Born to Bite (37 page)

“I have someone I want you to meet.”

Alex frowned at the strange greeting, slow to recognize her sister’s voice. Once she did, a deep sigh slid from her lips and she shook her head wearily. She really didn’t need this right now. She was heartily sick of the parade of men Sam had been presenting her with over the last eight months. It had been bad enough when she and their younger sister, Jo, had both been single and available, but now that Jo had Nicholas, Sam was focusing all of her attention on finding Alex a man. She supposed it wouldn’t be so bad if even one of the men Sam had insisted on introducing her to had shown some mild interest in her, but after barely more than a moment, and sometimes as little as a few seconds, every single one had simply ignored her, or in some cases, even walked away. It was giving her a complex. She’d even started dieting, something she’d sworn she’d never do, and exercising, a pastime she detested, as well as trying different makeup and fashion choices in an effort to boost her now flagging ego.

This really was the last thing she needed, but knowing Sam’s heart was in the right place, Alex forced herself to hang on to her patience, even managing to keep her tone to only mildly exasperated. “Sam, honey, my head chef just quit and I have one hour to replace him before the dinner set start to arrive. I don’t have time for your matchmaking right now.”

“Oh, but, Alex, I’m pretty sure this is the one,” she protested.

“Right. Well, maybe he is, but if he isn’t a world class chef, I’m not interested,” Alex said grimly. “I’m hanging up now.”

“He is!”

Alex paused with the phone halfway back to its cradle and pulled it back to her ear. “What? He is what?”

“A chef?” Sam said, but it sounded like a question rather than an announcement. It was enough to make Alex narrow her eyes.

“For real?” she asked suspiciously.

“Yes.” Sam sounded more certain this time.

“Where did he last work?” she asked cautiously.

“I—I’m not sure,” Sam hedged. “He’s from Europe.”

“Europe?” Alex asked, her interest growing. They had some fine culinary schools in Europe. She’d attended one of them.

“Yes,” Sam assured her. “Actually, that’s why I was sure he would be the one. He’s into cooking and fine cuisine like you.”

Alex drummed her fingers thoughtfully on the desk. It seemed like just too much good fortune that her sister wanted to introduce her to a chef the very day she was in desperate need of one. On the other hand, she’d suffered enough bad luck the last few months that a bit of good luck was surely in order. Finally, she asked, “What’s his name?”

“Cale.”

“I’ve never heard of him.” Alex murmured, then realized how stupid it was to say that. She didn’t know every single chef in France. In fact, she only knew a few from her days in culinary school…and the names of the famous ones, of course.

“Look, he’s a chef and you need one. What can it hurt to meet him?” Sam asked. “I swear you won’t be sorry. I really think this will work out. Marguerite is never wrong. You have to meet him.”

“Marguerite?” Alex asked with confusion, recognizing the name. She was the aunt of one of Mortimer’s bandmates, Decker Argeneau. Alex had never met her, but Sam mentioned her a lot. However, she had no idea what the woman had to do with any of this.

“Just meet him,” Sam pleaded.

Alex sighed, her fingers tapping a rapid tattoo. She could sense that Sam was lying about something in her determination to get her to meet the man, and really, she didn’t have time to waste at the moment. On the other hand, Sam hadn’t hesitated to say he could cook and had even said it was why she’d thought they might hit it off, so Alex suspected that part of it was at least true. At least she hoped it was. The fact was, she was desperate. And frankly, beggars couldn’t be choosers. If the man could cook even half decently she was definitely interested in him, though not the way Sam was obviously hoping she would be.

“Send him over,” she barked, then slammed the phone back on its cradle before she could change her mind.

“I can’t believe Sam told her sister I am a chef,” Cale muttered for probably the sixth time since finding himself bundled into the passenger seat of his rental car and riding away from the enforcer house with Justin Bricker at the wheel.

“Believe it,” Bricker said dryly. “Sam is desperate to see her sister settled with an immortal. She and her sisters are as thick as thieves. She’ll do everything and anything she can to ensure Alex doesn’t have to be left behind at some point in the future.”

“Hmm.” Cale supposed he could understand that. He had often thought it must be hard for mortals to give up their family and friends to claim the immortals they loved. They gained a lot in return, of course: eternal youth and a love and passion most mortals could only dream of. Still, family was important to his clan, and to his mind it spoke well of Sam and her sisters that they also deemed family important.

“Still…a chef? Just the sight of food makes my stomach turn, and the smell…” He grimaced and shuddered, growing nauseated at just the thought of it. His reaction to food was one of the reasons Cale didn’t much bother with mortals anymore. Their very lives seemed to revolve around food or beverages. They did business over coffee or drinks and held feasts to celebrate every event. It was for that reason Cale had funneled most of his business interests into areas where he need only deal with immortals. Of course, some of them ate, too—those who were still young or were mated, but he ran into it much less dealing with immortals.

“This is the first time I’ve heard of an immortal with that kind of reaction to food,” Bricker commented, then cast him a curious glance and asked, “Just how old are you?”

Cale scowled. The older he got, the more he detested answering that question, and supposed he was starting to feel his age. Not physically, of course, but mentally. The truth was, lately Cale was bored to tears. It was why he’d agreed to a long visit in Canada. He hadn’t had any real change in his life for a very long time. Running companies that catered to immortals’ needs and that had mostly immortal employees meant he hadn’t had to change his name or job for some time. He also lived on a country estate just outside Paris where there were no neighbors to notice his lack of aging. It had allowed him to avoid moving as well.

Cale knew that while doing so had been convenient, it had also allowed him to stagnate. Lately, he’d been thinking that a major rearranging of his life was in order. He’d been contemplating leaving his company in the hands of one of his capable senior employees and taking up a different line of work but simply hadn’t decided on what he wanted to do. He’d considered several things, but most of them necessitated attending college to gain the necessary skills, which meant being around mortals and their ever-present love of food.

Another option he’d considered was hiring himself out as a mercenary. Cale had enjoyed battle in his youth, and while he couldn’t become a proper soldier because he couldn’t risk daylight, he understood they still hired mercenaries to fight in Third World countries. He supposed it spoke of how low his mood had sunk that the idea of a bloody battlefield appealed to him.

“If you’re Martine and Darius’s son, you have to have been born before Christ,” Bricker said thoughtfully. “Your father died in 300 B.C. or something, didn’t he?”

“230 B.C.,” Cale said tightly. It was not a day he liked to recall. He had lost not only his father, but several brothers that year, all in the same battle. Actually, slaughter was the better word, since they’d been lured into a trap by an immortal who vied for the same mercenary contracts they did and had decided to eliminate the competition. Cale’s father, Darius, had been a great warrior and raised his sons with the same skills, then made a living by hiring himself and his sons out for battle.

Including Cale, his mother had borne eleven children with his father, all sons. The pair had met and become life mates in 1180 B.C., when his father was two hundred years old and his mother three hundred. While they’d adhered to the rule of one child every century, they’d also had two sets of twins, and—so far—the council didn’t punish parents for having twins by making them wait an extra century to have another child. Of those eleven sons only three still survived. The rest had died alongside their father on a bloody battlefield in 230 B.C. Cale still ached at the memory of the mammoth loss.

“Well, then, maybe your reaction to food is because you’re so old,” Bricker murmured with concern. Apparently, the idea of having such an extreme distaste for food was bothersome to the younger immortal. Shrugging, he said more cheerfully, “But if Marguerite’s right about this—and she always is—once you meet Alex, you’re going to find yourself craving food.”

When Cale merely peered at him dubiously, Bricker chuckled and added, “Trust me. By tonight you’re going to be stuffing your face like a mortal after a week-long fast.”

Cale scowled, not pleased at the suggestion. Really, he wasn’t any more delighted to find himself trapped in a vehicle with the younger immortal. Food eaters always had a similar stench. Normally that smell didn’t bother him so much, but then he wasn’t usually trapped in an airless car with one. Wrinkling his nose, he sighed and asked, “Why are you driving me there again?”

“Because you don’t know your way around Toronto and Sam didn’t want to take the chance of your getting lost,” Bricker reminded him with amusement. “She also worried you might crack up your car on the icy roads and didn’t want to risk that either. And Mortimer wanted to discuss her turning and wouldn’t let her drive you herself, so she reluctantly decided I should deliver you to Alex. I’m to report back to her on every word that passes between you,” he announced with amusement.

“Right,” Cale muttered, beginning to wonder what he’d got himself into. Perhaps it really wasn’t worth it to humor Marguerite after all. Not if it meant going to a restaurant where he would be surrounded by the stench of mortal food…and this Alex woman thought he was a chef for God’s sake! What on earth had possessed Sam to claim he could cook? He didn’t know the first damned thing about cooking and didn’t want to. On the other hand, if it turned out Marguerite was right and this woman was his life mate…Well, he supposed that might make it worth it…and he really might start to like food again.

“Here.” Bricker reached blindly into the back seat to retrieve a book. He offered the large volume to Cale, saying, “Sam thought it might help if you gave this a quick once-over on the way.”

“
Cooking for Dummies
?” Cale read with something akin to horror as his gaze moved with distaste over the picture of the dead, headless, featherless, and trussed-up roasted chicken on the plate next to a bunch of equally roasted vegetables.

“Well, it can’t hurt,” Bricker said with amusement. “Alex is expecting a world-class chef.”

Cale tossed the book back on the seat behind him with disgust. “I have no intention of cooking. I’ll just go there, meet the woman, see if I can read her, and leave when I can’t.”

“Or,” Bricker drawled, “you’re going to go there, discover Marguerite was on the mark
again
, that you can’t read Alex, and will be desperate for an excuse to stay close to her as you try to lay claim to her as a life mate.”

Cale snorted. “If I can’t read her and she is my life mate, I won’t need an excuse to stay close to her. She’ll want me there.”

“Oh, man do you have a lot to learn about mortal women,” Bricker said dryly.

Cale glanced at him sharply. “Surely if she is my life mate, she will—”

“What? Drop into your palm like a plum ripe for the picking?” Bricker tore his gaze from the road to glance at Cale with obvious amusement. When Cale merely scowled, he shook his head and turned his attention back to the road. “You weren’t paying attention back there at the house, were you? Didn’t you catch the fact that Mortimer and Sam are life mates, have been together for eight months, and yet she’s only now agreeing to the turn? Mortal women do have free will you know.”

Cale’s eyes widened as he realized that was true.

“And contrary to what the movie claims, Earth girls
aren’t
easy.”

“What?” Cale asked, completely bewildered by the reference.

“Never mind,” Bricker muttered with disgust. “The point is, while
we
grow up with the knowledge that some day we will meet that special someone who can’t read us and whom we can’t read and so will therefore be our perfect life mate, mortal women
don’t
. They grow up being taught that men are cheating, lying bastards and being told that they will have to kiss a lot of toads before they find the one that will be their prince. And
then
they’re taught to be cautious because some princes are actually wolves in princely clothing.”

Cale peered at the younger immortal with dismay. “Are you serious?”

“You don’t watch much TV, do you?” Bricker asked dryly, then suggested, “Get a clue, watch a movie or two tonight. It will bring you up-to-date on the state of the war of the sexes.”

“War?”

“Yes, war,” Bricker said solemnly. “Women aren’t the sweet, little biddable gals pleased just to have a bit of attention anymore. If they have a man in their lives it’s because they want him there, not because they need him to take care of them. Today’s women can take care of themselves. At least a lot of them can. And as a successful businesswoman, Alex is one of the ones who can. In fact, dragging her attention away from her business is most likely going to be more of a struggle than anything. Especially right now,” he added grimly.

“Why especially right now?” Cale asked.

“She’s in the midst of opening a second restaurant,” Bricker informed him. “She started with this little hole in the wall. It was fancy,” he added in case Cale got the wrong impression. “But small. Only she’s one hell of a cook and it was a raging success. You had to book months ahead to get a table. So she decided she needed a larger venue, only from what Sam said that’s been one problem after another and Alex has been running in circles trying to get it together in time for opening night.”