Линси Сэндс - Meant to Be Immortal [calibre]

“Yeah, see, he had to do that. If he hadn’t and you’d stroked his shaft and felt his pleasure coursing through your body, you’d have wanted explanations,” he pointed out. “And he couldn’t risk explaining until he was sure you cared enough about him that you might be willing to be his life mate. Otherwise, he’d lose you.”

“Lose me how?” CJ asked with a frown.

Bricker met her gaze solemnly. “The entire last three weeks or more since the two of you met would be wiped from your memory and replaced with some nice generic recollection of a boring case in a boring town, not worth thinking about.”

CJ sat back on her heels at this news. So, if she and Mac didn’t work out, he’d be erased from her memory? All of them would. The entire last few weeks?

“The only way it won’t work out is if you refuse to be his life mate,” Bricker said quietly, grabbing another bag of blood in preparation of the next switch needed. “But that would be a shame since you both love each other.”

“We do?” she asked, but her question really was, Does he?

“He loves you,” Bricker told her firmly. “I normally wouldn’t be able to read him because he’s so much older than me, but even older immortals are easily read for a year or so after meeting their life mate and Mac’s been an open book since meeting you. He loves you, and I know you love him . . . so, hopefully, you’ll make the right decision.”

CJ was silent, her gaze on Mac as Bricker switched blood bags again.

Twenty

Mac woke up thirsty. Rolling out of bed, he headed for the bathroom to get a glass of water and walked into what he was pretty sure was a wall. Cursing, he stepped back, put a hand to his head, and turned, smacking into what felt like a chair. That brought another curse and then the light turned on.

“Mac? Are you okay?”

The sudden light in the room left him blinking, but the sound of CJ’s voice made him smile. “Sorry,” he said, turning toward her voice. “When I first woke up I thought I was in my apartment in New York and walked into your wall.”

“Oh.” He could hear the smile in her voice, but also could actually see it now. His eyes had adjusted to the light.

“Good morning,” he said, and then grimaced and said, “Or evening, I guess. What time is it?”

“About ten o’clock,” she said softly, and then asked uncertainly, “How do you feel? Do you need more blood?”

Mac stiffened. “Blood?”

She shifted in the doorway and nodded. “Bricker left a lot here for you. He said you’d probably need more when you woke up. I’ll get you some,” she decided, and spun away to hurry off down the hall before he could say anything.

Mac stared at the empty spot where she’d been standing a moment ago, his mind whirling madly, and then glanced around in search of his phone. CJ had asked him if he needed blood. What the hell was going on? What did she know? And how did she know it? Now that he was fully awake, he remembered helping her bring in her luggage and finding Jefferson here. The bastard had tried to shoot CJ, he recalled, and he’d jumped in the way. That was pretty much the last thing he remembered other than using his last bit of strength to shift off of her when he realized she was having trouble breathing and that the others were there to keep her safe. He’d obviously passed out, but what the hell had happened after that? And where were his clothes? His phone should be in the pocket of his jeans, which he’d been wearing the last time he was conscious, but were now missing. He was standing around in his boxer briefs.

“I didn’t know how much you’d want, so I brought a couple of bags.”

Mac whirled toward the door at that announcement and watched her cross the room to set the bags on the bedside table. She started backing toward the door then, her gaze somewhere over his shoulder rather than on him. She was also talking a little fast and almost nervously as she said, “You must be hungry. I’ll go see what I have to feed you. Come on out when you’re ready.”

She spun around, seeming eager to flee, and rushed from the room again.

Mac stood still for a minute, thinking that her reluctance to be in the same room with him didn’t seem like a good thing, and then sighed and scanned the room again. His jeans weren’t there. The only thing he could think was that perhaps she’d taken them to wash them, so he headed into her walk-in closet and nearly tripped over the duffel bag Julius had given him to put his clothes in. It was the one thing he hadn’t thought of on the shopping trip to get clothes, something to keep them in.

Bending, he picked it up and set it on the center island to open, wondering who had brought in his things. CJ’d had so many bags that they’d both been bogged down and he’d decided to leave his own bag until he returned with Julius’s car, but someone had obviously brought it in for him after he was shot.

Mac was tugging on a pair of jeans when he spotted his cell phone on one of the two tall chests of drawers that framed either side of the entry. Leaving his pants undone, he hurried over to pick it up and quickly found and hit Decker’s number.

“You’re awake! About time,” was Decker’s greeting when he answered the call.

Mac scowled at the “about time” bit, but said, “What the hell happened while I was unconscious?”

“A lot,” Decker said, sounding mildly amused, and then began to list various events for him. “CJ kicked all our asses at Match Up. She and Dani bonded over a mutual love of hot chocolate and Reese’s Pieces. Marguerite and Julius have decided to name their baby girl Benedetta when she’s born because that means blessed , but I really don’t think they thought that through,” he added, sounding a bit agitated. “I mean, you know it’s going to get shortened to Benny or something and she’ll probably hate that. I mean—”

“Decker?” Mac interrupted his rant impatiently to ask, “How long have I been out?”

“Uh, let me see,” he said thoughtfully. “We got to CJ’s place at about four thirty on Saturday afternoon and it’s ten o’clock on Tuesday night so you were out three days and five and a half hours.”

“Dear God,” Mac said with shock.

“Yes, it was a pretty long time,” Decker said seriously, and admitted, “We were getting a little worried, but Marguerite said it was fine, that you’d wake up when you were ready. She said sometimes it just took longer to heal than others.”

“Yes, but three days?” Mac asked with amazement. He was usually a fast healer. “I mean, I healed pretty fast after the fire, and my organs were all probably parboiled in that tub—why would a single gunshot wound take longer?”

“Maybe that’s why,” Decker suggested. “Maybe you still hadn’t fully healed from the fire, and your nanos decided to shut you down until everything was healed up so you wouldn’t go out and add another injury to the list of repairs to be made.”

“You make it sound like the nanos can think beyond their programming,” Mac said with a faint smile.

“You don’t think they do?” Decker asked with surprise. “They aren’t programmed to pick life mates, and yet they seem to do it.”

“Right,” he sighed, and shook his head, and then suddenly asked, “What the hell is Match Up?”

Decker chuckled at his bewildered tone. “It’s a game where you shuffle the cards and set them all out facedown on the table and take turns flipping two cards over, trying to match up pairs. The one with the most pairs at the end wins,” he explained. “CJ said it was the only game we couldn’t cheat at by reading her mind.”

Mac grinned widely. “That’s my clever girl.”

“Yeah. Bricker tried to convince her to play poker for Reese’s Pieces first, but she’s no one’s fool. I like her,” he added.