by JoAnn Ross
“She does,” Mac agreed. “But I think it’s because it’s pink as much as for the flavor.”
“Probably so. The girl does have a fondness for pink. Annie used to like it, too. Did I ever tell you about the time she surprised me by painting our bedroom?”
“I don’t think so.” He had, several times. But knowing it was one of his grandfather’s favorite memories, Mac didn’t mind hearing it again.
“She painted it bubblegum pink because she thought it’d be more romantic than the beige I’d painted it when I built the addition. Well, when I came home from crab fishing up in Alaska and walked into that room, the first thing that hit my mind was that the guys would never stop ragging me if they knew I had a foo-foo girlie-pink bedroom. But she was so happy about her surprise, I decided that I liked it, too. And it wasn’t as if any of the guys on the boat were ever going to see our bedroom. Plus, she turned out to be right. We did have some fine romantic times in that pink room. . . .
“Mac, you need a wife.”
The change in topic was abrupt and unexpected. Like so many of his conversations with his grandfather these days. Aware that there would come a time when the older man would disappear completely behind the veiled curtain that would cut him off from his friends and family, Mac was grateful whenever Charlie initiated conversation. As Analise had said, this was definitely a chatty day.
“I had a wife,” Mac reminded him.
“You did?” Narrowed eyes sharpened as the past tense seemed to sink in. “What happened to her?”
Although they’d been through this numerous times before, Mac settled on the short answer. “She left me. Eight months ago.”
And except for three phone calls to their daughter—one the day after she’d left Colorado Springs, the second on Christmas Day, and the third on Emma’s recent sixth birthday—Mac hadn’t heard a word from her. He had, however, received the divorce papers from her attorney, then the official notice that the State of Arizona had declared their marriage ended.
“Humph. Sounds like she wasn’t the forever-after one . . . your soul mate, like Annie was mine. So maybe you need a new wife.”
“I’m doing okay.”
“So you say. But I’ll bet my great-granddaughter could use a mother. Now, I’m not saying that you and your father aren’t good caretakers,” he said, sounding a great deal like the decisive, outspoken man he’d once been. “But little girls need a woman in their lives. And this is your lucky day, boy, because I’ve got just the woman for you.”
“You do, huh?”
“I do.” His grandfather folded his arms across his chest and nodded. “My nurse.”
Unfortunately, his nurse was Analise, who’d just returned from her honeymoon. Damn. For a while there, they were on a reality roll. One step forward, two back.
“I’ll take that under advisement.” There was no point in reminding his grandfather that his nurse was newly married, since he would undoubtedly forget this conversation by the time Mac reached his truck in the parking lot.
“You do that. Annie—that’d be the nurse—is pretty, smart as a whip, and sweet. She’d make a perfect mother for little Emma. And you could do a helluva lot worse.”
Now he was confusing Analise’s name with that of his late wife.
“Like I said, I’ll keep it in mind,” Mac said, fighting back a long, deep sigh. Then, needing to change the subject, which was getting increasingly depressing, he asked, “Want to watch Western Angler? I brought along a DVD.”
Although Mac had never understood the appeal of watching other people fish, apparently a lot of folks, like his grandfather, did. How else to explain a mind-blowing number of more than nine hundred fishing shows available on TV?
“Always up for fishing.”
About five minutes into the show, which was all about fishing on the Clackamas River, his grandfather said, “She’s waiting for me.”
“Grandma?”
“Who else would I be talking about? Of course your grandmother . . . I keep telling her I want to be together again. But she keeps insisting it’s not my time.” He folded his arms and glared at the TV. “She made me wait six damn months after I proposed before she’d marry me so she could plan herself a wedding.”
“Women like weddings.” Kayla had certainly planned one with an attention to detail that had reminded him of the Joint Chiefs orchestrating an invasion.
“Yeah. I figured that out for myself when she had me choosing between chocolate and vanilla wedding cakes.”
“Which did you go with?”
“We split the difference and went with marble. Woman never was on time a day in her life, so I spent a lot of time waiting. Which I never minded, because she was worth it. But dammit, here I am now, stuck in this place, waiting for her again.”
As a fisherman hauled in a fifteen-pound steelhead that had put up one helluva fight, Mac’s grandfather’s words caused a stir of concern. “You’re not thinking about speeding up that timeline, are you?”
The rise in military suicides had made Mac extra vigilant during his days on AFN whenever men and women would call in to his program with personal problems. Now he was attuned to every nuance.
“Of course not,” Charlie huffed, sounding offended that Mac had even asked. “I was just making conversation.”
“Okay. But you’d let someone know if . . . “
“I said I was just making conversation. So can you just shut your piehole and let me watch my damn program?”
“Sure.” There was no point in arguing. But Mac did make a note to call his grandfather’s doctor as soon as he left. And to stop again at the desk on the way out and ask Analise Peterson to request that the staff keep an eye out for any signs of depression.
They watched the rest of the thirty-minute program, which proved about twenty minutes longer than his grandfather’s attention span.
After promising to be back tomorrow evening, he was leaving the room when Charlie tried one more time. “You think about my nurse. Not right for a man to be alone. And Annie would be just the right little gal for you.”
“Yes, Pops,” Mac said obediently, even as his mind drifted back to that woman he’d literally bumped into earlier.
She hadn’t been wearing a wedding ring, and yes, he’d noticed, but that didn’t mean that she wasn’t attached.
He didn’t even know her name. Didn’t know a thing about her except for the fact that she liked cats. And didn’t like men who didn’t like cats.
Well, he did know that her eyes, behind a way hot pair of sexy black-framed librarian glasses, were an intriguing swirl of silver and pewter, that her nose tipped up a bit at the end, and that her kiss-me-big-boy mouth had had him on the verge of doing exactly that.
He also knew that during that fleeting moment of impact she’d awakened vital parts of himself that he’d begun to fear had gone dormant.
9
“I’m so glad we could get together,” Annie said to Sedona Sullivan as they worked their way through an appetizer plate of popcorn shrimp and clam strips at Sax Douchett’s Bon Temps Cajun restaurant.
“Me, too.” Sedona took a sip of her wine. “Sometimes it seems as if we’re the only two single women left under the age of fifty in Shelter Bay.”
“At least in our circle of friends,” Annie said as she dipped a piece of popcorn shrimp into the restaurant’s signature Come-Back sauce. “I’m honestly glad everyone’s happy. Especially Kara and Phoebe with their babies. But although I really am over my divorce, I’m happy with my life and have no inclination to jump back into the dating pool again anytime soon.”
She’d managed to move beyond the divorce, and the pain of failure had eased. But she’d spent the past two years rebuilding her life, establishing her business and becoming part of the community, which didn’t leave her with the time or energy for a relationship. There was also the fact that these days men, or at least the ones in Shelter Bay, actually seemed interested in creating families. Something that was a non-starter for her.
For a fleeting moment earlier, at Still Waters, when she’d felt that jolt like heat lightning, she’d been tempted. But then the guy who’d caused that red alert to all her feminine parts had opened his mouth and proven himself to be just another jerk. Which she so didn’t need in her life. She’d been there, done that, and hadn’t even gotten a T-shirt out of the deal.
“Smart woman,” Sedona said. “It’s also what I’ve been telling my parents. Until I caved in for one of their fix-ups last night.”
“Your parents fixed you up? Aren’t they some sort of hippies?”
“They are that. For some weird reason, they’re starting to work into seemingly every conversation the complaint that I’m never going to make them grandparents. It’s a little spooky how two former flower children, who still live in a commune, would start acting so abnormal.”
“I’m not sure, but I think it’s normal for most people, once their kids grow up, to start looking forward to becoming grandparents,” Annie said mildly.
“Maybe. But my parents are definitely not most people. It almost makes me want to fly down to Arizona and check out what’s gotten into their well water.”
Personally, Annie had always found it unusual that after such an unstructured childhood, Sedona had grown up to become an accountant. But, of course, hadn’t she walked away from the six-figure income and big-city high-rise corner office to bake cupcakes in Shelter Bay? Much the same way Annie had walked away from wealth and privilege and what was actually a stiflingly boring country club existence to move across the country and open a scrapbook store.
“People always have the wrong conceptions of commune living,” Sedona complained as she snagged a shrimp from the pile on the plate and dipped it into the Come-Back sauce. “Contrary to conventional wisdom, most communes aren’t refuges for aging flower children, but well-ordered, financially solvent, nonhierarchical, socially and ecologically involved communities. When I went to college, guys all figured that I grew up surrounded by free love, so naturally, I’d be easy.”
“But you didn’t.” Annie had secretly wondered, but had never wanted to delve into such a private topic. Especially since, having grown up as a foster kid, she had no idea what constituted a “normal” family. “Grow up surrounded by free love?”
Although she’d never admit it, there were times when she thought that if people’s lives had sound tracks, Sedona Sullivan’s would be a medley of “Aquarius/Let the Sunshine In” from the musical Hair.
“No. I dislike conflict and drama, so I pretty much stayed on the boring straight and narrow. And my parents, while not the Cleavers, were, as far as I know, absolutely monogamous. They’re very different people, actually. My mother, who taught me to bake, is mellow and calm and goes with the flow, while my artist dad’s pretty intense.
“But as I got older and started thinking about boys and men and relationships, I realized that each of their individual parts fit together perfectly to make a much stronger united entity. I’m certainly not holding my breath, since I enjoy my life exactly as it is. But if I ever met a guy I meshed with as well as my parents do, I’d latch on to him in a heartbeat.”
“I take it the guy last Saturday wasn’t Mr. Right?” Annie often thought that it would be next to impossible for any man to live up to the required qualities Sedona had plugged into her unbelievably detailed Excel “dateable male” spreadsheet. The first time Kara Douchett had told her about the spreadsheet, Annie had been sure she must be kidding. But then she’d actually seen it for herself.
Sedona might have grown up in a commune, but apparently, despite her change in careers, there was a CPA still lurking somewhere inside her.
“Hardly. For any woman. Unless she was into vampires.”
“You’re kidding, right?”
“I wish I were.” Sedona sighed and leaned forward, about to share the story, when their server arrived at the table to take their dinner orders. Crab jambalaya for Annie, shrimp étouffée for Sedona.
“He seemed normal enough when he kept coming in to buy a cupcake,” she said. “Granted, I don’t get many customers who come in every day, but I was admittedly flattered when even after I turned him down twice, he didn’t stop.”
“Some might consider that close to stalking,” Annie suggested.
“True, it’s a thin line. But I didn’t get any weird vibes from him. He dressed like a normal guy, no black cape or upside-down cross necklace, he didn’t have oversized incisors or ask for blood-flavored cupcakes. He was also walking around in the middle of the day, and from what I could tell didn’t sparkle.”
“So when and how did you discover his vampire tendencies?”
“After I finally caved in and agreed to lunch at the Sea Mist. When we first walked in and the hostess led us to a table by the windows overlooking the harbor, he said it was too bright.”
“Which is unusual for here, but maybe his eyes are sensitive.”
“Exactly what I thought.”
“So, after we were seated, before we even got our menus, he informed me he was taking a trip to Transylvania. Since it’s not one of your usual tourist destinations, I asked him if he had family there, and he said, ‘Not exactly.’”
“That’s odd.”
“Agreed. But then he told me that he got into fifteenth-century history after reading Bram Stoker’s Dracula.”
“Aha! A clue. But not an indictment.”
“Again, we’re in full agreement.” Sedona shrugged and took another sip of wine. “I mean, it’s not as if all those millions of people who read vampire stories or visit Forks up in Washington because of Twilight believe they’re actually vampires.”
“Lucky for the rest of us or we’d be overrun with people wanting to suck our blood.”
“Extremely lucky. When the waitress came to take our drink orders, since I had to go back and make a bunch of pies, I stuck to tea. He ordered white wine.”
“Nothing unusual there. Given that the Sea Mist is a seafood restaurant, I’ve ordered white wine a lot with my meals there.”
“Ah. But I didn’t tell you his reason.”
“Which would be?”
“White wine ‘dilutes the bloodlust.’”
Annie paused in lifting her wineglass to her lips, held it out, and studied the straw gold Chardonnay. “It does?”
“Of course not. Because vampires, excuse me, don’t exist. He also told me that he only ate red meat.”
“Which makes the Sea Mist an odd choice.”
“Not if you order the burger off the children’s menu . . . So, while we were waiting for his rare hamburger and my seafood salad, he decided he could trust me with his secret.”
“I’m afraid to ask.”
“Wise. Because it just so happens that he’s a direct descendant of old Vlad the Impaler. And it gets better. He’s the first person in his American family to make the pilgrimage back to their homeland.”
Annie nearly choked on her wine. “He comes from an entire family of vampires? Who live here in Shelter Bay?”
“No. We can rest easy. Apparently he’s the only one for generations who inherited the count’s powers. In fact, despite his showing supposedly irrefutable evidence from three different genealogists to his relatives, they all deny their heritage.”
“Whew! I feel much relieved.” Annie waved her hand. “So, continue on.”
“Well, as I said, he seemed normal enough whenever he came into the shop, so for a few minutes I thought I might be getting punked. I couldn’t imagine who’d go to the trouble to set up such a practical joke, but I decided to play along and see how far he’d go with the story. So I asked him if he had super vampire powers.”
“And?”
“Supposedly he does, but he only uses them in times of great need. He can hover.”
“Cool.”
“And allegedly slow time down.”
“Okay, that one might be worth having lunch with a vampire if he could pull it off for me for even a day,” Annie dec
ided.
What with her business, and her volunteering at Still Waters, the evening classes she taught at Memories on Main, the card group she led, which made blank-inside greeting cards for troops to send back home to friends and loved ones through Operation Write Home, as well as for the Cards for Hospitalized Kids charity, she could definitely use at least another two hours in her day.
“Unfortunately the blood power’s been diluted through the centuries. Which is why he’s going back to his so-called homeland. Because once he’s in his ancestor’s castle, he’ll have Vlad’s strength.”
“Gotta love his optimism. Even if it might involve him looking forward to impaling tens of thousands of innocent people. So, is this where you got up and left the restaurant?”
“I hadn’t had my salad yet. Which I’d been looking forward to all morning. As I said, he wasn’t outwardly creepy. And, in a way, in the beginning, he was entertaining.”
“But that changed?”
“Absolutely.”
“If he’d leaped over the table and sunk retractable fangs into your neck, I would’ve heard about it,” Annie decided. “Because someone would’ve called the sheriff, and Kara would’ve arrested him.”
“No, it was just that being a vampire was all he wanted to talk about. I asked him what sports he liked, and he said that he couldn’t do sports because even though his strength might not be up to his ancestor’s, it was more powerful than humans’, so it wouldn’t be fair to compete. He is actually pretty buff.”
“Probably from sweating blood in the gym.”
Sedona laughed at that. “Trying to change the subject, I mentioned being homeschooled in the commune, which usually sparks some conversation, but it was as if he didn’t have any real interest in me, because his response was that he’d always been smarter than anyone else in school due to his hyper-speed brain power, which had made him an outcast growing up.”
“Not that telling everyone he was a vampire would’ve had anything to do with that. Especially once his classmates all started wearing garlic necklaces,” Annie said dryly.
They laughed, then changed topics to the residents of Still Waters, and the upcoming sand castle and kite festivals on the beach as the weather warmed up.