Drina glanced to Harper to see how he was taking this, but his head was bowed, and she couldn’t see his expression.
“The biggest favor she did for Bobby was tossing him over for that idiot Randy Matheson when he showed her some interest.” Teddy shook his head. “Now there was a troublemaker. She always went after troublemakers. And Randy’s name fit him to a T, let me tell you. Never seen a more randy teenager. I caught those two parking on back roads all around the county until she tossed him over for some London fellow with a rich daddy and an allowance big enough he could afford to rent himself a motel room rather than grope in cars. I wasn’t sorry about that at all. Chasing off bare-arsed teenagers just gets old pretty quick.”
They’d crossed the deck and reached the door of the house by then, and Teddy paused to turn back to Harper, saying, “I never would have told you all that had Jenny lived, and I didn’t say it when she died because I knew you were hurting, but now that you’re happily settled with Drina here, and enjoying that new-life-mate glow like the others, I have to tell you I think you made a lucky escape there. I don’t know all the ins and outs of this life-mate business, but while Jenny might have been a possible life mate for you and agreed to the turn, I don’t think her heart was in it. I kind of got the feeling she just saw you as another Bobby Jarrod.”
Turning away, Teddy opened the screen door and raised a hand to knock but paused as Mirabeau opened the door from inside.
“Beau,” Teddy greeted, stepping inside.
Mirabeau smiled, then glanced past Teddy to Drina and Harper and waved them in. “Come on you two. It’s cold out.”
Forcing a smile, Drina stepped inside, wishing she could drag Harper somewhere to talk and find out what he was thinking. But there didn’t appear to be much of a chance at the moment. She would have to figure out a way to get him alone and talk to him later.
“Decided to come out of hiding now that Drina and Stephanie have gone to bed, did you?”
Harper stiffened at that greeting from Anders as he stepped off the stairs and turned the corner into the dining room. The hunter sat at the table, a deck of cards spread out before him in what appeared to be a complicated version of solitaire. Harper frowned at the man, not appreciating that one of the few times the Russian chose to speak more than a word or two was to call him out on his behavior.
“I wasn’t hiding,” he lied, turning to walk along the L-shaped counter separating the kitchen from the dining room. Moving to the refrigerator, he opened it, his eyes sliding from the bags of blood to the available food inside.
“Right,” Anders said dryly. “You just like four-hour showers.”
Harper scowled into the refrigerator, and then grabbed both a bag of blood and a bowl of some sort of leftover. He wasn’t sure what it was, but he was hungry. He’d heat it up and see what it tasted like. The dinner he’d had with Drina was the first time he’d eaten in a while. He hadn’t a clue what he would like, so everything was an experiment just now.
“Your avoiding her hurt Drina,” Anders growled.
Harper set the bowl on the counter with a sigh and lowered his head. He shouldn’t be surprised that his fleeing the minute they’d got their coat and boots off, and then not returning downstairs would hurt her, he supposed, but he hadn’t been thinking of her. He’d been thinking of-
“A dead woman,” Anders said grimly, reminding him that his thoughts were easily read at the moment.
“She was my life mate,” Harper said quietly.
Harper stared out the back window of the house, frustration coursing through him. Everything Anders said was true, but he couldn’t seem to rid himself of the clawing guilt. He’d managed to forget it for a while in Toronto, but the closer they’d gotten to Port Henry, the more he’d felt like a philandering husband returning from an elicit rendezvous with his secretary.
Harper closed his eyes. Jenny was dead and in the grave because she’d been willing to turn and be his life mate, and he was off laughing and playing with another woman. He felt like he was dancing on her grave.
But that wasn’t even the worst of it. The thing that really ate at him was that he couldn’t even remember what Jenny had looked like anymore. That wasn’t because of Drina’s arrival. He hadn’t been able to recall her face for a while now. Her image had faded from his mind almost before she’d been in the ground. It was wrong. Shameful. She’d died to be with him and deserved better than that.
“And what does Drina deserve?” Anders asked, obviously still in his thoughts.
Harper turned and scowled at the usually uncommunicative man. “What do you care?”
“I don’t,” Anders said with a shrug, moving cards around on the table. “If you want to throw away a good thing when fate is kind enough to give it to you, go for it.”
“Thank you,” Harper said dryly, turning back to the counter.
“But I’ll tell you this,” Anders said in a conversational tone. “If it had turned out that Drina could have been a life mate to either you or me. . you’d be dead. I’d have killed to claim her. Most immortals would. So I’m thinking you’re either a fool or seriously fucked up. Either way, she’s better off without you.”
Harper whipped around to gape at him, but Anders didn’t even glance up from his cards and continued matter-of-factly playing his game as he added, “I’m doubting she’ll see it that way, though. This’ll eat at her, distract her from what she’s supposed to be doing, and a distracted hunter usually ends up a dead hunter.”
Anders paused to glance to Harper, and added, “That’s all right, though. You’ll have two life mates’ deaths on your hands and can completely submerge yourself in guilt and misery, right?”
“Gin,” Stephanie said triumphantly, laying her cards on the table.
Drina tore her gaze from the ceiling and reached for a card from the deck.
“Sorry,” Drina muttered, and then a small smile tugged at her lips, and she set her cards down, saying, “Beth calls me that.”
“Dree?” Stephanie asked, collecting the cards and beginning to shuffle them again. “She’s your partner, right?”
Drina nodded, suddenly wishing Beth were there. She could use some advice at the moment.
“Harper’s avoiding you,” Stephanie murmured sadly as she began to deal cards.
“It would seem so,” Drina said on a sigh, her eyes sliding to the ceiling again. He’d been avoiding her ever since their return the night before. He’d escaped to his room to shower and change the moment they’d gotten their coats and boots off and hadn’t left it until she and Stephanie had retired for the night. She’d heard him come down from the third floor and descend the creaky stairs.
Now it was midmorning, and he was apparently still sleeping. Or hiding in his room. She didn’t know which but suspected it was the latter.
“What are you going to do about it?” Stephanie asked quietly, finishing dealing and setting the remaining cards on the table.
Drina shook her head. She’d lain awake most of the night trying to figure that one out, and she’d been fretting over it since rising with Stephanie this morning and still didn’t have a clue. It was hard to know what to do to drag him out of his gloom and preoccupation if he was going to just hide in his damned room.
Oh, she knew what she wanted to do. Drina wanted to go to his room, climb into his bed, and wipe the memories of Jenny from his mind with hot, live-life-mate sex. Unfortunately, she had responsibilities here. She had to spend the nights with Stephanie to be sure the girl didn’t take it into her head to run off to her mortal family, and she had to spend the days watching out for her until Anders took over. That left only the evening hours for her to do anything, and Drina suspected Harper was going to use the presence of the others to keep her at arm’s length, or-
Her thoughts scattered to the four winds, and Drina stiffened as she heard footsteps moving along the
