Before Santo could decide if she was insulting or making fun of him, Marguerite glanced at her wristwatch and murmured, “There are still a couple hours before she has to pick up Parker, and I do not think she has had anything to eat today unless the two of you stopped somewhere?”
Santo shook his head.
“Good,” Marguerite said on a sigh. “Then I suggest you take her out for a late lunch and then talk to her. Just be yourself, but speak your thoughts out loud,” she suggested as if it was easy as could be. Walking around him, she moved to the door and then paused to swing back and add, “Your less prurient thoughts, though, Santo. Save any sex talk for later. All right?”
She didn’t wait for an answer but turned away, muttering, “I need to go talk to Julius. Maybe he will have some ideas on how to help you.”
Santo stared at the empty doorway for several minutes after Marguerite left, feeling depression settle around his shoulders. He had lied when he’d said he disliked talking. It wasn’t that he disliked it so much as he was out of practice and uncomfortable with it. It was part of the reason he’d refused counseling after the mess in Venezuela where he was kidnapped and tortured . . . He didn’t know how to talk about it. And he didn’t know how to talk to Pet.
Santo grimaced at how stupid that sounded, and then shook his head and left the kitchen to go looking for Pet. He didn’t have far to go; he spotted her the minute he stepped into the hall. She was at the front door, her arms full of a bunch of equipment that she was trying to shift so that she could open the new door.
“What are you doing?” he asked with a frown, automatically moving forward now to take some of the items for her. His gaze moved over what he realized was a speaker and a gaming system as he took them.
“Thank you.” Her voice was quiet and polite as she juggled the other speaker and game controllers still in her hands so that she could open the door before she answered his question. “I’m taking these outside.”
Santo frowned, but followed when she stepped out on the porch. “Why?”
“To put in my car,” Pet responded as she made her way down the steps and headed for the driveway.
“Why?” Santo repeated impatiently, trailing her to her red Toyota 86. It was a damned cute car, he noted not for the first time, and he thought she’d look good in it.
“So I don’t have to later.”
Santo glanced at her blankly, slow to put together that she was answering his question about why she was putting the items in the car. He paused next to her as she stopped at the trunk and popped it open, and then watched unhappily as she set the controllers and speaker inside. She then turned to take the game station and the other speaker from him and set them in as well.
When she closed the trunk and headed back the way they’d come, he followed again, asking, “Are they not Parker’s?”
“Yes.”
“Does he know?” he asked as they mounted the stairs to the porch.
“That I took them from his room?” she asked.
“Yes.”
“Not yet.”
Santo waited for her to explain and then scowled at her back when she didn’t, annoyed as hell that she was being so reticent.
“Where are you going now?” he asked when they entered the house, and she started to jog lightly up the stairs.
“Upstairs,” she announced as she reached the top of the steps.
Santo watched her disappear up the hall, and then muttered under his breath and strode into the living room.
“Problems?” Bricker asked with amusement.
“No,” he snarled, wondering how he was supposed to ask her out to lunch when she was being so difficult. Or if he even wanted to. Seriously, he’d known claiming a life mate could be hard, but this was not the kind of difficult he’d expected. Shouldn’t his life mate be someone who understood his silences and joined him in them?
A snort from Bricker reminded him that he wasn’t alone and was easily read at the moment. He turned a baleful glare on the younger immortal, but it didn’t seem to intimidate him.
“Buddy,” Bricker said with a grin, “the last thing you need is more silence. Hell, I’ve spent half my time the last couple of weeks wanting to check to see if you’re still breathing.” When Santo glowered at him, he shrugged. “I’m just sayin’ . . . I mean, at least Chewbacca squawks once in a while, you know?”
“What the hell is a Chewbacca?” Santo asked impatiently.
“Exactly.” Bricker nodded solemnly, as if his question meant something. “You are way out of touch with society, my friend. And at least as bad as Lucian was at the boy-girl thing. You need help, and I’m just the guy to help you.”
Santo arched his eyebrows and simply said, “The Bricker Lotto?”
Bricker grinned, apparently unembarrassed that Santo had heard about his explanations to his mate about their being life mates. “Yeah, all right, not my finest moment, maybe. But I got my girl, and that despite all the shade Anders and Decker were throwing my way, so . . . who’s laughing now?”
Santo grunted at that, and then glanced around at the sound of the front door closing.
“It was Pet,” Bricker told him.
Scowling, Santo strode out of the living room and hurried to open the front door. He peered out, then gaped when he saw that Pet was now carrying a television this time.
Cursing under his breath, he rushed after her, catching up just as she reached the back of the car.
“What are you doing now?” he asked with exasperation.
“Putting this in the car,” she said, even as she did so.
“I can see that,” he growled. “Why?”
“To take it somewhere else,” she said simply, slammed the trunk and turned to head back to the house again.
“Why?” he repeated impatiently, beginning to feel like a parrot.
“So Parker can play his games.”
“Well, he cannot play if they are not here,” he pointed out with exasperation, following her up the stairs to the porch and finding his attention briefly caught by the curve of her behind.
“He can,” she assured him. “Someplace else.”
That dragged his attention away from her butt, and he lifted his gaze to the back of her head with alarm. “Why would he not be here?”
“Because he’ll be elsewhere,” she said grimly and slipped back into the house.
Santo halted briefly, her words striking him like a blow as he realized she was taking Parker and his things and leaving. At least he thought she was. She was being so damned reticent he wasn’t sure. Honestly, getting answers from her was suddenly like pulling teeth, he thought irritably, and then nearly gasped aloud as he realized those had been her exact words to him.
Son of a bitch, she was giving him some of his own back, Santo realized. And he didn’t like it. No wonder she was annoyed with him. If she felt as frustrated by his lack of communication as he presently did with hers . . .
Muttering under his breath, Santo hurried after her. Bursting into the house, he glanced up the stairs, expecting to see her already halfway up them. She wasn’t there, though. Instead, he heard her voice from the living room. He moved to stand in the doorway just as Bricker said, “Marguerite mentioned she didn’t think you’d had breakfast or even lunch and might be hungry. Was she right?”
Santo saw the surprise that flickered onto Pet’s face, and then she smiled wryly and nodded. “Yeah, I guess she is. I didn’t even think of eating.”
“Good. ’Cause I’m hungry too,” Bricker said, and then added, “I was thinking a nice juicy steak would be nice, maybe a baked potato . . .”
“That sounds good,” Pet admitted solemnly.
Bricker nodded and then glanced past her to Santo and said, “Take her to that steakhouse we stopped at on our way here.”
Pet swung around, her mouth forming an alarmed O as she spotted him and realized Bricker had set her up. She started to protest, “Oh, but—”
“They have aged steak there,” Bricker said, talking right over her and taking her arm to steer her across the room to Santo’s side. “And it was good too. Now, off you go.”
Santo took her elbow when Bricker urged Pet toward him, and then turned to walk her out of the house. He suspected Bricker had taken control of her to prevent further protest. The fact that he followed them out onto the porch and watched them walk to the SUV just convinced him that was the case. Santo didn’t know how he felt about that. Part of him didn’t like Bricker controlling her, but another part suspected she wouldn’t come with him otherwise and was grateful.
Sighing, he saw her seated in the passenger seat, and then started around the SUV.
“Hang on!”
Santo glanced around to see Julius passing Bricker and gesturing for the younger immortal to follow as he walked toward the SUV.
“Do you have the coffee table and headboard in the back?” his uncle asked as he approached.
“Sì,” Santo murmured, realizing he’d forgotten to unload the items they’d picked up. “But they are in boxes and have to be assembled.”
Julius nodded, not seeming surprised. “We will take them then. We can put them together while you are gone.”
Santo walked around and opened the back. Julius immediately leaned in and pulled out the long thin box holding the coffee table top and its legs. After passing it off to Bricker, he leaned in to grab the longer box holding the headboard next. He didn’t turn and head back to the house then, but paused to eye Santo solemnly.
“I had trouble talking to Marguerite when I first encountered her again,” he announced abruptly.
Santo arched an eyebrow at this news and waited.
“But a mortal named G.G. gave me some good advice,” he continued. “And that is that women like to talk.”
Santo’s other eyebrow rose at that. “Marguerite said I should talk more.”
“She is a woman,” he said with a shrug. “And you will have to talk some. Just try to pay attention to her questions. Your instinct will be to answer as economically as possible, from habit. Don’t. Give her as much information as you can, and then try to find out what she likes and is interested in and ask her questions. Once she starts talking, you will be able to talk less.”