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“Wonder what?”
“I wonder when you’re going to get tired of me,” I said. “I mean, this can’t last forever, right? For me, nothing this good lasts forever. And we don’t have any sort of … we haven’t really talked about the long term … I’m going to stop talking now.”
Gabriel opened his mouth to protest, then snapped it shut. After a few moments’ consideration, he blurted out, “Is this because I haven’t said that I love you?”
“No,” I said, caught off guard enough to gape at him a little. “Are vampires even capable of love?”
“Jane, that hurts me,” he said.
“It shouldn’t. I honestly have no idea. I love my parents, I love Zeb. I love Aunt Jettie. But I had those emotions before I was turned. How do I know they aren’t just residual echoes of what I felt when I was human? I was never in love with a man as a human. I’m not sure I would recognize the feeling. I really like you. Does that help?”
He made a face.
“Have you ever been close to getting married?” I asked. “Do you want to get married?”
He grinned down at me. “Is that a proposal?”
I ignored him. “Are we even able to get married? Legally?”
“No, not yet,” he said. “If a vampire was married before being turned, and the spouse is still human, the marriage is still legal and valid. It took the council nearly two years of lobbying Congress to accomplish that. We’re still working on establishing after-death rights for vampires. We are technically dead, so the hard-line conservatives insist that we don’t have the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. Marriage, adoption, voting—”
I gasped. “We can’t vote?”
“You didn’t notice that in November? During the election?”
“Of course I did, because I vote …” I protested. “OK, fine, I didn’t even try to vote. I forgot. I’m a horrible person.”
He shrugged, patting my head. “Well, you had to have flaws. You don’t vote or have tact or have control over most of your gross motor functions—”
“OK, stop that,” I said, pinching his arm. “And stop trying to get out of talking about your marriage feelings. Have you ever been close to getting married?”
“Yes,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “Her name was Mary Louise Early. Her parents were dear friends of my parents. My father wanted access to their pasture land. It was a good match.”
“Wait, so you were engaged to one of my ancestors?” I scooched away from him. “Ew.”
“This is why I don’t tell you about my past! I’m not enigmatic and secretive. I’m trying to keep you from doing—ow!” he cried as I pinched him again. “That. We were not officially engaged at the time of my death. We were promised, that’s all.”
“Did you sleep with her? Because that would just be weird.”
He seemed insulted that I was calling his before-death self a horndog. “Of course not! We were never left unchaperoned. She was wearing twelve layers of underwear at all times. And she had a laugh that made my ears bleed.”
“Hmmph.” I snorted.
Awkward silence.
“So how was Nashville?” I asked.
“The new manager is an idiot,” Gabriel said of the radio station employee he’d traveled to Tennessee to “meet” (translation: yell at in a scary vampire voice). “He’s a fan of Jethro Tull and wants to change the format to soft rock. I’m either going to fire him or make him believe he’s a nine-year-old Girl Scout.” He stroked my hair back from my face. “How’s the wedding planning going?”
“I don’t want to talk about it.” I groaned.
“The dress is that bad?” he asked. He was trying to look sympathetic, but vampire fangs tend to give away hidden smiles. “Well, if it makes you feel any better, at least you don’t have to go to the bachelor party. Zeb said Dick has made arrangements for us to visit the Booby Hatch on ‘Amateur Night.’ “ Gabriel grimaced at using the word “booby.”
“You’re telling your girlfriend that you’re going to a strip club,” I said, narrowing my eyes at him.
“Yes.”
“Do you know what happens at strip clubs?” I asked.
