Love Game Chapter 6

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CHAPTER 6

Danica

“KELLZ, I CAN’T HEAR,” Dani groaned, looking up from her laptop to Kelly tugging their ancient vacuum cleaner around their living room. Why her roommate insisted on keeping that old thing around was anyone’s guess. It had to be older than her grandfather, who would’ve celebrated his five-hundredth birthday this year. The roar of the vacuum ceased.

“What? It’s vacuum day.” Kelly yanked the cord coiling on the floor.

“Our housekeeper is going to be mighty upset that you’re trying to put her out of business. Besides, you’ve vacuumed in here already. Twice.”

“Sorry,” she dropped the long cord with a thud. “I can’t help it. You know I clean when I’m nervous.”

Wasn’t that the truth. Kelly had been cleaning for three hours straight, doing anything from emptying the trash, vacuuming the floors, cleaning the bathroom to vacuuming the floors again. Instead of sitting still, she wrapped up the cord of the vacuum cleaner and made her way to the kitchen to give their already sparkling countertops another shine.

But a sudden sound at their front door had Kelly clutching the wet soapy rag in her hand, causing a whoosh of water to splatter at her feet.

“Oh my God. It’s him.” Kelly’s limbs seemed to petrify in place as she stared at their front door.

By the gods, Kelly was a nervous freaking wreck. Before she could answer, Asher was out of his room and tending to the door. Through the crack in the door, she saw the postman asking for Asher’s signature on the other side.

“Who is it?” Kelly pulled her lip between her teeth.

“Calm down, it’s just the mailman.”

“It is a package from Breanne,” Asher grinned, then took it into his room to open it.

“Oh.” She breathed in relief, but a crease still formed in her brow. “I thought that was…” She didn’t finish, but she didn’t have to. She thought it was Tattoos.

“Kellz, would you calm down? No one is coming for us.”

It had been long enough for Kelly to realize that waiting around for Sebastian Wade, aka the boogeyman, was completely ruining their style. They hadn’t even ventured out to Taco Nacho because Kelly refused to leave the apartment.

“I have a bad feeling. You know, I think inherited my mom’s sixth sense. None of her magic, but all of her intuition. Did you know her intuition was so great she predicted the great flood of 1982 before it hit town? They say she saved a thousand lives. I think it rubbed off on me because I can feel something’s off.”

“I don’t doubt you, but no one’s going to get to us. Even if he tried, I have Asher keeping watch at all times. He will not get past him.”

That last bit was a bald-faced lie. If Sebastian Wade could force her to sit when and where he wanted and spill her stinking guts all over the plane, he could probably make Asher step to the side while he strode through her front door in all of his glory. But it’d been days and Sebastian Wade hadn’t shown up at her door yet.

“You’re right. I’m being paranoid, aren’t I?” Kelly begrudgingly sighed, then sat in their freshly upholstered navy pinstripe wingback chair, but didn’t settle in. Instead, she remained on the edge of the seat, ready to bounce up at a moment’s notice.

“Just a tad. So, come on, we have to get ready for our internship. You promised me to introduce me to your contact.”

“Today?”

“I have to go in for orientation. Remember?” She said, but Kelly’s bulging eyes made her quickly say, “Asher will be with us.”

Kelly’s eyes flickered to Asher’s door. Uncertainty blanketed her eyes, but she subtly nodded as if she were giving herself the pep talk of the century. The jury was out on whether it was working, but when she looked up again, the worry had left Kelly’s face.

“I’m overreacting,” she laughed sheepishly and her body loosened. “Let me get ready. It’ll only take a minute.”

Kelly crossed the living room and went into her en-suite bathroom. The best part about their 3-bedroom apartment share was that they each had their own bathrooms.

Dani moved the computer off her lap and unfurled herself from the throw blanket draped across her knees. She should probably freshen up too.

Asher poked his head out of his room. “Who is this person Kelly is afraid of?”

Holy crapola, she hadn’t realized Asher was listening. Not that he wouldn’t be. Vampire hearing was a real pain in the ass sometimes. She huffed and glared silently at her roommate’s closed bedroom door.

“A figment of Kelly’s imagination. I met someone on the plane home and now Kelly thinks he’s got some attachment to me. I haven’t seen or heard from him since I was at the airport.”

“I shall bring extra weapons, just in case.”

“Not you too.”

“One cannot be too careful while guarding a royal.” Asher went back into his room, slid the key into the lock of his weapon’s closet to open it. An assortment of weapons hung inside the cabinet. If they ever got raided, it would probably be the city’s biggest weapons bust in nearly fifty years. She hovered his doorframe.

“Can we ixnay on the whole royal thing? No one knows, and I don’t want them to find out.”

“Ixnay? What is this?”

“It means to keep quiet. I’m incognito.” No one knew she was a royal. And she’d like to keep it that way. As far as Kelly was concerned, her parents were rich recluses, choosing to spend their time gallivanting across the world on ski trips, instead of making sure she got to class on time. She’d rather liked that people didn’t know her for her title. It made her feel less of an oddity.

Asher stared at Kelly’s door. “She is flattening her hair between two irons and listening to songs. She cannot hear us.”

“I understand, but I like that people don’t know me for my title.”

“Yes, Princess.”

“Dani,” she reminded him.

“Yes, Princess Dani,” he repeated.

From the look on Asher’s wide face, he’d meant it as a joke. She scowled and his grin grew. The warrior turned palace body guard shouldn’t take up comedy for a living.

“What’s in the package?” she eyed the opened box on Asher’s spartan bed with interest.

“Our transceivers. Breanne sent them.” Asher grabbed the vampire realm’s equivalent to a handheld radio and put one in her hands. It was small, oblong, and shiny black like polished onyx, but smooth like a river stone. It looked no different from a desk ornament. Well, that’s if river rocks could transmit important messages from the Crown through the portaled lands. But she’d never heard of one being used this far from the portal line before.

“I didn’t realize warriors got homesick.” She tossed the radio stone up into the air. Asher caught it before it landed in her palms.

“Be careful with that. It’s delicate.” Asher’s thick fingers turned the radio stone over in his hands as if looking for a scratch. When he found nothing, he placed it next to the other one on his desk.

“What for?” She snorted at his caution. “It’s not like they even work from this distance.”

“Once I’m done tinkering, they will be.”

Disbelief lifted her brow when Asher showed her the set of miniature tools he’d kept in a small velvet pouch on his desk.

“I’ll believe it when I see it.”

“Hey, where did everybody go?” Kelly called from the living room.

“In Asher’s room.”

“Are you ready?” Kelly barged in without a knock. In true Kelly fashion, she adorned a freshly curled bright electric blue wig that was completely at odds with the black lipstick painted on her lips. From the looks of it, makeup and hair became the armor she needed to fight against her worry.

“Sure am,” she said, nudging Asher’s weapons closet closed before Kelly could see what was inside of it.

“Good. I call shot gun.”

Author’s Note: The calm before the proverbial you know what…