Too much to risk. Losing another woman he loved that way would end him. He could feel it.
“I wouldn’t call life with you solitary confinement, but I ken what you’re saying. There’d be some adjustments to make for sure. But love—”
“Love. Bah. Look at my brothers then tell me that really exists.”
“Look at your parents and your grandparents and tell me it doesn’t. Look at your life with Juliette.”
“That’s dirty pool.”
Stanhill brushed a bit of lint from his trousers. “Get out of your own way. She’s only here for a month—”
“Twenty-eight more days.”
“Not that you’re counting.” Stanhill’s phone chimed. He straightened as he pulled it from his pocket. “Just give the whole thing a chance. At the very least, you’ll make your grandmother happy and keep her from pulling a stunt like this again.” He glanced at the phone and made an odd face. “I have to go.”
“Annabelle?”
“So it seems.” He headed for the steps.
“I might go see Sebastian.”
“You do that,” Stanhill called back. “Maybe you should feed too. You sound like you could use a topping off.”
“I fed yesterday, for your information.” But Stanhill had already shut the cellar door.
Hugh gripped the edge of the worktable and studied the notes before him, but it was impossible to make sense of them with the memory of last night still stuck in his head. And trying to erase it to clear the way for anything scientific was equally pointless. All his brain wanted to do was replay that kiss. Taste again the sweet softness of her mouth. Feel the tentative, searching way she’d kissed him back. The silkiness of her hair as it slid between his fingers. The press of her body against—
“Bloody hell!”
Enough. He knew one surefire way to change his thinking. He stormed up the stairs, grabbed his keys and headed for his eldest brother’s home. There was no question Sebastian would be there. Sebastian was always home.
Sure enough, when Hugh rang the bell, Sebastian’s man ushered him into the study. Sebastian sat at his desk, ledgers spread out before him. Sebastian kept the books for the family business and preferred to do things the old-fashioned way, with pencil and paper, before entering it all into the computer. He looked up. “Hugh. What brings you by?”
Hugh took a seat in one of the high-backed leather chairs fronting Sebastian’s desk. “I need advice.”
“Always happy to help. What can I do for you?”
Hugh frowned, trying to find exactly the right words. “I need to know how you got over Evangeline.”
Sebastian’s smile flat-lined and angry embers lit his gaze. “I’ve asked you and Julian not to speak her name in my house.”
Hugh nodded. “I know, and I wouldn’t, but getting over her, how you did it, is something I need to understand how to do too.”
“Then that’s going to be a problem.”
“Why’s that?”
Sebastian pulled out a bottle of whiskey and two glasses. “Because I never have gotten over her.” He poured a dram into both glasses, then pushed one toward Hugh. “You may not want this, but I do.”
Hugh stared at him. “Are you telling me you’re still in love with her?”
Sebastian drained his glass, refilled it, then turned his chair toward the windows. “You think I’d be this miserable if I wasn’t?” He drained the second glass. “Why are you asking me about her anyway? You’ve never been heartsick over one of your entanglements before.”
“It’s not that exactly. It’s…” Hugh gave him the quick and dirty version of Annabelle coming to stay with him.
Sebastian shook his head. “Didi is out of control. If I were you, I’d give her the damn amulet and be done with it.”
“Yes, but you rarely leave the house anyway.”
“We’re vampires. It’s unnatural for us to be outside when the sun’s up.”
Hugh laughed. “We’re vampires. Being vampires is unnatural.”
Sebastian topped off his whiskey. “Speaking of, how’s the formula coming?”
“I thought I’d had a breakthrough, but the last batch only held out for five minutes.” A little of his blood mixed with the formula, then set beneath UV lamps. Same test. Same miserable results.
“And then?” Sebastian quirked a brow in interest.
“Up in flames.”
Sebastian made a face. “Damn shame.”
“I am getting closer, though. The one before that only went thirty seconds.”
Sebastian straightened the pencil on his desk so it was perfectly parallel to the ledger page. “We need that formula. I love Didi, but she uses those amulets against us too often. And I’d like to travel.”