The Single Undead Moms(83)

“Here.” Wade gently pulled the handkerchief over my nose, and the nauseating popcorn miasma was smothered by the spicy, warm scent of . . . Wade.

My mouth went from wincing to watering in seconds. It was like being wrapped in a bubble of Wade’s delicious scent. I was instantly calmed and comforted and crazy aroused all at the same time. I knocked the blanket out of his hands and hauled him into the truck bed with me. I rolled on top of him, straddling his hips as I lowered my face to his. And realized that my bandanna was still in the way. Wade laughed, pulling the red material back down under my chin so he could plant a hot, sweet kiss on me.

“Better?” he asked.

“You sealed it in the bag so it would smell like you,” I said, giving him an “aw” face.

He shrugged. “You seem to like the way I smell.”

“I love the way you smell, which on any other date would seem like an off-putting thing to say.”

“Being thrown around like a rag doll by my gal is extremely hot but pretty damn emasculatin’,” he muttered against the soft skin of my jaw.

“Well, get used to it,” I told him, turning his head so I could nibble at his lower lip. He groaned and rolled his hips under me.

“Is that your vampire talent?” he asked. “Slappin’ guys around but lookin’ so cute while you’re doing it that they don’t mind?”

I laughed and, realizing that we were still very much in view of people in neighboring cars, sat up, straightened our clothes, and scooted against the back of Wade’s cab so we could watch as the titles to The Great Outdoors began playing. “No, my vampire talent is very boring. I’m a stabilizer.”

“What’s that?”

“I suppress the talents of other vampires near me,” I told him as he wrapped his arm around me, settling my head against his chest. I tucked my hair under his chin, burying my nose in his shirt.

“Well, that’s not . . . OK, yeah, that’s pretty boring. But how do you even know that you’re doing it? It could just be a fluke.”

“My, uh, my sire told me all about it. He was the first one to figure it out, because I was suppressing his talent.”

“How did he manage to figure it out when Jane couldn’t?” Wade asked, winding my gold hair around his fingers and watching it uncurl when he released it. I opened my mouth to tell him the story about Finn seeing me at the hospital coffee shop. But then Chet Ripley pulled his family car in front of the Loon’s Nest, and it seemed rude to keep talking. And even though I was watching one of my favorite childhood movies, I couldn’t help but wonder, how did Finn figure out that I was a vampire damper? I had never heard of a vampire’s talent being “latent” when he or she was still human. In all the reading Jane had forced me to do, the books stated that vampire powers manifested after the newly turned vampire changed. It seemed impossible, even with Finn’s special head-hopping power, for him to sense what I could do.

Why hadn’t I questioned it? Why had I simply believed what he said, even when I’d learned so much to the contrary? Why did I want to believe the best of someone who hadn’t done anything to deserve my trust?

Finn had lied. Or at the very least, he had stretched the truth to the breaking point. Again. I was getting really sick of Finn treating conversations like a taffy pull. I was sick of half-truths and shadows and meeting on his terms.

And here I was, spending my date with Wade thinking about Finn.

I was going to have a conversation with Finn Palmeroy. But first, I was going to watch John Candy shoot a bear in the butt with a shotgun lamp.


I stomped through the lobby of the Holiday Inn and bypassed the elevator in order to scale the stairs and work off some anger. I’d barely been able to concentrate on what was a perfectly lovely first date with a desirable, extremely fang-worthy man because I’d been too busy turning over all of the possibilities in my head. I’d come up with a dozen plausible explanations that didn’t involve Finn lying to me, but somehow they just didn’t seem as believable, as likely, as that he was manipulating me. Finn was too charming, too smooth. Hadn’t I learned by now not to trust the easy path? Why hadn’t I seen this coming? Why hadn’t I listened to those warning bells?

And because I wanted to catch my sire off-guard for once, I kicked in his hotel-room door and walked in without an invitation. Finn looked deliciously casual, stretched across the bed, going over some paperwork. He didn’t even seem that startled to see me busting into his hotel room like the cops. He just grinned brightly and hopped to his feet.

“Libby!” he exclaimed. “This is a pleasant surprise.”