The Vampire Hunter's Daughter: Complete Collection(30)

“Get off of her!” He yanked him away from me, turned him around, and then swung at him.

“Drew!” I screamed “Get off of him! He didn’t do anything!”

Drew hit him again and again. I tried to stop Drew by grabbing his shirt and pulling on it. I didn’t want to get into the line of fire.

“Stop it!” I screamed.

Finally, Gavin came to his senses enough to hit Drew back. He pulled back and cracked his knuckles against Drew’s cheekbone. The white of Drew's tux shirt spattered with blood when Gavin’s fist connected with his nose.

“Guys! Please, stop this!” I was crazy mad at Drew, but my fear for Gavin was worse than my anger. I knew what Drew could do. I guess, in that moment, I forgot that Gavin was also a vampire hunter.

“Damn it!” I slammed my fist onto the kitchen table and watched in horror as my beautiful yellow roses tipped over, spilling out of the vase. At exactly that moment, I heard a loud ripping noise, and we were blessed with a fire in the kitchen.

Neither of the guys had seen it happen. I looked over, and they were still wrestling, bashing each other into the kitchen counter and grunting.

“Fire!” I screamed at the top of my lungs and ran for an extinguisher. In the last week, a whole bunch of fire extinguishers had magically appeared in the house. I think Drew was worried about stuff like this happening.

Quickly, I pulled the pin from the nozzle trigger and sprayed the table down. I wanted to cry while I watched the foam float over the remaining stems and tiny bits of charred petals. The clear glass vase had split in two, probably from the heat.

They finally stopped when they heard the whoosh of the foam and the hiss of the disappearing flames. I glared at them, with their bloody faces and messed up hair. Both were crouched over, holding their stomachs and staring at the charred table and broken vase covered with fire extinguisher foam. They looked at me in my pretty blue dress holding the damned extinguisher.

“What happened?” Gavin asked.

I lost it then. I grabbed up the brittle, foamy stems off the table with my free hand and threw them in Drew’s face.

“How dare you!” I hissed.

I hefted the extinguisher and sprayed them both until nothing was left. Then I tossed it on the ground with a loud clang.

I looked at Drew and pointed. “You get to clean this crap up!”

I stalked out of the kitchen and up to my room.



The next morning, I woke and realized I was still in my dress. I totally was not going to work out or do any training. I didn’t want to, and there was no way Drew was going to make me. I was so ticked at him I didn’t care if I ever saw him again. I got up and hurried across the freezing hardwood floor and into the bathroom.

I slid out of my dress, grabbed my robe off the hook, put it on and started some bath water. While the water ran, I tried to pick out all the bobby pins. It was a bobby pin nightmare up there, a tangled mess of the little pins and hair. When I finally got them all out, I ran a brush through the mess and, for a moment the air sparkled. After a couple of blinks and a shake of my head, I realized that glitter was falling from my hair and floating around in the air. I smiled while I watched the pretty sparkles float slowly down onto the sink, remembering how Gavin had smiled and laughed when we tried to get the little top hat to stay on top of my up do.

He was probably regretting all that by now.

With a loud dramatic sigh, I finally tied my hair up on top of my head in a big bun and stepped into the hot water. I hadn’t had a bath in ages. It felt so nice just lay in the hot water with my eyes closed, soaking and not really worrying about anything except keeping my arm on the side of the tub so as to not get the cast wet.

Then I heard the door open.

“Chloe?”

“Drew!” I screeched. “Get the hell out of here,” I ordered.

I fumbled around to get the towel off the chair next to the tub. I flung it over my top half and hoped he couldn’t see down in the water from where he stood.

He didn’t budge, but he stayed by the door and turned away slightly. “I’m not leaving. I need to apologize for last night. I was totally out of line.”

“Yes, you were, and I don’t forgive you… not yet.”

“I just didn’t like seeing him force himself on you.”

I sighed. “He wasn’t forcing himself on me. I don’t want to talk about it.”

The last thing I was going to do was tell Drew I didn’t want my body to heat up so much while I kissed a guy—kissing my first guy—I almost caught fire.

“Well, I just wanted you to know, I’m sorry.”

“The problem here, Drew, is I don’t know what you are to me. You're definitely not my father. You're not even my brother, so you don’t get to tell me who I can kiss and who I can’t.”

“Chloe, it looked like he was trying to force you. What was I supposed to do, just stand there and let it happen? I don’t think so.”

“So instead of just saying something and letting us know you were there, you thought beating the crap out of him would be a better way to exhibit how you feel about me?”

“I was only protecting you. I would have done it for anyone.” When he said this, he didn’t say it softly. The ice lingered in his voice.

I knew I was making a bigger deal out of it than it was.