Serafina and the Virtual Man - By Marie Treanor Page 0,93
all his old friends and colleagues.”
Sera drank her coffee. “Want something stronger?” she suggested.
Jilly shook her head mutely. Sera’s heart contracted. Her friend was hurting and not yet ready to have the wound probed. Sera understood that; she always had.
She finished her coffee and stood up. “See you in the morning, Jilly.”
Jilly nodded. She even tried a smile, which almost broke Sera’s heart.
As she drove back to the New Town, she realised she was angry with Jilly, not for being who she was but for not grabbing her chance. Jilly was afraid of nothing and no one, and yet she couldn’t even walk into the same room as a man she might well grow to love.
Sera hit the heels of both hands off the steering wheel. “Fight for him, damn it! Roxy didn’t lift a finger to save him. You did that. You’re the one he asked for. Risk it, damn you!”
She couldn’t recall ever being so frustrated with Jilly. And yet she understood only too well. She and Jilly had always survived by keeping their hearts under wraps. But sometimes, you just had to unwrap a little. As she had, for Blair.
Blair. With an unpleasant little jolt, she recognised a reflection of Jilly’s behaviour in herself. She’d let Blair in but only up to a point. She held on blindly to what she saw as her independence, forcing herself to go home at night so as not to share too much. She, who’d refused to be anyone’s sex toy, had made herself just that, tried to make Blair just that. Her throat closed up. Emotion swamped her in such a flood that she had to force herself to concentrate on the road.
What would she do now without Blair? The weird, arrogant, controlling bastard. The monster who drank her blood and anyone else’s he fancied. The being who still fascinated her and made her laugh, who made her alive…
If Jilly was wasting precious time, precious once-in-a-lifetime opportunity by not going to Genesis Adam, what the hell was she doing that was so much bloody better?
With an indrawn breath that sounded more like a sob, Sera drove straight past Serafina’s and on to Blair’s house. There was a light burning in the upstairs sitting room.
She used her own key to get in the main front door and ran along the hall, calling, “Blair?” She pushed open the sitting room door and stopped short.
Blair rose from his armchair like a perfect gentleman. His undead guest, reclining on the sofa, smiled and raised a dusty whisky bottle to her in a silent toast.
“Phil? I didn’t know you were back in Edinburgh.” Distracted, Sera stared at the bottle. “Is that Dale Ewan’s?” she demanded.
Blair inclined his head, his dark eyes alight with laughter. He turned to the table behind him and picked up a bottle of red wine that also looked familiar, presenting it to her with a flourish and a bow.
Sera’s breath caught. She wanted to laugh. “Blair—Blair, you can’t do that! You can’t nick people’s stuff as presents for your friends! Even if they’re cheating, murdering bastards.”
“Did you come to tell me off?” he enquired telepathically.
She met his gaze and swallowed. “No. No, I came to tell you—come here.” She grabbed his hand in her free one and dragged him out of the room and across the hall to the bedroom, since it was closest. There she dropped the wine bottle on the bed and reached up to take his handsome face between her hands.
“I came to tell you that I’m sorry,” she said. Her voice cracked. “And that I love you.”
His lips and his eyes softened. In silence, he smoothed her hair, cupped her cheek, and bent to kiss her. It was a kiss of tenderness more than passion, although with Blair, that could never be entirely absent.
When the kiss broke, she said shakily, “And if the Founder himself comes between us, I’ll stake the bastard.”
Blair threw back his head and laughed.
****
Two weeks after he’d come out of his “coma” and five days after the astonished doctors had allowed him to go home, Genesis Adam opened his door to a surprise visitor.
Dale stood there, looking sheepish. As if he’d eaten Adam’s sandwich.
“Fancy a pint?” he said with a weak smile.
“No, Dale, I don’t.” Adam didn’t budge, didn’t take his eyes off his one-time friend. His neck, his whole body prickled. He supposed that was inevitable. And yet he didn’t close the door in Dale’s face. Something—curiosity, maybe—made him wait.