Undead and Unappreciated by Davidson Maryjanice

Author:Davidson, Maryjanice [Davidson, Maryjanice]
Language: eng
Format: mobi, epub
Tags: Romance, Paranormal, Fiction
ISBN: 9781101158807
Publisher: Berkley
Published: 2005-12-06T08:00:00+00:00

Chapter 19

The devil’s own—Laura Goodman, college girl about Dinkytown—breezed into Dunn Brothers at two minutes after five. She waved at me, paused to speak to the counter guy—who was slavering like a beast, I couldn’t help noticing—and then came over to me.

“I’m so sorry I’m late,” she gasped by way of greeting, shaking my hand again. “I’m really, really sorry. Have you been waiting long? I’m sorry.”

“It’s fine, Laura. By my watch you’re right on time.” She seemed so contrite, so sincere, I found myself rushing to reassure her. “Have a seat.”

“Thanks. My cocoa’s coming.”

“Don’t like the hard stuff, huh?” I asked, indicating my own doublechocolattespressowithextrafoam.

“Oh, I try not to drink caffeine after lunchtime,” she replied. “I have to get up early in the morning for work.”

“You’ve got a job, too?”

“Too? Oh, that’s right.” She smiled at me. It wasn’t a grin, it wasn’t a smirk, she didn’t raise an eyebrow knowingly. It was just a nice smile. “You were following me half the night yesterday.”

“Well, yeah,” I admitted. “I guess it’s no good pretending I wasn’t.”

“My father says liars are fated to believe their own lies, so it’s probably good you’re coming clean.”

“Yeah…your father. Uh, listen about that…”

She leaned forward and took my hand in hers, then dropped it. “Gosh, your hand is cold! You should have another hot drink.”

“Sorry. I have bad circulation.”

“No, I’m sorry. I hope I didn’t make you feel bad. I shouldn’t have just blurted it out like that.”

“Don’t worry about it, Laura.” She was too good to be true! Minnesota nice was one thing, but Laura was in a class by herself. “Listen…”

She leaned forward, perfect gorgeous face lighting up. “This is about my family, isn’t it? My birth family.” She paused, then added, “Sorry about interrupting.”

I blinked in surprise. “How’d you know?”

“Well.” The counter guy brought her a white coffee cup the size of my head, absolutely brimming with whipped cream and swirled with chocolate syrup. She smiled up at him and cupped the biggest cocoa in the world in her hands. “I was thinking about you last night, after you left. And you’re tall, like me—in fact you’re about an inch taller. My whole life, I’ve never met a woman taller than me. And you’re blond, and we both have light-colored eyes…and you were so mysterious, but so nice…it just got me thinking.”

“Oh, so you know you’re—that you were adopted?”

“Yes, of course. Mama and Dad told me all about it, about how of all the babies in the world, they chose me.” She was still smiling, clearly happy at the memory. “God brought me to them.”

“Right.” God. Uh-huh. “Well, I recently—like, this week—found out about you, and I did some detective work.” With vampires. And a certain dark book bound in human skin. No, not chemistry. “And I tracked you down and—I don’t know.” I really didn’t know where I was going with this. “I just wanted to meet you and then I guess…”

“You’re my sister, right?”

“Half sister,” I hastened to correct. I did not have a single drop of blood in common with the Ant or the devil.

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