The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) (18 page)

“She’s a smart lady, my babysitter.”

“Are you all right?” he asked. “That had to be frightening for you earlier, seeing that weird guy in the parking lot with the ski mask.”

“How did you know about that?”

“It’s a long story.”

“Well, I would love to stand out here with you and try to figure out your cryptic quips, but I have other things to do. Enjoy your night.” I took the steps, light on my feet, but he caught my hand as I passed.

“So do you remember me?”

He stood, close enough for me to appreciate the warm amber notes of the cologne he wore. I pulled back, but he used the instability of my momentum to pull me near. His lips were so close to my temple I could almost feel the soft brush of his beard against my skin. “Please, remember me.”

A rush of images flooded my brain. Hands sliding up my throat to cradle my head. Cheap, thin motel sheets stained with tiny specks of blood. Lips at my ear, whispering that it was all right to be afraid. That this part was always difficult, but when I woke up, I would be like him, strong and beautiful.

Cool, strong hands curled around my elbows, catching me before my knees buckled under me. I surfaced from the strange memory fog and found Mr. Gentleman staring down at me, his lips quirked into an amused smirk.

Holy hell. No wonder he seemed so familiar. This guy was my sire.

Be careful of the connections and friendships you form in the world of the undead. Just as when you were living, you want to be careful of the influences you allow around your children.

—My Mommy Has Fangs: A Guide to Post-Vampiric Parenting

H
e was real. The man from my dreams, the matinee idol with the warm eyes and the naughty smile. He was standing right in front of me. He was real.

I remembered more and more, even as a thrill fluttered through my belly, hot and fast. I remembered his long, muscled arms winding around me, cradling me gently against his chest. I remembered him distracting me with stories—stories of his near-idyllic childhood in Cleveland in the 1950s and the
Ocean’s Eleven
–style heist gone awry that led to his being turned, along with his best friend, Max. It had taken the pair almost thirty years and several schemes before they paid off the debt to their vampire “creditor.” Someday, he promised, he would introduce me to Max, who he was sure would love me before he even met me.

My sire was every bit as physically imposing and, well, devilishly sexy as my dying brain had imagined. But he’d also been oddly considerate, comforting almost, in a way I hadn’t expected. He’d honestly tried to make my transition as painless as possible. It wasn’t his fault there was no such thing as a painless vampire birth.

My sire clasped my hands before sliding his own up both my arms.

“Well, you turned out just as I’d hoped,” he purred. “A simply divine creature.

“I’m sorry I missed your transition. Mrs. Nightengale made it very clear what would happen to me if I came anywhere near you. But I think I’ve given her warnings a respectable amount of consideration and am now going to ignore them.”

“Well . . . I have questions.”

He grinned, even as I pulled my arms out of his grasp and stepped back. “I knew you would.”

I began counting the queries on my fingertips. “One, what the hell do you think you’re doing here? Two, who the hell are you? Three, how did you find my house? Four, are you aware that the Council told me never, ever to talk to you? And five, just to reiterate, who the hell are you?”

“Do you want my name or some deep philosophical explanation of who we really are on the inside?” he asked, his breath feathering across my neck as he circled me. It took all of my strength not to shudder under that whisper of sensation over my skin. “We’re so much more than our names, aren’t we?”

Even though I was ninety percent sure he’d stolen that line from a postmodern
Dracula
remake, I couldn’t help but duck my head as he rounded me like a predator. And when he smirked, I wanted to lick that little divot over his lips.

Seriously, I was going to have to have sex soon, or I would be making some very unfortunate decisions.

“You, sir, are the devil in a Sunday suit,” I told him.

He spluttered. “What?”

“The very picture of charm, drawing me in, lulling all those natural alarms that go off when a woman hears a line of bull.”

“I don’t think I should be flattered, and yet, somehow, I am.” He stared at me for a long time, and the tension seemed to ease from his frame.

“So what can I do for you . . . ?” I asked. “There was a pause there, which was a chance for you to tell me your name.”

“Finn Palmeroy,” he said, reaching out to shake my hand. Given the whole wanna-lick-the-upper-lip-divot reaction, I didn’t trust myself to touch him. So I gave him a nod—a friendly nod but a nod. He handled this miniature snub with grace. Hell, he looked pleased.

“I guess you already know my name, given that you tracked me down like a deer.”

“Yes, Libby, I know a little about you but not much. I checked your driver’s license before I buried you at the park.”

That was right. I’d asked him to bury my purse with me. Because I didn’t want to have to go back to the motel for it. The absolute absurdity of our situation hit me with full force, and I burst out laughing. I giggled until tears ran down my cheeks, and I had to brace my hands against my knees to keep from collapsing to the gravel. He watched me, his head cocked to the side as if he’d never seen someone laugh before.

“That is
such
a weird sentence to leave someone’s lips.” I sighed, plunking my butt down on the steps. He slid down next to me with much more grace. I put an appropriate amount of distance between us as I wiped at my eyes.

“Our relationship did have a strange beginning, didn’t it?”

“We don’t have a relationship,” I told him.

“I’m your sire.”

“In the eyes of the Council, Jane Jameson-Nightengale is my sire. You’re like a biological parent without any rights. You’re a vampire deadbeat dad.” That particular phrase, I noticed, made him cringe. “Now, what are you doing here?”

“I just want to see how you are. I’ve never made another vampire before. I didn’t expect such a feeling of obligation about your well-being. Not knowing how you’re doing left me feeling unsettled.”

“Well, I’m doing just fine. My bloodthirst is well under control. I haven’t had one violent outburst. I’m keeping my at-home business running, and I’ve only lost a client or two. I’m practically a functional member of undead society.”

“I knew you would turn out well.”

“Because you learned so much about me in the time between meeting me in a cheap motel and biting me?”

He shook his head. “Your ad, the one you put on the Internet. I could tell, just from the way it was written, that you were a decent person. Desperate but decent. Decent people generally turn into decent vampires.”

“I’ve heard that from Jane.”

“Decent vampires have to be careful, however. You could be seen as weak by other vampires.”

“Jane mentioned that, too,” I told him. “So who are you, Finn Palmeroy? Jane has made a few unflattering comments, but I think I should consider the source a bit biased.”

“Thank you for that.” He cleared his throat. “What do you want to know?”

“Why did you respond to my ad? How did you even find it? Do you plan on invoking some sort of weird sire privilege that involves me killing someone or not spending time with people you don’t like?”

“That’s a really broad scope of sire privileges,” he noted.

“I like to cover my bases.”

“I don’t know if I should tell you all that. A guy likes to have a bit of mystery about him.”

“Trust me, you’ve got mystery by the pant-load,” I muttered, making him snicker.

“OK, I can tell you that, like Dick, I’m an entrepreneur. I use my connections to help people find what they need, no matter how obscure. This was my line of work before I was turned, and let’s just say that my being turned stemmed from a miscommunication with a client. The market was a bit more diverse before we came out of the coffin, but I have a few special skills that help me along.”

“We’ll just ignore the fact that the word ‘miscommunication’ was in invisible air-quote marks, and I’ll ask, skills like what? Is it your vampire power? What is it? Is it weird, like being able to guess what’s in a sealed envelope or talk to squirrels?”

He waggled his eyebrows. “That would be telling you.”

“It’s not the ability to guess underwear colors, is it? Because that eyebrow waggle is making me wonder.”

“Air of mystery,” he whispered.

“And why did you answer my ad?”

“Because I don’t have the chance to do the right thing very often,” he said. “And that’s all I’d like to say for now.”

“Will you expand on that in the future?”

“When the time is right.” He nodded and twined my fingers together with his. “So I have a question for you. Are you ready?”

I shifted in my seat and nodded. “Shoot.”

“What was your last meal?”

“What?” I cackled. “That’s the big personal question you want to ask me? Of everything you could ask,
that’s
what you want to know?”

“Come on.” He chuckled. “Your last meal. You knew death was coming. You planned it out. I mean, everybody asks themselves, if they were on death row, what would they choose as their last meal? It’s like a personality test.”

“What was yours?”

“You tell me first,” he countered.

“You show me yours, I’ll show you mine.”

“I was hoping for something a little more revealing when you used that phrase for the first time,” he said. When I lifted an eyebrow, he took a small leather notebook out of his pocket and handed me a piece of paper. “OK, we’ll write them down. And then we’ll exchange them.”

“OK.” I dug a few things from my giant mom bag at my feet—toy trucks, lip balm, an extra phone charger, old contact solution—to find a pen.

“Is that purse like the TARDIS, bigger on the inside?” he asked as I dropped the kid debris onto the porch floor.

“Oh, if I was a bigger nerd, that would be so sexy,” I told him, making him do the eyebrow thing again.

“That is a
Star Wars
LEGO man,” he said, nodding toward the action figure I’d unearthed from my purse.

“Nice try.” I scribbled my Last Supper menu on the scrap of paper. It took me twice as long as his, which I made a grab for. He snatched the paper out of reach and shook his head.

“Same time,” he reminded me, and we slowly exchanged papers. His eyes bugged out as he read down the list. “Roast turkey, dressing, hash brown casserole, green beans amandine, honey-glazed ham, potatoes au gratin, deviled eggs, pot roast, buttered carrots, marshmallow Peeps (purple), pumpkin pie, red velvet cake, an entire sixteen-piece box of Vosges Wink of the Rabbit truffles, and half a bottle of Chardonnay. Good grief, woman!”

“I went off several of my medications just so I would have the appetite to eat all of that,” I said proudly.

“It’s just so much food,” he said.

“I knew I was going to be missing holiday meals for the rest of my life, so I was trying to eat them all at once. I had to special-order the Peeps from a seasonal candy site on the Internet.”

Finn was still staring at me. I shrugged and read from his paper. “A porterhouse steak, mashed potatoes, and a slice of chocolate cake? That’s kind of boring.”

“I’m a man of simple tastes. I’m still trying to imagine you eating all that,” he said. “You’re so tiny.”

I laughed, a genuine, tinkling amused note that made him join in. I let that hang in the air between us, because I was about to say something he would not enjoy as much. “Look, I don’t need you to guide me or mentor me or anything like that. I have a support system and, if I want, a support group, Lord help me. I’m doing just fine. Besides, I’m pretty sure the Council told you to stay away. Dick and Jane both have some . . . not nice things to say about you. They probably wouldn’t be very happy with me for talking to you.”

“Do you always do what you’re told?” he asked.

“When it involves being told what to do by scary older vampires, yes.”

“Oh, we’re going to have some fun, you and I,” he told me. He leaned close, and—thinking he was going to kiss me on the mouth—I ducked my head. Unfortunately, he had leaned at the last minute to kiss my cheek, and my feint had put my mouth on a direct path with his. It was just a peck, really, a friendly, soft press of his lips against mine.

Holy hell.

Even though it only lasted the length of the heartbeat I no longer had, I felt it all the way down to my toes. He tasted smooth, like old wine, and seeped slowly into my senses. It was sliding slowly under cool, crisp sheets, soothing every single cell of my body. Just as the spicy flavor of his kiss had settled into my mouth, I pulled away. I pressed my fingers to my lips and fought the urge to giggle hysterically.

“Right,” I said, clearing my throat while I wobbled to my feet. “Not impressive at all.”

But instead of being insulted by my critique, he simply grinned wickedly as I backed toward my door.