Where Winter Finds You (Black Dagger Brotherhood #18)- J.R Ward Page 0,17

again unto him. Which was how he had lost his faith in the afterlife.

Surely, if she were somewhere in the universe, and she could come see him once, she would do it again. His shellan wouldn’t have deserted him in his suffering. No way.

So there had to be nothing of her left.

Staring at the snow-covered windshield of his BMW and being able to see nothing on the other side made him think of Therese. He had had no real reason to go to the restaurant tonight. He had no reason to try to see that female, ever—especially now that she had drawn such a firm line about getting out of that rooming house. He needed to leave her well enough alone.

Physical similarities amplified by grief did not a relationship make.

And besides, his grief was like the snow on this car. Blinding him to what was all around, rendering him cold and sightless as to the truths he was living in. He was just starting this journey of grief, the death still so fresh, and there were no easy exit ramps off the highway he was on. From what Mary had told him, he just needed to proceed with the belief and understanding that it does get, if not better, per se, then at least more easily tolerated.

Not that he found “more easily tolerated” something to look forward to.

He didn’t find anything to look forward to.

And seeking out that waitress did not count as optimism. It was a compulsion that bordered on being psychotic.

He needed to cut that shit out.

* * *

Back at Sal’s, Therese crossed the main dining room with a pitcher in one hand and a damask napkin in the other. As she approached the male vampire who was sitting by himself in front of the hearth, he looked up, and she nearly tripped on the carpet.

Which was what you might expect when someone saw a unicorn. Out in the wild. About to have dinner at a four-top by himself.

The male was so unusually handsome that her eyes had trouble processing the full sight of his facial features. His coloring. His incredibly big body. He had blond hair that was thick and seemed natural, not colored. His cheekbones were high and hard, balanced by the blunt cut of his chin. And she refused to even look at his lips, her peripheral vision providing her with enough of an idea of what they were like that she felt as if, were she to get a full view of them, it would be akin to staring at a naked ass that was spectacular.

“Hi, my name is Therese.” As her voice squeaked, she cleared her throat. “I’ll be your server tonight.”

She leaned over his table, put the folded napkin on the rim of his water glass, and tipped the pitcher so that a deluge of ice and water went tumbling in. The manager, Enzo, required that all servers do the napkin trick, and at first, she’d thought it was incredibly pretentious. A couple of pours in, however, and she was grateful for the splatter shield.

“Are we waiting for others to join you?” she said as she straightened. “Perhaps a cocktail for you to pass the time—”

Therese froze and stopped talking. Her one customer of the night was staring at her with wide eyes, like someone had slapped his incredible face with a cold fish.

She glanced over her shoulder in case the good-looks police were coming to take back some of his handsome as a violation of the natural order. Or maybe it was a demogorgon from Stranger Things. Nope, no one was behind her. Maybe there was something wrong with her uniform? She looked down at herself to make sure everything was in proper place still, not that any kind of untucked could explain the expression of shock he was showing.

Refocusing on her customer, she held her pitcher closer to her body. “Is there something wrong?”

The male shook himself. Looked away. Looked back. Continued to stare.

Okay, so this guy might be a good tipper, she thought, but he was going to make her earn the extra money just being around the weirdness—

“I’m sorry,” the male said in what was, of course, a gorgeously rich and deep voice. “You just—you remind me of someone I know.”

“Oh?”

There was no reason to get braced for some kind of pickup line. For one, he was too extraordinary to need them. She was quite certain he could sneeze and women and females would come running just on