Page 55 of Protector Unmatched

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Moments later, Daphne unlocked her apartment door with trembling fingers and entered. Pearce was behind her and closed the door, then flipped the deadbolt. The sound sent a shiver down her spine. Had she made a mistake allowing him in?

“You haven’t answered my question,” she reminded him. “Why did you follow me?” She turned to face him.

Pearce sighed. “I overheard you on the phone. I’d waited in a bistro across from your work. I wanted to fake running into you so I could ask you for a date. But when I caught up with you, you were on the phone. To Guido, or Kevin as we now know. And what I heard concerned me. So I followed you to make sure nothing happened to you.”

“I didn’t see you.”

“Because most of the time I was invisible. It makes it easy to shadow somebody. But I wasn’t doing it in a creepy stalker kind of way, believe me.”

A faint smile stole onto her lips. “I get that. But why didn’t you just call me for a date? You had my number.”

Pearce shrugged. “Maybe I got the feeling that you might say no.”

“So you’d rather get a rejection face to face, is that it?”

He chuckled softly. “I thought perhaps I could talk you into it with my charming smile.”

She decided not to comment on his attempt at levity. There was nothing casual about the entire situation. She’d just found out that vampires, immortals, and demons existed. She didn’t know what to think of it. Was she shocked? Yes. Scared? To a point. Could she trust Pearce? Not sure.

“What’s bothering you?” he asked, looking at her as if he could see into her mind.

“Everything.” She didn’t even know where to begin. “Will my brother be all right?”

“Yes. Ryder will take care of him, and Leila is a very accomplished doctor.”

“Is she a vampire too?”

“No. She’s human. And the wife of one of the other Stealth Guardian warriors.”

That stunned her. “An immortal married to a human?”

“It happens more often than you’d think. Our race is short of female offspring. We don’t have a lot of women. Hence, when we mate, we may choose a human woman.”

She didn’t ask the question that was burning on her lips, how such a match would even work long term, given that the immortal was, well, immortal, and the human was not. Instead, she asked, “And Leila knows what her husband is?”

“Of course. She lives in the compound with him and their twins.”

“Oh.” She hadn’t expected to hear that there would be children. Nor had she expected Pearce to volunteer information.

“Is there something else I can say or do to ease your mind? To make you trust me?”

Trust? She hesitated. Did she have reason to trust him? To her surprise, a few things came to mind immediately: he’d saved her from being caught by the police; he’d found her brother and uncovered his scam; he’d saved her brother from the two thugs; and, last but not least, he’d saved her from the assailant who’d pressed a knife to her throat. Plenty of reasons. But what were the cons? He’d lied to her about who he was. One minus against four pluses. The scale weighed heavily on the trust side. And she did trust him.

But she had questions. “As an immortal you never get sick?”

“Never.”

While she had so many more questions, there was one more thing she had to see eyes once more with her own eyes to cement this new reality in her mind. “Would you make yourself invisible right now? I need to see it, now that I’m calmer. I need to make sure I wasn’t dreaming.”

He nodded, and in mid-nod, he simply disappeared in front of her eyes.

“Are you still here?”

“I’m still standing at the same spot.”

Daphne bridged the distance with two steps and reached out with her hands. She could feel him, his torso, his shoulders. She slid one hand farther up. His face. His lips. She felt him press a kiss to her fingertips, making her shiver. But this shiver was different from the one earlier. It had nothing to do with fear.