Xander's Chance

Rule number four: clean house, no dirty laundry.

She neared him, frazzled as much with the cat as she was with him showing up with a stain, when she wanted to go home. She wasn't going to break his bizarre rules on the first day. Accustomed to the teens' all but shredding their clothes, she instinctively reached for the stain to feel if it was wet. Salvageable.

He caught her hand. She looked up at him. His eyes were narrowed. He was heavy of jaw with a wide forehead and an aquiline nose set between two large eyes. Long, dark hair was neatly bound at the base of his neck. The air around him was strangely still, the heat of a body unlike any she'd ever seen before reminding her she hadn't dated in four years. Without traditional beauty, he was still handsome in a raw, dangerous way. If the horseracing fanatic, Brandon, was there, he'd call this man a wild mustang.

He seemed guarded and genuinely unsettled, as if he wasn't expecting an assistant today, despite the note from Ingrid she found. Or maybe, he wasn't expecting her? The sense he knew she wasn't the right assistant made her frown.

"You're a Natural," he said, searching her features.

"A natural what?" she returned. "Is that a tomato-based stain?"

His hand dropped. He stared at her. His presence was intense but calming, almost to the degree she had the urge to lean against him and let his huge hands roam her body, grip her from behind and pull her …

Crunching from behind her broke the spell. Jessi whirled to see the cat huddled over its bowl of food. She started forward. The cat looked up.

"Pleeease, just be cool, kitty," she begged. "What's her name?"

"Cat."

She rolled her eyes. She crept forward. "I'm Jessi, by the way. You must be Xander."

"That's all you're going to say?"

Was he puzzled or angry? She didn't know. Jessi knelt beside the cat. It continued eating this time. She lifted it gently then picked up its bowls.

"You're standing in a vampire's house, and you want to know what's on my shirt."

Jessi nuzzled the cat and glanced at him. "You're not a vampire."

"I am a vampire."

She wasn't terrified as she had been with Jonny. This man was huge - maybe a wrestler? - but his presence was calming, whereas Jonny's was like a storm-cloud, ready to explode. If she believed Jonny was a vampire, she couldn't believe this man was as well.

"Look, it's almost time for me to go home. If you want me to follow the rules, I've gotta fix that tonight," she said.