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"Daddying?" Armand asked doubtfully He could think of a lot of words to describe Lucian, bossy and bullying a the," Eshe said with a friendly s everyone what to do and where to go and so on He&039;s like a big old gruan, but she cut him off

"My dad asked you to look out forhappen to hi to live up to that proested she&039;d heard that arguuht back when I was a kid, Lucian, but jeez,You&039;re only a hundred years older than me for cripes sake Get over it already I&039;uardian forever"

"You&039;re only a hundred years younger than Lucian?" Arer"

"Why thank you!" She turned and bea, and then she stuck out her hand, "Hello, I&039;eneau"

"Yes" He took her hand and shook it, s at how srue"

Eshe snorted at the suggestion "Not hardly Father Tiht of the world-not totime-on his shoulders like a vampiric Atlas Me? I enjoy life to the best of rump masters"

"There are others like Lucian?" Armand asked with doubt

Eshe raised her eyebrows "Not traveled much in Europe? Because there are a ton of them over there Especially Britain; even the ru"

Ar to think of soe her continued disrespect of Lucian-which was incredibly fresh and exciting in a turning-hian to chirp its funeral dirge Gri, he slipped it from his pocket, flipped it open, and pressed it to his ear, wincing when Paul, his an to squawk in panicked tones about Bessy&039;s labor When the man paused to take a breath, he took the opportunity to say, "I&039;m on my way I&039;m only at the diner I&039;ll be there in five minutes"

"Trouble at home?" Lucian asked dryly as Armand snapped the phone closed and slipped it back in his pocket

Arot out toand there&039;s a probleht you had a wheat far up with surprise in her eyes as he straightened beside her

"I do, but we have a couple of dairy cows too and a few other anied "Most farroceries"

"And what do you do with the, correctly, that he didn&039;t eat

"My oods, but s and milk to the diner here"

"We&039;ll follow you ho more quickly

"Take your time I&039;ll be down at the barn, but make yourselves at home The front door is always unlocked" When Lucian raised an eyebrow at that, he said wryly, "It&039;s the country No one bothers anyone out here and crih for Lucian to grunt an acknowledgment and then smiled and nodded at Eshe and strode out of the diner He could feel her watching him as he left and wished he could watch her too She was a beautiful wo forward to her co the day and had the evenings off, and Armand was usually alone there when awake It would be nice to have soe, especially so time since he&039;d found anyone attractive in -fancy kind of way Even his second and third wives hadn&039;t been that attractive to him His affection for them had been based more in friendship and companionship than in pure ani to be difficult to keep his distance from the lovely Eshe d&039;Aureusand wasn&039;t even sure if he really wanted to anyway

Eshe watched Ar from his broad shoulders to the narroaist and then down over his behind and legs He had a confident ith a hint of a swagger that was purely unconscious, she was sure, a natural rolling of his feet and shifting of hips as he h With his rugged features and silver-blue eyes, she hadn&039;t been able to help but notice that he was a good-looking eneau male asn&039;t They weren&039;t all classically handso Arifted with a little extra helping of that certain solanced around with surprise at that co quickly She settled back in the booth to watch hiood, she noted, and asked in a distracted voice, "Why would I want to do that?"

"The real question is why haven&039;t you already done so?" he said dryly, scooping up potatoes and peas together onto his fork "I have known you a long time, Eshe, and never known you not to try to read every newcomer you encounterwhether they were mortal or immortal"

Eshe scowled at him as he popped the food into his ht She wouldn&039;t ader to meet a new life mate and enjoy the peace and passion she had enjoyed with her first lifewithout the vibrancy a lifeshe usually did on h try wasn&039;t the correct term since she hadn&039;t yet met anyone she couldn&039;t read The only reason she could think that she hadn&039;t read Ar Lucian It was a pasti, life could get a bit boring at tial had to amuse herself somehow

Still, it was unusual for her to not read newcoed to herself, and had to wonder why she hadn&039;t The question, however, e the subject

"So did he buy your story abouta safe house?" she asked quietly as she watched Aret in his pickup and pull out of the diner parking lot

Lucian nodded without even glancing her way "Why wouldn&039;t he?"

Eshe made a face "I suppose It&039;s not like he knowsto hide out anywhere"

"H off his food "Well, do me a favor and try not to ht," she murmured, and then when he pushed his plate away and stood up, she stood as well and asked curiously, "Do you really think he could have killed his wives?"

"No," Lucian acknowledged, digging out his wallet to throenty on the table "But then I didn&039;t think Jean Claude could do what he did either"

Eshe frowned at these words as she retrieved her helmet fro, "Why don&039;t you just read him and see if he did it? For that matter, why didn&039;t you read Jean Claude?"

"Because I couldn&039;t"

The words startled her soShe couldable to read Jean Claude who had been his twin, but Armand"But you&039;re four hundred years older than Arrimaced "For some reason-which I&039;ve never been able to work out-there are sos and even one or two nieces and nephews in the family that I can&039;t read"

"Really?" Eshe asked with interest as she finally began to ain and joined him by the door "I didn&039;t know that"

"It&039;s not soh the door

"No, I suppose not," shehim outside "So, why do you suspect Armand? It&039;s not just because you can&039;t read hi the front of the diner to a dark van parked several feet past her motorcycle "And it&039;s not that I suspect him so much as I don&039;t feel I can afford not to As far as I can tell, his being their husband is the only connection between his three wives And then Annie was his son&039;s wife"

"And Nicholas wasn&039;t killed, just put on the run to prevent his discovering whatever it is Annie htfully She knew the whole story Areneau had lost three wives to "accidents" Eachhihter-in-law had also died in a tragic and so his son She had been pregnant, but hadn&039;t yet given birth to ould have been their first child when she died Both had perished in that freak accident More important to the situation was that it appeared Annie had been asking questions about the deaths of Ar to Nicholas on the phone the night before her accident, she had been rather excited and told hiot home However, she&039;d died before she could tell him whatever that was, and when Nicholas had set out some weeks later to ask a friend of Annie&039;s if she knehat Annie had wanted to tell him, he had somehow ended up in his basement with a dead mortal in his arms, her blood in hisher should have been

Nicholas, a rogue hunter Eshe had worked with a couple of tiht fifty years ago, but had recently turned himself in to save his new life mate However, Annie&039;s phone call and the blank spot where the h to make Lucian reluctant to execute hined Eshe the task of sorting out theout what really happened to Armand&039;s wives and, hopefully, Annie and Nicholas It was a pretty de task, almost impossible to do, really, since Arht

"Follow ot into his van

Esheher helmet on as she went Her actions were automatic as she eneau and the possibility that he had had so to do with the deaths of his wives and then Annie It definitely wouldn&039;t be a happy thought to anyone who knew and cared at all for the Argeneau clan, and Eshe was one of those people The Argeneaus were presently enjoying a happy period after centuries of misery and oppression by Lucian&039;s brother Jean Claude, and didn&039;t need this kind of thing to blight their happiness

Sighing, she forced herself to focus on the task at hand and followed Lucian&039;s van out of the parking lot

Armand&039;s farood since-despite her best efforts-Eshe&039;sher little attention for driving She autohts ca paved driveway lined with trees The trees were old and large, their branches stretching like a canopy over the road and blocking out the stars over-head It was actually startling when they suddenly fell away on either side, spreading out to surround a clearing around an old Victorian farmhouse

Eshe slowed to a stop behind the van when it came to a halt, and then drove around to park beside it on the circular drive that ran around in front of the house Her eyes traveled over the building as she did It was an old Victorian gabled farerbread tri the front The porch rail ran along both sides of a set of four or five stairs, leading up to double doors that were dead center in the front of the building Light spilled fro to the illuht that shone over the doors in a welco manner

Eshe turned off herover the abode with interest as she reood repair, either tended with love over the hundred or so years since it had been built, or refurbished at souess would have been that it had been well tended rather than refurbished The gingerbread triuess would be right," Lucian announced, appearing at her side

Eshe scowled at hi her ized for, and then her gaze slid to the cooler he carried and she breathed out a little sigh at the thought of the blood it probably contained Lucian&039;s call had woken her up mid-afternoon and she&039;d been in such a rush to follow orders and get down here that she hadn&039;t thought to feed before leaving She was beginning to feel it

Lucian shts and waved her forward "Then lead the way and you can have a bag or thile I put the rest of these in Ar from the CruzPac on the back of her motorcycle, and started toward the house

"That&039;s it? That&039;s your idea of packing for a trip?" Lucian asked, eyeing her bag with disbelief as he followed her to the stairs

"What were you expecting? A steamer trunk?" she asked dryly "Besides, I wasn&039;t sure how country folk dress I thought I&039;d buy a couple of things down here once I figure that out"

"You make it sound like farust and half with a," she said dryly, and then added, "Besides, they are as far as I can tell" Eshe shook her head as she admitted, "I just don&039;t understand why anyone would bury theh of that nonsense in the Dark Ages, thank you very much Outhouses hold no attraction forout here now," Lucian said with amusement

"They didn&039;t the last time I was on a farue down in Arkansas," she answered with a shudder The living conditions in the nest had been positively brutal to her ue and his littlethem out of their misery That had been one of their kill-order hunts Where the rogues had already been investigated and judged, but their hideout just discovered

"For God&039;s sake, woh ago for et," she said with another shudder

"If I&039;d known it was going to scar you, I wouldn&039;t have included you in that hunt," he said dryly

"Yeah, right," she snorted "More like you would have made me hit all the farmhouses with outhouses after that Why do you think I didn&039;t let you kno much it bothered me at the time? You&039;re a sadistic bastard, Lucian You would have seen it as your duty to desensitize runt as she held the door for hi, anyway?" she asked as hehall It had several doors leading off it and a set of stairs on one side leading to the second level Lucian had obviously been here before; he headed straight up the hall toward the back of the house

"Long enough to talk to Arured when I saw that Leigh wasn&039;t with you," Eshe admitted with a smile as she mentioned his life mate The tere rarely apart, and she&039;d honestly expected to find the woman at the diner with Lucian and Ar a girls&039; night out, some time at the spa, dinner out, and a movie," Lucian announced as he led the way into the last room on the back left side of the house "I&039;d like to be homent of his comment, but her attention was on the rooht in this roo in from the hallway that Eshe could see it was a country-style kitchen ide plank wood floors, a brick-faced outer wall, three inner walls painted what appeared in that light to be a sunny yellow, an island in the kitchen side, by the refrigerator, and what appeared to be an old-fashioned wood-burning stove The naas stove, specially designed to appear to be authentic to the Victorian hoaze shifted to Lucian as he set the cooler on the stone-topped island stationed at the cooking end of the room When Eshe paused beside hi of blood, and handed it to her

Eshe ainst the island, opened her s to slide out and down, and then quickly popped the bag of blood to theerator behind hirunted, Eshe shifted to peer in around his shoulder Her eyebrows rose when she saw there wasn&039;t a single bag of blood inside Either they had arrived between deliveries or Ar his head, Lucian turned back to begin transferring the blood bags froerator and Eshe backed up a couple of steps to give hi at her s in the refrigerator when he suddenly dropped the over her shoulder and past her head

Eshe heard skin slap on skin and a choked sound frolanced over her shoulder Her eyes widened incredulously as she saw thein the air behind her, Lucian&039;s hand around his throat and holding hiht hand