“Yeah.” He glanced at the house and shrugged. “She’ll be okay with it.”
Jeanne Louise snorted. “You mean she’ll be okay with it as soon as you give her your charming grin. You always could get around Aunt Marguerite.”
“Why do you think I liked hanging out with Thomas when we were younger?” Lissianna asked with amusement.
“Oh, I see!” Thomas laughed as they got out of the vehicle. “So the truth is out. You only like me for my way with your mother.”
“Well, you didn’t actually think it was that I liked
hanging out with
you
, did you?” Lissianna teased, as he walked around to her side.
“Brat.” He gave her hair a tug as he joined her.
“Isn’t that your brother Bastien’s car?” Mirabeau asked as she climbed out from behind the front passenger seat and slammed the Jeep door closed.
Lissianna glanced toward the dark Mercedes and nodded. “Looks like it.”
“I wonder if anyone else is here.” Jeanne Louise murmured.
Lissianna shrugged. “I don’t see any other cars. But I suppose Bastien could have arranged for a couple of the company cars to pick up and drop off people.”
“If he did, I doubt anyone has arrived yet,” Mirabeau said, as they started toward the front door. “You know it isn’t fashionable to show up to these things on time. Only unfashionable geeks arrive on time.”
“I guess that makes us unfashionable geeks,” Lissianna commented.
“Nah. We’re just trendsetters,” Thomas announced, and they all chuckled.
Bastien opened the front door as they approached. “I thought I heard a car.”
“Bastien, du-ude!” Thomas greeted loudly, then immediately stepped up to give him a hug that had the older man stiffening in surprise. “How’s it hanging, dude?”
Lissianna bit her lip to keep from laughing and glanced toward Jeanne Louise and Mirabeau, then quickly away as she saw that they were also having difficulty controlling their expressions at the sudden change in Thomas. He’d gone from being just your average guy to a space cadet, in the passing of a heartbeat.
“Yes…Well…Thomas. Hello.” Bastien managed to disengage himself from his exuberant younger cousin. As
usual, he looked uncomfortable and not entirely sure how to handle the younger man. It was why Thomas acted that way, he knew that both her older brothers—at over four hundred and six hundred—tended to look down on him as a young pup, and it never ceased to annoy him. Being thought of as little more than a child at over two hundred years old could be terribly annoying, and so he acted like an ass around them. It never failed to make the older men uncomfortable and—Lissianna suspected—gave Thomas an advantage. Her brothers were forever underestimating Thomas because of their prejudices.
Suffering the same prejudice herself, Lissianna could sympathize with Thomas. She also never failed to enjoy watching her older brothers squirm with discomfort.
“So, where’s the party, dude?” Thomas asked brightly.
“It has not started yet,” Bastien said. “You’re the first to arrive.”
“No dude,
you
were the first to arrive,” Thomas corrected him cheerfully, then confided, “You don’t know how relieved that makes me. ’Cause if we’d been first, Mirabeau said we would have been unfashionable geeks. But we weren’t. You were.”
Lissianna coughed to cover the snort of laughter that managed to escape her as her brother recognized that he’d just been called an unfashionable geek. When she regained control of herself it was to find Bastien standing stiff and straight and appearing a tad annoyed. She took pity on him, and asked, “So, where’s Mom? And are we allowed to enter, or are we to wait out here for another fifteen minutes?”
“Oh, no. Come in.” Bastien stepped quickly to the side. “I just got here myself, and Mother went up to change for the party after letting me in. She should be down in a few minutes. Maybe you should wait in the games room until
she comes down. She might not want you to see the decorations until everyone’s here.”
“Okay,” Lissianna said agreeably, stepping past him into the entry.
“Want to play a game of pool, dude?” Thomas asked cheerfully as he followed Lissianna into the house.
“Oh…er…No. Thank you, Thomas, I have to watch for early arrivals until Mother is ready.” Bastien backed away along the hall as he spoke. “I’ll tell her you’re here.”
“He loves me,” Thomas said with amusement, as Bastien disappeared from the hall, then he opened his arms to shepherd them toward the closed door on the right of the hall. “Come along. Let’s go play. Anyone up for a game of pool?”
“I’ll play,” Mirabeau said, then added, “Lissi, you have a run in your stockings.”
“What?” Lissianna paused and peered down at her legs.
“Back right,” Mirabeau said, and she twisted to look at the back of her right leg.
“I must have got it caught on something on the garbage bin,” Lissianna muttered with disgust as she spotted the long, wide ladder up the back of her right calf.
“Garbage bin?” Thomas echoed with interest.
“Don’t ask,” she said dryly, then made an irritated
tsk
and straightened. “I’ll have to go change my stockings before the party starts. Fortunately, Mom insisted I leave spare clothes here in my old room when I moved out. I should have a couple pairs of stockings. You guys go ahead and play.”
“Hurry back,” Thomas called, as she jogged lightly up the stairs.
Lissianna merely waved over her shoulder as she reached the landing and started along the hall toward her
bedroom, but she was thinking it was good advice. Marguerite Argeneau wasn’t going to be pleased that they’d arrived early, but Thomas would quickly cajole her out of any irritation she might initially be feeling. For that reason alone, it would be better to be with Thomas and the others when she met up with her mother.
“Coward,” Lissianna berated herself. She was over two hundred years old and well past the age where she should worry about upsetting her mother.
“Yeah right,” Lissianna muttered, acknowledging that she would probably still worry about it when she was six hundred. All she had to do was look at her brothers to know that. They were independent, self-sufficient and…well…just plain
old
and still worried about pleasing or displeasing Marguerite Argeneau.
“It must be a family thing,” she decided as she opened the door to the room that had been hers until recently, and where she still occasionally slept when she stayed too late to make it home before sunrise. Lissianna started into the room, but her steps halted, her eyes widening in surprise at the sight of the man on the bed.
“Oh, sorry, wrong room,” she muttered, and drew the door closed again.
Lissianna then simply stood in the hall staring blankly around as she realized she hadn’t accidentally entered the wrong room. This was her old bedroom. She’d spent several decades sleeping there and knew her own room when she saw it. She just didn’t know why there was a man
in
it. Or, more importantly, why he was tied spread-eagled on the bed.
Lissianna considered the matter for a moment. Her mother would not have taken in a boarder, and if she had, she certainly wouldn’t have done so without mentioning it to her children. Nor would she have put him in Lis
sianna’s old room, a room she still used on those rare occasions she stayed. Besides, the fact that he was tied down on the bed rather belied the possibility of his being a
willing
guest.
As did the bow around his neck, Lissianna thought as she recalled the cheery red splotch of color that had been half-crushed by his chin as he’d struggled to look at her.
It was the bow that finally had her relaxing as she realized he must be the special surprise her mother had driven into the city for. The Sweet Tooth Jeanne Louise had suggested. Though, Lissianna thought, the man in her bed had looked healthy enough, but then, you couldn’t always tell until you got close enough to smell the sweetness an untreated diabetic exuded.
In effect, the fellow was a walking birthday cake. And a yummy-looking one at that, she decided, recalling his dark good looks. His eyes had been piercing and intelligent, his nose straight, his chin strong…and his body had been rather nice, too. He’d appeared long and lean and muscular, stretched out on the bed.
Of course, after her experience with Dwayne, Lissianna was aware there might be some padding under the jacket he wore. She hadn’t looked for cucumbers, but the man hadn’t been sporting a tan, bottled or otherwise, yet hadn’t looked anemic, but then her mother wasn’t likely to make the mistake Lissianna had earlier. Marguerite would have made sure he was exactly what she wanted to give her daughter, and Lissianna was thinking that Jeanne Louise was probably right, and he was an untreated diabetic. Nothing else made much sense. Her mother would hardly drive all the way into town for just a standard healthy individual when she could have ordered a pizza and handed Lissianna the delivery boy, which is what she usually did.
So, he was a sweet to eat, she reasoned, and felt hunger gnaw at her stomach. Lissianna wouldn’t have minded a nibble right then. Just a little taste to tide her over until her mother actually gave him to her. She quickly killed that thought. Even Thomas wouldn’t be able to cajole her mother out of her bad mood if Lissianna pulled a stunt like that. So, walking back in there and biting him was out, but she still needed to fetch fresh stockings.
While Lissianna knew she should probably just return to the games room without them, it seemed to her that—as the surprise was already spoiled—it was silly to run around in ruined stockings all night. She was here, and it would only take a moment to grab a fresh pair from those she’d left behind for just such an emergency.
Greg stared at the closed door. He
couldn’t believe that someone had just opened it, paused—obviously startled at the sight of him—then apologized and closed the door while he’d just lain there like an idiot, too startled to say or do anything. Not that he’d had much of a chance to react, but still…
The muscles in his neck began to ache with the strain of keeping his head raised to peer at the door. Heaving a sigh of defeat, Greg let it drop back onto the pillow and began to mutter under his breath about his own stupidity.
It had come to his attention tonight that he was a
complete
idiot. Greg had never thought of himself as an idiot. In fact, he’d always considered himself somewhat intelligent, but that was before he’d climbed into the trunk of a strange car and locked himself inside for no good purpose that he could think of.
“Definitely an idiotic move,” Greg announced, but then perhaps insane was a better description. Stupid would have been
accidentally
locking himself in a trunk. Climbing in and calmly pulling it closed was more along the lines of inexplicable insanity. And he was starting to talk
to himself, he pointed out. Yes, it would appear he’d lost his grip on sanity. He couldn’t help wondering exactly when he’d lost his mind, and how.
Perhaps insanity was contagious, he pondered. Perhaps he’d caught it from one of his clients. Not that Greg had any clients he’d have diagnosed as insane. He dealt mostly with phobias in his practice, though he treated a few patients with other, more long-term, difficulties. He supposed he could have had the seed all along, and tonight it had simply sprouted into full-blown madness. That was a thought. Perhaps insanity ran in the family. He should check with his mother on that, find out whether they had a madman or two in the family history.
It wasn’t just the climbing into the trunk that bothered Greg, that had only been the first of his mad actions tonight, and one he’d regretted as soon as the trunk lock had clicked into place. He’d lain in the dark, cramped space, calling himself all kinds of a fool for at least half an hour as the car had driven to this house. Then the car had stopped, the trunk had opened and what had he done? Had he leapt out, apologized for his unnatural behavior, and gone home? No. He’d stood and waited as the pretty brunette from the elevator had gotten out of the car to join him, then had followed her—docile as you please—into this huge house and up to this room.
Greg had been as cheerful and trusting as a five-year-old as he’d—without even being asked—climbed onto the bed and splayed himself for her to tie down. Greg had even returned her smile when she’d patted his cheek and announced, “
My daughter is going to love you. You are my best birthday gift ever
.”
After she’d left the room, he’d lain there, his mind blank for several moments before the situation he’d got himself into had begun to sink in. Greg had spent the time
since then in bewildered contemplation of what had happened. His own behavior—never mind the woman’s—didn’t make any sense. It was as if he’d temporarily lost his mind. Or control of it. Unable to solve the quandary, he’d turned his thoughts to more immediate concerns, such as what was going to happen now that he
was
here?
“
My daughter is going to love you. You are my best birthday gift ever.
” These words—along with the fact that Greg was presently spread-eagled on a bed—had first made him fear he was some sort of sexual gift. A sex slave, perhaps. That possibility had immediately had him imagining being ravished by some huge, homely creature with a bad complexion and facial hair. For surely only someone terribly unattractive would need a man kidnapped and tied to her bed to get sex in today’s sexually free climate?
Just as Gregory had started to hyperventilate at the imagined horror, he’d given himself a mental slap. The woman—the mother—couldn’t be more than twenty-five or thirty years old at most. Surely no daughter of hers would be old enough to want a sex slave? Or even to know what to do with one. Besides, why would anyone want
him
for a sex slave anyway, he’d asked himself.
Greg had a healthy self-esteem, and knew he was attractive, but he wasn’t a rock star or
GQ
-model gorgeous. He was a psychologist who dressed in conservative suits, had a conservative haircut, and lived a conservative life based around work, his family, and little else. Well, his work, his family, and attempting to escape all the blind dates his sisters, aunts, and mother would have set him up on, he corrected himself wryly.