Must Love Vampires

by Heidi Betts

  “What time does he go to bed?”

  Her mouth popped open, then she closed it again. Should she tell him the truth or lie? She didn’t even know what time it was now, so she wasn’t sure what bedtime to make up.

  Unsure of what else to do, she reluctantly went with the truth. “About nine o’clock.”

  “Great!” Glancing at his watch, he said, “It’s only seven now. That should give us plenty of time to get there and have a little visit before Jake needs to go to bed. Besides, we have quite a bit of time to kill before the sun comes up and I can prove to you once and for all what I am.”

  Aidan didn’t think a short trip to Henderson should be such a production, but from the minute she’d agreed to take him to meet her son, Chloe had done nothing but chatter away about how she expected him to behave.

  Don’t tell my mother we ran off and got married.

  Don’t tell Jake you’re his new daddy.

  Don’t say anything about being a vampire.

  And for God’s sake, don’t say or do anything vampire-ish!

  What she meant by “vampire-ish,” he wasn’t entirely sure. They’d been dating for a month now and she’d never suspected that about him, had she? He certainly didn’t go around flashing fang or hissing like a rabid dog. And he’d never once bitten anyone in public.

  Thanks to his sleek little Ferrari Scuderia Spider, they made the trip in no time. It only seemed like forever because of Chloe’s nervous rambling.

  Aidan found it kind of adorable, though. She was the hottest thing going—sexy and sensual and completely uninhibited in bed, as well as her everyday life. But when it came to her family, and her kid in particular, she turned defensive, possessive, and protective all in one.

  Truth be known, he wouldn’t mind having some of that passionate emotion directed his way.

  And maybe one day it would be. They had a lot to work through; she, especially, had some rather major, life-altering facts to come to terms with. But he was confident that once she did, they would be okay, they would have a future together.

  One could hope, anyway.

  With Chloe giving him turn-by-turn directions, they pulled up in front of a modest ranch home nestled into a middleclass community. Since it was already dusk heading toward dark, it was hard to make out the exact color of the wide aluminum siding, but he thought it was probably a light yellow or beige with black shutters on the windows.

  There were potted plants on the small front porch with the twisted iron railing, and chain-link fence all around, enclosing the entire yard. In that yard were clear signs of childhood play—a brightly colored ball, a Big Wheel, one of those miniature plastic basketball hoops, a sandbox shaped like a pirate ship . . .

  The items made Aidan smile. He pictured a tiny little male version of Chloe out here, laughing and playing, yelling, “Mommy!”—or perhaps “Gramma! ”—“Watch this!” while he tried to stand on his head or sink a ball into the plastic netting.

  And he wanted nothing more than to get down on the ground and play along. Toss a baseball around, play hide and seek, maybe teach the little boy to ride a bike.

  He wouldn’t be able to do any of those things during the day, of course, but there was always early evening or indoor activities they could busy themselves with. Heck, aside from what Aidan could provide on his own, there were hotel/ casinos all along The Strip that catered to children; ones that housed arcades, bowling alleys, and Chucky Cheese-like playgrounds that offered children not only their weight in pizza, but entertainments rivaled only by Disneyland and the main Mouse himself.

  And The Inferno itself held a movie theatre and Olympicsize swimming pool—complete with diving boards and water slides. He might have to convince Sebastian to close those areas down to public traffic once in a while so they could screen G-rated flicks or play Marco Polo without some Playboy Playmate wannabe’s silicone ta-tas falling out of her toosmall bikini top.

  He had no doubt he could find a million-and-one ways to interact with Chloe’s son and be as much of a father to him as any mortal, sun-loving man.

  Leaving the car, Chloe beat him up the walk to the front door. As he reached her, she turned on him once more.

  “Please, please be careful,” she begged him in a harsh whisper. “I don’t want Mom to get suspicious about us and start asking questions, and I’m definitely not ready to tell her what’s going on. Not until I know for sure myself.”

  He nodded sagely. Inside, he was chuckling, amused by her high anxiety. But outside, he made sure to keep his expression serious and solemn.

  To his surprised delight, he’d inadvertently walked into just about everything he’d ever wanted in this eternal existence of his, and he had no intention of jeopardizing it by doing something stupid in front of his new mother-in-law.

  “And be careful around Jake,” she continued. “I don’t want him getting all excited about you, thinking you’re going to be his father from now on, when you might burst into flames at sunrise.”

  Aidan flinched. Where vampires were concerned, that was hitting well below the belt. The very idea had him breaking out in a cold, pink-tinted sweat, even though that’s exactly what he intended to do in a few more hours, just to prove his true identity to her.

  Ouch. He hoped he’d remember to stop off at an all-night drugstore on the way back to pick up some extra-strength burn ointment. The stuff didn’t really help all that much, but it would provide a modicum of pain relief until his rapid healing process kicked in and vanished the scars completely.

  “Don’t worry,” he said, taking her wrist and pressing a soft kiss to the back of her hand. “I promise not to embarrass you or say anything that will alert your family to our true relationship.”

  She seemed to consider that, then dragged in a deep breath and let it out again, her stiff posture and rigid tension going with it.

  “Okay. I’m sorry, it’s just . . . I’m really careful with Jake. I’ve never brought a man home to meet him or my mother before, and if this doesn’t work out . . . I just don’t want to have to explain, or for my baby’s heart to be broken.”

  He inclined his head, giving her his silent agreement and understanding. Inside, however, his own immortal heart clenched. She didn’t realize it, but if things didn’t work out between them, her son’s wasn’t going to be the only heart in pieces.

  Eight

  When Chloe turned back to the door, he was surprised and delighted that she kept hold of his hand. With the other, she tapped lightly, then used a key she’d pulled from her pocketbook to let them in. He’d noticed, too, that she’d slipped off her sparkling new wedding band and engagement rings—the ones he’d paid a cool quarter of a mil for—to hide them from her mother and leave her left hand once again bare and unclaimed.

  They were inside, front door closed behind them, when footsteps sounded from the rear of the house. A lovely older woman appeared from around the corner, smiling widely when she saw her daughter.

  “Chloe! What are you doing here?”

  “Hey, Mom,” Chloe greeted her. “We came to see Jake. Is he still awake?”

  The older woman nodded and tipped her head in the direction from which she’d just come. “He’s in his room, playing.”

  She answered readily enough, but Aidan saw the interest gleaming in her eyes. She was happy to see her daughter, but curious as all get-out about the man at her side.

  Chloe must have noticed her mother’s subtle body language, too, because she said, “Mom, this is Aidan. We’ve been seeing each other for a while now, and I wanted to introduce him to Jake before we . . . got too serious. Aidan, this is my mother, DeeDee.”

  Aidan held out his hand—the one Chloe wasn’t holding like a lifeline. “Pleased to meet you, Mrs. Monroe.”

  Was it possible he was actually nervous about meeting Chloe’s family? He was so old, had met so many people and been in such a wide variety of situations over his many, many years on this earth, that he wouldn’t have thought anything c
ould truly shock or rattle him. But it seemed he would have been wrong. Because standing here, shaking hands with his new bride’s mother, had his palms sweating and the rest of him feeling clammy and jittery.

  DeeDee took his hand in a firm grip, testing him, he suspected. Her indigo eyes, just a few shades darker than Chloe’s own violet ones, were sharp and intense. She was sizing him up, and he could only hope she approved of what she saw.

  At least he’d remembered to use Chloe’s real last name instead of the more flamboyant one she used professionally. He’d also cleaned up a bit and changed clothes before leaving his apartment, so the pants and shirt he wore now weren’t as wrinkled as the ones that had lain on his bedroom floor all day after he’d ravished the woman’s daughter six ways from Sunday.

  “Aidan,” DeeDee intoned. Not coldly, but not fireplace warm, either. “I’m afraid Chloe’s never mentioned you.”

  He offered a small smile. “I hope that means I hold a special place in her heart.” Tipping his head more in Chloe’s direction, he winked. “One can hope, anyway.”

  DeeDee offered a low, non-committal hum. “So what do you do, Aidan?”

  Slapping a hand over her face, Chloe groaned. “Mother.”

  “It’s all right,” Aidan told her, giving her hand a reassuring squeeze. “Your mother has a right to know how the man who’s interested in her daughter makes his living.”

  Turning his attention back to DeeDee, he said, “Actually, Mrs. Monroe, I guess you could say I dabble.”

  She didn’t look terribly impressed by that bit of information.

  “My brother is Sebastian Raines,” he added, only to watch her eyes go wide. Oh, yes, Sebastian’s name had a tendency to impress just about everyone the world over.

  “He has his fingers in quite a few pies, as I’m sure you probably know, and I mostly help him with those. I don’t have anything quite as large or impressive as the Inferno under my belt, but I do all right for myself.”

  That was certainly an understatement. He didn’t mind being linked to his brother most of the time, but he also didn’t like people believing he relied on Sebastian for everything he did and owned. No, Aidan had a few of his own projects going, and his own money in the bank . . . as well as other, much more secret and less impenetrable hidey-holes.

  “Don’t worry,” he added. “If your daughter and I stay together, I’m more than capable of taking very good care of her.”

  Chloe’s mother arched a dark brow. Down to the curve of her lips and her long, lithe dancer’s figure, she was nearly a perfect cut-out of her younger daughter. Which made him wonder just how much of their father’s DNA had made it into the gorgeous twins.

  “I should say so, Mr. Raines.”

  The stressing of his surname let him know he’d passed the first familial hurdle. He would have released a pent-up breath, if he had any, but he’d been so wired since stepping inside the house that he’d forgotten that part of his human persona.

  Picking up with some even breathing before anyone noticed he hadn’t been using his lungs, he continued to curve his lips in an easy smile. He was careful not to flash his fangs, even though they were recessed enough at the moment not to pose much of a problem.

  “Well, you two go back and see Jake while I get us all something to drink,” DeeDee told them. “What would you like, Aidan? Coffee, tea, maybe some iced tea? Or something stronger?”

  “Whatever you and Chloe are having will be fine,” he replied. “Thank you.”

  Almost before he got the words out, Chloe was grasping his sleeve, dragging him out of the entryway and through what looked to be a small family room. He barely had a chance to see more than lemon chiffon carpeting and sandcolored walls dotted with framed photographs before she was steering him down a narrow hallway also decorated with family photographs.

  “My mother never offers guests something to drink,” she all but snarled back at him. “She doesn’t like them to overstay their welcome.”

  He wasn’t entirely sure how to respond to that. Was she angry that her mother seemed to like him well enough to offer him refreshments, or because now that she had, they might be forced to stay longer than Chloe had planned?

  “I’ll bet you anything, when we come back, she’ll not only have a pot of hot tea brewing, but a plate of cookies set out on the table. She’ll try to pass them off as homemade and hope you don’t notice the word ‘Keebler’ stamped into the center of the little elves’ shortbread butts.”

  He nearly chuckled at that, then thought better of it.

  “I’m . . . sorry?” he offered instead, hoping like hell it was the right thing to say.

  Coming to a complete halt at the end of the hall, she turned on him and lowered her voice even more. “It’s because you’re loaded,” she told him. “She thinks I’ve landed myself a nice, big fish and doesn’t want me to blow it, so she’s going to pretend to be Miss Manners in hopes of showing you that we deserve to be part of the vast Raines empire.”

  “You do,” he readily assured her.

  She rolled her eyes, letting him know precisely what she thought of that declaration.

  “I don’t deserve a bank vault full of money or my weight in jewels just because I’m good in bed. And I don’t want to spend the rest of my life listening to her bitch and moan about how I ‘let you get away’ if we don’t end up growing old together.”

  He raised a brow, silently reminding her that there was pretty much zero chance of that, even if they stayed married for the next millennia.

  “Oh, you know what I mean,” she huffed with the flip of her wrist.

  Knowing it probably wasn’t the wisest question to pose at this point, he asked cautiously, “Do you and your mother not get along?”

  Chloe blew out a breath, all of her steam and annoyance seeming to seep away with it. “I love my mother,” she told him. “Normally, we get along very well. The problem is, we’re a little too much alike, so she sometimes thinks she should be allowed to make decisions for me . . . or badger me into doing things the way she thinks I should.”

  “Should I simply write her a check for a million dollars or so to get her off your back for a while?”

  Chloe’s eyes went as wide as Lake Tahoe a second before she realized he was teasing.

  “Don’t you dare,” she warned, punching him in the arm with far more force than he thought necessary.

  Offering her a confident smile, he pulled her close, kissing her hard and quick right on the mouth. “Stop worrying so much. Your mother likes me. Now let’s see if Jake does. Come on . . . introduce me to your son.”

  It occurred to Chloe suddenly and out of the blue that she didn’t really need Aidan’s money. All she had to do was devise a way to bottle his kisses—infused with his minty, masculine flavor and unwavering confidence—and she would be a zillionaire overnight.

  But he’d done exactly as he intended; rather than being a bundle of nerves and anxious energy, she was beginning to calm down and realize that having him meet her mom and little boy was not the end of the world. They met new people every day, right? Some who stuck around, some they never saw again. Whichever category Aidan eventually fell into, they—all of them—would deal. She would just have to have faith in that.

  “All right,” she said softly.

  At the end of the hall, Jake’s door was open a crack and she went to it, tapping softly to keep from scaring him if he was deeply involved in some imaginary game or another.

  He was on the floor in his sea-blue and yellow Spongebob Squarepants footie pajamas, pushing a toy train around in front of him and making soft chugga-chugga-chugga noises, punctuated by the occasional whoo-whoo!

  As always when she saw him—especially after a long night at work or off trying to seduce a rich daddy for him—her heart turned over inside her chest. Most mothers probably thought their children were the sweetest, cutest, most adorable children on the planet, but Chloe knew for a fact that hers was. He was also—thankfully—her spitti
ng image, getting only his two-shades-lighter-than-her-own hair and possibly the curve of his nose from his deadbeat of a father.

  When he heard her knock, he turned his head, and when she pushed the door open and he saw her, his eyes lit up like the stage lights at Lust.

  Jumping to his pajama-bootied feet, he yelled, “Mommy!” and raced straight for her.

  “Hey, beanpole.” Dropping to one knee, she caught him up in a giant bear hug, rocking him from side to side and nuzzling the side of his neck until he giggled.

  After a minute or two of tickled greetings, Jake pushed her hair away from one ear and leaned close to whisper, “Who’s the fancy man?”

  Chloe smiled, cocking her head a few degrees until she could see Aidan from the corner of her eye. “This is my friend, Aidan. He wanted to meet you before you went to bed.”

  “Me?” Jake asked, sounding surprised. “Why?”

  “Why do you think, silly? Because you’re cute and smart and funny, and he didn’t believe me when I told him you had a pair of Spongebob pajamas.” She plucked at the lightweight material, making sure to tweak his tummy in the process.

  He giggled, covering his stomach and wiggling away. Then he turned his attention up to Aidan, tipping his head like a museum curator studying a particularly interesting new acquisition.

  Seconds ticked by, and Chloe waited to see what her son’s reaction would be to the first man she’d ever brought home to meet him. To his credit, Aidan merely stood where he was, offering Jake a friendly smile and letting him lead things wherever he wanted.

  “I’m Jake,” he said, with a hint of challenge to his voice.

  “Hello, Jake. I’m Aidan.”

  Then Aidan did a truly remarkable thing—he stepped forward, tugged at the razor-sharp seams of his slacks, and dropped to the floor, sitting cross-legged beside her. Not something she ever would have expected from a man like him, especially given how much she was sure his clothes must have cost. And this was his casual look.

  “I like your pj’s,” Aidan told Jake.

  Jake glanced down at himself, then back at Aidan. “Did you really want to see them before I went to bed?”