Page 60 of Dawn Caravan
“Of course you do.”
“I don’t—” He raised a hand. “Okay, look. I don’t want to fight about this.”
“You don’t want to fight because you weren’t winning,” she muttered.
“No, this is supposed to be just business, and it’s getting into the personal.” He gathered up the papers. “We agreed to keep it business.”
“Our lives have been entwined for over ten years,” Tenzin said. “Do you really think we can keep anything only to business at this point?”
“Doesn’t matter.” His throat felt tight. “That was the agreement.”
Tenzin stared at him for a long time. “So it was.”
She rose and left him alone with his files.
* * *
They’dall agreed to stay in Gavin’s house in Budapest since he had plenty of room for them all, and with any luck, they’d only be there for a night. Knowing that Tenzin was going to be not-sleeping in a room right next to him was messing with Ben’s mind.
He wanted to talk with her. He didn’t know what to say. He probably shouldn’t talk to her, but he found the urge to just be in the same room with her was nearly impossible to resist.
Was it her blood? Was this because he’d taken her blood and his amnis wanted her? Ben felt slightly desperate thinking about the end of this job. In a matter of days, they’d be finished and he’d have no excuse to be near her. What would he do? Where would he go?
He had no obligation to return to China to be near Zhang because his sire had asked nothing of him.
He had no obligations in Los Angeles except with family.
When he thought about his future, the only thing he wanted to do was what he had been doing. He wanted to look for lost art for clients.
Ben found her in her room. He knocked on the door and waited for her to open it, but all he heard was a clatter of what sounded like plastic hitting the floor.
“Tenzin?”
She opened the door, her cheeks flushed. The sight sent an immediate surge of arousal to his groin even though he knew she’d probably just been having blood-wine.
“What?” She was irritated. She glanced down at the sudden tent in his pants. “I don’t have time for that right now.”
“I wasn’t… What was that?” Ben found her irritation oddly comforting. “Did you break something?”
She spun and looked at a scatter of yellow plastic on the ground. “This… thing! It’s driving me crazy.”
He walked into the room and stared at the mangled plastic and circuitry. “Is that the new Nintendo portable console?”
“Yes. If I wear thick gloves, it’s too clumsy. If I wear thin gloves” —she held up her hands in light pink driving gloves— “then it breaks in under a half an hour!”
He looked at the stack of boxes next to the bed. “How many of these things have you wrecked?”
“This is the third.”
“Tenzin.”
She kicked the pieces toward the wastebasket. “What else am I supposed to do? I’m going crazy waiting. Why aren’t we flying to Farkas’s house tonight?”
“Because tomorrow he has an event at the winery and no one will be home.”
She let her head fall back. “So we just sedate him or something if he’s in the house. Comeon, Ben, you’re a vampire now. You have amnis.”
“Which I’m not going to use on humans unless I absolutely have to.” The familiarity of the argument was soothing. “I don’t know why you find this surprising.”
