Nice Girls Don't Date Dead Men (41 page)

“What’d you bring me? What’d you bring me?” he asked, hopping up and down.

“Tiny liquor bottles from the mini-bar,” I said, holding up my suitcase proudly and thumping it into his chest.

“Sadly, that’s the same thing my uncle Ron gave me for Christmas.” He took my sad little carry-on bag onto his shoulder.

“I wrapped them in hotel towels from four different countries,” I added.

He grinned. “Excellent.”

I actually had gotten him and Jolene fancy 500-thread-count sheets and some very expensive snacks from Harrods. The hotel towels were for me.

Zeb started the car and paid the exorbitant parking fee. “So, tell me everything. Where did you go? What did you see?”

“Went to some parties, met strange and snotty people. Saw some great museums and restaurants, but being in France and not being able to eat anything is downright masochistic. Oh, we saw
Carmen
performed in Vienna. Did you know the whole first song is about cigarette smoke?”

“I didn’t know that,” Zeb admitted. “But I’m surprised
you
didn’t know that.”

“Oh, ha-ha. So where’s your lovely wife?” I asked as we pulled onto the interstate. “What’s she doing letting you take off for Nashville after midnight? Doesn’t she know you get lost?”

Zeb grimaced.

“What?” I asked. I knew things between Jolene and Zeb had been tense lately. They were trying to build a home on the land I’d given them as a wedding present. The house was slow to finish because Jolene’s family was pressuring them to move back onto the McClaine family compound. Werewolves are notoriously territorial, and Jolene was the first McClaine to live “off-site” since they’d settled in the Hollow 200 years before. The family owned multiple businesses in the Hollow, including several construction firms. And what they didn’t own they could influence with scary male-werewolf dominance. So, to say that it was difficult to get contractors to get contractors to show up, risking pissing off Jolene’s kin, much less finish their work, was an understatement.

To top it off, the brand-newish trailer they’d been offered as an incentive to live on McClaine land had mysteriously been claimed by a recently divorced cousin from a neighboring county, leaving Zeb and Jolene to live in the camper recently vacated by Jolene’s stoner cousin Larry. And one could only live in the close quarters of a cannabis-saturated camper for so long before one’s marriage began to feel like the last half of
The Shining
.

I would say that Zeb was a saint to put up with such interference from his in-laws, but his family’s no prize herd, either. Let’s just say that one of the Lavelle family’s favorite Christmas activities is to gather around the TV and watch their highlight reel from the “Rowdy Rural Towns” episode of
COPS
.

Oddly enough, it wasn’t my thwarting Ginger Lavelle’s plans to kill her son’s will to wed a five-dollar hypnotist
that resulted in her no longer speaking to me. To bastardize Harry Potter, I was Zeb’s Secret Keeper for his honeymoon destination. Zeb told his family that he and Jolene were going to the mountain retreats of Gatlinburg, when he, in fact, took his blushing bride to Biloxi for a week of Gulf shrimp, putt-putt, and blessed silence. Their hotel information was sealed in an envelope and given to me with the instructions that it was to be opened only if someone was dead or incapacitated.

While contrite over her wacky antiwedding antics, Mama Ginger could only remain chastised for so long. Incensed that she could not locate her son after calling every hotel in Gatlinburg, Mama Ginger called me at home at seven
A.M.
to demand that I give her the location and phone number
right now,
because she was having chest pains and was being taken to the hospital. Used to this ploy, I refused. She then switched tactics and said that she needed the number because Zeb’s father, Floyd, had dropped an automatic cigarette lighter into his lap while driving and was being treated for several third-degree burns in sensitive areas.

While that was far more plausible, I still withheld the number. And Mama Ginger announced that she would never speak to me again. I was not properly devastated by this announcement, which just made her madder. Whereas she’d long held out hope that Zeb and I would ond day wed, onnce she know about my “unfortunate condition,” Mama Ginger was slightly ashamed to have wanted a vampire as an in-law. While she was less than civil to Jolene, she now preferred her daughter-in-law, because at least Jolene wasn’t a vampire. Of course, Zeb
hadn’t yet broken the news about his new bride being a werewolf, but that was neither here nor there.

I’d promised myself that I was going to back off and stop interfering in Jolene and Zeb’s relationship, but it was so much healthier than talking about my own relationship. So, I think I earned a pass just this once. “I was only gone for a few weeks. The honeymoon can’t be over already.”

Zeb sighed. “Marriage is a little harder than I thought it would be. Just normal stuff, you know. Things that get on each other’s nerves.” He began ticking off Jolene’s numerous faults on his fingers. “She chews her fingernails
and
her toenails. She cannot stop herself from answering the questions from
Jeopardy
out loud, even when she knows she’s wrong. She sheds. She puts ketchup on her egg rolls.”

“Blasphemy.” I shuddered. “And as much as it would be in my own personal interests to interfere with your marriage and reclaim your full attention, you do realize that you are married to arguably one of the most beautiful women on the planet. And you are a male kindergarten teacher who collects dolls.”

“Action figures,” he corrected.

“And she stuck with you, despite the fact that your mother tried to make casting changes in the bridal couple at her wedding rehearsal.”

“Her family put out a bear trap for me!” he huffed.

“Well, that just means that your families cancel each other out.”

He snickered, his expression softening. “She’s pregnant.”

My jaw actually hit the middle of my chest. “Well, that explains the egg rolls and ketchup.”

My throat tightened at the thought of Zeb having a baby. This was so huge, the last step toward us really growing up and being old. I’ll admit I was a little jealous. I was being left behind again. But as I’d discovered last year, when Zeb’s mom dumped an infant on my doorstep in an attempt to jumpstart my biological clock, I am not cut out to nurture. And because I no longer have a pulse, I can’t have children; which works out nicely.

“But this is a good thing, right?” I shook his shoulder. “I’m going to be an honorary aunt.”

“It’s a great thing, other than the idea of being responsible for a whole family sort of scaring the crap out of me. But we wanted to have kids right away and given how fertile her family is, we knew there was no contraception on earth that would work.

“But that’s not really … Her mother comes over every single day. Her aunts are always bringing over food or they’re putting up homemade curtains or they’re moving our dishes around in the cabinets without asking. And Jolene just lets them. And the men! If they don’t back off and let a contractor come out to finish the house, we’re going to be raising their grandchild in a pot-soaked RV; is that what they want? I’m just frustrated and feel … impotent.”

“Well, obviously, that’s not the case. When is she due?”

“In about four months,” he said.

“What? You guys were pregnant before the wedding? And you didn’t tell me?”

Zeb rolled his eyes. “It’s a werewolf thing. The average wolf pregnancy is only about sixty days. Werewolves sort of split the difference with five months.”

“Wow. You have very little time to get ready for this baby—babies? How many kids is Jolene going to have? Is it going to be like a litter?”

Zeb looked horror-struck.

“Maybe I should drive,” I suggested.

“No, let’s talk about why you think Gabriel would suddenly start cheating on you. That will keep me awake.”

“Let’s not,” I told him. “I don’t want to rehash the whole thing. I just want to pretend it didn’t happen.”

“Because denial usually works so well for you.”

“I’m going to deny that I just heard that. Should we stop by the shop?” I asked.

“Nah. We boarded up the windows. Besides, the sun’s going to rise soon.” He nodded to the lightening blue-gray sky on the horizon. “We’ll have just enough time to get you home.”

As the sky turned toward lilac, I snuggled under a blanket and dozed the last hour or so before we reached the family manse, River Oaks. More English country cottage than sprawling Georgian plantation, River Oaks is at its heart just an old family home that happened to be built before the Civil War. Despite having spent the last few weeks in buildings that were much older and far more elegant, my house had never seemed so beautiful.

I kissed Zeb’s cheeks, mumbled a good night, and dashed for the door with the blanket over my head. In my room, on sheets that were weeks old and slightly musty, I lay down and, for reasons I hadn’t quite processed yet, cried.