Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)
Laurell K. Hamilton
This book is dedicated to everyone who has had the courage to face their personal demons and fight.
1
EDWARD STOOD IN front of the half circle of mirrors getting fitted for the wedding clothes he’d be wearing as best man in my wedding. I’d been his best man/person less than a year ago, so turnabout was fair play. He was even hating the clothes almost as much as I hated the formal-length dress that his bride had forced me to wear at the last moment when I thought I’d get away with a tux like the men. Now it was his turn to think he’d get to wear a tux and find out he was half right. Since I was marrying someone who either designed or helped design most of his own clothes, Jean-Claude had ideas for spicing up the traditional boring clothes that most modern men wore. Normally his fashion sense wouldn’t have bothered Edward, who had a very traditional style, but now as he glared at himself in the mirror he was bothered, very bothered.
“You have got to be kidding me,” he said. His blue eyes were already starting to turn pale like winter skies, which usually meant he was about to kill something, or that he wanted to kill something.
Peter, his very grown-up son, and I sat in little chairs that were usually reserved for mothers of the bride, or other members of the female side of the wedding, because men didn’t have to come to the designer wedding couture side—ever. Edward was my bestest friend, but I grinned at him, because I was enjoying the men getting outfitted in something they hated so much more than any normal tux.
“You look great,” I said, smiling, and that at least was true, unlike me in every bridesmaid dress I’d ever been forced to wear.
He looked to Peter for a different opinion. “This is ridiculous.” He spread his arms out to his sides so that Peter could get the full effect of the black leather and cloth tailcoat with its high, stiff collar that framed about half of Edward’s head. His blond hair looked brighter yellow than I’d ever seen it, maybe it was the black leather framing it? Or maybe it was his desert tan, which wasn’t tanned by most standards, but it was the most color I’d ever seen on Edward’s skin.
“Except for the collar, the jacket looks great on you, and the collar isn’t bad, it’s just”—Peter made a waffling motion with his hand—“it’s odd, like it shouldn’t be there, but I really like the leather over the shoulders, and the scalloped leather over the forearm looks like a leather bracer from armor. It’s really cool, Ted.” Peter’s desert tan was a lot darker than Edward’s; technically they were stepson and stepfather, but for them it wasn’t about genetics, it was about love.
Edward’s glare softened a little and turned back to the mirrors. He took a visible deep breath and let it out slowly as if he were counting to ten. He pulled on the edges of the jacket as if it needed to be settled in place, but it fit him perfectly; the little bump of the tails on the coat actually drew the eyes to his ass, and since we had never ever been anything but friends I didn’t usually notice Edward’s body like that. I’d thought of tailcoats as old-fashioned until I saw the first of our wedding party in them and realized that they actually accentuated everyone’s booty a lot more than modern jackets did.
“Why do I hate this so much, besides the stand-up collar?” he asked.
“Maybe it’s just so different from your usual cowboy–U.S. Marshal aesthetic?” Peter suggested.
I looked at Edward, and finally said, “It’s the most fitted thing I’ve seen you in since you slimmed down for your wedding. You look slender, more . . . delicate almost, and in all the years we’ve been friends, delicate has never been a word I used for you.”
He nodded at himself in the mirror. “That’s what it is, I look smaller even to me.”
“You’re in the fiercest shape I’ve ever seen you in, unless you’ve put on weight since I saw you at the pool during the wedding trip. You’re all muscle. Hell, Ed”—and I had to stop and force myself to say, “Ted, I didn’t even know you had a six-pack under there until that weekend.”
“I hadn’t. Not since I was in the military twe?nty years ago, so never since you’ve known me.”
“All the moms and most of the daughters at martial arts class think I have the hottest dad and that includes the male instructors.” Peter said it with a touch of pride, unlike some twenty-year-old sons who would have felt competitive with their fathers. Of course, Edward had never been competitive with Peter either.
“High praise, I take it, since I haven’t seen your instructors,” I said.
Peter grinned. “Yep.”
“Since you’re one of the instructors now, very high praise,” Edward said, and he smiled at his son with a pride that I never thought I’d ever see in his eyes for anyone. When we first met, Edward and I had both been so alone, and neither of us had ever expected that to change. Now here we were, both of us happier than I’d ever seen us. Sometimes life was good.
Peter looked embarrassed but pleased.
“Why didn’t you tell me you’d made instructor, Peter? Congratulations.”
“It’s just part-time.”
“But you’re still in college, so part-time is all you can really do,” I said.
“There’s really not a lot of money in owning a good martial arts school, and instructors make less.