One Lucky Vampire(59)

“What?”

Jake glanced to Nicole to see that she was staring at him with complete and utter incomprehension. Jake opened his mouth, closed it, and then glanced to his cousins, muttering, “Some of that help would be good about now.”

“Oh, no, Pinocchio,” Dante said on a laugh. “You’re on your own here.”

Jake scowled at the man and ground out, “I thought you said you were here to help?”

“Not if you’re going to lead with that,” Tomasso said with amusement.

Cursing under his breath, Jake glanced back to Nicole, and forced another smile. “I’m sorry. Forget I said that. That was a mistake. What I meant to say was that—Nicole, I wasn’t sick. I was poisoned.”

Nicole blinked several times and shook her head with confusion. “What?”

Yeah, she wasn’t taking that any better than the life-mate bit, and he wasn’t surprised. Nina had said Marguerite had played with Nicole’s memories and that Dante and Tomasso were reinforcing it so that she would relax and work. He knew what that meant. Marguerite must have pretty much erased most of her memory of the night he’d started puking up blood in the hot tub.

Jake was trying to figure out how to handle that when Dante stepped in with some of that help he’d promised and said, “Nicole, think back to the night Jake got sick. You were in the studio, heard him vomiting, went out to check on him, and . . .”

Nicole sat back abruptly as if Dante had physically hit her with the memories, and Jake didn’t doubt that it felt like that to her. Dante had led her to the memory and then finally let her recall what had happened. He watched with concern as she paled and then flushed and paled again.

“Fangs,” Nicole breathed, her thoughts obviously turned inward as she recalled that night.

Jake winced, guilt pinching at him as he had his own flash of memory of trying to bite her.

“You tried to bite me,” she recalled with horror.

“I’m sorry,” Jake said at once, almost drowning in guilt now. He’d never bitten anyone in the seven years since he’d been turned, but he’d been out of his head with both blood loss and bloodlust, and she’d smelled so good. The scent and sound of the life-giving fluid pounding through her veins had tempted him beyond reason. “I would never hurt you. I swear.”

“But you tried to,” she pointed out. “You tried to bite me.”

Jake grimaced. There was no getting around that.

“Pitiful,” Tomasso said, shaking his head sorrowfully, and Jake glanced to him with confusion.

“What?” he asked.

“You don’t seem to handle emotional situations well, Pinocchio,” Dante said for his brother. “You’re kind of pitiful.”

Jake scowled with frustration. “Well, if you’re so damned smart, why don’t you tell me how I should be handling this?”

Dante exchanged a glance with Tomasso, and then turned to Nicole. “You trust Marguerite?”

“Yes.” She drew the word out slowly.

“You don’t think she’d put you in a dangerous situation, or put dangerous people in your home?” Tomasso asked.

“No, of course not,” Nicole said more certainly. “Marguerite has always been kind and supportive of me and my family. She’s almost like family herself.”

“So you know you’re safe with the three of us,” Dante said simply and then added, “No matter how crazy Jake sounds, you’re safe with him.”

Nicole let her breath out on a slow sigh and relaxed a little in her seat with a nod. “Yes. I believe I must be.”

Dante nodded, and then warned her, “You’re going to remember and learn some things now that will freak you out.”

“Some of it will sound crazy,” Tomasso added.

“But you need to just listen and stay calm and remember you’re safe.”

Jake stared from one twin to the other. This was the most he’d heard the pair speak in all the time he’d known them, and he’d known them since he was four years old. Roberto Conti Notte had business interests in Italy and after he married Jake’s mother, the family had spent the summers, Christmas, and most every other school holiday in Italy. Dante and Tomasso had often come around with Christian to visit and Jake had looked up to the three of them with a boy’s hero worship. He’d wanted to grow up to be just like them . . . at least until he was eighteen and “the family” had decided he was old enough to know the truth about them . . . that they were different. That he was different from them . . . and could never be like them, not without becoming something he’d always thought was evil and bad.