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But this involved someone else, and he didn’t like that the poor woman was going to be out the commission she thought that she was going to be getting. What was worse, the house might have sold for nearly that had he just kept out of the way. He found Rose in the garden playing around in the roses that paled in comparison to her beauty.

“I was just thinking that I’d like to expand the rose garden.” He told her anything she wanted. “You’re too easy. You should have let me argue with you a little bit. Then we could have makeup sex.”

“Oh, by all means leave the garden alone. I demand that you not touch a single blossom.” She laughed, and that made him smile. “I’ve just spoken to someone about your brother. He’s causing trouble already.”

“What has he done?” After telling her everything, she was as upset as he’d been. “I knew he was going to take you having money to the limit. I just didn’t have any idea that he’d be so blatant about it. You said he used my name and address? How the hell did he get by with that?”

“I would say that at some point in your younger life, he got a hold of your Social Security number and kept it someplace. You were right, he is going to be trouble.” She asked about the house. “It belongs to Baxter. He decided about halfway through the construction that he didn’t care for the layout. So he had the house finished to a point and put it on the market. I had no idea that it would sell like that, but he assured me that it would. It’s really too bad that Phillip halted the deal, or he might well have gotten more for it. He still did all right because now he’s about a few hundred grand over the price he wanted.”

“I think that getting two million dollars for an unfinished house is amazing. I wonder what would happen to Phillip if Baxter were to go and ask him for the money. That would be too funny.” They, the two of them, laughed and she sat down on one of the many benches he’d had put in when he’d had the gardens redone. “What happens to him now? I don’t know what can happen to him really. He didn’t get the house.”

“No, but he used your information to try and get it. Lucky for him, at least for now, I’m going to press charges against him for you in the fact that he used stolen identity to get the house. You’ll just have to go down to the police station to sign off on the paperwork to have him arrested.” She said she’d do that. “It might not stick. I have no idea what will happen to him, but I’ll talk to Baxter and Safford about it. Perhaps they know of a way to keep him in jail for a while.”

“That would be nice. It would let me stop worrying about what he’s going to be doing next.” He said he understood that. “Okay, you tell them I’ll be down there soon, and I’ll go there in the morning. Give him one day to think that he’s done something like pull the wool over our eyes about the house. Damn him anyway. He should know better.”

“Do you think that he’ll learn his lesson on this? I mean, if he ends up in jail, do you think he’ll stop trying to get money from us?” She shook her head and told him it would more than likely make him try harder. “I believe you’re right. Once he’s out of jail, I’ll have a talk to him. Since I can read his mind, I can tell if he’s thinking that he needs to have an endless supply of our money. I’ll tell him that’s not going to happen.”

“Don’t get hurt.” He promised her that he’d not. “Good. I can live with him being in jail again, but not if you get hurt. I love you.”

“And I love you. I’ll file the paperwork now, and then later you and I can have he’s-in-jail sex. That calls for a celebration if you ask me.” She laughed, and he smiled. She was so easy to please at times that he just wanted to stick beside her all the time to hear her laughter. “Did you want to know when the police show up?”

“You’re going to call them? That’s even better. Instead of getting the house news tonight, he’s going to jail. That’s even better.” She stood up and dusted off her jeans. “This is going to piss him right off, and I find that I don’t care. The more he’s pissed off, the stupider he gets, and that will be awesome.”

Going back into his office, he picked up the phone just as Rose joined him in the room. Putting the phone on speaker, he let the officer know what was going on and how Phillip had scammed them. Just as he suspected, not only was he going to be in trouble for fraud, but he was also going to be in trouble for trying to buy a house he had no intention of being able to purchase. Just as he was ready to hang up so they could pick him up, Rose asked if they could do it tomorrow. Let him think he’d gotten the house for one night before getting himself into trouble.

They were more than willing to do that for her. When he hung up the phone, he called the realtor back and asked her to tell Phillip that he got the house for the three million dollars. After telling her that he was going to be arrested, she agreed with them. He’d be basking in his idea that he’d been able to get one over on them and it would be all for naught. Tomorrow he’d be arrested, and that would be funny too.

She had been eating her dinner in the kitchen since they moved in. Just last night she’d had pork chops and fried potatoes. He shared a dessert with her when she was finished, then he made love to her in the living room. York didn’t think there was a room they hadn’t had sex in, and he was having fun. But he was careful too that they didn’t do too much, as she was still learning to deal with their kind of sex and he didn’t want her to be weak. She was much too important to him for him to hurt her in any way.

Tonight was no different. She ate her dinner and then afterward the two of them shared something sweet. Usually it was a piece of pie or something. Tonight it was simply ice cream. He didn’t care much for ice cream, but the joy he found in sharing it with her was more than he could have hoped for.

Tonight was one of the nights when Rose looked worn out. She’d been working around in the gardens, enjoying the colorful blooms and scents. But he knew that he was draining her and that wasn’t good. As soon as she said she was going up to bed, he followed her to the bedroom. She was nearly asleep on her feet.

“I’m just going to hold you tonight.” She looked at him with such a smile that he wondered why she’d not said anything. Then it occurred to him. “You know you can tell me no when you’ve had enough of me.”

“No, I can’t. I love you.” He said that he loved her as well but didn’t want her to be ill simply because he couldn’t get enough of her. “I can’t get enough of you either. You’re like an addiction for me. I can’t get enough of you.”

“Well, that’s because I’m so awesome.” She laughed, and he helped her get into bed. “I’m going to hold you until you go to sleep, then I’m going to get some work done in my office. I have three more reports to fill out and file before I can get paid. And if your brother decides that we’re going to be buying him a three million dollar home, I have to work.”

“I should too.” He told her that he was only joking. “I know that. I was just thinking how bored I am with just hanging around the house. I do love working in the gardens, but there are only so many weeds in the thing that require me to pull them. Right now I’m considering planting some so that I have something to do. That’s not right.”

“No, that’s just silly.” She laid down and closed her eyes. “When I was about twelve, I already knew that I was going to be a vampire. Some parents don’t tell their children for fear of it getting around that there is a family of vampires around. Well, anyway, I wanted to go to this birthday party. The boy was human, and I think he knew that we weren’t. His parents probably said something, and he picked up on it. When the invites went out, myself and another boy weren’t invited.” She said that was just cruel. “You have no idea how much it hurt us. The other little boy was a wolf and me a vampire. He told us that since we weren’t humans like him, he wasn’t going to have anything to do with us. The wolf cried, but I got angry. I think it was the first time in my life that I got angry at someone because I wasn’t human.”

“You didn’t bite him, did you? I mean, I might have had I not been invited, but you’re not like that.” He just stared at her. “Oh no, you did, didn’t you?”

“I did. Now hush while I tell you what happened.” He cleared his throat and could see the day like he’d only just done the terrible deed as it was termed at his home. “Neither of us could shift yet. I could drop my fangs, but my beast had yet to come to me. When we decided that we were going to pay him back, I hissed at him, showing him my fangs and bit him on the hand. It might have hurt a little bit, but not enough for the way that he was crying. As soon as I did it, I knew that I was going to be in trouble.”

She didn’t move, and he realized that she’d fallen asleep. He continued thinking about the young boy until he realized that he’d been a bully to the boy from then on. Now that he was older, he would have handled it differently, but when he’d been that young, he’d not had his emotions mature yet, and he was just a bully. Wishing he could go back and redo things, he knew that he’d handled things differently. First of all, he wouldn’t have bitten the kid and scared him so badly.

Getting up, he decided that he’d had enough paperwork for a while and went to the living room. The child by now was long gone, and there was no way that he could find him after all this time, so he looked for another person that he could help. There were any number of people in the newspaper that were down on their luck, and he was going to find one of them tonight. Slipping a few bucks into their checking account wouldn’t hurt him, but it might make the difference between eating or not for someone else. He found just the person he was looking for as soon as he opened the newspaper to the back section of the paper.

~*~

“I just don’t understand.” Gib watched the man at his office. When York had told him what he’d done, he thought that it was a terrible idea. “I should be overdrawn again, not flush with enough money to go to the grocery store and get my meds too. Not to mention paying you what I’m behind.”

“I’m not sure what you wish for me to do, Mr. Darcy. I suggest you talk to your bank and see what they can tell you. Perhaps someone read in the paper how you were going to lose your home if you didn’t get a job. You said there was a job application in your mailbox as well? I’d fill it out and turn it in. Someone is watching out for you.”

“I’ve applied for a job there before. Do you suppose they read the same article and felt sorry for me? I’ll take the job out of pity anyway I can get one, but I just don’t understand.” He’d come right in and caught up his payments on the computer his children were using for their school work. He’d been on the verge of going to pick up the computer when he’d heard from York about what he’d done for the poor man. “I don’t suppose you’ve heard of anyone doing something like this before.”