Sun God Seeks…Surrogate? (Accidentally Yours #3)(32)
Author: Mimi Jean Pamfiloff

Oh, thank heavens.

“Hi, my name is Penelope Trudeau. I’m calling for my mother, Julie?”

The man spoke in clear-as-day English.

“What do you mean, ‘wrong number’?” I asked, hiccuping and sniffling.

I repeated the number. I had it right but there was no one there by my mother’s name. To make matters more unsettling, it was some bar named Fugly’s—yes, a Swedish bar named Fugly’s—not a medical clinic.

The phone slipped from my hand. This couldn’t be happening. It couldn’t. What was going on? What was I going to do?

Cry some more. Yeah, that will feel gooood. I burst into tears once again. And whattaya know? I felt better! For ten whole seconds. Then I realized sobbing wouldn’t help me find my mother, and that I needed to apologize to Nick—OMG, a god? Really? And you called him a man-whore?—for acting like the giant ass that I was.

What are you waiting for, Penelope? Groveling should be treated like a Band-Aid.

I turned for the door and collided with a black leather wall. It was the enormous blond man, the vamp…the vamp…I couldn’t say or think the word.

He studied me with his intense, deep blue eyes as if wondering what I might do so that he might decide what he might do.

“I can save you from having to guess,” I stated quietly. “I was about to scream, but decided it’s useless.”

“Good choice.” He swooped down, picked up my phone, and held up the screen. “The woman, who is she? I must know.”

My mind ricocheted like a pinball. Now that I thought about it, the last time I’d seen my cell was when I’d slammed it into the side of this vamp—man’s face.

“You put my phone back in my purse, didn’t you?”

He nodded yes. “Who is she?” he asked again.

Had he come all the way to Sedona specifically to give me back my phone and find out who my mother was?

“Why are you asking? Aren’t you a…” Oh my God. Oh my God. I can’t say the word. I can’t say it. I wiped the tears from my cheeks with the back of my hand.

“Yes. I am a vampire. My name is Viktor.”

Oh thank goodness; someone said it.

“Please,” he continued in a deep, lulling voice. “Penelope, I must know. Who. Is. The. Woman? Where can I find her?” Something in his eyes made me want to tell him.

Mind control? These people were so, so not going on my Friends list.

I felt the words involuntarily bubbling up. “She’s my mom. And she’s sick. Really sick. But I don’t know where she is. She’s supposed to be in a Swedish clinic, but she’s not—”

He snatched the piece of paper I still held in my hand. His blue eyes turned the deepest, darkest black I’d ever seen. I stepped back.

“Center for Immune Management and Integrative Lifestyles?” he said with a feral growl. “Fucking hell.”

“What?” Why was he using the f-word? That was reserved for the direst of situations.

Or the sexiest. Like the time when you dreamed that Kinich—

Shut it, Pen! Idiot! Now is not the time to think of dirty-deity dancing.

“Center. Immune. Management. Integrative. Lifestyles,” he repeated.

I looked at him.

He looked at me.

I was lost.

He was not.

“C-I-M-I-L,” he stated.

Oh f**k! “Cimil? She has my mother?”

Viktor shook his head. “Not anymore.”

“I don’t understand.”

He ran his large hands through the length of his thick blond hair. “Whatever plans Cimil had for your mother, have been derailed. This, I am sure of.”

“I still don’t follow. Where is she? What’s happened to her? How do you know all this?”

I didn’t know Viktor or anything about his…people, but I could tell he was in a dark place with bad, bad thoughts, and the fact that my mother had anything to do with those bad, bad thoughts scared the hell out of me.

He turned for the door looking smaller, defeated somehow. “I must speak with Kinich. Immediately.”

“Wait! Tell me what the hell is going on!” I tried to follow but he was gone in a blink.

Christ! Vampires were definitely not going on the Fav list.

I followed the hallway past several vacant bedrooms until it hooked to the right and ended at a set of double oak doors. I was about to turn back, but caught a whiff of exotic flowers, fresh ocean air, sunshine, and fruit.

I pushed open the doors, stepped inside, and inhaled like a junky getting a fix. Kinich.

This had to be his room. Hanging over the headboard was a large sun made from hammered copper, and a freestanding bar stood in one corner next to a sitting area with a cozy, khaki-colored couch.

Running water? I turned my head left and noticed a doorway with a glass wall to each side. Sheets of water flowed over the panes, disappearing into a gap in the floor, to create an aquatic privacy screen. Whatever kind of bathroom was on the other side, it had to be something spectacular.

But despite the beautiful decorum and pre-Hispanic art adorning the walls, I became fixated on the nightstand. What did this deity keep in his drawers? Did he moisturize? After all, he was the Sun God—Demon crackers, gods can’t be real—but all that exposure to the sun’s power had to leave him chapped. Or maybe he read dirty magazines. What kind of women would he like?

Definitely tanned women.

I stepped toward the dresser.

Penelope! Focus! Mom’s missing, remember?

I gasped, realizing what was happening. His smell was an instant ditz-ifier. God crack!

Grack!

I scrambled from his room and backtracked down the brightly lit hallway until I found Kinich and Viktor arguing in the living room.

“I have never in my existence asked the gods for anything,” Viktor disputed. “I have served. I have been loyal and obeyed. I have suffered. And now I make this one request, Kinich.”

“Going in alone is madness—suicide! What does the Book of the Oracle say?” Nick asked.

“Nothing. I’ve consulted the pages hundreds of times. It never mentions me, and it never will.”

“You don’t know that for certain. Perhaps you should look again,” Kinich argued.

“It is a moot point; Cimil is currently in possession of the text, and she is nowhere to be found.”

“Cimil? Why would she, of all people, need a book that foretells the future?”

Were they speaking of that thick, leather text she kept poring over when I was in her study? And it told the future?