The Single Undead Moms(20)
“You’re looking pretty tired, hon. Why don’t you take a little break?” Jane suggested, nodding toward the closet near the music room marked “Janitorial Supplies.”
“Thanks. I’ll be right back,” I said.
I ducked into the closet, using just a teensy bit of my vampire strength to wrench the doorknob’s fifty-year-old lock off of its pins. Promising myself that I would send the school a check to replace it, I leaned my forehead against the cool wood door and tried some of the relaxation techniques the nurses had suggested at the chemo center. I pictured warm, yellow sunlight filtering through the ceiling and relaxing my frazzled nerves. I pictured a warm beach, sand shifting underneath my back as my toes curled and uncurled under the grainy surface. I imagined the scents of coconut suntan lotion and ocean salt wafting toward my nose. I felt a pretend breeze against my skin. And I heard a voice, low and loving, calling my name. I’d heard the voice before, whispering in my ear while I was unable to breathe. He told me that everything was going to be all right, that this was part of it, and when I woke up—
Suddenly, the door popped open and smacked me in the forehead, knocking me back on my heels.
“Oof!” I cried, clutching my face. Thank goodness I had rapid healing powers, because I was pretty sure I’d just sustained a concussion.
“Are you OK?” a gruff voice demanded.
“What the hell— Who are you?” I demanded.
“I’m the guy with the keys to this closet. Who are you?”
My eyes went wide. This was the school janitor? What happened to Ernie Houser? When I attended Half-Moon Hollow Elementary, the janitor had been a sweet old man who had a fluffy white walrus mustache and whistled “My Old Kentucky Home” through the gap in his front teeth.
The contemporary school janitor was made from a slightly different mold. Tall, lean, almost wiry, with respectable cords of muscles rippling over arms covered in a swirling cloud of colorful tattoos. His face was long and lean, with sharp features only softened by a scruff of white-blond beard and longish darker blond hair that brushed against the collar of his T-shirt. His eyes were a defiant blue. If Thor had a pissed-off, tattooed younger brother, he would be the guy blocking my exit from the supply closet. And yeah, he might have fit the bill for some of my more tawdry biker fantasies, but given the way he was glaring at me, I got the distinct impression that he didn’t want me touching him or his . . . hog.
“I came in here for a fresh shirt,” he said, nodding toward the flannel shirts hanging neatly from hooks on the closet wall. “The air conditioner was on the fritz . . .” He stared down at the ruined doorknob. “What the hell did you do to the door?”
“Nothing!” I exclaimed, but I hid my hands behind my back as if it would keep me from being caught red-handed.
“What are you even doing in here?” he demanded. “You don’t have any good reason to be in here, damaging school property. What the hell is wrong with you parents? Ya know, just ’cause you pay taxes doesn’t mean you own the school!”
My mouth was hanging open in response to his rudeness. I was sure my vampire impression of Munch’s The Scream was super-attractive. “I got turned around.”
“Well, turn back around and get out.” He jerked his thumb toward the open door behind him as he shrugged out of his sweat-stained gray Half-Moon Hollow Howlers T-shirt and into a blue cotton uniform workshirt with “Wade” stitched on the breast pocket.
My jaw dropped. Who the hell was this guy, and who did he think he was, bossing me around? Nobody had talked to me like this in . . . well, I couldn’t remember the last time someone talked to me with such an irritated tone, certainly not since I became a tragic terminally ill widow. I’d been treated with kid gloves lined with cotton balls for the past two years.
And holy Hades, he had even more tattoos underneath the shirt. Even with my super-vision, I couldn’t take in the details in the brief glimpse I got. Still, I got a good look at the big picture, and the picture was pretty damn nice. Long, sinewy arms, a broad chest, and a flat stomach tapering to hip bones that jutted out just a few inches above the waistline of his worn jeans.
How perverse was it that between the pretty face, the tattoos, and the surliness, I was actually beginning to feel the faint stirrings of attraction? Fine, they weren’t so much faint stirrings as a deep, reverberating echo between my thighs, like a super-dirty version of those Tibetan meditation bells. It was certainly stronger than anything I’d felt in years. For a while, I hadn’t been certain that all of my parts were still in working condition. Was this a side effect of vampirism? Unprecedented skankiness in response to hostility?