“I was also told you’d been working to lose the Australian accent, but that information seems to have been wrong.”
She sighed, slouched in her seat, and said in a perfect American accent, “I know how, I just don’t like doing it.”
“Well, practice makes perfect. Aaron wants you to blend in, and I’m pretty sure our new Master of the City is going to feel the same.”
“Right, because I’m coming in as one Master is about to leave and another is arriving, just to complicate things even more.”
Collosa glanced at her and looked back to the road. “I can’t imagine how stressful this is for you. I can’t speak to the vampire politics part of it, but Drake Security will fold you into us like you’re family. We’ve been needing more computer geeks, so everyone will be happy to see you.”
She shrugged. “Likely not everyone. I’ll walk in and be better than everyone else. It always causes problems, but I can deal with it.”
“You’re better than Chance?”
“Apples and oranges, where he’s concerned. Different skillsets.” She sighed. “But yes, I’m better.”
Kelsey sat quietly while the grizzly bear ordered nearly sixty dollars of food. She did the math in her head and figured that was around eighty Australian dollars, and she suppressed a sigh. Vampires are supposed to offer to provide food for the people who regularly offer up a vein. She wasn’t to the point of penny pinching, but she wanted to build up some savings, and feeding this man would be expensive. Would the gorgeous leopard eat as much? She hadn’t counted on spending hundreds of dollars a day to feed the shapeshifter who’d agreed to be her regular sustenance.
Old vampires are rich because they accumulate wealth. Kelsey would be reasonably well off in another thirty-three years — when the funds she’d squirreled away to grow for fifty years became available to her once again. For now, she was living off her paychecks. Drake Security was going to pay her much better than her previous employer, but she couldn’t invest in her future if she spent everything she earned.
“You’re going to have a year without a summer, aren’t you?” Collosa asked.
She looked at him, in profile, and focused on him as a person instead of a gorgeous male specimen. He had the bluest eyes she’d ever seen on a human, and the face of a god. Chiseled, strong, and as alpha male as one could get. Walking up to him and pretending to be confident had been hard, but she thought she’d managed.
She wanted to just stare at him. No, she wanted to touch his arm and see if the muscles that rippled when he turned the steering wheel were as hard as they looked. She wanted to feel his heat. His life force.
But he’d asked her about having two winters back to back, and she needed to answer him.
“Yes, which isn’t a bad thing for a vampire.” He looked displeased, and she remembered he wanted her to speak American.
American was her present, Australian was her past. New identities can’t be absorbed unless you stay in the present tense. She’d been coached about it enough, but the lesson hadn’t fully sunk in until that moment.
She focused on speaking the way her speech coach had taught her. “Vampires prefer long nights and short days, and the cold doesn’t bother us. I’ve ordered some things. Have there been deliveries?”
“Several boxes arrived yesterday, which was perfect timing. The three of us were in New Hampshire until a few days ago, on a job I worried we wouldn’t finish before you arrived, but we finished the night before Halloween, thank goodness.”
“Excellent. I sold most everything I owned. Cheaper to do that and buy new than to pay to ship things overseas.” She breathed in again and had to say something. She’d smelled it before, but it was stronger now, in the closed car. “I smell explosives and something else I’m not familiar with. It seems to be coming from you, but I suppose it’s in the car.”
He breathed in, turned his head towards the back of the vehicle, breathed again, and finally leaned towards her to smell again.
“I smell my gun, and the rifle in the hidden compartment, but no explosives.”
A gun? Kelsey’s stomach tried to turn over again. Fear raced through her veins. “Gun? You have a gun?”
“Of course. I’m a bodyguard.” He came to a stop at a red light and glanced over at her. “This is America, sweetheart. We carry guns here.”
“I’ve never actually seen one, other than in movies and on television. Well, I suppose I’ve seen them on coppers, but not up close, and you can’t really see much when it’s in the holster, can you?” Too late, she realized she’d reverted to speaking Australian.
“We call them cops here, and you’re going to need to check that accent.”
“Stop changing the subject,” she said in her best American accent. “Why do you have a gun? No, two guns!”
“I don’t go much of anywhere unarmed. I mean, I have to take it off before I can go into a government building, or into an airport, or school, but otherwise, if it’s legal for me to have it, I do.”
“Wait. It’s legal here? To just walk around with a gun?”
He let out a breath that wasn’t quite a sigh, but was damned close, and he waited until he’d merged onto the interstate to answer.
“It’s difficult to own a gun in a few states, like California, for instance. We’ll be in Florida, Georgia, and Tennessee on this trip, and it’s legal for me to have a weapon and carry concealed in all of those states, because I have a license to carry concealed in Tennessee. If I didn’t, it’d still be legal for me to have it in the car.”
“Is it loaded?”
He laughed. Laughed! “Why would I bother carrying a paperweight around? Of course it’s loaded.”
“And the one in the hidden compartment? Surely that can’t be legal, even here.”
“Seriously? If you didn’t like the country, and if you can’t handle security people being armed so they can protect their clients, why did you accept a job with a security company in the States?”
Great, now she’d pissed him off. She took a breath she didn’t need in the hopes it would calm her, but it didn’t.
“Just, never mind. I’m sorry I asked.”
They were both silent several long minutes, and he finally said, “Look, you said you’ve never seen one. Fear of the unknown is perfectly understandable. I’ll unload a few tomorrow, teach you how to check for yourself to see if they’re loaded, and we’ll talk about how they work. I’ll take you to the range the first chance we get.”
“I don’t want to shoot one.”
He did a doubletake at her and then focused back on the road. “I’m surprised Aaron agreed to bend the rules for you.”
“What rules?”
“The employment contract states you have to spend time in the range, and have to carry a weapon. It’s all spelled out to make sure everyone can handle a firearm, and to keep their skills up to date. Even office people. Everyone who works for us knows secrets the bad guys want. No one can afford to make themselves easy prey. You must have vampire powers that weren’t in your packet.”