His gaze slid over her tense shoulders and stiff jaw, and Mac considered that her not being a police officer here in town presented a problem. It meant there was no reason for her to be the one to guard him and have to stick close to him at some sort of safe house . . . unless he could make sure there was no one else to do it and that she had to continue to help in this pinch.
If that failed, he could always rent a room at the bed-and-breakfast, Mac supposed. That would put him close to her at least some of the time. She must be staying at Mrs. Vesper’s, he knew. It was the only B and B in town. Mac had stayed there himself when he’d been scouting towns, and then again when he’d come to see about a house to buy, but there hadn’t been anything on the market in Sandford. He’d almost given up and decided to try another town when Mrs. Vesper had told him that the owner of an old farmhouse outside town wanted to rent.
Mac hadn’t been too keen on the idea of renting at first, but as the dear old woman had pointed out, it would give him a chance to see if he liked it in Sandford before he actually purchased, and if he did, she suspected the homeowner would be willing to sell somewhere down the line if he was patient. So, Mac had contacted the homeowner via an email address Mrs. Vesper had given him, and arranged to rent the house.
It had all happened quickly after that. Mac had used e-transfer to send first and last month’s rent to the homeowner and made arrangements for monthly withdrawals to cover future rent. He’d then arranged for the renovations he’d wanted for the basement so that it could be used as a lab. Once the renos had been finished he’d flown back to New York to arrange for his house there to be packed up and sent north. Then he’d flown back and booked into the bed-and-breakfast again to wait for his belongings to be driven up.
Mac had only expected to be at the bed-and-breakfast one night this time. He’d flown straight up the evening that they’d finished packing up his things, but the truck wasn’t going to leave until the next morning. He’d expected it the next night, Wednesday, but it had been held up at customs for more than twenty-four hours, and hadn’t arrived until nearly midnight on Thursday . . . and now, here he was with everything he owned burned up along with his new rental, and nowhere to go except to the bed-and-breakfast where CJ must be staying. But Mac could only think that might be helpful for him. He needed to spend time with the woman to woo her, and he needed to woo her to convince her to be his life mate.
Mac savored the words in his mind. Life mate. The one thing every immortal yearned for. The one person who could beat back the loneliness every immortal invariably suffered thanks to their need to protect their thoughts from older immortals, and block out the thoughts of younger immortals as well as mortals. But that wasn’t necessary with a life mate, which was a gift. Having to constantly guard your thoughts could be exhausting, and often led to his kind avoiding others to avoid the need to do it . . . and that could lead to madness and going rogue.
Mac didn’t think he’d been in danger of that quite yet, but he had waited a long time to finally meet his life mate. So long that he’d begun to think it might never happen . . . and now here she was. She’d just walked up to the ambulance in his darkest hour, changing what had seemed like one of the worst days of his life into the best damned day ever.
Mac smiled faintly at the memory. Her arrival in his life had been so normal that, at first, he hadn’t recognized that his very existence was about to change, or that she was about to become the most important person in his life. CJ had just been a tall, slender stranger walking toward the ambulance in a white blouse and dark business jacket that contrasted wildly with the jeans and cowboy boots that finished off the outfit. Everything about her had been surprising, but he thought she should have had a spotlight on her, and been accompanied by a symphony, or a choir singing “Hallelujah!”
Mac smiled at the thought, and then turned his mind to more pragmatic matters . . . like that he had to contact the local Enforcers and bring them in on the case. If someone was trying to kill him, they needed to know. Not only so that they could try to sort out who it was, but because they’d have to do damage control when it came to the mortals in the area and any official reports the case generated. He would have preferred to let it play out as a simple fire caused by electrical issues as he’d originally intended. Being an old farmhouse, no one would have questioned that, and it would have got little attention at all that way. But not being able to control CJ had put paid to that plan and now they’d have to try to manage the situation.
Mac also needed to arrange for more blood to be delivered to him wherever he ended up. A safe house would make that difficult if CJ was the one guarding him. Hell, even in the bed-and-breakfast it would be difficult, but he needed more blood, and soon. While the blisters were gone and he looked mostly healed on the outside, his body was still repairing the internal damage and was quickly using up the blood he’d managed to acquire from the various firemen and paramedics at the scene. Mac was already feeling the gnawing ache that came when his body was in need of more blood. Not really a surprise. He’d pretty much been parboiled in that tub by the time the firemen had managed to beat back the flames enough to make a path in to get him out. The water had been bubbling around him, scalding him alive, and it had taken every ounce of self-control he possessed to keep from leaping out of the water. The only thing that had kept him from doing so was the sure knowledge that he would be dead in seconds if he got out. His body could repair almost any damage done to it, but nothing could bring an immortal back from ash and that’s what he would have been had he got out of that tub, because the one weakness immortals had was being incredibly flammable.
Pushing away the unpleasant memories of his time in the tub, Mac turned his thoughts to how he was going to make the calls he needed to. His phone, along with everything else he owned, had been destroyed in the fire, and the calls he had to make could not be done in front of others. He needed a phone and privacy for at least a few minutes, and was considering how to manage that when the loud music that had been playing since they left the house suddenly died.
Glancing around, Mac saw that they’d arrived at the police station. He turned back to CJ, his mouth opening and then snapping shut with alarm when he saw that she was already getting out of the car. Quite sure that if he let her out of his sight she’d never give him the chance to see her again, Mac quickly unsnapped his seat belt and scrambled out to follow.
Three
“So, what does ‘CJ’ stand for?”
CJ’s jaw tightened as that question told her that her attempt to escape Mac Argeneau hadn’t worked. She hadn’t moved quickly enough to leave him behind. Although she had managed to lose Simpson, she saw with a quick glance back. The officer was still scrambling out of the car with his evidence kit. Turning to face forward again, CJ didn’t respond to Mac’s question, but suggested, “You should really wait for Simpson, Mr. Argeneau. If someone is out to kill you, you’ll need him to keep you safe.”
“I am sure you can keep me just as safe as he could,” Mac said with unconcern.
“I don’t have a gun, he does. Stick with Simpson,” she said firmly, and reached for the glass door of the police station, only to snatch her hand back to avoid touching his when it got there first.