Peace, Blood, and Understanding by Molly Harper

Author:Molly Harper
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Gallery Books
Published: 2019-10-06T16:00:00+00:00

* * *

I came home to find a lovely vampire heating my favorite blood for dinner. But it was not the fantasy I’d come to expect. Luke was standing at my counter again, just as comfortable as he had been every other time he’d visited, and yet I felt so awkward, I could barely look at him. Between guilt over my secret Googling and feeling off balance because of Bollinger’s intrusions, I was stretched paper-thin emotionally. And he smelled… off. The bright, spicy apple scent was gone and replaced with the stringent odor of oakmoss. He was hiding something from me, which didn’t exactly help my suspicions with the whole “red file” situation.

I couldn’t look him in the eye as I crossed into my kitchen and washed my hands with the ultra-powerful dish soap required to get bloodstains out of porcelain. I looked at every surface in my apartment but not his face. And the only thought bouncing around in my head was What did you do? What did you do? What did you do?

“Hi.” Luke’s dark head tilted as he watched me sort of stumble around my apartment to put down my purse and keys.

“Hi, I didn’t know you were coming over,” I said.

“Well, I haven’t heard from you in a while, and I thought I would come over and…” He wiggled his eyebrows as he finished, “Visit.”

Because “visit” was our code word for getting all naked and sweaty. It wasn’t particularly creative, but it was so commonly used that we could say it in open conversation and no one else knew what we were talking about—unless, of course, Luke was using his sexy voice.

“I’ve just been busy with work and the shop and everything,” I said, still not making eye contact with him.

“Are you OK?” he asked.

“Oh, sure,” I said, my tone still incredibly distant. “But I don’t think I’m in the mood for ‘visiting’ tonight.”

“Oh, well, that’s OK,” he said, shrugging. “We can just have dinner and talk, if you want.”

Dinner… and talking… when I could barely look at his handsome face. What in the hell would I find to talk about with Luke that wouldn’t involve Jane’s list or the red files or me blurting out, Hey, you’re not a former cult leader or something, right?

“I’m not really in the mood for talking, either,” I said, shaking my head.

“What is going on with you, Meadow?”

“I don’t think— I can’t,” I babbled. “Why does something have to be going on with me?”

“Because you’ve never pulled the ‘emotionally distant, something is clearly very wrong, but I am not willing to talk to you about it’ card on me before. You’ve always been so great about telling me exactly what you’re thinking. It’s one of the reasons this thing with us works. But if that’s changed for some reason and there’s someone else, you could at least talk to me about it instead of… whatever it is you’re doing right now.”

I couldn’t tell him. Not just in the “I

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