This Same Earth

Chapter Three

Los Angeles, California

October 2009

“I know, but Dr. Stevens didn’t really give me a choice, Mano.”

She heard her boyfriend sigh over the phone. “Well, I suppose I’ll just tell Dan that I can’t handle the morning dives for a while. On my schedule right now, we’re never going to see each other.”

“I know.”

“How long is this guy going to be doing research? And why does he have to do it in the evenings? Are you going to miss judo and kickboxing, too?”

She curled her lip; she’d forgotten about her martial arts classes that met twice a week. Damn vampire.

“I think he has to do nights because of his other job or something. It’s probably only going to be a couple of weeks.”

It better only be that long. Giovanni had two weeks to convince her of…she wasn’t sure what, but two weeks was her limit. She clenched her eyes in frustration. She felt as if the careful wall she’d constructed between her past and her present, between the supernatural world and the normal one, was starting to crumble, and she didn’t know where to draw the lines.

Mano was still talking. “I know it’s not your choice. And it’s great that this guy requested you specifically. I’m really proud of you, B.”

Her heart twisted, and she couldn’t help feeling like she was deceiving him by not telling her boyfriend that Giovanni was the scholar she was helping with translation. Mano knew an even more abbreviated version of the Giovanni and Beatrice story than she had told Dez, and she had never told him she’d been romantically involved with her former employer.

Or whatever they had been.

She felt the hum of energy when Giovanni entered the room and looked up to see the vampire approach the table where she was sitting. Beatrice cursed mentally when she felt her heart begin to race, knowing he could hear it. She met his intense stare as he crossed the room, but she didn’t hang up her phone. Mano was still talking.

“-so I’ll see you tomorrow afternoon. Hey, baby, I gotta go. Dan’s waiting for me to close up the shop. Love you.”

She stared back at Giovanni when she responded. “I love you, too. Have a great night! Miss you, and I’ll see you tomorrow.”

He sat down next to her and leaned his elbow on the table, propping his chin on his hand to watch her. He was wearing a charcoal grey button-down shirt, a pair of black slacks she knew would show off his incredible ass, and a small, satisfied smirk.

“How’s your friend, Beatrice?” he asked when she hung up the phone.

She gave him a tight smile. “My boyfriend’s great. I’ll have to apologize,” she said as she yawned. “I’m so tired today; he kept me up pretty late last night.”

“Is that so?” He leaned toward her, smiling when her heart picked up. “I’ll remember that. I’m sure I can think of inventive ways to stimulate you.”

She rolled her eyes and opened the document files he had requested through Dr. Stevens. “Fine. Whatever. Now, what do you actually want? Since I know you don’t need my help with the translations.”

“I really am looking for provenance on an old journal. I found it for my client, but he wants documentation on the origins,” he said in a more professional voice.

Beatice felt her heart sink. “Oh, you mean, you really only came for-”

“Asking for your help with the translation was a pure ploy for your attention, of course.” His eyes swept from her boots to her face, which she could feel heat up, much to her own annoyance. “I could have just requested the documents and not your help, but where’s the fun in that?”

She fought the smile that wanted to surface. “Well, here they are. Do you want me to go through them with you? I’m familiar with this set.”

“I’d appreciate your eyes. There are a lot to go through, and I know you’re far more familiar with them than I am.”

She smirked. “Well, it’s nice to be appreciated.”

“Let me know what else you’d like me to appreciate,” he whispered. “I’ll be happy to oblige.”

Beatrice bit her lip and ignored him as she began to sort through the letters on the table. She’d walked right into that one. She was having problems not reacting to the playful version of Giovanni she only had faint memories of from Houston. He could be very flirtatious when he let himself, but it was usually only when he hadn’t fed for a while and let his guard down.

“Need to go grab a bite to eat?” she muttered. “You’re in quite the mood.”

He leaned closer and she could hear him inhale, even though she refused to look at him. “Are you offering? Because I could have feasted last night, and I still wouldn’t turn that down.”

The blood rushed to her face. “Stop.”

“Stop what? Telling you how good you smell? How good you look? You look amazing, by the way. How about how good you taste?”

She could feel his breath on her neck.

You’re not supposed to be here! Beatrice wanted to scream. Where have you been?

His voice only dropped. “Should I not tell you how many times I’ve replayed in my memory the one time I tasted you in my bed? How I’ve dreamt about your skin? Is that what I should stop, tesoro mio?”

She could feel the heat radiating off him, and Beatrice knew he was as affected as she was. The smell of smoke and whiskey was even stronger than the night before, and she clenched her eyes, trying to keep herself from breaking down and throwing herself into his arms. Nothing about their attraction to each other had dissipated in the five years they’d been apart. She forced her mind into the present.

“Don’t. Just…don’t. Let’s get to work, all right?”

Please, she almost begged.

His green eyes raked over her face, and she saw the edge of his fangs peek out from behind his lips.

“Fine,” he murmured. “I’ll stop…for now.”

She let out a ragged breath and started sorting through the letters again.

Since he’d shown up the night before, Beatrice hadn’t been able to think of anything else. And she was furious with herself for not being able to give him the cold shoulder the way she’d imagined for so many years. She could lie to him, but he would know.

He’d always known.

She’d attacked Mano the night before, clinging to him as if he was a life raft. He’d been amused by her sudden rush of desire, but he was an enthusiastic participant, nonetheless. Afterward, Beatrice had lain awake for hours, shaking and confused. She felt herself slipping into the tangled maze of emotion that gripped her on rare occasions when she allowed herself to remember her last year in Houston, her abduction to Greece, and her time with Giovanni at his house in the Cochamó Valley. The persistent questions about her father’s whereabouts and what Lorenzo wanted from him had surfaced along with Giovanni, and she was already having trouble sleeping.

In the years she had lived in Los Angeles, Beatrice had carefully constructed a “normal life,” distancing herself from most of the more supernatural elements unless Carwyn or Tenzin happened to visit. She’d even been able to distance herself when she visited Cochamó, fooling herself that her visits could be part of her “normal” life since Giovanni was never there. Now sitting next to him, smelling him, sensing the familiar energy that always seemed to radiate from him like her own personal magnetic field, made her want to throw herself into his arms, wrap herself around him, and forget the past five years.

She took deep breaths, finally calming the beat of her heart and the rush of her blood. She focused her mind and tried to see him as just another visiting Ph.D.

“Well, Dr. Vecchio, let’s get started.”

They worked silently for another hour, quickly falling back into the unspoken communication they’d always shared. But then, Giovanni had always had an uncanny knack for understanding the way her brain worked, and she’d had the same understanding of him.

“Did you find that one letter from Governor Portolá to-”

“Yes, I did. Thank you, that mention of the young friar-”

“Yeah, I thought that might be what you were looking for there.”

They skimmed through the first stack of documents from Mission San Diego and moved on to a stack of letters from Monterrey. They continued to whisper back and forth throughout the evening.

“Have you seen any further correspondence from the priest in San Diego that-”

“You mean the young Catalán? I think there’s something in this stack here…”

“Ah, exactly. That’s what I’m looking for. Thank you, tesoro. Look at the year. That’s promising.”

As they worked, the years seemed to slip away. Strangely, Beatrice felt even more at ease than she had when she’d first worked with Giovanni. She supposed the years she’d spent at school and working with visiting scholars had given her much-needed confidence. She was no longer intimidated by his intellect or his experience, and she realized he no longer treated her as a bright student but more like a colleague.

When it was time to leave, she felt reluctant to go back to her empty house, even though she knew she should. He hadn’t made any more suggestive overtures, but five years of questions tugged at her mind. Luckily-or unluckily, she couldn’t decide-he was waiting on the steps outside the library when she exited holding her helmet and the black backpack she wore riding.

“So…a motorcycle?”

She sat down on the steps, keeping a careful distance from him. “It’s easy on gas and good for traffic.”

“And sexy. Beautiful woman on a fast bike? Very sexy, tesoro,” he said with a wink.

Well, that hadn’t taken long.

“Gio, you need to-”

“Don’t shush me. I’m allowed to express an opinion.”

“What-” Beatrice paused, waiting for Dr. Stevens to pass. “Where have you been? Since you have appeared out of nowhere, and apparently want back in my life, I think I have a right to know.”

He leaned toward her and tucked a piece of hair behind her ear. “I definitely want back in your life. And I like the hair, by the way. It suits you, though I do miss the length. I had dreams about that long hair-”

“Damn it!” She slapped his hand away. “Stop saying shit like that, all right? I have a boyfriend, and I’m trying to have an actual conversation with you.”

Giovanni smirked but leaned back, placing his elbows on the steps above and stretching his long legs in front of him. She rolled her eyes, wishing she didn’t notice the way his shirt stretched across his defined chest.

“Fine. And of course you have a right to know where I’ve been. I’ve been traveling mostly-”

“Yeah, got the postcards, thanks a bunch.”

He smiled. “Did you keep them? Those are all the places your father left me a clue, then disappeared before I could get there.”

Her heart almost stopped. “You-you’ve been looking for my father?” she whispered, tears springing to her eyes. “All this time?”

He looked away, allowing her to wipe her eyes. “On and off, yes. I told you I’d find him. I have a great desire to meet your father. He is both impressively and irritatingly good at hiding himself.”

When Beatrice had moved to L.A.-and the threat of Lorenzo seemed to disappear-she had hoped her father would find her. She’d waited, keeping a faint hope alive he could be part of her life again. But as the years passed, Stephen De Novo, and whatever mystery he carried with him, remained stubbornly out of reach. So, she tucked him away into a dark corner of her heart and tried to forget.

She was still trying to process the idea of Giovanni spending the previous five years looking for her missing father. “How did you know where to look?”

“Oh,” Giovanni murmured, “I would get word through certain channels that he’d been asking questions of this associate or that acquaintance. Looking for records at a certain library or auction house. All little clues he must have known I would pick up on, if I was looking for him.”

“Did he know you were looking for him?”

“Yes.” His expression darkened. “I let it be known I wanted to meet with him. De Novo kept leaving traces, but by the time I would get to any location, he would be gone.”

Beatrice frowned, twisting her hands together. “Does he think you want to hurt him? Is that why he’s hiding?”

“I don’t know, though it’s fairly well-known that his daughter is…”

“What? His daughter is what?”

Giovanni cleared his throat. “To put it bluntly, ‘my human,’ and-

Her eyes popped wide. “What?”

“-I wanted to speak to him-”

“‘Your human?’” she hissed.

“Beatrice.”

“Was there some sort of memo I should have gotten about this?”

“Beatrice?”

“Because, it’s been five years, and I sure don’t remember-”

“Beatrice!”

She fell silent, glaring at him, but he only leaned closer.

“You stole an almost unspeakable amount of money from an immortal. One who still has many friends. You’ve been living here in peace for five years now. Do you think that was some sort of accident or luck?”

“I don’t know! I thought you said I’d be safe!”

“You are safe, but did you think everyone in my world…” Giovanni glanced over at the trees and lowered his voice. “Did you think they had forgotten? You’ve been under my protection since I kissed you at The Night Hawk pub six years ago. That has never changed.”

She felt like she’d been punched in the chest. “But-”

“It doesn’t matter whether you have a boyfriend,” he bit out, “or whether we see each other or not. You’ll be under my aegis for as long as you live.” He paused, but there was no amusement or victory in his eyes. “Or you’re fair game, Beatrice. And that is not acceptable to me.”

Beatrice whispered, “I wish you’d told me.”

She’d been fooling herself. The graduate degree. The very respectable job. The little house in Silver Lake. Mano… All pieces of a life that was still under someone else’s control.

Giovanni took a deep breath. When he continued his voice was hoarse, “Why would I tell you all that? So you could worry? So you could have nightmares again and spend your days looking over your shoulder? I didn’t want that for you, tesoro.”

She shook her head and glared at him. “What the hell did you want for me? Why didn’t you ever come to Cochamó when you knew I’d be there? Did you want me to miss you? To wonder every night if you were alive or-” She broke off when he held up a hand.

“You should be quiet unless you want an audience,” he muttered, looking at the trees again.

“What? What are you talking about?” She craned her neck, trying to see in the darkness.

Giovanni sighed. “Benjamin, stop hiding in the trees and come introduce yourself.”

“Benjamin?” Her eyes narrowed. “Ben?”

“Are you going to be mad at me?” She heard a child’s voice call from the shadows and looked back at Giovanni, who was sitting with an expression both sulking and amused.

“No.” He stood and reached for her hand. “Just come out.” He muttered something else in Italian she didn’t understand.

“Will you please tell me what is going on?” Beatrice walked down the steps, clutching her helmet in front of her. At the edge of the trees, she saw a boy emerge holding onto a bicycle and looking at Giovanni with a crooked smile. He was thin and a bit clumsy as he emerged from the brush, but his sharp brown eyes looked her over, and a smile grew on his face.

“Are you Beatrice?”

“Are you the Ben who was asking for me last week?”

He grinned and nodded. “Yep. That guard actually told you? I didn’t think he would.”

Giovanni frowned. “What do you mean, you were asking after her?”

Ben looked at Giovanni innocently. “Well, you were so nervous about talking to her-”

“Tell me why you’re out on your bike at nine-thirty, Benjamin.” Giovanni interrupted.

Oh really? So Giovanni wasn’t quite as confident as he seemed. She smirked and looked over to Ben, who grinned at her.

“I was wondering whether my uncle was going to provide a delicious and nutritious meal for me. Family time is so important and all.”

Giovanni cocked an eyebrow in the boy’s direction. “And I suppose you missed the note about the leftovers in the fridge?”

“Wait,” Beatrice held up a hand. “Uncle? Am I missing something here?”

“Only me,” Ben said with a mischievous smile, “but I’m here now, so no need to worry.”

Giovanni reached over and pinched the boy’s ear. “Don’t be rude. Introduce yourself.”

Ben propped his bike on the kickstand and held out his hand. “Benjamin Vecchio. Former pickpocket, con man, runaway, and fake nephew of the vampire to your right. You must be the beautiful Beatrice.”

She held out her hand and Ben took it, bending down to kiss the back in a gallant gesture. She chuckled and looked at Giovanni. “And you think you’re charming?”

Giovanni rolled his eyes as Ben continued kissing up her arm. He reached over and tugged Ben’s collar, pulling him away from Beatrice, who was still laughing.

“Stop it, she’s too old for you.”

“Well, technically,” Ben said with a smile, “she’s way too young for you, old man.”

“Do you like that Xbox I bought you? How about the daily meals?”

“Shutting up now,” Ben quipped. “But really, Beatrice, it’s nice to finally meet you.”

“Um…” She paused. “Likewise. And please call me B, only the professor here calls me Beatrice. So you’re his fake nephew, huh?”

Giovanni put an arm around Ben’s shoulders. “My poor, departed brother’s child. Tragic accident.”

“Very tragic,” Ben nodded solemnly. “I still cry sometimes. Not really. My real parents were assholes.”

She nodded along, trying to integrate this new, paternal side of the vampire. She knew it shouldn’t surprise her-after all, he had raised Caspar-but it was still difficult to think about the man that made her blood boil with anger and desire in equal measure being, for all practical purposes, a father.

Despite the fact he was over five hundred years old.

“Okay then, well, on that very interesting note-”

“Do you ride a motorcycle?” Ben pointed at her helmet. “Cool! Can I see it?”

“Um, sure. I guess. I mean if it’s okay with Gio…”

Giovanni nodded, probably glad he had managed to trap her into further conversation. They walked toward the parking lot and she looked over at Ben. “How did you get all the way here? Where do you guys live?”

“Well,” Giovanni started, “I happened to find an appropriate house-”

“We just live a couple blocks from here! Gio thought it would be great ‘cause he could walk to where you work instead of worrying about the driving thing. I keep telling him he should teach me to drive, and then he wouldn’t have to worry about breaking cars, but he tells me I have to wait till I’m fourteen, or at least until my feet touch the pedals.”

“So you could walk to where I work, huh?” she muttered under her breath, knowing he could hear her, even if Ben could not. He simply cocked an eyebrow at her and shrugged.

“I told you I was here for you. And the house next to yours was too small.”

“You wouldn’t-”

“Is that your bike? It’s awesome! I’ve never seen one like that. Gio, can I have-”

“No,” he said quickly and looked at her with a smirk. Leaning down, he whispered in her ear. “Very sexy. I can just imagine your legs wrapping around-”

“So, Ben,” Beatrice cleared her throat as she interrupted the thought she really didn’t want him to finish. “Want to sit on it?”

“Cool!” Ben threw his bike on the ground and scrambled over to Beatrice’s Triumph. As she helped the boy onto the back and explained some of the features of the bike, she could feel Giovanni’s gaze as if it was a physical touch. She tried to concentrate on Ben’s enthusiasm and ignore what the vampire’s eyes were doing to her heart rate.

“So,” Ben said, “are you going to take the job? He asked you already, right?”

“Wha-what job?” She looked over her shoulder at Giovanni, who was frowning and glaring at Ben in frustration. He closed his eyes and she thought she saw his lips move like he was counting.

“Oh.” Ben grinned meekly. “I guess not. Oops.”

She walked over and stood in front of Giovanni with her hands on her hips.

“What job?”