asked.
“Yes.” I nodded. “Absolutely.”
“I asked if you thought I was a good vampire.”
“Oh.” My face fell. “Eugene, I’m sorry, you’re super interesting. It’s just that—”
“No.” He stood, a sad smile on his face. “I get it; sometimes I get carried away with music stuff. Look . . .” He pulled a piece of paper out of his pocket and held it out to me. It had his name with a time and location for his next concert. “If you ever think of ditching your ex-boyfriend”—he pointed back at Lex—“or ever decide it’s time to get over him for good, you should come to one of my shows. I think you’d like it.” He dropped a twenty on the counter and walked away.
The minute the door closed, Lex pushed the girl off his lap and said something, then laughed. Clearly he’d pissed her off because she stomped away.
He winked at me, shrugged, stood, and then sauntered over.
“Prostitute of yours?” I asked sweetly.
“Silly, innocent little Gabs.” He shook his head. “It’s only prostitution if money exchanges hands.”
“And bodily fluids?”
“You tell me, were there any bodily fluids? You were looking hard enough.”
“Like a car wreck, it’s hard to look away when you’ve got a girl jerking you off in the middle of a family establishment.”
“The off didn’t happen. Thought you noticed.” The prick actually had the audacity to adjust himself right in front of me.
“Aw.” I played a tiny violin with my two fingers. “Poor Lex.”
“So . . .” He leaned in. “What happened to Eugene?”
“He had a thing.” I nodded confidently, then slammed the piece of paper against Lex’s rock-hard chest. “But we’re going to hang out later.”
“Want me to come so I can provide the free show again?”
I rolled my eyes. “I don’t watch porn.”
“Me either.”
I threw my head back and laughed. “Yeah, okay.”
He actually frowned, like I’d hurt his feelings.
I shook it off. “You gonna give me a ride home?”
“That depends. Are you going to annoy the hell out of me the entire way back?”
“No,” I lied. I lived to irritate him. It kept the line between us firmly in place. The universe balanced.
He rolled his eyes. “Fine, I’ll give you a ride home, only if you promise I get you for an hour tomorrow.”
“No.”
“Yes.” He crossed his arms. “Got all night, Gabs.”
“Fine,” I grumbled. “But just an hour. I mean, what else could I possibly need to know about the business? Just give me my first client, and I’ll knock it out of the park.”
Lex tapped his chin. “That confident, huh?”
“Absolutely.”
“Fine.”
“Fine!”
“Fine.” He cracked a smile.
What had I just agreed to?
Chapter Seven
Lex
Later that night, when sleep failed me, I was stuck staring up at the boring white ceiling, wondering why the hell I’d told Ashley to run along when I could have been balls deep inside her.
Gabs.
She was the reason, damn it.
All the bad things in my life easily could be traced back to her, like the time I got a black eye from an elderly lady at Costco because Gabs just had to have the last bag of Pirate’s Booty.
The elderly lady cried.
I was arrested.
The Pirate’s Booty? Lost.
Or the time I nearly failed midterms because she had a flat tire and Ian was out of town, leaving me as the only option to help her. My professors thought it was just an excuse. Then again, word had gotten around that I had slept with a few of their daughters.
But it wasn’t like they hadn’t been willing.
With a curse, I kicked off the down comforter and padded over to my computer.
I had one new e-mail.
From Gabs.
“All filled out!” The subject said, with all the forms attached.
With a confident smile, I clicked on the first one, the one with her Social, and very easily answered her security questions for Bank of the Cascades.
Favorite family pet? Scooter. An aging goldfish that her parents replaced whenever it went belly up. He had originally died when she was six, but she hadn’t noticed the changeover until she was eighteen. Right. Eighteen.
Mother’s maiden name? Hernandez.
And finally . . . best friend. Ian Hunter. Though the details were a bit sketchy, it seemed that the Sava family had basically adopted Ian when he was young. His own parents had barely paid attention to him, and then they died, leaving him a shitload of money. Not that it had mattered; he would rather have had parents.
Instead, he had Gabs.
The one girl he’d told me was off-limits.
“Hah, dodged that bullet,” I muttered to myself,