room. He’d been making calls for the last hour while Tiny and the women brainstormed in the living room with Stephanie over ways to help her. He knew that Drina had included the girl in an effort to reassure her and give her some sense of hope, but when he entered the room, he found Stephanie curled up on the couch sound asleep and the others gathered in chairs at the other end of the living room talking quietly.
“Any luck?” he asked quietly as he settled on the arm of Drina’s recliner and rubbed her back.
“We had a couple of good ideas, I think,” Drina said, tipping her head up to smile at him crookedly. “But we’re all so exhausted. .” She shrugged, and then said, “You were on the phone a long time. Was there a problem arranging for the helicopter?”
Harper shook his head. “It’s coming for us at midnight. That gives us. .” He automatically glanced down at his wrist, but recalling that his watch had been another victim of the fire, glanced around the room for a clock. He spotted the digital time readout on the DVR beside Teddy’s television. It was 10:58. “Thirteen hours to sleep, take turns at the shower, and get ready. We should also be able to fit in another brainstorming session before it arrives.”
“Good thinking,” Tiny rumbled, catching Mirabeau’s hand and standing up. “We’ll be more clearheaded then.”
“Yeah,” Mirabeau sighed, slipping her arm around Tiny, and then glancing to Drina and Harper with a grimace. “Are you two going to be all right in the recliners? I feel bad that we get the bed.”
“Don’t,” Drina said, a wry smile curving her lips. “I’m so exhausted I could sleep on a bed of nails.”
“We’ll be fine,” Harper assured them. Teddy had decided the sleeping arrangements; Tiny and Mirabeau got the spare bedroom, Stephanie, Drina, and he got the living room, and Anders was presently sharing Teddy’s bed. Or possibly sacked out on Teddy’s bedroom floor, Harper thought with amusement as he recalled Anders’s expression when Teddy had made the announcement. He hadn’t looked terribly pleased, but it was Teddy’s house, so his rules.
No one was fooled. The police chief had made Anders share his room so he could keep an eye on him and ensure he didn’t try to slip away with Stephanie while the rest of the house slept. Drina’s and Harper’s sleeping in the living room with Stephanie was the second safeguard against that as well as the possibility of another attack by Leonius.
Harper sincerely hoped there wouldn’t be another attack. He was exhausted. They all were. If they could just make it through the next thirteen hours without Leonius trying something, they would get Stephanie away from here and at least that risk. Then they’d only have to worry about helping her handle her new gifts and convincing Lucian to give her the time to do so.
“Well, good night then,” Mirabeau murmured, as Tiny turned her toward the door and urged her from the room.
“Good night,” Drina and Harper whispered together.
He watched them out of the room, and then bent to press his lips to Drina’s forehead. At least that was the intention, but she lifted her head to say something just as he did, and his lips landed on her mouth. Exhausted as he was, his body immediately responded to the contact, and Harper found himself thrusting his tongue eagerly into her mouth to taste the passion bursting to life between them.
When she moaned and arched her back in response, thrusting her breasts upward, he couldn’t resist reaching for them. They both groaned at the excitement that bounced between them as he palmed her breasts, but Harper forced himself to release her and break the kiss.
“Christ,” he whispered, leaning his forehead against hers. “I’m so tired I can’t see straight, and I still want to rip your clothes off and sink myself into you.”
Drina gave a little sigh, and then pulled back to glance toward Stephanie. Her smile was wry when she turned back, her voice a mere whisper as she said, “Sleep.”
He nodded and started to rise, but she caught his hand, and said, “Thank you.”
“For what?” he asked with surprise.
“For coming with us to Toronto. When you asked at the house if I’d stay here if Lucian decided to replace me, I wanted to say yes, but Stephanie-”
“I know,” Harper assured her quietly. “It took me a minute to reason it out, but we’re life mates. We’ll be together. We just have to work out the particulars of where and so on.”
She smiled, and he caressed her cheek gently, and then pushed himself wearily to his feet. Drina shifted her chair into a reclining position as he walked to his own. He got in the second chair, shifted it into the reclining position, and then reached across the end table between them for her hand. She smiled at him gently and squeezed his fingers, and they both drifted off to sleep.
It was something cold and hard pressing against his forehead that woke him sometime later. Harper frowned and blinked his eyes open. His head was turned to the side, and the first thing he saw was Drina in the next chair, her eyes open and narrowed in concentration on something beyond him. Bending his neck to the side, he turned slowly to see what had been at his forehead and stilled when he saw the woman standing over him, pointing a gun at his head.
Chapter Seventeen
Harper stared at the slender mortal female with short, dark hair and a pinched, angry face. She was trembling, no doubt trying to fight the control Drina had taken of her.
“Sue?” he said finally, his voice as blank as his thoughts as he stared at Susan Harper. He hadn’t seen the woman since Jenny’s death, and his brain was having a little trouble accepting that Jenny’s sister would be here at all, let alone pointing a weapon at him.
“Why can’t I pull the trigger?” she growled, sounding furious. “I’m trying to, but my finger won’t move.”
Harper glanced to Drina.
“I woke up as she entered the room,” Drina said quietly. “At first, I was half-asleep and thought it must be Leonius, but then I realized she was a woman and mortal and she wasn’t going for Stephanie but heading for you. I waited to see what she was up to, but when she pointed the gun at you. .”
Harper nodded, not needing her to tell him that she had taken control of the woman enough to prevent her harming anyone but leaving her free to think and speak. He shifted his gaze back to Sue; his eyes slid from her face to the gun and back, before he asked with bewilderment, “Why?”
“Because you killed Jenny,” she said bitterly.
Harper sagged in his chair, his old friend guilt gliding through him like a ghost. . Jenny’s ghost. If he’d been the one controlling Sue at that moment, his control would have slipped, and he’d no doubt have a hole in his head. Fortunately, Drina didn’t slip at this news, and after taking a moment to regather himself, he cleared his throat, and said quietly, “I never meant for that to happen, Susan. You must know that. I wanted to spend my life with Jenny. She was my life mate. I’d sooner kill myself than my life mate.”
“She wasn’t your life mate,” Susan snapped with disgust. “Jenny didn’t even like you. She only put up with you so you’d turn her. She bought into all your promises of young and beautiful and healthy forever. . but you killed her.”
Harper winced as those words whipped him. He didn’t know which hurt him most: the suggestion that Jenny had only been using him or the reminder that she was dead because of him. Susan’s saying that she hadn’t even liked him fit with what Teddy had said the night he and Drina had flown back from Toronto in the helicopter, and he supposed it was possible. They’d only known each other a week or so before she’d agreed to the turn. And while he was immortal and had accepted her as his life mate the moment he couldn’t read her, she was mortal. Mortals didn’t understand the importance of being a life mate, didn’t automatically recognize the gift of it. She may have just gone along with it to let him turn her. But he was sure that she would have eventually recognized that he was the only one she could find peace with and passion.
Harper frowned as he recalled that he hadn’t experienced that passion with Jenny. He’d been putting it down to the fact that she’d kept him at arm’s length, and still believed that. If she’d even allowed him to kiss her, they both would have been overwhelmed by it, he was sure. Just as he and Drina were constantly bedeviled by it.
Finally, he said solemnly, “She was my life mate, Susan. I couldn’t read her.”
