“New or not, you should be certain.”
“I need to call my grandmother.” Avoidance was the only real savior and she grasped at it immediately.
“So call.”
Yep. Still not happy with her. She pulled out her cell phone, happy for international calling. She couldn’t wait to call her grandmother. She needed to hear her voice. Already, she felt the eager anticipation she always got when she had been away from her grandmother for too long.
Andre didn’t let her go. If anything, his arms tightened, holding her to him while the phone rang.
“Teagan?”
There it was. Her grandmother’s voice. Her throat closed for a moment. She loved her so much. “Grandma Trixie? How are you? I miss you.”
“I miss you, too, girl. I wish you were home. Your sisters come round every day getting into my business. Sometimes all of them. Whispering. Staring at me. They think I’m totally batty.”
“You aren’t, Grandma Trixie. I know you aren’t. I’ll be home in three weeks or so. I want to take in as much as I can. And . . .” She took a breath. “I’ve met someone.”
There was a long silence. “Someone? As in a man?”
Andre’s hands tightened around her belly, pulling her closer into him. There wasn’t any room left, any place to go with the exception of his skin. She could just melt there and become part of him.
“Yes. A man. His name is Andre Boroi. He’s amazing. He’s going to come home with me so you can meet him.”
Again there was silence.
“Grandma?”
“This isn’t like you, Teagan. How did you meet him?”
“Remember Armend? He turned out to be not so nice. In fact it appears he’s kind of . . . um . . . a serial killer,” she said it fast. Really fast. Hoping her grandmother really didn’t notice. “Andre sort of rescued me.”
“A serial killer?”
Her grandmother screeched the words at the top of her lungs. Teagan held the phone away from her ear. Her hearing was acute enough as it was. There was no turning down the volume fast enough.
“You went into the mountains with a serial killer?” Grandma Trixie demanded.
“Well. Yes. But this time it wasn’t my fault,” she assured.
This time? Andre asked.
She tipped her head to scowl at him, hoping that would serve to shush him.
Grandma Trixie sighed. “Teagan, it’s never your fault, but you always get into trouble and still, you insist on traveling all over the world where I can’t get to you when you’re in trouble.”
“I’m not in trouble,” she denied. “I don’t get in trouble and if I do, I always get myself out.”
Clearly you do get into trouble, Andre observed. I should have been told about this or looked closer into your memories.
She glared at him. Her most fierce, practiced glare. Andre didn’t appear impressed.
Stay out of my memories and stop listening in on my conversation with my grandmother. I mean it, Andre. She hissed the order into his mind, using her famous “tone,” the one that sent her brothers-in-law scurrying to the other room to avoid any confrontation with her. She had a very carefully cultivated reputation of being the best at verbal battle.
He didn’t appear intimidated or impressed. She could have sworn his lips twitched, and for one moment amusement dared to light his eyes.
“Teagan, tell me about this serial killer right this instant,” Grandma Trixie insisted, using her no-nonsense voice.
Are you laughing at me? she demanded. Because I have enough to contend with trying to convince my grandmother I’m perfectly fine.
The trouble was, she wasn’t perfectly fine. She had no idea what she’d gotten herself into this time, and she didn’t think her grandmother could get her out of it. Why did things like this always happen to her? She knew Andre was monitoring her thoughts because he trailed kisses down the side of her face from the corner of her eye to the corner of her mouth and then back up to her ear.
She had to suck in her breath sharply and work to keep her wayward body under control when it wanted to melt into a puddle at his feet. As it was, she went fairly boneless and his hands at her belly held her upright.
“I told you I asked Armend, you remember him from college . . .”
“I never met him, but you talked about him.”
“I tutored him, Grandma. I went to school with him for three years. He grew up in a village near the highest peaks of the Carpathian Mountain range. I wanted to explore that region. You know I love to hike, so when I decided to head over here, I contacted him through the Internet. We occasionally had exchanged email just to keep up. He seemed nice enough.”
“A serial killer?” Grandma Trixie repeated.
Teagan sighed. “At the time I agreed to tutor him I didn’t know he was a serial killer. He dated all the time, just not me.” She chewed on her lip for a moment. “I don’t think he actually killed anyone then. I would have heard about it.”
“Well thank heavens for small favors. What, you weren’t his type?”
“Thanks, Grandma.” She tried to keep the sarcasm from her voice, but really, her grandmother was implying she wasn’t attractive enough to even get a serial killer interested.
She didn’t mean that.
She tried another scowl, which was seriously difficult to do when his fingers were sliding through her hair and then dropping to the nape of her neck in a slow massage before returning to her hair—and that felt nice. Too nice. She was so susceptible to him and the way he touched her. Exasperated, she pushed at his hand.