The Vampire Next Door (8 page)

“So…why didn’t you ever say hi before?” I speared a meatball with my fork.

He shrugged. “You’re only out when the sun is shining.”

“So you just stare at me from the window like a creeper? Weird.” I smiled to soften the insult, and Reeve grinned back.

My joke seemed to work, as Reeve shifted in the loveseat to what seemed like a more relaxed position, with one knee pulled up and his hands looped around it.

“I wasn’t sure what to say,” he admitted. “‘Hi, I’m the vampire next door.’ Your boyfriend would have staked me right then and there.”

“He’s not my boyfriend,” I said absently, wondering where Eddie was at that moment. “Anyway, he might have staked you, but I’m more open-minded. You could have started off by saying, ‘Don’t worry, I won’t eat you. Do I know you from somewhere?’ That would have been one heck of a story to tell my grandchildren. ‘One day this huge vampire walked up to me and said-’”

“Do you like board games?”

I broke off mid-sentence at his interruption, and pursed my lips. “Um, okay, I guess that could be your opening line. It’s…well, it’s original.”

“No, I mean- really, do you like board games?” Reeve motioned down the hallway. “Your neighbors were big gamers, apparently. The hall closet is full of board games.”

“Oh.” I poked at my spaghetti with my fork. “Yeah, I like board games. What all do they have?”

“I’ll look.” He got up from the loveseat, and I bit my lower lip, trying not to smile. Board games. I hadn’t expected that.

It was actually kind of cute. And completely unfair. This guy was downright adorable in addition to being drop-dead gorgeous.

He’s also a vampire. Down, girl.

My inner voice could be such a buzzkill sometimes.

Reeve came out carrying a stack of board games. I didn’t recognize any of the titles.

“Castle Panic,” I read off, starting with the top box. “King of Tokyo. Ticket to Ride. The Walking Dead- oh, hey, that’s the board game version of the show I was telling you about last night.”

“We should play that,” he said, setting the boxes down on the loveseat. “And I know exactly which character you’ll play.”

“If you say Lori, I will throw this can of spaghetti at you.”

The ice was well and truly broken then. Reeve grinned wickedly, shoving the coffee table over until it was pressed up against the couch, putting it within my reach. As he opened the box for The Walking Dead, I finished off the last of my food and surreptitiously wiped my mouth with one finger, making sure I didn’t have any sauce on my lips.

“Have you played this before?” he asked, and I shook my head.

“Nope. I didn’t even know there was a board game.”

He reached over and took the can from my hands. “Here, see if you can set up the board while I throw this away. Do you want some water?”

“Yes, please.” I unrolled the game board, which was made of the same material as a mouse pad. “That’s different,” I mused, and started reading the instructions.

Reeve brought back a bottled water and some more Advil for me, and we buckled down and started playing, figuring out the rules as we went along.

As the minutes ticked by and we grew more engrossed in the game, I genuinely began to enjoy myself. If Reeve had shown even a trace of aggressiveness, I would have been terrified, but he was winning me over with his impeccable manners and sweet personality.

It was the first time in a long while that I’d felt so comfortable with another person. I’d always been on edge with Eddie, worried that I might say or do the wrong thing and give him the idea that I was interested in more than just friendship. Even in my last months with Cole, our relationship had been so strained that we certainly hadn’t enjoyed any quality time as a couple.

Reeve was like a breath of fresh air for me. It was easy to forget that he was a vampire, and I found myself appreciating his low-key humor. When we realized that The Walking Dead board game was almost impossible to win while playing by the factory rules, we experimented with different house rules until we found one that seemed to balance the game play.

After The Walking Dead, we moved on to King of Tokyo, and as the day wore on, we worked our way through the large stack of games, stopping only when I beat him four times in a row at a gothic-humor-themed card game called Gloom.

“I’ll get you next time,” Reeve told me, stacking the cards and sliding them back into their box.

“You wish.” A peal of thunder shook the house around us, and I jumped. “Gosh, I wish it would stop raining,” I said, glaring up at the ceiling. “This is ridiculous. It’s not even monsoon season.”

“Spring showers,” Reeve said unhelpfully. He stood up and leaned down to pick up the stack of games we’d finished. I watched him head down the hallway, the games piled so high in his arms that he could barely see where he was going.

If you’d told me just a few days before that I’d be spending an entire day playing board games with a vampire, I would have laughed you right out of my house. And yet it was happening- and I was minding it less and less with every passing minute.

“What does your movie selection look like?” I asked when Reeve came back into the room.

He grimaced. “Lots of old movies.”

After looking over the media cabinet, I was forced to agree with him. “For having such a bad-ass board game collection, they seem to have done a pretty good job ignoring every movie made after 1970,” I said, picking up one DVD. “
Seven Brides for Seven Brothers.
You want to give this one a shot?”

He held out his hand. “Sure.”

Before I knew it, we’d watched two movies. I fell asleep on the couch, and only woke up when Reeve turned off the television.

He brushed a hand across my forehead as he set a candle down on the coffee table beside me. “See you in the morning, Kennedy,” he said, and there was genuine affection in his voice.

“Goodnight,” I murmured, and when he put a blanket over me, I pulled it up over my shoulders, falling back into a dreamless slumber.

CHAPTER 6

When I woke the next morning, the sun was peeking around the boards covering the living room windows. The storm was over.

My clean clothes were folded on the coffee table. I picked them up and managed to stagger to the bathroom, leaning my left shoulder heavily against the wall and using my right leg to bear most of my weight.

The house was spotlessly clean, which I found kind of funny. Did he have a vampire maid service to come in and tidy up for him? Or was Reeve just really OCD about cleanliness? I swept and mopped my entire house once a week out of habit, but his place looked like someone had scrubbed every inch of the floors with a toothbrush. Reeve must have done a thorough cleaning- and regular upkeep- after moving in.

I ran my finger along the shelf below the bathroom mirror and shook my head when it came away clean. Huh.

My hair felt dirty and greasy, and all I wanted to do was take a shower and wash it again, but there was no reason to do that here, now that the sun was shining and I could go home. I took my hair out of its ponytail and combed my fingers through it several times before twisting it into a knot at the nape of my neck.

Reeve’s words from the first day we met echoed in my head as I stared at myself in the mirror.

Hard to miss you, with all that hair. And those eyes.

I’d inherited my mother’s eyes, crystal-blue, like a cold sky in winter. Her hair was a glorious, rich mass of auburn curls, but mine had somehow managed to come out straight and dark, nearly black. Though I knew that some people found the contrast between my light eyes and dark hair striking, there was no denying that my hair color washed out my already-pale complexion.

I still thought of myself as pleasantly pretty, in a soft, forgettable kind of way. My face was oval-shaped, with well-defined cheekbones and an average mouth over a strong chin. Only a handful of people had ever called me beautiful, and I was well aware that my breasts were slightly too small, my hips just a tiny bit too wide, for me to be considered conventionally attractive. I had always assumed that it was my unusual eyes which caught people’s attention. The rest of me was just kind of an afterthought.

I recalled that Cole could never remember the color of my eyes. It hadn’t irritated me so much at first, but after a few years, I found that his callous attitude was grating on me. “I’m a man,” he’d snapped every time I’d called him on his poor memory. “Men don’t remember details like that.”

I’d never been married before, so maybe he was right, but I still thought that remembering your spouse’s eye color should be pretty easy after two or three years. I never once forgot that his eyes were green.

I slumped my way back to the living room, lurching along like an uncoordinated zombie, and found Reeve standing beside the couch.

“You’re walking,” he said.

Duh, I wanted to say. Instead I answered, “Barely. But it should be enough to get me home.”

He raised a hand to his forehead, hooking the waves of his jaw-length hair with his fingers and brushing them back. He often ran his hands through his hair when he was nervous, I noticed. Obviously I still made him nervous, even though I thought we’d gotten to know each other pretty well the day before. I wasn’t sure if that was a good thing or not.

“I got you this. Sorry it’s pink.” He held up a cane, which was more than I would have expected from any vampire, even one who had saved my life. I took it from him and leaned gratefully on it, and when he looked down at it, I could tell that he was trying not to laugh.

“Laugh now,” I said, “but I’ve always secretly dreamed of using a cane. A pink one. With giant daisies all over it.”

“It suits you,” he agreed, and smiled. “I’d walk you back, but…”

“That’s okay, I’m not exactly in the mood for barbequed vamp today,” I said. “The sun is out. I’ll be safe for the, what, two hundred feet back to my front door. Assuming I can use your front door and not have to walk around the backyard.”

“Of course. Do you need anything before you take off? Water? Food? A shower?”

I cracked a grin at that. “Do I smell that bad?”

His expression was immediately chagrined. “I didn’t mean that. I just meant…if there’s anything you need help with, we might as well get it done now.”

“Oh. Thanks, but I’ll be home in no time.” He was standing so close I could smell his aftershave, a spicy, musky, sexy scent that sent my hormones into overdrive. How funny. I pillaged essentials like deodorant and disposable razors, but it had never occurred me to grab perfume or body spray. Yet here was Reeve, looking and smelling like a Calvin Klein underwear model.

The day before, we’d been cocooned in our own little world, but now things were different. The isolation of the rain had disappeared with the emergence of the sun this morning. The camaraderie I’d felt with Reeve the day before was a little elusive now, and I struggled to think of how to interact with this vampire I’d befriended.

“I plan on camping out in my basement for the next week or so, until my knee heals up,” I told him. “It might be fun, though. It’ll give me the chance to run through all the seasons of
Doctor Who
again and argue with myself over whether I prefer Ten or Eleven.”

There was a pause, and then Reeve raised an eyebrow. He had no idea what I was talking about.

Despite myself, I was a little disappointed. As sad as it was that he’d never watched
The Walking Dead,
the fact that he’d never heard of
Doctor Who
was almost a travesty. But it wasn’t all that surprising. No man could be this gorgeous, and a Whovian to boot. The scales of justice would tip, the Earth would spin off its axis, and we’d find ourselves in a crisis not unlike those that were commonplace on the very TV show I’d been referring to.

I figured I should probably make my getaway now, before things got any more awkward. “So…front door?” I prompted.

“Right.” He edged past me, motioning for me to follow. I did- slowly- and hesitated when I got to the two steps that led into the sunken foyer. I wasn’t sure if my knee could bend that much, even with the assistance of the cane. Reeve held out a hand to me, and I hesitated.

“Worried I might infect you?” Reeve asked, a smile playing around his lip.

“Worried you might bite me,” I muttered lightly. I’d meant it as a joke, but somehow it came out more serious than I’d intended.

“Yes, I rescued you, fed you, played board games with you and let you sleep on my couch so I could bite you in my entryway,” he said, sarcasm dripping from his tone like bitter honey. “Come on, Kennedy. The sooner you get your weight off that knee, the better.”

He was right. I swapped my cane to my right hand, then reached out and took hold of his fingers. They were warm, and as I’d expected, the heat rushed straight to my face, my hand tingling as it gripped his. I’d never been any good at hiding when I was attracted to a guy. Cole had always teased me about my incessant blushing, but Reeve stayed quiet now, and I was grateful to him for that.

He lifted my hand to his shoulder and moved closer to me, letting me lean on him as I awkwardly shambled down the steps. I tried very hard to ignore his closeness, and leaned as far away from his as possible. His arm was wrapped tightly around me, resting just below my shoulder blades, the heat of his touch burning through my shirt to my skin underneath.

It didn’t take long to cross the foyer to the door, and he helped me up the two steps to the door.

But he didn’t let go of me.

His scent was intoxicating, and I resisted the urge to lean into his broad chest as I looked up at him. The height difference between us was considerable, and that was disconcerting for me. At five-foot-nine, I was used to being around the same height as or even taller than most men. But I felt dwarfed by Reeve. For the first time in my life, I was being held by a man who made me feel tiny and fragile- like someone who needed taking care of.

It wasn’t entirely unpleasant.

His dark eyes bored into mine for a long moment, and then his gaze dropped to my lips. I drew in a shuddering breath, fully prepared to punch him if he tried to kiss me, but he only smiled and released his hold on me.

“You got the door?” he asked as he backed away.

I nodded mutely, one hand braced on the cane. I drew the deadbolt.

“Thanks,” I said. “For everything. Especially the Vienna sausages. And the board game marathon.”

He grinned, transforming his already-stunning-features into a face worthy of a Greek god. “Anytime. Feel free to stop by again.”

Now that I was so close to leaving, for some reason I felt reluctant to do so.

“I’ll see you around,” I said, and turned the knob.

There was a covered porch on the front of his house that offered some relief from the glaringly bright sunlight- enough, at least, that Reeve didn’t seem particularly worried about frying to death, though he was just a few feet away from the open door.

I pulled the door shut behind me and shuffled down the walkway, wincing with every step and leaning heavily on the cane. The basement stairs were not going to be a pleasant experience for me, I knew that much. I took a moment to send up a brief prayer of thanks that I’d let Holloway go instead of trying to keep him inside the house. It would be hard enough for me to walk up and down the stairs. Crawling around on the floor to scrub at dog poop stains would have been a challenge of Olympic proportions.

There were no dead bodies outside my house- at least none that I could see- and that was a relief. Thank goodness for small favors.

As if he’d known the exact moment that I would return, Holloway came bounding up the alley when I unlocked the breezeway door, and my heart nearly jumped out of my chest. “You brat,” I scolded him. “Nearly gave me a panic attack.”

He ignored my irritation and trotted into the breezeway after me.

I clutched my stake in one hand as I opened the front door stepped inside my house. My heart was pounding so hard that I could feel it thumping against my eardrums. If a vampire had somehow gotten into the house last night, I had almost no way of defending myself. The weapons were stored downstairs, and with my bum knee, the stake I held would be of little assistance.

I made my way through the foyer, looking right into the formal dining room, and left into the hallway. I saw nothing. That was good enough for me. Limping along as fast as I could, I went to the basement door and quickly unlocked it. Holloway raced down the stairs when I pulled the door open, narrowly avoiding a collision with my injured leg. He was probably desperate to get back to his food bowl.

I flipped the switch that would turn the UV lights on, and listened. Nothing.

I headed downstairs, wincing with every step. As much as I appreciated the safety of the basement, these stairs were going to be the bane of my existence for the next couple of weeks.

When I turned the corner around the stairs, I saw Holloway at his food bowl, chomping loudly on kibble. Everything else looked normal.

After a short break to rest my knee, I went to the storage room and rummaged around the junk pile in the corner. I knew that Pearl, ever the drama queen, had once complained of ankle pain, and Kellie had sent her over on crutches, which the kid had left at our house once she’d decided her ankle was cured. Typically I didn’t let either of the girls leave stuff from their mom’s house with us, but in that particular case, I’d let my bitterness get the best of me. I was tired of Kellie passing on her hypochondriac tendencies to Pearl.

I couldn’t find the crutches in the basement’s storage room, so I armed myself with the spare crossbow and ventured back upstairs. The UV lights were on, so I felt safer, but I still wasn’t taking any chances.

Holloway followed me and scratched at the back door again.

“You are more trouble than you’re worth,” I told him. It only took me a minute to hobble to the back door and let him out, but he was whining and yapping so loudly that you’d have thought I was moving at a snail’s pace. He shot out the door almost before I could get it open, and promptly peed on the legs of Cole’s old charcoal grill.