She pulled back. “Hey.”
“Hey.” He leaned in. “Are you okay?”
“Yeah, why?”
“Did that new guy do something that pissed you off?”
“Yeah … no, I mean, it was nothing.”
Steve’s expression soured. “Why was he mouthing off at you about Smurfs?”
She usually told Steve the truth, but suddenly she didn’t want him to know she wore Smurf pajamas. “I thought he was trespassing and we bumped heads.” She glanced up over Steve’s shoulder and saw the panty perv staring at her and Steve.
“Funny,” Steve said in a nonfunny voice. “The way you were looking at him wasn’t the way you’d look at someone you’d butted heads with.”
Della nipped her lip to keep from smiling. She should be embarrassed at Steve calling her out about appreciating the panty perv’s body. And she was, but her pride took second to the excitement of knowing that Steve cared enough to get his boxer shorts in a bunch.
Leaning back on her heels, she stared up into his eyes. “It sounds like someone’s jealous, but I can’t see why. It’s not like you and I are going out or anything. We’re just friends, so…” Della shrugged, feigning innocence.
Steve quirked his lip in a cocky half smile and took a step closer. The electricity started to crackle. They stood less than an inch apart, but Della, aware only of him and the magic he brought on, refused to step back this time. They’d been playing this game for weeks—flirting and teasing each time they saw each other—and Della could give as well as he could take.
“Yup, we’re just friends, but friends look after each other, and make sure they don’t go goo-goo-eyed at new campers they don’t know anything about.”
Goo-goo-eyed? She bit the inside of her mouth to keep from chuckling. “I have no idea what you are talking about. You must be seeing things. Vampires never go goo-goo-eyed. Maybe a drop of sweat got in your eyes.”
She reached up to and thumbed away a nonexistent drop from the corner of Steve’s brow. She heard his heartbeat surge the second her skin touched his, and willed her own heart rate to stay calm.
He caught her wrist, and drew a tiny little heart on the tender skin above her veins. “You’re looking a little gooey right now, Miss Priss.”
She almost laughed. Almost. Instead she became instantly aware that they weren’t alone, but still in the midst of nosy campers—some of them with super hearing. And this game, the flirting game she and Steve played, she insisted they only play it in private. What the heck had she been thinking. Oh, yeah, she wasn’t thinking!
She took a step back, and when she did she saw Derek walking away. Derek, whom she’d come here to talk to about her missing uncle. “We’ll talk later,” she told Steve. “I need to see Derek about something.”
“About what?” Steve asked as if he had all the right in the world to know.
Derek was almost to the trail. “I … I really gotta go. I’ll talk to you later.”
She glanced back at her two best friends, both looking … goo-goo-eyed at their boyfriends, and decided to talk to Derek without them.
Taking off, she caught up with Derek right as he entered the path back to his cabin. “Derek,” she called, shaking off the warm, fuzzy feeling left over from her encounter with Steve. Damn that boy had a way of getting to her.
Derek stopped and turned around. “Yeah?” he asked.
“I … Do you have a minute?”
He almost frowned. “Just a minute, I’m meeting someone. What do you need?”
Was he meeting Jenny? Probably. Everyone seemed to be in love or on their way to it. Except her, she told herself, not willing to accept that her and Steve’s “thing” was more than a passing fancy. And it would pass, because that’s what she wanted.
She looked at Derek. “I’m…” How did she explain it? She forced herself to just spit it out, and as she did, she realized how hard it was to ask anyone for help. “I’m looking for a missing person. I want you … I was hoping you would flex your PI muscles to help me find him.”
“My PI muscles?”
“Your gift of doing investigation,” she clarified. “I know you used to work at a PI agency and I wanted to ask for your help.”
“Who is it you’re looking for?”
“My uncle,” she said.
“How long has he been missing?” Derek asked.
Della did the math in her head. “Around nineteen years.”
Derek’s mouth dropped open. “What?”
“My dad had a twin that he never talked about, and I just learned about him. Supposedly, he died in a car crash.”
Derek’s mouth dropped a little more and his brow pinched in confusion. “If he’s dead, why…”
“I think maybe he was turned and faked his own death like most vampire teens do.”
“Are you sure he was turned?”
“No, but the vampire virus runs in families and it would make sense that … that it was what happened.”
“Not really. I’d say the odds of him being killed in a car crash are fifty times greater than him being turned. And the virus doesn’t always run in families. That’s only with about thirty percent of vampires,” Derek said. “Chris and I were just talking about that.”
“I know, but I have a cousin who’s vampire, too. So … so that has to up the odds some. And my sister heard my dad say his brother got cold and then went off and got himself killed in a car crash.”
“Cold as in physically cold?” Derek asked, for the first time seeming as if he believed her.
“I don’t know. My sister just overheard him saying that, so I can’t go ask my dad. But I was hoping you could research it. See if you find out anything on him.”
Derek made a what-the-hell face, and Della feared he was about to tell her no.
“Please,” she said. God, she hated begging.
He sighed. “I don’t mind trying, but nineteen years is a long time ago. Normally, I find stuff on the Internet, and being that long ago, chances of finding anything there is slim to none.” He paused as if to take everything in. “Wait, why don’t you go to Burnett? He could probably…”
“I don’t want Burnett involved until I know for sure he’s registered, or as a last resort.”
Derek frowned. “You think he could be rogue?”