The Reluctant Vampire(4)

But the new arrival merely set a suitcase on top of the cooler and turned back to the SUV without comment. Tiny immediately slid past Harper to head for the house, leaving him to step up beside the newcomer and peer curiously into the back of the SUV. There were two more coolers left inside. The fellow was unplugging them and winding up the cords.

“Harper.”

He glanced to the man with surprise at the terse greeting, eyebrows rising as he recognized the eyes that turned to him. “Nice to see you, Anders,” Harper greeted in return as he reached in to retrieve one of the coolers. “It’s been a while.”

Anders’s answer was a grunt as he claimed the second cooler and straightened from the vehicle. He paused to close the back of the SUV, hit the button to lock the doors, and then nodded for Harper to lead the way.

Harper turned away but found himself grinning and couldn’t resist saying, “Chatty as ever, I see.”

When the man basically told him to bugger off in Russian, Harper burst out laughing. The sound of his own laughter was somewhat startling, but it felt good, he decided, as he led the way across the deck. Maybe it was a sign that he was finally coming out of the depression that had struck him when Jenny had died.

The thought made him sigh to himself as he shifted the cooler to open the door to the house. He’d been sunk pretty deep in self-pity and gloom for the last year and a half, and while he supposed it was only to be expected when one lost a life mate, it would be a relief to feel more himself again. He was not a naturally gloomy guy but had found little to laugh or even smile about since Jenny’s death.

“Here.” Tiny was in front of him, reaching for Harper’s cooler the minute he stepped into the house. He gave it up and watched the man carry it into the dining room, where he unraveled the cord and plugged it in. The one Tiny himself had carried in was already plugged into a socket in the corner of the kitchen, Harper noted, and supposed the man was spreading them throughout the house to be sure they didn’t overload a breaker. The coolers were basically portable refrigerators and probably used a lot of juice.

Feeling the cold at his back, Harper realized he was blocking Anders from entering and quickly stepped aside for him to pass. He then pulled the screen door closed and shut and locked the inner door. By the time he turned back, Tiny had returned and was taking the last cooler from Anders. Harper’s gaze slid over the dining room in search of Alexandrina-Argenis-everyone-calls-me-Drina and found her standing beside the dining-room table, shrugging out of her coat.

“If this is all blood, you brought a lot of it,” Tiny commented with a frown as he turned to carry the last cooler away, this time heading for the living room.

“Lucian sent it for your turn,” Anders responded, bending to undo and remove his boots.

“My God, he speaks again,” Drina muttered with feigned shock. “And a whole sentence too.”

“Sometimes you’ll even get a paragraph out of him,” Harper responded, but his gaze was now on Tiny. The man had paused in the doorway of the living room and turned back, a startled expression on his face. Apparently it hadn’t occurred to him that now that he and Mirabeau had acknowledged they were life mates, the next step was the turn.

“A whole paragraph?” Drina asked with dry amusement, drawing Harper’s attention again.

“A short one, but a paragraph just the same,” he murmured, glancing her way. He then paused to take her in. She was petite, as he’d noticed outside, which was a polite way of saying short. But she was curvy too, rounded in all the right places. She was also most definitely Spanish, with olive skin, deep-set eyes, the large brow bone, and straight, almost prominent nose. But it all worked to make an attractive face, he decided.

“Right, of course, the turn,” Tiny muttered, drawing his attention once more, and Harper shifted his attention back to find the other man looking resolute. As he watched, Tiny straightened his shoulders and continued into the living room.

Harper frowned and had to bite back the urge to tell Tiny that perhaps he should wait on turning, but he knew it was just a knee-jerk reaction to his own experience. It was rare for a mortal to die during the turn, and in all likelihood, Tiny would probably be fine. However, Jenny had died, and so that was the first thing he thought of and the worry that now plagued him.

Sighing, he bent to remove his boots. He set them beside the radiator, and straightened to remove his coat. Laying it over his arm, he then took Anders’s as he finished removing it and crossed the room to collect Drina’s as well before ducking into the small pantry in the back corner of the kitchen. It held the entry to the garage but was also where the closet was.