Bearly Hanging On (The Jamesburg Shifters #6)(36)

"Jeez," Jamie said, "she having nightmares?"

"Not screaming like that, screaming like calling me a whiny baby, how she could beat me up. This one time, you know what she said?"

Jamie was trying very, very hard to suppress what was probably going to be a major episode of the giggles. She had to start over twice to swallow the laughing before she finally asked what Izzy had said.

"Two nights ago," his voice took on the far-off sound of a haunted soldier recounting war days. "She was asleep. Just snoring away, happy as an oyster."

"Clam."

"What?"

"Clam - the phrase is happy as a clam. Not an oyster. Anyway, keep going, sorry," she said.

Without acknowledging that at all, Erik just kept talking. "She rolled over and jabbed me in the ribs with her elbow. I was pretty irritated, so I kinda snapped. 'What do you want?' that sort of thing."

"Understandable," Jamie said. "Did she get upset?"

"No, she was dead asleep. Anyway, she did that, and then she kept, like, nudging at me. Prodding me in the side of the face."

"And she's asleep through all this?"

"Totally. So she's jabbing at me, poking me, and finally I get up out of bed, I'm pretty pissed, and I say 'what the hell are you doing? Why won't you let me sleep?' Right?"

"Reasonable question," Jamie said, still having to bite her lip to keep from getting worked up.

"So she sits up, points at me. Just points and stares. And then about fifteen seconds later, she stands up on the bed, walks over and pokes me right in the nose. She pulled me real close and then yells in my ear, ‘you're a *!’”

Jamie gave up on trying to keep herself from laughing. No point. She was purple and wheezing.

"Yeah, yuk it up. She didn't remember anything at all. Next day, I asked her and she thought I was lying. It wasn't until after breakfast that she remembered, and then she started laughing about it."

"Oh my God," Jamie wheezed. "I would have given anything to see the look on your face. Listen to me though." She grabbed his shoulders and turned him to face her, tired eyes and all. "You're being so sweet to her. I can't even imagine what sort of hell you're going through. I know what sort she's going through because she tells me about it all the time."

At that, even Erik got to laugh a little.

"Just keep doing what you're doing. It won't be long until Aunt Jamie can take the little cub and you two can go wild all over the place."

Erik's eyes twinkled for a moment. "God that'll be nice."

"But you just keep doing what you're doing with the foot rubs, and letting her call you a * in the middle of the night. She doesn't act like it now, because she's completely, totally, f*cking miserable. But she'll remember everything you're doing."

He nodded, slowly, like his mind and body were disconnected. "How would you know?" he asked.

Jamie shot him a sidelong glance as they both faced the window, wondering what was going to happen with that car. He doesn't know. Of course he doesn't, no one does. Well, no one except Jenga. Guess he takes that fake doctor-patient confidentiality thing seriously.

Her throat got a little thick, but a quick throat clearing got rid of that. "Just a hunch," she said. "That's all. Get some rest, will ya?"

She was out the door and up the stairs before the red was running down her cheeks. Erik, for his part, probably hadn't even noticed Jamie was gone.





-11-


“It had to happen sometime.”


-Jamie


“Quick” was not a phrase that could ever be used to define Jamie Ampton’s decision-making process.

She'd run from Ryan, although that wasn't much of an earnest attempt at fleeing. It was more like she left after a date and did one of those "I'm going to pretend I don't like you but really, I'm begging anyone that will listen to send you back," things that everyone does more often than they'd like to admit.

But, it was a slow death spiral from that to three days later when she decided she couldn't go another second without seeing him. Ryan had been on her mind since they parted ways, but only the past day did she start getting strange, unmarked notes at the office that made her think maybe he was getting a little edgy too.

"The hell are all these?" Erik asked when he casually strolled into her top-story office and saw the pile of envelopes on her desk. "You got some kind of secret admirer?"

At first Jamie hadn't honestly been sure where they were coming from, but by the fourth envelope out of the seven that had arrived that morning via the intra-city Jamesburg post, she figured it out. Something to do with the slightly naughty limericks each one contained, mostly themed around "vampires" and "sucking" clued her in.

She shrugged, outwardly trying her best to act like she wasn't, in fact, as excited as she probably very clearly was. "These just started coming this morning. Irma brought 'em up. Not really sure what's going on, but—hey!" she shouted as Erik grabbed one and opened the stationery square.

"The moon in the skies, the glint of your eyes, I can't stop thinking, my thoughts they keep sinking," his eyes got wide enough to be comical, "to how it must feel between your thighs? Holy shit, Jamie, whoever is sending these to you is either a romantic genius, or some kind of sex pervert."