Blood Mate Read Online Free Page B

She took a bag and filled it with the
zucchini behind him and began to push her cart in the opposite
direction.
    If she got away
from him this time, he wouldn’t have another chance to do this the
nice way. A third approach would make her feel stalked and erect
stronger barriers against him. A fourth might equal a restraining
order no matter how spaced apart their meetings were. He followed
her, trying to wipe away the panicked desperation she’d no doubt
experienced on their first encounter weeks ago. Such intense emotion
would do nothing to assuage her fears.
    “Nicolette,
wait.” His voice was more controlled than the day he’d chased her
outside the coffee shop.
    She stopped but
didn’t turn around, her shoulders radiating tension. When he
reached her cart, she said, “You remember my name.”
    “And you
remember me.” He hadn’t been a hundred percent sure that her fear
wasn’t a natural wariness toward men she didn’t know. Some women
were like that, and all things considered, it was a good instinct to
have. And not just when it came to vampires.
    “You would be
hard to forget,” she admitted.
    He wasn’t sure
that was a compliment, but he’d take it. “One coffee. You’ll
feel better.”
     
    ***
     
    Nicole wasn’t
sure why she agreed to coffee with the scary stranger. Sadness,
loneliness, despondence, perhaps? Dominic had wrapped himself more
tightly in his work, creating a cocoon she couldn’t hope to
penetrate. It didn’t matter what she did, he’d shut her out, and
none of it made sense.
    She bristled when
August guided her a back booth. There was no way she’d do this if
it weren’t daylight outside with a bustling street of busy people
around them.
    She stared at the
diamond bracelet she couldn’t bring herself to take off.
    “Did your
husband give you that?” August asked. He was perceptive. Maybe too
perceptive. But then, what woman bought such an extravagant piece of
jewelry for herself? Diamonds were the domain of lovers.
    Nicole couldn’t
help the tears that came then. She hadn’t expected or intended to
cry in front of him, but she’d kept it in so long around others
that the dam was bound to burst. With a stranger it wouldn’t
matter. She hadn’t told her family or her coworkers. She’d
thought if she went along and pretended that everything was fine with Rose and Rose that it would be.
    “Are you happy
with him?” he asked, echoing the question he’d asked the last
time they’d met.
    Pain radiated from
his face. Had he scared her that first day because he was dangerous
or because she’d been attracted? Maybe his danger was to her
marriage, not to her, physically. She tried to remember their first
meeting. Of course August was attractive. He was attractive in the
way that no red-blooded American woman could deny, but then, so was
Dominic. There was no need to seek elsewhere for that.
    But here, now, was
a man who cared, someone looking at her in that half-starved way her
husband had always looked at her. That look she missed so much.
    She didn’t pull
away when he reached across the table, his large, cool hand covering
hers. “Nicolette? Are you happy?”
    “No,” she
whispered. She’d never said it out loud.
    “Then why do you
wear the bracelet?”
    “Because the
moment he gave it to me was the last time he loved me.”
    The depth of the
pathos of that statement was reflected in the pity in August’s
eyes.
    “You don’t
deserve to be treated this way.”
    She jerked her
hand away from his. “How do you know what I deserve?” If he
thought that line was going to work on her, he hadn’t been on the
dating scene in a while.
    “What happened?
You were floating the day I met you.”
    Something niggled
the back of her mind, but it didn’t make any sense. Coincidence
happened. Maybe Dominic hadn’t been as great as she’d thought.
Maybe she’d been settling somehow. Maybe running into August,
another man showing a strong interest in her had taken the wool