“Hmmph.”

He snickered at my distaste. “I take it that you’ve never thought about being turned into a vampire?”

I pulled a frown. “Well, everything I cooked would taste spoiled and rotten to me. Not exactly a great career move.”

“Good point.” He sighed, pushed to his feet, and wiped his hands on his jeans, as if his palms had been sweating. “OK, get up, wash your face, and show me some of these samples that made your friends upchuck.”

I sniffed, more than a little startled by his friendly tone and the way he stretched his long fingers toward mine. I was sure I’d misheard him. “What?”

“Look, I’ve tried coming up with a contest entry of my own, but I can’t boil water without startin’ a fire. And you can’t seem to grasp the whole vampire-taste-bud thing. But if we combine our efforts, we might have a chance at winnin’ this thing.”

“That’s why I’ve been finding the burned pans? You were cooking on your own?”

“Sadly, yes.”

I cackled, making him pout a little. “What temperature setting were you using on the stove?”

He frowned. “There are different settings?”

I rubbed my temples. “I weep for you, I really do. But I have plans for that prize money, as much as I want to help you stick it to Lindy.”

“I know, you just bought Howlin’ Hank’s, and you need the money to fix it up,” he said. When my jaw dropped, he added, “It’s a small town. Word gets around, even to the hermits.”

“So if you know I need the money, why are you asking me to do this?”

He dropped to bended knee in an exaggerated show of chivalry. He took my hand in his cool, slim fingers and pressed both over his still heart. His dark eyes twinkled as he looked up at me. “Because I have a proposal for you. I’ll help you perfect the recipe for your entry. If you win, you give me the prize money so I can buy the house from Lindy. In exchange, I will do all of the renovations on your restaurant, for the cost of materials.”

“You’re screwing with me,” I scoffed. “If I helped you, and I’m not saying I will, you would run off with the money, leaving me with squat.”

“I wouldn’t,” he swore. “I may be a lot of things, but I’m a man of my word. And if it makes you feel any better, I’d sign a contract with you, guaranteeing my services. We could file it with the Council office.”

I pinched my lips into a prim expression to prevent the crazy grin that threatened to split my face. “I have other vampire friends who are willing to be my guinea pigs.”

“None of them can hang drywall like I can.”

Why did that sound slightly dirty when he said it? I eyed him suspiciously. As much as I wanted to rain some sort of biblical vengeance upon Sam’s snotty blond ex, I didn’t really want to be pulled into their marital drama. I did not need to take on other people’s stress when I was just learning to manage my own, and I found angry-married-people baggage to be particularly distasteful. But Sam had been honest with me, more honest than my last three boyfriends. And frankly, he did do some very nice work around the house. I would love to see what he could do for the restaurant.

“Come on, Tess, what do you say?” he said, the sound of my name on his lips making my stomach do strange, flippy things.

I shuddered but managed to maintain what little composure I had left as I said, “I don’t even know if I want to use you as a contractor.”

“Aw, come on, you can play dirty all you want, but don’t play dumb,” he countered, sounding miffed at the slight against his abilities.

Snickering, I reached out my other hand for an official shake, then retracted it, narrowing my eyes at him. “This isn’t another prank?”

He dropped my hand and held up his own in a mockery of the Boy Scout oath. “I promise.”

“I’m going to need some time to think about it.”

He rose to his feet, standing a little closer to me than I was comfortable with. I backed up, only to bump against the counter. “I understand. And while you’re thinking, I just want you to consider one thing.”

“What?”

He grinned at me with those sharp white teeth, making my knees wobble a bit. I held on to the counter for support as he leaned closer and whispered, “How much it’s going to piss Lindy off when she realizes her ‘renter’ is helping to snatch the house out from under her.”

Blending Oil and Water

8

Hey, Sam!” I called. “Would you come taste this?”

I hovered over the rust-colored mixture bubbling merrily in my saucepan, waiting for just the right moment of consistency to remove it from the heat. I whisked the pan from the stove and stirred it carefully before noting the time and cooking temperature in my little recipe notebook.

On the other side of the house, I heard the whining peal of an electric drill. But this time, instead of attempting to drive me insane, Sam was putting up a heavy-duty curtain rod for sunproof shades.

In the last week or so, we’d developed a routine at the Lassiter house. I would visit Jolene, nap, or experiment with new recipes during the day. Then I’d make dinner and warm up some blood just in time for Sam to rise. We’d eat together, hold completely ridiculous conversations about ’80s music, our favorite tacky monster movies, and whether reality television would be the social factor that finally triggered the apocalypse.

Sam would work through the samples I’d prepared that day, and—depending on whether or not I’d made him violently ill—we’d spend the rest of the night making small changes in the recipes.

While we talked about movies, music, food, sports, and any number of pop-culture phenomena, we rarely ventured into territory as personal as his revelations about his marriage to Lindy. It seemed to have made him uncomfortable, being that open, and he’d retreated to safer topics. That was fine, as long as we kept talking. Now that we were on the same team, I was seeing a whole new side to Sam—funny, laid-back, sensible, easy with a smile, and quick to admit when his cooking advice went horribly awry. I didn’t feel I had to play down my accomplishments, as I had to with so many men I’d dated before. I didn’t have to pretend to be a delicate little flower who rarely ate more than a salad with dressing on the side. Because Sam knew I was neither delicate nor flowerlike. And he’d seen me eat an entire quart of Three Little Pigs hash-brown casserole in one sitting. I could be myself with Sam, the unglossed, cooking-in-a-wife-beater-and-yoga-pants, “real” version of me that Phillip hadn’t met until we’d been dating for six months. We’d barely lasted seven.

I would miss our evenings together when I moved into the apartment over my as-yet-unnamed eatery. Maybe we’d arrange some sort of vampire-food-for-maintenance-work barter system after I opened, just so we could keep in touch.

I spent several afternoons helping Chef Gamling with the church dinners. On the rare evening I didn’t spend with Chef or Sam, I was with Jolene and her friends. Jolene was very quickly becoming my first meaningful friendship outside of the kitchen. She was funny, warm, smart in a no-nonsense, “don’t try to screw with me just because I’m gorgeous” way that sort of made me want to have her babies. Not that I would, because (a) science wasn’t quite there yet, and (b) she seemed pretty attached to Zeb, for whom I also had very fond feelings.

I’d found a circle of friends here. And I was really enjoying my time with them. Jolene had talked her uncles into letting me shadow them in their kitchen at the Three Little Pigs. Jane had invited me to one of her infamous girls’ movie nights, which guaranteed that I would never look at Jane Austen adaptations ever again.

Sam’s voice behind me drew me out of my musings. “You hollered?”

“Did you like Italian food when you were human? Because this has chicken stock and Marsala wine. The cooking process should have left a result that won’t make you sick.”

“Should?” he said, eyeing the shot glass suspiciously.

Without responding to his concerns, I added, “Just try it.” I pushed the shot glass toward his lips.

“But you said you weren’t sure about it,” he protested.

I took the shot glass out of his hand and pressed it to his lips.

“That’s not bad,” he said.

“No nausea?”

“Can I have another?”

“Try this one,” I said. “It’s like barbecue sauce. Honey, liquid smoke, pork stock, and other by-products you may not want to know about.”

“There’s pig’s blood in here?” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“How is it different from drinking human blood?” I asked. “Besides, if you ate bacon in life, it’s a little hypocritical to turn your nose up at pig’s blood now.”

“Oh,” he said, sighing, after knocking back the shot. “Now I just really miss ribs.”

“My blender cannot handle rib bones,” I told him.

“This,” he informed me, lifting the barbecue sauce, “is awesome. If you could bottle this, you would kick the crap out of Paul Newman and his salad dressings.”

“Paul Newman’s dead,” I reminded him, narrowing my eyes. “Unless there’s something you and the vampire community have to explain to me.”

“That’s not nice,” he said. “You could be the first celebrity chef for vampires, like Rachael Ray or, if Mr. Gamling keeps giving you those dumplin’s, that Paula Deen chick.”

“Thank you for reminding me why being nice to you is never a good idea, you ass.”

He leaned in close, his brown eyes twinkling. “Oh, come on, Tess, I’m sorry. You can be as nice to me and my ass as you want.”

“I’m not touching that one.”

He smirked. “You know you want to.”

“Do you want to go back to cricket warfare again? Because I’m feeling a trip to the bait shop coming on.”

He shuddered, giving me the vampire puppy-dog eyes, which was just disturbing. “Please, ma’am, don’t unleash your biblical plagues of bitchery upon my household.”

I laughed, shoving at his shoulder. He was so close, and my arm was pulled flush against his chest. I closed my eyes, enjoying the vibrations from his laughter traveling from his chest through my fingertips, all the way up my arm to my heart. It was like feeling the pulse he no longer had. I felt my lips part in a smile so wide my cheeks ached. This wouldn’t do. I couldn’t let him see that smile and know what a big part he played in it. I dipped my head, glancing down at the feet so closely arranged we could have been dancing. My forehead brushed against his shoulder. He tucked his fingertips under my chin and tilted my head toward his. His eyes were hooded and dark and stared right through me. His lips looked so soft, even turned into that slightly mocking grin he was giving me. I could stand up on my tippy-toes, or maybe on a chair, and kiss him so easily.

But I didn’t.

Smiling awkwardly, I stepped away and took a deep breath. He wasn’t ready. And no matter how loudly my raging hormones screamed, You moron, do you realize how long it’s been since anyone has gone near your forbidden zones? I couldn’t be the one to decide that he was over his ex-wife.

He was going to have to make the first move. And considering the fact that I was standing immediately lip-adjacent and he didn’t give me a 20 percent lean-in, I didn’t think he was going to be doing that anytime soon.

“So, the barbecue sauce, huh?”

He nodded, taking a step back. “That’s your winner.”

—

The nights went by faster than I imagined they could. We focused our efforts on perfecting the barbecue sauce. We experimented with cooking times, temperatures, spices, sauce bases, until Sam pronounced it almost as good as eating real food when he was human. Sam and I visited the restaurant and discussed the changes he would make, including improvements to the apartment upstairs. My calendar filled up with closings with the Realtor, appointments with the bank, and drinks with the girls. Before I knew it, we were bumping down the country road toward town in Sam’s truck, with our contest entry carefully balanced on my lap.