“What can I do for you?” The words didn’t feel natural coming out of her mouth. She rarely had to speak at work, let alone help a customer. It’s why she worked in Housewares, the only department without a monthly sales quota for its workers.
His broad shoulders relaxed, but he didn’t smile. “I was in here a couple of days ago, and you helped me pick out a sheet set.”
“Seven-hundred-count Egyptian cotton in black with a damask stripe.”
There was a twinge at his mouth. “You’ve got a great memory.”
“It was my only sale this month.” She finally saw a white plastic bag hanging around his wrist. “Did you need to return them?”
“No. Actually, I’d like another.”
“Oh. Um. This way.”
She walked him over to the exact same spot they had stood last week. She felt stalked, like a dark cloud just before a storm was following her. It only intensified when she turned to him at the display and found that the storm was in his dark blue eyes.
She really wasn’t sure what happened next. She didn’t really do the customer thing, except at Christmastime when everyone was looking for the electric blankets, and that was mostly pointing like a game-show host, like she was doing now. “Ta-da.”
God, she had actually said that out loud. She was pathetic. She tucked her hair behind her ear and waited, staring down at his unusually shiny black shoes. Come to notice it, he was a little dressed up for sheet shopping.
“Thank you,” he said as he took another set, exactly the same.
In his smooth movement, she was flooded with the smell of him, a musky cologne with undernotes of Downy, but there was a darker twang to it. Something familiar tickled her nose.
As he inspected the plastic package, she looked up at him. His tired blue eyes, his pale skin. But even her caramel skin looked peaked under these lights. It was probably nothing.
“Did you need the matching comforter? It’s on sale.” Wow, maybe she was cut out for this sales thing.
“Sure.” He chuckled. “Lead the way.”
She walked him over to the wall of comforters. “The store brand is pretty nice. Comes with a bed skirt.”
“Never really understood the need for a bed skirt.”
“My abuelita believes it keeps the dust bunnies from nesting.”
He laughed. It was a deep laugh, short but honest. “Good to know.”
“We have pillows, too.”
“I think I’m good on pillows. I have to walk home.”
“Walk? No one walks in Dallas.”
“I enjoy the exercise.”
And it showed. Even under his black trench, she could see the broad expanse of his chest and how his buttons strained when he’d reached for the sheets. Given the wrinkled shirt under her dusty apron, she looked like she didn’t shower. But then again, until him, no one had noticed her. Ever.
“Can I help you find anything else?”
He opened his mouth but closed it again and shook his head.
“Then the cash register is this way.”
As she walked him back to the register, she felt it, that pressure in the back of her head. She wondered if all girls got this when they were being followed, like she could feel him looking at her, watching her messy ponytail bob back and forth.
And he just kept looking at her, and she just kept smiling like an idiot as she rang up the bed set. “Total is seventy-three ninety six.”
“That is a good sale.” He handed her the credit card again, and again, his hand trembled. This time she paid attention to the name. Val Lance. Very knightly.
She ran the card and handed it back to him. Their fingers brushed for a second, and his fingers were cold, like touching an ice cube. She snapped her hand back.
“Sorry about that,” he apologized as he put his card back in his wallet and his wallet in his coat pocket, not in the back pocket like most boys these days. “I really should start wearing gloves.”
“We have gloves in men’s wear.” She blushed when she realized that she hadn’t talked so much in ages. She was like a babbling brook under his intense gaze.
Esme pulled her hair behind her ear and slipped his purchases into the handled paper bag.
“I came to get your number.” The statement spilled out of his mouth like a gangly kid in a foot race.
Her jaw dropped as her brain contemplated the possible answers to “Why?”
His blond brow furrowed. “To ask you out for coffee?”
Excited goose bumps trickled down her arm. “Why do you need my number to do that? Just do it now.”
He laughed that one short laugh and let out a long breath. “Would you do me the honor of having coffee with me?”
She looked up at him and into those tired blue eyes. They were old. Older than her abuelita’s, but she felt seen. For the first time in a long time, she felt like she was a normal girl. That should be something, right? Even if it was just a cup of coffee before he realized how completely boring she was, and he forgot her like everyone else did. “Yeah. Yes.”
He smiled, and something glowed within him. It was a wide smile that completely changed the dynamic of his features. It lit up his eyes and chased away the storm clouds. “Wonderful. May I have your number so we can set up a time?”
“Actually, I don’t have a phone.”
“Why not?”
“No one remembers to call me.”
She wanted to giggle but fought the light, fluttering feelings in her stomach. She knew exactly where to meet. One of her favorite places in Dallas, where the baristas never forgot her order. “There’s this coffee shop off Oaklawn. Big black cat in the window?”
She watched as what little blood colored his cheeks faded, and his Adam’s apple bobbed slowly.
“Do you know it?”
He licked his lips. “I sort of know the owner.”
“Really? I love that place.” She let one excited smile slip.
“Thursday night?”
She nodded.
“So Thursday. Coffee shop. Eight?”
“Sounds good. I’m Esme, by the way.” She stuck out her hand.
“Val,” he said.
As his cool hand slipped into hers, she shivered again, this time with excitement as the hair prickled on the back of her neck.
He squeezed gently, then pulled away. “See you on Thursday, Esme.”
She stayed behind the counter for at least fifteen minutes after watching him walk away. What had gotten into her? Did someone seriously just ask her out on a date? And not just a someone. A tall, Viking-looking thing who should be wielding a sword and not sipping coffee.
Esme smiled. Her first date. Her abuelita was going to be so proud. And she might just go upstairs and visit Hannah Jane in Juniors to find something to wear.
Chapter Two
UP UNTIL THAT moment, Valiance was convinced vampires didn’t sweat. One hundred and sixty-seven years old, and he was as nervous as a long-tailed cat. It made him smile. Violet would appreciate that. Violet wound be proud of this whole endeavor, no matter how badly it ended. He wiped his palms on the legs of his jeans before he took a deep breath and pulled open the door.
The smell of humans hit him hard in the gut. He should have fed. He’d thought about it, but there was an echo within him whispering he shouldn’t pulse with someone else’s blood, someone else’s life, on his date with Esme. Some very old-fashioned part of him wanted him to be pure for this.
Like he could ever be pure again. He had the lives of a thousand people running through his veins. One more shouldn’t have mattered. But it did tonight.
His nose twitched with the soft scent of baby powder and flowers. His gaze was drawn to the front window, where Esme was sitting in the window seat, watching him with doe-like eyes.
She stood and smoothed her green skirt over her dark leggings and pulled at her jacket. Her rose sweater reminded him of just that, a flower, with her soft scent and delicate features.
Esme met him halfway to the register. “Hi.” Her eyes fluttered somewhere around his elbow as she pulled her dark hair behind her ear.
“Hello.” He led her over to the register. “What’s your usual?”
“The Mexican Mocha. It’s got this kick like Abuelita makes.”
Valiance turned to the manager. Bastian was one of the few humans in Dallas who knew of the Wanderer community and happily served them coffees and cookies. It struck Valiance that this might be the first time he’d ordered anything here. “Two Mexican Mochas.”
Bastian raised his eyebrow at the order. “Really?”
Valiance pressed his lips together in a tight smile. “Please?”
The manager shrugged and rang up their coffees. “It will be a moment. I’m a little behind on orders.”
“Are you hiring?” Esme asked.
Bastian laughed as he went to make their drinks. “Don’t I wish.”
Valiance saw an instant of sadness cross her eyes, and a metal hook pierced his heart. He needed to change the subject quickly. “You talk about your grandmother a lot.”
“I live with her.” Esme dropped her face into her hands, and the flower scent around her increased as she blushed. “I wasn’t going to tell you that. Now I look pathetic. A twenty-two-year-old still living at home.”
Valiance chuckled. “Families should live together.”
She peeked out from between two fingers. “Really?”
FROM THAT MOMENT on, he was sunk. She was adorable. And nervous. And honest. She spun the porcelain cup in its saucer as she talked about her college literature courses and how the poetry class she was taking now was her last before she graduated though she didn’t know what she could do with her degree. She talked about her incredibly large family and how she had to live with her grandmother to get any peace because everyone in her family was loud and in each other’s business. She talked about how he was the first customer who ever asked for her again.
“Oh God. I shouldn’t have said that. You’re going to think I’m even more pathetic.”
“I’m not going to think you’re pathetic.”
She scrunched her nose. “Can you tell I don’t talk to people much?”
“Probably more than I do.”
She raised an eyebrow. “So now we’re going to play who’s more pathetic?”
“I’d win. I work in a storefront alone, selling things online. The only person I talked to this week was the mailman. And you.”
She smiled up at him, her sparkling brown eyes, her rosy lips, her sharp chin. The only thing that could have pulled him away from that moment was the spike of icy energy that rammed down his spine and made him jerk.
The café was suddenly less illuminated than it had been a moment earlier, a grim shadow quickly cast over his evening. His hand moved to his neck and inside the collar of his jacket. He brushed the familiar hilt just to make sure. He’d tried to leave the house without his sword, but it had been his only companion through all this. And, frankly, he felt nak*d without it.
“Something wrong?” Esme asked. “Something’s wrong. You went all stony.”
He was honest. “I don’t know.”
“Did it get cold in here?” She rubbed her hands up and down the arms of her jacket.
“More than just cold,” he said as he scanned the front windows of the shop. It was never cold here, part of the spell the Prima had put on the place. “It’s time to go.”
“Oh. Um. Okay.”
“Where’s your car?”
“In the lot out back.”
“Let’s go.”
She didn’t question him. She just grabbed her bag and put it across her chest, taking one last drag of the mocha before he escorted toward the rear of the café.
“Are we allowed back here?” she whispered as he ushered her through the storage room.
“I know the owner, remember?”
He guided her through the dark and toward the glow of moonlight from the back door window. His senses heightened by the fear creeping down his back, he was completely lost in the smell of her hair, the flowers, and her warmth as it pushed against him in the darkness.
He knew right then that she was too good for him. Too sweet. Too pure. What was he thinking even talking to her?
Valiance reached around her to push open the back door, and they broke out into the cold night.
“Which one is yours?” he asked as he reached into his front pocket to get his cell phone.
“The . . .”
Esme sucked the words back in with a gasp as a dark figure swooped down and skittered in the gravel before them. Valiance pulled her behind him. He inhaled sharply as she buried her face between his shoulder blades, pressing the long, hard edge of iron against his spine.
The darkness faded around the figure, and his Clade Brother Mondrian’s violently blue eyes smiled at him. “Nice to see you again, Valiance.”
Six months of loneliness hit Valiance like a load of bricks in the pit of his stomach. “What do you want?”
Mondrian ran his fingers through his long brown hair, then pulled at the cuffs of his black leather jacket. “A little hospitality, for starters.”
“What do you want, Mondrian?” Valiance repeated.
Mondrian spread his hands out. “Just to talk, older brother.”
Slowly, Valiance pressed his cell phone into Esme’s leg. Her hand wrapped around the phone, catching his fingers in hers for a moment. The thrill of it jumped up his arm and made him stand straighter. “Now is not a good time.”
Mondrian’s rage twisted his usually perfect face. “You think you’re too good for your Clade now? That shifter bitch tell you that?”
This wasn’t right. Mondrian’s first emotion wasn’t anger. His brother would have tried charm first, seduction. Swung around to flattery before resorting to anger. This wasn’t a hospitality visit, and the knowledge grated on Valiance’s nerves, setting everything on edge.