Until the Sun Falls from the Sky (The Three #1)(112)

“Are you still disowning me?” she asked, giving me a cheeky grin because she knew my answer.

I had, of course, in my efforts at being sarcastic, bitchy and obnoxious, told my mother I disowned her.

“I haven’t decided,” I replied but she knew I wasn’t serious.

She gave me another hand squeeze.

I saw movement outside and looked out the windows. One wall of the kitchen was made of floor-to-ceiling windows making the indoors seem kind of outdoors, which was really cool. And I saw Lucien and Stephanie stroll out of the woods.

So Stephanie and Lucien had gone for a stroll which was why he couldn’t hear my family’s mind-boggling, earth-shattering, Leah’s place in the family and all her foundations and everything she ever thought about life herself and the world as she knew it rocking conversation.

They were walking slowly even for mortals and I watched Lucien’s body move.

It was a sight to behold.

Even walking slowly across a yard, he looked imposing. Not like he was walking across a yard but as if he was strolling broodingly across a battlefield, pre-battle. A battle he’d eventually win, of course, soundly.

As I had this thought, his head came up, and he looked right at me.

I hoped he didn’t hear my thoughts.

Then his lips tipped up in that sexy way of his. Not smug or arrogant, just smiling at me.

He didn’t hear me.

I smiled back.

Then I felt something strange and I looked toward its source and saw Avery was watching me musingly. And somehow I knew that he knew I’d heard every word of the earlier conversation.

But it was something else. And that something else was somewhere I did not want to go.

I wrinkled my nose at him and he grinned.

Lucien and Stephanie walked in.

I went to sit down on the arm of the couch next to Aunt Kate which, incidentally, had the added benefit of being closer to Lucien. Then, I couldn’t help myself, I bent and kissed the top of Aunt Kate’s head.

“What on earth!” She batted around her head, her hands getting nowhere near me. Aunt Kate, by the way, hated public displays of affection or affection at all for that matter. “What’s the matter with you, Leah Buchanan?” she snapped.

“I’m trying to find new and interesting ways to annoy you,” I informed her.

“Well, you found one,” she retorted.

“Good,” I returned. “Next I’m going to force you to cuddle with me and a tub of ice cream and tell me about all your secret crushes as a teenager,” I hesitated and finished, “in minute detail.”

Aunt Nadia, Aunt Millicent and Mom giggled. Stephanie out-and-out laughed and I heard Avery’s chuckle.

Aunt Kate stood and announced, “We’ve a guest house to check into. Ladies, we’re going.”

The rest of my family and also Avery and Stephanie made their moves to leave.

Nicely done, pet, Lucien said to my brain.

I looked at him. He looked amused and hungry and very, very sexy.

My heart skipped a beat.

I hadn’t actually kissed Aunt Kate to piss her off enough to leave and drag everyone with her.

But at that moment, I also wasn’t upset to see them go.

Chapter Seventeen

The Joining

Three weeks ago, Lucien came home and gave me a black-colored credit card, a checkbook and a bank card

The credit card, he told me, was for my use whenever I wanted, whatever I wanted. The bills would go to him.

The checking account, he told me, had its first deposit. The same amount would be deposited every month and that was for my use whenever I wanted, whatever I wanted when cash was required.

When he left me, I looked and the amount of the deposit was a quarter of my yearly salary.

It was the kind of thing dreams were made of, if you didn’t hate the person who made that dream come true as, at the time, I hated Lucien.

Two weeks ago, Stephanie came over one morning and told me we were having a girlie day. Then she whisked me off to a spa, we had facials and massages and then sat in a sauna where, incidentally, her super-vampire senses came in handy because all that steam made me blind. I tripped over the wooden mat by the door and she caught me before I took a header. Then we had a gourmet lunch followed by manicures, pedicures, makeup and hair.

Then we went shopping and she took me to the place where she bought the outfit I admired so much.

And she also took me to a place that sold lingerie that cost more than most people’s monthly mortgage payments.

It was there that she made me (and she did make me, I didn’t want to do it) buy the getup that I was wearing at that very moment. She heard my heart start racing when I eyed it in the shop, she forced me to try it on and then she vampire-talked me, as in no protesting allowed, into buying it.

Now I was standing in front of the three-way mirror in the dressing room and examining myself.

I had to admit, I loved it. It was kind of naughty but it was also cute.

The problem was I didn’t know if Lucien would like it.

It was a camisole and panties in sheer baby pink. The camisole was bloused from under the br**sts, the cups had rows of tiny, black lace frills that ran at diagonals. The thin straps were made of baby pink satin and there was a little black frill around the hem. The panties were also sheer baby pink but they were covered in rows of tiny, black lace frills, like little girl panties.