“Don’t touch me.”
He scowled down at her. “I’m checking your temperature. You didn’t feel right.” He put his hand back on her brow.
She almost swatted his hand away again, but realized she was taking her frustration with the dream and her hearing problems out on him. “I’m vampire. I’m friggin’ cold, remember?”
He grimaced as his hand tenderly moved across her brow. “I know, that’s what’s wrong. You don’t feel … as cold. I think you might have a fever.”
“I’m fine.” She sat up. “I just didn’t get any sleep.” Her gaze shifted to the window. The sun hadn’t completely chased the night away yet, but the little corner of the sky she could see through the glass panes had streaks of pink in it. “What time is it?”
“Five-thirty.”
She flopped back onto her pillow. “That means I’ve slept a whole hour,” she muttered.
“Sorry for waking you. I was worried. I told you to call and you didn’t.”
“When did you tell me to call?” She cut her eyes at him, now sitting on her bed, looking morning peppy. She hated morning people. Then she tried to remember their last encounter, when Burnett showed up. “You didn’t tell me to call you.”
“In the note, I told you to call me as soon as you got back.”
“What note?” she asked.
He pulled a piece of notebook paper that rested half under her shoulder. “The one you’re sleeping on. After you took off, I got worried, so I came here and left a note on your bed. I barely slept myself, I kept waking up every ten minutes checking my phone. All I could think was that something went wrong.”
It had gone wrong, Della thought. Two innocent people were killed and then she learned Burnett didn’t think she had what it took to be an FRU agent.
The images of the victims flashed in her head, making her chest feel like it had been filled with syrup. The really thick kind of syrup. But there was nothing sweet about the weighty feeling. Just heavy empathy for two young lovers.
“I finally just decided to come over here and check for myself,” Steve said. “Besides, I have to leave in ten minutes.”
He’d been worried. He was leaving? Della’s mind spun to keep up with him. It was Monday, he didn’t go to play doctor on Mondays—not that it was really play. Just as she longed to be an FRU agent, Steve longed to be a doctor, a supernatural doctor. Because there weren’t really schools to study supernatural medicine, someone wanting to go into this field had to get a degree in either regular medicine or veterinarian medicine, as well as work under another paranormal doctor. Steve trying to get ahead of the game, assisted the only supernatural doctor in town. “I didn’t see the note. I … was exhausted.”
He ran his hand up and down her forearm. “Are you really okay?”
“I’m fine.”
His eyes twinkled. “You are fine. I especially like the Smurf pajamas.”
See, there was nothing wrong with Smurf pajamas! Crap! Why was she thinking about that low-life vamp?
“And if that new vamp mentions your pajamas again, I might have to teach him a lesson.”
Why was he thinking about…?
Steve straightened the collar of her PJ top and then leaned down. “I’m the only one who can tease you about what you sleep in, or don’t sleep in.” He wiggled his brows and then went in for a kiss.
She fully intended to push him away, but the moment his lips brushed against hers, she … well, she didn’t do a dad-blasted thing. Hadn’t this been how they’d gotten in trouble on the mission? She’d let him kiss her while in bed, and the next thing she knew their clothes started falling off.
Yup, that’s what happened, and she was going to stop this right now. She put her palm on his chest to give him a good-bye shove. Not hard enough to hurt him, just … Then his hand slipped under her pajama top and his palm eased ever so softly over the na**d curve of her waist. Well, maybe she wasn’t going to stop it right now, but for sure before their clothes started …
Just when she really started feeling all tingly, he pulled away, his expression puzzled, his lips a little wet from their kiss. “Are you on your period?”
Her mouth dropped open and she gave his chest a hard thump with her palm. “A guy isn’t supposed to ask a girl that. And if you thought I was going to—”
“No!” He shook his head and chuckled as he sat up. “I didn’t mean … I’m asking as a doctor, not as your boyfriend.”
“You’re not my boyfriend.”
“Right,” he said, as if he didn’t believe it.
Oh, Lordie, was he her boyfriend? Had she slipped up and let this thing between them get that out of hand?
“Seriously, are you on your period?” he asked.
She frowned at him. “You’re not my doctor, either.”
He shook his head as if she was silly. “Look, sometimes when a female vampire is on her cycle, she runs a slight temperature. You really do feel warmer.” He put his hand on her forehead again.
“I just didn’t get enough sleep,” she said, but then remembered her headache and hearing problems. Could she have some kind of flu?
“Are you on your cycle?” he asked again.
She rolled her eyes and nodded. It wasn’t exactly the truth; she wasn’t due for about three days. She wondered if PMS could mess with her hearing as well.
She sat up and looked at him sitting on the edge of her bed as if he had every right in the world to be here. Then she remembered him saying he was leaving. “Where are you going?”
“To work with Dr. Whitman.”
She shook her head. “But you don’t go on Mondays.”
“I do now. Dr. Whitman asked Holiday if I could come in four days a week instead of three and stay there at night. Half the supernatural clientele comes in after hours. He’s got a room where I can sleep in the back of the clinic.” He studied her expression. “I was going to tell you last night, if you hadn’t run off to play FRU agent.”
It hadn’t been play, Della thought, and then her mind went to Steve and his new schedule.
“What about school?” Della didn’t like the sound of this. She didn’t like that he wouldn’t be around at night when she went out for a run to clear her mind. Then she didn’t like the fact that she didn’t like it. Depending on people got you in trouble. Jeepers! Had she already started depending on him? Face it, with Miranda with Perry and Kylie with Lucas, she’d had some time to fill.
Not that she blamed them … well, she sort of did, but she also understood. When she’d gotten with Lee, she’d basically ignored her friends, too.
“School’s not a big deal,” Steve said. “Before I even came here I tested out of high school.”
“I knew you were a smart … ass,” she said, hoping to hide her emotional upheaval with humor. But bullcrappers if her heart didn’t feel tight at the thought of him being gone.
“Like you’re not smart.” He grinned. “But Holiday is going to make me take some tests every Friday so on the record it shows I went here. It’ll look better on my files when I start college.” He brushed a strand of dark hair from her cheek tenderly. “Are you going to miss me?”
She frowned. Could he read her mind? “No,” she lied.
He made a face at her answer. “I’ll miss you. But we’ll see each other on Fridays and the weekends. Of course, if you’d stop pretending that you don’t like me, and would be seen in public with me, then we could spend more time together. I wouldn’t have to wait until the middle of the night or early morning to steal a kiss.”
He leaned in to steal one then, and she put her hand up and pressed her finger to his lips. “It’s late, I should be getting dressed.”
“Go ahead.” He flopped back on her bed and rested his head on his hands as if he was going to enjoy watching her. His reclined position did wonders to showcase the muscles in his arms and chest. He grinned that sexy bedroom smile at her and she wanted to kick his ass.
“Out!” she ordered.
He sat up. “After you kiss me good-bye.”
“No! You are incorrigible.” She shook her finger at him. “Presumptuous. Arrogant.”
“Call me all the names you want, but if you want me to leave, it’ll cost you a kiss.”
“And impossible,” she growled. “You do know I could pick you up, twirl you around like a baton, then toss your ass out the window, don’t you?”
“Could and would are two different things, sweetheart.”
Friggin’ frack! How did this guy know her so well? When had she opened up and invited him into her life? Into her heart?
He leaned in and collected a kiss. A short one, that’s all she allowed. But it was a hell of a lot more than she should have permitted. Right then she knew his leaving was a good thing. She needed to put some distance between them. Needed a slowdown.
“I’ll see you Friday. But promise me you’ll call me.”
“I don’t make promises.” She swallowed a slight lump in her throat at his expression. “I’ll try.” Try not to, she amended. She had to put on her emotional brakes. Stop these feelings before they got out of hand.
He put one leg out the window and then glanced back. “Stay away from that new vamp. I don’t like him.”
Me, either, she thought, but didn’t say it.
Della sat there hugging her knees, staring out the opened window, trying not to care about the dad-blasted shape-shifter who’d left her feeling less than happy. A cold blast of wind snaked in her bedroom, and she shivered. She popped off the bed to go shut the window, and that’s when it suddenly occurred to her. She felt cold.
Since she’d been turned, she’d been aware of temperature, but she hadn’t really felt cold. She remembered Steve insinuating that she might have a fever. Placing a hand on her forehead, she moved to the window. She got there just in time to see Derek watching Steve walk away.
Great. Now Fairy Boy was going to think she and Steve were dirtying up the sheets. Derek looked toward the window, half smirked, and started walking over. Her first impulse was to offer him the third-finger salute and slam the window. Then she remembered he was assisting in looking for her uncle. Was he here for that? Did he already have something for her? She leaped out the window and met him halfway.
“I’m not sleeping with Steve,” she said first thing, deciding to make that clear from the get-go.
He rolled his eyes. “I really don’t care.” Then his gaze moved over her. “Smurfs, huh?” He chuckled.
“Oh, please, give it a break. You guys just want to fantasize about us girls wearing sexy lingerie to bed every night. We wear what’s comfortable. We wear what we like. So get over it!”
He scratched his jaw. “I’ll try to wrap my brain around that.”
She shook her head, her dark, straight hair flipping in front of her face. “Do you wear thongs and lingerie to bed?”
“Uhh, no.”
“Well neither do women. So if you don’t like to floss body parts that don’t need flossing, why would we?”
“I…” he stuttered. “I didn’t say anything about … I meant, I just didn’t expect to see a vampire liking little blue people.”
“Why not? I’m not prejudiced,” she said. “I like people of all colors, nationalities, and species. I even like you. A little bit.”
He looked taken aback. “You do know Smurfs don’t exist, right?”
“Of course I do. And you know all women don’t wear thongs or sexy lingerie. And wearing Smurf PJs isn’t weird.” Steve had even liked them.
Derek had the decency to blush, and held up one hand. “Forget I said anything.”
She realized she was overreacting and being grumpy, especially considering he was probably here to help her. “Sorry. I didn’t get enough sleep.” And the new vamp’s insult about her PJs had obviously stung more than it should have. “Did you find something out about my uncle?”
He nodded. “That’s why I’m here.”
Chapter Six
“What did you get?” Della asked, feeling as if his answer could change things. If her uncle was alive …
Derek shrugged as if he was about to disappoint her. “Not a lot, but I was able to dig up an obituary from some old newspapers that were accessible through the library Internet.” He pulled out a piece of paper. “I went ahead and printed it out. Of course, this doesn’t mean that he actually died. But it’s a place to start checking if maybe it was falsified. And I’m not done searching the Internet. If I can find out what school he went to, sometimes if there’s a reunion of that class, some classmates might have posted something.”
Della took the folded paper and frowned. “I don’t know what school he went to, but I’ll see if I can find out.”
He nodded. “Just remember, it’s not overly promising with something that happened so long ago.”
Disappointment whispered through her.
“Oh,” he said. “Can I sort of ask for a favor in return?”
Well, duh, she couldn’t say no, now could she? But what in the world could Derek want from her? “What is it?”
“I was hoping … maybe you could sort of be nice to Jenny.”
So it was really true. Derek had a serious thing for Jenny.
“Be nice to her?” Della asked. “I haven’t been rude to her.”