Meant to Be Immortal (Argeneau #32) - Lynsay Sands Page 0,51

to burst out of Julius’s arms and start undressing him again. “You cannot let her see you dressed in the clothes we brought you.”

“I will just tell her that Bastien sent them with Bricker and Decker and you didn’t know it,” Mac assured her with a small frown, not sure why the woman had bothered to lie at all, but not wanting to reveal that she had if he could help it.

“You cannot do that,” Marguerite said with exasperation. “If you have clothes, there would be no need for her to take you shopping.”

“So?” he asked with bewilderment.

“So, I’ve read her mind, Macon. If she is free of the need to take you shopping she will abandon you here and go find and interview Keith Kaye in person, and you will not get the opportunity to woo her,” she said grimly.

“Who’s Keith Kaye?” Justin Bricker asked with curiosity.

“Some kid who got beat up by a police officer during an arrest. CJ is here to investigate the matter on behalf of the Special Investigations Unit,” Mac explained, frowning now as well. It was CJ’s job to interview both Keith Kaye and Officer Jefferson, and she probably would take off and get to it if he didn’t have an excuse to keep her near.

Cursing, he turned on his heel and headed back to the bathroom to change back into the pajama bottoms and T-shirt he’d just thrown out. He’d been relieved to get out of them. After the fire and his being boiled in the bath, followed by hours sitting, pacing, then tossing and turning in them while he’d tried to sleep, they had started to look sad and smell even worse. At least to him, and probably any other immortal around. An immortal’s sense of smell was as keen, or keener, than a dog’s thanks to the nanos circulating through their bodies. But hopefully his clothes didn’t smell as bad to mortals, because he wasn’t going to get far wooing CJ if he smelled bad.

Muttering under his breath, Mac snatched his previous clothes out of the garbage bin, and grimaced at their wrinkled and now damp state thanks to his stepping on them when he’d got out of the shower. Sighing in resignation, he removed his clean jeans and quickly shook out and then pulled the unclean clothes back on. He did not remove his boxers first, though. To hell with that. He’d just showered. He wanted something clean between himself and the material that still had bits of his dead skin attached to the inside of the cloth. The material had apparently melted to his skin in places in the boiling water, or perhaps his skin had melted to the material. Whatever the case, while a lot of it had fallen out when he’d removed the clothes, and again when he’d just shaken them out, not all of it had.

“Disgusting,” he muttered to himself as he finished dressing. This time when he took a moment to look in the mirror and smooth his hair, Mac didn’t feel nearly as good as he had the first time.

Life, he decided, had an interesting way of kicking you in the balls just when you thought things were going your way. Of course, there was the other side too. Just when you were experiencing the very worst day of a long and event-filled life, you met your life mate, turning it into the best day of your life. Basically, it seemed to him that when it came to life, you just had to roll with it and wait to see what happened next.

“Better?” he growled in question as he stomped back out to join the others.

“Perfect,” Marguerite said with a pleased smile.

“Perfect?” Bricker asked dubiously. “He smells. How is he supposed to woo her while he stinks like death?”

Mac’s shoulders slumped at the words. It was a question he was wondering himself.

“You will not smell to CJ,” Marguerite said soothingly to him. “She is mortal, and—” she rushed to the back of the RV and the bathroom he’d just left, and came back just as quickly with what he could only presume was Julius’s cologne in hand “—this will help,” she finished as she began to spray him with it. “Now go before she thinks of a way to get out of taking you shopping.”

Mac led Bricker and Decker to the door, even as she ordered, “And take your time about shopping, then take her to lunch. And you boys give them some space.