Mirabeau stilled, shocked by her words, and to hear them from a girl who was so young. Such insight and wisdom from a kid was rather unusual, but then Stephanie was proving to be an unusual kid.
"Dani said that to me a while ago," Stephanie admitted quietly. "And she's right. I have to not be afraid to care for people again. I would miss out on a lot of good stuff. We both would."
Mirabeau heard Stephanie moving and glanced over in time to see her finish turning onto her side away from her. It seemed it was all the girl had to say, which should have left Mirabeau to crawl into bed and go to sleep for the few hours she had until dawn. However, while she crawled into bed, she didn't sleep. She lay there thinking about the fact that Marguerite had set her up, that she couldn't read Tiny but wanted him with a desperation she hadn't experienced for anyone else in all her more than four hundred and fifty some years, and that meant he was probably her life mate. She also thought about what Stephanie had said. While the idea of caring for anyone again was terrifying, did she really want to miss out on what they could share just to avoid hurting later?
All those thoughts ran around and around inside her head as the night crept past. It was all so scary and confusing that Mirabeau was actually relieved when she saw predawn light through the crack in the curtains. She still didn't know what she was going to do about Tiny, but it was a relief to get moving and have something to do besides lie there fretting over things.
Chapter Nine
"Want a bite?"
Mirabeau jerked her head back a little with surprise as Tiny raised what he'd called a chili cheese dog in front of her face. Frowning, she murmured, "I don't eat foo-" The last word died on a gasp of surprise as Tiny suddenly pushed the food forward, catching her on the upper lip and the bottom of her nose.
"Nice one, Tiny," Stephanie laughed between bites of her cheeseburger.
Scowling at the pair of them, Mirabeau pushed away the dog Tiny was still holding out to her and wiped the warm chili from her nose. However, her scowl was replaced with surprise when she licked her lip to clean it and a savory, spicy taste exploded on her tongue. Mirabeau couldn't contain the murmured "Mmm" as she swallowed the bit of flavorful food.
"Good thing I got you one too despite your claim not to want anything, huh?" Tiny teased, lifting a second plate with a chili dog off the tray he'd brought to the table and setting it before her.
Mirabeau hesitated, she really didn't eat much anymore. She indulged on occasion to keep Jeanne Louise company, but she rarely bothered otherwise, food had become boring over time. This chili stuff, however, was not boring at all, she thought as she watched how Tiny carefully picked up his own hot dog smothered with the thick chili and bit into it. Perhaps she'd simply been eating the wrong foods, she thought as she emulated his actions.
"Or maybe Tiny's your life mate and your taste buds, along with your libido, have come back to life like Decker's did," Stephanie said dryly.
Mirabeau paused midbite to scowl at the girl, but she couldn't hold the expression. Her mouth was alive with the wonderful combination of flavors she'd bitten into. Her eyes involuntarily closed as she savored the explosions taking place in her mouth. Chili dogs definitely rocked, she decided, and wondered how it was she'd never had one before.
"Try an onion ring," Tiny urged, holding a round breaded object out to her.
Mirabeau accepted the odd item, turned it curiously in her hand, sniffed it, and then took a careful bite. Her eyes widened with surprised pleasure as an entirely different flavor filled her senses. Damn, that's good too, she acknowledged, and smiled when he slid a smaller plate with a mound of rings in front of her. He'd bought two of those as well, she noted.
"How about a chocolate shake?" he said next, and a thick-looking, creamy drink was set before her as well.
This time Mirabeau didn't hesitate to try the offering and as the cold, creamy, chocolate slid across her tongue and down her throat, she understood what he was doing.
"You're trying to kill me with pleasure," she said on a sigh.
"If that were the case, you'd be nak*d, and I'd be eating this off your supine body," Tiny growled. He then leaned toward her and licked away a drop of chili that rested on her upper lip.
Mirabeau swallowed thickly, her eyes finding and locking on his until Stephanie groaned, and muttered, "Oh, gross. Get a room."
Mirabeau saw the chagrin flicker in Tiny's expression and knew he'd forgotten the girl was there, just as she had for those few seconds. She shared a wry smile with him, then, as if by agreement, they both turned their attention to their food and began to eat, trying to pretend that the moment hadn't happened.
Unfortunately, Stephanie wouldn't let it rest, and asked, "Are you two going to get together after you get me to Port Henry, or what?"
Mirabeau gave her a quelling look, but the girl wasn't willing to be quelled.
"Oh, come on, he's your life mate, right?" she said, waving a french fry around as she spoke.
"You don't know what you're talking about, Stephanie," Mirabeau said sharply. "Eat your food. We have to get going."
"Oh please, even if I couldn't read your thoughts, anyone could see you two are hot for each other."
"Enough Stephanie," Tiny said quietly. "Now eat your food. We're already very late getting you to Port Henry. We really shouldn't have stopped here."
And they shouldn't have, Mirabeau acknowledged. By now the people in Port Henry had probably called Lucian in a panic that they hadn't arrived...and there wasn't a darned thing they could do to reassure them that everything was all right. Mirabeau hadn't had a cell phone when she'd left the church, and Tiny's phone had gone missing. He suspected it had been lifted while he was shopping for clothes and food. He'd told her as much as they'd made their way to the SUV in the predawn light.
Mirabeau had considered stopping to use a pay phone to call in, but one of Lucian's last instructions had been not to make contact in any way but through Tiny's cell phone unless it was an emergency. He'd said Tiny's cell was set up specially to be untraceable, while calls from any other phone wouldn't be. He was determined no one was going to figure out where Stephanie was, and he was the boss, so there was nothing she could do to soothe any worries anyone might be having.
And they would be worried, she thought unhappily. By her guess, between getting lost in the tunnels and their stop at the hotel to clean up and rest, they were probably at least five or six hours behind schedule, which meant they should have arrived in Port Henry about three or four hours ago. Instead, they were half an hour southwest of Toronto, eating quite the most delicious food she'd ever enjoyed in one of the ugliest, dreariest-looking diners she'd ever seen. Tiny had picked it after several hours of Stephanie's whining that she was hungry. He'd called it a truck stop and said they always had the best food.
Mirabeau had to admit the food was indeed good. They just really shouldn't have stopped to get it, and had Tiny not been so obviously exhausted from driving all the way up from New York, she would have said so. However, the man had been yawning and wiping his weary eyes for the last hour they'd been on the road, and she'd decided a break was probably smart. She planned to offer to take over driving when they returned to the SUV he'd managed to get them into and get started that morning, all with nothing more than a hanger they'd taken from their room and a screwdriver they'd gotten from the handyman at the hotel. It had been rather impressive to watch him in action. But then he was impressive just to look at, she acknowledged.
"All done? Shall we go?" Tiny asked, and Mirabeau glanced down at her empty plates wryly. So much for not eating. She'd pretty much inhaled the offerings he'd brought her.
"I need to go to the bathroom," Stephanie announced, slurping the last of her own shake, a pink one that smelled of strawberries.
"You take her to the bathroom, and I'll get the SUV started," Tiny suggested, getting to his feet.
"Hey, I'm not a kid. I can take myself to the bathroom," Stephanie protested, scowling at him.
Rather than point out that Mirabeau was to be with her to ensure she remained safe, Tiny grinned, and teased, "I thought you girls always went to the bathroom in packs?"
"Sexist," Stephanie muttered, but amusement was tugging at her lips as she got to her feet.
They were pretty quick in the bathroom, but Tiny was quicker. He'd started the SUV and pulled it up to the door to collect them when they stepped outside.
"I was going to offer to drive," Mirabeau murmured as she climbed into the front passenger seat after closing the back door behind Stephanie.
"That's okay. I'm good. The break refreshed me," he assured her.
Shrugging, Mirabeau settled in the seat and did up her seat belt as he started out of the parking lot. They were back on the highway when Stephanie suddenly leaned forward between the two front seats to ask, "What's your real name, Tiny?"
Mirabeau glanced at him, curious about the answer to that herself, and caught the amusement tugging at his lips as he asked, "What makes you think it isn't Tiny?"
"Because no one but a pair of spazzes would name their kid Tiny," the teenager assured him dryly.
"Spazzes, huh?" Tiny chuckled, and then said, "Well as it would happen, my given name is Tinh." He spelled it out, then added, "Tiny is just what everyone has always called me, like Billy instead of Bill."
"Tinh?" Stephanie said with amazement. "What kind of name is that?"
"Vietnamese."
"You aren't Vietnamese," she said, then asked uncertainly, "Are you?"
"No," he said with a smile.
"Then why did your parents name you that?"
"My father was a soldier in Vietnam," he answered patiently. "He was injured while on recon. He's pretty sure he would have died where he fell had he not been rescued, and nursed back to health by a friendly named Tinh. Dad was never sure if that was his last name or first, but when he married mom and they had me, he named me after the man who had saved his life."
"Oh," Stephanie murmured. "I guess that was cool."
"I always thought so," Tiny agreed.
"I guess it's a good thing you didn't end up a little guy though," Stephanie commented. "They would have been dooming you to a life of teasing and bullying, naming you that if you were little."
"My being little was never very likely," Tiny assured her. "My mother is five-ten, and my father is my size."
"Hmm." Stephanie grunted, then sat back in her seat. "I'm going to watch the end of the movie I started before we stopped to eat."
Mirabeau glanced over her shoulder to see the girl putting earplugs into her ears and hitting the play button on the DVD player in the back of Tiny's seat. She then turned back to face front, but found herself unable to keep from glancing at the man driving. Finally, she asked softly, "They're still alive then? Your parents?"
"Oh yeah," Tiny assured her. "Both retired and spoiling the grandbabies my little sister has given them...and cursing me for not giving them more yet," he added with a wry smile.
"You're close to them," she realized, the thought troubling her.
"Yes," he admitted, then glanced sideways at her, and added, "they'll like you."
Mirabeau held his gaze for a minute, then turned away to look out the window as she tried to settle the sudden quandary in her mind. She had only been considering her own point of view when it came to their being life mates. The risk it would be to open her heart up to him and possibly lose him at some later date as she had her family. She hadn't considered what he might have to give up to be her life mate. That perhaps he wouldn't be willing to give it up for her.
"Tell me about your family," Tiny said suddenly.
Mirabeau glanced at him sharply, then away, muttering, "What do you want to know? They're dead."
"Yes," he said quietly. "Marguerite said that your uncle killed them. Tell me how...and why?"
Mirabeau stared out the window silently for a moment, but she didn't see the vehicles or landscaping they were passing. Her mind took her back to France in 1572, a mad time in the country.
"My father and uncle were turned in the thirteenth century by a rogue," she said finally. "Fortunately, they were new turns and had committed no crimes so were spared when the rogue was hunted down and killed."
"Like Leigh's friend Danny?" Tiny asked.
Mirabeau nodded silently, then cleared her throat and continued. "They were very close before the turn and for a while afterward, but then my father met my mother. She was his life mate, and they became wrapped up in each other as life mates tend to do. My uncle and father drifted apart while my parents had my three brothers and me in quick succession."
"In quick succession?" Tiny asked with surprise. "I thought you had to wait a hundred years between children?"
"Well, yes, but I mean they had my eldest brother right away in 1255, and then as soon as the hundred years were up, had my second brother and so on. They didn't leave extra time between each. I was born in 1555, almost a hundred years to the day after the youngest of my brothers was born."
"Ah," Tiny murmured.
"Anyway, they were happy. We all were, but apparently my uncle was not. He hadn't yet found his life mate and was jealous of my father, who had my mother and us children, as well as wealth and a title. He wanted all of it...including my mother. I guess he thought the St. Bartholomew Massacres would be a good cover for his getting it all."
"I'm sorry," Tiny interrupted gently. "Marguerite mentioned the St. Bartholomew Massacres to me, but I'm not sure what it was exactly."
Mirabeau frowned, wondering how something that had always figured so large in her own life was unknown to most of today's mortals. It was such a turning point in her life that it was difficult to accept that it meant nothing to others. Shrugging that aside, she explained, "St. Bartholomew Massacres were basically a mess. There was some history behind what happened, but the final straw that appeared to light the fury was when the Catholic Marguerite of Valois, the sister of the King of France, was married to Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The population of Paris was very Roman Catholic, and equally anti-Huguenot. French Protestant," Mirabeau explained before he could ask what a Huguenot was. She then continued, "Over the next six days after the wedding, several events conspired to stir things up, but the end result was that on August twenty-third, the gates to the city were closed, and a Roman Catholic mob began to hunt down and slaughter Protestants in the streets. Thousands were killed, including women and children."