For better or worse, she had her vampire until midnight, and then she supposed he’d slide back into his coffin, awaiting the next poor schmuck desperate enough to have to rustle up somebody for a family affair. Somebody idiotic enough to show up with a vampire.
“So, all right. Glass half full is the way to go.”
Looking at things positively, the agency actually had been somewhat like going to the Pound, where you found your puppy, a.k.a. dead guy, and took him home. Or else he would arrive any minute now in a limo. So why were her nerves wrecked and jangling? Why did the mirror hanging above her grandmother’s antique credenza reflect back a pale version of herself, cowering?
Bright and bouncy as her blonde hair was, not even it or bronzer could hide the whiteness of her face. Her blue eyes, black-lined and heavily mascaraed for the evening, were wide, shadowed, and uncertain. And it was too late to do anything about it. Any second now she would have to make small talk with someone who might hand her a receipt. Someone who could possibly be wearing a cape if the movies had gotten this detail right and the agency insisted on playing their games to the hilt.
Would vamps charge more for small talk, since they had those pesky sharpened teeth? Did they get hazard pay for jobs like this one? Would the Davis family buy the fact that a guy they had never met and their daughter were a happy couple, and get off her back about being twenty-three years old and prospectless?
“Agh!”
Massaging her temples with shaky fingers, Veronica nearly missed a sound in the hallway.
Tapping?
Breath held, fingers slipping to form a noose around her neck, she paused to listen, ear to the door. No footsteps. No heavy breathing out there.
False alarm.
But then why, quite strangely, had her palms, pressed tightly to the wood, began to heat up? Also her buttocks, and the back of her head?
She didn’t move. Couldn’t. A perceptible nip of panic returned as she thought: This is Man Radar.
He was out there. In the hallway. The guy whose photo had sealed the deal. The man she was about to dangle in front of her parents as her date, when in actuality, he was bait.
“Calm down.” Her whisper seemed more like an order than a suggestion as three soft raps came, near her upper back.
Bolting, Veronica stumbled into the living room, nearly taking out a table lamp. Glancing around at the small amount of furniture she had managed to buy with a law clerk’s meager salary, she decided that any breakage would be unacceptable. She would have to get herself together and stop being such a chicken.
She would have to open the door!
But first, she whined some more.
Why had she signed on the dotted line?
Why had Annie, who had left a lunch-time yesterday, messed with her like this?
Gad. If a photograph could make her want to hump a coffin, what might the real guy do to her?
Nonsense, her rational mind argued. You’ve had blind dates before.
True, enough, but she had never paid for one. And that made a difference.
Another knock came.
Veronica let out a yelp.
Maybe he’d go away if she didn’t answer. Too bad if she would have to pay. Serve her right.
Then again, she couldn’t leave him out there in the hall. What would the neighbors think if he kept knocking?
Fact: She was going to have to let him in!
Blowing out a sigh that stirred her fringe of platinum bangs, Veronica took in a shallow, settling breath, muttered “No refunds permitted,” and yanked on the knob.
* * * *
She blinked several times in repaid succession, trying to clear her eyes, with no success. She saw black. A stretch of black covering a very broad chest.
Her gaze traveled upward slowly — way up — until she confronted a pair of big expressive eyes the color of an espresso shot.
Coffin Guy stood there, in the flesh.
Again, she heard music.
His face was chiseled to perfection, as if by an artist’s hand. He had mile-high cheekbones, a tapered chin, and wore a charming, welcoming grin curtained by long, shoulder-length auburn hair that was perfectly straight, thick, and the color of a new penny.
Six-foot-two, at least, her date’s tall frame and long limbs took up most of the doorway space. This was, Veronica thought, the most exquisite chunk of manhood she had ever seen. In her doorway, smiling at her, stood every girl’s version of a wet dream.
Veronica’s knees wobbled.
Her unmentionables fluttered.
Surely somebody up there had created him just for her?
She tightened her thigh muscles to keep from falling over backwards, and closed her speechless lips.
“Veronica Davis?”
His voice was a harmonic vibration. Deep. Lightly accented. Creamy. It echoed in her foyer, and kicked Veronica’s long unused body parts into gear, as if those parts had merely been napping all this time.
Of course, all this was absurd. This guy was not hers to keep. He wasn’t even a real date. Mister Beautiful was a temp.
“I’m Veronica, yes,” she said, fantasizing that a girl with a healthy inner dream life could be thrown in jail for doing to a rental what she was dreaming of doing to him, and remembering she hadn’t changed the sheets on her bed.
“And you are . . . Christian?” she added, commanding herself to get a grip, not wanting to pant in front of the hunk, because this guy was not just gorgeous, he was really gorgeous. Out of this world, drop-dead gorgeous — and she hadn’t yet gotten to anything below his neck.
Although his smile was to die for, it was his eyes that fascinated her. His gaze seemed to suck her in and twirl her around in some sort of cyclonic convergence. When he leaned toward her, Veronica was sure there was going to be a kiss, on the first date, within thirty seconds of their meeting. She wondered about the fine print on this detail.
But no kiss came. Her date merely angled his face toward her neck, where he inhaled once, as if appreciating her perfume, then sighed softly into the tendrils curling over her ear.
All the little goose bumps covering her body were cheering. Her breasts, safely tucked away behind dress and jacket, strained toward him, nipples as hard as cheery pits. Though fairly sure she’d shaved her legs, Veronica suddenly wanted to run and check.
“Yes,” he said. “I’m Christian.”
His voice sent bursts of longing crashing all over her, the likes of which she had never known. Indeed, her body parts still worked and were throbbing in anticipation, hyped by the drift of a masculine scent she couldn’t quite pin down.
Cedar chips?
Supersoil?
Coffin lining?
Although he wasn’t touching her, Veronica could have sworn he was. It was as though they were both thinking of touching, at the same time, in some alternate universe. The result was pure magic; the kind that didn’t bode well for her original agenda.
“Hey,” he said. “You okay?”
The question served as a wake-up call.
“Fine. Thanks for coming.”
She was, though, and just for the record, beginning to think that maybe she should have walked by more of those coffins before choosing. She tended to think now that she should have picked someone, well . . . less like him.
She should have chosen someone she wouldn’t have been attracted to. Someone she wouldn’t want to hit the sheets with. After all, the guy had been borrowed for purely superficial reasons. She had maxed out her credit card for just one evening’s worth of familial retribution. Not for sex.
Definitely not for sex.
Yummy as he was, as erotic as the sensations of being near to him were turning out to be, his job was to accompany her to a horrid occasion and make her look good. Besides, he would find out soon enough that she was all talk, all dreams, all fantasies, in the end, with zilch in the experimentation department. If he even were to make a move now, she’d probably faint.
“Pleasure
to meet you,” he said.
“Likewise,” she returned, only then noticing there was no black cape around his shoulders, as she’d feared might be the case.
“You look beautiful, but then, you are beautiful,” he told her, causing her to flutter some more. She had been called cute on occasion, but beautiful was a stretch. She was too darned perky for beautiful. Her slightly turned-up nose wasn’t at all patrician or regal, and she had a lean, narrow body, unadorned with lush curves, fake boobs, or a curvaceous backside. What she did have was a smattering of freckles across her nose, and a lot of bouncy blonde hair.
However, a compliment was always appreciated.
“So are you,” she rallied, maintaining her tight grip on the doorknob. “But I’ve seen Dracula, so I’d better not ask you in.”
He smiled over that, quite gallantly she thought, and as though he had never heard this before. A real gentleman.
“Are you ready?” he asked.
Boy, was she! She nodded, unable to actually answer this question, because more images were springing to mind that were totally uncalled for, rather risque, and triple-A wishful thinking. Images of this guy stroking her all over returned, added to Cosmopolitans in the bathtub and long trails of discarded clothing from here to there. And also, quite wickedly, her thoughts turned to supposing which one of them would be on top within the narrow confines of a coffin, and how that might work out.
These daydreams skidded to a stop when he covered her hand with his, branding her with a searing heat as he worked to pry her fingers from the doorknob.
And okay. That was embarrassing.
He bowed his head in the direction of the street once her hand came free, and kept hold of her fingers. A bead of perspiration trickled between Veronica’s beasts. She kept on smiling.
“Shall we?” he asked.
“Yes,” she replied, figuring that everyone in signal-beaming distance with either a flair for ESP or a very tall radio antenna would have heard what she really wanted to say.
God, yes! To everything. To all possible scenarios.
To her credit, she didn’t say any of those things aloud. Slipping her hand from his, so that she could recover what was left of her dignity, Veronica turned, retrieved her clutch purse from the table, and closed the exterior door behind them . . . safely sealing them both off from the possibility of the mattress, not more than twenty feet away.
Feeling as though she had just ingested a scalding cup of something sweetly exotic, Veronica walked down the hallway with the resident of coffin number three in tow, feeling his eyes on her backside, hoping he didn’t have x-ray vision.
Purposefully keeping her hip swaying to a minimum, lest she tip the already precarious balance between them and he find out how inexperienced she actually was, Veronica focused on pertinent details to stabilize herself. Such as: When was she going to tell this guy what he was really up against by taking on a Davis shindig?
She’d have to tell him soon. Every Davis south of the Pole would be in attendance for Charlene’s wedding tonight. Her big sister’s over-the-top, churchy event. And her sexy, brilliantly beautiful vampire was going to be fodder. Prime Davis fodder.
She wouldn’t wish such a fate on anyone if it weren’t an emergency, and didn’t wish it on her vampire, really. But what could she do? It was either bring a date, or drown.
As she walked toward the curb on her spiked satin stilts, Veronica felt her shoulders begin to slump. The reality was that the odds of ever seeing the inside of this guy’s cushy coffin were a big fat zero.
Especially after this.
Chapter four
The limo was parked in front of the building, as long, sleek, and shiny as her rent-a-date’s hair. Veronica never ridden in a limo. Her high school prom date had received a Volkswagen as a graduation gift. At the time, Volkswagens were cool.
Christian, her date, opened the door. He brushed her shoulder as she slid onto the soft leather seat, sending tugs of lust all the way to her thong strings.
He entered the car through the opposite door, street side, and sat on her left. The big limo door closed with a thunk that suggested the words “water tight.”
Small talk was necessary, but Veronica couldn’t start it. Neither could she look at him without hyperventilating, for so many reasons, one of which was the fact that with just one sniff of her neck, this guy had made her dream of clean bedding.
Still, Veronica felt the need to break the ice as she settled herself on the seat. She needed to suck on some. (Ice, not seats). Of course, the term “breaking the ice” was in terms of actually opening her mouth to say something, and not in any way temperature related. The interior of the limo was actually exceedingly warm.
“How about some background?” she suggested finally, in a breathy tone. “I’m Los Angeles born and raised. An actual California native. You?”
“Transylvania,” he said with a gravelly tone that poured over her skin like her new silk slip.
With her heart issuing a little thunderclap of uncertainty as she pictured in her mind the coffin this hunk had come packaged in, Veronica said, with skepticism, “Transylvania? You’re kidding, right?”
“I’m afraid it is rather trite, but true,” Christian said. “I actually was born there.”
“What happened to your accent?”
“I lost it ages ago, wanting to blend in.”
“You’ve been in the States for some time?” All Davis’s were good at interrogations once they got rolling.
“About twenty years,” he replied, but he might just as well have said something about rubbing body parts together, for all the hoarse, sexiness of his tone.
Twenty years ought to have been about right, Veronica thought, for locking herself in her bedroom with him. Who needed food or water, when they had communal vibrations?
She eyed him suspiciously with a sideways glance, wanting to scrutinize openly, refraining. “You don’t actually look like a dead guy, you know. Certainly nothing like a vampire.”
“Thanks. But what is a vampire supposed to look like?”
His voice, she decided, was pure Hagen-Daz. Agency points there, for sure, if there would be a post-date questionnaire.
“Well, I didn’t expect a black cape or anything,” she said, “though of course I couldn’t rule it out. I wasn’t sure how I would have explained a cape to my parents, and have to admit to being more than a little bit relieved to have found it missing. Oh, and maybe paler skin. Vampires are supposed to avoid the sun, aren’t they?”
And fangs, she thought. Don’t forget the fangs.
“I’m sorry,” her escort said earnestly, as far as she could tell. “Have I disappointed you?”
“Un-uh. No.” No way.
“Hollywood has given us a bad rap, you know,” he explained, laughter somewhere behind his words. “They keep us stuck in a rut. In this century, capes, cummerbunds, coffins, and pasty complexions are mostly fiction.”
And those were exactly the first things she’d thought of.
“It’s blatant stereotyping,” he concluded with a slightly dangerous sounding chuckle. “Not at all typical of what we’re really like.”
Yeah, vampires are just your average guys . . .
“You don’t live in the coffin?” Veronica was certain he’d break soon, laugh about the creature of the night schtick, and come clean.
“Actually,” he said, “I have a very nice home in West L.A.”
“The coffin at the agency?”
“My home away from home, when I’m working.”
“And the paleness thing? Why aren’t you white as a sheet?” He was, in fact, a very becoming light golden bronze. And she was becoming Veronica Frigging Nancy Drew.
Christian’s sly grin made him appear younger.
“Get out! You go to a tanning salon?” Veronica said.
She hadn’t meant to get so personal, but his coloring was a wonderful contrast to the white dress shirt he had on. White and soft enough to flow with
the perfect cut of his jacket. Sheer enough to cling to what she could see of his well-defined undercarriage.
Noticing her glance, Christian said, “I like softness against my skin.”
Veronica wanted to touch that skin, and made herself think of something else. Like what her mother, now probably frantic over preparations at the church, would say about his suit. It was the deepest charcoal in color, almost black, and expertly tailored. No flip-flops or loafers with tassels peeked out from the pants.
She said, “Very chic suit. You look good in it.”
She watched her unusual date’s lips upturn at the corners, as though he hadn’t been expecting the complement and was pleased. She supposed it was entirely possible that men didn’t receive many compliments. Probably it wasn’t cool for men to high-five their gender mates for their choices in clothing. Maybe men didn’t give much thought to skin tone and color schemes.
And because of that thought, suddenly Veronica felt truly grateful that Annie had recommended the agency. Weird though it might be to date a guy whose resume might list resting in a coffin at a rental agency, and as uncomfortable as it was being in this situation with a stranger that would cost her a good chunk of change this month, Veronica had a good feeling about this. She had a premonition that this guy might just be a hit at the wedding. All the arithmetic added up. The looks, the voice, the pecs. The hair, the tan, the pecs. The suit. The pecs.
One hundred percent perfect.
She shot her date another grateful sideways glance, glad of the yard or so of leather stretching between them that amounted to breathing space. The urge to close the distance had grown formidable.
Rationalization told her this immediate affection for the new guy was caused by the damsel in distress syndrome. Damsels always lusted for their heroes. The pangs in her panties were, in essence, nothing more than savior worship. He wasn’t actually staring back at her as though he wanted to devour her as well. It would be silly to think so.
Veronica and the Vampire Page 3
