Page 8
“Lawrence!” Alessandra jumped up from her seat on the couch where she’d been lying, her feet cradled in Kenton’s lap. Tossing a book onto the coffee table, she came around and hugged him as if it had been more than two days since they’d last seen each other.
Saving someone’s life tended to forge an unbreakable bond.
Kenton wasn’t as quick to greet him, understandable given the time of night and their bitter history. Yet greet him he did—he walked over and shook his hand, a nicety that still felt peculiar given the number of times they’d fought over the years. If Kenton’s grimace were any indication, the Englishman felt the same way.
“What are you doing here?” Alessandra asked.
“So late,” Kenton added, sitting back down and pulling Alessandra down onto his lap. She laughed as he reached for the gin and tonic sitting on the table in front of them.
It was, indeed, eleven. Too late for a casual visit, even though he’d suspected they would be awake.
Lawrence sat opposite his hosts in an oversized leather chair that was a new addition to the room. Like the walls, which now sported a burnt orange color in stark contrast to the white mantel of the largest fireplace in the house, the update struck a nice balance between old and new.
“My apologies for the hour,” he said, directing the apology to Alessandra, “I saw the lights on . . .”
She tilted her head to the side. “What’s wrong?”
“I wanted to ask you about the old bank near Le Trousseau,” he said. It had the virtue of being partially true. Perhaps he had also wanted to discuss Toni. But his bar project was never far from his thoughts.
“The old Penn Community Bank?”
“Yes.” Mary returned to the room holding a small tray topped with a bottle of his favorite beer. He hadn’t requested a drink, but he wasn’t surprised. She possessed the knack of knowing, without being asked, when a guest required refreshment. “Thank you.”
She smiled at him, a kind smile, not the hungry sort the bartender at the wedding had given him, and left the room.
“I’m taking her home with me one of these days.”
Kenton ran a hand through his pitch-black hair. “Like hell you are.”
“What do you want to know about the bank?”
Whenever he and Kenton crossed swords, Alessandra quickly deflected the conflict. Always the peacemaker. It had taken loving her, a woman who didn’t possess a violent bone in her body, to convince Kenton that just because the Cheld were powerful enough to hunt vampires didn’t mean all of them would. Some Cheld were bad, and some were good—something he’d discovered was equally true for vampires.
“It’s owned by a man named Robert Davis—”
“The real estate mogul?” He’d heard the name before. “The one who lives in Philadelphia?”
Alessandra nodded, shifting off Kenton’s lap and sitting beside him. “I’ve never met him, but they say he’s a real bastard. Grew up in Stone Haven, but he moved on to bigger things after flipping a bunch of houses and using the money to buy the bank and a few other buildings.”
“And yet the bank sits empty?”
Alessandra shrugged. “It’s been that way for years. An eyesore, if you ask me.”
“No offense, but you didn’t come here to talk about a bank,” Kenton said.
“Reading minds”—he lowered his voice in case Mary was close by—“isn’t one of your talents.”
Popular culture had gotten certain things correct about them—they were fast and strong, excessively so, but he’d never yet met a human or a vampire who could read minds, and he preferred dawn to any other time of day.
“Eleven o’clock on a Saturday night?” Kenton pressed. Oh, it was so like him not to let up. Once, just before they’d been forced to abandon Scotland, Kenton insisted he and his siblings would stay, despite the fact they were not aging. Of course, he did not care what the Morleys did, but his stubbornness had not abated in all of these years. “Spit it out.”
“I do have an interest in that bank—”
“What kind of interest?” Alessandra asked.
“Bullshit,” Kenton said at the same time. His eyes narrowed. “Where were you tonight?”
Lawrence downed his beer and pretended not to hear the question. Coming here had been a mistake.
