Aran pushed himself away from the doorframe and moved into the dining room. “I was suddenly awake. I’m on British time, and it’s ten in the morning, there.”
“Greenwich time?” Neven said sharply.
Jesse could feel her cheeks heating, as Sydney glanced at her with a thoughtful expression.
Veris did not look at her. He got to his feet, instead, and patted Aran’s shoulder as he passed him. “You both need coffee, then. Sit. I’ll get the kettle going.”
“As long as you don’t actually make the coffee, Far,” Aran called out after him. He looked back at Neven and Sydney. “The sludge at the bottom of Athair’s old Lamborghini would taste better than what Far manages to make.”
“Give him a break,” Jesse shot back. “He wasn’t even human when coffee arrived in the western world.”
Sydney leaned toward Jesse. “If you don’t like his coffee, never ask him to make tea. You’ll live to regret it.”
“I heard that!” Veris called out softly from the kitchen as water ran.
“Good!” Sydney shot back.
“Maybe his coffee-making skills are the reason time jumpers disappeared,” Aran said judiciously, sitting at the table. “We all ran away.”
By the time the other humans in the house were awake and clamoring for food, Jesse realized that no one was going to quiz her about the book. No one was asking any impossible-to-answer questions about anything.
She learned, though, they had been thinking it through, when Brody drew her away from the breakfast table and into the front room, where her temporary bed under the window had scattered cushions onto the floor.
A man with short, dirty blond hair thickly touched with gray stood at the other window. He was only slightly taller than Jesse, but he was a rolling lump of muscle. Jesse sized him up with a glance. He wasn’t ex-military. He didn’t have the bearing. But he could be dangerous in a blunt object way. His fists could do real damage with that much muscle behind it.
He turned as they approached, and Jesse put his age at mid-forties or maybe a youthful fifty. There were deep creases at the corners of his hazel eyes and around his mouth. His skin might have been fair to match his hair, but sun had aged it and left it permanently tanned.
“Jesse, this is Andy,” Brody said.
Andy stuck out his hand and Jesse shook it. Yeah, there was packed-away power there, for sure, but that wasn’t all his grip told her. “Hello Andy,” she said. “Cool hand.”
Andy glanced at Brody, with a grin. “You called it.” He looked back at Jesse. “Yeah, I’m of the Blood now…but it’s new to me, so don’t judge me, ‘kay?”
Brody put his hand on Andy’s shoulder. “A long time ago, Andy helped Taylor out. Then we helped Andy. He was one of my band’s crew for years and he ended up helping us all over again. We’ve been trading favors for years. Andy is in personal security now.”
A bodyguard.
Jesse wrapped her arms around her middle. “You think I can’t look after myself?” Her voice came out too high. “I’m not going to engage with the sharks, Brody. I don’t need protection.”
But it was Andy who replied. “I’m guessing you haven’t had much practice dealing with the media, then. You might be able to look after yourself in normal circumstances…” His gaze flickered over her. “Military, yes?”
She nodded stiffly.
“You’re used to working among enemies who wear uniforms to declare they’re the enemy, who you can fire at to get ‘em out of the way. The media, though…that’s a different sort of enemy. You can’t wave your pistol to scatter them. You certainly can’t fire it and you can’t take ‘em out to clear your way. They’ll hound you day and night, if you don’t handle them just right and win them over with your charm. That’s why you leave all the manhandling to me.”
Jesse squeezed her middle even harder. “But I have no intention of dealing with them at all. I’m going to ignore them and go back to my life.”
“Forgive me, Jesse,” Andy said gently, “but you might not get a choice in that.”
“Andy has guarded some pretty big names, Jesse. He knows what he’s doing,” Brody added.
Unhappiness settled in her middle.
“Let her breathe while she can,” Veris said, from behind them.
Jesse glanced over her shoulder, startled. Veris stood only a few