CHAPTER 10
Teren and I didn’t talk much about Carrie after that and he didn’t meet up with her while she was in town. I think he wanted to; sometimes when we were at home, I’d catch him staring at the door, lost in thought. I think he wanted to see her, just to make sure she was okay, that her life had turned out well. As if he were somehow responsible for every bit of sadness she may have had over the past ten years, because he’d let her remember one tragic event that had happened when they were kids. But he didn’t leave my side. Maybe he felt like he’d done enough damage, and was kissing up to me by not seeking her out or maybe he was nervous that she’d notice his changes. Either way, two weeks went by, and while I wasn’t sure how long she was in town for, most vacations don’t last longer than that.
I relaxed tremendously after that 2nd week passed and I didn’t see her again. I know it wasn’t her fault that she had a history with my man, but I didn’t exactly want to sit around and compare notes with her or anything. Once she left, I surprisingly found myself grateful that I had run into her at all. Teren may have never brought up that part of his history without a little prodding. He could just be secretive like that, if he thought he was protecting someone, and he didn’t want to hurt me or expose Carrie to his family.
I was getting to be a little better with the fact that he hadn’t told me. I mean, we really did jump right into this relationship head first and never really sat down to discuss our pasts. And there were certainly a lot of things in my past that he didn’t know. For instance, I’ve never told him about the guy who slipped me a roofie at a party (thank god for girlfriends and nothing happened) or the guy who had become so obsessed with me in college that I’d nearly had to get a restraining order on him to get him to back off. There were a lot of little skeletons in our closets that Teren and I had just never had the time to sit down and look at. And he repeatedly assured me that Carrie was the biggest, the one he’d been trying to hide from his family, and had inadvertently hid from me as well.
But he couldn’t hide her from his family forever, not thanks to my sort of public declaration of their past, and eventually Alanna or Imogen did tell Halina. It became immediately apparent when they did. She showed up on our doorstep, looking hot and fiery, a thoroughly pissed off vampire. I hid out upstairs while he and Halina “discussed” the situation that was Carrie. I’m not sure what they said exactly, since most of it, at least from Halina’s side, was in heated Russian (apparently being really mad got her to revert to her native tongue). Teren responded in English for the most part, but catching just one side of a conversation was frustrating and after awhile I stopped listening.
When she slammed the door and left, all I’d gotten was the fact that Carrie had indeed left town and Halina wanted to know where to find her. Teren didn’t know, or wouldn’t say, and Halina was on the warpath to find out. She wanted her wiped more than anything, much more than she’d wanted Ben’s memories. I had a feeling that she’d take everything from Carrie, just to teach Teren a lesson. Assuming she ever found her that is.
But not everything was stressful. Amid the drama of Carrie’s surprise visit, Teren and I had the big ultrasound. He walked me into the lab where they ran the tests, his nose wrinkling at the antiseptic smell that bothered even my sense of smell. We sat in padded waiting room chairs and he rubbed my shoulders while we waited. He’d been doing a lot of massaging after our spat. I didn’t tell him that it wasn’t necessary, that he really didn’t need to keep buttering me up. He was good at massages and my body was sore, and aching in spots I hadn’t expected to ache in, and I wasn’t about to ask his heaven-sent fingers to stop.
A short, plump woman with platinum hair and raspberry scrubs called my name and after Teren helped me stand up, we walked over to the doorway to greet her. She held her clipboard to her chest as her pale eyes took in our excited faces. “First timers?” she asked brightly.
I nodded eagerly and Teren chuckled, rubbing a spot on my back as we followed the nurse through the door and into a hallway leading to several small exam rooms. She nodded her head as she walked us by spaces full of various complicated looking equipment. We passed other patients, some getting tests done that were not nearly as joyous as the one we were about to take, and I tried to contain my joy and not smile merrily at the more dour faces.