Love Me Forever. Rosemary Laurey

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СКАЧАТЬ You want a kid-sized custom costume but it mustn’t look custom-made and you’re going to give it away?”

      “Heavens no, Dixie! Stella doesn’t seem the sort to take anything even whiffing of charity. I thought you could make it with a deliberate mistake.” His mouth curved a little.

      “Make it up with a flaw near the hem. Something like a selvage showing. That would make it unsellable but if she turns up the hem it would do.”

      “How come you know so much about sewing?” Stitching up people, he was good at. She still had faint marks on her forehead and under her breast, where he’d repaired injuries. Neither scar had faded after her transformation to vampire.

      His eyes went distant. “Long before you were born, I knew a seamstress.” He looked back at Dixie. “Can you do it?”

      “Of course.” She could hardly outsource this, the requirements were too odd. “Give me a day or so and I’ll see what I can come up with.” She smiled at Christopher, her love, her lifemate, who’d been listening intently. “You two going feeding tonight?”

      Christopher shook his head. “No. You want to?”

      “No.” Over a year vampire, and she still wasn’t comfortable with live feeding and used blood bags as much as possible. She was slowly getting use to living off blood but definitely missed Lindt chocolate and Starbucks ice cream.

      “I thought Justin and I would take a turn round the village. Just to keep an eye on things.”

      “You’re deputizing him, are you?” She had to smile.

      “Just letting him see what I do with my spare time.” Christopher crossed the room and hugged her. “You worry too much, Dixie.”

      “Why wouldn’t I? You’re taking on crooks!”

      “Just discouraging petty criminals from targeting the neighborhood.”

      They never would see it the same. Christopher wasn’t in-vulnerable, even if bullets couldn’t hurt him. “Be careful.”

      “With you to come home to? Of course.” His lips were cool and inviting and she’d much rather he took her upstairs than left to wander the streets.

      “Make sure you don’t come back with a whacking great hole in your shirt!” She’d nearly flipped out the time he did that. Even if the wound had half-healed by the time she saw him, the bloodstains and singed bullet hole in his broadcloth shirt would have given her palpitations—if her heart still beat.

      “Don’t you think the pair of us can take care of anyone we meet?” Justin asked.

      She scowled at Justin. Now there were two of them out to play “stop the bullet” or “trick the thug,” or whatever silly macho games male vampires played when no one was watching. “I don’t want to think about what the pair of you are likely to get up to!”

      Okay, petty crime had dropped since they’d moved into German Village. So what? It didn’t ease her mind to know her lover was swooping the streets discouraging would-be burglars. She’d seen herself how closely Christopher skirted injury. “Take care of him, Justin. If I’m making that costume, I won’t have time to repair slashed and punctured clothing.”

      “You know we’ll come back, don’t you?”

      She’d never had much luck arguing with Justin. “Yeah.” She kissed Christopher and hugged Justin and watched them disappear around the corner before she shut the door and went up to her attic workroom.

      Velvet. Justin’s suggestion of a missewn selvage wouldn’t work with the nap, but she did have a bolt end she’d put aside, as it had a row of flaws. Five minutes with a tape measure and Sam’s measurements and she had it figured out. She’d make the cape three inches too long and put the row of flaws at the hem. Stella could easily turn it up and make it the perfect length. Or better still—Justin could take it around and check the length and deliver it back after she’d fixed it. That way he’d be invited into Stella’s house and could reenter at will when he needed sustenance.

      Dixie sat bolt upright and stared at the ceiling. Had she really thought of Stella as a food source? Dixie shuddered but slowly calmed. Yes. She had no other choice. She was vampire and fed off blood—when she ran out of blood bags, it had to be animals or mortals. That was the way her world was now ordered. She thought back to the times Christopher had fed off her before her transformation. Stella wouldn’t be complaining and Justin would do right by her.

      And Justin would soon be back with Christopher, so she’d better get going. There was enough spare velvet to make a pair of pants. She’d leave the bottoms unfinished to add to the “just something I found” myth and Stella could add a tee-shirt or sweater. Busy with scissors and sewing machine, Dixie almost forgot her anxiety about Christopher. She was glad to be working, and particularly pleased to be making something for Sam.

      She missed the kids she’d worked with in her librarian days, and Sam was neat. Bright, polite and an avid reader, heck he was the answer to a teacher’s prayer, and obviously Stella’s pride and joy. And Dixie liked Stella, admired her independence and determination to get the very best for Sam. Interesting really, after asking for the costume as a favor for Sam, Justin’s conversation had been ninety percent Stella.

      Dixie chuckled. Could ethical, straightlaced Justin be smitten? She shook her head. Hardly likely. He’d been more adamant even than Christopher that mortals and vampires avoid emotional involvement. No, Justin was just being kindly towards a poor kid. Very typical of him. Besides, what chance was there of Justin ever linking with another female while he still carried a torch for Gwyltha? Not that Dixie understood that after all that had happened, but men were hard enough to understand at the best of times and add vampire to that complication. Dixie shook her head and reached for her tailor’s shears and started cutting.

      “You’re not being injudicious over this venture, are you?” Justin asked.

      Christopher braced his feet against the gutter and leaned back on the slate tiles of the school roof. “What do you think?” They had a perfect view over the park and the houses on Reinhart, and one house in particular.

      Justin kept his sights on the shadows in the park. “That flamboyance has always appealed to you.”

      “Can’t much help it, walking around with an eye patch gets people’s attention.”

      “Walking around is one thing, setting yourself up as the neighborhood vigilante is another.”

      Christopher replied without taking his eyes off the house on the corner by the alley. “Justin, I discourage young thugs from continuing a life of crime. Hardly vigilante activity.”

      “But it will get you noticed. You can’t take that risk.”

      “No one is noticing me, except a few juvenile delinquents and some petty thieves. I’m not out to obliterate crime.” He paused. “Now that would get noticed. I just aim to get the word out that German Village isn’t easy pickings.”

      “Be careful, Christopher.”

      Satisfied the two dark figures who turned down Jaeger had passed the empty house, Christopher relaxed a little.

      “Surely you didn’t come all this way just to exhort me СКАЧАТЬ