Inez turned to survey the filled closet again and shook her head. There were enough clothes there for a two-week stay, but then the Argeneaus didn’t do anything by halves.
Sighing, Inez sat on the side of the bed and then fell back on it and closed her eyes. She was exhausted, she was also still annoyed. The clothes and other goodies had not lifted her mood. Bastien had refused to explain why Thomas couldn’t read or control her, insisting it was something Thomas would have to explain himself when he was ready. But from his reaction to her questions, she suspected Thomas wouldn’t be ready to answer them for some time.
Inez grimaced. She had never been a very patient person, and hated feeling ignorant. Being left in the dark on this matter simply made her think it was important and something she really should know.
Frowning as she became aware of a pounding coming muffled from the next room, she stood and moved to the door to the sitting room, her eyes finding Thomas still standing by the table with the cooler on it. His back was to her and his shoulders hunched as he listened to whatever Bastien was saying on the phone and made notes on a notepad on the table.#p#分页标题#e#
Her gaze slid to the door to the hall as the pounding continued, and then back to Thomas, but if he heard, he didn’t care that there was someone at the door. He was now hissing rather urgently into the phone in tones too low for her to hear. Worried that Bastien may be giving him bad news about Marguerite, she frowned with concern and moved to the door to the suite to bring an end to the pounding. At this rate, whoever was at the door was going to have the people in the neighboring hotel rooms calling hotel security.
Irritated at that possibility, Inez was scowling when she opened the door. She only opened it a little ways, an effort to keep whoever it was from seeing Thomas, the cooler and the empty bag of blood. She didn’t want to upset housekeeping or whoever it was. However, the man on the other side of the door was already upset, his expression a strange mixture of worry, apology, and relief as she opened the door.
“Yes?” Inez asked, relaxing a little as her gaze slid over the black nylon jacket he wore with the A.B.B. logo on it. The same logo that was on the cooler he carried as well as the one on the table in front of Thomas. A.B.B., Argeneau Blood Bank; it was one of the companies under the Argeneau Enterprises umbrella. It was also a company she didn’t know much about. Inez had always been kept away from anything having to do with A.B.B. Now she understood why, of course.
Her gaze jerked back to the man’s face as a spate of Dutch was spat at her in anxious tones. Inez shook her head with a small frown. “I’m sorry, I don’t——”
“Ah! English.” The man nodded. “I have made a mistake. I delivered the blood here earlier.”
“You didn’t leave it with the front desk, did you?” Inez asked curiously, wondering how they would explain why a cooler of blood would be delivered to one of their hotel rooms.
The man blinked, obviously not expecting the question. Still, he answered, “No, of course not. I found out the room number, brought it up, and found a maid to let me in to leave it. But I made a mis—”
“Mind control?” Inez asked.
He peered at her, his expression confused.
“Did you use mind control on the maid to let you in?” she explained.
“Oh, yes,” he was frowning now, and becoming a bit annoyed. “But I left the wrong cooler. The one I left was to go to the Night Club.”
“The Night Club?” she asked curiously.
The man snapped his mouth closed and stared at her, and Inez blinked in surprise as she felt a slight ruffling on the edge of her mind. It was so faint that if the man weren’t concentrating so hard on her and she knew nothing about immortals and what they could do, she didn’t think she’d even have noticed it.
“You’re reading my mind,” Inez accused and then frowned. “But Thomas couldn’t read my mind.”
Whatever he read in her thoughts seemed to make him relax. He even smiled and said lightly, “Lucky him.”
“Why lucky?” she asked warily.
The man grinned and said simply, “Who would not think him lucky? He has found his lifemate.”
“Lifemate?” Inez echoed the word slowly. She’d heard the word before. Now that the man had said it, she distinctly recalled overhearing Thomas talking on the phone through the bathroom door and saying something about biting his lifemate. She tilted her head and asked the man, “Not being able to read me means I’m his lifemate?”
“Yes.” Now he was frowning too. “Has he not explained things to you?”