A grin crossed his face as he left his office to find Angelina at her desk, furiously typing away as she stared at the latest papers delivered to her. It was amusing how easily he could get her riled up. It was equally impressive how she took everything he threw at her in stride when it came to work. She had found Isaac Fisher’s address before Rainer told her that she needed to finish up all the paperwork he’d left on the desk before she wrote her piece.
Oh, the death glare she had given him! He chuckled just thinking about it.
Darkness was starting to fall outside, and Rainer rubbed his hands together. It was time for step one of his seduction plan! Now that she was exhausted by paperwork, it was time to step it up a notch. “Leave all that, Angel. You and I are taking a road trip.”
She didn’t even glance up from her papers. “I have five more minutes and then I’m going home.”
“You’re not going to become a reporter if you don’t put in the work. That means late nights. You can’t just put it aside because you’re a little tired—”
“I’m not tired.” Angelina kept typing, her fingers flying across the keyboard. “But I have a two-year-old son. I need to pick him up from daycare and get him home.”
Riiiiiiight. He’d forgotten about that. She had a kid. Didn’t wear a ring, though. Rainer sat on the edge of the desk and tried to make his question sound sincere. “Can’t the boy’s father look after him?”
If looks could kill! Rainer blinked in surprise at the intensity of Angelina’s glower in response to that question. She even growled in her throat. “No, he can’t. He’s not in the picture, and I wouldn’t trust him anywhere near Tommy, anyway!”
Ok, there was a whole story there. Rainer had to admit he wanted to keep pressing. To peel back the layers on this tough cookie and get to that juicy heart of hers. Hmmm… speaking of juicy, her lips were just that. She had gone with an understated lipstick, but it still brought attention to her mouth. Thick, plump lips, just the right kind to kiss and suckle while making love.
Normally, Rainer had a strict policy against even flirting with women at his workplace. That was why he always tried to choose men to work with, or at the very least women in happy, committed relationships. His job didn’t need the distractions of whether a woman was into him or his money. With Angelina, though… she was a temp. There were no problems with it blowing up out of control because the contract she signed very clearly had a termination date in place.
“Don’t you have a mom or something?” Rainer pressed. “Come on, it’ll be fuuuu-uuun. Going to jail and talking to convicted criminals. How can you turn that down?”
“My parents both died when I was a teen and my grandmother, who raised me, passed a year before Tommy was born. I have no siblings, no cousins, nobody that can just take my son because my boss wants to go on a field trip. And that’s my five minutes.” She finished her sentence and then went about closing it down. “Can I take some of this home?”
She looked less than impressed with him and Rainer struggled to think of why. Was it just his cavalier attitude or was she really pissed off with him for giving her so much work? He glanced over the desk—it looked a lot less cluttered than it had this morning.
“No,” he told her. “You can’t take it home. Either you come to jail with me, or you don’t work more tonight. It can wait until the morning.”
She looked at her piles of paperwork and then back at him, exasperated. “So first you tell me that I have to work outside of office hours because that’s the only way I can get ahead, and then you tell me that I’m not allowed to work outside office hours unless it’s with you?”
Rainer grinned.
“That’s not happening,” she said, standing. She groaned and rolled her neck.
Until now, he hadn’t paid attention to what she was wearing. It was so boring and uninspired. Now he saw that it was all polyester, didn’t fit her frame quite right and that seam in the skirt? Clearly repaired at least once. This was a cheap suit if he’d ever seen one. He frowned. She had been wearing something better than that for the interview, hadn’t she?
He vaguely remembered a slinky red dress with a split up the thigh and a neckline plunging to her navel. Or had that only been his imagination?
I shouldn’t take interviews when I’m drunk.
“Let me make one thing clear to you, Mr. Weiman.” Angelina lifted her chin and she glowered at him with all the strength she could muster. “I don’t care how rich and handsome you are. I don’t care if you have women throwing themselves at you night and day. I am not going to sleep with you!”
Ah. Perhaps he should have been a little less obvious. Rainer shrugged, attempting to keep an air of aloofness. “Alright. Good to know. Now, I need to get to jail. I’ll see you tomorrow.”
He grabbed his jacket and headed for the elevator, whistling pleasantly. It was only when he was alone that it hit him—he hadn’t been looking for a bit of fun for the night. Not really. Distraction, maybe. But he just didn’t… want to be alone. Alone, it was so much harder to keep those memories at bay. So much harder to stop his hands from trembling and his throat from going dry.
The thought of the long drive to the jail with only his thoughts to accompany him was more than he could take. So instead, he pointed his shoes toward the nearest club and started walking.
Chapter Two
“And then he wouldn’t even let me take the actual work home,” Angelina complained, glaring up at the ceiling as she lay in bed.
As was her usual, she had gotten up several hours earlier than she needed to, in order to be able to get a little reading and cleaning done before she had to get Tommy up for daycare. Today, though, rather than doing the work that needed to be finished, she had phoned her friend in England (via an internet app on her phone, so it didn’t actually cost her anything). After the day she’d had yesterday, she needed someone to vent to.
“That’s bonkers,” Emma replied with a snort. “Did he think that not letting you take your work home was some sort of punishment?”
“It might be. If he expects it to be done in a certain amount of time and is going to fire me if it’s not,” Angelina grumbled. It was just the sort of trick that a crazy vampire would do. There was nothing logical about Rainer Weiman. “The joke’s on him, though. I spent my free time last night researching this whole Isaac Fisher thing. I even sent him an email, asking for an interview. We’ll see if he replies.”
“Are you sure that’s… safe?”
“What?”
“Interviewing someone like that!”
Angelina frowned as she rolled onto her belly and propped her chin in her hand. It was something she had been thinking of since Rainer told her he wanted that story from her. What did she personally feel about it? It was true that the majority of articles from other news sources weren’t very favorable toward him, but he had given plenty of interviews when he was still in jail. He’d had a hard life and seemed genuine in wanting to make a new life for himself.
“I don’t think he’s dangerous. At least, not to me. You know, he’s working with the FBI now.”
Emma hummed, not sounding convinced.
“I need to get going so I’m ready for work, anyway. Thanks for listening to my ranting.”
“Anytime, Sweet.” Emma still sounded distinctly worried. “And as for this Rainer Weiman, if he tries anything you make sure you get it backed up with times and witnesses if you can. Maybe it’d be a good idea to set up a webcam to record all your interactions.”
Angelina bit back a sigh. That did seem a little extreme for this situation, but, on the other hand, he was a billionaire and she was a struggling single mom. If Rainer did cross the line, it would be a good idea to have some backup—otherwise, she’d have her face all over the news and random people spitting at her in the streets for being a gold-digger. She flinched as she thought of that. What had happened to the world that she thought those extreme measures were perhaps the only way she could protect herself?
“I’ll figure something out,” she said. “Thanks. Bye.”
She hung up and dropped her head to the blankets. She had wanted to tell Emma that Rainer was Tommy’s father but had chickened out. Emma was pretty much her only friend—if she didn’t confide in her, how could she confide in anybody?
From the open door, Tommy called out for her. Angelina rolled off her bed and folded it up—she slept in the living room, giving Tommy the single bedroom in the apartment since she was often restless at night and didn’t want to disturb his sleeping—and then went to get him. He gave her a wide grin as he stood up on his twin-sized mattress. The frame was tucked away in storage, as Angelina didn’t like the idea of him falling out of bed if he was too far off the floor.
Of course, when she first put him on the mattress she worried about mice and rats but luckily (very luckily) they hadn’t had a problem with rodents yet. It might have something to do with the owner of the apartment building having three dozen cats that wandered around the building at will. Whatever it was, Angelina was grateful.
“How did you sleep last night?” She asked Tommy as she carried him into the bathroom.
“Good! We go to the moon now.”
“Oh, really?”
Tommy babbled happily as she changed him and got him ready for the day. Despite what she had told Emma, Angelina was already ready. She smoothed a little lint off the bottom of her skirt, checked her appearance and nodded in satisfaction. Her boss hadn’t mentioned anything about her appearance, so she had to assume that it was suitable for work.
“Mommy, I wanna zoo.”
“You want to go to the zoo?”
Tommy nodded eagerly. “I tiger! Roar!”
He bunched his face up into a look of ferocity that had Angelina laughing as he made his hands into claws. She shook in pretend fright. “Ahhh! A scary tiger!”
“Roar!”
Angelina scooped him up. “Ahhh! We have to get away from the tiger.”
“No, Mommy. I tiger!”
“Oh no! You were eaten by a tiger?”
Tommy giggled. “Huh-yeah and now I tiger.”
“Uh oh. What am I going to do?” She kissed his forehead and she put him in his highchair and stuck a bit of the seven-grain cereal she had cooked up the previous night in the microwave. “Would you like a banana?”
Tommy nodded. “Can we zoo?”
Looking at his bright, eager eyes, Angelina wished she could say that they would. She wished that she didn’t have to go to work and leave him at daycare. Her heart ached at the thought of leaving him alone. Well, he wasn’t alone at daycare, there were plenty of workers and other children. But it felt like alone, whenever he cried for her to take him with her.
She smoothed his hair from his forehead, frowning when she felt that he was a little warmer than normal. Was he getting sick? But no… Tommy had never even had so much as a cold—it was the half-vampire in him.
She kissed him and shook her head. “Mommy has to work today. And you have to go to daycare.”
***
By the time she got to daycare, Tommy’s nose was streaming, and he had developed a cough. Angelina was frantic. He never got sick and the daycare wouldn’t take him, because they didn’t want the other kids getting sick. She took him to the hospital—they assured her it was a simple cold.
And by that time, she was late for work. Unable to get anybody to come to watch Tommy on such short notice and knowing that taking her second day off work was going to be unprofessional, she brought him with her. Tommy curled up in her coat on the floor and quickly fell asleep as she worked, checking him every so often. His cheeks were flushed, and Angelina bit her lip. What had brought this on?
She had only been there for an hour when Rainer came out of his office. His shirt was wrinkled, his tie loosened and there was a distinctive smell about him. Angelina frowned. So, he’d spent the night drinking and then slept in his office?
When he spotted her, he straightened and ran a hand over his hair. “Ah, good. Good, you’re here. Uh… what time is it?”
Angelina glanced at the clock. “Noon.”
“Oh! It’s lunchtime. Let’s go grab lunch. Put on your coat. We’ll get something from a drive through on the way to jail.” He shook his head, as though shaking off his hangover. And maybe it worked because he was rapidly looking more sober. He grinned at her as he came forward. Then his nostrils flared, and he stopped. “Is someone else here?”
Angelina bit her lip as her fingers hovered over the keyboard.
“Angel?” Rainer stepped in a little closer. “Why do you look like you’re afraid I’m going to throw you out the window?”
“I’m not,” she snapped back at once.
“Uh-huh.”
Angelina rolled back slightly. She stood because she didn’t like to have him towering over her like he was doing. She was pretty tall for a woman but still only reached his chin. She lifted her own chin, holding her shoulders back to give herself more presence.
“And now you look like you’re about to deck me.” Rainer’s brow furrowed. “What is it? Because I want to take you to jail? It’s part of the job, I’m not making a move on you. The Isaac Fisher thing got me thinking, there are lots of paranormal individuals that are unjustly persecuted—”
“That’s not it.”
Rainer frowned.
“My son is sick. The daycare wouldn’t take him, and I couldn’t get ahold of anybody to watch him.”
Rainer’s frown deepened. “Please tell me that there isn’t a child asleep under your desk.”
“There is.”
“Why didn’t you take the day off?”
Angelina rolled her eyes. “Because you said I wasn’t allowed to take any of this home and because I don’t want to get fired for missing my second day of work! It’s bad enough that I was late.”
“But you have a sick kid to take care of. Only a jerk would fire you for taking care of your child.” Rainer shook his head, looking disgusted. “Although I guess there are plenty of jerks out there. But whatever. The office isn’t any place for a kid. It’s noisy and…” He looked around the dead-quiet office. “It’s… uh… Well, you’d be more comfortable at home, wouldn’t you? I mean, it’s better than being on the floor.”
Angelina frowned at him, not entirely certain if he was serious or not.
“Well, how sick is he?”
This time, that fear and worry slipped back into her stomach. She twisted her hands and she glanced at where her precious child slept. “I don’t know. He’s never been sick before.”
Rainer stepped forward. “How old is he?”
“Two.”
“And he’s never been sick before?”
Angelina hesitated a moment as she considered him. This was a vampire she was talking with. She had spoken with other vampires, had gotten information from hospitals and online groups. But maybe Rainer would know something she didn’t?
“He hasn’t been. He’s half-vampire. I didn’t think that—”
Rainer’s expression went from surprised to confused to alarmed in seconds. “Do you have blood for him?”
Angelina jumped, shocked at his urgency. “Everything I read said he won’t need blood until—”
“Get him and come with me.”
He turned on his heel and strode back into his office. Angelina shivered as anxiety drummed at her temples. She moved quickly as she scooped Tommy off the floor. He startled awake and let out a plaintive cry as he rubbed his eyes. Angelina held him close as she charged into Rainer’s office. He was at a small mini-fridge to one side of the room and withdrew what looked like one of those applesauce pouches. Only this was full of a thick red liquid.
“Hey, bud.” Rainer gestured for Angelina to sit on the couch and then crouched beside them. “Think you can drink some of this?”
Tommy clung to Angelina, pressing his face into her neck. She patted his back. “Honey, you’ll feel better.”
“This is great st
uff,” Rainer added. He pretended to drink from it and smacked his lips. “Yum, yum, yum. Ahh, delicious.”
Tommy turned to look at him doubtfully. Rainer held the pouch out to him, and Tommy hesitantly took it. It was so large that Angelina had to help him, but as soon as he started to drink, the flush eased from Tommy’s face and he sat up straighter. He drank hungrily until it was all empty, then burped. Flecks of blood hit Angelina’s face, making her feel sick, but mostly just the relief that overwhelmed her when she touched Tommy’s forehead to find him back to his normal temperature.
“There’s a condition among some half-vampires where their immune system falters,” Rainer told her, slumping into the couch. “I don’t know what causes it, but it just means they have to start drinking blood early.”
Angelina started to tremble. “And if they don’t get blood?”
“Don’t worry about that. It’s not something that’s widely known, so don’t beat yourself up about it, either.” His grin widened even further. “Good thing you got this job, though, isn’t it? Nothing like having a vampire boss to help you take care of your vampire son. Although—I shouldn’t say that in front of him.”
Tommy hopped from Angelina’s lap and started exploring, looking at bright as ever.
Angelina watched him, trembling and on the verge of tears as the worst scenarios flooded her mind. She jumped when Rainer whispered in her ear. “You owe me, though. For letting you keep him here for the rest of the day. There’s a big vampire party tomorrow where I’m expected to make an appearance if I want to be king of the Starlight Mountains. Having a human at my side will only help with my slogan. So you’re coming with me.”
Thoughts and emotions tumbled around Angelina so confusingly that Rainer was already gone before she understood what he had been saying.
He wanted her to go to a vampire party. With him. And immediately, her mind flashed to three years ago, the night of Tommy’s conception…
In Bed with the Vampire: A Paranormal Romance (Shifter Dating Service Book 3) Page 2