The Bite Before Christmas - Argeneau Series - Book 15.5 Page 0,4

skills were becoming renowned. At least they were in the family. It was said she seemed to have the same ability that Katricia’s grandmother and the family matriarch, Alexandria Argeneau, had possessed. That woman had found life mates for a good number of her children and the others of their kind before her death more than two thousand years ago. They said it had been like a sixth sense with her. Every couple she’d put together had been life mates. Now Marguerite was doing the same.

Still, this was the last thing Katricia had expected when Marguerite had invited her to join the family for Christmas. Especially since she’d said thank you, but no. It had been an automatic response. If she’d thought first, Katricia probably would have said yes, in the hopes that Marguerite had a life mate for her. However, she hadn’t thought. Her answer had been automatic and firm. She avoided family gatherings. Actually, she avoided gatherings altogether. It was just too wearying to have to guard your thoughts all the time, so she’d taken to spending more and more time alone, especially the holidays, when all the older relatives got together. It was impossible to guard your thoughts from some of them, and Katricia didn’t want one of her uncles reading hers.

The only family function she’d attended in the last decade was the multiple wedding in New York last February. Not showing up would have raised questions, since she lived and worked in New York, but as she’d expected, it had been hell. Concentrating on trying to guard her thoughts while trying to hold conversations with people had been like juggling knives while doing backflips. Impossible. She was sure more than one relative had caught a glimpse of her thoughts. She’d seen a flash of concern in the eyes of a couple of her uncles and even in Marguerite herself as she’d talked with her. Katricia was positive they all had caught how dark and depressing her thoughts were growing.

The thought made her smile. Both the darkness and depression had blown away like smoke in a stiff breeze the minute she’d reached the end of the driveway, spotted Teddy Brunswick, automatically tried to read his thoughts to see who he was and what he was doing there on the road, and found she couldn’t. That had been a shocker. And suddenly her last-minute problems with her holiday plans had taken on a different light.

Katricia had been annoyed as hell when her flight from New York to Colorado for some holiday skiing had been diverted to Toronto. The pilot hadn’t known what the problem was and Katricia had disembarked from the Argeneau plane ready to rip someone a new one, only to find her uncle, Lucian Argeneau, waiting on the tarmac.

“Bad weather,” he’d announced by way of explanation as he’d bundled her into an SUV.

Katricia had been beside herself with frustration, her concentration divided between reciting nursery rhymes, to keep her uncle from reading her thoughts, and the intrusive worry that she’d be stuck with the family for the holidays and reciting those nursery rhymes for days. So, when he’d taken her to Marguerite’s and that dear woman had mentioned that Decker had a cottage up north if she didn’t wish to spend Christmas with the family, Katricia had jumped at the suggestion like a drowning woman leaping for a life raft. The next thing she’d known she and her luggage had been bundled in an SUV with the directions already on the GPS and she’d been on her way.

Now, here she was, up in the wilds of Central Ontario, snowed in with Teddy Brunswick, whom she couldn’t read. Not being able to read a mortal was the first sign of a life mate. As an immortal, she could read mortals as easily as cracking open a book. Not being able to read Teddy had come as a hell of a shock. But a good one. A life mate. Damn, the idea made her sigh happily.

Of course, not being able to read him was only one of the signs, she tried to caution herself. After all, there was the occasional mortal that couldn’t be read by anyone. They were usually crazies or people suffering from some affliction or other, like a brain tumor. Then no one could read them. However, Teddy Brunswick didn’t seem mentally ill. He could still have a tumor or something, though, she acknowledged unhappily.

She would know soon enough, however. If Teddy really was her