Just One Bite (2 page)

A major rush of ickiness went through me. FYI—while I might be a blood-drinking vamp, I don’t really do the bite-and-suck part very well. I’d rather uncork a bottle of the imported stuff in the comfort of my own living room. No spurting or running required.

“If I take you out”—he pointed the stake at me—“I make SOB history. The bigwigs in administration already promised a nice little bonus package to anyone who meets company goals this year. We’re talking a steak dinner. A gold watch. An extra twenty grand for my 401(k). A lifetime supply of Girl Scout cookies.” When I arched an eyebrow, he added, “Charlie—he’s the main guy—has a couple of little girls and his wife is a troop leader. He’s pledged all the Thin Mints I can eat if I break the standing record.” He pushed to his feet and rounded the desk. “Thin Mints are mama’s second favorite food.”

“What’s her first?”

“Spaghetti with lots of garlic.”

That explained the smell. My feet thawed at the speed of light and I inched backward.

“Go ahead. Run. You might even get away. For now. But when you come back”—he whacked his palm with the stake for emphasis—“I’ll be waiting.”

“And if I skip the country and head for Costa Rica? Or Switzerland? Or the Bahamas?”

“You move into someone else’s territory. Someone who might not have a saintly mother who wants grandchildren.”

Which meant I could go somewhere else and eventually get whacked. Or I could stay in Manhattan and get whacked right here and now. Or I could match up Vinnie with his ideal—no atheist bimbos need apply—and NOT get whacked.
Or
I could ask my family for help and risk dragging them into Vinnie’s line of fire.

Number three won hands down.

“Okay, I’ll do it,” I told him. I motioned to his weapon. “Just put down the stake and you’ve got yourself a deal.”

He placed the piece of wood on the corner of my desk and we eyeballed each other.

My super-vamp gaze zeroed in on his jacket. “If we’re going to do this, you have to be one hundred percent committed. I’ll do everything I can, but I need to feel confident that you won’t double-cross me and plug me with a couple of .45s when I’m not looking.”

He pushed to his feet, shrugged off his coat, and tossed the gun next to the stake.

“Or slip a little garlic into my afternoon cocktail.” Not that the big G could actually kill me. At least not in small quantities. But we’re talking major digestive upset.

He toed off one loafer and fished out a couple of clear packets filled with the deadly powder. “You want the toothpicks sewn into my underwear, too?” He reached for the waistband of his pants.

“Hold it.” I held up a hand to stall him. “Why do you have toothpicks sewn into your underwear?”

“In case I’m captured and my weapons are confiscated.” He unfastened his belt. “I can still defend myself.”

“With a toothpick?”

“One stab”—the belt slid open—“you start bleeding from the eyeball”—his hand went for the button—“and in a matter of seconds, you’re practically blind.”

He grabbed the zipper and I blurted, “Keep the toothpicks.”

His hands stalled and his gaze collided with mine. “Aren’t you scared?”

And how.

The sudden image of Vinnie in his skivvies had me trembling even more than the possibility of bleeding all over my favorite Christian Dior blouse and Amy Tan skirt.

I shrugged. “What’s life if you can’t live on the edge once in a while?”

He refastened his button and his belt. The vise gripping my insides eased.

I gathered up his weapons, shoved them into the bottom drawer of my desk, and motioned him into a client chair. A few seconds later, I settled behind my desk and handed him a clipboard with a blank profile. “Fill this out and let’s see what we’re up against.”

Two

“D
o you wear women’s panties?” Vinnie glanced up from the clipboard I’d handed him and scowled. “What the hell kind of question is that?”

FYI—because of my primo confidence and ultra-sharp fangs, I’m not usually intimidated.

Particularly by humans.

But the SOBs were the best of the best. Specially trained to scope out the weaknesses of Others and exploit them. Skilled in the art of killing. Vinnie already had four hundred and ninety-nine born-vamp kills under his belt. Translation: He was one bad mother. Despite the fact that I’d temporarily defused the situation and bought myself some time, I was still scared shitless.

But while I knew that, I wasn’t about to clue him in.

I gathered my courage, ignored the alarm bells ringing between my ears, and gave him my most benevolent smile. “Vincent, Vincent,
Vincent.
It’s this exact question—and a dozen others like it—that is going to help me find you the perfect woman.” I reached across the desk and plucked the clipboard from his meaty hands. I stared at the answers he’d already filled in. “It says here that you love blue.” He nodded and I added, “You wouldn’t want me to hook you up with someone who hated blue, now would you?” I scanned the list. “Or someone who despised cannoli. Or monster trucks. Or the Yankees. Or someone who thought
The Godfather
reeked.”

“Al Pacino is the shit.”

“You know that and I know that.” I’d never actually seen the movie myself, but who was I to quibble with a man who made his living shish-kebabing vamps? “But what if I matched you with a clueless woman who thought Al sucked?” Vinnie’s expression darkened and my heart paused. “Not that I would ever do such a thing,” I hurried on, “but if I’d never asked you the question in the first place, then I wouldn’t know it was a deal breaker. A good matchmaker makes it her business to know
everything
about her client. That way there are no ugly skeletons dangling in the closet.”

He shifted uncomfortably in his seat, and my vamp instincts kicked into high gear.

“Don’t tell me you have an actual skeleton hanging in your closet.”

“Fuck no. What kind of guy do you take me for?”

Relief rushed through me.

“It’s in my sock drawer.”

“Now about the—
what
?”

He shrugged. “And it’s not the entire thing. Just a femur and a few rib bones from my last were kill.” His mouth crooked into a grin. “I broke the standing were record with that one. Talk about a tough little sucker. I chased him a full two weeks before I managed to pump a couple of silver bullets into him. Dropped just like that. He was too big to fit into the trunk of the car—we’re talking were-
bear
—so I chopped him up and—”

“As fascinating as this is,” I cut in, eager to ignore the preview of
Pooh Meets Jason
that played in my head, “I’d really like to get back to the, um”—I swallowed past the sudden lump in my throat (we’re talking sweet, cuddly Winnie)—“questions.”

“All right, but just so you know, I’m not used to being asked shit like that.”

“I totally understand. Not all of the questions on this profile pertain to everyone. When you get to something that’s too far out, feel free to write
non-applicable.
I’ll just jot that down right here and we can move on—”

“I wouldn’t be too hasty.”

“Excuse me?”

“A pink rhinestone thong with glitter appliqué,” he blurted. He must have noticed my surprise, because he added, “If I want this to work, I gotta be honest, right? Besides, it isn’t something I do every day. Only on Fridays. That’s the official SOB wear-what-you-want day. Monday through Thursday, it’s regulation boxers. White. Loose. While I stuff ’em in once a week, the boys are big and rowdy. They like to run free most days.”

“I’ll, um, make a note of that.” I scribbled a few quick words in the margin (no, one of them wasn’t
freak,
but I was sorely tempted) before handing back the clipboard. “Just be as honest as you can.”

He grunted and shifted his attention back to the profile while I turned to busy myself with the stack of mail Evie had left on the corner of my desk.

At least the goal was to look busy and unassuming while Vinnie finished filling out his information. The last thing I needed was for him to change his mind and decide to off me right now.

I rifled through the stack and separated everything into two piles—urgent and not-so-urgent.

Electricity bill due in two weeks—not so urgent.

Office space rent due in three weeks—not so urgent.

Visa bill due in three days—not so urgent. (Hey, a lot could happen in three days. Brad Pitt could dump Angelina, walk into my office, demand my primo hook-up package,
and
offer to pay me a rush charge and a big fat tip. My parents could waltz in and tell me that I don’t have to settle down with a born male vamp and squeeze out several dozen grandchildren in order to get my trust fund. I could even win the lottery.)

The fall catalog from Banana Republic—urgent.

Register to win a year’s supply of MAC bronzers—
way
urgent.

I tackled the registration card first, then flipped through the catalog. The bills I stashed in my top desk drawer with yesterday’s not-so-urgents—telephone, Internet, water. My night had already gotten off to a bad start. I wasn’t going to make myself even more miserable by paying my bills.

Not that I couldn’t, of course. While I wasn’t anywhere close to eHarmony fame, I was holding my own. It’s just that every time I started to write out a check for something like, say, the light bill, I started to think about all the other things I could buy with my money—like, say, this totally cute Banana Republic hobo satchel with matching cellphone case—
if
the Founding Fathers had been the least bit intuitive and gone with “life, liberty,
electricity,
and the pursuit of happiness” instead.

Get over it, already.

I gave the satchel another once-over, folded the corner (in case I had an extra five hundred bucks laying around
after
I paid this month’s utilities), and turned to my computer.

I’d just logged on to my database to work on a few existing clients when Vinnie slapped the clipboard down on my desk and declared, “Done. Now what?”

“Well.” I reached for the clipboard. “Now you leave to do whatever snipers do on a Thursday night. I’ll input your data and run a search for possible matches. Once I have those, I set you up on a few dates and we see what happens.” I smiled. “The whole process takes about two to four weeks.”

“You’ve got seventy-two hours.”

My smile died. “That’s really fast.”

“I’m in a hurry.” He pushed to his feet. “My mama’s birthday is next Tuesday. I figure if you find me a date in a couple of days, that gives me time to take her out a few times and get to know her before I bring her home on Tuesday. We can announce our engagement at Mama’s party. I’ve already got it all planned. My Aunt Cecille is making the pasta. We’re going to have lots of balloons and presents. And my Uncle Morty is going to play the guitar. I ordered a cake from Giovanni’s. Italian Crème. Mama’s favorite. She’s going to be the happiest woman in Jersey.”

Okay, while I know Vinnie’s a killer and everything, there was just something really sweet (if you overlooked the whole creepy Oedipus factor) about a guy going to so much trouble to give his mom a great birthday.

“I’ll do my best.”

“You’ll do more than that,” he said. “Find me a woman”—the Ray-Bans zeroed in on me and I found myself staring at my own stark complexion—“or I’ll turn you into a popsicle.” The sweet quickly faded into the demented as he snatched up my letter opener and tossed it at the wall behind me.

The blade sailed past my head, nailed the Sheetrock, and I flinched.

“Seventy-two hours.” He bit out the words, turned on his heel, and walked toward the door.

“I-I’m on it,” I called after him once I managed to find my voice. “Really. It’s no problem. No problem at all.”

The door slammed and I contemplated using the letter opener on myself and beating Vinnie to the punch. For about an eighth of a second. I’d been around too long to give up that easily. Besides, if I did kick the bucket, I was doing it in something besides an outfit from last season (I hadn’t had a chance to make it to the cleaners yet and I
so
didn’t do laundry). No, I was going out in style. Chanel. Dolce & Gabbana. At the very least a pair of studded Rock & Republic jeans.

I snatched the opener out of the wall and shoved it into the nearest drawer. Then I spent the next five minutes doing some deep breathing exercises I’d seen on
Dr. Phil.

Crazy, right? I’m a born vampire. Which meant the breathing wasn’t going to do anything but waste precious time I didn’t have. At the same time, it did help the cobwebs to clear.

Work. That was the only thing that was going to get me out of this mess. That, and maybe a valium. But since I didn’t have any drugs on hand, I put my fingers on the keyboard and started to type in Vinnie’s information.

After a few minutes, my anxiety slipped away. I mean, really. He
was
just a guy, and I’d hooked up dozens of them since opening my door six months ago.

In fact, I preferred male clients because they were, for the most part, easier to please than women. Sure, they had their ideals, which they shared in great detail in the
Ideal Woman
section. But when it came down to the
Absolute Must-Haves,
the only real requirement was usually a vagina. The rest was negotiable.