Free Here Comes the Vampire by Kimberly Raye Page B

sushi.
    Nope. No way. Nuh, uh.
    I wasn’t having any part of that. Even if I could practically hear my mouse clicking away on Gilt.com.
    I grabbed the stack and deposited it into my bottom drawer for safekeeping while I hooked Ash up with every inappropriate woman I could find. Then I would, regretfully, admit that I’d failed. I’d give him his money back and all would be right with my conscience.
    Minus expenses, of course.
    If I was going to send him on a wild goose chase with some of my clients, then I needed to be compensated for my time and effort.
    That, and I really needed a new wardrobe.
    With the money locked up, I retrieved the half-empty bottle of blood, popped a DVD into my computer and settled back to watch more footage until my next appointment showed.
    I made it through a threesome in the lobby, a fat guy smoking a cigar in the elevator despite a Non Smoking sign hanging just to his left, and a not-so-nice game of black jack going down in the casino between a very conservative looking businessman and a Paul Bunyon lookalike.
    The businessman made a winning call and Paul pulled out an ax.
    No, really.
    But then the dealer hit the security button and the place teemed with cops in a matter of seconds. The film pitched and rolled for a split second and then bam, everything seemed fine. I watched for a few more seconds as the uppity looking vamp stared at his cards before laying them down on the table for the rest of the room to see. Everyone except Paul Bunyon who’d obviously been hauled away by the police. My momentary excitement took a nosedive back to serious boredom as I moved through another hour of ho-hum footage that did not include yours truly.
    A good thing—no humpety-hump.
    And a bad thing—no purely platonic elevator ride where Remy kept to his side and I kept to mine.
    I was part-relieved, part-disappointed and one hundred percent frustrated.
    It was no wonder that when the phone rang, I didn’t so much as glance at the Caller I.D. Instead, I snatched it up in a desperate attempt to save myself from the ever-growing fear that the DVDs were a wasted effort and I was stuck with Remy.
    “This is Dead End Dating,” I murmured in my most confident give-me-all-your-money-‘cause-I’m-totally-worth-it voice, “where we make all of your romantic dreams come true.”
    “Why me?” my mother’s voice came over the line. “I swear this is all your father’s fault. The crazies run rampant on his side of the family.”
    I wanted to protest, but I’d just used the word romantic and dreams in the same sentence which was more than just cause for commitment in the BV world.
    “Hey, Ma. What’s up?”
    “Programs. Engraved or raised print?”
    “I think—“
    “Engraved,” she snapped, answering her own question. “Of course we have to go with the engraved. It’s classic. And speaking of which, we need a more timeless place setting, as well. The event planner has these hideous modern contemporary napkins—“
    “Event planner? The one from the country club?”
    “No, this is a specialist I decided to hire when I added two hundred people to the guest list. We’re now at eight hundred and forty and—“
    “ What ? But I don’t know that many people.”
    “Vampires, dear, not people. And of course, you do. There’s everyone in my Huntress Club, your father’s business acquaintances, and our family. The Marchettes alone count for over three hundred and twenty-two according to the last census conducted by your great aunt Rebecca on my s Sbec hundred aide. And while I’m hoping to conveniently “forget” a few of your father’s relatives, I most definitely have to invite all of mine.”
    “But eight hundred?”
    “And then there’s Remy’s family which you know is even larger than ours.”
    Okay, I knew that. I’d been raised on a neighboring estate in older-than-dirt France and had seen more than one Tremaine Family get-together, but I’d never really thought about having them