He rose to his feet, standing a little closer to me than I was comfortable with. I backed up, only to bump against the counter. “I understand. And while you’re thinking, I just want you to consider one thing.”

“What?”

He grinned at me with those sharp white teeth, making my knees wobble a bit. I held on to the counter for support as he leaned closer and whispered, “How much it’s going to piss Lindy off when she realizes her ‘renter’ is helping to snatch the house out from under her.”

Blending Oil and Water

8

Hey, Sam!” I called. “Would you come taste this?”

I hovered over the rust-colored mixture bubbling merrily in my saucepan, waiting for just the right moment of consistency to remove it from the heat. I whisked the pan from the stove and stirred it carefully before noting the time and cooking temperature in my little recipe notebook.

On the other side of the house, I heard the whining peal of an electric drill. But this time, instead of attempting to drive me insane, Sam was putting up a heavy-duty curtain rod for sunproof shades.

In the last week or so, we’d developed a routine at the Lassiter house. I would visit Jolene, nap, or experiment with new recipes during the day. Then I’d make dinner and warm up some blood just in time for Sam to rise. We’d eat together, hold completely ridiculous conversations about ’80s music, our favorite tacky monster movies, and whether reality television would be the social factor that finally triggered the apocalypse.

Sam would work through the samples I’d prepared that day, and—depending on whether or not I’d made him violently ill—we’d spend the rest of the night making small changes in the recipes.

While we talked about movies, music, food, sports, and any number of pop-culture phenomena, we rarely ventured into territory as personal as his revelations about his marriage to Lindy. It seemed to have made him uncomfortable, being that open, and he’d retreated to safer topics. That was fine, as long as we kept talking. Now that we were on the same team, I was seeing a whole new side to Sam—funny, laid-back, sensible, easy with a smile, and quick to admit when his cooking advice went horribly awry. I didn’t feel I had to play down my accomplishments, as I had to with so many men I’d dated before. I didn’t have to pretend to be a delicate little flower who rarely ate more than a salad with dressing on the side. Because Sam knew I was neither delicate nor flowerlike. And he’d seen me eat an entire quart of Three Little Pigs hash-brown casserole in one sitting. I could be myself with Sam, the unglossed, cooking-in-a-wife-beater-and-yoga-pants, “real” version of me that Phillip hadn’t met until we’d been dating for six months. We’d barely lasted seven.

I would miss our evenings together when I moved into the apartment over my as-yet-unnamed eatery. Maybe we’d arrange some sort of vampire-food-for-maintenance-work barter system after I opened, just so we could keep in touch.

I spent several afternoons helping Chef Gamling with the church dinners. On the rare evening I didn’t spend with Chef or Sam, I was with Jolene and her friends. Jolene was very quickly becoming my first meaningful friendship outside of the kitchen. She was funny, warm, smart in a no-nonsense, “don’t try to screw with me just because I’m gorgeous” way that sort of made me want to have her babies. Not that I would, because (a) science wasn’t quite there yet, and (b) she seemed pretty attached to Zeb, for whom I also had very fond feelings.

I’d found a circle of friends here. And I was really enjoying my time with them. Jolene had talked her uncles into letting me shadow them in their kitchen at the Three Little Pigs. Jane had invited me to one of her infamous girls’ movie nights, which guaranteed that I would never look at Jane Austen adaptations ever again.

Sam’s voice behind me drew me out of my musings. “You hollered?”

“Did you like Italian food when you were human? Because this has chicken stock and Marsala wine. The cooking process should have left a result that won’t make you sick.”

“Should?” he said, eyeing the shot glass suspiciously.

Without responding to his concerns, I added, “Just try it.” I pushed the shot glass toward his lips.

“But you said you weren’t sure about it,” he protested.

I took the shot glass out of his hand and pressed it to his lips.

“That’s not bad,” he said.

“No nausea?”

“Can I have another?”

“Try this one,” I said. “It’s like barbecue sauce. Honey, liquid smoke, pork stock, and other by-products you may not want to know about.”

“There’s pig’s blood in here?” he said, wrinkling his nose.

“How is it different from drinking human blood?” I asked. “Besides, if you ate bacon in life, it’s a little hypocritical to turn your nose up at pig’s blood now.”

“Oh,” he said, sighing, after knocking back the shot. “Now I just really miss ribs.”

“My blender cannot handle rib bones,” I told him.

“This,” he informed me, lifting the barbecue sauce, “is awesome. If you could bottle this, you would kick the crap out of Paul Newman and his salad dressings.”

“Paul Newman’s dead,” I reminded him, narrowing my eyes. “Unless there’s something you and the vampire community have to explain to me.”

“That’s not nice,” he said. “You could be the first celebrity chef for vampires, like Rachael Ray or, if Mr. Gamling keeps giving you those dumplin’s, that Paula Deen chick.”

“Thank you for reminding me why being nice to you is never a good idea, you ass.”

He leaned in close, his brown eyes twinkling. “Oh, come on, Tess, I’m sorry. You can be as nice to me and my ass as you want.”

“I’m not touching that one.”

He smirked. “You know you want to.”

“Do you want to go back to cricket warfare again? Because I’m feeling a trip to the bait shop coming on.”

He shuddered, giving me the vampire puppy-dog eyes, which was just disturbing. “Please, ma’am, don’t unleash your biblical plagues of bitchery upon my household.”

I laughed, shoving at his shoulder. He was so close, and my arm was pulled flush against his chest. I closed my eyes, enjoying the vibrations from his laughter traveling from his chest through my fingertips, all the way up my arm to my heart. It was like feeling the pulse he no longer had. I felt my lips part in a smile so wide my cheeks ached. This wouldn’t do. I couldn’t let him see that smile and know what a big part he played in it. I dipped my head, glancing down at the feet so closely arranged we could have been dancing. My forehead brushed against his shoulder. He tucked his fingertips under my chin and tilted my head toward his. His eyes were hooded and dark and stared right through me. His lips looked so soft, even turned into that slightly mocking grin he was giving me. I could stand up on my tippy-toes, or maybe on a chair, and kiss him so easily.

But I didn’t.

Smiling awkwardly, I stepped away and took a deep breath. He wasn’t ready. And no matter how loudly my raging hormones screamed, You moron, do you realize how long it’s been since anyone has gone near your forbidden zones? I couldn’t be the one to decide that he was over his ex-wife.

He was going to have to make the first move. And considering the fact that I was standing immediately lip-adjacent and he didn’t give me a 20 percent lean-in, I didn’t think he was going to be doing that anytime soon.

“So, the barbecue sauce, huh?”

He nodded, taking a step back. “That’s your winner.”

—

The nights went by faster than I imagined they could. We focused our efforts on perfecting the barbecue sauce. We experimented with cooking times, temperatures, spices, sauce bases, until Sam pronounced it almost as good as eating real food when he was human. Sam and I visited the restaurant and discussed the changes he would make, including improvements to the apartment upstairs. My calendar filled up with closings with the Realtor, appointments with the bank, and drinks with the girls. Before I knew it, we were bumping down the country road toward town in Sam’s truck, with our contest entry carefully balanced on my lap.

“Don’t be nervous,” Sam told me.

“Can’t help it,” I said, leaning my head back against the seat rest. “There’s a reason I hide in a kitchen all day. I’m not good with crowds.”

He nudged me with his elbow. “You’re going to be fine.”

“Liar.” I sighed.

Sam’s truck smelled nice, like Murphy’s Oil Soap and piña colada air freshener. This was a very different vampire from the one I’d been pranking. He was relaxed, if not quite happy, as he hummed along to George Strait. He actually smiled at me when he emerged from the basement earlier and complimented me on the little red sweater I’d paired with jeans. It felt natural driving along with him like this, almost like a date, if one’s first date involved hauling several servings of synthetic blood around in a warmer.

Sam pulled the truck to a stop in front of an old bank building, near Howlin’ Hank’s. While I stared, bewildered by the sheer number of cars parked in front of the darkened buildings, he pulled me out of the truck and helped me with our parcels.

While parents hauled sunburned, exhausted children to their cars, the “night shift” for Burley Days was arriving in droves. The town square was bustling with laughing humans and vampires toting an odd assortment of cheap stuffed animals. Red, white, and blue twinkle lights hung from every stationary object, giving the square a festive glow. Gleeful screams echoed over the insistent country and western music pumped over the PA system.

We carried our sauce samples in a foam chest lined with warming gel packs. As we walked, I noticed several people watching Sam, flashes of recognition flitting across their faces before they averted their eyes. They were human, I could tell by their tans, and they refused to make eye contact. They didn’t exactly turn their backs, but they definitely weren’t giving him manly fist bumps. Were these people Sam’s friends and clients before he was turned? What had Lindy said to them that would make them retreat this way? My irritation with Sam’s ex ratcheted up to “bitch-slap on sight” levels.