“Oh, right.” Imogene shuffled toward Celia and her freakish talking baby. She handed the bag to her friend, who appeared to be glowing.
From the doorway, Ian asked, “Should we call Dr. Savage?”
“No,” Nicholas and Imogene said at once.
She smirked. “Nicholas and Rain had a little tiff about her foot fetish.”
For the first time since they’d arrived, Celia actually looked concerned. “About what?”
“Oh, and the hooker he banged in the Moulin Rouge.”
No one had a response to that, except Nicholas, who made a deep, exasperated whine. He said, “I’ll keep her abreast of things.”
“Breast.” Imogene laughed like Butthead. “Don’t tell that to Dean.”
Nicholas put her in a headlock, which she fought half-heartedly, enjoying the sensation of being trapped in his armpit.
Nicholas took off his suit coat when they got back to her place and stood by the couch, staring at her. “What?”
“I want to paint you.”
Imogene didn’t move. “Why?”
His eyebrows dipped in the middle as he looked away from her. “The baby’s coming soon, and before that happens, I want to paint you.”
“What does the baby have to do with anything?”
“Jesus, are you listening?”
She didn’t say anything.
“I’ll have to have Ian go out tomorrow to get painting supplies.” He didn’t seem to be talking to her. “There aren’t twenty-four hour art shops on Admiral Key, I would bet.”
Imogene didn’t realize she still held her car keys until her hand started hurting. She looked down and saw deep imprints of metal edges in the palm of her hand where she’d been squeezing with enough strength to break a human finger.
“Will you let me paint you?” His voice shook—just enough for her to notice—which made Imogene eye him closely. He looked like he’d just sprinted ten miles and spewed.
“What’s going on?” She stepped away from him.
“It’s a simple question.”
“No, it’s not.” She shook her head. “I need to go out.” She didn’t wait for him to speak, but hurried for the door and drove to The Drift Inn. Angry Santa wasn’t there, but one of the other regular bartenders was: a middle-aged woman who looked like she used to be a showgirl and possibly thought she still was, what with the overabundance of glitter on her shirt, in the shape of a palm tree.
“Rum punch?” she sneered in her smoker’s voice.
“Yeah,” Imogene muttered. “And whiskey, double.”
“That kinda night?”
“That kinda night,” Imogene repeated. She took the shot without wincing and twirled the rum punch between her palms.
Nicholas had told her he only painted women he loved, twenty-two to be exact. He wanted to make her twenty-three, and what would that mean? If he painted her, what did he expect—that she’d run off to London with him, try to pop out a couple fuck-talking vampire babies? Shit.
She pulled on her hair and growled, which got the attention of three biker behemoths to the right of the circular bar. She glared a glamour that made each man fall from his bar stool and onto the stale, beer-soaked floor.
“Not good,” she muttered. “This is not good.”
“Imogene?”
She gazed sideways, and there was Wharf. Of course. Just what she needed.
He sat next to her, a hulking monster who somehow made the overt hairiness, mixed with hugeness, appealing. “Why have you been avoiding me? I had to buy blood from some hippie chick yesterday. The stuff smells like flowers.”
“Yeah, I’ been to her. We used to call it ‘Shaman-Blessed Shit.’”
He laughed and nodded. “Totally.”
She sighed and spun to face him. “Wanna make out?”
They went behind The Drift Inn and started necking. He tasted like beer and the flavor she associated with her maker: rare steak. He had his huge hands all over her, and she put her hands like suction cups on his face. She sucked his tongue into her mouth as he lifted her by the hips. Imogene wrapped her legs around his waist.
There had always been sexual sparks between the two of them—always—so why did she feel so lacking in sparkle? She tried harder and leaned her pelvis against his groin, which sort of felt good, but…
She growled and shoved him away. “Fuck!” she bellowed.
“What?” Wharf wiped his mouth.
“Goddamn it!” she screamed. She offered no explanation as she clomp-clomped back into the bar and dropped a twenty on the counter. Imogene jumped into her car. She forgot to breathe until she pulled into her driveway, where she smacked her head, repeatedly, against the steering wheel, and then, only somewhat dizzy from her self-inflicted concussion, she walked into the house.
Nicholas was nowhere to be seen, but he was home—she could smell him. She heard muffled sounds from upstairs, the sound of his feet on carpet and the rustling of a few papers. She walked heavily up the steps and pushed his bedroom door open to find him sitting on the edge of his bed, paging through a book that looked about ready for a burial service.
He looked up when she walked in. “Drift Inn?”
She wiped the taste of Wharf from her mouth. “This is about Mule.”
His eyes did an around-the-world circle from floor to ceiling to Imogene to floor. “A mule.”
“No.” She clenched her fists. “Mule. My ferret when I was thirteen.”
“Mmhmm.” His tone suggested a dubious question mark lingered somewhere near the end of his consonants.
“Look, Mule was my best friend, okay? I didn’t have friends in Ohio. I was a freak. Even my own family didn’t want me around, so I found Mule eating garbage behind an Italian restaurant and took him home.” She sat on the bed next to Nicholas. “Then, one day, he was gone.”
“Dead?”
“No. He ran away. Even he couldn’t stand to be with me. I don’t want a rehash—a Mule, part two. I don’t let people in, because they’ll just disappoint you eventually. Celia and Ian had to wheedle their way into my heart, with, like, a metaphorical blowtorch and crowbar. Then, you say you want to paint me, and I know what that means, so this is the point in every sexual relationship where I run. Before you can leave me, just like fucking Mule.”
Nicholas took a deep breath. “Perhaps Mule had his reasons. Maybe he met someone and wanted to start a family.”
She smiled and shook her head.
“People don’t all want to run away from you, Imogene. Celia and Ian care about you very much, as does Rain, even if she’s odd about it. I’m certain that Mule just made a bad choice.”
She chuckled as he took her hand.
“People love you.”
Imogene raised an eyebrow. “People?”
Nicholas didn’t look at her. “You don’t have to say it back.”
“You haven’t even said it yet.”
He lifted his gaze. “I love you.”
“Damn it!” She pulled her hand away from him and stood. “You know, I was fine until you showed up. I was very happy with the way my life was going. Then, you waltz in and fuck everything up.”
“Are you mad at me?”
“Of course I’m mad at you! You show up here in your fancy suits and sex smell and cheekbones and… and irreconcilable behavior toward me. You like me, you hate me, like me, hate me.”
“I never hated you.”
She sneered. “You tried to.”
He stood, too, possibly just to feel like he wasn’t a child being punished by a taller, purple-headed, half-hysterical adult. “Fine, yes, I tried to deny our attraction, but it was for your own good since I won’t be here much longer. I didn’t want to grow attached because…” He roared a string of vowels. “We aren’t supposed to be fighting at a time like this. We’re supposed to be kissing!”
“You just told me you love me,” she screamed. “I can’t think of a worse mood killer, except maybe dead babies.”
He winced. “Imogene
.”
She covered her ears. “Why did you have to say it? Why?”
He pulled one of her hands away. “Because I mean it, and I wanted you to know.”
“But it doesn’t matter. Once Celia has her talking baby, you’ll be on your way back to London.”
“Maybe that’s why it matters. Because we don’t have much time.”
“What is this? A movie about cancer?” She stepped away from him and faced the black night beyond the windows, although she could see them both, reflected in a shade of moonlit blue. “Is that why you paint the women you love? So they’ll remember you once you’ve left? A parting gift.”
“I paint them so I can remember—every line, every detail burned in my brain.”
“These paintings of yours sound like eulogies.”
“Perhaps they are.” His reflection didn’t move.
“You can’t paint me, Nicholas. Promise you won’t.”
He didn’t say anything, so she turned around.
“Promise.”
He inclined his head in acceptance.
“I’m sleeping alone today.”
He caught her arm as she walked past. “I do love you.”
“Yeah. I know.”
In the privacy of her bedroom, she put on her headphones and played the Ramones at full volume. She plugged her nose with cotton balls to block out Nicholas’s smell and eventually fell asleep mouth breathing to the sound of punk rock.
Chapter Fourteen
She dragged Ian and Celia to a place where she knew Nicholas wouldn’t look for her—The Drift Inn. Ingenious because it was so idiotically obvious, and Nicholas was no idiot. The bartender, the same wrinkled prune lady from the night before, gave Imogene the arched eyebrow judgy face of “back again?”
They sat curled together around the bar, not necessarily because they were telling secrets but because Imogene was worried the weird baby might start screaming obscenities from the depths of Celia’s stomach and cause mass, drunken hysteria. She even had a flashback of that scene in Spaceballs where the alien tap-danced across the bar, which she shook off like a dog shaking drool from its jowls.
“I have a problem,” she said.
Celia snorted. “Several.”
Imogene pointed her thumb at Celia and looked at Ian. “When did she get like this?”
“It’s your influence.” He smiled as if that was a good thing.
“Nicholas is in love with me.”
“D’aww.” Celia grinned.
“No. No, don’t do that. This is not good.”
Celia swung her legs like a little kid. “Come on, Imogene, it’s not like he’s a ferret.”
Imogene glared at Ian. “You told her about Mule?”
He shrugged. “She’s my wife.”
“He’s exactly like a ferret,” Imogene hissed. “I even had a dream about Mule last night, but Mule had Nicholas’s eyes and talked with a British accent, okay? This is fucking serious.”
“Well, do you love him back?” Celia asked.
“No!”
“Liar,” Ian muttered.
“I’m sorry.” Imogene pushed her earlobe forward with the tip of her finger. “What?”
Celia’s stomach said, “Fuck!”
“You’re not involved in this,” Imogene told Celia’s stomach.
“You’re obviously in love with him, or we wouldn’t be having a bar conference,” Ian said. “If you didn’t give a hoot about the guy, you’d just laugh him out of your house and it’d be over. Instead, you’re hiding at The Drift Inn.”
“I’m not hiding.”
Ian’s bright blue eyes moved to her head. “You’re wearing a hat.”
“I like hats.”
“You never wear hats. Did you buy one just for tonight?”
Imogene sighed and paid attention to her drink.
“He’s not Mule, Imogene,” Ian said.
“But he is, because once Celia pops out your baby, who obviously has a penchant for obscenities—”
“Your fault.” Ian and Celia spoke as one.
Imogene bugged her eyes out and rolled them. “Once the baby is born, Nicholas is gone, poof, back to London, back to his job at Big Brother—the fucking lame stadium or whatever—and I’m just another girl he painted.”
“He painted you?”
Imogene looked at Celia and swore she saw hearts dancing in her eyes. “He wants to paint me, and I said no. Absolutely not. I won’t be just another of the bitches he painted and left. I have to put an end to this now and just not fuck him anymore and that’s it. You have your baby, he gets the hell out of here, and my life goes back to normal—as normal as it can be with a talking vampire godchild.” She groaned into her rum punch.
Celia sipped daintily on her Shirley Temple. “What if you told him you loved him, too, and he could move here?”
“And what, Merk? Live happily ever after? I don’t do that shit, and neither does he. Obviously. Most guys that are into monogamy don’t have nicknames like The Great Lover.” She sighed. “No. We’re done. It’s done.”
“Oh, did you go talk to his ex?” Ian asked, raising his voice over the sound of Hendrix’s “Purple Haze,” on the jukebox.
“Yeah.” Imogene frowned.
“What’s she like?” Celia chewed on a piece of ice.
“Your basic nightmare amped to eleven. Although not only is she smoking hot, but I think she’s evil. It really freaked me out that night she showed up at your house.”
“Why is she in Florida?”
Imogene rolled her eyes at Ian. “Said she heard it was beautiful this time of year.”
Celia balked. “It’s horrible this time of year. You could melt a crayon on the sidewalk.”
Ian nodded. “A box of crayons.”
“She’s here for Nicholas, I just don’t know why. He’s obviously not happy to see her, and she’s been murdering people—men, by the way. Men who look like Nicholas.”
“That’s messed up.”
“Agreed. There’s something still going on between them, which is another reason why it’s over between me and Nicholas. Cheers for the great sex. Now, fuck off back to Big Ben.”
“‘This is true love. You think this happens every day?’”
Imogene pulled her sunglasses out of her back pocket and balanced them on her nose. “Ian, why are you quoting The Princess Bride?”
He shrugged. “Nicholas loves you. Seems like a waste to pussy out.”
She almost coughed on her drink. “I don’t pussy out. Ever. This is just the responsible thing to do.”
Her two best friends stared at her.
“What?”
Ian’s voice dropped. “I didn’t think you knew what that word meant.”
“I’ve heard it used before,” she grumbled.
They kept staring at her.
She wiped her nose. “Do I have something on my face?”
Celia tapped her finger on the edge of the bar. “You love him too, don’t you?”
“No. Like, no. Pfft.” She finished her drink. “Yes. Okay, I love him.”
Celia took a huge, gasping breath of air, and her eyes went wide. Ian immediately rubbed her shoulders and shushed her as she continued gasping for air, smacking her hand on the edge of the bar.
Imogene jumped to her feet. “Holy Christ, I’ve killed her.”
“No, it’s just…” The gasping turned to sobs. “I’ve been really emotional lately.” She sobbed and sniffed and sobbed and sniffed. “And I think it’s so cute… it’s just… you…” She sobbed against her husband’s shoulder.
Ian ran his hand through her hair. “I think. She’s happy. Although there’s really no telling lately.”
Imogene fell back onto her bar stool. “What do I do?”
“Tell him,” Ian said. “Just tell him.”
Outside, Imogene put her hand on the knob to her front door. She pulled her hand away. She put her hand back on the knob and growled a string of cusswords a drunken sailor woul
d’ve deemed inappropriate before wrenching the door open. Tiptoeing inside, she found her kitchen fully lit and Nicholas standing at the island with a glass of blood.
His brow wrinkled. “You’re wearing a hat.”
“Oh.” She tossed the huge, yellow sunhat on the floor. “Yeah. Well.” She put her hands in her shorts pockets.
He rested his long-fingered hands on the counter and touched his top lip with the tip of his tongue. “I feel I should apologize for last night. I never should have put you in that position, knowing you the way I do.”
She chortled.
His brow wrinkled some more. “You think my apology is funny?”
“No.” She shook her head. “It’s just so you. Always the gentleman.”
He looked to be chewing the inside of his lip as he stared down at the island.
Imogene took slow, quiet steps until she stood next to him. He straightened at her approach. In his deep blue three-piece suit and dress shoes, he seemed so much taller than her—even though he wasn’t. He had the regal bearing of a man twice his size.
Imogene leaned her shoulder against his and tapped her chipped nails on the counter. “Look. Every time I see you, I feel like I’m going mad,” she said.
“You were arguably mad when I found you.”
“Will you shut up for five seconds? I’m making a speech.” She faced him. “I see you and get all warm inside. Just a glimpse is all it takes or a flash of your profile. The golden flecks in your eyes.” Her eyes moved to his lips. “And your mouth should be damn illegal. I hear your voice or your laugh, and I lose my mind. The things you say, the way you move, the way you smell.” She looked away. “I think I love you, too, you cocky British prick.”
He kissed her, hard, and lifted her onto the island. He grabbed her ass and pulled her to the edge so they could easily grind, hip to hip, which made Imogene lose her mind before regaining a semblance of sanity when his mouth again found hers.
Nobody kissed like Nicholas—and she’d had lots of kisses. Nobody made her feel like she was being devoured, gently, as if she were an expensive dessert. Nobody tasted like him, either: spice and mint. She gripped the back of his head and wallowed in the softness of his red-brown hair. They parted long enough for Nicholas to tug Imogene’s t-shirt off over her head, and she went to work first on his vest, then his white button down before grumbling about “too many damn buttons.” Nicholas tore his shirt open and grinned when buttons flew and she whooped. He laid her back on the big, marble island and rested his upper body against hers as his kisses moved to her neck and across her collarbone. Her legs hung over the edge of the countertop as he unbuttoned her shorts and pulled them down her thighs and calves.
Bite Somebody Else Page 18