—

I’d broken Andrea’s streak and then some. My poor ladies’ room would never be the same.

Hours later, I sat at the Lassiter house’s kitchen counter, my face buried in my hands. I’d never cooked anything bad before. When I was a culinary student, I’d gotten cocky with the seasonings and turned a simple roast chicken into a garlic-soaked mess. Even then, I’d managed to turn the carcass into a palatable soup and gotten partial credit.

“What did I do?” I groaned, thunking my head on the counter. I let it rest there as hot tears tracked down my cheeks. If I didn’t come up with a prize-winning entry, I had no shot at the money I needed for renovations. Who would want to eat in a restaurant with a semiprivate bathroom?

A cool hand awkwardly patted my head, followed by an arm slipping around my shoulder. I glanced up through my hair to see Sam sitting next to me, stretching his body as far away from me as possible, as if he was cuddling up to an incendiary device.

“There, there,” he said, his voice resigned and sheepish as he patted my head. “I’m sorry I hurt your pans.”

“What?” I exclaimed, snorting far too loudly as my head popped up.

Sam looked stricken, his cheeks pale(r) and his brown eyes clouded with concern. His lean frame was curved around mine almost protectively, and I found I didn’t want to move away. Hell, I wanted to move closer. I sniffed, offering him a watery smile.

“Don’t flatter yourself. This is not about you.” I waved a hand at my tear-stained cheeks. “This is just… everything. I’ve been on this roller coaster, feeling like a failure, feeling almost normal, feeling I’ve got it all figured out, and then right back at failure again. Only this time, I don’t know if I can bounce back. I have hubris-ed myself right into a corner, and I don’t even think that’s a verb.”

“Psfff.” He snorted, pulling a bar stool close to mine and sitting. “Failure. Trust me, I know failure. Whatever this is, it’s just a bump in the road. I moved here to try to save my marriage. And livin’ here is what destroyed it.”

“I’m sorry,” I said. “I heard that Lindy didn’t handle your, er, transition, very well.”

He scoffed. “You know, her brother was one of my best friends. He warned me against her, and not just in that ‘friends don’t mess around with their friends’ sisters’ way. He told me Lindy was a ‘wanter.’ She planned and prayed, but then once she had whatever ‘it’ was, she didn’t want it anymore. She got a degree in marketing but decided she wanted to be a medical coder. I rented us an apartment, but she wanted out of the lease by the third month. She went through three wedding dresses before I even proposed.

“I thought she would settle down, be happy, once we were married. We were living in Nashville. I was workin’ as a project manager for this big construction firm. Lots of hours, lots of travelin’. I hardly ever saw Lindy. She’s the one who pushed for us to move. This house, in this town, was supposed to save our marriage. A quieter life, less stress, more time together.”

“And it didn’t work?”

He grimaced, that cute little constellation of freckles disappearing into the creases under his eyes. “It turned out that not spending time together was what held our marriage together for so long in the first place.”

“Ouch.”

“I fit right into the Hollow. There are nice people here. It was a good place if we wanted to raise a family. My business picked up faster than I expected. Lindy just sort of drifted, which was unusual for her. She couldn’t find friends. It was too quiet for her. She didn’t like livin’ in a work in progress. When she saw how happy I was, I think it pissed her off. I think she decided that I was the latest thing she just didn’t want anymore.

“I wasn’t perfect,” he admitted when I made a derisive snorting noise. “The more Lindy tried to tell me what I should and shouldn’t do, the more I dug in and did what I thought I needed. I thought that once the place was finished, it would get better. Livin’ our life in this house, livin’ up to its potential, was supposed to fix things. But then I took that job for Hans and got turned. I know it was scary for her, not knowing if I was dead or not, not knowing what it would be like, married to me. But hell, it was scary for me, too. I woke up, and she was gone. Our life together was gone. And when I tried to talk to her about it, well, she freaked out. Called me a monster, told me to stay away from her. And I… may have gotten Hulk-angry and thrown a couch through a window.”

“Wow.”

“Not my finest moment,” he admitted, running his fingers through his unruly hair. His mouth formed a slanted, rueful grin. “Lindy, of course, insisted I was too dangerous to be around normal people. Called her family, our friends, my friends here in town, to ‘warn’ them about my new nature and how fast I could turn on humans. Damn near ruined the life I’d built here, but she was scared and confused, and I guess I can’t blame her.”

I muttered, “I can.” He frowned at me, making me shrug. “I’m a grudge holder.”

“She’s puttin’ the house on the market on October 28,” he said, his voice toneless and resigned. “All the property went to her when I died. But thanks to the Council’s intervention, I got to stay here, and she had to return the holdings for my construction business—the business account, the tools, equipment, and such—and I have until October 28 to buy her out of the house. I’ve been working a little, doing nighttime projects for one of our neighbors, Mr. Calix. He’s added a fence, an outbuilding, and a finished basement to his house in the last few months. I think he’s just doin’ it because he’s tryin’ to help me out, but he’s too nice to say anythin’ about it. It hasn’t been enough to save what I need.”

I muttered, “That explains why the drills didn’t start until the wee hours some nights.”

“I had to squeeze annoyin’ you in where I could,” he admitted, grinning sheepishly. “I am sorry you got pulled into this mess. Lindy was using you, leasin’ the house to you while I was still here. She was countin’ on something called the Vampire Squatters’ Act. Right after the Comin’ Out, human mortgage companies and landlords got tired of newly turned vampires just walking away from their homes, figurin’ that mortgages and leases didn’t apply to them anymore. So the government declared that any vampire who left their property for more than thirty-two days had abandoned it.

“She must have a buyer lined up already. If I raise the money before the deadline, she has to sell me the house. That’s why she rented it. She thought if some tenant annoyed me enough, I would move out for the length of the lease, and the house would be considered abandoned to her. She’d be free to sell it without giving me a dime.”

“So I was her backup plan? I think that hurts my feelings,” I mumbled, my face flushing hot with shame. No wonder Sam had put up such a fight against leaving, despite my campaign against him. I hated the idea that I’d been helping Lindy, albeit unwittingly, try to drive Sam away from this place. The manipulative little wench would pay for that.

“I’m really sorry about the crickets,” I said, my voice soft. “And the ghost chili. And gluing your car keys to the counter. Well, I’m pretty sure you deserved the chili thing, but—this is not how a normal person behaves. I’m sorry. I can’t leave, but I don’t want to be this crazy wok-swinging whackaloon anymore. If we could just find a way to share the house for just a little while longer, I swear I won’t attack you again. I’m supposed to be resting, not plotting.”

“I don’t want to do this anymore, either. I’m afraid we’re going to escalate to the point where one of us is left with a permanent limp,” he said. “And to my everlastin’ shame, between the two of us, your pranks seem to be more effective, so I’m all for a ceasefire.”

“It’s not even that I don’t like you,” I said, wiping at my dripping nose with my sleeve just as Sam tried to hand me a red bandanna from his back pocket. “There’s nothing specific about you not to like. Other than your mere presence.

“I will stay out of the basement,” I swore. “If you agree to stay away from my cookware.”

“Agreed,” he said, patting my shoulder again. “We’re goin’ to be OK. When I’m not actively tryin’ to get rid of someone, I’m actually a very easygoin’ roommate.”

“Oh, sure, you’re a charmer.” I lifted my head and looked directly at him for the first time since the conversation started. It amazed me that I could move it so easily. My neck felt as if it had had a bowling ball lifted off it.

“If we’re going to make an honest go of this, we’re going to have to abide by some rules.”

“More rules? I’ve already agreed not to attack you with kitchen implements!” I exclaimed, feigning indignation.

He gave me a withering, and somehow incredibly sexy, glare.

“Such as?” I asked.

“I stay out of your room,” he said. “And you stay out of mine.”

“Like I wanted to visit your lair.” I snorted.

“I think a part of you is a little curious about it,” he said, grinning cheekily.

“I’m a little curious about tattoos,” I shot back. “Doesn’t mean I’m going to get a tramp stamp.”

“I think you’d look hot with a tramp stamp,” he said, tilting his head and giving me a long, speculative look that made a shiver ripple up my spine. “A cute little kitten… wavin’ a very sharp knife.”

“Funny,” I retorted. “And on that note, I promise that I won’t threaten you with my knives anymore. No more hitting you with pans. No more tainting your blood with evil pepper juice. If you’re civil to me, I’m civil to you. It’s what I should have said in the first place.”

“Agreed. And I will stop callin’ you a psycho.”

“You called me a psycho?”

He shrugged. “Not to your face.” He took a long pull from the bottle of synthetic blood, the faintest lines of a grimace crinkling the corners of his mouth.

“Not as good as the real thing?” I asked.

His brows drew up in surprise. “You offering?”

“No,” I said, shaking my head emphatically. “No, no, no. I’m just curious about what that tastes like to you. What would make it taste better, that sort of thing. I’m trying to enter this cooking contest for vampires—”

“The Bloody Bake-Off?”

“Yes, and I can’t quite get a grasp on what I’m supposed to be doing. It’s more than that—I’m, aw hell, I’m just sucking beyond the telling of it.” I unwrapped the remnants of the red-wine reduction sauce and held it up for him to sniff. “I’ve done everything I can to cover up the taste of the synthetic blood, but all of my efforts made my vampire friends sick. And if I don’t figure out what I’m doing wrong, my life here in the Hollow is going to be… well, less than I’d hoped.”

He brought the sauce up to his face and winced. “You’re probably lookin’ at it from your own perspective, what tastes good to you. You make something that sounds good for a human palate and then add some blood. You need to think about what tastes good to a vampire, start with the blood, and work from there.” He held up the half-empty bottle of synthetic blood. “This doesn’t taste like anything. For vampires, it’s not so much bein’ hungry as bein’ really, really thirsty. You can’t think of anything else until you feed. Human blood, donated or live-fed, answers that thirst and lets you think clearly again. This? This is like drinkin’ water when you could be havin’ an ice-cold lemonade.”