Page 46 of Huntress Unleashed

Good. They got the point that Jacqueline could show up anywhere that they might be, and she wasn’t a threat, and she could still share the same space as them. She wasn’t a non-entity like they were trying to act like.

“What about your dad and brother?” Dane asked.

“We might see my brother at the club tonight. I don’t know how he would react. My father?” Jacqueline shrugged. “It’s possible that he might try to have words with you for going to see my mother at their house without my father being there. But you and Matt had my best interests at heart. And if they can’t see that, shame on them.”

“I agree,” Ryan said.

Trey said the same thing.

The women appeared to not want to leave their table though they had been at the restaurant first and had ordered lighter lunches. Even now, Jacqueline, Dane, and his brothers had finished their steaks and her lobster, and they were ready to leave.

“I think they are going to stay until we leave, and I have things to do at home,” Jacqueline said.

“Yeah, let’s go,” Dane said. “If they feel uncomfortable about us, that’s their problem.”

“I can’t wait to see what happens at the club,” she said.

“Yeah, I hope that we don’t end up in a fight and get kicked out. I just want to dance with you,” Dane told Jacqueline.

She sure hoped they would be able to enjoy dancing the whole night through.

13

After Jacqueline arrived at home and greeted Princess, she got a call from Lettie, her former best friend who had taken up with her ex-fiancé. “Hello?” She was really surprised to hear from her. What did she want? Jacqueline still felt resentful toward her, but she thought if they could talk it out, maybe she would understand why Lettie had done it.

“I…I didn’t expect you to be at the house that was once owned by Piaras,” Lettie said.

“Would you have gone there if you had known I would be there hunting rogue vampires?”

“Uh, well, yeah, because we were after Paine. Well, maybe not, if we had known you would be there. You all would have probably gotten to him first, even though Van wanted the bounty.”

So all they cared about was the money.

“My friends made it their mission to go after the vampire who had made me.” Jacqueline wanted to know how Lettie felt after she’d been her friend since they were little girls and then just dumped her like that.

Lettie didn’t say anything for a minute. “Uhm, okay.”

“You knew about it, right? That Heskel had turned me?” Jaqueline figured the news would have been all over the hunter community. Especially those closer to her—like Van and Lettie—would have known.

“Uh, yeah.”

Jaqueline had figured that or otherwise Lettie wouldn’t have started dating Van.

“We didn’t know he was in the house though. We were after Paine.”

Jacqueline would have felt better if she had known that Van and Lettie had gone there to at least take Heskel down. “Sorry”—not really—“but Paine was on my list and I killed him.” Jacqueline smiled a little, glad—if nothing else—that she’d taken the bounty money from Van and Lettie.

“Uhm, I…I guess you’re upset with me for hunting with him, with Van, I mean.”

Hunting? Yeah, since Van didn’t like hunting with Jacqueline. Now he was hunting with Lettie? But she was more annoyed with that than that Lettie was dating Van after she had been such a good friend of Jacqueline’s and did it behind her back. She could have at least asked Jacqueline if it was all right with her. Jacqueline would have appreciated the heads-up. But instead, she had done it as if she didn’t want to be Jacqueline’s friend anymore. Since Lettie hadn’t called her once to see how she felt after being turned, that had confirmed it for her. She had felt so isolated from family and friends as soon as it had happened when she had needed them more than ever.

“Did Van give you a reason why he didn’t want to go after Heskel? I mean, my new friends tracked down all his blood bonds and his vampire friends to learn where he was staying and to terminate him. That’s proof that they’re loyal friends even though I had never even met them before.” Though she recalled that she’d seen Dane with a woman at one of the hunter clubs, but she hadn’t paid much attention to either of them because she’d been engaged to Van at the time.

“I’m sorry.”

“Answer the question. Why didn’t Van want to go after Heskel?”

“I don’t know. We didn’t ever discuss it.”