All In: Double or Nothing (19 page)

It was Saturday, June thirteenth. The one year anniversary of the day Caleb and I met, and we were heading out to celebrate.

When he pulled up at Shooter's I laughed. "Seriously?"

"Yes, what's wrong with Shooter's?" he asked.

"Nothing. It is where we met. I just didn't expect this to be where you'd want to go."

"Come on, let's see if you remember anything I taught you," he said, grabbing my hand and pulling me inside.

We went in and headed for the table in the back. Our table.

"Want to play a game with me, beautiful lady? I'll even buy you a drink, since you've been legal almost a year now."

I laughed. "Sure. Whisky sour," I told him, and he headed to the bar while I grabbed a cue and chalked the end, then started racking.

When Caleb came back I traded him the stick for my drink.

"I'll break," he said, chalking the tip again. Then he bent over and hit the center hard, sinking a few solids and stripes, before he handed the cue back to me with a smile.

"You need any help?" he asked.

"No, I think I remember how to hold your stick."

He laughed and moved around to the side of the table to give me room. I leaned down to angle a shot toward the side pocket when my fingers slid over something raised around the tip. Pulling the stick to me, I saw a silver band that I was pretty sure hadn't been on the cue when I'd chalked it. I rotated it around to see that the band held a princess cut diamond, lined with tiny diamonds on both sides.

I dropped the stick and spun around to Caleb. He was leaning his hip against the side of the table innocently with his hands casually in his pockets.

"Did you … did you put that on there?"

"Depends. Are you freaking out in a good way or a bad way?" he asked.

"Ah, good."

"Then yeah, I put it there for you."

He came over and picked up the stick, pulling the ring off.

"Lauren Jefferson, I started falling in love with you the first time I saw you. I know without a doubt that I want to spend the rest of my life with you. I love you more than anything, and I want to try and give you everything you've always deserved but have never had. So, will you marry me?"

He grabbed my hand and poised the ring over my finger as he looked at me, waiting. I wrapped my arms around his neck and brought his lips to mine.

After a long kiss Caleb pulled back and smiled down at me. "Is that a yes or are you just trying to distract me so you don't have to break my heart?"

"Yes. Of course it's a yes. What took you so long?" I asked through the happy tears.

He slid the ring onto my finger, and it looked like it had always belonged there.         

"Oh sweetheart. I've wanted to marry you for months, but I needed you to trust me first, to realize that I'm never going to leave you. A marriage has to be built on trust, and trust can't be substituted with marriage." 

"I love you," I told him and he wrapped his arms around me.

"I love you too," he said softly, then he yelled, "She said yes!" to the rest of the bar, which erupted into cheers.         

###

Pick up Tyler and Jess’s story in
Betting on a Full House
from the night
Double or Nothing
ended! Look for it soon!

Blood Drive
- is a fun and sexy story about a lazy vampire who falls for a beautiful girl, and the asshole who will lie, deceive and betray his only friend to come between the two of them.

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I pulled the pillow tighter over my head. I was trying ineffectively to block out the sun shining through my bedroom window, and the alarm clock screeching out a horrible pop song. I don't know why I leave it on this shitty radio station, except for it beats waking up to
beep-beep-beep
.

I blindly reached over to the nightstand and slapped my hand around until I found and hit the snooze button, giving myself ten more minutes. Work begins for me at the ungodly hour of eight a.m., and since there were bills to pay and video games to buy, the next time my alarm went off, I'd make myself get up.

I felt the dip in the foot of my mattress an instant before I heard his annoying voice.

 "Get up jackass. I'm hungry, and you're going to be late for work."

I grabbed the pillow and swatted at the fat-ass orange and white tiger-striped cat to knock him off my bed.

 "Get the fuck out of my room!" I yelled at him. I have got to remember to lock my damn door!

 "I bet a slash across your face will get you moving,” he threatened.

 "I'll feed you in ten minutes if you'll leave me the hell alone! But I swear, if you scratch me with your filthy shit covered claws, I’ll snap you in half!”

 "That reminds me, you need to change my cat litter too, asshole," he said as he finally gave up and sulked away.

 "You're really a man, use the fucking toilet!" I screamed after him.

 "I’ve tried, but my claws slip and I fall in. Then I have to spend the whole damn day licking piss water off myself," he whined.

 Chris had been annoying the shit out of me for years, but he was one of the few friends I had. Five years ago he'd been on the run and turned himself into a cat. He'd been one ever since because the idiot didn't stir the counter-spell before transforming. It wasn't the cat part of him that bothered me, it was his non-stop mouth. Why the stupid spell left him with the ability to talk was just my luck.

 I really should give the guy some slack though. There didn't seem to be an end in sight for his feline days. He'd showed me how to do the spell reversal, and we’d tried it at least a dozen times, but using his kitty blood was always a no-go. Dumb ass.

 When the alarm went off again I finally rolled out of the warm cozy bed and headed to the bathroom. I did remember to lock the bathroom door before I found my way to the toilet. My eyes were still closed as I took a piss then turned on the shower and got undressed.

 As soon as the steaming water in the shower hit me I finally started to wake up. I washed my face then scrubbed my head with shampoo, feeling more and more like myself. Then I really woke up as my washcloth grazed my morning wood.

 Finishing that task only reminded me of my lack of a love life, but it's hard to form lasting relationships with women when you're a disgusting leech. 

 I grabbed the plush green towel from the rack beside the shower and ran it over my body before using it to dry my dark blonde hair. Damn, I was in desperate need of a haircut, but I just didn’t give a shit. I could use a shave too, but didn't feel like wasting the time on it.

 I brushed my perfectly straight white teeth, pulled on the clinic's white logo polo, a pair of jeans and my grey New Balances, then I was out the door.

Shit! My foot was hovering on the first step of the porch when I remembered I didn't feed Chris. I reluctantly turned back around and unlocked the front door, heading to the kitchen. He could just rip open the bag of food with his claws if he got hungry enough, but then I'd be the one who'd have to eventually clean up the mess.

"Hey, Chris," I yelled. "Do you want bologna or cat food today?"

A second later he came bouncing all nimbly-pimbly into the kitchen from his bedroom, directly across from mine. "Bologna! And make it two slices," he answered.

Since he’d been a cat, his food preferences had tended to be that of a regular feline, which was fine with me. Bologna and cat food were cheap, and saved me a shitload of money at the grocery store.

"Fine. Here," I said as I threw the slices on a plate and sat it down on the floor. I hated when he ate on the counter, getting his little white and orange hairs all over everything.

"Thanks man. See ya' after work," he told me.

I turned on the TV in the living room for the poor bastard, then went back out the front door again, this time actually making it to and sitting down in my blue trash filled Mazda 3 Sport.   

Looking at the clock on the dash I had a good five minutes to spare, so I made a detour for a caffeine and sugar rush.  Luckily the drive thru lane at Donut World was short, and with four coffees and a dozen doughnuts for myself and my equally grouchy coworkers, I headed to the clinic. It would be my Happy Fucking Friday gift to them.

On blood drive days I'm supposed to check in at our headquarters downtown by eight a.m. to get everything packed up before we hit the road. I work at the local blood bank, but usually once a week we take our enormous blood mobile out around the community.

It was a little over eight years ago that I had the brilliant idea to go to school and get my certification in phlebotomy. Even as a vampire, I was one lazy son of a bitch. Having to go out and find my own blood sources was too stressful and tedious, especially when giving in to one lust usually led to the other.

Why go through all that trouble of finding someone to bite when I could just work at the place that always had a supply? It's like they were paying me to survive. I don't call taking a bag of blood here or there "stealing" per say. I know humans need the blood donated for accidents and surgeries and all that other blah, blah, blah. But what I do is a freaking public service. Besides, I try to only drink the bad shit.

Since I've been consuming blood for over fifty-eight years I can smell and taste the difference between healthy, sick, and really sick donor blood.  Over the years, each and every time I've sniffed or slurped one of the closet deathbed cases, I've been a damn fine Samaritan. I get their phone number from their records, call them right up and tell them that our "laboratory tests" suggest they have an illness, and they should contact their doctor immediately. I've lost count of the number of lives I've possibly saved. Of course our tests will show when someone has HIV and a few other diseases, and the donor might get notified weeks or months after they donate. My way is much quicker.

I pulled into my parking spot in front of the rundown brick building almost ten minutes late, and noticed all three of my coworkers were already there. They overlooked my lateness however, when I walked in the door and they saw what was in my hands. All three ladies converged on me with a, "Thanks, Sam," to grab up breakfast and devour it at their desks so we could hit the road.

Doris was the oldest and shrewdest of my three female coworkers, and technically my boss. In her fifties with salt and pepper hair, spare tire around her midsection, and permanent frown, she scared the shit out of me until I realized she wasn't as mean as she looked.

Then there was Anna. She was in her mid-thirties and a single mom with two small brats. She'd given up on appearances and rocked her ponytail every day without the care or hope of ever finding a man. She’d only been here at the clinic a few years longer than I had, and she pretty much kept to herself, just trying to get through the daily exhaustion that was her life.  

Finally there was Betsy, the anti-Doris.  Always happy and pleasant to the point of annoyance, she was just out of college and still acted childish. She showed up to work today, just like every day, as if we were having a damn beauty pageant. Her face was caked with bright colors making her look like a clown, and her bad blonde dye job was sticking out and smelled like it held a can of hairspray. I knew Betsy had a thing for me but she was so not my type, and I didn't just mean her blood.

I wasted no time putting down my two doughnuts and coffee. Hell yes I still had to eat and drink regular food, even though I happen to be a bloodsucker. Then, since I was the only male in the building, it was time for me to start loading up all the heavy boxes and equipment onto the bus.

All three of the women were the stereotypical horrible drivers, so I took over the blood mobile’s huge steering wheel, and we made our way through honking rush hour traffic to one of the local colleges. I was all too familiar with the perfectly landscaped and picturesque campus of Madison University. 

As every guy in this town knew, Madison had an overwhelming majority of rich bitches attending, most of them all caught up in their artsy-fartsy majors. Twice a year the sorority girls took a timeout from their partying and hazing to hold blood drives. It gave them the chance to put out signs and get on the local news, bolstering their "community service" image.

On a good day the school could usually get about fifty of the four thousand students to donate. Forty-five of those donated to get out of class for the entire day, and the other five gave just because they were decent human beings.

By nine-thirty we already had two takers, or givers as the case may be. The first went to sourpuss Doris, and the second to scatterbrained Anna. Since Betsy was still learning the ropes and mostly doing the administrative paper shuffle, it meant I was up next.

I was still arranging my supplies in the tiny cramped work area on the back of the bus when I heard Betsy tell our next contestant to come on down. I turned around with my professional smile to greet my first donor, then instantly frowned and let out a sigh. Of all the people that could walk through my blood mobile, it was just my luck that I would get stuck with her.