Summit at Sunset (Sunset Vampire Series, Book 3)

by Primo, Jaz

  “Greetings, fellow servant of the people,” Ethan grandly offered with a sparkle in his eyes.

  He placed a sealed cup onto the desk before Paige while sipping from his own. The aroma from his coffee wafted her direction as she studied the sealed cup before her.

  “What’s this?” she asked, popping open the plastic lid. The smell of warm blood quickly assailed her sense of smell, making her mouth water slightly.

  “Just thought I’d stop by and say hello,” he said. “And I didn’t want to come empty-handed.”

  She sipped at the warm blood, savoring the flavor. She hadn’t fed regularly in recent days with all of the additional duties the major had foisted upon her.

  “Oh, that’s good,” she complimented with a satisfied tone. “Thanks for not bringing me coffee.”

  He inclined his head and idly chatted with her for a few minutes. In fact, she could have sworn that he was openly flirting with her. Not that she minded, of course. But while she appreciated the company of such a charming and attractive vampire, she momentarily considered her stuffy supervisor.

  “You’re sweet, but I’m not really supposed to have visitors dropping by,” she noted.

  “Me? I’m not a visitor,” he countered. “I’m a peer, a fellow employee. This is just your run-of-the-mill water cooler chit-chat.”

  She appreciated his quick wit and raised an apprising eyebrow. His lean-muscled body was sculpted in a manner that any woman could appreciate. She absently imagined tracing her finger across and down his bare chest.

  Ethan idly chatted for a few minutes about his day, albeit with the sound of a man who wasn’t quite sure of how to broach a topic. Paige couldn’t help thinking that he was working on an angle to ask her out.

  Would I or wouldn’t I say yes? she wondered.

  As if on cue, and with the poor timing that only she could have predicted as of late, the major stalked through the office door. He quickly panned the room, only to adopt a stern expression as he noted the doctor’s presence. She had seen that look before.

  “So, I’d appreciate your consideration of a sturdier lock on the prescriptions cabinet in my examining room,” Ethan spoke up as if finishing the topic. “Not that we’ve had any problems, mind you, but I’ve worked in hospitals where even some of the staff were tempted. And what with the increasing prices of prescription drugs today...”

  “Sure, sure,” Paige smoothly replied. “I’ll look into that for you.”

  She admired Ethan’s quick thinking.

  The major suspiciously regarded them.

  “Well, I’ll be going then,” Reynolds said. “Have a great day,” he offered with a friendly tone to Major Pietari as he walked past him to exit.

  “Problems?” Pietari queried.

  “I think I can handle it,” she said.

  At least, I’d sure as hell like to try, she slyly entertained as the major continued into his office.

  She studied her monitor as one of the surveillance windows displayed the handsome Ethan Reynolds walking back to his office. She couldn’t help but smile.

  * * * *

  Later that afternoon, Caleb’s mood had improved slightly as he appreciated the beautiful forested mountain scenery around him. He discovered a couple of small walking trails leading into the nearby forest and took one on a whim. After only ten minutes, his cell phone rang, and he noticed that the number was from his college.

  “Hello?” he asked.

  “Caleb? Hi, this is Paul,” the friendly voice offered.

  Dr. Paul Wright was Dean of Social Sciences, namely, Caleb’s division. He got along great with Paul and appreciated the casual, first-name basis they were on since he had first started. Paul was a favored person around the College, and a great dean. However, given the earlier email Caleb read that day, he had a sinking feeling that the call wasn’t strictly a social one. A queasy feeling formed in the pit of his stomach.

  “Hi, Paul. What’s up?” he offered in a friendly tone despite his misgivings.

  “Uh, Caleb, I know you’re in Europe and everything,” Paul began with a rueful tone. “I would’ve waited to see you in person, but I felt that I needed to let you know as soon as possible. You may not have seen a message from President Beaumont that went out two days ago –”

  “Yeah,” Caleb interrupted, “I just saw it this morning when I was checking messages. Doesn’t sound too good for budgets this year, does it?”

  “Well, uh, no, not really, Caleb,” Paul hesitantly replied in an uncharacteristic manner. “Actually, that’s why I’m calling. Listen, there’s still a lot that could happen between now and fall, but...”

  Caleb thought he was going to throw up. “Looking like layoffs, isn’t it?”

  The pause that followed was nearly painful to him.

  “Yeah, Caleb, I’m afraid it is,” Paul conceded. “Each division had to select some potential staff for layoffs based upon seniority, you see, and well, I had to add your name for our department. I’m really sorry, Caleb. Listen, it’s not for certain yet-”

  “But likely, isn’t it?” Caleb pressed.

  “Yeah, it’s looking that way,” Paul said. “Believe me, it’s nothing personal and certainly not a reflection on your performance. You’re one of my best, Caleb; your enthusiasm’s made quite an impact on the students, as well as your peers. It’s just, well, it’s just a damned shame. And, hell, I just thought you deserved to know where things stand.”

  Caleb’s mind raced as he felt his future spiraling into uncertainty.

  “Any idea when you’ll know for sure?”

  “Probably the next couple of days, I think. Listen, I probably shouldn’t have called you about this.”

  “I won’t tell anyone, Paul. Besides, it means a lot that you’d warn me. You’ve been really great, so no matter what happens I’ll always appreciate all you’ve done for me.”

  Paul swallowed aloud.

  “Dammit with this seniority crap. Believe me, there’s a couple of burnouts around here that I’d much rather see retire instead of letting fresh talent go.”

  “Ah, the tenure conundrum rears its ugly head.”

  Paul chuckled. “You’d valiantly jest in the face of a hurricane, wouldn’t you?”

  Caleb’s tight-lipped expression demonstrated otherwise. He just hated the idea of Paul’s being riddled with guilt over the situation. It’s not his fault, after all.

  “Someone once told me that even if you don’t have control over what happens to you, at least you have control over how you choose to react to it,” Caleb offered.

  “You’re wiser than your years,” the dean quietly offered.

  Caleb shrugged. “I dunno about that. But listen, will you do me a favor?”

  “Sure, if I can,” he replied.

  “Call me the minute you know something for sure, okay?”

  “You got it. It’s the least I can do,” Paul promised.

  The two said goodbye, and Caleb fell into a daze as he contemplated how both the trip and his personal career seemed to be going to hell all at the same time. His mood quickly grew dour, and he wandered into the forest while considering a host of prospective options for his uncertain future.

  As he walked through the serene forest appreciating nature’s own form of silence, the surroundings complemented his reflective mind. However, it also seemed lonely and added to his sense of melancholy. The sun had nearly set, and all that remained was a reddish-orange spectrum on the horizon, which seemed analogous to the sun’s setting on what was his burgeoning career in academia.

  Though the light was fading, it was still ambient enough to see where he was walking. He wondered what alternate paths he might soon be compelled to walk in life, as well.

  Will they be lit well enough for me to see them?

  After a time, he stopped in the middle of a small clearing. A couple of large trees appeared to have fallen against some of their neighbors, creating the small open area. It was peaceful, and the fallen trees reminded h
im of how things seemed to be going in his own life lately.

  I’m practically ignored by Kat given the conference issues, he bitterly determined. Now, the career I’ve barely started might be cut short just days from now. Damn.

  He stood as still as a statue, shallowly breathing in an almost trancelike state and contemplated the situation he might face upon returning home from the Slovenian conference. He felt so powerless over his circumstances, having no influence over the fiscal conditions affecting his college or the final staffing decisions to be made. While his confidence in the leadership at the College was strong, he also realized that unsavory decisions sometimes couldn’t be avoided, no matter the good intentions of the decision makers.

  What will be, will be, he conceded with resignation. It wasn’t the first time that he had faced undesirable prospects.

  His mind snapped back to the present upon hearing a shuffling sound behind him, like some animal walking past a bush. Then a small, snapping sound followed, and his muscles tensed. He slowly turned to his left while gazing around the area with a frown. After turning nearly completely around, his eyes settled on Paige.

  She wore a pair of faded blue jeans and short-sleeved Interpol rock concert t-shirt. Curiously, the shirt had a black and red image of a deer in a forest being watched by a camera. As she casually leaned against a tree trunk staring at him while snapping a thin length of tree branch into smaller pieces, he found the image on her t-shirt somewhat ironic for his circumstances. Of course, he was playing the part of the deer.

  Her bright blue eyes stared back at him with a piercing intensity, which he found slightly unnerving.

  “Trying to be subtle. Didn’t want to scare you,” she offered.

  “You? Subtle?”

  “Whatcha up to, tiger?” she asked, ignoring his sarcasm.

  “Just taking a walk and thinking,” he replied while folding his arms before him.

  “Saw you take a walk on the video cameras earlier. But then you disappeared from around the complex, and nobody knew where you went. Kind of worried me,” she said, noting his body language. “So, I had just enough time to change outta the stupid khakis and sport coat before sunset and figured I’d come looking for ya,” she added.

  “Thanks,” he replied.

  Of course, the fact that Paige is here and not Kat means my mate is blissfully unaware of the development.

  Paige noted his dark mood and absently dropped the remaining pieces of branch to the ground.

  “Shouldn’t be out in the woods alone,” she mildly chastised. “It’s almost dark, and there are wolves around, you know.”

  He’s seriously troubled over something.

  “Yeah, well I haven’t seen any. So, I’m feeling pretty safe right now.”

  The edges of her mouth upturned slightly as she adopted a fully-upright stance and playfully corrected him, “No wolves? I’m a bit of a wolf, remember? In fact, after I acquired a general idea of where you went, I tracked you here by your scent, Mister Rabbit.”

  He smirked at her comment, recalling a happier time just months ago when they had analogized her as a wolf and him as a rabbit.

  “Ah, but don’t forget, you’re a friendly one, Miss Wolf,” he fondly recollected. Then the fleeting moment faded as the recent, disappointing phone call replayed in his mind.

  Paige’s eyes flashed for a second before returning to their previous state, and she took two subtle steps in his direction.

  Time to have some fun with him.

  “Me? I’m not a friendly wolf, kiddo. I’m only friendly to you because I want to be,” she clarified in a deliberately ominous voice. “We’re predators, remember? I get really unfriendly when the mood strikes me.”

  He was unsettled by her suddenly edgy demeanor, but anticipated that she was just trying to distract him. Instead, her comment only increased his chagrin over his current situation.

  “Tell me about it,” he muttered while turning his back on her. “You vampires get all interested and friendly, and then suddenly you disappear or turn off like a damned light switch. And frankly, it just pisses me off.”

  “Hey, what gives?”

  “Aw, crap. Just leave me alone, Paige,” he fumed. He wasn’t in the mood to play games.

  She was completely taken aback by his retort and froze in her tracks as her mind raced to understand.

  What the hell? Is it something I did?

  She noted the tension in his body language and the fact that he had turned his back on her.

  Okay then, rejection. Problems with the old lady maybe? But that’s not all, I’d wager.

  “Well, I’m here now. So why not talk to me?” she invited in a friendlier tone, all pretense of playing with him put aside for the moment.

  Big sister’s on duty now.

  He shook his head and walked a few steps away to sit on the edge of one of the large, fallen tree trunks. While he kept his arms folded before him, his eyes softened somewhat as he looked at her.

  “Never mind,” he said. “You’ve got enough on your plate right now.”

  She shook her head.

  Once again, tiger, you’re trying to shoulder everything yourself.

  Perching beside him, she placed a supportive arm across his shoulders. At first his muscles were tight, but then she felt him relax somewhat. She used her free hand to reach up and turn his face towards hers, insisting, “Hey, I’m your babysitter, your surrogate vampire. Talk to me, kiddo. Spill.”

  He stared back at her as darkness continued to fall around them. Then he shrugged.

  “Well, first, Kat’s been so distant with the conference distractions. Of course, that’s when she’s actually in the room. Most of the time, I never even see her. She’s obsessing over Alton’s latest project.”

  Paige remained silent as she lightly ran the tips of her fingernails across his shoulders.

  It’s a pretty big project, too, something not tried at this scale before. In the vampire world, this is “big time.”

  “And I got a phone call today,” he continued. “It was from Dean Wright at the college. He said that the way the budget’s looking, I may not have my faculty contract renewed in July.”

  Her eyes widened with surprise, and she began to realize how both of the things he mentioned were culminating to generate his bad mood.

  He loves teaching.

  “Okay, that’s bad, I’ll admit,” she conceded while pulling him to her in a side-hug. “But it’s not the end of the world. There are other teaching positions out there. Time to go job hunting. I mean, you nailed the position at your current college. You can do it again.”

  He incredulously stared back at her.

  “You have no idea what you’re even saying,” he corrected with exasperation. “Do you know how lucky I was to land the job at the college in the first place? Think about it, Paige, isn’t it a little strange that I’m a twenty-six-year-old straight out of graduate school, and yet I’m a full-time college professor? That just doesn’t happen in the real world. Listen, it sucks to admit this, but I wasn’t exactly their first choice on the hiring list.”

  Her eyebrow rose with surprise. “You weren’t?”

  He looked away. “No, I was at the bottom of their list of finalists. Of the four finalists, I was fourth.”

  “So, what happened there, then?” she asked.

  He paused. “Dean Wright was pretty candid with me after I was hired. He said their first choice got a better counter-offer from another college. The second guy didn’t like the salary range, and the third candidate didn’t pass the pre-hiring drug test. So, that only left me. It sounds like I was just a name to pad out the finalist’s sheet. Although I think Paul told me the story right off so I’d buckle down from the start. Yeah, as if I needed any incentive to do that.”

  Okay, that’s pretty surprising, Paige admitted. Not that it changes my opinion about him, though.

  “Does Katrina know that?” she asked in a quiet voice.

  “Are you kidding
?” he chortled. “It’s not something you go bragging about to your five-hundred-year-old, supermodel-looking, successful vampire-mate, now, is it?”

  She winced at the pain evident in his voice and immediately regretted asking. Her mind searched for the right thing to say, but all she managed to do was increase her grip around his shoulders and hug him closer to her.

  I wish I could fix this, but it’s a little out of my league. It’s not like I can just bleed dry the people who fire him, right?

  Then she evilly smiled before discarding the idea altogether.

  “Red’s not going to think badly about you,” she reassured him. “Hell, she loves you more than life itself, and I should know. What I’m trying to say is it doesn’t matter in the end whether you’re a professor or a window-washer. She loves you, the same as I do.”

  He peered into her bright blue eyes and noted her sincere look of sympathy. The edges of his mouth upturned slightly, and then his lips pressed together into a fine line again.

  “But you see, it does matter,” he insisted. “It matters to me. Being a professor was the one thing I could claim as my own special talent, my own niche in life. Soon, that may be gone too.”

  “Listen, if it’s about the money...”

  “And yeah, it’s also about the money,” he interrupted. “Geez, I’m already feeling inferior that she pays for these trips we take. Then I don’t even pay more than the cost of groceries at the estate. Hell, if I lose my job, I’ll be complete dead-weight!”

  She couldn’t help smiling a little bit at his retort, which he found infuriating.

  “Just what’s so damned funny?” he demanded.

  Her expression turned serious. “Listen, tiger, I don’t know if you’ve given it any thought or not, but a five-hundred-year-old vampire has had a lot of time to build up a nest egg. And consider that Alton, ‘Mister Capitalism’ himself, was her mentor. Doesn’t a little light bulb pop on in your head? I mean, look, I’m only about a century old, and I’m doing okay, if you know what I mean. Thanks to some financial tips from Katrina, of course.”