I ducked my head and concentrated on the patterns in the rug. “Yeah, but it’s different.
I’ve never been a vampire without you. But you, you’ve been at this for so long. You know how vampire relationships play out. I don’t. And you know how to get along without me. Sometimes I wonder …”
“Wonder what?”
“I wonder when you’re going to get tired of me,” I said. “I mean, this can’t last forever, right? For me, nothing this good lasts forever. And we don’t have any sort of … we haven’t really talked about the long term … I’m going to stop talking now.”
Gabriel opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. After a few moments’ consideration, he blurted out, “Is this because I haven’t said that I love you?”
“No,” I said, caught off guard enough to gape at him a little. “Are vampires even capable of love?”
“Jane, that hurts me,” he said.
“It shouldn’t. I honestly have no idea. I love my parents, I love Zeb. I love Aunt Jettie.
But I had those emotions before I was turned. How do I know they aren’t just residual echoes of what I felt when I was human? I was never in love with a man as a human. I’m not sure I would recognize the feeling. I really like you. Does that help?”
He made a face.
“Have you ever been close to getting married?” I asked. “Do you want to get married?”
He grinned down at me. “Is that a proposal?”
I ignored him. “Are we even able to get married? Legally?”
“No, not yet,” he said. “If a vampire was married before being turned, and the spouse is still human, the marriage is still legal and valid. It took the council nearly two years of lobbying Congress to accomplish that. We’re still working on establishing after-death rights for vampires. We are technically dead, so the hard-line conservatives insist that we don’t have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage, adoption, voting—” I gasped. “We can’t vote?”
“You didn’t notice that in November? During the election?”
“Of course I did, because I vote …” I protested. “OK, fine, I didn’t even try to vote. I forgot. I’m a horrible person.”
He shrugged, patting my head. “Well, you had to have flaws. You don’t vote or have tact or have control over most of your gross motor functions—”
“OK, stop that,” I said, pinching his arm. “And stop trying to get out of talking about your marriage feelings. Have you ever been close to getting married?”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Her name was Mary Louise Early. Her parents were dear friends of my parents. My father wanted access to their pasture land. It was a good match.”
“Wait, so you were engaged to one of my ancestors?” I scooched away from him. “Ew.”
“This is why I don’t tell you about my past! I’m not enigmatic and secretive. I’m trying to keep you from doing—ow!” he cried as I pinched him again. “That. We were not officially engaged at the time of my death. We were promised, that’s all.”
“Did you sleep with her? Because that would just be weird.”
He seemed insulted that I was calling his before-death self a horndog. “Of course not! We were never left unchaperoned. She was wearing twelve layers of underwear at all times. And she had a laugh that made my ears bleed.”
“Hmmph.” I snorted.
Awkward silence.
“So how was Nashville?” I asked.
“The new manager is an idiot,” Gabriel said of the radio station employee he’d traveled to Tennessee to “meet” (translation: yell at in a scary vampire voice). “He’s a fan of Jethro Tull and wants to change the format to soft rock. I’m either going to fire him or make him believe he’s a nine-year-old Girl Scout.” He stroked my hair back from my face. “How’s the wedding planning going?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I groaned.
“The dress is that bad?” he asked. He was trying to look sympathetic, but vampire fangs tend to give away hidden smiles. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, at least you don’t have to go to the bachelor party. Zeb said Dick has made arrangements for us to visit the Booby Hatch on ‘Amateur Night.’ “ Gabriel grimaced at using the word “booby.”
“You’re telling your girlfriend that you’re going to a strip club,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Yes.”
“Do you know what happens at strip clubs?” I asked.
He laughed. “I’m sure it will be fine. We’ll have a few drinks, get him something to eat, and get him home.”
“You honestly don’t understand how strip clubs work, do you?”
Gabriel snorted. “So, how is Zeb’s wedding driving you into the abyss of madness?”
“It’s the whole thing,” I grumbled. “It’s not that I don’t like Jolene. In fact, I’m pretty sure I like her much more than I would have liked anyone else who married Zeb. With the exception of her constantly eating in front of me, I like everything about her. She’s nice and funny and obviously loves my friend. It’s just that—”
“She drives you crazy,” he offered.
“A tiny bit.” I sighed.
“I think that you’ve gotten used to being the female influence in Zeb’s life,” Gabriel said, squeezing me. “There’s nothing wrong with it. I think the friendship between you two is a beautiful thing. But he understood when you began spending time with me, and he’s made it easy for me to become a part of your life. I would be very disappointed in you if you weren’t able to do the same for him.”
“Fine. I will take the mature route. Even if you have to check me into some sort of vampire mental institution immediately after the reception.”
“Jane?” he said, winding his arms and legs around me.
“Letting it go.” I nodded, playing with the curling ends of his hair. “Now that I have your attention, I think we should test that vampire endurance I hear so much about.”
“To think you were this innocent little librarian when I met you.” Gabriel heaved a mock sigh. “I’ve created a monster.”
I grinned, my fangs extending over my lips. “In more ways than one.”
Well, I finally got my revenge for all those times I’d walked in on Fred and Jettie. She came home to find me sprawled on the couch wearing nothing but Gabriel’s shirt, sitting in a very naked man’s lap.
I’d always been disappointed that River Oaks doesn’t have a great ghost story attached to it. Of course, now it does. Aunt Jettie. Jettie was my own personal daytime security system. She woke me up when someone, such as grabby family antique enthusiasts Grandma Ruthie and Jenny, tried to get into the house. She also chased away door-todoor salesmen, meter readers, and evangelists with vague unease and spooky noises.
Unless you have some sort of psychic ability, ghosts decide when they want you to see them. Which is good, because I don’t think I’d want to walk around seeing dead people on every corner. Just when Jettie had decided to let Gabriel see her, she was seeing a whole lot of him. Ever poised, he wrapped an afghan around his waist and held a perfectly civil conversation with her. The utter mortification forced me to block most of it from memory. I know she brought up the phrase “steam cleaning” a lot.
Gabriel promised to call and made himself scarce. There was practically a Gabriel-shaped hole in the door.
“Where have you been?” I asked her, hands on bare hips. “I haven’t seen you for four days. And then you just waltz in without so much as a how do you do? Am I going to have to ground you to get you to spend time with me? It’s that boy you’ve been seeing, isn’t it?”