The Single Undead Moms(98)

“I’ll get it!” Danny yelled, abandoning his LEGO kingdom to run toward the foyer. Lightning-quick, I hopped over the bannister and landed between my son and the front door. Danny, now accustomed to his mother zipping around the house at vampire speed, merely skidded to a halt before we collided. Through the front-door glass, I could see a strange man standing on my stoop.

“Sweetheart, what have we said about opening the door without an adult?” I asked, glancing over my shoulder at the stranger. Should I even answer the door? I wondered. What if it was more bad news? What if he was from the Council or, worse, the family court? What if he was some friend of Les’s looking for a confrontation?

Danny chewed his lip and considered. “Not to do it.”

I glanced pointedly at the door and back to him, and realization seemed to dawn on his face. “Oh.”

“Yeah, oh,” I deadpanned. “Hey, the moon is supposed to be full tonight. Why don’t you go to the kitchen and see if you can spot Sasquatch in the backyard.”

“You’re just trying to keep me from seeing who’s at the front door, aren’t you?”

“Yes, I am,” I told him.

“Fiiiine.” He sighed mightily and slumped toward the kitchen.

I stepped closer to the door, considering the man on the other side of the glass.

He smiled, a wide, friendly, not at all hostile expression, like we were old friends reunited. He had wavy blond hair, a long nose, high cheekbones, and light blue-green eyes. Now that I could get a closer look, I could see the telltale pearlescent perfection of vampire skin. The stranger had been turned in his late thirties, and he was handsome, in that same “devil in a Sunday suit” manner as Finn. You could tell from the twinkle in his eyes that he was a charmer, the kind of guy who could talk you into a used car, a timeshare, and Amway and have you thanking him for the opportunity.

I unlocked and opened the door, careful to keep my foot propped against it so he couldn’t push in on me. “Yes?”

His grin seemed to broaden even further but in a sincere way. He was beaming so brilliantly I was going to need sunglasses soon. “Liberty.” There was no question in his tone. He knew that I was Liberty Stratton, which was odd, considering how few people knew my embarrassing birth name.

“Can I help you?”

Behind him, a sedan careened into my driveway, practically on two wheels. The driver, Finn, slid to a stop and hopped out.

“The hell?” I muttered, making the stranger snort.

“Max, this is not what we talked about! She’s still pissed at both of us! She’s not going to appreciate you—”

“Max?” I asked.

“Max Kitteridge,” he said. “You look so much like your mom. Her hair and her nose, that stubborn little chin. I saw enough of that whenever I tried to tell her what to do. You’ve got my eyes, though.”

I glanced down and back at my son, who was peering around the kitchen doorway at the stranger. He seemed to be evaluating the man for potential bad-guy beardness, staring him down with my eyes. Danny’s eyes. Max’s eyes. The same shade of blue-green with the ring of navy around the pupil.

When I whipped my head back toward the door, Max smiled at me, and those eyes almost disappeared into crinkly laugh lines. It pissed me off. That after all these years, my father could smile like that at me and act like he was happy to see me, when he hadn’t bothered with a visit in thirty years.

“I thought vampires couldn’t have kids,” I said, shaking my head.

“I was with your mom, and then I was turned. I came back. I tried to contact her after you were born.”

I stared at him as if he were speaking a foreign language. How was it possible that after all these years, I was looking at my father? And where in the ever-loving hell had he been since the day I was born?

“She was a smart girl, your mom, always picked up on the little cues that no one else got,” Max said. “And when she realized what I was, she didn’t want me around. She was scared, and I couldn’t blame her. Nobody knew about vampires then, and who would want one around their baby girl? She told me to leave, that it was safer for you if I was nowhere near you. She made me promise to stay away from you. And if nothing else, I kept my promise to her.”

Finn huffed behind him. “Max, she’s not ready.”

Max still pointedly ignored his old friend. “I followed your life over the years. I hadn’t spent a lot of time here, but I still had contacts in town. They’d take pictures for me, let me know when you had something big coming up—graduations, your wedding. If it was at night, I’d slip into the crowd so I could feel like I was part of it, too.”