With that parting thrust, Mr. Peters stood up, returned his chair to the table from which he’d taken it, and strode off without a backward glance.
“Wow,” I said. “And we’ve been trying to avoid him? He’s a hair-brained idiot, but he doesn’t seem that dangerous. I mean, no stake ready to plunge. Not even any garlic, holy water, or giant Christian cross.”
I was laughing, but Timothy, Terry, and Bob maintained their jaw-tightened grimaces, stiffened bodies, and tension-casting vibes.
“See that he is gone,” Timothy ordered Bob, who’d pushed his plate to the side. Logical since it was completely empty. Unfortunately, from the expression on his face, I think that Bob had envisioned going back to the buffet for a second round, but the guard said nothing, stood up, and took off in the direction that Mr. Peters had headed.
Terry had still been eating his way through the hash browns which had congealed into his pile of stewed tomatoes. He looked up, fork in the air. “Want me to move on him?”
I set down my second half of the English muffin. Terry’s offer sounded like gangster talk to me. I turned to look at Timothy, watching the way his jaw clenched from the guard’s wording.
“We keep him under surveillance,” Timothy said. Then he turned to look at Terry. “Mr. Peters is not to come near Penelope again, understood?”
“Hey, I thought it was an interesting conversation,” I protested, this time not reaching out to soothe Timothy. The whole scene was making me nervous, not about a reporter gone vampire chaser, but because of my own boyfriend’s attitude and his warning to Terry, like this was a scene from some grade B mafia movie.
I shook my head to clear out the cobwebs. “You know, I’m very glad I finally got to meet the errant golfer. This Van Helsing of journalists seems so much easier to stomach than some unknown bad guy. Mr. Peters wasn’t really harassing and spying on us. He was just trying to make sure I wasn’t the latest flavor of milkshake. So, sure, the guy is crazy, but I doubt he’s any danger to us — as long as we watch out for flying stakes.”
Timothy sighed, shook his head, and gave me a quick smile. “More coffee?” he asked, not addressing my words at all.
“I’m already floating,” I said.
Timothy smiled at me with that marvelously inviting and sexy grin he had, and I practically melted against him. Perhaps he knew his effect on me because he squished me in closer, then whispered in my ear. “You handled him well, my darling, but I don’t want him near you. Please don’t engage with him again.”
I shrugged in a non-committal way, knowing that I should tackle the overly protective attitude that Timothy was demonstrating, but he was drugging me with sex hormones. I simply slid deeper into his cuddle.