I pulled my thoughts back to the situation at hand. “I won’t stop looking for your brother,” I said. “We have a good lead, but that won’t stop me following up on others.”
Her dark brows drew together, twin arches over those deep brown eyes of hers. For a second, I couldn’t look away. There were so many songs about blue-eyed girls, but tonight was the first time I wished I could sing, just so I could talk about her eyes.
Man, this woman had done a number on me. She was turning me into some cheesy idiot.
“Why are you helping me?” Emma finally asked. There was a mix of surprise and relief in her eyes. Had she really thought that I'd hear that sirens were involved and run off? When the surprise wore off, I could also see a healthy dose of skepticism in there as well.
“I understand loss.” I watched the idiot kids dancing and probably taking ridiculous amounts of drugs around me and sighed. I hated telling this story. I pushed the emotions down so I could relay what happened without getting overwhelmed. “My wife and best friend were on their way to Shawsville to pick up a birthday present for me when they were in a freak accident. A fuel truck crashed into them and exploded.“ I chucked humorlessly. “Those things are really hard to blow up, though you wouldn’t think so. But it did, killing them both. It also started a fire. It was a dry and windy summer, so it turned into a wildfire. The worst one our region has ever seen, as a matter of fact.”
I wanted to say more. I wanted to pull that moment together with this moment when she was scared for her brother, but I couldn’t seem to form the words. Because everyone knew that Emma had lost so much over the years already. It seemed like the right thing to tell her I understood, but the wrong thing to compare any of our losses as if they were the same. Loss was always different. That was something I’d learned in my professional life and my personal life.
Emma’s gaze was filled with so much empathy that I wished I could curl around her. Instead, I continued holding her gently, diving into those eyes of hers. At last, her sweet voice came. “I’m so sorry. That had to have been awful." We both fell quiet for a moment before she spoke again. "I, uh. I’m going through a messy divorce. I've tried to keep it from Travis, my son, but he's picking up on more of it than I would like. Smart ass kid.” She rolled her eyes and fixed her stare on me. “Rick, my husband, cheated. Bad. It was awful, left me pretty much a total wreck. It may or may not have had something to do with me coming back to Mystic Hollow.”
My blood boiled. How dare this Rick guy treat her like that? Emma was sweet, kind, and joyful, and for someone to stomp all over that made me want to show them exactly what my bear thought of the situation. My bear paced within me, eager to be released so he could wreak some havoc. I could hardly suppress the growl that wanted to vibrate out of me as it was. “I’m sorry he did that to you. If you’d like, I can kill him and make it look like a bear attack,” I offered.
She burst out laughing. I spun her and lowered her into a dip. As she arched her back and let herself relax, I heard a ripping sound. Emma gasped and her eyes widened. “Oh, no,” she whispered, one hand suddenly clutching her stomach.
“What was that?” I pulled her close again, gently taking her hand that had been resting on her stomach and putting it around my waist as we began to sway again.
Her cheeks reddened. I could tell even in the low light, which meant they were probably actually flaming red in the right lighting. “My girdle.”
It took all I had not to burst out laughing. She would probably think I was laughing at her though, which I wasn't, just the situation. “Emma, you don’t need that. There’s nothing wrong with curves.” Hell, I’d thought she looked a little stiff. “Relax. Really, I—”
“Sir?” A voice behind me cut me off suddenly. Emma jerked away and looked at the guy behind me with wide eyes.
Turning slowly, I faced one of the vampires I knew guarded the door to the VIP section downstairs. “Yes?”
“The boss would like a word,” he said.
After nodding at the stooge, I gave Emma a small bow. “Next time,” I said, then followed the crony toward the downstairs door.
Time to do my job.
17
Emma
“This has been the longest three days of my life,” I said with a long moan as I pushed the book away. We’d been researching nonstop, but there was not much info to be found about sirens. All we knew for sure was what Beth had gotten from her contact. They came inland to the beach to do their ceremony every full moon near the waterfall. The internet said the sirens lived in massive mansions on tiny unplottable islands off the mainland. They also had a flotilla of sorts, but that was spoken about even less in the books.
“So, we’re going to do this,” I muttered. “We are.” I took another bite of the brownie Deva brought for courage. The rich, chocolaty square practically melted on my tongue. It was so
