be able to read her, which would leave him wondering. . and drive him nuts, she was sure. But it served him right. It didn’t take much effort to be courteous, and courtesy was necessary in a civilized society. It was a lesson the man should learn before he got too old to learn anything anymore.
Harper considered his cards briefly, then pulled out a six of spades and laid it on the discard pile. He glanced toward Tiny, not terribly surprised to find the man not looking at his own cards but peering distractedly toward the stairs.
“Tiny,” he prompted. “Your turn.”
“Oh.” The mortal turned back to his cards, started to pull one out of his hand as if to discard it, and Harper shot his own hand out to stop him.
When Tiny glanced at him with surprise, he pointed out dryly, “You have to pick up first.”
“Oh, right.” He shook his head and set back the card he’d been about to discard, and reached for one from the deck.
Harper sat back with a little shake of the head, thinking,
Tiny and Mirabeau were brand-spanking-new, however, and couldn’t think of much else but each other. . and how to find a moment alone to get naked. And they couldn’t control their thoughts either, so that it was like constantly having a radio playing in his ear, life-mate porn, twenty-four/seven.
Harper supposed the fact that he hadn’t packed up his bags and moved on a year and a half ago when his own life mate had died, was probably a sign that he was a masochist. Because really, there was no worse torture for someone who had just lost their long-awaited and prayed-for life mate than to have to stand by and witness the joy and just plain horniness of other new life mates. But he had nowhere to go. Oh, he had an apartment in the city and businesses he could pretend to be interested in, but why bother when he’d set them up years ago to ensure he needn’t be there to oversee them, and could travel, merely checking in once in a while. He also had family in Germany he could visit, but they weren’t close, each of them having created their own lives centuries ago and barely keeping up with each other.
Actually, Harper thought, Elvi, Victor, Mabel, and DJ were the closest thing to family he now had. When Jenny had died, the two couples had surrounded and embraced him and pulled him into their little family. They had cushioned and coddled him during the first shock of her loss, and slowly nursed him back to the land of the living, and he was grateful for it. So much so, in fact, that he was glad for this opportunity to repay some of their kindness by looking after things while they went on their honeymoons. He just wished that looking after things didn’t include a pair of new life mates to torture him with.
Tiny finally discarded, and Harper picked up another card, but then paused and glanced toward the window as the crunch of tires on new snow caught his ear.
“What is it?” Tiny asked, his voice tense.
“A vehicle just pulled into the driveway,” Harper murmured, then glanced to Tiny and raised an eyebrow. “Your replacements, I’m guessing.”
Tiny was immediately out of his seat and moving into the kitchen to peer out the back window. When he then moved to the pantry to collect his coat from the closet there, Harper stood and followed. The arrival of the replacement hunters was something he’d looked forward to. He suspected Tiny and Mirabeau would now retreat to their bedroom and not be seen much. It meant he could avoid the worst of their obsessive thoughts about each other. . which would be a blessing.
Tiny apparently saw him coming and grabbed Harper’s coat as well. The man handed it to him as he came back into the kitchen, and both pulled them on as they headed for the door to the deck. Tiny had pulled his boots on while in the pantry and headed straight out the door, but Harper had to pause to kick off his slippers and tug on the boots by the back door. It only took a moment, but by the time he did and stepped outside, Tiny was already out of sight.
Harper grimaced as the bitter wind slapped his face. He followed the big mortal’s footprints in the snow, trailing them across the deck and down the steps to the short sidewalk that ran along the side of the garage to the driveway. With his eyes on the ground, he didn’t see the person approaching until he was nearly on top of them. Pausing abruptly when a pair of running shoes came into view in front of his boots, he jerked his head up with surprise and found himself blinking at a petite woman in a coat far too light for Canadian winters.
His gaze slid from her hatless head, to the suitcase she carried, and then beyond her to the two men by the SUV.
“Hi.”
Harper glanced back to the woman. She was smiling tentatively at him and holding out one ungloved hand in greeting.
“Alexandrina Argenis,” she announced when he merely stared at her hand. “But everyone calls me Drina.”
Removing one hand from his pocket, he shook hers, noting that it was warm and soft despite the cold, then he cleared his throat and said, “Harpernus Stoyan.” He retrieved his hand and shoved it back into the safety of his pocket as he stepped to the side for her to get by. “Go on inside. It’s warm in there. There’s blood in the fridge.”
Nodding, she moved past him, and Harper watched her go, waiting until she disappeared around the corner before continuing on to the SUV now parked in the driveway. Tiny and another man, this one dressed more befitting a Canadian winter, with hat and gloves and even a scarf, were still at the back of the truck. As he approached, the new man pulled a cooler from inside and handed it to Tiny.
Rather than turn away and head back to the house though, Tiny said, “Throw your suitcase on top and I’ll take it in as well.”
Harper smiled faintly to himself. Tiny was a big guy, a small mountain really, and very strong. . for a mortal. He was also used to being the muscle among his own people and forgot that he was now dealing with immortals who outclassed him horribly in that area.
But the new arrival merely set a suitcase on top of the cooler and turned back to the SUV without comment. Tiny immediately slid past Harper to head for the house, leaving him to step up beside the newcomer and peer curiously into the back of the SUV. There were two more coolers left inside. The fellow was unplugging them and winding up the cords.
“Harper.”
He glanced to the man with surprise at the terse greeting, eyebrows rising as he recognized the eyes that turned to him. “Nice to see you, Anders,” Harper greeted in return as he reached in to retrieve one of the coolers. “It’s been a while.”
Anders’s answer was a grunt as he claimed the second cooler and straightened from the vehicle. He paused to close the back of the SUV, hit the button to lock the doors, and then nodded for Harper to lead the way.
Harper turned away but found himself grinning and couldn’t resist saying, “Chatty as ever, I see.”
When the man basically told him to bugger off in Russian, Harper burst out laughing. The sound of his own laughter was somewhat startling, but it felt good, he decided, as he led the way across the deck. Maybe it was a sign that he was finally coming out of the depression that had struck him when Jenny had died.
The thought made him sigh to himself as he shifted the cooler to open the door to the house. He’d been sunk pretty deep in self-pity and gloom for the last year and a half, and while he supposed it was only to be expected when one lost a life mate, it would be a relief to feel more himself again. He was not a naturally gloomy guy but had found little to laugh or even smile about since Jenny’s death.
“Here.” Tiny was in front of him, reaching for Harper’s cooler the minute he stepped into the house. He gave it up and watched the man carry it into the dining room, where he unraveled the cord and plugged it in. The one Tiny himself had carried in was already plugged into a socket in the corner of the kitchen, Harper noted, and supposed the man was spreading them throughout the house to be sure they didn’t overload a breaker. The coolers were basically portable refrigerators and probably used a lot of juice.
