“Yes. Dani—” He hesitated and then asked, “You do remember Marguerite showing up here with Julius and Dani and those guys?” Jake asked, unsure how much Marguerite had removed of her memory and how much she recalled.
“Yes. Marguerite, Julius, Dante, Tomasso, and Marguerite’s nephew Decker, as well as his wife, Dani, were here,” she said and then her expression turned troubled. “I think I remember them talking about the hot tub . . . and that it might be poisoned.”
“Yes,” Jake said, relieved that she was remembering. He had no doubt Marguerite had veiled those memories to keep Nicole calm until he could talk to her, but they were coming back now that Dante and Tomasso weren’t reinforcing Marguerite’s efforts.
“Dani took a sample for analysis,” he told her now. “And the water in the hot tub has a high concentration of nicotine and DMSO. Enough to kill quickly. If you had got in the hot tub instead of me, you would be dead.”
“And you think someone was deliberately trying to poison me,” she said quietly.
Jake frowned. “Well, it didn’t get in there by accident, Nicole. And it wasn’t put there for my benefit. It had to be put in with the intent of killing you.”
“Right,” she said unhappily.
“I know it’s hard to accept that the man you love would try to kill you,” he said gently. “But Rodolfo—”
“I don’t love Rodolfo,” she protested with amazement. “I’m divorcing him, for heaven’s sake. I’d hardly do that if I loved him.”
Jake glanced away with a sigh. He didn’t really want to tell her that she was divorcing her husband because of Marguerite’s controlling her mind and nudging her in that direction. Marguerite had Nicole’s best interests at heart when she’d done it, so instead of telling her that, he pointed out gently, “You still have pictures of him all over the house, Nicole. That suggests you still have feelings—”
“I still have pictures of him all over the house because the egotistical idiot went and superglued them to the fricking wall,” Nicole interrupted grimly.
“What?” Jake gasped even as Tomasso and Dante spat the word.
Nicole sighed and shook her head. “Rodolfo is a spiteful, nasty, selfish creep. I don’t know what he was thinking. If he thought it was a good way to make me have to think of him even after he was gone, or if he just doesn’t know how to wield a damned hammer, but every single picture is superglued or spackled to the wall. Pierina and I tried to take them down while she was here. We managed to pry one off the wall, but it left a great gaping hole. I’m going to have to have professionals in to remove them, but I don’t know who to call about something like that and I’ve been too busy with all these commissioned portraits to call around, so I’ve just done my best to ignore them.”
She scowled and glanced to one of the half dozen pictures affixed to the kitchen wall and added, “I considered buying a glass cutter and removing the glass from each frame so I could at least remove the pictures, but then I’d be left with empty frames everywhere. Besides, it seemed like I was giving it too much energy that way. Like he’d somehow have succeeded at whatever he was trying to do, so I decided to just ignore them until I could get people in to fix it. And mostly I have managed to ignore them.”
“Until someone points them out,” Jake said quietly. It was pretty obvious she was pissed right now just thinking about it.
“Yeah. Then I get annoyed all over again,” Nicole admitted with a grimace, and added, “But that isn’t because I love him. It’s because he’s taken control from me again. He’s decided what will be on my walls and made sure I had to live with it for at least a while. And it’s because it reminds of all the damned, stupid annoying and petty little things he did when I bought him out of the house.”
“Like what?” Dante asked with interest.
“The agreement was he take half of the furniture and whatnot as marital assets . . . Forget that I paid for every damned thing.” Nicole grimaced with disgust, and then continued, “Fine. So he took half of everything, but he also did his damnedest to mess with anything left behind.”
“Mess with them?” Jake asked curiously. “How.”
“Well, the stereo, for instance,” she said. “It was here and in working condition, but he took the power plugs as well as the connecting wires to the speakers. He did that with the PlayStation, the mosquito catcher, and anything else that had a removable cord. So I had them all here, but couldn’t use them until I replaced the wires . . . and then there was the dishwasher, it was missing its silverware holder. There were shelves missing from the refrigerator, and the dining-room set? It was a twelve-chair set, but he took the end chairs. You know, the chairs with the arms?” Nicole said, and when they nodded, continued, “I called him on it, of course, through our lawyers, and he had an answer for everything. He didn’t know what I was talking about. He hadn’t taken any cords or shelves. And the chairs? Those had suffered an unfortunate accident during the year he lived here. Hadn’t he mentioned it to me when we were agreeing on what would go and what would stay? He was sure he had.”
“As for loving him,” Nicole continued quietly. “Not only do I not still love him, in truth, I don’t think I ever did. It turns out I didn’t even know the real him. I suspect I was in love with love, with the whole romance of the relationship, the exotic foreigner, sexy accent, seeing the world thing . . . I was a fool.”
“That’s kind of harsh,” Jake said quietly.
“Yeah,” Tomasso agreed. “Besides, we’re all fools for love.”
“She didn’t love him,” Dante reminded him.
“Oh, right,” Tomasso muttered, then peered at her hard. Jake knew at once that he was reading Nicole’s mind, and wondered what he was finding. His eyebrows rose when Tomasso added, “Well, we’re often fools for sex too.”
Nicole flushed and demanded, “You’re doing that mind reading thing Jake mentioned, aren’t you?”
Tomasso grimaced.
“Stop it,” she said firmly and stood up. Her gaze shifted to Jake. “If you’re done explaining things, I’d like to get back to work.”
Jake hesitated. He hadn’t got to the part about their being life mates, but he’d dumped a lot on her already. Besides, he’d rather discuss that part with her alone without his cousins there to hear. Still, he eyed her briefly. She seemed to be handling everything pretty well so far. He didn’t think he had to worry that she’d slip out of the house and run away, freaked out about everything she’d learned. But he wasn’t positive. It wasn’t every day you learned you were hosting vampires in your home . . . and she hadn’t asked any questions yet. He didn’t know if that was because she needed to process what she’d learned, or what, but he hoped so, he wanted to trust her. That was a hard thing for Jake. His experiences in life had left him with some trust issues and it wasn’t just because of the woman he’d nearly married who had been intent on robbing him blind. His family had aided in those trust issues too, with their deep dark secret and by keeping him in the dark for so many years. But he had to learn to trust Nicole eventually for them to be life mates.
Sighing, Jake sat back and nodded. “Of course.”