Vampire's Dilemma by Jacqueline Lichtenberg

Author:Jacqueline Lichtenberg
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: vampires, love, romance, paranormal, Twilight
ISBN: 9781434448620
Publisher: Wildside Press LLC
Published: 2012-05-14T16:00:00+00:00

THIN WHITE DUKE IN SNEAKERS, by Laura Wise

A sudden breeze off Matanzas Bay fluttered the paper of Linda Ramirez’s notebook, pages flying so fast that random words from the notes she’d jotted down seemed to escape into the night. The Lion’s Magick Shop. Cantina, after sunset. Greg.

She’d double-underlined his name with one bold strike obscuring part of the letters, a habit she’d picked up somehow back when they were dating and never abandoned. He’d teased her about it for years; she could almost hear him, in his pathetic attempt at a Spanish accent, “Ah, mi Linda, is that a black mark for your esposo? Ready to write me out already?” For that stupidity she would try to punch him, but he’d catch her hand in midair, saying dryly, “Que Linda, my violent girl,” and, yes, that was her husband, faster than he looked.

She flipped the notebook over so that the pages would be safe and she couldn’t see even the fragments in the dimness of the restaurant patio. Then she drank from her margarita, letting the salt burn where she’d bitten her lip a dozen times that day. Damn nervous habit.

It had been a long drive from her home in Winter Park: I-4 to fight, then the insanity of I-95. She’d gotten off the Interstate early, though, driven across the toll bridge to the barrier island and St Augustine Beach. The swamps were disappearing here as on the mainland, new construction taking over the world just like the loud, terrible traffic—Daytona’s Bike Week stretched all the way up here.

She knew where she was going, however. Two blocks off A1A, in a knot of older houses tangled between the ocean and the rest of the new-built world, was the McGarrity family’s summer home.

She’d pulled into its driveway just before sunset and turned off the David Bowie CD that Greg had left in the CD changer and she’d never gotten around to taking out, and she’d just sat there. The closed hurricane shutters still blocked every window, even though the season was four months gone. As she turned the key to the house over and over in one hand and held onto the necklace she always wore with the other, she saw the fading of the day over the house, heard the roar of the nearby waves. Nothing else, although she felt him.

Then she’d started the car and driven back to the mainland, over the Bridge of Lions, to keep the first of her evening appointments.

She drank more of her margarita, although she really shouldn’t, not with what lay ahead. She broke all the complimentary chips and dropped them in the complimentary salsa without eating any. She listened to the couple in the far corner start a domestic argument about a new Harley versus a custom Indian motorcycle. She gazed at the shimmer of dark water in the bay below the Castillo de San Marcos. She waited.

And before she was ready, she heard him. God, she’d always loved his voice—that soothing baritone,

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