Page 5 of Brewster

“They’re all gone now. He said you told him that he was in charge of the house, and he fired them all. Stopped payments on the checks that were to go out for people that don’t actually work for you.” Again, he thanked her. “I have a couple of questions for you.”

“Anything, love. Anything at all.” She told him he didn’t know what it was yet. “I would lay down my life for you. Not for what you’ve done for me already but the things I think you’re going to be doing for us in the future.”

“I want to have control of the household accounts.” He said they were hers. “Thank you. Also, I’d like to do something other than just sit around your lovely home too. I’m bored, and when I’m bored, I tend to do things that I don’t usually ask permission to do. Like, I’ve already started on the herb garden out back. Also, it looks as if someone at one time tried to grow a vegetable garden. While I don’t want to spend all day snapping peas and green beans, I would like to have some for my own dinner. No one here knew how to cook either.”

“With you here, I’d like to entertain again. This used to be the place to have large gatherings. While I don’t care for thehuman race, I do enjoy the company of some of my kind. Not to live here, but to be here for occasions where I must dress up.” She eyed his clothing, and he laughed. He’d been doing that, laughing again, for a while now, and he would swear that it took years off his body. “I mean in a man’s tux with all the women in long flowing dresses. Dressing to the nines, I believe it was called at one time. Yes, I’d like to get the house opened up again and show you off to them.”

“I’m not all that much to show off, Brew.” She flushed brightly, and he had to smile. He might well have said nothing if he thought she was fishing for compliments, but she was stating a fact that she’d been told all her life. But to him, she was everything. “I also wanted to talk to you about us being together. I know you told my uncle that we were married, but we’re not. Is there a way that we can make that true so that no one takes exception to it if they find out? No wedding is necessary, but if you could have it put to the record, I’d be happy with that.”

“It has been filed. I did not tell you when it was done as you were still getting used to the things around here. Had I known how much of an investigator you were, I might well have waited for you to figure it out on your own.” They both laughed, which was what he’d been going for. He worried that it would upset her as he’d done it without telling her. “There are many things that I have done since, too. I have put your name upon the deeds to the houses and property that we now own. Credit accounts. I have even made it so that your money is in a safe place where your uncle will no longer have access to it. I believe the bank will now fully cooperate with you in keeping his fingers out of your accounts.”

“I hope so. Like I said, it’s a lot of money that I was saving for a house.” She started to turn away but looked at him. “Will you put that money with yours now? I would like for you to do that. You’ve given me so much that I want to contribute as much as Ican as well.”

He didn’t tell her that simply being around was more than he’d ever hoped for, and just being able to gaze at her at any time he wished was a perk he’d not counted on. The very fact that she was saving him a great deal of money was, again, nothing that he’d ever thought of.

“It would be my pleasure to invest your money with ours. And anytime you need anything, you’ve only to ask Landon or myself, and we’ll get it for you.” Her face flushed again, and he found it to be the most endearing thing he’d ever captured in a woman’s face. Yes, he thought to himself. He was one lucky vampire. “We’ll need to hire a full staff. Open the rooms up that have been closed off for no other reason than it was easier on someone else to do so.” He thought about the rooms in the house. “I wouldn’t be able to tell you what a single room has in it, much less the color of the paper. I do believe the last time they were opened up, it was when wall coverings were all the rage.”

“It might be better to hire someone to come in and clean the rooms then. It’s doubtful if they look as bad as I’m thinking, but we don’t want our new staff running for the hills after opening one of the doors.” He laughed with her again. “I know it sounds as if I’m just sliding into this with no thought to how long we’ve known one another, but I’m thinking about everything that I do. I’m not one to go willy-nilly into things, and it seems like that to me. But I’m not. I’m calculating every move I make to make sure that if you were to ever want to rid yourself of me, then I will be able to stand on my own two feet and survive. I’ll be broken, but I won’t die of starvation or lacking a place to live.”

“I’m glad that you’re prepared, love. But I shan’t ever leave you. You are my heart and soul. My very life.” She just stared up at him, her eyes filling with unshed tears. “Oh, my heart. I will make it my life’s work to make sure that you understand that I love you so much.”

The rest of the afternoon and up until dinner, Brew pampered Calla Lily. She was strong, there was no doubting that, but she was just like the flower that she was named for. A delicate flower that blooms with its whole stem. Something so fragile that it begged to be protected. Yet, like the flower, she was strong and resilient. And he loved her with all of his heart.

After dinner, she had made herself a grilled cheese with some pasta on the side. He’d explained to her that she’d never gain weight unless she was breeding. He loved that she ate what she wanted, and he was happy with her sigh of relief that she could, if she wished, have children now. He supposed that being alone, she’d never given it a single thought. Now, she seemed to be thrilled to start on that chapter.

“Not today.” He nodded. “You have to believe me when I tell you that I’m happy with you here. Also, I’m falling in love with you. But not yet. I have some nightmares of my own that haunt me, and he’s still running around like he’s nothing to worry about. Did I tell you that he went to the bank?”

“I heard, too. I guess it was quite a surprise for him not to be able to get to any of your money when he’d been told that very thing. The police were called.” She said she thought that was the best part. “He was taken to jail and stayed overnight until they were able to get to the bottom of him not having any cash. It was quite the eye opener for the police, too, that it happened so quickly for him to try to access your money so soon after being told it wasn’t his.”

“Peter Lanne said that he’d had a fit that he wasn’t being treated nicely as he had some money in my accounts. Can you imagine the look on his face when he was told to get out and to never return? I bet he doesn’t give up, either. He told Peter that I’d given him the access all along and that it was unfair of me to take it from him this late in the game. Daniel has nearly five dollars on himself that is going to have to last him until he getsa job or some other form of payment that isn’t me.” Brew told her that he’d had twenty. He’d slipped it into his pocket when he took a sip of him to know where he was at all times. “I heard that he spent his last few bucks on some kind of drink. It figures, Daniel has always thought that he deserves the finer things in life. Even if he couldn’t afford them. It is a small wonder that Grannie didn’t leave him anything. He was forever ‘borrowing’ from her. She kept track of his borrowing, too, right up to the penny. When she passed away, he owed her over a hundred grand in cash, and then there were the things that he’d stolen from her that he pawned or sold off. Jerk. Grannie took great care of me when I was younger. I hated to see her go.”

“I knew her when she was but a child, your grandmother. She was much like you, insecure yet strong. When her baby had been born, she had nothing to do with his upbringing because her husband wanted to raise him in the way that he was. That didn’t turn out very well, and when he died, having a heart attack one night when he’d been yelling at Daniel about his waste of money, she turned her back on him. He stole things from her like he did you. I think she did well in not leaving him anything.” Calla Lily said that she thought so, too. “Good. To change the subject, we’ll have to have a trip soon. I need to be in New York for a meeting, and it would be my pleasure to have you with me. Would you like that?”

“I believe that I would.” He was happy with her answer. He didn’t know what he’d do if she didn’t go with him. He’d been looking forward to showing her off for a few days now, and New York was the perfect place to do so.

Chapter 3

The dress, that’s what she was calling it, the dress fit her like a glove. And even though she had plucked it off the rack herself, someone would think that it had been made especially for her slim body. The pretty sequins all over the dress made her sparkle and shine. Her shoes, black again, had the tiniest red bow on them, and the shawl that had come with the dress covered her from head to toe like she was some kind of creature of the dark. The dress made her feel like she’d never felt before. Pretty. Sexy.

“Are you ready, my love?” She told him that she just needed a moment and that she’d be out. “I do hope you’re not getting cold feet again. I have it on good authority that the dress will fit you well and that people will be wondering where I got such a lovely wife. Which reminds me. I have something for you finally. I’ve been waiting for it to come back from the cleaners.”

She stepped out of the room with her cape over her dress. He said that he had wanted to be surprised like the others at the ballroom would be. She would have thought that he’d want to see how she was dressed before they left so that she’d have time to change. Into what? She didn’t have a clue as this was the only dress that she’d gotten today.

Taking her hand into his much larger one, she was startled when he kissed her hand and slipped what she could only assume was a ring onto her finger. Lifting it up in the bright light, it sparkled around the room much like her dress had.

“It’s beautiful, Brew.” And it was. The diamond in the middle of the ring was a brilliant white. The prisms that danced from it made up all the colors of the rainbow. The row of blue and red gems surrounding it just made the large diamond sparkle more. It was as if she’d been given the buttons to push on fireworks, and they were lighting the evening splendor of the room. All sheneeded to hear was the booms, and she’d swear that she was at a Fourth of July party and she’d been right under the lights.

“Come on now before I convince you that we need not go and the two of us get to know one another in a more personal way.” Before she could figure out what he was saying, she was in a large black limo, and it was speeding down the road from the hotel they were in. “How have you liked New York so far? I remember when it was nothing more than shanty houses along the banks and lovely flowers blooming all around it. Such an odd time of my life. I never cared for the larger cities. Too many people around. But Ohio? Well, it’s been my home for the last few centuries, and I can’t imagine living anywhere else. Especially with you by my side.”

“I’ve been to New York City before. I was only a kid. I remember thinking that people were faster here. They seemed to have more purpose in their steps but had nowhere to be. I was just a kid then, but it all seemed to be something out of a science fiction book that I used to read.” She laughed and told him that she’d been a very strange kid. “I love to read. That’s why I can’t wait to get back home and read every book in your library. Landon told me that you also like to read and that you have a lot of first editions in your home. What was it like meeting all those famous authors before they were…well, famous?”

“Some were already famous, as you might have guessed, but there were a few that I enjoyed an easy conversation with when they were in a pub or somewhere that I happened to be. Ah, here we are now.”

The building was magnificent and brightly lit up. As she was handed out of the limo, her leg slid out onto the pavement like she’d practiced all afternoon. Standing up, she looked into Brew’s eyes when he didn’t move and saw something there that she’d never seen on a man’s face when he was looking at her. Lust. Need and something that she couldn’t put her finger on.Love perhaps? She didn’t know but continued to stare at the man she just then realized that she loved.

“Brew?” They were whisked into the building, and he held onto her like she was his lifeline. Or he was hers. Calla didn’t know, but she knew too in those few moments before entering the massive building that she could never tell Brew in words how much she dearly loved him. When he suddenly stopped moving, reaching for her cape, she leaned up to his face and kissed him on the cheek. “I love you so much.”

“Christ, your timing couldn’t be worse. But this will be fun, I think. I shall make you suffer for this. In a wonderfully sexual way.” He turned her around and took off the cape. When his lips touched her ear, she leaned into him and laid her head on his chest. “I could find us a dark corner or make us one if you keep this up. My goodness, this is going to be a hard, very hard night.” He rolled his hips, and she could feel his cock as it touched off every cell in her body. His laughter had her giggling. His curt “behave”had her laughing harder. Then he turned her around and looked at her.

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