Page 13 of Cooper’s Passion

“Yes. I’ve lived here all my life. My father’s family is from here too. My mother is from the East Coast. And you? Diaz is a Latino name, but you’re a natural blonde. That’s unusual for a Latina.”

“My dad is from Mexico, but my mother’s family is from Sweden. How do you know that my hair isn’t dyed blonde?”

He shrugged. “I just do.” He could smell it. Dyed hair had a different smell, even once it had been washed fifty times. “Did you grow up in Elko County, or did you move there just for the job?”

“I spent my entire life in Nevada. But we lived in Reno until I was nine. After that, my father and I moved to Elko, and we’ve been there ever since.”

He noticed that Anita hadn’t mentioned her mother. “Just you and your dad? You don’t have any siblings?”

She shook her head. “Do you? Have siblings, I mean.”

“An older sister, Lydia.”

He stretched out his hand and put it on Anita’s forearm, enjoying the feel of her soft skin, the warmth of her body. He noticed her breath hitch. Her eyes snapped to his.

“How about we stop with the twenty-questions-game we’ve got going here? What I really want is to get to know you. You’re a beautiful woman, and I think we both know that I’m attracted to you.” He winked at her. “Despite you arresting me.” He stroked over her forearm down to her hand, allowing his fingers to brush over hers. “Please tell me a little about yourself, about what drives you, about your life, your dreams.”

She inhaled deeply, and her chest rose, drawing his gaze to it instinctively, before he lifted his eyes back to her face.

“I’m not used to talking about myself. I’ve spent a lot of my childhood on my own, without family other than my father, and now, working in law enforcement, it’s even harder to let anybody come close, when you have to behave a certain way. It’s difficult to let go of that. You must know how that is. I mean, you’re in law enforcement too.”

Cooper took her hand and simply held it. “I think it’s different for me. I work with my family. And everybody at Scanguards—that’s the company I work for—is part of my extended family. We might not all be related by blood or marriage, but we’re all one big happy family. I couldn’t imagine doing anything else, and not being part of Scanguards.”

“Your entire family works there? They’re all private investigators?”

“No. Scanguards’ main purpose isn’t investigations. It’s security. I’m actually trained as a bodyguard, and virtually everybody working there is also a bodyguard.”

Anita’s eyes widened in surprise. “Your parents too?”

“Yes. That’s how my parents met. Mom was protecting a young actress, and Dad got tangled up in it. It’s complicated. But it worked out in the end.”

Yes, it had worked out, but only because his father, Haven, had sacrificed his human life in the end, and his mother, Yvette, had saved him by turning him into a vampire. But those were details he couldn’t divulge to a human who knew nothing about the existence of vampires and other preternatural creatures.

“It sounds like you’re very close to your family, and to the people you work with.”

Cooper nodded.

“My father and I have always had a complicated relationship. It didn’t get any easier after Mom was gone.” Anita hesitated, searching his eyes before she continued, and he didn’t interrupt, didn’t prompt her, and instead gave her the time she needed to open up. “We lived in Reno, when Mom disappeared one night. Dad still believes that she left us because she didn’t love him anymore, but I think she was abducted.”

Cooper squeezed her hand. “I’m sorry.”

“We never heard from her again. That was twenty-one years ago. Dad thinks she’s living somewhere else, maybe under an assumed name, but I think she’s dead.”

“Why do you think that?” he asked with interest.

“She would have contacted me if she was still alive. She would have never put me through the pain of losing her if she was still alive. She loved me. And I loved her.”

“Have you tried to find her?”

“Yes. Her leaving was the main reason why I went into law enforcement. It gave me the resources I needed.”

“So that’s what drives you.” He felt her heartbreak, felt the pain she carried with her. “Thank you for telling me about it. Now I can see who you are.” And he liked what he saw: a woman with a hard shell to protect the soft heart inside. A woman who loved deeply and was trying to protect herself from further hurt.

Anita smiled softly, then sighed. “You don’t think I’m crazy thinking that my mother didn’t leave us voluntarily?”

“Why would I think that? I’ve dealt with plenty of tragedies like yours to know that these things happen more frequently than people think. Unfortunately, many of these cases are never solved. But at Scanguards we try our best to help victims and their families get closure. It’s very rewarding when we close a case. The cases the police hand us are some of the more egregious ones, because we have people with the right expertise.” Or rather, the police handed them cases that involved vampires, but he couldn’t very well tell her that, even though he wanted to open up to her just like she’d opened up to him.

He took the last sip of his glass of wine. “How about another glass?”

Anita smiled at him. “I’d like that.”