Smolder (Anita Blake, Vampire Hunter, #29)(116)

He looked at her waiting for her to add to the sentence. If he didn’t like the unpleasant look on her face, then he hid it, but again maybe I was projecting on the unpleasant part. My therapist and I had talked a lot about this visit and how it was going to be difficult for me to see Judith and Andria, but especially Judith, in a fair light. So fucking true.

“Didn’t you look at any of the links Mom sent you about Anita’s boyfriends?” Andria asked in that condescending voice that only women and catty gay men seem to have, oh and one other group. Mean girls from about junior high when they start practicing the attitude and running into their twenties to the grave for some women. I had a moment to realize that Judith and Andria were mean girls; the revelation suddenly made my childhood make so much more sense.

Dad looked flustered and then he blushed, so that’s where I got it from. “I . . . they weren’t links I was comfortable with looking at.”

“You sent him the link to Guilty Pleasures, where Brandon dances,” I said, trying to keep my face blank as I pictured my incredibly conservative and very straight father looking at a website full of male strippers.

“Such a cute . . . stage name,” Judith said with just enough hesitation to let me know she meant something else.

“Oh, Dad,” Andria said, rolling her eyes.

My dad blushed harder and didn’t make eye contact with anyone.

Judith laughed and hugged his arm to her and leaned her perfectly straight hairdo on his shoulder like they were still honeymooners. It made him smile and lean into her. He loved her still, and maybe she really loved him. I wanted Dad happy after Mom died, and he was once he fell in love with Judith. The fact that his happiness added to my sorrow never seemed to compute for him.

Nicky’s hand found my right one and for once I didn’t argue with him compromising my gun hand.

I needed the handholding more than I needed my gun. If violence broke out around us we’d react, but right now the touch of his hand was the best protection I had to what was happening inside my head and my heart.

“I’m sorry,” he said, “for assuming who you would bring to the airport to meet us, Anita. I understand that you are polyamorous as your lifestyle. I just . . . it’s hard for me to think about my little girl living like that.”

“Living like what, Dad?” I said, and realized that I sounded angry, mean. I didn’t want to be like that to him or anyone else. I could be angry, but I didn’t want to be a mean anything.

He looked up, giving me the full stare of his perfectly blue eyes. “I’m sorry, Anita.”

I wanted to ask sorry about what, but I took a deep breath, squeezed Nicky’s hand, and tried not to be childish and still stand up for myself. “Let’s start over, Dad. I had planned on easing you into how big our poly group is, but it didn’t occur to me that you wouldn’t look online and google Micah, Nathaniel, and Jean-Claude. This is Nicky Murdock, he lives with me, and he is part of our poly group.”

He offered his hand to Nicky again, as he said, “I know what the vampire looks like. Judith made me watch some of his interviews online.”

Nicky took the handshake and very carefully didn’t look at me. He knew how I’d feel about Jean-Claude being called the vampire.

“His name is Jean-Claude, Dad, not ‘the vampire.’?”

My father shook his head. “He is a vampire, Anita.”

“I’m aware of that,” I said.

“I just don’t understand how you can want . . . to be with . . . him.”

Andria said, “Did you see what he looks like, Dad?”

“He’s fabulous, Anita,” Judith said, and seemed to mean it. She even wasted a smile on me like we were friends.

I nodded but had to fight to manage a smile, because Judith being friendly was just too weird. “He is fabulous.”

“Not that this one isn’t a ruggedly handsome hunk,” she said, wasting a smile on Nicky. He didn’t smile back either. Let’s all be sociopaths together; it was the only sane reaction to my family dynamics.

“I never thought you had it in you, Anita,” Andria said.

“Had what?” I asked, finally looking at her again.

“Dating such hunky men, you were so terrible with boys when we were growing up.”

“You mean I wasn’t popular, and you were.”

She shrugged her pink-clad shoulders. “You were always so gloomy when we were growing up.

No man likes someone with that kind of attitude.”

Nicky said, “Anita’s bad attitude is what brought us together.”

The women looked up at him together like a choreographed movement. They had a lot of body movements that were mirrored; the matching outfits weren’t necessary to let you know they were mother and daughter. “Really?” Andria said it like she didn’t believe him.

Nicky smiled and it looked like a real smile; it even filled his one blue eye. “Really,” he said, voice soft. I didn’t need to read his mind to know he was already beginning to think of ways to at least hurt her for real. He was reacting to my dislike of her and that she was being snide to me. I played at being a sociopath, but he was the real deal. Only me having a conscience and sharing mine with him metaphysically had tamed some of his . . . issues.

I wanted to say No killing my family on this visit, but didn’t think saying it out loud would help smooth things over. He knew it, because he could literally read at least my feelings and a lot of my thoughts and then I realized that it caused all my Brides literal pain for me to be unhappy sometimes.