The big cat stared at her, then turned those massive golden orbs to Hunter.
Hunter stared at him in shock. “Where did he come from?” he demanded.
“And you’re the one who had it all worked out,” she said casually.
“He was in the vehicle?”
She nodded. “Of course. I brought him with me.”
“What about at Stefan’s?”
“He was outside, but I opened the window, and he came in and spent the night with me. But he always leaves before anybody else is around.”
“So he knocked on Stefan’s door, when you were unable to.” She avoided his gaze. Hunter turned to Nocturne. “Thank you for watching out for her.” He studied the cat, who stared right back, measuring him. “Yet he appears here now, before me and you,” Hunter said, still staring at the massive feline. “Why is he visible now?”
“Because he chooses to be,” she said, facing Hunter. “He’s obviously checked over your energy and made a decision about you. Honestly I’m surprised. He’s often been very difficult about making those kinds of decisions.”
“Difficult?”
“Yeah, he doesn’t like people,” she said bluntly. “Especially men.” Her gaze narrowed, as she studied the look on Hunter’s face. “Particularly young men.”
He looked at her, eyebrows up. “What difference does age make? Isn’t it just about character?”
She shrugged. “Let’s just say, he has his preferences.”
“So, do I pass muster?”
“You’re still alive,” she said succinctly. “So, I would say, yes, you do.”
Chapter 8
Hours later, down at the edge of the lake, Beth sat hidden in the brush beside the dock, a cup of tea in her hand, wondering how quickly her life had shifted and changed. But then it was the only reason she’d stayed alive. Hunter walked down the path onto the dock and out toward the end, as he studied the water and the horizon. He turned to look at her and said, “If you wanted to go fishing, right now is not a bad time.”
She frowned. Damn, she didn’t expect him to see her. “But I’m quite happy right here, with my tea.”
“When we go inside, I have hair dye for you, so you can change your hair color too.”
Her eyebrows shot up. “My hair doesn’t change color.”
He frowned at that.
“It’s jet-black,” she said, “very hard to change.”
“I was thinking of a blue.”
“You know what? That might work,” she said hesitantly. “I’ve tried to dye it various browns and blonde, but it never works.”
“I figured a blue-black might be okay,” he said, studying her. “It is almost too jet-black to be natural.”
She smiled. “And yet it is.”
“Your skin is almost too white to be natural too,” he said, standing in front of her, his arms across his chest, frowning, as if he didn’t like the color of her skin.
She shrugged. “It’s always been that way.”
“Bloodred lips too,” he said. “It looks like you’ve got on makeup, and yet I know there is none.”
She just stared at him steadily. If he dug deeper, he would find out some of the secrets she didn’t want anybody to know because, as soon as they got wind of it, it would mean more explanations, and she wasn’t up for that.
She waited until he turned to look out on the horizon again and said, “Depending on how long we’re here for, we can go fishing another day.” He shoved his hands in his pockets, and she saw he was almost itching to go out. “Are you a fisherman?”
He tossed her a casual grin. “I caught the bug a few years back,” he said. “And I promised myself I’d come here many times, but I just never managed to get here.”
“Work?”
He nodded. “Work.” But he didn’t offer anything else.
She had to wonder what somebody who worked for Stefan would do. “Does he pay you?” He stiffened ever-so-slightly and didn’t answer. She knew it wasn’t that he hadn’t heard but that he chose not to.
“We have more time to cook now. I’ll go put some meat in marinades for the barbecue.”
She nodded slowly. “Vegetables? I’m kind of a rabbit.”
“You’re not a vegetarian, are you?” he asked.
Such a note of shock was in his voice that she had to laugh. “You make it sound like that could be the absolute worst thing in the world.”
“For me, it would be,” he said candidly. “I am very much a carnivore.”
“Good for you,” she said, “but I’ve never been able to afford much meat.”
“Ah,” he said, “now that’s a different story.” She raised an eyebrow. “I can afford meat,” he said, “so I eat it.”
“Good, and I certainly won’t say no, if it’s there.” As a matter of fact, she felt her mouth watering at the thought of a good thick steak.
“Steak is food for the kings,” he said, as if echoing her thoughts.
“I can’t even remember the last time I had one.”
“When you were a captive, what did you eat?”
“For a long time, it wasn’t even food, at least not anything we would recognize as food. A gruel, with all kinds of supplements and nutrients in it. They kept us healthy, healthy, healthy, but with absolutely zero appreciation of what real food was, until our teeth weren’t developing properly. Then they suddenly gave us food to chew, bread to bite on, bones to gnaw on,” she said, shaking her head. “We had superhard baked crackers, just to give our digestion and our teeth and our jaws some practice. But most of the food was liquid.”
“That sounds disgusting.”
“Later,” she said, “we had some changes in diet. We would get things like oatmeal and puddings, soft foods, but they could mix whatever they wanted into it, without us having the ability to taste much of it.”
“Is that why they did it?”
“I think so. Some of us got more common food, but, if you resisted or caused them any trouble, you got mostly liquid food,” she said, with a half smile. “So I spent a good half of my life on liquid foods.”
He chuckled at that. “Not surprised at that, but I am surprised that you have any enzymes to digest food at all.”
“It’s one of the things I did when I left. I struggled with supplementation to eat naturally. But I survived,” she said. “And beef hasn’t been cost-effective enough for me to eat.”
“Well, you get it now,” he said. “Let’s go take a look.” He reached out a hand toward her.
She nodded, and, using his hand to pull herself up, she managed to straighten without too much pain digging into her.
“How is the wound?” he asked.
“Healing,” she said, keeping her response short. She led the way up the hill, finding it a little bit of a climb. By the time she made it to the lower-level deck, he said, “We can go inside, if you want.”
She shook her head and kept on going up the staircase to the left until she got to the upper deck. There she slowly sagged into one of the outdoor chairs. “You’re blessed to have something like this,” she said wistfully.