Affliction (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter) - Laurell K. Hamilton Page 0,117

you clear your calendar?’ he asked.

‘Me? Why? I mean, I’ll be there with bells on, but we’ll all work around your schedule.’

‘Good, because I want you to be my best man.’

‘I would love to be, but won’t the whole Donna-thinking-I’m-your-lover be a problem?’

‘She says not.’

I tried to wrap my head around it. ‘You know, if you just hadn’t told me that Donna thought that, then I wouldn’t have felt weird about this, but now … wow, awkward.’

Edward laughed, and it was a good, wholehearted laugh, the one that Donna had helped him find. It made me smile. For that laugh I could handle the weirdness, couldn’t I? ‘I would be honored to stand as your best man,’ I said, because in the end, really, what else was I going to say?

‘Donna has made one request.’

‘What?’

‘That one of your men be on her side of the aisle.’

‘She’s never met any of the men in my life,’ I said.

He shrugged. ‘I think she believes that if you have a lover in town with you, that will cut down on our time together.’

‘So she trusts us, but not really.’

‘She never said she trusted us. She said she forgave us, and she understood what we were to each other; she never said she trusted us.’

‘That’s just weird. Sorry, I know you love her, and everything, but that makes no sense,’ I said.

‘It’s girl logic,’ he said.

‘I’m a girl,’ I said.

‘You’re too much guy to be this much girl,’ he said.

‘That doesn’t make sense,’ I said.

‘Yeah,’ Micah said, ‘actually it does.’

I looked from one to the other of them, trying to decide if I’d been complimented or insulted.

‘Do you feel suitably distracted from ardeurs and blood lusts?’ Edward asked.

‘What?’ I asked.

‘I’ve noticed that giving you an emergency to handle or a problem to solve helps you ignore all the metaphysical stuff, so have I confused and puzzled you enough for you to get an X-ray without eating the doctor?’

I thought about it, and then I laughed. ‘Damn you, but yes, I’m going to be puzzling and puzzling till my puzzler is sore about the convoluted logic of it all.’

The door opened, and Dr Cross came through with the nurse at his side. He was smiling. ‘I thought I’d take you to X-ray myself.’

Edward gave me a look. ‘Should have taken that bet.’

‘It was a sucker bet and we both knew it,’ I said.

‘And you were never a sucker,’ he said.

‘Not if I can help it,’ I said.

We smiled at each other.

‘What bet?’ Dr Cross asked, still smiling, but obviously feeling he’d missed something.

‘Don’t ask,’ Micah said. ‘They’ve been best friends for years. Sometimes you just nod and let them have their guy moment.’

Dr Cross frowned harder. ‘I don’t understand.’

‘I’m the wife,’ Micah said, ‘she’s the husband, and he’s the husband’s best friend. Does that explain it?’

Dr Cross frowned and then said, ‘Oddly, yes.’

The fact that it made sense to him made me like him better, which was both good and bad. Good, because liking people is always better than disliking people. Bad, because I was more likely to feed on people I liked.

‘You go check on Nathaniel and your dad; I’ll play chaperone,’ Edward said.

‘Thank you,’ Micah said.

‘Not a problem.’

‘Does Donna really not have a preference on which of my guys stands on her side?’ I asked.

‘Who’s Donna?’ Dr Cross asked.

‘My fiancée,’ Edward said.

‘Congratulations.’

‘Thank you; we’re starting to decide who’s in the wedding party.’

‘That’s always fun,’ Dr Cross said, and seemed to mean it.

And just like that, this particular vampire was safe from me trying to eat him. I could never eat someone who thought planning a wedding was fun.

35

Dr Cross unhooked the IV and let me use the bathroom but wouldn’t let me get dressed. ‘Not until after the X-ray comes back clean. I get the feeling if I let you get dressed you’ll just make a break for it.’ He laughed.

Edward said, ‘He does know you.’

I scowled at him, but I took what I could get and went into the bathroom. The door shut and I got the first look at myself in the mirror. My curls had gone every which way. My skin was pasty pale. What makeup I’d been wearing had vanished long ago. My eyes had the beginnings of dark circles under them, which I almost never got. I looked rough. The fact that Micah and Dr Cross had reacted to me the way they had could only be chalked up to vampire mind games, or otherwise I was seeing