Rocked by Love (Gargoyles, #4)(66)
On one leg. With a stab wound to the kidney.
Very carefully, Kylie poured her grandmother’s coffee, then turned to offer some to Dag. He shook his head, and Esther seemed to take that as some sort of signal.
“Pardon me for being unforgivably rude, Mr. Steinman—”
“Dag,” the Guardian insisted.
“Dag,” Esther conceded. “You’re very gracious. Forgive me, but I was hoping I might have a few minutes alone to talk to my granddaughter.”
“Of course,” Dag said at the same moment that Kylie’s internal voice screamed, “Noooooooooo!!!!!!” like a character in a bad horror movie who had just stumbled on the first mangled body.
She knew she couldn’t say anything, though. Not to the woman who had kept Kylie secure and grounded and seen that she knew what it meant to have a family when her own parents couldn’t have cared less.
“Well, miss,” Esther began, slowly stirring a spoonful of sugar into her black coffee. “I hardly even know what to say to you.”
“Bubbeh, I know the house isn’t finished, and—”
Esther gave her head a sharp shake. “That is not the problem here.”
Kylie felt the dagger in her kidney move up to her stomach and twist. “Dag? Bubbeh, you don’t know him. He’s really the—”
The old woman snorted. “That wonderful young man? I grant you, he’s a little too quiet for my taste, but my Ben was a talker. No, he seems like a fine man, polite, respectful, and the way he can’t take his eyes off of you shows me he at least has good taste. It would be nice if he were Jewish, but I gave up on that idea years ago. That is not what we need to discuss.”
Kylie shook her head, utterly confused. “Then I don’t understand.”
“Kylie.” Esther stretched out her hand and laid her fingers over her granddaughter’s, squeezing with surprising strength. “There is something that is not right with you, bubeleh. I could feel it before I even got here, and now I can see the evidence with my own eyes. So I’m here, and I’m asking you. What is going on with my only baby girl?”
*
Dag had left the room at Esther’s request, but he hadn’t gone far. Just far enough that his keen Guardian hearing could pick up their conversation while remaining concealed himself.
He had scented Kylie’s distress the minute he emerged from the basement and saw her open the door to an elderly woman in a black hat and a pink coat, but when she had turned to face him, he hadn’t needed his nose to discern her state of panic. It was written all over her face.
For a moment, his instincts had urged him to throw himself into the fray and place his body between his mate and the danger that threatened her. His instincts, however, had a hard time reconciling the idea of the small, wizened, and obviously aged woman in the doorway with an assault on Kylie’s physical well-being. He quickly realized that the only weapon Esther Kramer carried was guilt, but she wielded it like an expert swordswoman.
Standing barely an inch over Kylie’s four-ten frame, and although her spine might have begun to curve, Esther still carried herself with the straight-backed pride of a much younger woman. Her skin had taken on the faint translucence of age, but the color reminded him greatly of her granddaughter. The women also shared the same curve of the cheekbone and that distinctively stubborn chin.
Esther’s hair had gone gray, strands of steel and iron lightened by the occasional thread of silver, but it appeared to curl much like Kylie’s, though she wore it in a much shorter crop that had obviously been styled with care. The same attention to her appearance showed in her clothing, all well tailored from fabrics of obvious quality.
Everything about her stated that this was a woman to be reckoned with. He imagined that in fifty or sixty years, his Kylie would look much the same. He looked forward to seeing her mature into an equally formidable matriarch.
In that moment he realized the true importance of convincing her to accept their mating. Only a true bond between them could free him of his duty and allow him to share a natural human life span with his mate. If she were to reject him and their relationship, he would be condemned to another long slumber and an eventual awakening to a world with no Kylie in it.
The thought made him clench his fists until the knuckles ached. He could not survive in such a future. He needed her too badly.
A grunt of satisfaction escaped him when he heard his mate’s grandmother express a positive opinion of him. He would not have stepped away from Kylie even had the old woman commanded it, but he was glad not to be the cause of tension in their family. As he understood, Kylie had too few family members she could rely on as it was.
But it was the old woman’s softly voiced question that really got his attention.
What is going on with my only baby girl?
He heard Kylie’s tired sigh.
“Bubbeh, it’s nothing,” Kylie said. “I’m just tired. I guess I’ve been working too hard.”
“Du kannst nicht auf meinem rucken pishen unt mir sagen classe es regen ist.”
Dag frowned even as Kylie laughed weakly.
“I’m not pissing on your back and telling you it’s raining, bubbeh. I really have been working hard.”
“On what?” Esther demanded. “You made enough money with that big-time program you wrote that you never have to work another day in your life. And before you interrupt to tell me you like to work, I’ll remind you that in all of your years, you have never missed coming home for Passover. Not while you were in college, not while you were in negotiations for your business, not even the year you had a broken leg and mono all at the same time. Busy does not keep my ainikl from home on the holiday.”