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“I’ll rest on my laurels when she’s thirty, living independently, and not working a job that involves a webcam,” I muttered, blowing over my tea.
He gave a violent shudder and backed toward the basement door. “And on that note, I bid you good night. I’ve got some paperwork I need to go over before I turn in at dawn.”
“Where are you going?”
Glancing at the stairs, he said softly, “With Gigi here, it would be better if I were to go back downstairs. But I appreciate your offer to upgrade me to a ‘family room.’ ”
That set me back on my heels. He was right, of course. What did I expect? That we would continue what we’d started in the foyer while my baby sister slept twenty feet away? I cleared my throat and tried to school the edge of disappointment from my features. “Do you have everything you need down there?”
He pursed his lips, his eyes shining mischievously. “Well, not everything I need … but yes, I’m comfortable. Are you going to be all right? No lingering feelings after what happened earlier?”
Was he talking about my assault by his mysterious vampire intruder? Or Paul’s visit and the subsequent kissing? Because one had my nerves in an uproar, and the other was just damned annoying. Now, if I could only decide which was which …
Unable to answer that question aloud, I nodded, keeping my eyes glued to the sink full of dirty pancake dishes that I’d resolved to wash in the morning. The awkward silence hung heavy between us, and I wished I could find something clever to say about his technique. But the encounter at his house, the vodka, and the late hour had taken their toll. I was too tired for sarcasm.
He cleared his throat. “If you have trouble sleeping, you know where I am.”
—
I did have trouble sleeping. Exhausted, I tossed and turned, unable to find a comfortable position, the right angle for my pillows. The blankets were too warm, but the sheet was too cool. And there were moments during that lonely time between two and four A.M. that I seriously considered toddling down the stairs to the basement and crawling into Cal’s tent. But my apprehension was twofold. First, Gigi would hear me, and the teasing would be excruciating. And second, Cal had me all wobbly and off balance. And crawling into his tent after he’d seen that mortifying scene with Paul, after the way I’d mounted him against the door, felt like a concession.
Instead, I took advantage of the whatchamacallit in my nightstand.
I was not this woman, this ill-tempered, impulsive bimbo who resorted to nightstand candy in the face of a little stress and writhed all over clients just because they happened to be present and shirtless. I was a levelheaded, responsible single-parent figure, who had responsibilities and bills to pay and no time for ill-fated dalliances with the undead. Instead of sleeping, I made a mental list of reasons that starting any sort of personal relationship with Cal was stupid on the level of alligator wrestling or electing a member of the Jersey Shore cast to public office.
By sunrise, I had a list of 268, including “Stockholm syndrome be damned, you have to serve as a good example for Gigi” and “Vampires do not date ‘the help.’ They eat ‘the help.’ ” But most of them applied to vampires in general, not Cal, whose only flaws so far were snark and emotional unavailability.
I dragged my butt out of bed, flinging myself out the door at first light without benefit of coffee or refined sugar, and began my workday as usual … after a stop at Walmart for one of those tacky Vampire Home Defense Kits.
Vicki Stern, who was used to seeing Faux Type O and Fang-Brite Flouride Wash in my cart, did a double take at the red polyester gym bag emblazoned with a Count Chocula look-alike with little Xs over his eyes.
“It’s a gag gift,” I told her, rolling my eyes, tossing an Almond Joy onto the register belt. “One of my clients has a weird sense of humor.”
Given the way she was yawning, I’m guessing that Vicki’s interest waned pretty quickly.
I entered each house that day with liquid silver hidden in my hip pocket and a stake in my sleeve, despite the fact that spotting me with anything like that would have resulted in the loss of my contracts with the Council. I slipped through every front door like a cat burglar, silver spray at the ready, and completed my tasks with my back against a wall at all times. It made work tedious and stressful, but at least I was able to restock Ms. Wells’s blood supply without my hands shaking.
I rushed through my tasks, sure to leave the last client’s home long before sunset. I came home to find Gigi had gone to study at Ben Overby’s. Ben, a classmate of Gigi’s at Half-Moon Hollow High, was a sweet boy who bagged groceries at the Super Saver and drove his grandmother to church on Sunday mornings. He had big puppy-dog eyes the color of new moss and dark hair that sort of flopped over his forehead. Lanky, lean, and clean-cut, he actually went to class and cared about what he did while he was there. He was a nice boy, the kind you could count on to show up on time, to call when he was supposed to. You could trust that he wouldn’t drop mind-altering substances into your soda if you left it unattended around him. He was not exactly Gigi’s type, which ran toward the bigger, jockier, “I could bench-press you if I wanted to” variety. I hoped that Ben’s presence was a sign of her having some sort of dating epiphany.
Cal was sitting at my kitchen table, curtains drawn tight against the setting sun, typing something on his laptop. He looked up at me and smiled. I sensed some saucy opening line coming my way. For some reason, “Making any progress?” slipped out of my mouth.
Right then, right to business. No talk of grinding against door frames or slippery fingertips. Internally, I slapped a palm to my face and called myself a coward.
Cal’s shoulders sagged under the weight of … disappointment? Insult? Hell, maybe he was hungry. I couldn’t read this guy if he had bold print on his face. He recovered quickly and shook his head. “I hate to harp on this point, but I still need my files. You’re sure they weren’t in the front bedroom?”
“Well, I did spend some quality time in that closet. I think I would have noticed a big white file box.”
He sighed. “If the Council claimed the files from my house, they will be stored in my office or Ophelia’s—most likely Ophelia’s, since she wouldn’t trust anybody else with it. And there are few items on my desk that would be helpful.”
“How could someone who has secret cash and an emergency weekend bag stashed in his kitchen not keep his files on a flash drive?”
“I do have a flash drive … at the Council office. I have some digital scans of the important documents saved on my hard drive here, but other reports and some samples were left at the house. If they’re at the Council office, I need them back.”
“And calling Ophelia to tell her what you need is out?”
“Do you think I haven’t thought of that? Do you think it hasn’t crossed my mind every waking moment? But I can’t do that now, not after you were hurt in my house. Clearly, someone on the Council is trying to hurt me, even if they have to do it through people who are only loosely connected to me.”
Loosely connected? What the hell did that mean? I turned my back on him, heating water for a cup of tea. It gave me an excuse not to look at him and ample time to mull over how quickly my thrall had dissipated.
