Eternal by V. Forrest (new reading TXT) 📗

she had told him was that she didn’t drink alcohol, at least nothing beyond a good Hill stout. She’d never said anything about overindulging in blood.

“I don’t. Just a bad night.” She tugged on the too-tight collar of the ridiculous-looking turtleneck and leaned her head back on the swing. “Old haunts, shall we say?”

He studied her for a moment and then gazed out over the well-manicured green lawn. The fishpond in the side yard gurgled. Midmorning traffic crawled by. No one in Clare Point was ever in a hurry. It wasn’t as if they were going to grow old and die before they completed their task. They had all the time in the world…and maybe then some.

“You went out last night,” he said quietly.

She opened her eyes, cut them in his direction. Pain knifed through her head.

“I couldn’t sleep either. I heard you go out. One forty-five. Pretty late for a small town like this.”

Not knowing what to say, Fia said nothing. She sipped her tea, making a mental note to be more careful about slipping out at night while in his vicinity. Of course it probably wouldn’t matter after today. He was returning to Baltimore, she to Philadelphia. Cases would get solved. Lives that had intersected would never cross again. It was the nature of an FBI agent’s job. Life.

Glen was quiet beside her and she watched him through the dark lenses of her Maui Jims. “Guess these walls are thinner than we realized.” She hesitated. The bites on her neck burned and she tugged at the turtleneck again, wondering if they really hurt or if it was just guilt that stung this morning. She should never have gone to the party last night with Fin. She was a member of the high council, for sweet Joseph’s sake. She should have shut the party down.

“I heard you talking to your fiancée,” she said, trying to keep her tone light. “Table-linen matter still not settled?”

He watched a nuthatch teeter on the edge of a stone birdbath in a flower bed. “Old haunts?”

“What’s that?” she asked. Her mind was working sluggishly this morning.

“You said old haunts kept you awake. You mean an old boyfriend?”

She crossed her ankles and watched the nuthatch. “Something like that.”

“The guy waiting for you on the porch last night?”

“Yeah,” she heard herself say. Then, before she could catch herself. “No…not really. It’s…complicated, Glen.”

“You’re telling me.”

Again, silence.

“Did you love him?”

“Who, Arlan? No. It was his friend. His best friend.” Fia didn’t know why she was saying these things, but it was as if once she started talking, she couldn’t stop herself. “They were practically brothers growing up.” She lifted the mug to her lips. “I loved Ian. Arlan loved me. Ian…mostly he just loved himself.”

Emotion thickened her voice. It was the first time she’d ever admitted that fact. To herself. To anyone. Sweet Mary, Mother and Joseph, what had she drunk last night? Some sort of bizarre truth serum?

“Where’s Ian now?”

“Gone.”

She said it with such a finality that he didn’t ask where. She didn’t think he realized she meant dead. She knew he didn’t realize she meant dead hundreds of years ago.

Hundreds of years? Had it been that long? Why then, did it still hurt so much?

“And Arlan’s still coming around?”

“Yeah.” She gave a little laugh, but there was no humor in it. It made her sad. Sometimes angry, but this morning…just sad.

“And you and he…” Glen left the sentence for her to finish.

“Arlan and I…” Fia searched for the right words. “I…I love him for what he’s been to me, for how he’s been there, but—”

“You’re not in love with him?”

Fia lifted damp lashes to watch the birdbath again. The nuthatch was gone, but two female cardinals had come in its place. She couldn’t believe she was having this conversation with Glen on her mother’s front porch in broad, blinding daylight. Wasn’t this the kind of talk people who were practically strangers, like themselves, had late at night in bars, half lit? Wasn’t the anonymity what made them talk outside their usual boundaries of comfort? Fia couldn’t count the number of times men had confessed to her they didn’t love their wives or they hated their daddies or they were wearing pink silk panties under their gray Armani suit.

“No, it’s not settled,” Glen said.

She shifted her gaze from the birdbath to the good-looking man beside her. Again, the sluggish brain. “I’m sorry?”

“The linens. Stacy and I. We didn’t agree on the table linens. Hell, I don’t even know if we agreed what country we’re getting married in.” He looked away from her, squeezing his temples with his thumb and forefinger.

She couldn’t see his eyes because he was wearing sunglasses, too, but she sensed unrest. Unhappiness. “Trouble in paradise?”

He chuckled. “Something like that.”

“So you fought over white versus ivory napkins. So what? Weddings are stressful, or so everyone tells me. You’ll work it—”

“It’s not the damned napkins, Fia.”

His forceful tone startled her. Then she realized that he didn’t want her to placate or reassure. He just wanted her to listen. She drew her knees closer to his, angling her shoulders so that she was looking directly at him.

“I don’t know…I’m not sure…” He stopped and started again. “It’s not as if I ever really made any decision. You know what I mean? It just all fell into place. We started dating. Sleeping together. I liked her fine.”

But there was no passion between them. She could hear it in his voice. Smell it on his breath. And her heart gave a trip.

For what earthly reason, she had no idea.

“You don’t love her but you’re going to marry her?” she asked softly.

The conversation was so surreal. This was not the kind of exchange she was used to. In fact, she wasn’t used to exchanges at all, really, at least not of the personal sort. In bars, she listened to men’s confessions because they always wanted to come clean before they asked her back to their place. She had no real