by Molly Harper
“OK,” I said. “Any other instructions?”
“No lunch boxes. Nobody brings lunch, Mom. Everybody eats the cafeteria food, even though it can be gross sometimes. And I know you like to get me those little erasers shaped like pizza slices, but Carson ate them last year and started to cry ’cause he thought he was poisoned, so that’s not a good idea,” he said.
“Got it.”
“And no fat crayons. Everybody knows those are little-kid crayons. I need the skinny crayons.”
“OK, Danny.”
“And no—”
“Danny!”
Having finally made me bark at him, which was his goal all along, he burst out laughing and scampered off to his room.
I shook my head and asked Kaylee, “Are you sure you want to give all this up?”
Kaylee promptly burst into tears.
I blew out an unnecessary breath. “Oh, boy.”
While I drove into town, I mulled over the Danny situation and the fact that I would have no help in less than eight hours when he woke up. My first thought was to call his grandparents. It was an instinct born of years when calling anyone else to watch Danny—because I felt guilty asking for babysitting help every time we talked—caused disagreements with Rob and his parents, because they didn’t like the idea of anyone else watching Danny. Kaylee was only trusted because her mother went to Les and Marge’s church.
Again, it occurred to me how small my friend circle was now that I didn’t have other moms I could call for help. I doubted very much that Casey would be willing to watch Danny, since she seemed to be running some sort of gossip campaign about me.
Relinquishing the problem to my hindbrain for a thorough mulling, I pulled into the Walmart parking lot and brought the three-page school-supplies list out of my enormous mom purse. While I was walking to the entrance, I added several things we would need for the duplex: ice trays, a rug for Danny’s new bathroom, a countertop blood warmer, plus cracker packs Danny could put in his backpack for snack time. It was a far more interesting array of items than any of my preturning shopping lists.
It was nice to know that despite everything that had changed in my life, Walmart remained the same. I turned toward the special-dietary-needs aisle, the “vampire supplies” area where the undead could shop for fang floss, synthetic blood, and specialized sunscreen. I’ll admit I got a little overexcited at the number of new products now available to me. I dropped a tube of White Fang dental whitening gel into the cart, next to Hershey’s Special Blood Additive Chocolate Syrup and ReNu Skin revitalizing crème, because you never knew when you would suffer accidental sun exposure and need to regrow your epidermis. I might have overshopped a little, especially when one considered the metric ton of school supplies I was about to purchase, but so far, Casey’s and Marge’s calls hadn’t affected my bookkeeping business. I was going to consider that a good sign . . . or a sign that my clients were afraid to snatch business out from under a new vampire.
I turned toward the school-supplies section, praying that there was a Transformers or Avengers backpack left on the rack. While I dropped boxes of tissue, hand sanitizer, plastic bags, and paper towels into the cart, I tried to remember when exactly this stuff had become a parent expense. I turned the cart around the corner and crash—I ran right into another cart.
“Oh, I’m so—you!” I growled, my eyes narrowing at the tattooed arm in front of me. Grumpy Janitor was no less attractive in Walmart’s harsh fluorescent lighting. He smelled of iron and citrus, the earthy scents of the garage clinging to his clothes. Those two things should not have smelled good together, but God help me, they did. His dark gold hair was slicked back, revealing those devastating blue eyes. The less shaggy appearance made his face open up . . . and his face was openly hostile.
He was wearing worn jeans and black work boots with a T-shirt that read “HMH Custom Cycle Parts.” And a sneer. “You.”
And, of course, he appeared to be holding the last Avengers backpack in the store.
“So, what, now you’re runnin’ people down in the grocery store?” he demanded, throwing the backpack into his cart. “Seems like you’re always standin’ in my way somehow. What’s your problem?”
“My problem?” I exclaimed. “You ran into me. Just like you ran into me at school the other night. Do you have any manners at all?”
“I’ve got plenty of manners for people that deserve ’em. What the hell are you even doin’ here?” he demanded. “Who waits till two days before school starts to buy their kid’s school supplies? I thought your type updated your school-supplies shoppin’ list progress on Pinterest and shit.”
“You’re shopping for school supplies two days before school starts!” I cried, looking pointedly at his ill-gotten backpack. His cheeks flushed pink, and I tried really hard not to find that adorable. I had to actively command my nerve endings in naughty places not to tingle. Also, why didn’t I know what to do with my hands?
And he wasn’t even my type. While Rob hadn’t been all that considerate, he’d at least put on a show of politeness every once in a while. He didn’t actively disdain people to their faces.
“Also, I deleted my Pinterest account months ago.”
“And I’m here because I bought the wrong backpack. I guess it’s against some sort of kid law to carry a Minion backpack after kindergarten,” he grumbled, pointing to a bright yellow backpack featuring one of the small yellow underlings from Despicable Me. I grimaced. Danny had been rabid about Gru and the Minions when he was in kindergarten but declared the cartoon was for “babies” just after his fifth birthday. There was no greater insult. But I would not commiserate with the Hot Cranky Janitor, no matter how acutely I felt his pain.
I wondered how old his kids were and how old they would be when they got their first tattoos. Also, I wondered how his rough hands would feel against my skin. And where was the kids’ mom that he ended up shopping for a replacement backpack at nine o’clock on a Tuesday? Was he a single parent like me?
I glanced down at his hands. He wore silver rings on several fingers. One depicting a motorcycle running along the band, another showing an elaborately carved sugar skull, another made to look like heavy chain link. But none of the pieces screamed, My baby’s mama put a ring on it.
While I was staring at his manual accessories, his eyes flicked down to my cart and suddenly went wide. I followed his line of sight to the fang-whitening kits.
He smirked at me. “Ohhh, so you’re that mom.”
“That mom?” I asked, cocking my fist on my hip.
“The woman who went nuts and got herself turned into a vampire because she was tryin’ to avoid gray hair and crow’s-feet,” he said, smirking. “Just so ya know, hair dye is cheaper.”
My jaw dropped. That’s what the other moms at school were saying about me? Had they not seen me struggle through the last year with their own eyes? And they thought it was OK to tell one another that my reasons for being turned were cosmetic? I suddenly felt no guilt at all for skipping the room-mom meeting the night before. Let some living mom without a reputation for insane vanity take care of the class parties this year.
And this guy—it wasn’t that I didn’t appreciate his lack of preconceived notions.
The Hollow’s gossip circuits ran in concentric socioeconomic circles that never touched. The beauty-parlor circuit ran on a totally different level from the trailer-park-kitchen circuit and even further from the country-club circuit. (Yes, Half-Moon Hollow had a country club. It doubled as a catfish farm, but we had a country club.) Without a sensationalist story in the local paper about a murder trial or some county commissioner getting caught with his pants down, the stories rarely reached all levels. It was sort of refreshing meeting someone who didn’t feel sorry for me. He wasn’t afraid of me. He was annoyed with me based on personal experience alone. And I had to respect that. But still, screw him and his comments about crow’s-feet.
“No, n— What? That’s just freaking rude. I’m not go
ing to take that from someone who has the name of his favorite motorcycle on his arm,” I shot back.
He frowned in confusion and glanced down at his forearm, where he had “Harley” tattooed in flowing, elaborately shaded script. His arms were a mishmash of styles. Golden Japanese koi swam in and out of the crease near his elbow. A bit of cursive peeked out from under his sleeve, but I couldn’t make out what it said. A vintage pinup mermaid curled up on his other forearm. I couldn’t help but wonder where else he had ink and felt sort of sad that I would never find out.
“That’s not my— That’s my son’s name!” he exclaimed.
“You named your son Harley? Please, please tell me his middle name isn’t Davidson.”
“It’s Wade,” he deadpanned. And suddenly, I remembered seeing the name “Wade” stitched on the front of his shirt at school.
“After you, of course. And do you also have a daughter named Chlamydia because it sounded pretty?”
Anger flashed across Wade’s handsome features, but instead of lashing out, he just shook his head. “Were you always this bitter? Or did ya get that installed with your new plastic-surgery fangs?”
“Look, jackass, you don’t even know me. And every time you talk to me, you just spout more hostile bullshit. Why don’t you just stay on this side of the school-supplies aisle, and I’ll stay over there, and we can avoid each other. I don’t know how much more of your charm I can take.”
He grinned, showing surprisingly bright and even teeth. I wasn’t sure if I wanted to smack that beautiful smile off his face or yank him close so I could kiss it away. These were not normal thoughts. He was not my type. And I was already conflicted enough with all the naked sire dreams. I did not need this.
“Oh, it’s not charm. I just don’t like ya much,” he drawled.
“Trust me, I’ve deciphered your subtle social cues,” I shot back, pushing my cart toward the notebooks and folders. I turned on the heel of my sensible Keds and called, “By the way, you do realize that I could literally reach down your throat and hand you your own spleen, right?”
A horrified expression dawned on his face, as if he had not, in fact, considered that.
“Just making sure,” I said, smiling just enough to let my dropped fangs show. “You know, so your mouth doesn’t write a check your ass can’t cash.”
“Lunatic,” he muttered under his breath.
“I heard that!” I called as he stalked off.
I managed to recover most of my dignity as I checked off the rest of Danny’s lengthy school-supplies list. I was still trying to figure out what it was about Wade the Angry Janitorial Engineer that set my fangs on edge so easily. Was it because he reminded me so much of my childhood? Because he was the first person to express real and honest reactions to me in years? Or because he was the first person who seemed to be able to take it when I snapped at him?
I didn’t think any of those reasons painted me in a particularly positive light.
I checked out and walked out of the store a ridiculous amount poorer. But the good news was that I was no longer afraid to walk across a dark parking lot by myself. There was an extraordinary amount of freedom in that. I was practically skipping to my van, even with the enormous number of shopping bags I was carrying. Despite its being a relatively nondescript gray, I was able to find the van easily, thanks to the decal on the back that read “I like big books and I cannot lie.” It helped separate my car from all of the other mom-vans with stick-figure families on the back. I had briefly thought about getting a zombie stick family, but considering the whole dead-husband-slash-vampire-mom thing, that was probably unseemly.
And while I found the van easily enough, I also found that there was a motorcycle parked incredibly close to my driver’s-side door. As in, I couldn’t open the damn door. It was a beautiful bike, a sleek black classic Harley-Davidson with a swirling silver pinstripe along the gas tank. But while I could appreciate the aesthetics, I also wanted to drive my car home as opposed to jogging. I loaded the grocery bags into the back hatch and considered using my vampire strength to pick up the Harley and move it. But I’d read somewhere that touching a man’s bike was a big no-no in the motorcycle world, and the last thing I needed to do was piss off a random Hells Angel in a Walmart parking lot.
I would not crawl to the driver’s seat from the back gate of my van. I wasn’t sure my skinny jeans would hold up to the strain. I could crawl in from the passenger’s seat, but I wasn’t actually sure that I could back out of the space without hitting the bike. And while I wasn’t so worried about being beaten up by a biker, I probably couldn’t afford to replace a vintage Harley.
Wait. Harley. Oh, crap.
“Whatever crazy-ass evil thing you’re planning to do to my bike, just back away and do somethin’ else. Crack my kneecap or do the spleen-rippin’ thing, but just leave my bike alone.”
“I wasn’t going to hurt your precious bike,” I shot back as Wade dropped the backpack into a saddlebag slung over his bike’s seat.
“You were thinkin’ about it,” he said, pointing his finger at me.
“I—I was not,” I insisted. “I couldn’t afford to replace it, so I was fighting down the urge.”
He quirked an eyebrow and actually smiled at me. A real, sincere, mockery-free smile that actually made me want to smile back. I bit back the urge, but it was there. “So why are you standin’ here, eyein’ my bike in a suspicious fashion?”
“Because you parked it so freaking close to my van that I couldn’t even get into it.”
“Well, I only parked so close because I got distracted by the ‘big books’ sticker!” he exclaimed.
“What?” I cried.
“It was funny!”
I laughed, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying really hard not to like the cranky redneck. When I looked up, he was still grinning at me. I let loose a shocked gasp. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I accused. “You enjoy winding me up, like some sort of backward, backwoods form of flirting. You’ve got one of those weird fetishes where you can only get turned on by the sound of a woman yelling at you while pelting you with balloons filled with banana pudding.”
Wade went pale, and his full mouth fell open. “I’m tryin’ to come up with a smartass comeback, but my brain seems to have gone ‘TILT.’ ”
I snickered. “That’s not the first time I’ve had that effect on a man.”
“I don’t doubt it,” he drawled.
A smoother, more cultured voice sounded behind me. “Is this man bothering you, miss?”
I turned to find a tall, dark-haired man standing behind us, giving Wade a strong case of side-eye. He was certainly the kind of guy you’d want coming to your rescue—handsome and well dressed in dark jeans and a navy dress shirt rolled at the elbows. His eyes were dark, and his features were even and sort of dignified in that old-fashioned matinee-idol way. Given that I was pretty sure he was a vampire, it was entirely possible he was an old-fashioned matinee idol. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.
He looked vaguely familiar and yet so out of place in the Hollow. But somehow I was glad that he’d stopped to check on me. It gave me hope for the male gender. How wrong would it be for me to play injured party so this gentlemanly vampire would slap Wade around a little bit?
Pretty wrong.
Wade’s face, roguishly handsome though it might have been, could not stand up to a vampire whooping. So instead, I asked, “Do I know you?”
Wade had stepped between me and the newcomer and interjected, “Hell, no, I’m not botherin’ her.”
Mr. Gentleman gave Wade a withering stare. “I think I’ll let the lady answer that.”
“It’s fine,” I assured him. “Just a minor parking disagreement between fellow PTA members.”
Wade’s brows rose, as did the vampire’s. “Really?”
“Look, buddy, we’re not lookin’ for an audience, so keep walking,” Wade told him, making a shooing motion with his arm.
I ignored Wade’s rudeness, saying with saccharine sweetness, “My friend here was just asking me if I thought that his huge motorcycle could be considered a sign that he might be overcompensating for something. And I told him, ‘Don’t be silly, everybody knows that Corvettes are the classic compensation vehicles. Motorcycles are more of a midlife-crisis sort of purchase.’ ”
Wade cleared his throat. “And I told her that she was right, it was way more interestin’ to ride around town in a van that could carry a freakin’ basketball team. I mean, you have one kid, but really, drivin’ a barge is the smart thing to do.”
“Don’t pick on my van,” I retorted.
“Don’t call my bike an overcompensation. I don’t need to compensate for anything.”
“You sound a little defensive there.”
“I swear, woman, you are the most frustratin’ person I have ever met.”
“Are you sure you’re all right?” the vampire asked.
“We’re fine,” Wade and I chorused, glaring at each other. And it seemed that we were back to square one in terms of hostilities. It was nice to know we could agree on something, even if it was how much we irritated each other. The vampire stared for a few more beats and then walked away, frowning.
“Just let me back out, and you can climb into your mom-mobile,” Wade sniped, slinging his leg over his bike. I sincerely wished that wasn’t as sexy as it was. Maybe he would have one of those dorky full-face shield helmets that made him look like Darth Vader. Nope, no such luck. The half-helmet, black with a flaming motorcycle wheel painted down the side, just made him look hotter.
“It’s always a pleasure to see you,” I told him, my voice dripping with sarcasm. “Remember, red lights are for quitters.”
Wade backed out of the space with the Fred Flintstone shuffle, then started his bike. Under the roar of his engine, he was muttering some rude words he thought I couldn’t hear. I smiled, waving as I opened my door.