Holiday with a Vampire: Christmas Cravings

Which meant he was going to have to do it for her.

Looked like he was involved in this vampire war whether he wanted to be or not.

“Definitely time to stop coming here,” he muttered and sank down onto the chair.

Tessa had a vampire stashed in a secret room, but that didn’t keep her from attacking Christmas week in a big way. She busied herself hanging more garland and setting out the cranberry- and pinescented candles. There was a dish of chocolates on the living room table that she dipped into a little too often, but since she had a vampire in her house, Tessa figured she was due a little extra chocolate.

Besides, staying busy kept her from thinking too much. Thinking about how her vampire had once owned this house. Heck, built this house. About the power in his eyes. About what it felt like when he’d touched her.

And he’s not your vampire, she told herself firmly. For God’s sake. A vampire. She couldn’t stop thinking of that word. Obsession. Good sign. But she couldn’t help the way her insides jangled when she thought about him.

She had to stop thinking of the word vampire.

Which was why it was a good thing that her only customer, Joe Baston, was checking out early. He was a nice man, but Tessa couldn’t help but be grateful that he was leaving. Hiding a vampire in your secret room was a lot easier when there wasn’t anyone else around.

Vampire.

Stop it! Her fingers shook as she filled in the credit card slip for the older man standing opposite her. Giving him a smile she hoped he wouldn’t notice was a little too forced to be really cheerful, she said, “I hope you come back, Mr. Baston.”

“Oh, that’d be real nice. It’s a great place you have here.” He glanced around at the high, beamed ceilings and the fresh cream-colored paint on the wood plank walls. “Homey. Welcoming. I think you’ve got yourself a winner with this inn.”

Not if all of her customers left as early as he did, Tessa thought but didn’t say.

But he seemed to understand, since he spoke up again quickly. “I’m sure sorry about leaving early.” He didn’t look sorry, though. His pleased grin was infectious. “But my daughter’s insisting I stay with her while I’m here, and it’s a chance to spend lots of extra time with the grandkids.”

“It’s not a problem, really,” Tessa said, watching him sign the slip. After all, she’d only been open a couple of weeks. She was sure to get more customers after the holidays. “I’m glad you’re enjoying your trip.”

“Well,” he said, tossing the pen onto her desk, “I’ll be sure to tell folks what a nice place you’ve got here.”

“I’d appreciate it, thanks.” Tessa smiled and waved as he headed out the door, and then she looked around the empty room.

She needed more Christmas in here. A tree, of course, but one glance at the snow currently pelting the front windows told her that she wouldn’t be taking care of that chore today.

But she did everything else she could think of—pausing every now and then for a glimpse at the bookcase hiding Grayson Stone from her.

Amazing how much the world could change in twenty-four hours. God, yesterday seemed like a lifetime ago. Yesterday, she hadn’t even known vampires existed. Now she had one stashed in her house.

Was she crazy?

Probably. Absolutely, who was she kidding? Vampires were fictional. Dreamed up by authors trying to scare gullible readers when everyone knew there were enough scary real things out there already!

The doorbell rang. She jolted out of her thoughts and hurried across the room. She peered through the glass in the upper half of the door and spotted a private delivery van in the driveway. Opening the door, she was slapped by an icy wind and wet splats of snow. Squinting, she half hid behind the door and asked, “Yes?”

“Delivery for Grayson Stone.” The short guy in a beige uniform and a fluorescent orange parka held out a clipboard with a sign-in sheet and a pen attached to it. “Sign at number sixteen.”

“Right.” Grayson had told her a package would arrive. She signed her name, handed the clipboard back and when he turned to leave, she saw the box on the porch. Plain brown wrapping and a name and address label. No clue to what was inside.

She fought the wind, grabbed the box and stepped back into the house, slamming the door with her hip. The fire crackled and hissed as she stared down at the box and wondered about what could be inside. Carrying the heavy parcel across the room, she pulled on the bookcase latch and let the doorway swing open.

Grayson grabbed her at the throat.

She yelped, dropped the box and he let her go instantly. Staggering back, Tessa gulped in some air and forced her heart out of her throat and back into her chest where it belonged. She flipped her hair back out of her eyes and glared at him. “What the heck was that for?”

“Announce yourself. I didn’t know who the hell might have discovered this room,” he muttered, moving to the table.

“So you had to strangle me?” She rubbed her throat and could still feel the strength of his grip imprinted on her flesh. “Besides, even I didn’t know this room existed. How’s a stranger going to wander in and discover it?” Fear dribbled into the pit of her stomach, despite the fact that he’d let her go as soon as he’d figured out that she wasn’t a threat.

“Sorry.” He paced to the far wall, spun around and looked at her.

He kept a safe distance from her now, as if to convince one or both of them that he wasn’t going to hurt her.

“I’m not used to being around—”

“Humans?” she finished for him.

He nodded. “Yeah.”

“Well, try harder.” She waved a hand at the toppled box. “The package you told me about was just delivered.”

“Good. Thanks.” He walked to it, picked it up and set it onto the table. Then he looked at her meaningfully.

She frowned. “What is it?”

“Mine.”

Tessa shook her head. “I want to know what’s in my house.”

He watched her for a long second or two, then gave her a sharp nod. Tearing the strapping tape free, he opened the box, lifted out a Styrofoam packer containing dry ice, then reached deeper. He pulled out a small, plastic bag filled with…blood.

The thick red liquid sloshed back and forth while he held it and Tessa’s stomach did a quick pitch and roll. Of course. Vampire. Blood.

“Okay…” She pulled in a breath and let it go again slowly. “I just…I guess I wasn’t expecting to see that.”

“Vampire, remember?” He dropped the blood back into the box and folded his arms over his chest. “I’ve got connections at a blood bank.”

“Wow. ‘Blood bank’ sort of takes on a whole new meaning for me now.”

He frowned at her. “It’s better this way, believe me. I haven’t drunk from a living human in nearly a hundred years.”

How insane was it that she actually found that information sort of comforting?

As if he sensed her relief, he added, “That doesn’t mean things can’t change.”

“You’re deliberately trying to keep me scared,” she pointed out. “And not that it’s working, but why?”

“Because you should be.” He came around the table, laid both hands on her shoulders and pulled her closer to him. “Others of my kind know I come here every year. Some may come looking for me. That means you’re not safe.”

“More vampires? Here?” Looking up into his deep black eyes, she shivered. “Why are they looking for you?”

He let her go and shook his head. “There’s a war brewing in the vampire world. We’re expected to take sides.”

“A vampire war?” Tessa’s voice sounded strained even to herself, as if she’d had to squeeze those words out a too tight throat. “And it’s coming here?”

“Maybe.” He scraped a hand across his jaw. “I don’t know who’s coming—hell, even if anyone is coming. Can’t be sure.”

“And if they do come, then what?” The small dribble of fear she’d felt earlier became a running river, pushing through her veins, making her mouth dry and her head feel light.

He slanted a look at her. “If they come, then you should be gone.”

Go? When she’d finally found a home? When she finally had something to live for? A chance at a life that wasn’t revolving around hiding? No.

She’d run before to save her life.

Now she would stay to fight for it. “I’m not leaving.”

“Yeah. Thought you’d say that.” Walking back to the table, he reached into the box and picked up a packet of blood. “So. Looks like I won’t be leaving tonight after all.”

“Damn straight,” she snapped, fear giving way to resolve at the thought of hordes of vampires descending on her. “You can help me make stakes…and I wonder if the church in town is open. Holy water. A bucket or two full. And…” She stopped, looked at him and said, “I know why I want the help. But why are you volunteering to stay?”

“Because I brought this here. And I’m not going to bring more death into this house.”

His gaze was dark, his features tight and every square inch of him looked poised for battle. That sense of power that clung to him filled the tiny room and practically hummed in the air.

“More death?”

“A hundred and fifty years ago,” he said quietly, “my wife and children died in this house. And I was the one who invited their killer inside.”

Chapter 5

Grayson ignored the stamp of curiosity on her features. He’d said more than he’d planned and now regretted it. But then he was used to a life filled with regrets. What was one more? Lifting his head, he reached out with the finely honed senses of his kind and smiled. “Near sundown.”

“Close. But it’s snowing, so there’s no sun anyway.”

“You have a microwave?” he asked, picking up a packet of blood and leaving the rest in the shipping box. He headed out of the secret room, not waiting to see if she followed. He’d had more than his share of small spaces crowded with too many ghosts for one day.

“Of course,” she said, coming up right behind him. “Why do you…oh.”

He stared at her, then deliberately lowered his gaze to her neck. “I prefer my blood hot.”

She swallowed hard, but she didn’t flinch this time—just stared right back at him and he had to give her points for it. All in all, Tessa Franklin was a woman who could adjust to the bizarre fairly quickly. A shame she wasn’t more careful.

If more of his kind showed up here looking for him, it was likely they wouldn’t show her the same sort of consideration he was. They’d look at her and see her only as something to drink.

Why that bothered him more than it should, he didn’t care to think about.

He walked back to the kitchen and waited while she got him a coffee mug. He smirked at the happy face stamped on it in bright yellow, but opened the packet of blood and poured it inside. Opening the microwave, he set the mug inside, closed the door and punched the timer.

While he waited, he turned to look at her in the overhead lights. Beyond the kitchen, the day was dying in a swirl of ice and snow. He saw trees bending with their heavy white burden and heard the moan of the wind as it curled around the house. He focused more sharply then, and heard the skittering footsteps of a small animal looking for shelter. There was a brush of something more, too. Not vampire. Not completely human. Something—it was gone as quickly as it had come. Had he imagined it? Was he so primed for a threat, he saw one where none existed?

He shook his head and heard the buzz of the light fixture, and the beat of Tessa’s heart. That quick, staccato rhythm told him she was more nervous than she pretended to be.

Courage or foolishness?

His mind still open to any possible threat, he reached into the microwave when the timer dinged, took out the mug and had a sip.

She frowned, but he ignored it. “We all need blood to survive, Tessa. Even humans.”

“Yeah.” She blew out a breath and looked him square in the eye, as if trying to tell him she wasn’t bothered by the sight of him drinking. “I guess you’re right. It’s just—”

“Easier to take with an IV tube?”

“Yes.”

“I am what I am. Have been for too long to apologize for it now.”

“I didn’t ask for an apology.”

Not with words. But he read her eyes. Those deep blue eyes that looked at him and saw a man— until he reminded her otherwise. He shrugged and moved to the bay window overlooking the yard and the stand of woods beyond. Changing the subject because he preferred talking of things that didn’t matter, he said, “It hasn’t really changed much over the years. You say you just bought it.”

“A few months ago.” She came up beside him with quiet steps. “The first time I saw the house, I knew I wanted it. It was as if it had been sitting here. Waiting for me.” She reached out and touched one hand to the mist on the cold window, leaving her fingerprints in the damp. “Sounds silly, but I felt like I’d found home.”

“It’s a good place,” he said, not commenting on her little confession. But he knew what she meant. He’d felt the same when he first saw this piece of land so long ago. It had all been wide open then. With the nearest neighbor almost twenty miles away. He and his family had settled into the seclusion and hadn’t minded being on their own.

Until that last night.

As if she knew his thoughts had turned to the past again, she spoke up.

“What happened? I mean…”

“I know what you mean.” He took another drink of the hot blood, savoring the thick, rich taste as it slid down his throat. Appropriate, he thought, that he should have blood in his mouth to tell this story.

“It was Christmas night.” His voice was cool, detached, as though he were talking about something that had happened to a stranger. And that was more right than not, after all. It had been so long now, the man he’d been had nothing to do with the person he’d become. “A man came to the door. Freezing. Hungry. So near death I thought he wouldn’t last the night. I brought him inside.”

He remembered it all so clearly. The scents. The sounds. The baby’s cry, his wife’s soft humming, his son’s laughter. Decades fell away and Grayson tumbled into his own private hell. “We warmed him. Fed him. Though it wasn’t food he wanted.”

He shifted his gaze to hers and held it, trapping her in the story with him, dipping into her mind, so that the pictures he painted were as vivid for her as they were for him. “He killed my wife first. One twist of her neck and she was gone. I fought him, but he was too strong. I remember seeing murder in his eyes and I recall the feel of his fangs as they sank into my neck. Then the next thing I knew, it was morning and I wasn’t dead. Though everyone else was.”

Seconds ticked past before she swayed, closed her eyes briefly and said, “Oh, God. Grayson…”

“He could have killed me, too, of course. Instead he turned me. So that I’d wake and find what he’d left behind. So that I’d survive, knowing everything I loved was dead.”

“You couldn’t have known. When you brought him into the house—you couldn’t have known.”

He refused her offer of sympathy, brushing it aside as if he hadn’t heard the shock and sorrow in her voice. “That’s the point I’m trying to make to you. No one can know. You run an inn. Do you think vampires never stay in hotels? You think they really do live in caves and sleep in coffins?”

“Up until I met you, I didn’t know they existed!”

“Exactly. You don’t know. You wouldn’t recognize a vampire if it came to your door.” He laughed shortly. “Obviously. You didn’t recognize the danger in me. Instead you let me in. You wanted to take care of me.”

“You see compassion as a weakness,” she argued. “It’s not.”

She still didn’t get it. Grayson felt a surge of anger rise up inside to nearly choke him. She couldn’t—or wouldn’t—see the danger around her. Which meant she was in even more jeopardy than most.

“You’re the kind of person vampires live for. Most of them are just killers. They’re not interested in making others of our kind. All they want is to feed and destroy. They leave a trail of misery behind them and think nothing more of it once they’ve moved on. It was blind, stupid luck for you that I’ve sworn off humans. Otherwise—” he paused for a sip “—let’s just say you’d make a damned good snack, Tessa.”

Her eyes narrowed.

In a blink, he set the mug down, grabbed hold of her arm and gave her a hard shake. “Not everything out there deserves your compassion, Tessa. You don’t want to see what’s out there, that’s your business. But until I’m sure that none of my kind have followed me here, you’ll listen to me. You’ll open your eyes. You think you’re prepared. Safe. But you’re not. Humanity thinks it knows evil, but none of you have a clue.”

He held her tight with one hand and waved the other toward the window and the storm beyond the glass. “There are creatures moving among you that live only to cause pain. Who look for nothing more than the opportunity to strike. Do you think you can fight them off? Do you think you can survive?”

Her breath came fast and furious. She pulled free of him and he saw fire in her eyes when she glared at him. It pleased him. At least she had a temper and knew what to do with it.

“You think you’ve got the patent on suffering? Someone killed your family and left you to live with the memory?” She slapped both hands to his chest, gave him a vicious shove that didn’t budge him in the slightest. Even more furious now, she shouted, “You think you’re the only one?You’re my first vampire, but you’re nowhere near my first brush with real evil. Big deal. Vampires bite. Humans kill, too, you know…”

There was something raw in her eyes now. A bleeding pain that ripped through her and reached out to touch him as well. He refused to acknowledge it.

“But a human is still something to be reasoned with,” he told her.

She laughed at him, the sound harsh and ragged. “You think so?” Her short dark hair dropped onto her forehead and she tossed her head, sending it out of her way. “I ran for five years from a man—a human—who said he only wanted to love me.”

She couldn’t stand still. She walked in jerky steps to the kitchen counter and back again. “God. He really believed that, too. Two dates. That’s all we had. Two dates and my instincts told me to get away. I knew there was something wrong with him. Something terrifying. So I broke it off.”

She sent Grayson a look that was filled with bone-chilling terror. “He wouldn’t listen. He stalked me. Haunted me. He stood outside my house at night, followed me to work in the mornings. I got a restraining order.” She rubbed her arms viciously as if her blood had congealed in her veins. “That only made him madder. He set fire to my car. He killed my dog. Finally, he broke in to my house when I was out and killed a friend of mine who picked the wrong night to stop by with pizza…”

Tears streaked down her face, unheeded, unchecked. Her eyes were wild and furious and filled with a pain he recognized, as he lived with something much like it every day. He reached for her, but she jumped back from him.

“Don’t.” Tessa held up both hands and fought for control. God, she’d shatter if he touched her. She knew she would. Cold wrapped itself around her entire being, squeezing her heart, icing her lungs until she felt as though she might never draw another breath.

Her memories were every bit as emotionally charged as his. She couldn’t go a single night without dreaming of the past. Without seeing her home, her things shattered, Jamie’s broken body laying splayed and forgotten in her living room. She heard over and over again the quiet calm of the po-liceman’s voice. The flash of the red and blue lights on the squad cars slicing through the darkness.

She felt it all. Remembered it all. And had finally found the courage to live anyway. To forge a life for herself. To refuse to surrender to the terror Justin had subjected her to.

She’d escaped. That was what she clung to. What she had to keep uppermost in her mind. She’d finally found a way to stand in the light. And she wouldn’t go back into the darkness.

Looking at the man across from her, she stared into his dark eyes and wondered why she’d opened up to him. Wondered how Grayson Stone had become so important to her in such a short amount of time. How he’d gotten past the defenses she’d erected so carefully around her heart, her emotions. He was a stranger. He called himself a monster.

But somehow, he was so much more, too. She took a deep breath, blew it out and said, “Just don’t touch me right now, Grayson. I don’t want your sympathy. I don’t even know why I told you that. There’s something about you, I guess—I don’t know. It’s just…I don’t like being treated like I’m an idiot. I’m not.” She met his gaze. “I’ve already survived a monster and I’ll do fine with whatever else comes at me.”

The organ that had once been Grayson’s heart twisted for her sake and the sensation was so rare, it startled him. It had been a century or more since he’d cared about anything. Or anyone.

Why now?

Why her?

“I’m not running anymore,” she said as if expecting him to tell her to leave again. “Like the saying goes, Been there, done that. I changed my name so often even I couldn’t keep track of who I was at any given moment. I lived in dumps. Rooming houses or cheap motels. I didn’t have friends. I supported myself with temporary jobs because I was too afraid to even use my savings, for fear he’d somehow track me down that way. All I thought about was keeping my head down. Hiding. Running.”

She shook her head, used her hands to swipe away what was left of her tears, and then she lifted her chin, pride making her spine straight. “Until I came here. I found this place. And it’s mine. It’s home. I’m not going to run again. Not because of him. Not because of you. And not because of some vampires that may or may not show up.”

Grayson watched her, saw her determination, her strength, and though he admired her for those traits, he knew they might also get her killed. “You’re not going to listen, are you?”

She inhaled sharply, forced a smile she didn’t feel and shook her head. “No, I’m not. Besides,” she offered as her smile took on a touch of warmth, “it’s nearly Christmas. I escaped my own personal nightmare on Christmas Eve. So I’m a big believer in Christmas miracles.”

“Miracles.” Even the taste of the word felt foreign to him. Especially since her “miracle” time of the year had been an ending for him. He’d prayed that night, fast and desperate. But nothing had come to save his family. To prevent the destruction of everything he loved.

Yet, hadn’t she survived her own trip in to hell? And she’d come out not only whole, but with a strength of purpose that humbled him. Grayson studied her and fought the rising tide of sensation inside him.

She touched something in him. Something he’d thought dead and buried long ago. And he wasn’t sure whether to be grateful or furious about that.

But either way, Grayson knew he wouldn’t be leaving until she was safe.

“So,” she said after a couple of long minutes, “if we’re finished with the true confession portion of the evening, how about you help me string some lights around the front porch?”

He blinked at her. “Lights?”

“Yeah.” She grabbed her jacket from a hook by the back door and slipped into it. “Sun’s down—or nearly anyway.” She smiled and grabbed the doorknob. “And as long as you’re here, you can help.”

Standing in the open doorway, Grayson stared after her, with the wind and cold slapping at him. Hanging Christmas lights hadn’t been part of his plan in coming here. But things had changed.

He shifted his gaze to the woods that straggled around the edge of the property and studied the shadows. His senses were honed, and as he searched, he reached for that brief flash he’d felt earlier.

But it was gone.

Chapter 6