man should learn before he got too old to learn anything anymore.
Harper considered his cards briefly, then pulled out a six of spades and laid it on the discard pile. He glanced toward Tiny, not terribly surprised to find the man not looking at his own cards but peering distractedly toward the stairs.
“Tiny,” he prompted. “Your turn.”
“Oh.” The mortal turned back to his cards, started to pull one out of his hand as if to discard it, and Harper shot his own hand out to stop him.
When Tiny glanced at him with surprise, he pointed out dryly, “You have to pick up first.”
“Oh, right.” He shook his head and set back the card he’d been about to discard, and reached for one from the deck.
Harper sat back with a little shake of the head, thinking, Lord save me from new life mates. The thought made him grimace since that’s all he seemed to be surrounded with lately: Victor and Elvi, DJ and Mabel, Allesandro and Leonora, Edward and Dawn and now Tiny and Mirabeau. The first four couples had been together for a year and a half now, and were just starting to re-gather some of their wits about them. They were still new enough to be trying at times, but at least they could actually hold on to a thought or two longer than a second.
Tiny and Mirabeau were brand-spanking-new, however, and couldn’t think of much else but each other . . . and how to find a moment alone to get naked. And they couldn’t control their thoughts either, so that it was like constantly having a radio playing in his ear, life-mate porn, twenty-four/seven.
Harper supposed the fact that he hadn’t packed up his bags and moved on a year and a half ago when his own life mate had died, was probably a sign that he was a masochist. Because really, there was no worse torture for someone who had just lost their long-awaited and prayed-for life mate than to have to stand by and witness the joy and just plain horniness of other new life mates. But he had nowhere to go. Oh, he had an apartment in the city and businesses he could pretend to be interested in, but why bother when he’d set them up years ago to ensure he needn’t be there to oversee them, and could travel, merely checking in once in a while. He also had family in Germany he could visit, but they weren’t close, each of them having created their own lives centuries ago and barely keeping up with each other.
Actually, Harper thought, Elvi, Victor, Mabel, and DJ were the closest thing to family he now had. When Jenny had died, the two couples had surrounded and embraced him and pulled him into their little family. They had cushioned and coddled him during the first shock of her loss, and slowly nursed him back to the land of the living, and he was grateful for it. So much so, in fact, that he was glad for this opportunity to repay some of their kindness by looking after things while they went on their honeymoons. He just wished that looking after things didn’t include a pair of new life mates to torture him with.
Tiny finally discarded, and Harper picked up another card, but then paused and glanced toward the window as the crunch of tires on new snow caught his ear.
“What is it?” Tiny asked, his voice tense.
“A vehicle just pulled into the driveway,” Harper murmured, then glanced to Tiny and raised an eyebrow. “Your replacements, I’m guessing.”
Tiny was immediately out of his seat and moving into the kitchen to peer out the back window. When he then moved to the pantry to collect his coat from the closet there, Harper stood and followed. The arrival of the replacement hunters was something he’d looked forward to. He suspected Tiny and Mirabeau would now retreat to their bedroom and not be seen much. It meant he could avoid the worst of their obsessive thoughts about each other . . . which would be a blessing.
Tiny apparently saw him coming and grabbed Harper’s coat as well. The man handed it to him as he came back into the kitchen, and both pulled them on as they headed for the door to the deck. Tiny had pulled his boots on while in the pantry and headed straight out the door, but Harper had to pause to kick off his slippers and tug on