Love Me Forever. Rosemary Laurey

couldn’t hurt him. “Be careful.”

      “With you to come home to? Of course.” His lips were cool and inviting and she’d much rather he took her upstairs than left to wander the streets.

      “Make sure you don’t come back with a whacking great hole in your shirt!” She’d nearly flipped out the time he did that. Even if the wound had half-healed by the time she saw him, the bloodstains and singed bullet hole in his broadcloth shirt would have given her palpitations—if her heart still beat.

      “Don’t you think the pair of us can take care of anyone we meet?” Justin asked.

      She scowled at Justin. Now there were two of them out to play “stop the bullet” or “trick the thug,” or whatever silly macho games male vampires played when no one was watching. “I don’t want to think about what the pair of you are likely to get up to!”

      Okay, petty crime had dropped since they’d moved into German Village. So what? It didn’t ease her mind to know her lover was swooping the streets discouraging would-be burglars. She’d seen herself how closely Christopher skirted injury. “Take care of him, Justin. If I’m making that costume, I won’t have time to repair slashed and punctured clothing.”

      “You know we’ll come back, don’t you?”

      She’d never had much luck arguing with Justin. “Yeah.” She kissed Christopher and hugged Justin and watched them disappear around the corner before she shut the door and went up to her attic workroom.

      Velvet. Justin’s suggestion of a missewn selvage wouldn’t work with the nap, but she did have a bolt end she’d put aside, as it had a row of flaws. Five minutes with a tape measure and Sam’s measurements and she had it figured out. She’d make the cape three inches too long and put the row of flaws at the hem. Stella could easily turn it up and make it the perfect length. Or better still—Justin could take it around and check the length and deliver it back after she’d fixed it. That way he’d be invited into Stella’s house and could reenter at will when he needed sustenance.

      Dixie sat bolt upright and stared at the ceiling. Had she really thought of Stella as a food source? Dixie shuddered but slowly calmed. Yes. She had no other choice. She was vampire and fed off blood—when she ran out of blood bags, it had to be animals or mortals. That was the way her world was now ordered. She thought back to the times Christopher had fed off her before her transformation. Stella wouldn’t be complaining and Justin would do right by her.

      And Justin would soon be back with Christopher, so she’d better get going. There was enough spare velvet to make a pair of pants. She’d leave the bottoms unfinished to add to the “just something I found” myth and Stella could add a tee-shirt or sweater. Busy with scissors and sewing machine, Dixie almost forgot her anxiety about Christopher. She was glad to be working, and particularly pleased to be making something for Sam.

      She missed the kids she’d worked with in her librarian days, and Sam was neat. Bright, polite and an avid reader, heck he was the answer to a teacher’s prayer, and obviously Stella’s pride and joy. And Dixie liked Stella, admired her independence and determination to get the very best for Sam. Interesting really, after asking for the costume as a favor for Sam, Justin’s conversation had been ninety percent Stella.

      Dixie chuckled. Could ethical, straightlaced Justin be smitten? She shook her head. Hardly likely. He’d been more adamant even than Christopher that mortals and vampires avoid emotional involvement. No, Justin was just being kindly towards a poor kid. Very typical of him. Besides, what chance was there of Justin ever linking with another female while he still carried a torch for Gwyltha? Not that Dixie understood that after all that had happened, but men were hard enough to understand at the best of times and add vampire to that complication. Dixie shook her head and reached for her tailor’s shears and started cutting.

      “You’re not being injudicious over this venture, are you?” Justin asked.

      Christopher braced his feet against the gutter and leaned back on the slate tiles of the school roof. “What do you think?” They had a perfect view over the park and the houses on Reinhart, and one house in particular.

      Justin kept his sights on the shadows in the park. “That flamboyance has always appealed to you.”

      “Can’t much help it, walking around with an eye patch gets people’s attention.”

      “Walking around is one thing, setting yourself up as the neighborhood vigilante is another.”

      Christopher replied without taking his eyes off the house on the corner by the alley. “Justin, I discourage young thugs from continuing a life of crime. Hardly vigilante activity.”

      “But it will get you noticed. You can’t take that risk.”

      “No one is noticing me, except a few juvenile delinquents and some petty thieves. I’m not out to obliterate crime.” He paused. “Now that would get noticed. I just aim to get the word out that German Village isn’t easy pickings.”

      “Be careful, Christopher.”

      Satisfied the two dark figures who turned down Jaeger had passed the empty house, Christopher relaxed a little.

      “Surely you didn’t come all this way just to exhort me to discretion.”

      “No.” Justin folded his hands behind his head. “I came out here at Gwyltha’s urging.”

      That almost had Christopher falling off the roof. “I see.” It was an outright lie. What was going on? Had Gwyltha finally come to her senses and come back to Justin? If so, what was he doing this side of the Atlantic? And why would she send him here? “And I thought it was just for old times’ sake.”

      “That too. But she convinced me that if my protégés were living in Vlad’s territory it behooved me to make peace.”

      Dropping to the ground in shock got more probable by the minute. “We’re hardly in his ‘territory.’ That’s why we picked this part of the Midwest. To stay clear of him.”

      “Seems the Northwest is overpopulated and vampires are migrating.”

      That made sense. Too many vampires in an area meant trouble all around. “He’s moving in here?” If so, how could he and Dixie oppose him? Damn! They’d just got settled and, hell, he liked it here in German Village. It took him back to the narrow streets of the London of his youth. “What do we do?”

      “Nothing right now.” Justin stretched, seeming relaxed, but Christopher knew him better. “He’s established a colony in Chicago and is looking to spread out. I’m meeting with him there next week.”

      “And…” Surely Justin wasn’t going cap in hand to the man who’d taken Gwyltha. They’d up tents and scatter before he let that happen. “Look, you don’t have to do this.”

      “It’s no matter,” Justin interrupted.

      Christopher didn’t believe that for one second. “Look here…”

      “No!” Justin shook his head. “It isn’t…now. Funny, really. When Gwyltha gave me the ultimatum, I all but went into a snarling fit. On the flight over, I kept telling myself it was inevitable and to get it over with. But now, sitting here looking at the stars, it doesn’t seem that hard. I’ll meet with him, claim Ohio for my kindred and that will be that. I don’t even feel the rancor I have for the last century or so.” He gave a dry chuckle. “Must be the invigorating air of the New World changing my outlook…or maybe just seeing you and Dixie together tells me Gwyltha and I weren’t suited after all.”

      Christopher forbore pointing out Gwyltha and Justin had been suited, on and off, for fifteen hundred years until Vlad Tepes took advantage of one of their off times. Still, if Justin was at peace at long last…“What next?”

      “What next is,” Justin paused, head angled to listen, “trouble I think.” He stood up and crossed the roof, Christopher right behind him. “Thought so.”

      Justin