He finally glanced up as if surprised to see me standing there. “I thought you’d already left.”
I felt heat rise in my cheeks. “Oh, did you?”
He shrugged, then looked back down at the papers. “Doesn’t matter, I suppose.”
I stepped farther into the office and closed the door behind me. I could prove I was mature. Just watch me. “Veronique is very beautiful.”
“Yes, she is.”
I counted slowly to ten in my head. “I didn’t know you were married.”
He blinked. “And now you know.”
“Um, she seems very nice.”
“Didn’t you say you were leaving?”
This time I counted to fifteen. I knew without a shadow of a doubt that I had said nothing to piss him off. I’d even thought about what I was going to say before I let the words leave my mouth. That rarely happened. There was no reason for him to be acting like a jerk to me, especially after… well… after everything that had been happening between us.
“There’s no reason to get snippy with me. I guess I’m just trying to understand.”
“Understand what?” He stood up and pressed his palms against the desktop.
“It’s just that I thought… well, about what happened in Abottsville. I just figured—”
“I guess you figured wrong,” he said cutting me off. “I don’t mean to be rude, Sarah, but perhaps you read more into the situation than you should have. I have agreed to help you adjust to the life that has been thrust upon you, yes. But please, do not mistake a potential fling for something more meaningful.”
“A potential fling?” I sputtered. “Are you kidding me?”
“No, you’re right. To call it a fling would be exaggerating. It was only a few kisses, after all.”
His words felt like a slap in my face. For the last twenty minutes I’d wondered who I wanted to see die more, myself or Veronique. I’d just revised that list to include Thierry. And he was officially at the top of it.
I took a deep breath and concentrated on erasing the stunned look from my face. “You know what? I think you might be right. It was just a few kisses.” I forced a smile at him and didn’t try to make it look friendly. “And now you can kiss my ass good-bye.”
“Ah, yes.” The corner of his mouth raised into a half smile. “The refined wit of Sarah Dearly. It has been so refreshing this past week.”
Turning the doorknob, I looked back over my shoulder. “Oh, and by the way, if you happen to get the urge to throw yourself off another bridge anytime soon, don’t bother waiting for me to help you out. Just go for it.”
My reward was seeing a frown spread over his features before I slammed the door behind me. I saw the club through a foggy daze. I absolutely had no idea where that fight had materialized from. The only thing that echoed in my mind were the words “potential fling.” Was that really all he thought of me? And why did the idea of that cut me deeper than finding out he had a wife? I knew why. Because I’d been a silly dope and sort of fallen for him. But I wasn’t completely stupid. You didn’t have to hit me over the head, over and over, for me to see the truth. Not when it was sitting at the bar with its long, lean legs crossed, seductively sipping a martini.
Veronique waved good-bye to me. “Lunch. Soon.”
I walked around to the other side of the bar toward George. “Bye, George. Get well soon.”
“Sarah,” he said, his voice was still weak, but not as weak as it was earlier. He was healing up very nicely; another asset to life as a vampire.
“Yeah?” I leaned over.
“If it’s any consolation…”
“What?”
“You’re way cuter.”
I bent over to kiss his forehead. “You are now officially my favorite person in the entire world.”
I stopped at Holt Renfrew on my way home and bought a new pair of shoes. Hot pink, expensive stiletto pumps I’d seen a couple of weeks ago in Vogue—same pair Charlize Theron wore to a recent movie premiere. Did I mention expensive? The fact that I had no money except for twenty bucks left over from the tips I made the other night did occur to me. But I needed to buy something in the worst way—retail therapy. When I took the shoes out of the box at home, I realized I didn’t even like them. I cried over those pink shoes for a whole half hour. I was crying over the shoes. Really. I didn’t call anyone. I didn’t talk to anyone. I’d decided to officially become a hermit.
My hermitivity lasted exactly three hours. I did some laundry, took a shower, and paced around my small apartment. Finally I was so bored I was climbing the walls, and I decided to go out for a walk. Danger be damned. I walked past a small park about two blocks from my apartment complex. In it, there was a girl arguing with a young guy. I squinted at her familiar black hair, black clothes, and pale face. She looked over and saw me studying her and then I recognized her. It was Melanie. The Goth chick I’d clocked the other night at the club. The human girlfriend of Timothy, the vampire. Her eyes narrowed as she recognized me, too. She poked the shoulder of the guy she was with—not Timothy—and pointed at me. Then she started to march right toward me, and she didn’t look friendly. The guy followed dutifully behind her.
“That”—Melanie pointed at me—“that’s one.”
“What?” I asked. “Somebody who’s kicked your ass?”
Melanie scowled at me. Her friend just blinked a couple of times. Maybe he had even less of a clue what she was talking about than I did.
“No, bitch,” she snapped. “A vampire.”
I sighed. “Wow, alert the media. You know, Timothy should really invest in a leash and muzzle for you.”
“Timothy and me are through,” she spat and grabbed the arm of the timid-looking boy.
“This is my new boyfriend.”
He blinked at me again.
“My condolences,” I said and turned away.
“Where do you think you’re going, bitch?”
I raised my eyebrows and turned around. “You have a lot of hostility, Melanie. But at least your glowing personality makes up for it.”
“Vampire,” her friend finally spoke. His voice was small and nervous. He struck me as the kind of guy who’d be better off wearing a polka-dot bow tie, sitting in a small office, adding lists of numbers together, than out on the town with “Miss Congeniality.”
Melanie nodded. “That’s right, Eugene. A vampire. And what do we do with vampires?”
His forehead creased in concentration. “Uh.”
Melanie rolled her eyes. “We kill them. Come on, get your stake out and kill her.”
“He’s a vampire hunter?” I asked, my voice devoid of any panic. I mean, come on.
“That’s right,” Melanie said proudly as Eugene searched his pockets. “I’m training him, based on my knowledge of your kind.”
Eugene finally found what he was looking for. He held a stake tightly in his trembling right hand, but it slipped away from him and clattered to the sidewalk.