Free Kiss of the Vampire (The Vanderlind Realm Book 2) by Gayla Twist Page A

asking me a million questions about Dorian. As a matter of fact, I didn’t want to think about Dorian at all.
    “And there’s a woman over in the corner who’s been asking for you. She’s been here since the sun went down, taking up a whole booth and just milking one lousy cup of tea,” Debbie groused. “I don’t mind you having friends come by, but see if you can at least get her to order something.”
    “Okay.” I frowned. Who would come in to see me? It couldn’t be Erica. Debbie wouldn’t have called her a woman. Did my mom get sprung from the looney bin? I headed out into the dining area to see.
    I spotted the woman immediately. She was stretched out in the booth like she was the queen of Sheba or something. She was clad all in tight black leather and her bright red hair was styled in a Medusa of corkscrew curls. I could instantly tell that she was a member of the undead just by the intensity of her eyes. Debbie must have somehow invited her in. My boss lived above the diner so I’d always felt I was reasonably safe from undead visitors patroning the place, but that had been a foolish assumption.
    “Hello,” I said, after squaring my shoulders and walking up to the table. “Can I get you something to eat or just the check for your tea?”
    The woman practically glowered at me. “Are you Haley Scott?” she asked.
    I did some fast thinking. If I could tell she was a vampire, then she probably had a pretty good idea that I was one too. Lying and saying I wasn’t Haley would only cause her to hang around the diner more and that was something I definitely did not want. It was better just to own up to being me and see where she took things. “Yes.” I nodded. “I’m Haley Scott. Who are you?”
    “I’m an old friend of Dorian Vanderlind,” she said, a menacing sneer spreading tightly across her cherry red lips, which must have been her imitation of a smile. “He had a lot to say about you the last time I saw him. I thought I might like to come and have a look for myself.”
    I felt myself bristle. Who the hell was this woman and why had Dorian felt the need to gossip to her about me?
    “Really?” I said stiffly. “He hasn’t mentioned a thing about you.”
    “That doesn’t surprise me,” she went on, examining the polish on one of her perfectly painted red nails. “You two aren’t exactly close.”
    For some reason this comment got my back up. Who was she to come into my diner and tell me about my relationship with Dorian? So I feigned a perplexed looked and said, “We’re not? Then I guess it’s kind of strange that I spent all of today in his arms.”
    The vampiress looked surprised and then I saw anger flash across her brow. She quickly suppressed it to feign indifference. “I don’t know what it is about those Vanderlind boys,” she said, peeling a few twenties off of a fat roll of cash that she’d pulled out of her coat pocket. “They could have anyone in the world that they want, and yet they always choose…” She waved a vague hand in my direction as if that explained everything. Then she shrugged. “But I guess there’s no accounting for taste.” The vampiress dropped the notes on the table as if she was tossing out a soiled tissue. And then she sashayed out of the diner, hips swinging.
    It was nice to know that some women could be as bitchy in the undead world as they had been when they were alive.
    I could not believe that Dorian had been off spreading gossip about me all over Europe while I was struggling on my own trying to figure out how to be a vampire without also becoming a serial killer. What a jerk! He was almost as bad as Tommy and Sheila and the rest of those buttholes. But at least he wasn’t running around Europe bragging to a bunch of people that he had slept with me. Not that any of the undead of Europe would care if Dorian had nailed some small town chick in Ohio. But the thing was, we hadn’t been together. Not even close. So why was he gossiping about