I have that purse?” Ava, having ignored all the advice her sister doled out, was on to the next thing, in this case, a fabulous Louis Vuitton bag she’d coveted for some time.
“Don’t beg, it’ll make people hate you,” Alexis advised as she turned into the driveway of her mother’s pretty brick home.
“I’m not begging, I just want to borrow it,” Ava whined.
“You don’t have to borrow it. You can have one just like it when you finish school and get a good job. Until then, Payless is having a BOGO. Tell Mama I’ll call her after my book club.”
“Book club, swim class, work, aerobics classes, my God, do you ever just sit your butt down and do nothing?” Ava got out of the car and slammed the door a little too hard for Alexis’s taste.
“I’ll have plenty of time for that when I’m dead. Slam my door again and you’ll be walking home from now on, heifer.”
* * *
The rain was pouring by the time Alexis left her book club meeting. She didn’t mind, she was used to driving in the rain, even a downpour like this one. The meeting had been stimulating and enjoyable as always, even though the book wasn’t her favorite genre. The books were funny and well written, but nothing Alexis could fantasize about. There was no way she could hook up with a vampire. It made her shudder to think about it. The idea of cold skin next to hers was daunting and the thought of somebody sucking blood out of her body was… A sudden thud made her snap back to reality. She stopped the car and checked all the dashboard lights to see if there was something internal going on with her vehicle. Finally she bowed to the inevitable and got out of the car with her little pink flashlight.
Damn, damn, damn. A flat friggin’ tire! She hopped back in and reached for her cell phone. She hit the speed dial for AAA and waited to get through to a human. An eerily bright blaze of lightning preceded an unnaturally loud crash and her head almost hit her roof when a huge branch fell down in a shower of sparks, barely missing her hood. Crap. If it was like this all over Columbia, it could be quite a while before she got help. Alexis patted her chest in the vicinity where she imagined her heart was. She was normally quite calm, but the past few minutes had her really unnerved. That’s why she screamed when she heard the tap at her window. Of course, when she saw a pale face with deep-set pale eyes and stringy wet hair she yelped again. “A vampire!”
The man looked puzzled and touched his ear to indicate that he couldn’t hear her, thank God. She didn’t need him thinking she was crazy; he looked nutty enough for both of them. She let the window down a bit so that she could talk to him, but she prudently locked the doors as she did so.
“Umm, yes, did you need something?”
He smiled a crooked, surprisingly sexy smile that did funny things to her while she tried to compose herself.
“I think you need something,” he said. “I can see that you have a really flat tire and I can change it for you if you will open your hatch.”
Okay, that wasn’t what she was expecting. “Thanks, but AAA is on their way. I’m fine.”
“Well, they’re likely to be a while with the weather and all. I can get you up and running in about fifteen minutes,” he offered.
Nice. The stranger outside her door was certainly a rock and the flat tire was definitely a hard place. This was how people ended up on those true-crime shows, accepting help from a stranger. He said he wanted to help her but he could probably gut her like a fish and string her entrails on the fallen branch in the road.
“No, really, I’m fine,” she insisted. “Thanks for the offer, but I’m sure they’ll be along in a few.”
“Listen, I understand you not wanting to trust a man you’ve never met before. I have two sisters and you’re doing exactly what I’ve told them to do. Tell you what. I’ll just wait in my car until they get here so that no one bothers you, okay? I’m behind you and I’ll stay there until your help arrives.”
Alexis mumbled her thanks and put up the window while she tried to call her big sister. Alana was the owner and operator of Custom Classics, the best auto repair and remodeling shop in Columbia and if AAA couldn’t make it, Alana could come get her in ten minutes. She hated bothering her sister, but sitting on a dark street with a wet weirdo behind her was just not a plan. Unfortunately, Alana didn’t answer her phone. She tried her house, her cell and her office to no avail. Crap. She’d just have to wait it out. Her heart rate had completely slowed back to its normal rate and she was now calm enough to rummage around the car to find something sharp and potentially lethal just in case she had to defend herself.
The rain showed no signs of letting up and the thunder and lightning continued, accompanied by winds strong enough to blow down more branches around her. A particularly strong burst dropped another huge branch, along with a power line—complete with scary sparks that flew in all directions. Lovely. After that display, the stranger returned with a determined expression.
She cracked open the window again and before she could speak, he delivered a speech he’d apparently practiced.
“I know you don’t know me well, but I promise you I only want to help you.” He held out his cell phone to her as he continued to talk. “My name is Jared VanBuren and I have the police on the line so that they can hear everything that’s going on. I explained the situation to them and they’re willing to listen in so that, if anything goes wrong, they’ll be here in like five minutes to arrest me and save you. Go ahead, talk to the dispatcher, he’s waiting.”
Alexis stared at the phone, and then directed her wide eyes to the tall, soaking-wet man who looked less like a vamp now. He looked more like a Samaritan. She took a deep breath and put the cell phone to her ear. This was turning into the strangest day she could ever remember and she knew without being told that she wouldn’t forget it any time soon.
Chapter 3
Alexis was feeling slightly silly for her distrust, but only a little. She talked to the dispatcher and was fairly sure of two things when she finished. One was that the police knew where she was in case things got weird, and the other was that this Jared VanBuren wasn’t going to do anything to her that would end up on the late news. She was actually feeling grateful to her Samaritan for his insistence on doing a good deed. It had been over ninety minutes since she’d called AAA and a tow truck had yet to materialize, but Jared, bless his heart, had attended to her tire with speed and skill. The rain hadn’t let up and she’d tried to keep him from drowning by holding her snazzy leopard-print Christian Dior umbrella over him as he worked, but he’d refused.
“Look, I can’t get any wetter than I already am, so you just sit in the car until I’m done. Better yet, get in my car so we don’t have to worry about the jack falling or anything.” He guided her to his Range Rover and helped her in, a nice touch considering the circumstances. Alexis had a real thing for a man with nice manners. She appreciated the dry interior of the luxury vehicle as she inspected the SUV. It was very clean and tidy, except for some papers in a folder on the dashboard. Nosy as she was, she was dying to look through them, but she restrained herself. She did wonder what Seven-Seventeen meant, though; she saw the words on the folder and tried to figure out what they signified.
Suddenly all her attention was focused on her car and the man fixing it. Jared let out a yell that scared her half to death and she scrambled from the Range Rover to see what had happened. She was greeted by Jared holding his arm, his very bloody arm.
“Heavenly
