Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (46 page)

“Oh dear, oh dear,” Edwina fretted as she fluttered toward the hall. “How many are there? I don’t know if we have enough food.”

Avery followed Edwina but Lucien curled me into his front.

I looked up at him when he asked, “If it seems your family will interrupt our plans for this evening, if I’m forced to eject them bodily, how would you react?”

He was teasing again. It was frustrated teasing but he still did it really, really well. I was seeing the benefits of having a kind of like boyfriend who was centuries old. He had a lot of good stuff down
pat
.

“I’ve decided I’m mad at them. They’ve been ignoring me,” I admitted. “But not sure about bodily ejection. Could you, you know, Mighty Vampire Lucien Command them to leave?” I said the words “mighty vampire Lucien” in a fake pompous voice which was why I think Lucien yanked me in his arms and gave me a tight hug as he threw his head back and shouted with laughter.

This was what my family saw when they filed into the room looking uppity and in dire need of a martini.

I decided to glare.

I mean, in my hour of need, they’d ignored me and here they were when my hour of need was beyond me (not exactly, but in a way) and the good parts (one particular one I had in mind) were happening
that very night
.

“I need a drink,” Aunt Kate announced grandly.

“Leah, honey, are you okay?” Mom asked worriedly.

“Is that roast chicken I smell?” Aunt Millicent enquired, sniffing.

“
Ohmigod
, I love your blouse!” Aunt Nadia screeched excitedly.

“Well, hello to you too,” I replied to them all. “So, you remember I exist?”

Aunt Kate’s eyes narrowed.

Mom looked guilty.

Aunt Millicent glanced away.

Aunt Nadia bit her lip.

Lucien gave me a shoulder squeeze and murmured, “Leah.”

“Sorry but I
was
expelled from Vampire Studies and I
did
happen to find myself living with a vampire and my family
does
happen to be the premier family of vampire concubines so forgive me for expecting a little guidance and support!” I fired off.

The collective of Buchanan women’s eyes moved to Lucien. Once they did, so did my own. Lucien let me go and shrugged off his suit jacket.

He dropped it on the arm of the couch and suggested, “Perhaps we should all have a drink.”

I didn’t think this was good.

Aunt Kate disagreed. “Capital idea!” she announced.

“Lucien?” I called.

Drink,
he said in my head.
I’ll explain in a minute.

He’ll
explain? What did this have to do with Lucien?

Then it hit me. The aunties visit a month ago when I didn’t get the chance to talk to them.

I was right, this wasn’t good.

I crossed my arms, jutted my hip, threw out a leg and tapped my toe. If
any
of my past boyfriends saw me in this stance, they would ask no questions. They wouldn’t utter a
noise.
They would cut and run straight for the hills.

Lucien glanced at me as he headed for the drinks cabinet. When his eyes hit me, they traveled from chest-to-toe then straight to my face. Then I saw him bite back a smile.

Big, fat, vampire
jerk!

I immediately changed my mind regarding our later activities. If he thought we were “joining” tonight, he had another think coming.

“I’ll make more stuffing and potatoes and warm up more rolls.” Edwina was fussing in the kitchen. “Maybe whip up a pie.”

I was about to offer my help when I was interrupted.

“You were expelled from Vampire Studies?” Avery asked, his amused stare locked on me.

“I was caught texting, passing notes, throwing spitballs and writing my Last Will and Testament,” I declared.

Avery burst out laughing.

“Spitballs?” Lucien voice came at me from behind.

I turned and saw he had a bottle of vodka in his hand, his brows were up and he didn’t look amused.

“Spitballs,” I snapped rebelliously.

“Oh, can we
please
not talk about that? It took some palm greasing to get that instructor to keep his mouth shut,” Aunt Kate lamented and sent me her look that since I was four and even now that I was forty never failed to pin me to the spot. “Anyone
else
learns of this and it’s sure to taint the Buchanan name.”

“I still think it’s kind of funny, Katie,” Aunt Nadia whispered, giving me a wink.

“Um, excuse me, but does anyone want to talk about my daughter nearly dying from a bad dream last night? Anyone? Anyone? Or is it
just me?
” Mom demanded tetchily.

I stared at Lucien’s back and stated, “I’d prefer to know why my family has been avoiding me for a month.”

Don’t try me,
Lucien warned in my head.

Kiss my concubine ass,
I returned to his.

He didn’t turn but I saw him shake his head in that way men do when they think women are entirely too ridiculous for words. But, seeing as this was Lucien, he did it far better than any man of my acquaintance and there were
lots
of men of my acquaintance who would shake their heads like I was too ridiculous for words.

It was then that I saw the drawbacks of having a kind of like boyfriend who was centuries old.

He had a lot of bad stuff down pat, too.

“Leah, I asked you a question when I came into this room.” Mom commanded my attention. “Are you all right?”

I turned to my mother and told her, “I’m fine.”

“What happened?” she asked.

“Oh, not much, except I woke up but my dream wasn’t quite done with me yet. I had the highly disturbing experience of being hanged, literally, but without actually being hanged.”

Every single one of my aunties gasped and even Avery winced.

Lucien’s sharp voice cut cleanly through the horror filling the room.

“Leah, a word.”

Then he handed the martini shaker to Avery and walked out.

After the last incident that happened when I defied him in front of my aunties, I felt it prudent to follow him. He turned into the study and I followed him there too. He shut the door behind me, grabbed my upper arm and pushed me against it.

I looked up to see he was angry.

He didn’t delay. “You’re mother’s concerned. So concerned she flew across four states to check on you. You just told her something grisly, terrifying and
life threatening
happened to the daughter she loves like you’d relay the time of day.”

“Please, do
not
think to tell me how to handle my own mother.” I tried to make it as nice as I could. He might be the Mighty Vampire Lucien everywhere else but he was treading on thin ice if he thought he could get between me and my family.

He crowded me, dropping my arm and putting his hand on the door by my head.

“I see you need to learn respect for more than just me, pet,” he said in a low, dangerous voice, clearly thinking he could get between me and my family.

“You have brothers? Sisters? Cousins?” I shot back and his eyes narrowed.

“What the fuck does that –?”

I cut him off before he could finish, “No? Well then, you don’t understand what it means to be the black sheep in very close-knit family. They love me and I love them, like, a lot, but mostly, except Aunt Nadia, Lana, my cousin Natalie and sometimes my Mom, they put up with me. I didn’t want to come here. They
made
me. Then they left me to deal with it all by myself with only Edwina, Stephanie and
you
to help me out. I didn’t know any of you and
you
I didn’t even
like
.”

His face lost some of its anger, not all, but there was a hint of concern (and, dare I believe it?) even regret in his eyes.

“I curtailed their communication with you, Leah.”

“I figured that out in there, Lucien,” I informed him with a toss of my head toward the other room. “But do you think, for even a minute,
I
would listen even to
you
if my sister Lana needed me? Or Natalie? Or Mom? Or even Aunt Kate? Hunh? Do you?”

His hand left the door and came to my neck. Then his forehead came to rest on mine.

Then he muttered, “Not even a minute.”

“No, not even a minute. I was drowning, Lucien. I called out to them and they gave me no lifeline, just floated on their merry way.”

His other arm slid around me and he pulled me from the door into his warm, big, solid body.

“Sweetheart,” he whispered.

Yep, definitely regret.

It was time to let him off the hook. What he did was uncool but it was very Lucien. What they did was just, plain
wrong
.

I looked up at him and put my hands on his chest. “So, seeing as you’re new to the Buchanan family dynamic, let me clue you in. I’m going to go out there and be sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious. Aunt Kate’s going to be overbearing because she’s never wrong. Mom’s going to be guilty, as she should be. Aunt Millicent is going to be mostly worried about when dinner will be served. And Aunt Nadia and I’ll probably talk a lot about the clothes you bought me and whatever new man is in her life. Then all will be forgiven. We’ll eat. We’ll probably get drunk. And, except for Aunt Kate, who will find the best guest room and lay claim to it before any of the rest of them even think about getting their suitcases from the car, we might end up dancing to eighties pop music and doing the robot. Just hope Aunt Nadia doesn’t try to breakdance. The last time she did that she threw her back out and was down for a week.”

The regret was gone, his hand was moving up my back and his eyes were smiling even though his mouth wasn’t.

“Two problems with the evening’s festivities, pet.”

“And those would be?”

“I don’t want you drunk and I don’t want a house full of Buchanans when I finally have you.”

Oh.

I’d semi-forgotten about that.

“
Definitely
no breakdancing,” he went on and because he was funny, I laughed out loud.

When I did, his gaze dropped to my mouth, the smile left his eyes and they went intense. His hand sifted into the hair at the back of my head and he kissed the laughter right off my lips.

It was a good kiss. One of the best in a lineup of seriously top-notch kisses.

My arms were wrapped around his neck and my body was plastered against his when he lifted his head.

When my thoughts unjumbled, I whispered, “We have a wee problem then.”

“No, we don’t.”

I tilted my head to the side. “We don’t?”

“Leave it to me.”

For some reason, I got worried and my arms tightened.

“Lucien, I’m not sure you understand. The Buchanan women can be kind of…” I couldn’t believe I was saying this to
him
of all people but I had to warn him as I would have to warn
anyone
who went head-to-head with the aunties, “
daunting
when they’re riled. Whatever they did made my Dad leave and never come back and–”

Lucien interrupted me, “First, they’re concubines. I’m a vampire. Your father wasn’t. They won’t say a single word to me.”

Oh yes. That was true.

He went on, “Second, your father left because of your aunts but he never came back because of Cosmo.”

My arms tightened again, this time spasmodically because at the same time I felt like I’d been kicked in the gut.

“What?” I whispered.

“If concubines find a man after their Arrangement and wish to stop their care, they can ask their vampire to stop it. Most of them do. Your mother did too. But your father couldn’t give her the life Cosmo gave her or the ones her sisters had. This made him mean. Mean turned to nasty. Drink made him dangerous. Your aunts got rid of him, Kate told Cosmo about his behavior and Cosmo reinstated your mother’s care and made certain he stayed gone.”

I stared at him, uncertain what to do with this knowledge.

“Did Cosmo… did he…
kill
my father?”

Lucien’s brows knitted. “Of course not.”

“What’d he do?”

“He gave him a very large sum of money.”

My mouth dropped open.

My father vanished from my life because Cosmo gave him money?

“He, Cosmo, Dad…” I stuttered, composed myself and then went on, “Cosmo made it so my father didn’t even send me a birthday card, a graduation gift, a –?”

“Cosmo made no stipulations about you girls. Only Lydia. Your father chose to disappear from
your
life.”

This rocked me and my eyes moved to stare unseeing over his shoulder.

What a
schmuck!

Of course, I already knew this but to have it confirmed totally stunk!