Jake nodded and peered out the window again, trying to figure out how to ask about the furnace, the blocked doors, the gas grill and the fireplace. It was trickier to ask about. It wasn’t like he could say, “So have any near explosions lately?”
“Have you been married?”
He glanced to her with surprise at the question and shook his head. “No.” Jake glanced out the window again and then admitted, “I got close once, though.”
“What happened?” she asked curiously.
“My family,” he muttered.
“Your family?” she prompted.
“Yeah,” he said, thinking back to that time. He almost stopped talking then, but realized that his situation wasn’t all that dissimilar to her marriage and admitted: “My family has trouble with boundaries. They were concerned and . . . looked into things.” They’d looked into her mind, but he could hardly say that. On the other hand, Jake didn’t want to flat-out lie to her if she was a possible life mate. It didn’t seem a healthy way to start. Sighing, he said, “And through their looking into her, they found she was more interested in my money than me.”
Jake sensed Nicole glancing sharply toward him, but continued to look out the window and simply waited.
“Really?” she asked finally as she braked at a stop sign, and he heard the suspicion in her voice.
“Really,” Jake assured her solemnly, turning to meet her gaze. “She’d already taken two men for their money; one in a palimony suit, one in a divorce. I was to be victim three.”
“But your family saved you from that,” Nicole said quietly and shifted her attention back to the road. As she turned onto the cross street, she said, “You’re lucky.”
Jake frowned at the soft words and admitted wryly, “I’m afraid I didn’t see it that way at the time. I was just pissed at their interference when they confronted her and sent her on her way.”
“Why?” she asked with surprise.
Jake shrugged. “I was in love . . . and sure that it was different with me, that she loved me and they misunderstood what had happened in the first two relationships.” He grimaced and glanced to her to admit, “I was young and foolish then I guess.”
For some reason his words made her laugh. Raising his eyebrows, he asked, “What?”
“Jake,” she said on a laugh, “I know Marguerite said you’re older than you look, but you look twenty-five. How old were you then when you were so much younger? Sixteen?”
He smiled crookedly, remembering only then that he looked much younger than his fifty-eight years. Well, that was a fly in the ointment, wasn’t it? She now probably thought she was older than him. Certainly, she’d addressed him just then with the condescension of someone who thought they were older if only by a year or so.
“Well,” Nicole said now. “You’re very lucky your family intervened. It saved you a lot of heartache.”
“Oh, I still got the heartache,” Jake said dryly, recalling that time in his life. He’d been thirty-eight and the advanced age hadn’t made the heartache any easier to handle, and he suspected that heartache was the reason he’d never let anyone close again. Shrugging that aside for now, he said, “What they saved was my bank balance.”
Nicole smiled slightly and shrugged. “Well at least that insult wasn’t added to the injury.”
“That sounds like the voice of experience,” he said mildly, hoping to get her to tell him about the incidents Marguerite had told him about.
“Yeah. Loads of it,” she said, and then shrugged as if shaking off a bad cloak and said more cheerfully, “On the bright side, I had enough sense to go for counseling so I don’t wind up a nasty and bitter man-hating divorcee.”
“True,” Jake agreed. “I gather in divorce one partner or the other often goes crazy and does stupid things.”
“That’s what the gas guy said,” she said, her mouth tipping at the edges.
“The gas guy?” he asked.
“Yeah, I had a little trouble with the gas grill when I first moved back.” She shrugged and added, “And the furnace, and the fireplace and the doors.” Nicole grimaced and waved those worries away. “I had a run of bad luck for a bit, but it’s all good now.”
“Right,” Jake said quietly, pretty sure that Marguerite had told him the truth about her near misses after all. So, Nicole was in danger and did need looking out for, and she was a possible life mate for him as well, which was no doubt why Marguerite had put him on the job. Who better to look out for his possible life mate than himself, right?
Jake peered at her solemnly. Short, voluptuous, pretty with a nice smile, big brown eyes and long blond hair. Obviously, her father wasn’t Italian. Not with that long golden hair and the last name Phillips. He knew for sure the mother was Italian, though. She was the sister of Marguerite’s cook/housekeeper, Maria.
God, more Italians to deal with, he thought with dismay. As if the Nottes weren’t enough. Of course, he was a fine one to talk. His grandfather had been full-blooded Italian. It’s where his parents had got the name Stephano. His father had been very close to his father and had named him after the old man. His middle name, Jacob, came from his mother’s grandfather.
“You’re staring at me again.”
Jake blinked at that comment from Nicole and glanced away. “Sorry. I wasn’t really staring. I mean, I might have been looking at you, but I wasn’t really seeing you. I was thinking of my family and that I have Italian in my background too.”
“Do you?” she asked with surprise.
“Yes. It’s where I got my name.”
Nicole raised her eyebrows at that. “Forgive me, but Jake Colson doesn’t sound very Italian.”
“Oh, no, well, Jacob is my middle name. My full name is Stephano Jacob Colson Notte,” he admitted reluctantly.
“Really?” she asked with interest. “So how come you go by your middle names instead of Stephano Notte?”
Jake hesitated and then said, “Rebellion I guess. My family intervened one too many times and I rebelled and rejected any connection with them in response.” He frowned and admitted, “I guess it wasn’t a very mature response. It wasn’t like what happened was their fault, but I blamed them. I also didn’t want to be anything like them. Notte was my stepfather’s name. I reverted to my father’s last name and my middle name and—”
Realizing what he was saying, Jake caught himself and closed his mouth. He had never wanted to be immortal. He’d told himself that he didn’t want to be turned because being mortal was better. He could run around in the sun and go swimming in the daylight and attend a normal school with other kids. He’d never wanted to be a bloodsucking, brainwashing vampire. But after finding him dying on the office floor, his boss, Vincent, in a really very selfless move, had given up his one turn to save Jake’s life. Four days later he’d woken up an immortal . . . not by his own choice.
Jake hadn’t reacted well on finding out he’d been turned. He’d been furious to have his life turned upside down that way. He’d also been furious because suddenly his family was tiptoeing around and gently trying to offer him assistance afterward. Jake hadn’t wanted that help, or perhaps it was more correct to say he hadn’t wanted to need that help. Jake had always known who he was and what he’d wanted, and suddenly he’d been as lost as a boy, needing to be taught how to feed, how to control his hunger, how to read and control mortals, the best techniques for living with as little exposure to sun as possible, how, how, how. Jake had felt like a cripple, someone with a mental deficit . . . and he hadn’t liked it. So, basically he’d reacted like a teenage boy, and—
“Ran away?” Nicole suggested and when he glanced at her sharply, half suspecting she’d read him, she said, “You changed your name and ran away here to Ottawa to punish them, maybe.”
She was right, of course. He’d changed his name and run away from his home and his family like a kid. Wow . . . he was such an ass, Jake realized suddenly and shook his head.
“We all act like idiots at times,” Nicole said quietly. “We’re human. We have emotions and those are sticky and confusing and rarely logical so we do stupid things.” She shrugged, and turned off the car. “Welcome to the human race. You’ll make many more mistakes before your life is done. Accept it, deal with it, and move on.”
