She nodded and wiped the sweat from her eyes. “Thanks. He was great, I just felt like he’d taken me as far as I could go in my training. I felt like I was in a rut, you know?”

Pete nodded and slapped her shoulder. “No worries, I understand. Sometimes a relationship just runs its course. I hope you parted on good terms.”

Beatrice nodded and untied her belt, taking off her heavy judogi and stripping down to a tank top to hit the punching bags on the side of the studio.

“How long have you been studying?”

“Judo?”

Pete nodded.

“Well, when I first moved out to L.A., I started studying martial arts. First, it was just some tai chi at the university. A friend suggested it. Then I decided to take a self-defense class—”

“Always a good idea for anyone.”

She snorted. “Yeah, I can agree with that. Anyway, the place I went to taught judo and jujitsu, too, so I got interested that way. I’ve been studying almost five years now.”

She slipped on her gloves and Pete joined her at the bags. They both began hitting the teardrop shaped speed bags that hung from platforms in the low ceiling. Soon, Beatrice was zoning out to the sound and the rhythm of the quick punches as she tried to release the stress of the day and her last meeting with Giovanni.

Focus, focus, focus, she thought as she tried to wipe the image of his deep green eyes from her mind.

“Your focus is really impressive,” Pete said as he worked the bag to her right. “You should be proud of yourself. You look like you’ve been studying twice as long.”

“That’s nice to hear.” Even though I’m completely distracted at the moment.

Suddenly, he grinned. “What did you like about judo at first? I can almost guess.”

Beatrice laughed. “I saw this little girl toss a guy about a foot taller and seventy pounds heavier than her.”

Pete chuckled as he continued hitting the bag. “Yeah, that’ll do it. It’s pretty great when you realize you can take down someone way stronger than you if you know what you’re doing and use their own strengths against them, right?”

She shook her head. “Pete, you have no idea.”

“Why am I so upset?” Beatrice asked as she drank another glass of wine at Dez’s apartment.

Dez only raised an eyebrow. “Because you now have no handy excuse to see the man you’ve been in love with for five years?”

“I’m not in love with him.”

“Yeah.” Her best friend snorted. “Whatever.”

“I’m not.”

“Okay, then you’re upset because…you’re going to miss the challenge of the project? That is way cooler than most of the stuff we do.” Dez couldn’t contain the grin. “I mean, what a cool job! When you worked for him before, did you ever have a kind of treasure hunt like that? Or was it mostly research and catalogue work?”

Dez sat on the edge of her seat while Beatrice stared at her. “Uh…there may have been a mystery or two that we worked on, yeah.”

“And did you solve it? I mean, how does that work? That’s got to pay pretty well, right? It’s like hiring a private detective to find something. Only it’s someone who knows rare books! Do you think he’s looking for an assistant? I would totally dig something like—”

“He’s kind of a loner, to be honest.” Kinda. “I doubt he’d hire…someone to do that stuff when he could just do it himself.” She did wonder who he had doing his computer work for him. Did he just use amnis to get random people to search online? That wasn’t very ethical. Maybe he did need—

“Yeah,” Dez sighed. “I totally get why you’re so hung up on him though. A good-looking Italian book collector who solves historical mysteries? That’s just…”

“What?” Implausible?

“Hot. I can’t believe Mano’s not insanely jealous of all the time you’re spending with him.”

Beatrice felt her face heat up, and she caught Dez’s wide-eyed look.

“He doesn’t know, does he?”

She shrugged. There was no way on God’s green earth Beatrice was telling Mano that she was working alongside a five-hundred-year-old vampire who was linked to her missing father and was the sire of the monster who had kidnapped her. There was no way she was telling anyone any of that. They’d think she was insane.

“Oh, he’s going to be pissed, B!”

“Why? The research is done.” And her heart still ached over it. “Why would I see him anymore?” She shook her head and continued quietly. “He’ll probably leave town again now that he has it.”

Dez frowned. “I thought you said he bought a house?”

So he had, and she’d been asked over for dinner more than once by the persistent Ben. It was both despicable and adorable that Giovanni seemed to have Ben on his team in his attempts to win her back. She had to admit, the boy was charming.

As was his fake uncle.

“So he’s probably going to use Southern California as a base for work if he did that,” Dez reasoned. “It would be a good one. Easy airport access and lots of international flights to both Europe and Asia. Big research libraries and plenty of resources.”

“That’s true.”

“And a cute librarian he’s obviously still got the hots for.”

“Shut up, Dez.”