This Same Earth

“Even more so now,” he said with a grin.

They were soaked, and he framed her face with his hands as the water collected on their skin, running down in rivulets as they smiled and laughed together and the moon reflected in the ripples of dark water beside them.

Later, they stretched naked on the wool blanket she had tucked into their saddlebag, and he wrapped his body around her, chasing away the night chill. His hands explored each curve, leisurely studying her unique topography. In five hundred years, he’d had lovers he’d cared for, but none like her. Never before had one woman captured his heart, his body, and his mind as Beatrice had.

“What are you thinking right now?” she asked as his fingers traced over the soft rise of her belly.

“I am thinking, for the first time in five hundred years, I wish I could give you children. I regret that I cannot. It is not possible.”

She lay back, silent as she looked up at the stars. Finally, he heard her soft voice.

“Have I ever told you about my mom?”

“Not really.”

“She didn’t want me. She and my dad were never married, though I think he did ask at some point. But she didn’t want to be pregnant or married. She kind of…had me for my dad. Then she took off.”

“She was a foolish woman.”

Beatrice shrugged, and he clamped down on his instinctive anger.

“She didn’t want to be a mom. She could have gotten rid of me. She could have abandoned me to some stranger, but she didn’t. She gave me to my dad and my grandparents. And they loved me. So I can’t be too angry with her. I was probably better off.”

“My mother died of a fever. I think I was around five years old. I’m not sure. I know I was very young.”

“And then your uncle found you.”

“And then my uncle’s friends found me—purely by chance—and apparently I was a replica of my father, so they knew I was his bastard.”

“But your uncle was kind.”

“Yes.” He nodded. “Very kind.”

“So, Jacopo…” She rolled him over on his back and laid a slender arm across his chest as she met his gaze. “We know better than anyone that family is what you make it.”

“You would make a wonderful mother,” he whispered.

“Maybe I will be one day...somehow,” she said with a soft smile. “I think I have time.”

He tucked a strand of hair behind her ear and brought his mouth to hers for a soft kiss. “Yes, you will have time.”

A week later they were lying in their bed in the early evening as a fire burned in the grate and reflected off the mica in the hewn granite wall. Beatrice was watching the lights dance and laughing at a story Ben had related when she’d called him that afternoon.

“So he was reading the recipe and somehow read one quarter teaspoon as one quarter cup,” she said as she held back the laughter.

“And?”

The incredulity covered her face as she looked up at him.

“Really?”

“What?”

“Haven’t you ever baked?”

He cocked an eyebrow at her. “Only the bad guys.”

She snorted and rolled over to fold her arms on his chest.

“Well, there was a little bit of cleaning to do when the brownies ran all over the oven.”

“As long as he was the one doing the cleaning.”

“I have no doubt of that. My grandma has been forcing reluctant men to clean for years. My grandpa. My dad…”

She choked, and he caught her chin between his fingers, forcing her to meet his eyes.

“Do you want to know?”

“What are you talking about?” she muttered.

“You have very carefully not asked me any more about your father. You know I was looking for him. I know you received the postcards, but you seem reluctant to ask any other questions.”

She pursed her lips and wiped at a tear that had come to one eye. “I’m not sure what I thought. I guess part of me always hoped he would find me. That he would come to L.A.”

“He was in San Francisco once, but that was the closest he ever came that I know of.”

She thought for a few more minutes as he played with the ends of her hair.

“Okay, tell me what you found.”

“Whatever tricks Tywyll taught your father, he learned them well. Combine that with a brain like yours, enhanced by better vampire processing and memory…he’s stayed one step ahead of me for years.”

“But you found—”

“What is the saying? Breadcrumbs, tesoro. I found breadcrumbs.”

He pulled her closer as he continued. “As I told you before, in each location I found some clue. I would get a call, or a note, or some indication that he had been inquiring after one of my books or my services, something like that.”

“But when you got there—”

“He would be gone. I would always find a hotel room, recently occupied, with some trace—a note, a receipt, something that would tell me it had been his.”

“And that’s where you sent the postcards from?”

“Yes.”

“So he didn’t try to hide that he’d been there.”

Giovanni shook his head. “Quite the opposite. It was almost as if he was waving a flag, then ducking out of sight.”

He could almost hear the wheels turning in her head.

“So what if the locations were the clue? There has to be a—a method. A pattern, some—”