by Jessica Sims
He chuffed at me again, then turned, batting at my leg with his tail, indicating that I should follow once more. I did, and he took me down a set of alleys, leading me through the backstreets of downtown Fort Worth, before we came to a neatly stashed pile of clothing and shoes.
He paused, staring at me expectantly.
“Time to change?” I asked.
He reached out and licked my hand again.
“I’m going to take that as a yes. Go on, then.” I turned around, picked up his cell phone, and clicked on it, payback for his snatching my phone.
Locked. Darn. So much for my chance to snoop. I waited until Josh finished changing, listening to the sound of clothing rustling as he dressed. Then he leaned over my shoulder and neatly plucked his phone out of my hands. “That’s mine.”
“Afraid I’ll get all the numbers of your girlfriends and tell them about how you’ve been harassing me in an alley?”
“What, and give away all my smooth moves?” he teased. “Let’s get back to the agency. I imagine Ryder’s waiting. I assume she’s in on this scheme of yours?”
She was, and she was going to kill me if I showed up at the agency with Josh.
We walked back to the small strip mall off a service road. Midnight Liaisons had an unassuming storefront, since the last thing we wanted was to draw attention to our business. The lights were on inside, as they were twenty-four hours a day, but the blinds were pulled shut. When I entered the small waiting room, I frowned to see that all four desks in the main office were empty. I glanced over at Ryder’s desk. Her purse was still hanging off the back of her chair.
Not good.
I turned to Josh. “Can you wait here for a minute?”
He shrugged. “Or I could sit down and we can talk for a bit and explore this vampire fetish—”
That was the last thing I wanted right now. “Just . . . stay . . . here,” I said, placing my hands on his chest and giving him a nudge backward.
He put his hand over mine, as if to hold it. “I know you want your hands on me, Marie, but think of how jealous poor Ryder will be.”
I shoved him harder, ignoring the boyish grin on his face. “I’m going to talk to Ryder, and then we’re going to head out for a bit.”
“We are?” He seemed surprised. “Shouldn’t you be ‘working’ at your ‘job’?” He made air quotes, teasing me.
“Shouldn’t you?” I hissed back at him. “You’re being paid to track something, right? So go track.” When he didn’t move, I sighed. “Give me two minutes and I’ll tell Ryder where we’re going. Just wait here.” I didn’t want him following me in.
I half expected him to follow me in, but he did as I asked. I hitched my purse closer on my shoulder, braced myself, and headed to the back conference room, where I knew I’d find Ryder.
I cracked the door open just enough to see scaly flesh and curled wings. One misshapen arm shot out, clearly re-forming. The creature turned to me, eyes wild, and I recognized Ryder’s bright blue gaze in that awful face.
“Hey,” I said softly, forcing myself to ignore the fact that she was turning into a monster right before my eyes. “I’m taking Josh and we’re going to go get something to eat. Call me if you need me, okay?”
The hand wavered, shuddered, and clenched. Then she slowly raised it into the air and jabbed a thumbs-up.
I gave her the thumbs-up sign back and shut the door, leaving her to her business.
After all, I knew all about secrets. There were some things you just didn’t want other people to know. I swept through the office and brushed past Josh to the front door. “Come on. There’s bound to be something open this late.”
Chapter Five
There was a time when I’d have been excited about going out to a late-night dinner with a gorgeous man. A time when, if he’d put his hand on the small of my back to guide me down the sidewalk, I’d have shivered with delight. Tonight I had a handsome, gorgeous man with his hand on my back, walking at my side, and it just bothered me. I was filled with annoyance. What did Josh so arrogantly think he could teach me about dating a male vampire? I was the one who worked at a dating agency, after all.
I strode down the sidewalk and tried not to think about Ryder, who was having a bad night. Instead, I focused on my situation, since it was a worse night for me. Josh easily kept up with my angry strides, his big form staying protectively next to me.
He gestured at a nearby restaurant. “How about that?”
I eyed the yellow sign with a frown. “A diner?”
He grinned down at me and I was distracted by how close he was, by his touch on my lower back. “Why not? Open all night.”
“It just seems so . . . ”
“Casual? It’s not a date.” His hand nudged my lower back, directing me toward the restaurant’s lit parking lot.
My mouth tightened. Of course it wasn’t a date. “You don’t need to remind me. And since you picked, you’re paying.”
“Why? It’s not a date.”
I gritted my teeth. “Fine.”
When we got inside, the elderly waitress lit up at the sight of Josh. “There’s my boy,” she crowed in a voice that sounded as if she’d smoked too many cigarettes. “How are you, Josh darlin’?”
He gave the small, stout woman a bear hug. “I’m pining away with love for you, Carol.”
She gave a raspy chuckle and swatted his bottom. “You want your usual?”
“You know I do.” He glanced over at me. “I brought a friend. She’ll probably want a menu.”
The waitress glanced over at me, her nest of overly bleached curls tilting as she studied me, then she squeezed him in a half hug. “You go pick a table and sit anywhere. I’ll get your food started.”
“You’re an angel,” he said with a grin.
I rolled my eyes and followed him to a rounded booth in the far corner of the nearly empty restaurant. When I slid in on one side, Josh slid in right next to me. I immediately scooted all the way around to the far end, putting some distance between us.
That seemed to amuse him, which only made me more irritated.
“I see why you wanted to come here. You get free food every night just because you flirt with the old ladies?”
He grinned. “Not every night, and I don’t flirt. They just love me.”
As if to prove this point, Carol showed up with two glasses of water and a coffee for Josh. She set it down in front of him, tugged his ballcap off his head in a proprietary move that surprised me, then smoothed his hair like a mother. “No hats inside, young man.”
Josh gave her a rueful smile. “Sorry.”
He looked even more boyish with his hair sticking up wildly. If it hadn’t been for the scruff on his face, he would have looked far too young.
“This one’s too charming for his own good,” Carol said affectionately, chucking Josh’s unshaved chin as if she’d been a doting mother—or grandmother.
“He only thinks he’s charming,” I pointed out. “He just expects everyone else to think it, too.”
She chuckled again, that horrible smoker’s rasp. “I like this one, Josh.”
My face colored, which made Josh grin.
“You want the same thing he’s having, honey?” she asked me.
Anything to get her away from the two of us. “Sure. Thank you.”
She put a coffee mug down in front of me and filled it, then left with another smile at Josh.
“So that’s your schtick?” I said irritably. “To be a charming freeloader?”
“First of all,” he said, lifting the coffee cup to his lips, “I pay for everything. Carol doesn’t make enough to buy me dinner on a regular basis.” He sipped it and then grimaced. “Her coffee is shit, though.”
But I noticed he still drank it. Maybe telling her would hurt her feelings.
“And second?” I prompted, opening a few sugar packets and dumping them into my cup.
“Carol works four nights a week. Her husband died three years ago and
she lives in a small apartment on the bad side of town. It scares her to take the bus, so she tries to get a ride with friends. I stop in to check on her and give her a ride when she needs it.”
That was . . . unexpectedly nice of him. “So she’s a shifter, too?”
“No,” he said. “Just a lady with no one to look after her. So I do.”
I said nothing. Carol swung out of the kitchen with two massive stacks of pancakes and plopped them down in front of us, then dropped a bottle of syrup on the table. I stared at the massive stack. That was a lot of pancakes.
Josh put a hand over his heart and gave Carol a pleased look. “You make my heart melt with your delicious food.”
She chuckled again. “I’ll be back with the rest when it comes off the grill. Dig in.”
As she left, I eyed the pancake mountain, then looked over at Josh. “The . . . rest?”
He leaned in. “You ordered the same thing I get, right? Perhaps you didn’t realize that shifters eat a lot?”
I admit it hadn’t been the first thing on my mind. “So what exactly did I order?”
“Two club sandwiches, a skillet scramble, these pancakes,” he said, pointing. “And a steak.”
“A freaking steak? With all this? That’s revolting.”
“Does that mean I get to eat yours?”
“Only if you want to buy it from me,” I said, mashing my fork into the pat of butter on top of the pancake mountain. “That’s what I get for trusting a pretty face.”
“So you think I’m pretty? Marie, you flirt, you.”
“Voyons. It’s a figure of speech, tabarnak.”
“And more French. You know that’s sexy, right?”
“You know I just called you vile things, right?”
“That’s how you flirt.”
“I hate you.”
“More flirting.”
I ground my teeth and forced myself not to reply, since he’d practically consider it a declaration of love. Instead, I focused on swamping my pancakes with syrup, then taking a bite. Delicious. I’d be totally wound up from the sugar and coffee later, but it didn’t matter. It wasn’t like I could sleep anyhow. I ate a few more bites in companionable silence as Josh neatly cut his pancakes into perfect triangles and ate them without a bit of syrup.
Carol stopped by with the rest of the food by the time I’d eaten three pancakes and was feeling full. Josh, meanwhile, had polished off all of his pancakes and was more than ready for the next course. While I retreated to my coffee, he dug into the sandwiches, scrambled eggs, and steak, chatting with Carol for a few minutes. He asked her how her job was going, and listened attentively when she complained about a coworker who was taking all the extra shifts. He asked about her hot water heater, which hadn’t been working properly in the last month, and volunteered to take a look at it. She turned him down with a wave of her hand. He even asked about her cat. Carol left a few minutes later, smiling.
I digested it all in silence. It was clear that Josh knew the woman well and took an interest in her life. That seemed . . . odd to me. Josh was such a love-them-and-leave-them type that I hadn’t imagined him to be the kind to chat with lonely elderly ladies.
There was another side to the incorrigible flirt. Either that, or this was all an elaborate ruse to get women to fall into his arms. Take them to a low-key diner, charm them with his relationship with an old, down-on-her-luck woman, then they’d tumble into his bed faster than the speed of light.
Even as I told myself that, it didn’t fit. What playboy was going to hang out at a diner with an old woman to talk about her cats?
“So,” I said when we were alone again. “You were going to tell me what I’m doing wrong?”
He stopped eating, wiped his mouth with his napkin, and nodded. “First, I need to know the whole thing. How many vampires have you gone out with?”
I hesitated, wondering if I should tell him everything. Well, if I couldn’t get a vampire to show up for a date, it wouldn’t matter. I had to take my chances with Josh. “I’ve gone out with three. At least, I tried to go out with three. First there was Valjean—”
Josh shook his head immediately. “He’s hooked up and left for Europe. You know Ruby Sommers? Pretty little were-jaguar? Sister to Jayde?”
I didn’t, but it was clear that he knew all the “pretty little were-jaguars” in town, which made my teeth grit. “I know he’s hooked up. Anyhow, we never went out. I went out with Bert.”
He laughed. “No way. Seriously? World of Hurt Bert?”
I wasn’t going to have any teeth left if I kept grinding them. “He’s a vampire, isn’t he?”
“Only in the barest sense of the word. The man’s a loser. I can’t believe you went out with him.”
And Bert had told me that I wasn’t his type. That stung a bit more right now than it should have. “It was only one date.”
He nodded. “Turned you down, didn’t he?”
I gaped. “How did you know that?”
“I did a spin of guard duty for Bert last summer. He likes ’em . . . ” He gestured, indicating a rather large butt, and then began to jiggle his hands.
“Yes, I know,” I hissed, slapping his hands down. “Badonkadonk.”
“I was going to say ‘big booty hos’, but that works,” he said with a laugh. “Anyhow, that’s why he’s single. He’s selective, and the dating pool is kind of lean when it comes to that sort of thing. No pun intended.”
I rolled my eyes. “Yes, well, number two turned me down, too. He didn’t even show up to our date.”
He nodded. “I’m not surprised.”
“Why are you not surprised? I am.”
“Vampires tend to be skittish.”
I eyed the Russell Security T-shirt that he wore. “I noticed. So they’re paranoid?”
“To the extreme,” he agreed, sipping his coffee again with a grimace. “Vampires are a dog-eat-dog society. You look at someone’s blood partner the wrong way, and you could find yourself with a contract on your head. You go into someone’s territory and set up shop, there’s a contract on your head. It’s like the mafia with fangs. The smart ones lay low or leave town fast.”
That sounded awful. There was so much that I didn’t know about vampires, and I was quickly realizing that Josh could help fill in some of the fuzzy edges. “So what’s a blood partner?”
“A vampire’s mate is called a blood partner. Blood partners only drink from each other. And since vampire women are rare, you’ll find a lot more single male vampires, since every female that isn’t partnered pretty much has her choice of men.”
Interesting. That sounded like it could work in my favor. If vampire females were highly prized, my willingness to become a vampire female would probably be looked upon positively. “So why aren’t there many vampire females?”
“Same thing as female shifters, I imagine,” he said. “You’re marrying into a family that’s not exactly the most fun to get along with. And I hear it’s quite painful for the victim if the turning doesn’t take—or it kills them.”
That wasn’t a deterrent for me. I was dying anyhow, so I’d take my chances. I rubbed my eyes, feeling suddenly a bit tired. The more I found out about vampires, the less I wanted to become one, but I was low on choices. Very low. “So vampires are skittish and think everyone is out to get them. Is that why my date didn’t show up?”
“That’s my guess. Either that, or he didn’t like the way you looked and had second thoughts.”
I scowled. “I look perfectly acceptable.”
“You’re beautiful,” he agreed.
I was momentarily flabbergasted. “I . . . thank you.”
“To me,” he amended. “Vampires like different things.”
Oh, I remembered. Badonkadonk. Still, I felt warm under Josh’s flattery and didn’t even mind the reminder. “So what is it about me you’d change?”
He studied me for a long moment, the intense scrutiny making my cheeks flush. His gaze swept over my face, the
n my chest, then back over my face again. A smile curved his sexy mouth. “I wouldn’t change anything.”
My cheeks felt as if they’d been on fire.
“But we’re not talking about me. You’re talking about hooking a vampire . . . unless you changed your mind and decided you want me instead?”
Figured that he’d bring the conversation back around to how sexy he was. I kicked him under the table. “I didn’t change my mind. Tell me about what I need to do to get a vampire.”
“You girls and your weird vampire fetishes,” he said with a shake of his head. “You know dating a vampire’s not like it is on TV, right?”
“I’m not stupid.”
“No, you’re not, but I am questioning your taste in men.” At my glare, he raised a placating hand. “Fine, then. Let’s start with the basics. You went through the agency?”
I said nothing, suddenly nervous. Josh was the brother-in-law of my boss. If she knew that I was using the database for my own personal needs, I’d be fired in a red-hot minute. That was a big no-no, especially since I was only a marginal member of the Alliance.
Of course, Bathsheba had dated through the agency herself, once upon a time. Anytime it came up, however, she was quick to explain that it hadn’t been her choice—she’d been blackmailed into it to hide the fact that Sara was a werewolf. She didn’t want Ryder and me dating through the agency because the fact that a human had used the service had stirred up a real hornet’s nest among the shifter clans. Some wanted to date humans, but more of them didn’t want us contaminating the works. I could understand it, even if it was cross with all of my own plans.
Josh sighed at my reluctance. “I’m not going to rat on you, Marie. If I was, would we be here?”
I had no idea. But I supposed I had to trust someone—I was getting nowhere fast on my own, and I didn’t have a ton of vampires in the database to experiment with. “I’m in the database. As Minnie Michigo. Were-otter.”
The nod of approval came slowly. “Michigo was a good choice. Lots of them in the area.”
Strange, how flustered I felt when I had his approval. “That’s why I picked them. Plus, they’re not a bigger predator that could be intimidating.”
