Page 39 of Night's Reckoning
“Grow up. Cheng isn’t your competition. If Tenzin has feelings for him, then you don’t want to have a relationship with her. That would be foolish. If she doesn’t have feelings for him and the two of you actually stand a chance at anything approaching a normal relationship—which I still have very strong doubts about—then he’s no threat to you. According to you, she’s had him. If she wanted him, he’d still be hers.”
“Maybe Cheng ended it,” he muttered.
“Would he still be alive if he’d done that?” Fabia asked. “That’s a serious question, by the way. I have no idea what Tenzin would do if someone broke up with her.”
“Okay, probably not.” Ben rubbed his ear. “Why are you so mean?”
“Because you are so thickheaded.” She marched back to her room and closed the door. “I’m taking a shower and changing. Unless you want to scare her with your smell, you should too.”
11
Tenzin watched Ben as he entered the room with Fabia. The two of them moved similarly. She hadn’t noticed that before. They had a similar gait and pace. A consequence of growing up in comparable homes or something deeper?
Cheng glanced up from the plans he was scanning at the conference table. “Good. They’re here.” He looked at her from the side and his voice dropped. “You wanted him here. I don’t want any problems, Cricket.”
“There won’t be.”
“The woman is a good addition to the team. I looked over her résumé. She’ll be an asset.”
“That’s what he said too.”
“Did you talk to him in Penglai?”
“Yes.” They hadn’t talked in the way that Benjamin wanted, but Tenzin was still deciding what to do about that.
“Good.” Cheng flicked his portfolio closed. “Then there should be no problems.”
She looked at him innocently. “Are there ever?”
“Yes.” The corner of his mouth twitched. “Always. That’s why you should move here. You need a keeper.”
“Do you think so?” How amusing. “And you think you’d like the job?”
“I’ve told you before. The offer is open.”
Tenzin turned back to Ben, staring at him with no pretense of hiding her gaze. “No,” she said. “You and I only get along for short periods of time, Cheng. We’re too much alike.”
“Do you think so?”
Not really. She and Cheng were as different as water and wind. Still, it was good to humor him, and she didn’t want to say no too often. Doing that might create resentment, which wouldn’t serve her purposes.
Cheng examined Fabia. “The archaeologist is attractive.”
“She is. The short hair suits her.” Tenzin fingered the shorn hair at her own nape. She liked the velvet thickness of it. Liked the sensation of running her fingers along the edge. She enjoyed the swing of cool silk along her jaw when the blunt edges of her hair touched her skin. The tactile pleasure of it fed a growing hunger that lurked on the edge of her consciousness. She didn’t examine it; it was a hunger and she fed it.
She hadn’t told anyone—not even Chloe—that she’d returned to New York a month before and asked Breanna to trim it for her. It had grown out too much, and Tenzin wanted the velvet feeling back.
Cheng had noticed the newly trimmed hair, but he hadn’t asked. Jonathan told her short hair made her look like an adult and it was about time, which made no sense to her at all. She’d been an adult for thousands of years.
Cheng glanced at the old pocket watch he kept with him. “Kadek and Johari should be here in a few minutes.”
Tenzin glanced at Ben. He was looking at her. Looking away. Looking at Cheng. She’d rarely seen him so uneasy. He usually blended in wherever he went. “Let them eat before the other vampires get here. Humans can become uncomfortable if they are the only ones eating in a room.”
“Good idea.” Cheng rose and walked over to Ben and Fabia, playing host for the humans, getting them food and drink to put them at ease. Chatting in that easy way he had with mortals. Tenzin remained at the end of the conference table, paging through a book she’d already read from cover to cover.
The New York penthouse had been the same when she visited. Her roof garden hadn’t died, though it wasn’t thriving the way it had been when she was tending it. Her loft in the apartment was free of dust and smelled as fresh as when she’d left it months before. Ben was the only one allowed in her alcove, which meant he’d been cleaning it in her absence.
Tenzin couldn’t decide what she wanted to do about New York. Or about Ben. She hated to feel surprised, but he’d surprised her in Puerto Rico when he told her he remembered what had happened in the caves. She’d thought he’d been too rattled from blood loss to remember the passionate kiss. The biting. The… other things.
