The Single Undead Moms(40)

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?”