“Teagan, tell me about this serial killer right this instant,” Grandma Trixie insisted, using her no-nonsense voice.
Are you laughing at me? she demanded. Because I have enough to contend with trying to convince my grandmother I’m perfectly fine.
The trouble was, she wasn’t perfectly fine. She had no idea what she’d gotten herself into this time, and she didn’t think her grandmother could get her out of it. Why did things like this always happen to her? She knew Andre was monitoring her thoughts because he trailed kisses down the side of her face from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth and then back up to her ear.
She had to suck in her breath sharply and work to keep her wayward body under control when it wanted to melt into a puddle at his feet. As it was, she went fairly boneless and his hands at her belly held her upright.
“I told you I asked Armend, you remember him from college . . .”
“I never met him, but you talked about him.”
“I tutored him, Grandma. I went to school with him for three years. He grew up in a village near the highest peaks of the Carpathian Mountain range. I wanted to explore that region. You know I love to hike, so when I decided to head over here, I contacted him through the Internet. We occasionally had exchanged email just to keep up. He seemed nice enough.”
“A serial killer?” Grandma Trixie repeated.
Teagan sighed. “At the time I agreed to tutor him I didn’t know he was a serial killer. He dated all the time, just not me.” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “I don’t think he actually killed anyone then. I would have heard about it.”
“Well thank heavens for small favors. What, you weren’t his type?”
“Thanks, Grandma.” She tried to keep the sarcasm from her voice, but really, her grandmother was implying she wasn’t attractive enough to even get a serial killer interested.
She didn’t mean that.
She tried another scowl, which was seriously difficult to do when his fingers were sliding through her hair and then dropping to the nape of her neck in a slow massage before returning to her hair—and that felt nice. Too nice. She was so susceptible to him and the way he touched her. Exasperated, she pushed at his hand.
“Teagan, you sound as if you wanted a serial killer to find you attractive.”
She sighed. Her talk with her grandmother wasn’t going at all in the direction she wanted it to go. Worse, Andre’s hand had stopped moving, but remained wrapped around the nape of her neck. Her life was totally out of control.
“Grandma Trixie, take a breath. I don’t want a serial killer to find me attractive. I don’t think that much matters to them, although since he was a serial rapist as well, maybe he had a preference type.”
Her grandmother shrieked, an ear-splitting shriek Teagan was fairly certain she heard straight from the States and not from her cell phone. Okay, another mistake. She blamed Andre, because right at the moment she began trying to explain, his fingers slid into her hair again and totally short-circuited her brain.
“A rapist? Teagan Jonelle Joanes, you come home right this minute. Now. Get on a plane or I swear, I’m coming out there to save you from yourself.”
When her grandmother used all three of her names in that tone, she meant business. She opened her mouth to defend herself, but her grandmother wasn’t finished.
“Whoever this man is, he is a total foreigner. He has a different culture, and those foreigners treat women different. He might lock you up in his harem or something. Lose him now and get home.”
Teagan closed her eyes. Andre heard. Probably the people in the pub down the street heard. “He isn’t from a place where they have harems,” she defended lamely. “Grandma Trixie, you have to take a breath and just listen to me. He’s dead. Armend is dead. There is no threat to me.” Her voice kind of took a dive on that, because if you counted vampires and Armend’s friends she might have been lying just a tiny bit to her grandmother.
A tiny bit?
Andre’s laughter slid into her mind. Poured through her skin into her veins. It wasn’t fair he was so damned sexy. She tried hard not smile. The situation was just plain out of hand. Everything she said only made it worse.
“Don’t you lie to me, girl. You went right up into those mountains, and I warned you there are vampires wreaking havoc on the population.”
“I’ll watch out for them, Grandma Trixie,” she assured, because she would. “The idea of encountering a vampire in my travels is very, very low on my to-do list.”
“You take me seriously.”
“I always take you seriously. I have to go now, but I’m all right. I’ll check in again in a couple of days, and please stop worrying about me. Andre is perfectly capable of protecting me from anything or anyone who might want to harm me.”
“You don’t know this man, Teagan. Come home.”
“I’m going to marry him, Grandma Trixie,” she blurted out. “I’m very serious about him so don’t get it in your head he’s wrong for me. I’ve waited a long time to find the right man and he’s the one. He’s coming home with me, and I want you to make an effort with him.”
There was a long silence. Teagan bit her lip hard. Her heart pounded. Andre leaned down, his lips against her ear.