"That's okay. I'm good. The break refreshed me," he assured her.
Shrugging, Mirabeau settled in the seat and did up her seat belt as he started out of the parking lot. They were back on the highway when Stephanie suddenly leaned forward between the two front seats to ask, "What's your real name, Tiny?"
Mirabeau glanced at him, curious about the answer to that herself, and caught the amusement tugging at his lips as he asked, "What makes you think it isn't Tiny?"
"Because no one but a pair of spazzes would name their kid Tiny," the teenager assured him dryly.
"Spazzes, huh?" Tiny chuckled, and then said, "Well as it would happen, my given name is Tinh." He spelled it out, then added, "Tiny is just what everyone has always called me, like Billy instead of Bill."
"Tinh?" Stephanie said with amazement. "What kind of name is that?"
"Vietnamese."
"You aren't Vietnamese," she said, then asked uncertainly, "Are you?"
"No," he said with a smile.
"Then why did your parents name you that?"
"My father was a soldier in Vietnam," he answered patiently. "He was injured while on recon. He's pretty sure he would have died where he fell had he not been rescued, and nursed back to health by a friendly named Tinh. Dad was never sure if that was his last name or first, but when he married mom and they had me, he named me after the man who had saved his life."
"Oh," Stephanie murmured. "I guess that was cool."
"I always thought so," Tiny agreed.
"I guess it's a good thing you didn't end up a little guy though," Stephanie commented. "They would have been dooming you to a life of teasing and bullying, naming you that if you were little."
"My being little was never very likely," Tiny assured her. "My mother is five-ten, and my father is my size."
"Hmm." Stephanie grunted, then sat back in her seat. "I'm going to watch the end of the movie I started before we stopped to eat."
Mirabeau glanced over her shoulder to see the girl putting earplugs into her ears and hitting the play button on the DVD player in the back of Tiny's seat. She then turned back to face front, but found herself unable to keep from glancing at the man driving. Finally, she asked softly, "They're still alive then? Your parents?"
"Oh yeah," Tiny assured her. "Both retired and spoiling the grandbabies my little sister has given them...and cursing me for not giving them more yet," he added with a wry smile.
"You're close to them," she realized, the thought troubling her.
"Yes," he admitted, then glanced sideways at her, and added, "they'll like you."
Mirabeau held his gaze for a minute, then turned away to look out the window as she tried to settle the sudden quandary in her mind. She had only been considering her own point of view when it came to their being life mates. The risk it would be to open her heart up to him and possibly lose him at some later date as she had her family. She hadn't considered what he might have to give up to be her life mate. That perhaps he wouldn't be willing to give it up for her.
"Tell me about your family," Tiny said suddenly.
Mirabeau glanced at him sharply, then away, muttering, "What do you want to know? They're dead."
"Yes," he said quietly. "Marguerite said that your uncle killed them. Tell me how...and why?"
Mirabeau stared out the window silently for a moment, but she didn't see the vehicles or landscaping they were passing. Her mind took her back to France in 1572, a mad time in the country.
"My father and uncle were turned in the thirteenth century by a rogue," she said finally. "Fortunately, they were new turns and had committed no crimes so were spared when the rogue was hunted down and killed."
"Like Leigh's friend Danny?" Tiny asked.
Mirabeau nodded silently, then cleared her throat and continued. "They were very close before the turn and for a while afterward, but then my father met my mother. She was his life mate, and they became wrapped up in each other as life mates tend to do. My uncle and father drifted apart while my parents had my three brothers and me in quick succession."
"In quick succession?" Tiny asked with surprise. "I thought you had to wait a hundred years between children?"
"Well, yes, but I mean they had my eldest brother right away in 1255, and then as soon as the hundred years were up, had my second brother and so on. They didn't leave extra time between each. I was born in 1555, almost a hundred years to the day after the youngest of my brothers was born."
"Ah," Tiny murmured.
"Anyway, they were happy. We all were, but apparently my uncle was not. He hadn't yet found his life mate and was jealous of my father, who had my mother and us children, as well as wealth and a title. He wanted all of it...including my mother. I guess he thought the St. Bartholomew Massacres would be a good cover for his getting it all."
"I'm sorry," Tiny interrupted gently. "Marguerite mentioned the St. Bartholomew Massacres to me, but I'm not sure what it was exactly."
Mirabeau frowned, wondering how something that had always figured so large in her own life was unknown to most of today's mortals. It was such a turning point in her life that it was difficult to accept that it meant nothing to others. Shrugging that aside, she explained, "St. Bartholomew Massacres were basically a mess. There was some history behind what happened, but the final straw that appeared to light the fury was when the Catholic Marguerite of Valois, the sister of the King of France, was married to Henry of Navarre, a Protestant. The population of Paris was very Roman Catholic, and equally anti-Huguenot. French Protestant," Mirabeau explained before he could ask what a Huguenot was. She then continued, "Over the next six days after the wedding, several events conspired to stir things up, but the end result was that on August twenty-third, the gates to the city were closed, and a Roman Catholic mob began to hunt down and slaughter Protestants in the streets. Thousands were killed, including women and children."
"And your family was in Paris?" Tiny asked with a frown.
"No. And they were Catholic, not Protestant, and they died in late September not August. However, even up to October of that year, there were similar outbreaks of such attacks in cities and towns all over France. Even the hint of Protestantism was enough to mark a family for death.
"I don't know if my uncle planned what he did ahead of time and the St. Bartholomew Massacres simply offered a convenient cover, or if their eruption spurred him to action, but he planned to claim we had been suspected of Protestantism, had been chained in the barn, and burned alive."
"Nasty bastard," Tiny said grimly. "His plan went awry, obviously." And when she glanced at him in question, he pointed out, "You're still alive."
"Oh, yes." She frowned and peered out the window again, then admitted, "But I'm only alive because I was a rebellious seventeen-year-old who snuck out of the castle to drink wine in the stables with a very handsome stableboy named Fredrique."
She glanced over in time to see Tiny's mouth twitch with amusement and wished she could smile too, but even all this time later she didn't see the humor in it. "My uncle had arrived for dinner. After dinner, he and my father and brothers went out to view a new horse my father had purchased. My uncle's men must have been waiting and taken them by surprise, slaughtering them the moment they entered the stable. By the time I snuck away to meet Fredrique, there was no one around in the stables, and I thought they'd already returned to the castle." She pursed her lips and added bitterly, "And my uncle had returned to the castle...to get my mother.
She closed her eyes briefly, then continued, "We were in the loft drinking; Fredrique was trying to steal a kiss when my uncle dragged my mother into the stables to show her what he'd done. The headless bodies of my father and brothers had been lying in the stall beneath us, covered with a thin layer of straw the entire time Fredrique and I had been drinking above. He showed them to her and demanded she be his life mate."
"Hang on," Tiny said with amazement. "Be his life mate? How could she be his life mate? She was your father's life mat
e. And where were his men?"
"He must have sent his men away, intending to deal with my mother and me himself." Mirabeau said, then grimaced, and explained, "As for her being his life mate, my uncle could not read or control my mother either. She could have been a life mate to either brother, but chose my father."
"Smart lady," Tiny muttered.
Mirabeau sighed. "Perhaps, but I think that is what really drove him mad. That had she but chosen him, he would have had all that my father did."
"I see." Tiny nodded solemnly. "Yes, that must have been hard for him to bear. I'm sorry. Go on."
Mirabeau took a breath herself and swallowed down the pain that always rose in her when she thought on these events. She hadn't told the tale to anyone since Lucian had come upon her that night, and she'd sobbed the story to him. She found, though, that this time it hurt much less and wondered if it was the passage of time, or because it was Tiny she was finally telling it to. It did still hurt, and tears were crowding her eyes, but she was nowhere near sobbing with the agony of loss she'd suffered.
Mirabeau glanced down, noticed his large hand covering her own on her leg, and wondered when Tiny had put it there, but then she cleared her throat and continued, "My uncle told my mother that if she agreed to be his life mate and backed him up in the story that a roaming group of Roman Catholic vigilantes had killed my father and brothers, he would let me live."
"Bastard," Tiny muttered again.
Much to Mirabeau's amazement, she actually felt a smile twitch at her lips at the angry word and the support behind it. But the desire to smile died quickly as she continued, "I thought my mother would agree. I was silently begging her to, thinking we would find a way to escape later and tell the truth...and I really think she would have had she not spotted me peeking out from the hayloft. She straightened then, her expression determined as she said, 'No.'
"My uncle was furious. "Not even to save your daughter?" he raged with disbelief, and she suddenly looked serene and stared right at me as she said, "My daughter can save herself. You will not be able to kill Mirabeau. She is strong and brave. She will escape you and carry word of what you have done to the people who can do something about it."
"She was telling you what to do," Tiny murmured quietly.
"Yes," Mirabeau agreed.
"What did your uncle do?" he prompted, when she didn't immediately continue.
"He roared, 'I will slaughter her in her bed where she even now lies sleeping,' and pressed his sword to her throat, but my mother just smiled at me reassuringly over his shoulder, and said, 'You may try. But I vow you will not succeed, and much as I love my daughter, I will not spend one moment even pretending to be your life mate. I shall never let you touch or think of me in that way.'"
When Mirabeau fell silent as she recalled that moment, Tiny squeezed her hand and asked in a hushed whisper, "And so he killed her?"
Mirabeau shook her head and used her free hand to wipe away the tear that had escaped her. "No. She killed herself."
"What?" he asked with amazement. "But how? Why?"
Mirabeau shrugged. "The why is because while he couldn't control her, and they were both immortals, he was still male and stronger. He would have raped and tormented her first, and I would have tried to save her, endangering myself. She knew all this, and so..." Mirabeau took a deep breath. "The moment the last word had left her lips, she caught his hand holding the sword and jerked it toward herself while throwing her head forward, beheading herself on the steel edge."
"Jesus," Tiny breathed, then shook his head faintly. "I wouldn't even have thought that possible. The strength needed to do it, both physically and just in fortitude..."
"We are strong," Mirabeau said simply, though she had found it all rather shocking at the time. She had never imagined anyone doing that either, but her mother had been like Marguerite, a strong woman capable of doing whatever she put her mind to. And, Mirabeau supposed, her mother had probably seen little to live for with her life mate lying dead at her feet. Finding a life mate was a rare thing, and life could be so lonely when you moved through it without one.
Pushing that thought aside, Mirabeau admitted quietly, "I started to scream when she did it. Fortunately, Fredrique covered my mouth, and my uncle didn't hear what little sound escaped over his own frustrated roar. We stayed where we were while he ranted madly, but when he left to go find me, we slipped out of the loft. I told Fredrique to make himself scarce and mounted a horse and fled. My uncle's men were camped in the woods outside the castle walls. They mounted and gave chase when I raced through their camp. I think they might have caught me had Lucian not suddenly appeared. He and my father were both horse enthusiasts and had become good friends. He'd been heading to La Roche to see the new horse. He arrived just as my uncle's men were about to overtake me."
"And he took care of them," Tiny said quietly.
"Yes," Mirabeau agreed quietly. "As well as my uncle."
Tiny nodded and allowed several minutes to pass in silence, then asked, "What are we going to do about being life mates, Mirabeau La Roche?"
Chapter Ten
Mirabeau glanced at Tiny as panic and shock coursed through her. She hadn't expected the blunt question, and responded harshly. "What do you mean? I never said we were life mates. What makes you think--"
"It was obvious you couldn't read me in my room when you tried," Tiny interrupted quietly, then added, "You're eating too, which is another sign. And I'm pretty darned sure I was enjoying some of that shared pleasure in my bed this morning or last night or whatever it was."
"You two did it last night?" Stephanie squawked.
Mirabeau turned sharply to see the girl still wore her earplugs. Her confusion as to how she could have heard their conversation must have shown because Stephanie rolled her eyes.
"I don't need my ears to hear your thoughts," she said overloudly thanks to the movie sound track playing in her ears.
"Yes, but we were speaking what you heard," Tiny muttered.
"And you're thinking as you speak," she pointed out dryly, then shook her head. "Honestly, this life-mate business makes complete idiots out of adults. I mean, Dani's a doctor, for God's sake, and she's been pretty brainless since meeting Decker. Now you two." She shook her head again and turned her concentration to changing movies as she muttered, "Never gonna let myself get into that state. No sir."
Mirabeau flopped back in her seat with a sigh. Honestly, teenagers were a pain. She was amazed her parents had been willing to have more than one, let alone not take very long breaks between them...like maybe a millennium or something. Certainly her time so far in this kid's company was making her think a person had to be insane to want children. Sure, they were all cute and cuddly when they were someone else's baby, but that was when you could send them home. Spend twenty-four hours with them, and there were messy diapers, burping up on you, and the endless crying...then they grew up into smart-ass teenagers.
"I don't know who you think you're fooling, Mirabeau," Stephanie said with amusement. "I can read your mind, remember. I know you like me."
Mirabeau grimaced but didn't argue the point. Despite all the smart-ass comments, she did like the kid. Stephanie reminded her of herself when she was young. She'd bite her tongue off before saying that out loud though, she realized, and grimaced again as Stephanie began to chuckle in the backseat, positive she'd heard it anyway.
"So?" Tiny prompted after a moment.
It figured he wasn't going to let the subject go, Mirabeau thought unhappily. The problem was she didn't know what they were going to do about it. In truth, she knew that what Stephanie had said last night was right. While losing her parents and brothers had hurt horribly, she would never have dreamed of missing out on the years she'd had with them to save herself that loss. So, did she really want to walk away from what she could have with Tiny just to be sure she never suffered the pain of possibly losing him? Something that may never happen, she rem
inded herself. After all, she could die first, or they might die together.
However, while she thought she might be willing to go forward with it and be his life mate, there was more than just herself to consider here. Tiny too had a choice to make, and he was the one who still had family to lose. Not that he would have to give them up at once, but eventually, he would have to break away from them to prevent their noticing that he wasn't aging.
"What do you want to do about it?" she asked finally, rather than answer.
"I really don't know, Mirabeau," Tiny admitted with a wry smile. "A little more than twenty-four hours ago I stood in that church in New York and told Marguerite that I had a family, one I wasn't willing to lose even for the bliss of a life mate, but now..." He shook his head, and said with bewilderment, "They seem so far away when I'm with you. I love them, but..." He turned to peer at her briefly, then returned his gaze to the road, and said, "Twenty-four hours ago, to me you were just the gal with the black-and-pink hair. How could you become so important so quickly?"
Mirabeau had no idea. She had no idea how this life-mate business worked, just that it did, that she was showing all the symptoms of it, and that the longer she spent with him, the more she wanted to take that risk.
The sign warning of the approach of the off-ramp that led to Port Henry appeared ahead, and Mirabeau stared at it, rather surprised. She hadn't thought that much time had passed since they'd left the restaurant, but then she supposed she'd been a bit distracted with their conversation.
"I guess we'll have to leave this talk for later," Tiny murmured, putting on his blinker to take the off-ramp. "After we leave Port Henry, we'll stop somewhere and discuss it."
Mirabeau nodded at the suggestion but suspected that if they stopped anywhere the least bit private, they wouldn't get much talking done. Even somewhere very public wasn't likely to stop them from consummating their relationship if they were inside the SUV. Once the assignment was over, there would be nothing to stop them except themselves, and life mates weren't known for having a lot of restraint. She'd heard it said that new life mates were like drug addicts, constantly jonesing for a life-mate fix, and she finally understood the comment. She was jonesing for Tiny, very aware of his scent and the heat coming off his body, wishing she could sit closer, run her hands over his chest and legs, nibble at his ear...She didn't much care that he was driving. The only thing really preventing her doing all of that was Stephanie's presence and the fact that they had been charged with getting her safely to Port Henry. But once that was out of the way...