Free Mercy's Destiny: Montgomery's Vampires Trilogy (Book #3) (Montgomery's Vampires Series) by Sloan Archer

Serena. She’d undoubtedly be thrilled to hear that I was looking haggard, and I did not want to give her the satisfaction.
    The rep was scheduled to show shortly after sundown, around sevenish. It had annoyed me to no end that the VGO hadn’t provided me with an exact time. It bugged me when anyone did that, actually, because I liked to know the precise time that I needed to be ready. Sevenish to me meant any time between 6:45 and 7:15, which was a full half hour wasted that I could have spent doing something else instead of hovering by the front door waiting for company to show up. So rude.
    I wasn’t normally a gal inclined to nap, but I’d been so tired lately, as if an invisible anchor was bogging down my body and mind. Eventually, I was able to drift off. I didn’t dream, thankfully, because whatever my mind would have conjured would have been grim and vengeful.
    I slept so deeply, in fact, I suspected that I would have slumbered right through the night had I not set an alarm. Not surprisingly, the first thing I did after I turned off my phone alarm was to see if Robert had called. He hadn’t. I was beginning to wonder if he ever would. I got a grip by reminding myself that he had only gone away last night, though it felt more like last year.
    I had more than enough time to shower and get ready, so I decided to cook dinner from scratch. An Asian noodle dish, maybe. And chocolate chip cookies.
    Once I got into the kitchen and began rooting around for the appropriate pans and baking bowls, I didn’t feel like preparing anything. What I really wanted to do was curl up on the couch and read a book to take my mind off the weird turns my life had taken in the past twenty-four hours. With the VGO rep arriving soon, that certainly wouldn’t be happening.
    I searched around and found the take-out menu for my favorite Thai place, the aptly named Thai Spice. Because old budgeting habits died hard, I selected a conservative plate of pad Thai and sweet iced tea. As I was sitting on hold, I decided to add some tom yum soup and sweet mango sticky rice to my order, since I was ravenously hungry. And, what the hell, I was a millionaire now. I could afford it.
    I nearly pounced on the poor delivery guy when he arrived at the door. I plowed through my food straight from the cartons, not troubling with plates. I’d never been a nervous eater and had always thought of myself as the sort of girl to starve her way through bad times. Guess I was just hungry. The last time I’d had a broken heart (courtesy of the recently-departed Mathew) my stomach had been so tangled up in knots that the very idea of eating made me want to vomit. I’d ended up losing so much weight that people unaware of the breakup started asking me if I was ill. But now I’d have to watch it, or else I’d double my bodyweight in a week.
    I admired the dinner carnage—upturned cartons, errant noodles stuck to the table, crumbs of leftover peanut topping sprinkled down the front of my shirt like pixie dust—but then made the mistake of thinking about the pending arrival of the VGO rep. It made me instantly sick. Again. I ran into the bathroom, bent over the toilet, and waited. And waited. Finally, the nausea passed. Though I’d enjoyed dinner immensely, I hadn’t enjoyed it so much that I wanted to experience it a second time in reverse. I rashly vowed never to drink red wine again.
    Or fall in love.
    Since I was already in the bathroom, I stripped off my clothes and hopped into the shower. For an extra treat, and to perk up my spirit, I lathered my skin with one of the fancy frangipani soaps I’d gotten in Bali. I’d been hoping to save them for special nights out on the town with Robert, but . . . oh well.
    I was left with an odd amount of time after the shower: too little time to start a project or get into a book, but just enough of it that I’d start to feel antsy if I sat around, waiting. I reached under the counter and pulled out a blow dryer and fat