“No! Mary Ann, what are you thinking?” Destiny gathered her close, hugged her hard in protest. “You know better than to think anything so ridiculous. How could you be responsible for something a madman chooses to do? We don’t even know if this doctor has anything to do with what’s happened. All the facts aren’t in yet, but even if he is waving a magic wand and casting spells throughout the neighborhood, you cannot possibly be to blame.”
“You sound like me. That’s all well and good in theory, but if I had brought charges against him, maybe he wouldn’t have been able to touch any of my friends.”
“Or, more likely, he would have moved his deviant behavior somewhere else where no one would notice the difference in their friends. Don’t you see, Mary Ann? This neighborhood and the people in it are so close, they don’t readily accept that someone like John Paul who loves Helena so very much would suddenly turn on her and try to hurt her. They don’t accept that Martin would attack Father Mulligan. All of them began to watch one another and try to figure out what was going wrong.”
“Please find out who is doing this and stop it, Destiny,” Mary Ann pleaded. Destiny hugged her again. “I intend to do just that.”
Chapter Seventeen
Nicolae was waiting outside the office, his long, sinewy frame leaning negligently against the banister. Destiny paused to look at him. The breeze was coolly ruffling the long silk of his hair. The moon cast a silver beam across the angles and planes of his face, illuminating the sheer sensuality there. His body was hard and powerful, a dangerous blend of predator and seductive male. He turned his head and smiled at her, robbing her of breath just that easily.
“You’re very good-looking,” she said judiciously, tilting her head to study his magnificent physique. “Are all Carpathians as good-looking as you?”
His black eyebrows arched. “I do not think that is a safe subject for you.” He held out his hand to her. Destiny studied it carefully, as if examining it for a trap. How in the world had she become so obsessed with him that the sight of his outstretched hand could send her heart somersaulting? Her fingers laced almost reluctantly with his. Up close, he would be able to feel the way he made her pulse elevate, the way her heart beat a little unsteadily. Her entire body ached for him if she ventured too close to his sheer magnetism. A humiliating fact, and one impossible to hide when he was touching her.
“Silly woman,” he said affectionately. “There is nothing at all to hide from a lifemate. There is never any need. I am in your mind as you are in mine.”
“Well, if you’re in my mind, then you should be perfectly aware that I’m having a difficult time accepting our weird relationship.”
He brought their linked hands up to his mouth, his lips teasing the skin of her inner wrist. “You accept our weird relationship; you just are afraid to trust it. Or yourself. It makes you happy, and you do not trust that.”
She glared at him. “Have you been hanging out with Father Mulligan again? He’s always handing out that two-cent advice of his.”
“He only charged you two cents? He made me fill his poor box,” Nicolae said, straight-faced. “And he didn’t offer a single word on marriage. He just said to have courage, whatever that meant.”
Destiny burst out laughing. “The old fraud, he probably said that on purpose just to make me crazy. Where’s Vikirnoff?”
Nicolae rugged on her hand until she began walking along the street with him. “He is out seeking information on the woman in the photograph. The healer is on his way, and my brother is determined to keep the cities free of vampires. We do not need Vikirnoff cluttering up the skies tonight. I have plans.”
The three little words set butterfly wings fluttering in the pit of her stomach. She had already been too long away from him. Desire shot through her, shaking her very foundations. Her mouth grew dry, and her body hot, just hearing his words. Just the thought of his hard body made her tremble. She didn’t dare look at his mouth; her knees would give out.
“What kind of plans?” She had no idea how she managed to get the words past her strangled throat.
He moved closer, his larger body brushing against hers so that electricity seemed to arc and crackle between them. Little dancing whips of lightning sizzled in her bloodstream. Just walking with him was a miracle to her.
Nicolae glanced down at the top of her bent head. She was the miracle to him. He still couldn’t quite grasp the fact that he had found her at long last. The endless search for her was over and she was with him. A part of him. The intensity of his feelings shocked him at times. “You said you wanted to go to the movies. I found an all-night theater.”