Chapter 12

Dane probably should have taken Jacqueline with him to see her parents, but he wanted to get this off his chest. He was afraid they might think he planned to mate her and wanted their permission, which was the furthest thing from his mind. Not that he hadn’t totally considered a union between them, but he didn’t have any intention of asking her parents’ permission after the way they had treated her once she had been turned. It might have helped if he had taken Matt with him to show them that family stuck together. But he figured he had this on his own and he really didn’t need to get his family involved. It might cause more tension.

As soon as he arrived home, Matt was waiting for him. Dane frowned at him. “What are you doing here? Did you leave something important behind?” Dane couldn’t imagine Matt had any other reason for being here.

“You. I’m going with you to see Jacqueline’s parents.”

Dane’s jaw dropped.

“Come on, Bro. I hadn’t gotten very far when Jacqueline called me and said to return to your house where you were planning to drive your truck to see her parents. So I’m going with you to keep you out of trouble.”

Dane shook his head. “I had considered taking you.” But he’d then discounted the notion.

Matt didn’t look like he believed him as he dipped his chin down and lifted his brows.

“I’m serious. Come on then.”

“We’ll take my car,” Matt said. Then they left in his car. “Do you miss them?”

“Hmm?” Dane asked.

“Princess and Jacqueline,” Matt said as he drove out of the housing development.

Dane smiled. “Yeah, you know it. They both add a lot of warmth and fun in my life.”

“I could tell. So you don’t want to screw things up with her parents if things work out between you.”

“I don’t care how her parents feel. They don’t care about her.”

“They could come around and so you want to keep a civil tongue when you speak to them.”

Dane growled under his breath. Matt smiled.

A half hour later, they found her parents’ home on the north side of the city and parked in the circular drive, the landscaping featuring majestic old live oaks, green boxwood hedges, and a red rose garden, elegant and pristine.

“Are you ready?” Dane asked.

“They might not be home, you know,” Matt said. “Unless you made an appointment with them.”

“I’ll wait.”

Matt sighed. “All right.”

They both got out of Matt’s car and went to the front door of the house and Dane knocked a little harder than he needed to. Sure, he could have rung the doorbell, but knocking gave him more of a statement of power.

Then a young woman answered the door, but she looked too young to be Jacqueline’s mother.

“Yes?” she said.

“We’re here to see Mr. and Mrs. Anderson about Jacqueline,” Dane said.

“Jacqueline.”

“Yes, are they in?” Dane asked.

“Uh, Mrs. Anderson is. Who should I say is calling?” the girl asked.

“Dane and Matt Edmonson.” Dane hoped that Mrs. Anderson wouldn’t know that he had been turned.

“I’ll check and ask if she has time to meet with you.” Then the girl shut the door.

Dane said, “She had better.”

Matt smiled. “Keep it cool, brother.”

“I will.” Maybe. It depended on how her mother reacted.

A short while later, the front door opened and a redheaded woman who looked like Jacqueline, only about thirty years older, wearing a flowery dress like she planned to go to a luncheon with friends, frowned at them. “What’s this about? Is…is she all right?”

Did Jacqueline’s mother even care? “Maybe we should speak inside.” Dane wasn’t about to have this talk with her out here.

Mrs. Anderson hesitated. Then she said, “All right.” She sounded reluctant to speak to them. What if they had news that Jaqueline had been terminated herself? Dane thought she would have been more concerned. Then again, maybe not.

She led them into a formal living area and motioned to a couple of chairs to sit on. “I have a luncheon to attend so make this quick.”

“I’m here because of Jacqueline and the fact that she had been turned. This is my brother, Matt. When I was also turned against my will, my three brothers were right there, killing the vampire who had turned me, supporting me, having my back just like a decent hunter family would have should one of their own fall to the teeth of a rogue vampire.”

The woman’s face fell, and they all hesitated to take any seats. He felt empowered to tower over her, irritated that she had told him she had a luncheon to go to when he had news of her daughter.

“You might want to know, or maybe you don’t care, but we terminated the vampire who turned Jaqueline,” Dane said.

Matt said, “It was quite a battle. There were several vampires and several hunters. Jacqueline took out two on her own and successfully fought the vampire’s commands who had turned her until Dane eliminated him.”

“Uh…well, thanks.”

“Do you feel it would be better if she had died when she fought with the rogue instead of having been turned?” Dane asked.

The woman glowered at him, her eyes filling with tears.

Dane shrugged. “I know my brothers were mad at me for not having them at my back, but things happen like this. In the past, vampires would just kill a hunter if he could get away with it. But today, there are more rogues turning hunters so they can control them. Is it the hunter’s fault? How many times did you go into a fight and?—”

Suddenly, Jacqueline entered the living room to Dane and his brother’s astonishment. Not to mention Mrs. Anderson had lost all the color in her face. She sat down suddenly on a chair, shaking.

“I didn’t tell Dane and his brother to come here to speak on my behalf,” Jacqueline said.

“They…they told me they killed the vampire who had turned you,” Mrs. Anderson said.

“Yeah, Dane did. He unfortunately ended up in a similar situation as me, overwhelmed and outnumbered. We didn’t have a choice. But every one of his brothers have backed him since he was turned,” Jacqueline said. “Not so with my family. I can understand Van dumping me because it wouldn’t have worked out?—”

“Not me,” Dane said. “I don’t understand it at all. He was supposed to have loved you. He might not have wanted to marry a vampire who would have such a long life after the fact, and that could be understandable, but he should have been your hero anyway, and helped to destroy the vampire. He’s a hunter. That’s his business. That’s the least he could have done for you. Especially since he supposedly had loved you just like your family had. He should have asked all his friends to assist him if he hadn’t been sure he could manage on his own. There’s no call for the way he abandoned you.”

Jacqueline smiled at Dane.

Dane hadn’t meant to speak to her parents in an effort to earn points with Jacqueline, though that appeared to be a benefit once she showed up and he was glad for that. But he had done it more to tell her mom, and dad—if he had been there—that family should have meant everything to Jacqueline. Most hunter families were close to each other, helping each other out, taking care of each other—no matter the circumstances.

“I…I shouldn’t have let you in. I need to go to a luncheon,” her mother said, as if that was more important than trying to mend fences with her daughter.

“Go, enjoy your time with your women friends,” Jacqueline said to her mother. “Come on, Dane, Matt. You’re more family to me than my mother, father, and brother are.” Then she left the way she had come, just by vanishing.

Dane saw the frightened look on her mother’s face. He shook his head and vanished to reappear outside the house to be with Jacqueline, hoping she wasn’t too upset. He hadn’t meant to leave his brother behind, but he soon joined them outside, the normal hunter way.

Matt laughed. “I didn’t expect both of you to just disappear on me like that. Though Jacqueline’s mother didn’t either.”

“Well, I expected more of a reaction from your mom,” Dane said to Jacqueline.

“I didn’t. That’s the way she has been since this all happened. Both my parents were disappointed in me, and they were especially disappointed about the messed-up mating between Van and me.”

“Now that’s really screwed up,” Dane said. “So they took his side in all this?”

“Yeah, they did.”

Dane shook his head and they got into Matt’s car. “I still don’t believe it’s a wasted effort though.”

“No, I agree. I’m glad she knows that you took down my ‘master,’ if that was something that was even bothering my parents. And I’m glad you said all that you did. Sometimes they need to hear it from someone else who’s going through the same issues whose family is backing them,” she said. Then she paused. “You know, we should go to her luncheon.”

Matt glanced at her, and Dane chuckled. “We might get thrown out of the establishment.”

“It’s human run. She goes to the restaurant in Plano every week with her girlfriends. We don’t have to say anything to them, unless we feel the need, but I’ve been staying away from her since I was turned. Maybe she needs to see that I’m not going to go into hiding and that while we all live in Dallas, she might just run into me from time to time and she’ll have to deal with it. We all need to have lunch, right?”

Dane said, “I’m all for it. Should we call on Trey and Ryan to join us?”

“On it,” Matt said, getting on Bluetooth and giving them both a call. “We’re going to?—”

“The Blue Diamond Restaurant in Plano,” Jacqueline said.

“Jacqueline is with you?” Ryan sounded intrigued.

“Yep, and Dane. We’ll fill you in when you get there,” Matt said, then ended the call. “You don’t think she’ll call the police and say we’re stalking her, do you?”

“No. Not if your brothers all show up and we’re just there for lunch. We won’t speak to them, unless she initiates some conversation. We might not even see them. But if we do, I won’t mind glancing at them, and letting them all know I’m still in the area and not going away.”

“Are your mom’s friends all huntresses?” Dane asked.

“Yes, and they all know what happened to me. Both Lettie’s and Van’s moms are part of their little clique. They were all looking forward to the wedding. What about you, Dane? How about the hunters who were going to your wedding?”

“Nobody was disappointed. Not on my side of the family. Some of my friends rejected me after I was turned. But my brothers were glad. The thing of it is any of us could end up being turned at any point during our hunter’s career. So what if we had been married already?” Dane asked.

“That was exactly my thought,” Jacqueline said.

“Okay, but let’s turn this around, just for the sake of argument. What if your fiancé and fiancée had been turned instead?” Matt always was good at looking at both sides of a situation. “What would you have done?”

“I would have been there to kill the vampire who turned my fiancée, for one,” Dane said with conviction. “Staying together? I don’t know. It depends on how it changed her view of things. And whether she had even wanted to stay together.”

Jacqueline said, “Okay, I have to be honest here. Like Dane, I would have done everything in my power to kill the vampire who had turned him. But staying with him? I’m sure he would have changed too much for me. I could just imagine him being aggravated, hot-tempered, ill-at-ease, and not the man I had planned to marry.”

“That was probably me last week,” Dane said.

Matt laughed. “Yeah, I have to agree you were all over the place after you were turned, but then you settled down, got back to the business of taking down rogues, and went to your first therapy session.”

“And met Jacqueline.”

“I wasn’t even giving you the time of day,” she said.

“I know. That’s what intrigued me so much,” Dane said.

She laughed. “It’s not that I was trying to play hard to get.”

“I know. You’ve been through a lot. We both have. But I still wanted to get to know you.”

“You’re not afraid of being on the rebound?” she asked.

“Not where you’re concerned.”

She smiled.

“Well, you can be a member of our family anytime,” Matt said to her.

Then they arrived at the restaurant where Matt and Dane’s twin brothers were waiting in the parking lot. Ryan said, “Trey and I were going to have a fast-food burger and now we’re going to be at a dress-up kind of place?”

“You deserve it after all we did at the vampire’s house,” she said.

“Yeah, I can always go for a steak instead,” Trey said. “The hamburgers can wait.”

“Lobster for me.” Jacqueline headed for the front door of the restaurant while Dane hurried to open it for her.

They all went inside, and the hostess set up a table for five. When she returned, she led them to the table, carrying their menus, then she offered them the menus and left so they could decide on want they wanted to order.

“So are they here where we can see them?” Dane asked, picking up his menu.

“Yes, way over there by the windows overlooking the lake,” Jacqueline said.

All the guys looked that way, giving the women a hard glower. Not that anyone noticed.

“If we stay long enough and they leave first, they’ll have to walk right by our table,” Jacqueline said. “You can save your disparaging looks for them then. For now, we’re here to celebrate our victory.”

The waitresses brought them glasses of water and then took their orders. “Be up with the rolls and salads soon.” Then she left.

Dane was watching Jacqueline’s mother’s table. Jacqueline reached over and squeezed his thigh. He smiled at her. “Just enjoy the comradery we have here,” she said. Though she was looking forward to giving her mother and her mother’s friends the evil eye when they walked by.

But then one of her mother’s friends left the table and headed to the restroom and saw Jacqueline. The woman missed a step, her face turning pale. Her gaze shifted to the hunters with her, and Matt said, “Hey, Mrs. Gifford. How are you doing?”

“Uh, uh, fine.” Then she hurried off to the restroom.

“Well, you rattled her,” Trey said.

“She deserved it. Any friend of Jacqueline’s mother’s is in complicity with her, as far as I’m concerned. They’re not backing Jacqueline. She didn’t say hello to Jacqueline or acknowledge her in any way. She didn’t tell her she was sorry for what she had been through,” Matt said.

They all watched the bathroom for when Mrs. Gifford left it and she glanced at their table, and they all put on their best glowers. Jacqueline wanted to laugh. She felt bad in a way because she had been friends with all her mother’s friends, but now they were treating her like she was bad news. As soon as Mrs. Gifford headed to her table, they observed her sitting down and speaking, then everyone at her table turned to look at them. They just stared at them, and the women quickly turned around to eat their meals.

Good. They got the point that Jacqueline could show up anywhere that they might be, and she wasn’t a threat, and she could still share the same space as them. She wasn’t a non-entity like they were trying to act like.

“What about your dad and brother?” Dane asked.

“We might see my brother at the club tonight. I don’t know how he would react. My father?” Jacqueline shrugged. “It’s possible that he might try to have words with you for going to see my mother at their house without my father being there. But you and Matt had my best interests at heart. And if they can’t see that, shame on them.”

“I agree,” Ryan said.

Trey said the same thing.

The women appeared to not want to leave their table though they had been at the restaurant first and had ordered lighter lunches. Even now, Jacqueline, Dane, and his brothers had finished their steaks and her lobster, and they were ready to leave.

“I think they are going to stay until we leave, and I have things to do at home,” Jacqueline said.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Dane said. “If they feel uncomfortable about us, that’s their problem.”

“I can’t wait to see what happens at the club,” she said.

“Yeah, I hope that we don’t end up in a fight and get kicked out. I just want to dance with you,” Dane told Jacqueline.

She sure hoped they would be able to enjoy dancing the whole night through.