Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32) - Lynsay Sands Page 0,125

his last bit of strength to shift off of her when he realized she was having trouble breathing and that the others were there to keep her safe. He’d obviously passed out, but what the hell had happened after that? And where were his clothes? His phone should be in the pocket of his jeans, which he’d been wearing the last time he was conscious, but were now missing. He was standing around in his boxer briefs.

“I didn’t know how much you’d want, so I brought a couple of bags.”

Mac whirled toward the door at that announcement and watched her cross the room to set the bags on the bedside table. She started backing toward the door then, her gaze somewhere over his shoulder rather than on him. She was also talking a little fast and almost nervously as she said, “You must be hungry. I’ll go see what I have to feed you. Come on out when you’re ready.”

She spun around, seeming eager to flee, and rushed from the room again.

Mac stood still for a minute, thinking that her reluctance to be in the same room with him didn’t seem like a good thing, and then sighed and scanned the room again. His jeans weren’t there. The only thing he could think was that perhaps she’d taken them to wash them, so he headed into her walk-in closet and nearly tripped over the duffel bag Julius had given him to put his clothes in. It was the one thing he hadn’t thought of on the shopping trip to get clothes, something to keep them in.

Bending, he picked it up and set it on the center island to open, wondering who had brought in his things. CJ’d had so many bags that they’d both been bogged down and he’d decided to leave his own bag until he returned with Julius’s car, but someone had obviously brought it in for him after he was shot.

Mac was tugging on a pair of jeans when he spotted his cell phone on one of the two tall chests of drawers that framed either side of the entry. Leaving his pants undone, he hurried over to pick it up and quickly found and hit Decker’s number.

“You’re awake! About time,” was Decker’s greeting when he answered the call.

Mac scowled at the “about time” bit, but said, “What the hell happened while I was unconscious?”

“A lot,” Decker said, sounding mildly amused, and then began to list various events for him. “CJ kicked all our asses at Match Up. She and Dani bonded over a mutual love of hot chocolate and Reese’s Pieces. Marguerite and Julius have decided to name their baby girl Benedetta when she’s born because that means blessed, but I really don’t think they thought that through,” he added, sounding a bit agitated. “I mean, you know it’s going to get shortened to Benny or something and she’ll probably hate that. I mean—”

“Decker?” Mac interrupted his rant impatiently to ask, “How long have I been out?”

“Uh, let me see,” he said thoughtfully. “We got to CJ’s place at about four thirty on Saturday afternoon and it’s ten o’clock on Tuesday night so you were out three days and five and a half hours.”

“Dear God,” Mac said with shock.

“Yes, it was a pretty long time,” Decker said seriously, and admitted, “We were getting a little worried, but Marguerite said it was fine, that you’d wake up when you were ready. She said sometimes it just took longer to heal than others.”

“Yes, but three days?” Mac asked with amazement. He was usually a fast healer. “I mean, I healed pretty fast after the fire, and my organs were all probably parboiled in that tub—why would a single gunshot wound take longer?”

“Maybe that’s why,” Decker suggested. “Maybe you still hadn’t fully healed from the fire, and your nanos decided to shut you down until everything was healed up so you wouldn’t go out and add another injury to the list of repairs to be made.”

“You make it sound like the nanos can think beyond their programming,” Mac said with a faint smile.

“You don’t think they do?” Decker asked with surprise. “They aren’t programmed to pick life mates, and yet they seem to do it.”

“Right,” he sighed, and shook his head, and then suddenly asked, “What the hell is Match Up?”

Decker chuckled at his bewildered tone. “It’s a game where you shuffle the cards and set them all out facedown on the table and take turns flipping two cards