The Reluctant Vampire - Lynsay Sands [11]
Drina narrowed her eyes, and pointed out dryly, “Which isn’t promising he won’t himself.”
“No,” Harper admitted with a grin. “But Teddy didn’t catch that at the time.”
“Hmm,” she said with irritation, and then glanced to Stephanie’s worried face and grimaced. “Don’t worry. We’ll still go. We’ll just call a taxi.”
Stephanie looked dubious. “Do you think they even have taxis here? I mean, it’s a pretty small town.”
Drina turned to him in question. “Do they?”
“Actually, I don’t think they do. Or at least if they do, I haven’t heard of one,” Harper admitted, and when Drina’s shoulders began to sag with what appeared to be defeat, he found himself saying, “I can take you in my car.”
She appeared as surprised as he was by his offer. Truly, Harper had no idea where that had come from. He’d just blurted it without really even thinking first.
“Don’t you sleep during the day?” Drina asked with a frown. “Speaking of which, what are you even doing up?”
Harper just shook his head and turned away to start back up the drive, saying, “I’ll just throw on a shirt and grab my keys and wallet and be right back.”
“My laughing woke him up, but he didn’t want to make us feel bad by saying so,” Stephanie announced.
Drina turned to glance at the young girl in the SUV. Seeing that Stephanie’s attention was on Harper as he hurried across the deck toward the kitchen door, Drina quickly swiped up a handful of snow off the SUV’s roof and worked it into a ball as she asked, “Which laughing woke him? Your laughing when I was slip-sliding around on the sidewalk? Or your laughing when you hit me with the snowball, and I went down like a ton of bricks?”
Stephanie turned an unrepentant grin her way. “It was funny,” she began, and then her eyes suddenly narrowed and dropped to search for Drina’s hands.
Realizing the girl had read her mind and knew what she was up to, Drina quickly shot the snowball at her, but Stephanie was faster, whirling and ducking at the same time so that the ball missed her and hit the passenger window instead.
“Too slow,” Stephanie taunted.
Drina shrugged. “That’s all right. I’ll get you when you least expect it.”
Stephanie chuckled, unconcerned by the threat, and slid out of the SUV to walk around and join her. “He has a nice chest, doesn’t he?”
He certainly did have a nice chest, Drina thought, and she’d been hard-pressed not to simply throw herself on top of it and drool all the way down to the top of his jeans when she’d seen it. But she’d restrained herself, and now merely shrugged, asking, “You noticed his chest, did you?”
“Not really. Mostly I noticed that you noticed,” Stephanie responded with amusement.
Drina rolled her eyes with disgust. This being easily read business was going to become a serious pain in the arse at this rate, she decided.
“You played it cool, though,” Stephanie praised her. “He didn’t even have an inkling you were drooling inside.”
“I wasn’t drooling,” Drina assured her dryly.
“Oh, yeah. You were,” Stephanie said on a laugh.
Drina sighed. “All right, maybe a little inside.” She shrugged. “What can I say? It’s been half a millenniun since I’ve even noticed a man’s chest.”
Actually, it had been longer than that, she realized and hoped to God her hymen hadn’t grown back in the intervening years.
“Oh my God! That doesn’t happen, right?”
Drina blinked at that horrified exclamation and glanced at Stephanie with confusion. “What?”
“The nanos don’t . . . like . . . fix your hymen after it’s been broken so that every time you have sex it’s like the first time?” she asked with a bone-deep horror that left Drina gaping.
“Good Lord, no!” she assured her. “Where on earth would you get an idea like that?”
Stephanie sagged with relief, and then explained, “You were just thinking you hoped yours hadn’t grown back.”
“Oh, I—That was—I was just having a sarcastic, self-deprecating minute in my head. Gees.” She closed her eyes briefly, opened them again, and said solemnly, “Girl, you have to stay out of my head.”
“I’m not in your head,” Stephanie