Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32) - Lynsay Sands Page 0,14

to dump him at the police station and avoid him like the plague from that moment on.

It was starting to look to him like the act of arson at the house he’d just rented and barely moved into might be his only hope of keeping close to her. The problem was how to work it. She wasn’t a police officer, although from a couple of things said tonight, he was pretty sure she had been at one time. He’d read Officer Simpson’s mind to learn more about her, but Simpson hadn’t known anything about her other than her name, that she was in Sandford for some sort of investigation into an arrest that had gone bad for another officer, and that, as she had said, she was just helping them out in a pinch at the fire site.

His gaze slid over her tense shoulders and stiff jaw, and Mac considered that her not being a police officer here in town presented a problem. It meant there was no reason for her to be the one to guard him and have to stick close to him at some sort of safe house . . . unless he could make sure there was no one else to do it and that she had to continue to help in this pinch.

If that failed, he could always rent a room at the bed-and-breakfast, Mac supposed. That would put him close to her at least some of the time. She must be staying at Mrs. Vesper’s, he knew. It was the only B and B in town. Mac had stayed there himself when he’d been scouting towns, and then again when he’d come to see about a house to buy, but there hadn’t been anything on the market in Sandford. He’d almost given up and decided to try another town when Mrs. Vesper had told him that the owner of an old farmhouse outside town wanted to rent.

Mac hadn’t been too keen on the idea of renting at first, but as the dear old woman had pointed out, it would give him a chance to see if he liked it in Sandford before he actually purchased, and if he did, she suspected the homeowner would be willing to sell somewhere down the line if he was patient. So, Mac had contacted the homeowner via an email address Mrs. Vesper had given him, and arranged to rent the house.

It had all happened quickly after that. Mac had used e-transfer to send first and last month’s rent to the homeowner and made arrangements for monthly withdrawals to cover future rent. He’d then arranged for the renovations he’d wanted for the basement so that it could be used as a lab. Once the renos had been finished he’d flown back to New York to arrange for his house there to be packed up and sent north. Then he’d flown back and booked into the bed-and-breakfast again to wait for his belongings to be driven up.

Mac had only expected to be at the bed-and-breakfast one night this time. He’d flown straight up the evening that they’d finished packing up his things, but the truck wasn’t going to leave until the next morning. He’d expected it the next night, Wednesday, but it had been held up at customs for more than twenty-four hours, and hadn’t arrived until nearly midnight on Thursday . . . and now, here he was with everything he owned burned up along with his new rental, and nowhere to go except to the bed-and-breakfast where CJ must be staying. But Mac could only think that might be helpful for him. He needed to spend time with the woman to woo her, and he needed to woo her to convince her to be his life mate.

Mac savored the words in his mind. Life mate. The one thing every immortal yearned for. The one person who could beat back the loneliness every immortal invariably suffered thanks to their need to protect their thoughts from older immortals, and block out the thoughts of younger immortals as well as mortals. But that wasn’t necessary with a life mate, which was a gift. Having to constantly guard your thoughts could be exhausting, and often led to his kind avoiding others to avoid the need to do it . . . and that could lead to madness and going rogue.

Mac didn’t think he’d been in danger of that quite yet, but he had waited a long time to finally meet his life