LORGUES HAS THE FEEL OF A MEDIEVAL VILLAGE WITH the shopping amenities of a modern city. Frey and I spend an hour wandering the narrow streets hand in hand. Frey has never been here before and he's as taken with the vaulted passages, ancient stairs and elaborate stone carvings on the buildings and doorways as I was at first sight.

It's a beautiful spring day, and after checking off all the items on Mom's shopping list, we stop for coffee in an outdoor cafe on the Boulevard Georges Clemenceau. The sky is deep blue and cloudless, the air still.

Frey breathes it in. "I can see why your family loves it here."

I let my gaze wander up and down the street. Across from us, the open-air market we visited earlier teems with shoppers. The pile of our own packages, tucked under the table, holds bread, fresh vegetables, olives. It's still too early for the platan trees lining the streets and parks to have budded, and their white spindly trunks look like skeleton hands lifting bony fingers to the sky. Most of the buildings in Lorgues are painted soft pastels or brilliant primary colors with shutters of contrasting blue or green. It's an artist's concept of a French village . . . only real.

Once again I find myself grudgingly admiring Avery's choices. He couldn't have picked a more beautiful spot to set down eternal roots.

Frey picks up my hand and gently squeezes. "Are you thinking of Avery?"

I look at him in surprise. "How did you know?"

He points to the bridge of my nose. "You get a furrow, right there, whenever you think of him."

His comment makes me laugh. "Wow. Who needs mind reading when you have such keen powers of observation."

"It's true. I know you very well."

I place one of my hands over his. "Better than I know myself, I think."

Our coffee arrives and we settle back to enjoy it. One of the things I appreciate most about Frey is that we can be quiet around one another. As we are now, each alone with our own thoughts, but connected in a way that transcends words. It's a heady, comfortable feeling.

Until I feel him suddenly tense beside me. When I look at him, his face is drawn, tight with anger and taut with the primal instinct to defend. A low growl escapes his throat, the panther at the ready.

His reaction is so unexpected, it brings vampire to the surface, too. I swing around, senses on alert, scanning the crowd until I find a face I recognize.

A face Frey recognizes.

A face we intuitively know is about to shatter the peace we've found as surely as the cup I've let slip from my fingers shatters on the sidewalk at my feet.

A waiter approaches and makes quick work of cleaning up my broken cup, tsking and mumbling in French but reappearing in an instant with a new cup.

Along with a third for the man now standing beside the table.

Chael.