The Reluctant Vampire(10)

Blinking, he tore his gaze from the delectable sight and glanced past her to Stephanie, who was nearly killing herself laughing in the SUV, and then he sighed and said dryly, “I’ll live.”

“Hmm.” Drina’s eyes drifted down to his bare chest, where his coat had fallen open, and he saw one of her eyebrows rise, but then she scrambled to her feet and offered him a hand.

“Sorry,” she muttered as she helped him up. “You startled me.”

“My fault,” he assured her, taking a moment to brush himself down. He then straightened and glanced to the open door of the SUV. “What were you doing?”

“Er . . .” Drina flushed guiltily and turned back to the vehicle. “I need boots and a heavier coat, and Stephanie needs a few things too, so we were just going to head out shopping.”

“Hmm.” His lips twitched, and then he said, “So you were going to hot-wire the SUV?”

Drina clucked with irritation at being caught, and then said with exasperation, “Anders has the keys, and I didn’t want to disturb him to get them.”

“Ah.” Harper glanced from her embarrassed and defiant face to the vehicle and back, and then he asked, “Do you have a license to drive here? Or even a Spanish driver’s license?”

“Bah!” Drina waved the question away. “We don’t need them. If a police officer tries to pull us over, we just control them.”

“Ah, yes.” Harper nodded. He’d expected as much and explained apologetically, “But you can’t do that in Port Henry. You can anywhere else, even London, but not here.”

“What?” She glanced to him with surprise.

“Lucian promised Teddy that his people would follow the laws while in Port Henry, and none of us would use mind control on Teddy or his deputy,” Harper explained.

Drina narrowed her eyes, and pointed out dryly, “Which isn’t promising he won’t himself.”

“No,” Harper admitted with a grin. “But Teddy didn’t catch that at the time.”

“Hmm,” she said with irritation, and then glanced to Stephanie’s worried face and grimaced. “Don’t worry. We’ll still go. We’ll just call a taxi.”

Stephanie looked dubious. “Do you think they even have taxis here? I mean, it’s a pretty small town.”

Drina turned to him in question. “Do they?”

“Actually, I don’t think they do. Or at least if they do, I haven’t heard of one,” Harper admitted, and when Drina’s shoulders began to sag with what appeared to be defeat, he found himself saying, “I can take you in my car.”

She appeared as surprised as he was by his offer. Truly, Harper had no idea where that had come from. He’d just blurted it without really even thinking first.

“Don’t you sleep during the day?” Drina asked with a frown. “Speaking of which, what are you even doing up?”

Harper just shook his head and turned away to start back up the drive, saying, “I’ll just throw on a shirt and grab my keys and wallet and be right back.”

“My laughing woke him up, but he didn’t want to make us feel bad by saying so,” Stephanie announced.

Drina turned to glance at the young girl in the SUV. Seeing that Stephanie’s attention was on Harper as he hurried across the deck toward the kitchen door, Drina quickly swiped up a handful of snow off the SUV’s roof and worked it into a ball as she asked, “Which laughing woke him? Your laughing when I was slip-sliding around on the sidewalk? Or your laughing when you hit me with the snowball, and I went down like a ton of bricks?”

Stephanie turned an unrepentant grin her way. “It was funny,” she began, and then her eyes suddenly narrowed and dropped to search for Drina’s hands.

Realizing the girl had read her mind and knew what she was up to, Drina quickly shot the snowball at her, but Stephanie was faster, whirling and ducking at the same time so that the ball missed her and hit the passenger window instead.

“Too slow,” Stephanie taunted.

Drina shrugged. “That’s all right. I’ll get you when you least expect it.”

Stephanie chuckled, unconcerned by the threat, and slid out of the SUV to walk around and join her. “He has a nice chest, doesn’t he?”

He certainly did have a nice chest, Drina thought, and she’d been hard-pressed not to simply throw herself on top of it and drool all the way down to the top of his jeans when she’d seen it. But she’d restrained herself, and now merely shrugged, asking, “You noticed his chest, did you?”

“Not really. Mostly I noticed that you noticed,” Stephanie responded with amusement.