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Collin’s eyes grew wide. His mouth pinched itself together at the corners.
“Go ahead and laugh.” I sighed.
A hearty, braying cackle burst from his chest, doubling him over and startling me. My eyes went wide as he howled with laughter, clutching his sides as if he was using muscles that hadn’t worked in years. It might have irritated the hell out of me, except that he looked so damn pretty when he did it. He continued to snicker until slightly pink tears ran down his cheeks. He wiped at them.
I grumbled. “I left college, let’s say, ‘prematurely.’ It wasn’t a good fit for me, sitting in the same classrooms with the same people, day after day. I liked ‘drifting about the country,’ as you called it. I liked not knowing what I was going to do or who I was going to meet. I liked learning new skills. Every day should be an adventure, in my book, a whole new life to be lived. The karmic payoff to this ‘shiftless nomadic existence that breaks my parents’ hearts’ is that every time I think I find something I’m good at, it blows up in my face.”
“I am suddenly very, very afraid.”
“If it makes you feel any better, I don’t usually take bystanders down with me.” I added reluctantly, “Except for that one time with Morlock the Magician. Though, to be fair, he did tell me to coat the dove with glitter spray. It’s not my fault he bought a highly flammable discount brand.”
“That does not make me feel any better, no,” he said, shaking his head. “Highly flammable?”
“The bird got spooked during the Ring of Fire trick, then flew right at Morlock. Flaming bird, lots of stage makeup and hair spray. It took a whole fire extinguisher, and Morlock still had some third-degree burns.”>“Should we call the police and report this?”
“Do you really want to file another police report? That will just slow us down that much more. We’re running just shy of ‘on time’ as it is.”
“You make a good point.” He nodded. “We’ll just tell Miss Scanlon to add the cost of repainting the car to my bill.”
“Really?” I asked, lifting a brow. “That’s very nice of you.”
“Contingencies, Miss Puckett. They happen,” he said, echoing my words earlier. “Particularly when you’re around. But you shouldn’t be held responsible for the actions of mammary-minded juvenile delinquents.”
I searched his face for some hint of derision or deception. I found none, just unearthly blue eyes and an unsettling amount of sincerity. He really wasn’t angry or annoyed with me. He was incredibly embarrassed, however, and trying very hard not to look me directly in the eye.
Men, vampire or otherwise, were so strange when it came to boobs.
“Perhaps we can paint over the, er, additions with black paint so it’s less noticeable.”
“I thought about it, but adding another layer might make it harder for the professionals to fix. I’ll call Iris in the morning and ask her if we have some sort of vandalism roadside-assistance plan,” I said. “Let’s just get on the road, shall we?”
I reached into the car and popped the hood. As I propped it back over the windshield, Mr. Sutherland frowned. “I don’t think this is the best way to keep other drivers from seeing them, Miss Puckett, unless you plan to cut eyeholes in the hood.”
“Funny.” I snorted. “I just want to make sure our friendly neighborhood car decorators didn’t diddle with my engine.”
“Diddle?”
“I would use the f-word again, but cursing seems to upset you,” I said, peering down at the gleaming inner works of the car.
“Isn’t this just a bit paranoid?”
“It might be, if I hadn’t been stranded outside a mall in Poughkeepsie once, believing my car was completely dead, only to find out that some smartass had taken advantage of a faulty outside hood latch and unscrewed my distributor cap. The tow-truck guy laughed his ass off at me. So now, I just like to make sure everything’s in order.”
Mr. Sutherland peered over my shoulder. “Do you know what you’re looking at?”
I cut my eyes at him. “Would you ask a man that same question?”
“Yes, because I have no clue what I’m looking at.” He looked affronted, which made me laugh, despite the situation. “Why would said smartass do something like that?” he asked as I checked the obvious spots, the spark plugs, the alternator, the battery cables.
“I think I was being set up for a mugging in Poughkeepsie, but the tow truck got there before anything could happen. But in this case, I don’t know—just in case the automotive boobs weren’t demoralizing enough?”
I gently nudged his hands out of the way before snapping the hood shut. Remembering the incident with the car door, he flexed his healed fingers. “Are you demoralized?”
“Are you kidding?” I scoffed. “This is just Tuesday for me.”
“But it’s Thursday.”
“It’s an expression.”
