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“The lingerie … the red satin thing with little garters …” I watched his face go from blank to thunderous. “Judging from that expression, you have no idea what I’m talking about, do you?” My stomach seemed to ripple as I squirmed in the suddenly icky red undergarments. “Oh, not good.”
I started toward the stairs, then turned on him, hands on hips. “Wait, what did you send me for Valentine’s Day?”
His face was set in grimmer lines but for a totally different reason.
“Valentine’s Day, commemorating the martyrdom of Saint Valentine, patron saint of beekeeping, epileptics, and greeting-card manufacturers?” I said. There was a beat of silence where I was smacked in the head with a clue-by-four. “You didn’t get me anything for Valentine’s Day, did you?”
Gabriel cleared his throat. “Valentine’s Day was not something we recognized in my day.”
I poked him in the chest. “First of all, yes, it was. Lacy cards and love tokens were widely exchanged even in Victorian times. By now, you should know better than to screw with me on historical trivia. Also, you’ve had one-hundred-forty-something years to adjust. Get with the program. You didn’t notice the giant hearts and paper cupids hanging off every stationary object?”
“I’ve never dated a modern woman before.”
I poked him again. “You can only use that as an excuse so many times. And don’t offer to give me ‘awesome sex’ as a present, because I think we’ve established that given the right circumstances, I can hurt you.”
“I wasn’t going to—” I narrowed my eyes at him. Instead of finishing that ill-fated protest, he said, “Let’s focus on the creepy anonymous gifts.”
“You don’t say ‘creepy.’ Don’t try to get in good with me by talking like me. I just don’t understand how someone could select a pitch-perfect girlfriend Christmas gift and then completely ignore Valentine’s Day.”
“Well, what did you get me?”
“You will never, ever know,” I promised him. And he wouldn’t. Because now that I’d made such a big deal about it, boxer shorts with little glow-in-the-dark vampire lips and fangs all over them didn’t seem that great.
“Let me see the gifts you did get,” he said. “You were going to show me.”
I crossed my arms over my chest. “Not now I’m not.”
“Jane.”
“Fine.” I slid the straps off my shoulders and let the dress pool at my feet. Gabriel’s eyes went wide as he scanned me from head to toe. “Gabriel?”
“Give me a moment. All of the blood just drained out of my head.”
“I find this whole thing to be incredibly gross now that I know I’m wearing some stranger’s undies.” I shuddered and shrugged out of the suddenly disturbing get-up.
And now I was naked and embarrassed, which was a sensation I was much more familiar with. The phone rang.
“Saved by the bell,” he muttered.
“If we had time, I’d tell you about that figure of speech’s origins in connection to gravedigging, but I’m not going to,” I said, picking up the phone. “No gift means no trivia.”
“And yet somehow I think I’ll survive,” Gabriel groused.
I gave him a meaningful look as I barked a greeting into the phone. A sly female voice asked, “Did you like the presents?”
“Who is this?”
“It’s Andrea.” The voice on the other end of the line sounded hurt.
“Hi. I don’t—I can’t talk right now,” I whispered. Gabriel’s eyes narrowed at the stress in my voice, and language that, after I thought about it, sounded awfully suspicious. “I’ll call you later.”
“What’s wrong?” she asked.
I turned away from Gabriel and tried to lower my voice even further, but let’s face it, my boyfriend had superhearing.
“I can’t really explain. Let’s just say the words ‘Happy Valentine’s Day’ are probably going to make my eye spontaneously twitch for years to come,” I grumbled as Gabriel stared at me, his expression annoyed and somehow helpless.
“What happened?” Andrea cried.
