When they reached their room, Gideon inserted the keycard into the slot and opened the door. He took a quick glance around, grateful for the room-darkening drapes.
“Nice place.” Kay stifled a yawn while she waited for Gideon to lock the door, then she followed him into the bedroom.
“I don’t want you to leave the room,” Gideon said, dropping the suitcases on the flat wooden bench at the foot of the bed. “Not for anything. Understand?”
Nodding, Kay quickly changed into her nightgown and crawled under the covers. Five minutes later, she was asleep.
Stripping off his clothes, Gideon slid into bed beside her. He watched her until the sun came up and then he tumbled headlong into oblivion.
Kay sat up, yawning. A glance to her right showed Gideon was, for all intents and purposes, dead to the world. Undead or alive, awake or asleep, he was still the most gorgeous hunk of man she had ever known. She traced his lips with her fingertips, then leaned forward and kissed him. His lips were cool beneath hers. She brushed a lock of hair from his brow. It must be nice, she thought, never growing old or sick or feeble. Gideon would always look just as he did now, exactly the way he had looked when he became a vampire. Her people aged, but at a much slower rate than humans.
Being half werewolf and half human, Kay wasn’t sure if she would take after her mother, who was forty-three and looked it, or her father, who was in his mid-seventies and looked twenty-five. She was hoping the latter.
As a child, Kay hadn’t stopped to wonder why her mother aged and her father didn’t. She hadn’t really given it any thought until she turned twenty and realized that her father didn’t look much older than she did, which had made her wonder what it was like for her mother, being married to a man who looked so much younger.
Kay remembered asking her mother once if it bothered her that she looked older than her husband. Dorothy had shrugged, then said, “Of course it bothers me, but there’s nothing I can do about it now.”
The bitter edge in her mother’s voice had squelched any further questions on Kay’s part. At the time, Kay recalled wondering if one of the reasons her mother never left the compound was that people who saw the three of them together would likely assume that Kay and her father were siblings and that Dorothy was their mother, or perhaps assume that Kay’s father was her husband.
Rising, Kay went into the bathroom and closed the door. Slipping out of her nightgown, she turned on the taps in the shower and stepped into the stall, her thoughts still on her mother. Maybe Gideon could change Dorothy into a vampire, she thought, pulling the door closed behind her. Not exactly the best solution in the world, but it would keep her mother from growing any older.
Kay shook her head, horrified by the turn of her thoughts. Her gentle, soft-spoken mother, a vampire? She almost laughed out loud as she tried to visualize her mom with red eyes and fangs, stalking the night for prey. And then she did laugh. What on earth was she thinking? No doubt about it, hanging around with Gideon had definitely warped her mind. It was a moot point, anyway. Neither her mother nor her father would ever consider or consent to such a thing.
When she was clean from head to foot, Kay stepped out of the shower, dried off, and shrugged into the plush white robe the hotel had provided. A glance at her cell phone showed it was only eleven-thirty in the morning. What was she supposed to do all day while Gideon slept?
A rumble in her stomach made the decision for her. “Breakfast first.” Calling room service, she ordered French toast, scrambled eggs, bacon, orange juice, coffee, and the morning paper.
With that done, she settled back on the sofa and turned on the TV. Switching through the channels, she was appalled by her choices—insipid game shows, silly soap operas, movies that were older than she was, and news, news, news, none of it good. Jobs were at an all-time low. The Dow was down five hundred points. The deficit was up another billion or trillion—who could keep track? The price of gas and groceries was rising every day. And Israel was at war again.
She had just settled on an old Clint Eastwood movie when her breakfast arrived. She thanked the young man who delivered it and signed Gideon’s name to the bill. Resuming her seat on the sofa, she ate slowly to prolong the meal.
When she was finished, she set the tray aside, then sat there, impatiently tapping her foot. Did she dare go downstairs and browse the hotel gift shops? It would only take a few minutes. She could buy a candy bar and a book and come right back. But even as she considered it, she heard Gideon’s voice in the back of her mind. I don’t want you to leave the room. Not for anything. Understand?
He was right, of course. Even though Kay was fairly certain Verah wasn’t anywhere in the vicinity, discretion was, after all, the better part of valor. Besides, there was always a chance, however slim, that she was wrong. For all she knew, the witch could be prowling around the lobby right now. Having been the witch’s captive once, Kay wasn’t willing to take the chance.