Bizarre Life of Sydney Sedrick (15 page)

Pulling into our driveway and slowing the car to a crawl, I looked all around the yard. Nothing. There wasn’t an unusual sense of a presence that wasn’t supposed to be there. Inside the car, the heat was blasting out of the vents, so it was possible my senses might not be reliable.

Brianna got out of the car, giggling and singing the song that was playing on the radio before I shut off the car.

Aunt Judith stood in the doorway, the living room light outlining her form from behind. Seeing her safe and sound in the house lifted a huge weight off my shoulders. Closing the thick front door behind me after waving to the Knights, I turned around to see Aunt Judith giving Brianna the once over.

“We’re fine, don’t worry,” I said. “No overly zealous bar patrons tried to accost us.”

Aunt Judith smiled at me. She understood the underlying meaning of my statement. “Oh, that’s so good to hear! You girls really had me worried. You never know who you’re going to run into at those types of places.”

Brianna scrunched her face and said, “Aunt Judith, it’s just a bar with a lot of people around. If anyone was going to do something, it probably wouldn’t be in a populated place like that.” She flung her hand out, dismissing Aunt Judith’s concern. My sister had always been the trusting and ignorant one.

“Well, you just never know, Brianna, you’re a very pretty girl, and you know your mother...”

“Yep, my mother is a force to be reckoned with, so don’t you worry, Aunt Judith. My mom knows you take great care of me and Sydney, and you always have. Now I’m feeling a little too buzzed right now, so I’m gonna go and make the room stop spinning in my bed. Goodnight to both of you. Thanks, Sydney. That was a lot of fun.”

I didn’t realize how tipsy my sister was until she demonstrated it by walking, or rather, trying to maneuver, out of the furniture’s path, on her way to the staircase.

When Brianna was up the stairs and past the archway, Aunt Judith gave me a serious look, and whispered in a stressed growl, “I received a call while you were out, and we’ve got trouble coming our way.”

The instant he heard that we weren’t out alone, it dawned on me that mentioning the Knights and that they were essentially with us all night might not have been a good idea. The same Knights were Blake’s mortal enemies. Plus, Blake had a huge issue with vampires being near me, evidenced by his and Aaron’s hissing and growling match in my store the other night.

“You mean to tell me you had Knights with you all night? Did they hurt you? What did they want?” His jaw clenched in anger and exasperation as he grabbed my chin and inspected my neck for bite marks, moving my chin in various directions to get a better angle.

I slapped his hands away and frowned at him. “You don’t have anything to worry about. Kieran figured since you weren’t able to spend the night watching over me, he’d send a few of his people to do the job because of the full moon. By the way, the weirdest thing happened to me in my bathroom. Maybe you’d be able to explain it.”

“Don’t try to distract me. So you spent the entire night with vampires?” Jealousy added to the mixture of emotions playing over his face. Blake wasn’t going to let it go.

I smiled, and my grinning ear to ear only irritated him more. “You’re jealous, aren’t you? What bothers you more? That there were vampires around me, or that they were male vampires, and they were close to me all night long without you being there?”

“Don’t be ridiculous. Jealousy is not something wolves feel when it comes to vampires and the woman they are interested in. You shouldn’t be hanging out with them at bars. It’s not a smart thing to do as the Selected, that’s all. Did you talk to them? What did they want?”

The door chimes jingled, and Brianna walked into the store. She had slept in late, so I hadn’t had a chance to say goodbye before leaving for work. She needed to sleep off the festivities from last night before she had to make the drive back down to Chicago. Brianna wore her sunglasses inside, barely mustering a smile in greeting when she plopped onto the couch by the fireplace.

“Hi. Sydney, do you have any pain relievers? A pair of drummers has decided to do a standing ovation in my head.” She leaned over, groaning in hangover agony, and put her head on the armrest.

I glanced at my sister, then at Blake. “Yeah, there’s some in my purse. Let me go next door to Mountain Bean and get you some coffee. If anyone comes in, just have them wait. It will only take a minute.”

Blake stood off to the side of the stool by the counter and said, “I’ll go, that way you two can chat and you won’t have to leave the store unattended.”

“Thanks Blake, that’s so nice of you. Isn’t that a really nice thing for Blake to do, Sydney?”

I rolled my eyes. My sister, ever the matchmaker. “Yes, that is a very nice thing for Blake to do.”

After the dream catch left, we sat on the couch together. When my weight on the cushion shifted her body, she groaned some more. “Brianna, you didn’t seem to have that much to drink. Maybe you’re coming down with the flu or something. Have you talked to Michael yet this morning?”

Brianna grumbled, clearly not in the mood to talk.

At my insistence, she finally replied, “Yes, he’s going to meet me at Aunt Judith’s in about an hour. I just wanted to say goodbye before heading back home to Chicago. He apologized, by the way.”

“What did he apologize for?”

“He said he was sorry he was too busy to be with me last night and that he’d make it up to me. He said it had something to do with family stuff, and his Uncle Morris was particular about having girlfriends around sometimes. You never mentioned that you went to Morris’ house with Blake.” She made a weak attempt at wiggling her eyebrows above her sunglasses without moving the rest of her body.

“Yeah, well, it wasn’t a date, so don’t get your hopes up. It was just your sister checking out what type of family Michael comes from. You know you can tell a lot by a person’s family, how they interact with each other, how the members treat their spouses, that sort of thing. Don’t even think about me and Blake. We’re just friends.”

“What sorts of things did you find out about my family when you were at the house?” Blake asked, anger tingeing his voice. “I’d really like to know.”

I nearly jumped out of my skin, not having heard the door chimes again.

He leaned over and gave Brianna her large coffee and slapped the sugar and cream packets in my hand. Yeah, I’d say he was beyond irritated. By the looks of it, he was throwing a mini man tantrum to boot.

Way to put my foot in my mouth. But it was for the best that he heard me saying it to Brianna. There was no way in the near future anything was going to happen between us.

Brianna took a swig from her coffee and said she had to get going to meet Michael. They had to make the trip down to Chicago before rush hour traffic clogged up the freeways. Hopefully she didn’t think she had to leave because Blake was there, but I did need to ask him a few questions and wouldn’t be able to while she was listening.

“Okay, call me at the store when you get back to Mom and Dad’s.”

Brianna raised her glasses and rolled her eyes at me. “Don’t worry, Sydney, I’ll be fine.” She gave me a big hug, Blake a small finger wave, then left the store.

When we were alone again, Blake didn’t hesitate to continue the conversation right where we left off before Brianna had entered the store. “I’m still waiting to hear what the vampires wanted. It’s quite coincidental they waited until the full moon was up for their opportunity to try and poison you with their parasitic viewpoints.” He might as well have spit after he was done with that statement. The barely restrained hatred for the vampires clearly came through with every syllable.

“Blake, knock it off. You don’t have to act like a tough guy in front of me. You don’t like the vampires. That’s not a secret. They don’t like you that much, either. The Knights did say they had their own issues to take care of for the time being and were grateful the wolves were able to watch over me. It was a nice gesture for Kieran to send his guards when he knew the wolves were preoccupied.”

There was no way mentioning the phone call Aunt Judith had received of Kieran’s demands, telling me to move into his coven house because the vampires thought the wolves weren’t capable of taking care of my safety during his change, would make his disposition toward them any better. Blake was already ticked off because he couldn’t be with me.

If little white lies would help improve the relationship between the two races, then there was nothing wrong with that. Blake’s getting the funny idea in his head that maybe it would be better for me to move into the pack’s house because the vampires wanted me to move in with them wasn’t going to go over well, either. Neither of them was going to treat me as an object to be owned, manipulated, and used at will.

The tension eased a bit, and his shoulders relaxed. Blake went over to the couch and took a seat. He seemed to feel right at home in my store. That irked me a little, but it might bother me more if he didn’t. I sat on the sofa at the farthest possible cushion away from him, so he wouldn’t get the wrong idea. He didn’t need encouragement in repeating the kiss from the other night, no matter how scorching hot it was and how difficult a time it was now, keeping the memory of his hard body pressed up against mine out of my every waking thought. That memory brought my body to full arousal, making me groan before shifting to the front of the cushion to put more distance between us.

His arm snaked out, and he was pulling me back down onto the sofa closer to where he sat before I even had a chance to give protest.

“Did you know that a wolf has a very strong sense of smell?”

I looked at him, not understanding why he was asking me that random question.

“No, the thought never crossed my mind before. Why?”

“Sydney, your desire for me is strong in the air when you become wet, thinking about me, about us being together.” His expression became dark and his lips parted in a sensual gesture. The vision and touch of those lips would be seared into my memory for all time.

I pulled away from him with a sharp yank of my arm and shot off the sofa, feeling more embarrassed at that moment than ever in my life.

“Blake, you need to focus, okay? There’s something we really need to talk about. If you keep veering off in that direction, how are we supposed to get anything done?”

Sitting on the sofa with a smug look on his face, he replied, “We don’t need to get anything done. Come here and sit next to me.” He patted the seat next to him. “I promise to keep my hands to myself.” He raised an eyebrow when I hesitated. “At least one of us is being honest, and it isn’t you. You’re not being honest with me, or yourself. Your desire is blatantly obvious, even if you don’t want to admit it to yourself. The smell of you wanting me is all around us, so if you truly don’t want me to touch you, to caress you, to put my lips to your lips, that’s fine, for now.”