22. Flora

Flora

I woke up with my nightgown tangled around the top of my breasts and my bottom half totally naked. It took only a second for me to remember what happened last night. The conversation I had with Teresa about mating. Me asking her to stay with me and snuggle. Her offering to take the edge of my restlessness. And me falling asleep right after one of the most powerful orgasms of my life.

I hadn’t even stayed awake long enough to get Teresa off. That was definitely bad form. Since she was no longer in my bed when I woke up, I guess that part would have to wait.

Despite sleeping later than I usually did, I was still dragging when I woke up. I took a long hot shower and threw on some yoga pants, a tee shirt, and a hoodie, too exhausted to worry about how I looked right now. Besides, this was how I would usually dress for a Sunday at home – if I was totally alone that is.

My mother had taught me at an early age that appearances were everything. As one of Seattle’s wealthiest families, and scions of the beauty industry, how we looked mattered. You never knew when some eager photographer was waiting to catch you looking like crap.

I liked to look nice, but I wasn’t as strict as my mother had been. Even for a day relaxing at home Mom would have a full face of make-up, not a hair out of place, even her casual outfits carefully pressed and stylish. I’d learned when I was away at college the value of loungewear, much to my mother’s horror.

When I got downstairs Teresa was at the kitchen table with Boris, both of them tapping away at their laptops keyboards.

“Good morning,” I said.

Teresa gave me an intense look that made me blush. Boris’s gaze swung between us and he looked amused, although he didn’t say anything.

“I make coffee,” Boris said in his accented voice. “You tell me make myself at home, so I make myself at home. You have good coffee.”

“No problem,” I said, pouring myself a cup and coming to the table. “You two look like you were doing something intense.”

Teresa gave me a long look. “Why didn’t you tell me about Jacob Shapiro?”

“Jake? What about him? I think I’ve seen him like once since I went away to college.”

“Tell me everything you know about him,” she instructed.

“Why? What’s going on?”

“Boris spent the night investigating online comments about you.”

I reared back in surprise. “Online comments about me? What do you mean?”

“I look through new articles that mention your name, then read the comments,” Boris explained.

“Oh no, don’t read the comments online, everyone knows they’re terrible. I’ve heard those comments are all a bunch of incel trolls hanging out in their parents’ basement trashing people for fun.”

“Well, one of your incel trolls is your godfather’s son,” Teresa informed me. “So I’m going to need to know everything you can tell me about him.”

“Hm. Wow, okay. Well, Jake is about five or six years younger than me, so we never hung out or anything, even though our fathers were good friends,” I said. “He came to my parents’ funeral with Henry, and I talked to him briefly. I remember being so surprised because the last time I’d seen him he’d been in junior high, you know how when you see someone as a kid it’s almost jarring to see them and realize they’re all grown up.”

“What did you talk about at the funeral?” Teresa asked.

“Um, I don’t know, the usual funeral stuff, sorry for your loss, that kind of thing.” I paused, trying to bring up anything unusual about the interaction. “I remember he was kind of twitchy.”

“Twitchy?”

“Yeah, I remember he was ADHD as a kid, and I was surprised he still had such a hard time being still. I mean, if I didn’t know better, I would have thought he was on drugs or something.”

“How did you know he wasn’t?” Teresa asked.

“Oh, well I guess I didn’t know for sure. I just assumed that he hadn’t grown out of his ADHD. There were so many people to talk to that day, I don’t think I spent more than two minutes with him, although Henry stuck by my side the entire time.”

I allowed myself a smile, appreciating the gentle support of my godfather.

“Did you know that Jacob has been in and out of jail since he was fifteen?”

My eyebrows rose. “No, Henry never mentioned that. I can’t believe it.”

“He gets in trouble many times, but has good lawyer,” Boris told me. “Charges do not stick.”

“Do you have any idea why Jacob would be hostile towards you?” Teresa asked.

“I doubt that he is,” I replied. “We’ve never been friends or anything, but I never got any bad vibes off him. I don’t even know the guy.”

“Explain this then.”

Teresa slid her laptop over to me, pointing out an article about my becoming CEO of Meyer Beauty.

“Read the eighth comment down.”

I scanned the online comments until I found the one she wanted me to read.

“This cunt stole everything from me. I hope someone rapes her until she dies. Maybe I’ll do it myself.”

My hand came to my mouth as I read the vitriolic comment out loud. “God, that’s awful, why would someone write that?”

“The real question is, why would Jacob Shapiro write that?”

I looked at the username. “You think that disgruntled589 is Jake Shapiro?”

“I don’t think, I know it. Boris traced this username to his ISP.”

I spent the rest of the morning in a daze. Reading those horrible things Jake said about me was a shock. I had no idea how I was going to talk to Henry about it. For now, Teresa and Boris didn’t want me to say anything, not when he was their prime suspect in the attacks against me.

I didn’t believe Jake was trying to kill me though. He had no reason to. Although I was surprised by what he’d written, Jake was raised in a good family with parents who loved him. He had everything he could ever need, including a generous trust fund. His mother died of breast cancer when I was in high school and Jake was still young. As the only child, he was undoubtedly due a nice inheritance when his father died.

Even if he hated me for some reason, there was no reason for him to want me dead. Then again, I couldn’t think of any reason why he’d write all those hateful comments about me online either. I’d never been anything but polite to him.

The news made me restless and out of sorts. It was an unseasonably warm spring day, so I finally put on my swimsuit and ventured outside. It was only seventy-five degrees, but our in-ground pool was heated year round, making it convenient to take a swim whenever the mood struck us. I hadn’t been in the pool since last summer, uneasy about swimming alone with no one else in the house, but since I had a pair of bodyguards here, I figured I was safe.

As I swam laps, I tried to put Jake out of my mind and just focus on the feeling of my body gliding through the warm water. By the time I was done swimming, my body was tired, and my mind was much more relaxed.

Boris had been replaced with Angie while I was outside in the pool. While I swam, she and Teresa worked out with their swords on the grass nearby, having a vicious looking mock fight that lasted until they were both covered in sweat.

I wondered how Teresa felt about what happened last night. This whole fated mate thing was wild, yet it seemed to be true. I couldn’t say why, but I just felt it in my bones. Having sex with Teresa last night had only solidified my feelings for her. Well, at least one of us had sex. I really needed to return the favor.

As I dried off from the pool, I realized that I had fallen in love with Teresa. I wasn’t sure how she felt about me. She’d told me that I was her fated mate, but that was some primal biology thing, right? When she’d first come here – my God, was that only a week ago? – she’d seemed to dislike me. We were very different people, that was certain. But was the mate bond just some kind of chemistry? Or could we make it work long term?

For some reason, I’d never really imagined having a partner. Even as a little girl, I’d known that I’d grow up to run Meyer Beauty. I’d expected that to happen years later than it actually did, but it was the job I’d been born to do, groomed my entire life for.

I remembered the day I’d come out to my parents. I’d dated several boys in high school and my first two years of college, but it hadn’t been until I went on a date with a woman that I truly embraced my sexuality. My parents had been very accepting of my coming out, but my mother expressed sadness that I’d never be able to get married and have kids. I told Mom I wasn’t interested in any of that.

Of course that was long before gay marriage was legalized here. My options were different now, but when I tried to picture Teresa and I getting married and having kids, it was difficult to imagine. Would she even want kids? And would they be vampires or human or both?

Then again, we’d known each other for eight days. Maybe I was getting ahead of myself. Teresa hadn’t claimed me yet, and we still had a mystery to solve. I just hoped that they were wrong about Jake, because if he was the person who’d been trying to hurt me it was going to kill my godfather. I just knew it.