The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) (15 page)

Danny’s face twisted in disgust. “Ew, no.”

Harley snickered. “Fanny.”

Danny pointed a finger at Harley’s face. “Don’t even think about it.”

Harley pinched his lips together, but his little shoulders shook with repressed laughter.

“Harley, why don’t you and Danny go get some food? There’s plenty of hot dogs over there. Kerrianne will help you with your plates.”

“There are more adults at this party than I expected,” Wade observed.

“Not all of the kids came,” I said. “In fact, Harley is the only kid who came, so my friends are here to even out the room a little bit. You should know that most of the people here are vampires. So if that bothers you, you should find a way to make your excuses without hurting Danny’s feelings.”

Wade scoffed. “Hell, no, it doesn’t bother me. I know Jed from the gym. We went to Nola’s clinic once when Harley had an asthma attack. I’ve done some special modifications for Dick at my shop, which I’m not supposed to talk about ’cause of some paperwork I signed. They’re all nice enough.”

Nola’s hunky boyfriend walked over and handed Wade a beer. “Hey, man, come on in.”

“I thought you worked at the school. How do you find the time to work in a garage?” I asked.

Wade frowned at me. “I don’t work at the school. I’m a volunteer.”

“You clean the school for free?”

“I don’t actually clean the school,” he said. “I own my own shop, so I make my own hours. I’m at the school almost every day, mostly in the mornings. I help the kids take their reading-comprehension tests in the library. I try and fail to control the chaos in the cafeteria at lunchtime. And yeah, when the occasion calls for it, I help out with maintenance.”

“So why are you so territorial about the supply closet?”

“That’s where I keep my stuff,” he said. “You get thrown up on enough times, you learn to store extra clothes in a handy spot.”

“Yikes.”

He pursed his lips, making the golden-blond beard undulate over his cheeks. He nodded toward his son. “You’d think after nursin’ that one through every one of his stomach flus, I’da learned the signs of Vesuvius about to blow.”

I laughed, watching Danny drop an Outback hat onto Harley’s head while Harley scarfed down a hot dog. “It seems that our sons are inseparable.”

“It does.”

“So we might as well try to get along.”

“I s’pose.”

“Do you ever give answers with more than two words?” I asked. “I mean, I’ve heard you string together more words, but that was when you were yelling at me, so I figured that might be special circumstances.”

He smirked. “Sometimes.”

“Well, that’s still one word. But I’ll take it. Libby Stratton,” I said, offering him my hand.

“Wade Tucker.” He shook my hand, and I yowled in pain as my skin came into contact with something that burned and itched and stung all at the same time. Fangs sprung, I yanked my hand out of his grasp and stared at the dirty gray streaks across my fingers. I looked down at Wade’s hand and saw that he was wearing several silver rings.

“Huh,” Wade said, pursing his lips as I worked to get my fangs back into my mouth.

“It’s a problem,” I admitted, shaking my injured fingers. “OK, so you want to stay for a while and help us plow through an insane amount of beef jerky and foot-shaped cookie cake? Almost eighty percent of the guests cannot eat solids, so you’d be doing me a big favor.”

“I don’t think I can pass up an offer like that,” he said, shrugging.

I grinned and turned to the kids. “OK, boys, are you ready for your ‘Sasquatch hunt’?” I asked, using that hypercheerful voice only mothers who’d suffered through birthdays could fully understand. The boys abandoned their plates and bellowed a mighty hunters’ roar, dragging Dick and Braylen and Sam and Gabriel out to the backyard. The rest of us followed this brave battalion of cryptozoologists. I handed each boy his own binoculars with green Saran wrap over the lenses to make them look like night-scope goggles. They also got a flashlight and a butterfly net and beef jerky to sustain them on their perilous backwoods safari. Danny had his little camouflage digital camera strapped around his wrist, just in case he needed photographic evidence.

I wished I could accurately describe the heart-melting adorableness of fully grown, supposedly vicious vampires holding hands with little boys as they were dragged through the bluegrass, hunched over and searching for Sasquatch sign by moonlight. Wade and I followed at a casual pace. We exchanged grins every time the boys crowed over the clues. They loved the jerky wrapper I’d left by the rain spout, the faux fur I’d tangled around the rosebushes, the Swiss Rolls I’d dropped as Sasquatch scat. (Don’t judge me.) I tried to guide the boys toward the huge footprint I’d made in the softened earth just beyond the border of the yard, but my hints weren’t quite blatant enough. Before I could drop a more anvil-sized verbal clue, Danny yelled, “What’s that?”

In the distance, I could make out a tall, furry shape near the tree line, at least eight feet tall, with long, apelike arms covered in reddish-brown fur. Danny gasped, and the shape’s head whipped toward us. Its yellow-gold eyes flashed in the moonlight, and I sprinted across the grass to plant myself in front of the boys.

I clamped my hand over my son’s mouth and glanced around, wondering why the other vampires didn’t seem all that alarmed by the appearance of a Bigfoot in my backyard. Dick was freaking smirking at me. You didn’t smirk in front of Bigfoot. It was just asking for trouble.

I didn’t smell anything. It seemed completely wrong that this hulking, fur-covered creature was standing upwind of us and the only scent I could detect was a touch of sweat and Polo cologne. I stepped toward it, a growl forming on my lips, and Nola put her hand on my arm, smiling gently and shaking her head. “It’s OK,” she whispered. “Really.”

What in the flaming hell was going on here? Was this some sort of weird initiation into the vampire world? Social acceptance through cryptid pranks? Reluctantly, I loosened my grip on Danny and let him wander closer to the mystery guest.

“Look at him, Mom,” he whispered reverently. “He’s real.”

“Take a picture,” Harley hissed through the hand clamped over his mouth. I noticed that he’d hung back, clutching at my shirttail and watching the proceedings from around my hip.

“Oh.” Danny fumbled with the camera, but before he could raise it and hit the right buttons, the creature let out a low sound, a cross between a
moo
and a
bark
. He—I was assuming it was a he—made a strange hand-jerk gesture toward Danny and then lumbered into the woods.

It wouldn’t do, I suppose, for Bigfoot to pose for a selfie with the birthday boy.

“Let’s go after him!” Danny said, still trying to aim his camera at the retreating Sasquatch.

“Er.” I struggled to find the right explanation that wouldn’t scare Danny but would drive home the “don’t go running off into the woods alone in the dark” lesson.

“I don’t think that’s a good idea,” Harley supplied. “It looked like he’s just eaten and taken a crap. He’s probably off to bed. You don’t want to interrupt a Bigfoot’s bedtime, Danny. It’s dangerous.”

“Solid logic,” I told Harley.

“Harley, we’ve talked about usin’ the word ‘crap’ like that,” Wade said pointedly.

“Sorry, he’d just taken a dump,” Harley amended.

I snickered but managed to hide it with a cough. I knew how much it annoyed me when other parents found Danny’s particular brand of “forthright humor” charming.

“Aw, man!” Danny cried, snapping a photo of our now empty backyard. “I could have had photographic evidence. But Mom, he
waved
at me. Did you see? He
waved.
”

“Bigfeet love birthday parties,” I told him. “They love cookie cake. It’s a scientific fact. And you know what? It’s almost time for cookie cake and presents. How about you and Harley go inside and wash your hands?”

“OK!” Danny dragged Harley back into the house. Wade’s poor son was going to have NBA-length arms come morning.

“That was awesome,” Jane told me. “You’re totally planning Jamie’s next birthday.”

“Darling, Jamie is almost twenty-one years old,” Gabriel said as he followed her through the back door. “He’s a little mature for streamers and goodie bags.”

“But I missed so many of his birthdays!” Jane protested.

Without a word, Wade wandered toward the tree line, as if he was considering following the creature into the woods. I might have worried, but Wade struck me as a particularly capable guy, as in, when the zombie apocalypse finally happened, I expected to see him rolling through town in a tow-truck-turned-tank, picking off zombies with a potato gun modified to launch grenades. And he would probably look crazy hot while doing it. Stupid effective cheekbones.

While I contemplated this disturbing postapocalyptic image, Jed jogged around the corner of the house toward my side of the yard, shrugging back into his shirt. When he realized I was watching him, he stopped in his tracks.

“I have so
many
questions,” I said, shaking my head.

“So, yeah.” Jed grimaced as he finished buttoning his shirt. “I’m a shapeshifter.”

“That’s a thing?” I exclaimed.

“’Fraid so,” Jed said. “I have this little genetic quirk that lets me take on the appearance of just about any livin’ thing, real or fictional. It’s like being a werewolf but having more options. For the longest time, my family thought we were cursed, but it turns out we just happen to have a couple of extra genes thrown in. Jane and Nola thought Danny would get a kick out of it. I’m sorry for not checkin’ it out with you before. I didn’t mean to make ya uncomfortable.”

“So . . . when Danny thought he saw Bigfoot out of his window the other night . . .”

He grimaced. “That was me. But to be fair, I wasn’t in Bigfoot form. I’ve been playing around with an ape-werewolf hybrid creature. You know, trying to keep things interesting. Nola’s helped me figure out that I’m more in control of my shifts when I’m not bored.”

“Could you maybe not do that where Danny can see you?” I suggested. “Or if you do, pick a non-scary, non-emotionally-traumatizing form? Like a giant bunny or something?” I asked.

“You don’t think he would find an unnaturally large bunny lurking outside of his house to be traumatizin’?” he asked, and when I gave him my mom look, he added, “I’m just sayin’!”

“I’m sending him to your front door when he has nightmares,” I told Jed.

Jed pursed his lips and nodded. “Fair enough. I’m gonna go get a beer. Shiftin’ takes it out of me.”

“Wait, Jed, what did you mean by werewolves?” I called after him. “Are werewolves a thing, too?”

He just smiled his adorable redneck smile and ducked inside the house.

“Jed?” I yelled. “That’s not an answer!”

“Man, when you throw a party, you throw a party,” Wade said, carrying a beer across the lawn. “Where do you even find a Sasquatch impersonator? And what kind of person makes a livin’ pretending to be a Bigfoot? That musta been an interestin’ Craigslist ad.”

“You’d be surprised what you can find online.” I chuckled awkwardly. “Look, I really appreciate you being so open-minded, bringing Harley here in the first place and then sticking around when you realized most of the guest list was, uh, pulse-challenged.”

“Hell, I told ya, I don’t care about that,” he scoffed. “You’re clearly crazy about your kid, and your friends seem nice enough. My family are all humans, and they can be a bunch of assholes.”

“I’m just glad you added more words after you said ‘crazy.’ ”

“We did kind of get off on the wrong foot, huh?” Wade blushed—honest to God, blushed—and even in the silver light of the moon, I could see the rich pink hue spread across his cheeks. The spread of blood through his tiny capillaries did strange things to me. I wanted to follow that blush’s path across his cheekbones with my tongue. I wanted to see how far it spread. Did he blush all the way down?

And he was still talking while I was ogling his circulatory system. I decided to tune in before I embarrassed myself.

“I’m sorry I was such a jackass when we met. School registration is always sort of hard for me. It’s like a punch in the face, seeing all those big, happy families. Signing all that stuff as Harley’s only parent-slash-guardian, it was like being reminded over and over that I’m doing this all alone. I got pissed off, and I took it out on you, and that’s not fair.”

“I can understand that,” I told him. “And that night at Walmart?”

“Well, you did compare my son’s name to chlamydia,” he noted.

“Touché.”

“It would be better, I think, if the two of us could find a way to get along, for the boys’ sake,” he said. “If nothin’ else, we could stop cussing at each other every time we make eye contact.”

“I would like that.” I stuck my hand out to shake. “Truce?”

“Truce,” he said, extending his hand with the rings. Then, remembering the silver issue, he switched and offered me the safer hand. His closed his fingers around mine and pumped my hand gently. His callused, warm skin felt heavenly against my own, like sliding into a bath with just enough heat to sting a little. He didn’t seem to mind how cool my skin was, turning my hand over in his.

“Huh,” he said, studying our joined hands.

I withdrew my hand from his, rubbing it against my denim-covered leg. “So do you have family around here?”

He cleared his throat. “Yeah, but I try to steer clear of them. My family are a bunch of screw-ups. Mostly on my mom’s side. My dad was a pretty great guy. He’s the one who was into motorcycles, showed me everything he knew in the garage. But he died when I was eight, and Mom ended up moving to Garden Vista. She brought home a bunch of ‘uncles’ who got more and more messed-up with every year. I got a couple of half brothers and sisters running around the Hollow. I try to keep them away from Harley, so they don’t try to borrow money off him. Hell, if they thought he had a twenty in his piggy bank, they’d take a hammer to it. And then call him a ‘selfish little jerk’ if he got upset over it.

“Growing up the way I did, I didn’t want Harley seeing that shit. I wanted him to have somethin’ normal and soft. I wanted him to know that when he came home from school, I would be there. I would be sober. And he wouldn’t have to be afraid when I walked through the door.”