“Yeah. They did,” he said with a wry smile, and told her, “They ate every last bite of it. They even split the head in the end.”

Holly didn’t comment, she was too busy trying to swallow the food in her mouth, which had suddenly transformed into a dry nasty ball at the reminder of that damned fish. Deciding a change of topic was necessary if she wanted to enjoy her meal, Holly asked, “So, you were born here in California but live in Canada now?”

In the midst of biting into his sandwich, Justin merely nodded. Once he’d chewed and swallowed though, he added, “My family still lives here, though.”

“Oh,” she said with surprise, and then tilted her head and asked, “Family?”

“Yeah, you know, mother, father, brothers and sisters. Family.” He grinned and teased, “We do have ’em you know. We aren’t hatched.”

“Yes, of course, I just—­are they all vampires too?” she asked, and then tsked with exasperation at herself and said, “Of course they are. If you’re over a hundred, you’d hardly still have parents and siblings alive if they weren’t.”

Justin nodded at her deduction. “My parents are old. Not as old as Lucian or anything, but old enough. Dad was born around the time of William the Conqueror. He fought alongside him in battle, in fact. Mom, though, wasn’t born until the late fourteenth century, during the peasants’ revolt in England, about 1381 I think, he added, to give her a reference point.

“Oh,” Holly breathed, sitting back slightly. Cripes, his parents were ancient.

“I have three brothers and three sisters,” he added. “Each the dutiful century apart. I’m the second youngest. The oldest is my brother Cam. He was born shortly after my parents mated and is over six hundred years old. My younger sister is six, no seven, this year.”

“Wow,” she murmured. “That’s . . . wow.”

Justin chuckled softly and shrugged. “I suppose it would be to a mortal. To me, it’s just my family.”

“Right.” Holly shook her head, finding it hard to imagine that seeming normal to anyone. But then she’d grown up in the mortal world, where older siblings were usually one to ten years and sometimes even as much as twenty years older, but never five or six centuries.

“Do you have any brothers or sisters?” Justin asked.

She watched him pick up the last of his first sandwich and pop it in his mouth, marveling that he had finished a whole foot-­long sub while she was only halfway through one half of hers. It seemed Dante and Tomasso weren’t the only ones who ate a lot. Her mother would have said it was because he was eating too fast, and if he’d just slow down he’d realize one sandwich would more than fill him up. Thoughts of her mom reminded her of his question, and Holly cleared her throat.

“No. I was an only child,” she said, and then smiled wryly and added. “Apparently, I was pretty much an accident.”

His eyebrows rose. “Why would you say that?”

“Because my parents told me so,” Holly said with a shrug and added, “Mom and Dad are archaeologists. They love what they do and are pretty much obsessed with it to the exclusion of everything else. If they aren’t on a dig, they’re planning and finding the funding for one. It doesn’t leave a lot of time for kids.”

He nodded slowly, his brows drawing together with what appeared to be concern. “Where did you stay when they went on these digs?”

“Oh, they took me with them,” she said lightly, and noting his surprise, nodded. “They did. I grew up in tents around the world, a ­couple months or a year in one place, and then on to the next.”

“You never went to school?” he asked with a frown.

“James’s mom taught us,” she explained and when he looked blank, added, “My husband, James. His father was an archaeologist on my father’s team too. His mother was a schoolteacher, but she gave up her job to join his dad on the digs and homeschooled us both. It was really very handy all the way around.”

“Yes, I guess so,” he murmured thoughtfully, and then commented, “So you’ve known James a long time.”

“All of my life,” she said with a small smile. “We were playmates as tiny tots, best friends during the preteens, boyfriend and girlfriend as teens and then . . .” She shrugged. “When I turned eighteen, we went off to college together. Well, actually, university,” she said with a smile. “We both went to the university of British Columbia.”

“British Columbia, Canada?” he clarified, and when she nodded, asked curiously, “Why?”

“It’s where James’s mom is from and where she went to university.”

“So she steered you toward it,” Justin guessed.

Holly nodded. “But both our families live down here in California. Well, our families’ families I guess,” she corrected. “Grandparents, aunts and uncles and such. James’s dad was from California. He met James’s mom while lecturing at her university. Anyway, after growing up in places like Egypt and such, BC seemed a bit chilly to us, and we both wanted to be closer to family, so once James graduated last year, we moved down here to look for work.”

“And then you married,” he guessed.

Holly shook her head. “Actually, we married almost four years ago. We had both finished our bachelors in our fields. We were living in different dorms on campus and finding it a bit difficult to handle after the life we’d led, so we decided to marry and move off campus together. I worked while he got his MBA in applied science, and now he’s working while I finish my courses to become an accountant.”

“But you’ve always been together,” he said slowly, a frown plucking at his face.

“Always,” she said solemnly. “He was my first kiss, my first date, and my first love.”

“I see,” Justin whispered, then grabbed his second sandwich and rather than open it, slid it back into the take-­out bag, grabbed it, his empty chip bag and his pop and glass and headed inside. “I have to talk to Gia.”

Holly stared after him silently. She wasn’t terribly surprised by his reaction. That might even be part of the reason she’d said what she had. He had to understand that she was married, and happily, and that she loved her husband. She was not open to being his life mate. Still, she hated to hurt his feelings.

Sighing, Holly glanced down to the remainder of her sandwich and then began wrapping it up. She’d finish it later, maybe. For now, she’d lost her appetite.

“I shouldn’t have turned her,” Justin muttered, pacing the length of Gia’s bedroom. “I should have waited for Marguerite to find me a mate. She never messes up like this.”

“You did what you thought was right at the time,” Gia said solemnly.

“Well, it was a mistake,” Justin said harshly. “She’s married.”

“Yes, she is,” Gia agreed.

“But I mean really married. She’s known this guy since she was a kid. She grew up with him. He was her first kiss and her first love, for God’s sake. She’ll never leave him. Not even for me,” he said with dismay.

“Maybe not,” Gia agreed. “Or maybe she will.”

“I threw my one turn away for nothing,” Justin realized with horror.

“Would you really rather she had died?” Gia asked patiently.

“Of course not,” he snapped. “I would rather she hadn’t fallen on the damned scissors at all. What kind of an idiot runs with scissors?” he asked with sudden fury.

Gia bit her lip, he suspected to keep from laughing, and shook her head. “Well, sadly, she did run with scissors, did fall on them, and you did turn her to save her life when you realized she was your life mate. Now, I suggest you deal with it.”

Justin scowled at her grimly and then snatched up the take-­out bag and his drink from her dresser, where he’d set them on entering and whirled to storm out of her room.

“Deal with it,” he muttered to himself as he stomped downstairs. “Just deal with the fact that you turned a woman you can’t have. Nice. Thanks for that, Gia. Very helpful advice.”