Beth grimaced at the comment. Kira was a good six feet tall. She was not only voluptuous but muscular as well. The sword training she’d mentioned had shown in her physique. Still, Beth thought as the elevator doors opened and they crossed the lobby to the exit, size didn’t make a good Enforcer. Smarts did. She was only five-foot-three and considered herself a damned fine hunter.
“I’m hungry,” Donny said suddenly as they headed for the parking lot. “Can we stop at a coffee shop and get doughnuts on the way to the house?”
Beth glanced at him with disbelief. “Seriously? There were probably twenty or thirty food stalls in that place where you could have got food.”
“I want a doughnut, though,” he said with a shrug.
“They probably had a doughnut shop in there somewhere too,” she said with exasperation.
“I will stop at a Tim Hortons on the way to the house,” Matias said as they approached the SUV. Beth suspected he made the offer to keep the peace.
“Oh, good.” Donny beamed at the man as he followed him around to the driver’s side of the SUV. “I like the ones they have with white icing and all those pretty sprinkles.”
“Such a girl,” Beth muttered under her breath with disgust as she reached for the front passenger door handle.
“Allow me,” Scotty said on a chuckle as he got there first and pulled it open for her.
“Thanks,” Beth murmured, a little flustered by both his nearness as he leaned around her to get the door, and the chivalry displayed by the action.
“My pleasure,” he assured her with a smile as she slid into the seat. He waited until she was settled and then closed the door and got into the seat behind her as Matias and Donny got in on the other side.
“Well!” Matias said cheerfully as he fastened his seat belt and started the engine. “Is this not wonderful? Business is done and now we can play.”
Beth turned to him in question. “What did you have in mind?”
“Dancing!” he announced happily. “The girls here, they do not know how to dance, my cousin. You and I will show them.”
Beth chuckled at the claim, but shrugged. “Sure. Why not?”
“But doughnuts first, right?” Donny said from the back seat.
“Sí, sí, doughnuts first,” Matias assured him. “We will stop there on the way back to the house, and then you can all change while I order the pizza, and we will eat properly before we go out.”
“Will anything be open by then?” Beth asked dubiously, glancing at the watch on her wrist.
“Cousin, you are forgetting the time difference again. It is not even yet ten o’clock,” he said in a pained voice. “I promise we will be at the club by midnight and have hours to dance before it closes.”
“Starbucks!” Donny squawked suddenly.
“I see it,” Matias said with exasperation.
“Are we sure Donny should have coffee?” Scotty asked, sounding disgruntled. His voice sounded so close she was sure he had leaned forward in his seat.
Turning, she saw that she had been right, but merely shrugged. “Our trainers thought it best to find out how you reacted to things like coffee before you were on the job. We are done with business now, so we might as well let him see how he handles it.”
Scotty looked dubious, but merely nodded and sat back in his seat.
Six
“Can you no’ turn this music down? I think me ears are bleedin’,” Scotty complained from the back seat.
Beth chuckled at the claim, and leaned forward to turn it down, but then asked, “So you’d rather go back to Donny talking?”
“Hey!” Donny bent to peer down into the SUV from where he stood on the back seat with his head, shoulders, and chest out of the vehicle through the sunroof. “What happened to the music? Did you shut it off? Did he shut it off? Do you think it’s broken? Maybe it’s not the radio. Maybe it’s the station. Maybe the satellite was knocked out of the sky or—”
“Turn it back up!” Scotty barked.
“That’s what I thought,” Beth said with a laugh and cranked up the volume again.
“Yeah!” Donny shouted and straightened to continue playing air guitar in the open night air as they sped down the highway. She should have probably ordered the boy to sit down and put his seat belt on, but honestly, he’d turned into such a chatterbox once the caffeine had hit him, she’d rather risk it. Beth made a mental note to herself to warn Mortimer that Donny shouldn’t be allowed coffee. Ever. He was one of the immortals it did affect.
Much to everyone’s relief, it was only a couple moments later when Matias slowed as he approached the driveway of a nice ranch-style home she thought might be clad in light brown brick. She wasn’t certain. While the increased night vision immortals enjoyed allowed them to see relatively clearly in the dark, it wasn’t that great when it came to colors. But between her night vision and the fact that the driveway ran up the edge of the property a good thirty feet to the side of the house, Beth was able to see that while the front yard was small and neat, the backyard was absolutely huge with more than enough room for the large six-car garage and the attached outbuilding it housed.
The driveway led up beside and past the house to those buildings, but it also had a branch that broke off to run along the front of the house. Matias turned onto that, and steered them up to the front door before stopping.
The minute Matias shut off the engine, the loud raucous music died. Donny immediately dropped back into his seat.
“Man, we’re here!” he exclaimed as if they might have missed that fact. “I was really rocking it. You have great taste in music, Matias. We should unload, huh?” Throwing the SUV’s side door open, he bounded out of the back seat and ran around to the back of the vehicle.
“Ye had to let him drink the coffee, didn’t ye?” Scotty said with disgust.
“Espresso,” Beth corrected him. “And it’s better we know how he reacts to it now than on the job. Fortunately, he has lots of time to get it out of his system. We’re on a bit of a vacation right now,” she reminded him with a smile.
“Yeah, great,” Scotty said, following the younger man out of the vehicle. Beth couldn’t help noticing he sounded unimpressed.
“This Scotty, he is a grumpy bastard, no?” Matias commented as he undid his seat belt. Smiling at her then, he added, “And he has the thing for you.”
Beth froze in the process of getting out of the vehicle, and jerked around to stare at him with dismay. “No, he doesn’t.”
Matias just grinned and nodded slowly. “Sí, he does. He was wanting to tear my head off at the airport when you were in my arms. He has the thing.”
Beth glanced nervously toward the back of the vehicle to make sure that Scotty wasn’t hearing any of this. Much to her relief, she could see that Donny was busy chatting his ear off, hopefully preventing his hearing their conversation. Just in case, though, she decided she’d best keep her voice low. Turning back to Matias, she hissed, “He’s eight hundred and some years old, long past the days of sex and crushes and whatnot. He doesn’t have a ‘thing’ for me. And if you say that in front of him, I’ll scratch your eyes out, wait for them to grow back in and then scratch them out again.”
The old threat merely made Matias laugh and shake his head. He did, however, get out of the vehicle rather quickly and hurry around to join the men at the back of the SUV. He probably hoped there’d be safety in numbers, Beth thought with disgust as she got out to follow him.
“So, there are only three bedrooms,” Matias was saying as she joined the men. “Two of you will have to share a bed.”
Beth scowled at his suggestive tone and the way he waggled his eyebrows as he glanced between her and Scotty. She really should scratch his eyes out, she thought grimly, but merely said, “Scotty and Donny can share.”
“If there are three bedrooms, why do we have to share?” Donny asked. “Beth can have one. Scotty can have one. I can have one. That’s three bedrooms. That’s good. Three bedrooms is good. It’s perfect. Like it was made for us. Three bedrooms, three people.”