The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) (19 page)

“Some fun,” he said again.

It was at times like
these—counting out individual adhesive glitter letters in front of a giant display at Copy Shack—that I wondered whether it was a positive thing that I could run errands at any time of the night. The Copy Shack was the only office store in town now, since the Council office stopped masquerading as a Kinko’s and actually put the agency’s real logo on the door. And because of the laws of elementary-school project timing, I was there at ten
P.M.
considering just how much glitter was too much glitter for a first-grader’s homework.

I’d woken up that evening to my son beating on my cubby door, asking where I’d put his poster board for his special assignment. A special assignment that was, of course, due the next day. He had all of his photos of him fishing and playing with LEGOs, and he’d printed out his three-sentence “essays.” But he needed a poster-board canvas on which to paste his masterpiece. I normally kept a supply of poster board on hand for just such occasions, but lately I’d had other things on my mind.

Danny needed poster materials for the “superstar project” for Ms. Jenkins’s art class. The students had to make a poster featuring art and mini-essays about things at which they excelled, what made them “superstars.” It was a project focused on color scheme and self-esteem bolstering, so it landed in Ms. Jenkins’s educational sweet spot. Danny swore he’d told me about it. And while I was sure I’d never heard him mention any such thing, I went on the glitter run, because that’s what moms did.

Fortunately, the Copy Shack had a large selection of poster board and adhesive letters for parents who needed to help produce grade-saving projects at the very last minute. I double-checked the list to make sure I got all of Danny’s must-have materials and heard the now-familiar squeak of work boots behind me, accompanied by the smell of iron and citrus. I smiled, turning to find my favorite smartass mechanic standing behind me, hands stuffed in his pockets, giving me a smirk that drew a little dimple on the left side of his mouth.

It was normal to be overwhelmed with the urge to lick someone’s cheek dimple, right?

“Do you only run your errands at night?” Wade asked.

“I
can
only run my errands at night. What’s your excuse?”

“Superstar project?” we chorused, and then burst out laughing.

“Danny swears he told me.” I sighed. “But I honestly don’t remember him asking me for neon green poster board and glitter stickers. He doesn’t ask for glitter stickers very often, so I think I would remember.”

Wade snorted. “At least Harley admitted that he forgot.”

“Well, apparently, there was a note in their backpacks, so neither one of us is off the hook.”

Wade grimaced. “Damn it.”

I helped Wade pick appropriate supplies for Harley’s project, and we checked out and lugged our purchases to the parking lot. Despite the fact that I had superstrength, Wade insisted on carrying my bags for me. There was an old-fashioned sweetness to that, which, while not exactly progressive, touched the wearier parts of my heart. I was so accustomed to doing things on my own that a little gesture like that had a lot more impact than I expected.

I was actually sorry that we reached my van. I so rarely got to see Wade when it didn’t involve the kids. It was nice to be able to talk to him without being interrupted with requests for juice boxes.

We stood near my van, plastic shopping bags twisting in Wade’s hands, neither of us willing to drive away. A strange feeling of anticipation seemed to seep up from my belly to my chest, this desperate, longing ache that made me feel like I was coming out of my skin. I didn’t know whether that ache would be eased by getting closer to Wade or farther away, I just knew I needed something to happen. Quickly.

Was this how teenagers felt when they were falling in like with someone? No wonder they acted so insane all the time.

Maybe it was because he sensed my mind wandering, but suddenly, Wade abandoned his story about a frustrating customer, who didn’t seem to understand that you had to put oil in a motorcycle to keep it running, to say, “So I’m gonna ask you out. Probably not dinner, since you don’t eat. But I was thinking a movie. The old drive-in at Possum Point is showing a bunch of John Candy movies next weekend. And who doesn’t like John Candy?”

I stared at him for a long time, blinking, and a smile slid across my face. “Crazy people.”

“Exactly. I thought maybe bein’ outside might keep you from gettin’ sick at the smell of popcorn. And besides, you probably feel cooped up, havin’ to stay inside all day. So we’ll take my bike, spread out a blanket, and watch John Candy shoot a grizzly in the ass with a shotgun lamp.”

It sounded like the best date I could imagine. Hell, he’d actually put some thought into what I would enjoy, which was more than I could say for the handful of men I’d previously dated. But there was Finn to consider. He hadn’t exactly asked me to go steady, but it seemed sort of rude to go out with someone who wasn’t my sire . . . without my sire’s approval. That seemed backward.

Right, respond to social situations like a normal person. I could do this.

“And just to clarify, this does not involve the boys?”

“No. This is one-on-one, grown-up time,” he swore, holding up his fingers in a mock Boy Scout salute. “Noncrazy John Candy fans would call it a date.”

I laughed. “Wade, I haven’t been on a date since . . .”

“Since you were turned?”

“Since my husband died,” I admitted.

He took a step closer to me. “Are you saying no because you don’t want to spend more time with me?”

“No.”

“Is it because you don’t want me?” he asked, stepping forward again, head cocked to the side, studying my reaction as he closed the distance between us. And my reaction was to take a step back until I bumped into my van.

I shook my head. “Definitely not.”

He nodded, keeping his eyes locked on mine, which seemed inadvisable, considering the whole apex-predator thing. He leaned toward me, wrapping his big, warm hand around my left hip and pulling me a bit closer. “I’m gonna kiss you now.”

“Thank you for the heads-up.” I murmured as my tongue darted out to moisten my lips. Thanks to my heightened senses, I could hear the increase in his heartbeat, scent that edge of excitement spreading through his system in the form of pheromones. I was more than flattered by his response.

I looked forward to kissing him like kids look forward to Christmas. What the hell was wrong with me? I was a grown woman with a child. I should not be all giddy and giggly. In that moment, I wanted nothing more than to kiss him. I wanted to know what it was like to kiss Wade Tucker. But he seemed content to hover just outside of my reach, rubbing the tip of his nose along my cheek, letting the bristles of his beard tease my skin.

I moaned softly as his hands slid down the small of my back and braced around my hips. I threaded my fingers through his hair, pushing it back from his face as I stared into his eyes. Hesitant, I pressed forward, letting my lips slide along his in a sort of glancing blow, just a taste. Where Finn’s kiss was cool and sly, a tease with a promise of more, Wade laid out everything he had to offer, consuming my mouth with his warm, sweet force.

I withdrew, and he followed, growling softly and crossing his arms behind me to draw me closer. He pulled my bottom lip between his teeth, nibbling gently before nudging my lips apart and deepening my tentative kiss.

I twisted my hands in his hair, sliding up the hood of my van as he leaned in. His palm skimmed down my thigh, wrapping it around his waist. I gasped into his mouth, and he took the opportunity to skate his tongue against my growing fangs. He pulled back, and I panicked a bit, clapping my hand over my mouth. But he was giving me the filthiest grin, rubbing the reddened tip of his tongue over swollen lips.

I swear, my panties spontaneously combusted right there.

“Excuse me!” someone shouted. “This is a public place! There are
children
present!”

The spell was broken.

My eyes went saucer-sized, and Wade reluctantly let go of my leg. We turned to see an incensed man loading his towheaded children into a blue pickup truck. He looked vaguely familiar, in that “I think we’ve met before, but I can’t guarantee we liked each other” kind of way. I couldn’t put a name with the face, but given the way he was glaring at me, he seemed to know me. Great. My already tarnished reputation needed an addition like “parking-lot hussy.”

“Seems to me the problem is you’ve got your kids out past ten on a school night, Roy!” Wade shouted back, stepping between me and the angry dad.

Roy. I sighed, thunking my head between Wade’s shoulder blades. Roy Pannabaker. He was a high school classmate of Rob’s, come to think of it. And he had come to the funeral, overflowing with condolences and within five minutes asking what I was planning to do with Rob’s fishing tackle and tools.

“Go home, Wade!” Roy shouted.

“You get your kids home, Roy!” Wade hollered. “And you can forget about me fixing your carburetor at cost next time!”

Roy muttered something under his breath that super-sensitive ears only picked up as “mash-hole” and squealed out of the parking lot. Both of my hands were on my face now, and I was giggling, actually giggling. When I thought about it, that made sense, because I had just made out in a parking lot like some high school hussy. Wade seemed to find it pretty damned funny, too, because he was leaning his forehead against my neck, shoulders shaking with laughter.

“I can’t believe I just did that,” I said, gasping.

“Well, ya didn’t do it
alone
.”

If Rob had been confronted with such a public scene, especially in front of someone he knew, it would have been recriminations and griping all the way home. But Wade just shrugged it off.

I so wanted to date Wade Tucker.

“Now.” Wade reached to my driver’s-side door and opened it for me. “Next weekend?”

“Yes,” I told him, letting him hand me into the van like something out of a Regency novel. He shut the door as I started the engine. “I would love to . . . And next time, remove Roy’s carburetor altogether.”

It wasn’t until I got
home that night (and had helped Danny complete a spectacular poster, if I did say so myself) that I had a sort of hormonal epiphany. I’d kissed two men in the course of two days. I’d never kissed two men in the course of
two years
. I hadn’t even dated since Rob died, much less kissed anybody. And now I was stringing along two perfectly nice men—OK, at least one perfectly nice man, because I wasn’t sure about Finn. At the very least, I was engaged in a more than platonic relationship with both of them, which was way more than I was used to.

I had no clue how to feel about this, so I took what I was sure was an emotionally healthy route: I didn’t think about it at all. I had other things to worry about, including maintaining the appearance of a responsible, engaged parent and trying to be an actual responsible, engaged parent. I just pushed it to the back of my mind. That would work, surely. Because Finn was supposed to keep his distance, and if he kept his distance, I could ignore the whole thing.

When I was human, I processed my stress through baking. It came in handy whenever the school had a fund-raiser. And with running my home business, raising an active child with last-minute art projects, managing my bloodlust, and meeting with the Council’s (cordial but still scary) appointed custody lawyers, I had plenty of stress to work through. I woke up just before sunset, equivalent to a predawn wake-up call, to whip up a special batch of my famous triple chocolate chip from-scratch cookies, which had been
the
biggest seller at the Back-to-School Night bake sale the year before. I could blame those cookies for my sudden “indispensability” when the PTA needed someone to run the cakewalk at the Christmas Carnival.

Back-to-School Night was held about halfway through the first quarter of the school year, which gave the teachers a chance to get to know the kids enough to determine whether they were in for a year of “Your child is a joy to have in class,
but
 . . .” notes home. It was also the setting for the PTA’s first volley in the yearlong attempt to raise enough funds to provide all of the little things the school needed but couldn’t fund through the district’s provided budget—field trips, playground equipment, matching T-shirts for the robotics team, that sort of thing.

So there I stood, cooking for the first time in our duplex’s kitchen, trying to prove my worth to people who didn’t really like me all that much. And it didn’t feel right to make Kerrianne do my penance just because she happened to be human, especially since Kerrianne’s mother was keeping the kids so we could both meet with our kids’ teachers. Frankly, she was doing me a favor, because if Danny were present during baking, he would be sneaking raw dough from the bowl when my back was turned. We did not have the time to visit the ER for his inevitable salmonella.

Yawning as twilight seeped into my kitchen, I dropped softened butter into my KitchenAid, watching as the paddle beat it together with the sugar until it was a fluffy yellow dream. Just watching it go round and round in the bowl made my mouth water. Damn, I missed cookies. And cake. And doughnuts. Basically, all of the baked things.

Hmm, maybe it was better that I was turned. Even if I hadn’t gotten sick, my terrible sweet tooth would surely have led to health complications later in life. I sniffed at the mixture. It didn’t smell quite right—rancid, maybe? I checked the date on the butter carton. I still had weeks before the expiration date. Maybe my vampire senses were a little oversensitive?

Cracking the shells with one deft hand, I dropped eggs, one at a time, into the creamed butter and sugar, and each one was like a stink bomb exploding in the mixing bowl.

“Augh!” I could taste the awfulness in my mouth, like I’d inhaled garbage. “Oh, my God, no!”

Vanilla. The sweet scent of vanilla would make this better. I opened the bottle and poured it into the batter without even measuring. It turned the bowl into a dark brown, mushy mess, spinning at top speed into baking oblivion.