Dead and Dateless (24 page)

“Oh, I forgot. The super in my building is really bad ass with a power tool. He’s not much in the looks department because he had his nose broken back when he played high school football, but he’s got a great physique. On top of that, he’s single.”

“Does he have red hair?”

“Are you kidding? Anyway, he’s in his late twenties, single, and looking strictly for a little enthusiastic female companionship. Or to quote him, ‘A broad that really puts out.’ Tell me again why we’re remotely interested in players like this?”

“Because our clients want players.”

“For sex.”
Yawwwwn.
“So we’re like a sex service instead of a dating service.”

Actually, we were more like a procreation service, but I wasn’t going to tell Evie that. I ignored my own twinge of conscience. Survival of the species, I re minded myself. Higher purpose. Yada yada.

“Because if that’s what we are,” Evie went on, “we’ll have to lose the ‘happily ever after’ part of our ad. Maybe we could go with temporarily ever after?”

“You haven’t had your morning coffee, have you?”

“It’s five-thirty. I haven’t even opened my eyes yet.”

“We’re not setting up sex sessions. We’re a matchmaking service, i.e., we provide the initial match. What happens after they meet, be it sex, or falling in love, or both, is totally up to the individuals.”

“True. Besides we’re talking a whopper of a retainer fee.”

Have I mentioned that Evie and I were sisters in a past life? “And a bonus when we provide an Alpha Doody.”

“
If
we provide one.”

Okay, so maybe we were more like cousins. Second cousins. “Think optimistic.”

“It’s
five-thirty.
The only thing I’m thinking about right now is how many more minutes I can squeeze in before the alarm goes off. And speaking of squeezing, how goes it with the bounty hunter?”

“For the last time, I’m not with the bounty hunter. I’m flying solo. No accomplices.
Nada.
”

“You’re not getting any, are you?”

Not yet.

I squelched the thought. “Go back to sleep. I’ll call you later.”

“When it does happen, I want details,” she mumbled. “Lots of details.”
Click.

When.

Yeah, right.

Not my type, I reminded myself. I needed a born vampire.

Even more, I needed fifteen alpha males (in addition to the thirteen Evie had come up with), one of which had to be a redhead. And I needed them in less than five days (it was now Sunday and the full moon rolled around on Friday). Otherwise Viola and the NUNS were going to miss their one shot to grow the species.

Which meant they would be pissed.

Which meant they would demand their money back.

That, or my head on a stick so they could plant it right next to the controversial azalea bushes. A little birdseed in my mouth and I’d be doubling as a feeder for the rest of eternity.

The realization was enough to distract me from any lustful thoughts I may have had when Ty arrived back at the cabin with several bags of supplies. He had everything from bottled gourmet blood to a three-pack of plain white Hanes T-shirts and a few pairs of blue jeans.

“Connections,” he told me when I arched an eyebrow at him.

After he put everything away, he stripped down to a pair of white BVDs, and stretched out on the full-size bed below.

All right, already. Maybe I wasn’t
completely
distracted, but I only looked for a few heart-pounding moments before I managed to tear my gaze away.

I rolled onto my back and shifted my attention to the ceiling, and the real problem—a backup plan to grow my alpha list.

One that didn’t have me visiting every sports store in New York. Or every shooting range. Or every biker bar. I needed a plan that wouldn’t require me to leave the cabin, and risk capture, and piss off Ty.

The possibilities didn’t exactly rush at me, but I wasn’t going to be discouraged. I wasn’t afraid of hard work. Or of getting creative and thinking outside the box.

I
lived
outside the friggin’ box.

I could totally do this.

“I
can’t do this,” I told Ty.

It was Tuesday evening (yes,
Tuesday
) and I’d spent the past two days racking my brain for a viable method of rounding up alpha males without leaving the cabin, and I’d actually hit pay dirt.

Sort of.

I’d cruised every matchmaking site on the Internet and had come up with five more possibilities. Evie, bless her, had found an additional two, which gave us seven. Seven and thirteen made twenty. We were still eight shy, one of which had to have bright red hair.

Eight.

And the moon grew full in exactly three days.

“I mean it.” I paced toward the kitchen where Ty sat at the table, laptop in front of him. “I’m desperate.”

His gaze stayed riveted on the screen. “If you want out of this mess, you’ll have to be patient. This sort of thing takes time.”

“I’m not talking about the murder rap.” Ty’s quest for the real killer was going about as well as my search for an Alpha Doody.

Thanks to the cabin guy, we’d learned that the tip about my whereabouts had been made by an anonymous caller. What we didn’t know was whether or not the caller had been Remy Tremaine.

I waved a hand between him and the computer screen and he finally glanced up. “I’m talking about the Viola situation.”

She’d called to check my progress twice already.

Well, once to check my progress and the second time to inform me that she was taking out an official contract on my father and that she hoped his imminent death would in no way put a strain on our business arrangement. Apparently my dad had abandoned the weed killer idea and gone back to hacking away at the bushes himself. His choice of gardening tool? A chain saw.

Hey, his chain saw, his problem.

Anyhow, the point is, she’d
called.

“I’ve got exactly seventy-two hours to fulfill her re quests,” I told Ty. Short of it starting to rain men—I had to admit I’d actually resorted to praying (
do not
tell my mother)—I’d come to the painful conclusion that it wasn’t going to happen.

I was going to fail Viola and Dead End Dating would be royally screwed.

“Would you just calm down? Everything’s going to be all right.”

“Easy for you to say. You don’t have an ovulating werewolf breathing down your neck.”

He grinned. “That’s true.”

I frowned. “I’m glad you find this funny.”

“It
is
funny.”

“Because it’s not your ass on the line.” I eyed him. “Do you know how hard it is to sit idly by while everything you’ve worked so hard for just gets pushed aside and your life gets put on hold?”

He glanced around. Half-empty bottles of blood sat here and there (yep, he’d been bottling it since the “other” woman incident). A stack of paperwork overflowed one cabinet and kept growing thanks to the portable printer/fax he’d set up in place of the squirrel centerpiece to keep in touch with the outside world while he was on hiatus helping me. “I sure as hell wouldn’t know about that.”

“Okay, fine. But do you know what it’s like to have your ultimate dream dangled right in front of you, so close you could touch it? But the thing is, you can’t because your hands are tied?”

He eyed me and something dark and dangerous and sensual flashed in his gaze. “Nope.” His voice was deep and husky and I swallowed. “Wouldn’t know about that one, either.”

“Forget that.” My brain raced, desperate to trade
deep
and
husky
for
clear
and
to the point.
“I bet you don’t know what it’s like to have an employee depending on you for every mocha latte and TiVo and her ultimate
survival.
”

“Wouldn’t know what that’s like, either. I’ve got three depending on me.”

“Three employees?” My brain stopped racing and tried to process. “But you don’t even have a real office. Do you?”

“I don’t need a real office. I just need a cell phone and a computer. My guys do what needs to be done, wherever it needs to be done, whenever I tell them it needs to be done. I direct deposit the funds in return for their help.”

“You offer health insurance?” Evie had been bugging me for the past month and I’d promised to look around at a few different options for small businesses.

He shook his head. “I doubt they need it. They’re not exactly human.”

“Vamp?” When he shook his head again and opened his mouth, I waved a hand at him. “This is going to be another one of those ‘in a league all by himself’ things, right?”

“More like a legion.”

I
so
wasn’t going to ask, no matter how much I suddenly wanted to.

“Okay, so maybe you have an inkling of what I’m going through, but I bet you don’t have a stack of credit card bills waiting for you in your underwear drawer?”

“You got me there.” He shrugged. “I keep mine in the cookie jar.”

I frowned. “You’re a real comedian.”

“Come on.” He arched an eyebrow at me. “Your underwear drawer?”

“It’s the one place that I don’t go very often.” When he arched an eyebrow at me, I shook my head. “It’s not like that. I do wear underwear.” When it didn’t compromise the integrity of my outfit, that is. “I just don’t keep it in the drawer. I hand wash most everything and so it ends up hanging on the shower rod in the bathroom until I need it.” I shrugged. “I’m not much for laundry.”

“You’re not much for housework, either.” He glanced around at the chaos that surrounded us.

“And I’m not about to acquire a taste for it.”

He grinned. “I won’t get my hopes up, then.” He shifted his attention back to the computer and I went back to pacing.

I lasted all of ten minutes during which I turned on the television, tried my hand at several crossword puzzles, and even righted an empty bottle of blood that had tipped onto its side. Not that I was cleaning, mind you. I was straightening. Big difference.

“Ty.” I sank onto the camo-cushioned chair directly across the kitchen table from him and waited for him to look up.

That’s what I needed. His full attention. Then he would see how serious I was, and how miserable. And if he didn’t notice that, he was bound to notice how sexy and sultry I looked, particularly when I batted my eyelashes and flashed some cleavage. Then he would surely do anything I asked.

Made or born, he was still male.

He kept tapping away at his computer.

“Earth to Ty.”

Tap. Tap. Tap.

I abandoned the cleavage idea and gave him a great big mental kick in the ass.
“I’m naked!”

His head snapped up. “What?”

Case in point.

His gaze narrowed as it roved over me. “Very funny.”

“I’m not being funny. I’m being serious. I have to stop wasting time and get back to work. I can’t lose this client.”

“So get back to work. You’ve got a computer and a cell phone. What more do you need?”

“A Home Depot.”

“This isn’t Home Depot.” I glanced around at the cluttered store, the shelves overflowing with everything from female sanitary products to deer corn. I spotted a stack of prepackaged Hanes and a folded mountain of Wrangler jeans, and I knew this had been one of Ty’s stops when he’d gone out for supplies our first night upstate. A hand painted placard that read
Morty’s Commissary
hung behind the cashier’s counter, along with a faded
Nixon for President
sign and an autographed picture of Babe Ruth.

“It’s the best I can do. Besides, there’s a hardware section.” Ty motioned to the right and I turned to see a small shelf filled with hammers, screwdrivers, and several coffee cans full of nails.

I glared at him. “You said you were taking me to a hardware store.”

“I said a store. You assumed it was a hardware store because I said it was the next best thing to Home Depot.”

“Another lie.”

“Hey, around these parts this is Home Depot.”

“This is a retirement home.” I pointed toward the two men sitting on either side of a checkerboard near the front entrance. “I need alpha men. Not old men.”

“We can go back to the cabin.”

Then again, I’ve never been one to discriminate. I glared at Ty, turned toward the two men, and stepped forward.

Sure, they were old. But older meant wiser. They probably knew everything that went on in their town, and everyone.

“I’m looking for alpha men.”

“Don’t know no Alfred Mann,” one of them replied. He wore glasses and had a head as shiny as the gold nickel sitting on the table near his checkers.

“She said alpha men, Ernest,” the other man said, his voice raised to an ear-splitting level. “Not Alfred Mann.”

“Don’t know no Alphie Lynn, either.” Ernest shook his head. “You know good and goddamned well there ain’t no Alphie Lynn around these parts, Morty. Why, you been here even longer than me.” Ernest waved a crooked finger at me. “Born and raised right up the road.”

“That’s nice.”

Ernest frowned. “We don’t play no dice around here, little lady. We’re strictly checker men.”