“Not on your life.”
Beatrice was still thinking about what Dez had said when her best friend dropped her off at her empty house. Would Giovanni leave? What if he really was serious about staying in her life? What did that mean for her? For him? For her relationship with her incredibly loving but clueless boyfriend? Mano had a dive in the morning, so she was alone when she picked up the shoebox she had brought from Houston five years before.
Beatrice opened the lid and pulled out a picture of her and her father. Stephen De Novo’s dark brown eyes stared at her. She still missed him so much. It was worse knowing he was out there somewhere, and she just couldn’t find him. What did it all mean? Why had he never come? Maybe her father didn’t trust Giovanni, but couldn’t he trust her? What was the secret he was still running from after fifteen years?
Was Giovanni her best chance at finding him?
Had Lorenzo already found him?
Would Giovanni’s son find her again?
She shook her head and replaced the lid on the old box, shoving it back on the bottom of the bookshelf in the living room. She didn’t have room in her life for another mystery. She had built a good life. A safe life. She didn’t want to be pulled into the chaos of the past.
But when she closed her eyes that night, a dulcet laugh haunted her dreams, and her father’s eyes pleaded with her to find him. Beatrice woke with a start to see the moon shining through the narrow window of her bedroom. In her drowsy state, she looked for Giovanni beside her.
Just as it had been for the past five years, he was nowhere to be found.
Chapter Five
Los Angeles, California
November 2009
Two weeks.
Giovanni’s immortal life was measured in two-week intervals.
After her find at the library, Beatrice had given him two weeks to prove they could be friends again. While he knew he wouldn’t be satisfied with only that, he realized she still had doubts about his intentions, so he tried to back off and give her some space. They had been friends first, and he could be a friend again.
For a while.
So they met for coffee and conversation. She came to dinner at the house with Ben acting as an enthusiastic chaperone. Giovanni waited outside the library when she worked late just to walk her to her motorcycle.
And at the end of two weeks, she told him he was allowed to be in her life…as a friend. So he gamely ignored her racing heart every time she saw him and the loaded looks she cast his direction when she thought he wasn’t looking and pretended to be Beatrice’s friend for a while.
Two weeks turned into four, and they met for coffee a few times each week after her judo class. She had recently begun practice with a new teacher.
“Pete’s so good. I mean, he kind of beats me up—”
Giovanni couldn’t contain the low growl, and she shot him a look.
“—but in a good way. Since I’ve changed to this studio, I’ve made a lot more progress. And I’m a lot stronger. They focus on conditioning more than my old place.”
“You look stronger. And your balance has improved.”
She smiled. “I love judo. It’s so much fun. Have you ever studied martial arts?” She laughed. “Do you even need to?”
“My physical conditioning with my father was based on the Spartan agoge, so I learned about most military and fighting techniques that way, but Tenzin trained me more on hand-to-hand fighting styles. I picked up whatever she taught me, which was a strange mix of ‘do whatever will kill your opponent the fastest,’ and her sire’s form of wushu, or kung fu, as humans refer to it.”
“Cool. Tenzin’s the one who recommended I take tai chi when I first moved to California. That’s kind of what started me out. I still practice.”
“Tai chi?”
“Yeah.”
He nodded, letting a smirk cross his lips when he thought about his old friend.
“And Mano studied martial arts in the military. He still does some kick boxing. Sometimes we practice together.”
He made no response, choosing to ignore the existence of the boyfriend whenever she brought him up.
Beatrice had told Mano that Giovanni was an old friend from Houston who had recently moved to town and a mutual friend of Carwyn’s whom she had worked for in the past. He had a feeling that the boyfriend was clueless about more than his and Beatrice’s past relationship.
He leaned toward her in the crowded café. “So you really haven’t told anyone? Not even Dez? About your father or Carwyn or…anything?” He blew on the fragrant coffee he held, heating his breath to heighten the scent since it had cooled.
“No, I didn’t tell anyone. What would I say?” She lowered her voice. “Oh, hey, Dez, you know my friend, Carwyn? He’s a thousand-year-old Welsh priest who hunts deer and drinks their blood. Oh, and my father is a vampire, too, but I haven’t seen him for almost fifteen years so I don’t know what he eats. And I was kidnapped by a vampire once, but don’t worry, my boss—who I was kind of involved with, but not really—rescued me with his two best friends, one of whom can fly and the other who can tunnel underground like a giant gopher.”
He shrugged. “Seems totally believable to me. And we were most definitely involved.”
Beatrice rolled her eyes and took a sip of coffee. “Right, and were you going to swoop in and rescue me when they carted me off to the looney bin?”
“I will always swoop in and rescue you, whether from psychotic vampires or the men in white coats.”