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Think of the money, my brain scolded itself. Wait, no, don’t think of the money; that can’t be right.
I tucked the sheet around his hips and grabbed a towel to mop up the excess water. I pressed it to Cal’s chest and felt a strong hand close around my wrist. A wry, rumbling voice said, “I don’t know what exactly you expect from this arrangement, Miss Scanlon. But I have no interest in providing additional services in exchange for my time here.”
I was confused. Did he just imply that I was some sort of predatory spinster? I was feeling less guilty about whacking him on the nose.
I yanked my arm out of his grip. I smiled acidly at him. “I’m sure you think this is a real treat for me, but let me assure you that I have no interest in you or your … vampire package.”
I was proud that I was able to string together such a cogent, haughty-sounding rebuttal. But a tiny, insistent voice in my head noted that I was, in fact, interested in his vampire package; otherwise, I wouldn’t keep looking at it.
He grinned, almost loopily, like a hausfrau who’d had too many glasses of wine at a book-club meeting. “Really? Because I detect a nice, tangy note of feminine arousal in the room. And I don’t think it’s coming from me.”
I leaned closer than was probably advisable when dealing with an out-of-sorts creature of the night. I growled. “I know vampires are supposed to be the Space Mountain of the sexual carnival. But I have made it a point not to become directly involved in anything in your world, and that includes …”
“Behaving in the manner of a deranged howler monkey?” he offered blandly, cocking his head to the side and studying my face.
I dropped my head in defeat, groaning. “Gigi.”
“Your eyes are such a lovely shade of blue,” he said, tilting my chin so he could stare up at me. I blushed, busying myself with putting away the wet washcloth. And then he had to ruin it by squinting and asking, “Have you always had four of them?”
“Four what?”
“Eyes.”
“Hey, are you OK?” I asked, placing a hand against his cheek. His skin felt clammy, damp, like my own after a fever had broken.
Vampires weren’t supposed to get fevers.
“Cal?”
Waving his hand in front of his face, as if he’d never seen his own fingers before, he asked, “Where was I?”
“Howler monkeys.”
He gave me a lopsided grin. “It was the last thing I heard before I …”
“Passed out,” I supplied.
He frowned. “Vampires don’t pass out.”
“They do if they’ve been poisoned and severely weakened.”
He narrowed his eyes at me. “You enjoy pointing that out, don’t you?”
I smirked, and his own lips curled at the sight of it. “A little.”
—
When Cal inevitably dozed off again, I checked my calendar. I had a few deliveries to make the next day, not to mention picking up Ms. Wexler’s dry-cleaning and meeting the contractor who was installing a sizable blood chiller in Mr. Kraznov’s kitchen pantry.
I had three missed calls from clients, not to mention an obscene number of e-mails. Working my way through the requests, complaints, and demands, I took notes and filed them in my day planner. I made lists and a to-do spreadsheet.
Still, if he didn’t improve, I wasn’t comfortable leaving Cal alone in the house while I went to work. He wasn’t well. What if he got worse or threw up on something irreplaceable? I doubted he would be amused if he woke up unattended. He would probably consider it a violation of our verbal contract.
I was going to have to call my backup—Jolene Lavelle, a friend of Jane’s who sometimes filled in for me. Jolene, a stay-at-home mother of twins, was happy to have a reason to leave the house during the day. And riding around in the car was the only way she could get her babies to nap in the afternoons. It was a win-win.
Crap.
Jane.
