from Vampire Studies?” Avery asked, his amused stare locked on me.
“I was caught texting, passing notes, throwing spitballs and writing my Last Will and Testament,” I declared.
Avery burst out laughing.
“Spitballs?” Lucien voice came at me from behind.
I turned and saw he had a bottle of vodka in his hand, his brows were up and he didn’t look amused.
“Spitballs,” I snapped rebelliously.
“Oh, can we please not talk about that? It took some palm greasing to get that instructor to keep his mouth shut,” Aunt Kate lamented and sent me her look that since I was four and even now that I was forty never failed to pin me to the spot. “Anyone else learns of this and it’s sure to taint the Buchanan name.”
“I still think it’s kind of funny, Katie,” Aunt Nadia whispered, giving me a wink.
“Um, excuse me, but does anyone want to talk about my daughter nearly dying from a bad dream last night? Anyone? Anyone? Or is it just me?” Mom demanded tetchily.
I stared at Lucien’s back and stated, “I’d prefer to know why my family has been avoiding me for a month.”
Don’t try me, Lucien warned in my head.
Kiss my concubine ass, I returned to his.
He didn’t turn but I saw him shake his head in that way men do when they think women are entirely too ridiculous for words. But, seeing as this was Lucien, he did it far better than any man of my acquaintance and there were lots of men of my acquaintance who would shake their heads like I was too ridiculous for words.
It was then that I saw the drawbacks of having a kind of like boyfriend who was centuries old.
He had a lot of bad stuff down pat, too.
“Leah, I asked you a question when I came into this room.” Mom commanded my attention. “Are you all right?”
I turned to my mother and told her, “I’m fine.”
“What happened?” she asked.
“Oh, not much, except I woke up but my dream wasn’t quite done with me yet. I had the highly disturbing experience of being hanged, literally, but without actually being hanged.”
Every single one of my aunties gasped and even Avery winced.
Lucien’s sharp voice cut cleanly through the horror filling the room.
“Leah, a word.”
Then he handed the martini shaker to Avery and walked out.
After the last incident that happened when I defied him in front of my aunties, I felt it prudent to follow him. He turned into the study and I followed him there too. He shut the door behind me, grabbed my upper arm and pushed me against it.
I looked up to see he was angry.
He didn’t delay. “You’re mother’s concerned. So concerned she flew across four states to check on you. You just told her something grisly, terrifying and life threatening happened to the daughter she loves like you’d relay the time of day.”
“Please, do not think to tell me how to handle my own mother.” I tried to make it as nice as I could. He might be the Mighty Vampire Lucien everywhere else but he was treading on thin ice if he thought he could get between me and my family.
He crowded me, dropping my arm and putting his hand on the door by my head.
“I see you need to learn respect for more than just me, pet,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, clearly thinking he could get between me and my family.
“You have brothers? Sisters? Cousins?” I shot back and his eyes narrowed.
“What the f**k does that –?”
I cut him off before he could finish, “No? Well then, you don’t understand what it means to be the black sheep in very close-knit family. They love me and I love them, like, a lot, but mostly, except Aunt Nadia, Lana, my cousin Natalie and sometimes my Mom, they put up with me. I didn’t want to come here. They made me. Then they left me to deal with it all by myself with only Edwina, Stephanie and you to help me out. I didn’t know any of you and you I didn’t even like.”
His face lost some of its anger, not all, but there was a hint of concern (and, dare I believe it?) even regret in his eyes.
“I curtailed their communication with you, Leah.”
“I figured that out in there, Lucien,” I informed him with a toss of my head toward the other room. “But do you think, for even a minute, I would listen even to you if my sister Lana needed me? Or Natalie? Or Mom? Or even Aunt Kate? Hunh? Do you?”
His hand left the door and came to my neck. Then his forehead came to rest on mine.
Then he muttered, “Not even a minute.”
“No, not even a minute. I was drowning, Lucien. I called out to them and they gave me no lifeline, just floated on their merry way.”
His other arm slid around me and he pulled me from the door into his warm, big, solid body.
“Sweetheart,” he whispered.
Yep, definitely regret.
It was time to let him off the hook. What he did was uncool but it was very Lucien. What they did was just, plain wrong.
I looked up at him and put my hands on his chest. “So, seeing as you’re new to the Buchanan family dynamic, let me clue you in. I’m going to go out there and be sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious. Aunt Kate’s going to be overbearing because she’s never wrong. Mom’s going to be guilty, as she should be. Aunt Millicent is going to be mostly worried about when dinner will be served. And Aunt Nadia and I’ll probably talk a lot about the clothes you bought me and whatever new man is in her life. Then all will be forgiven. We’ll eat. We’ll probably get drunk. And, except for Aunt Kate, who will find the best guest room and lay claim to it before any of the rest of them even think about getting their suitcases from the car, we might end up dancing to eighties pop music and doing the robot. Just hope Aunt Nadia doesn’t try to breakdance. The last time she did that she threw her back out and was down for a week.”
The regret was gone, his hand was moving up my back and his eyes were smiling even though his mouth wasn’t.
“Two problems with the evening’s festivities, pet.”
“And those would be?”
“I don’t want you drunk and I don’t want a house full of Buchanans when I finally have you.”
Oh.
I’d semi-forgotten about that.
“Definitely no breakdancing,” he went on and because he was funny, I laughed out loud.
When I did, his gaze dropped to my mouth, the smile left his eyes and they went intense. His hand sifted into the hair at the back of my head and he kissed the laughter right off my lips.