Chapter 2
Theo Witherborne lay crumpled at my feet, and now the black-robe guy who was very likely a murderer was heading over.
Theo twitched.
Think, brain.
Theo had said something about the black-robe guy not finding him.
But the back-robe guy was on his way. The guy who’d calmly been standing over a body floating in his pool.
Theo was out cold.
Sunstroke, probably.
Because of course it had to catch up with him now. He wasn’t going to be any help anytime soon.
I grabbed Theo’s wrists and dragged him toward the nearest hibiscus bush. Heart pounding a hundred and ninety beats a minute in my ears, I dragged him, tugged him, shoved him, then rolled him under the voluminous foliage as best as I could. I could run, if I needed to. He could not.
As I stumbled out, the robe guy stood at the railings, watching me emerge from the undergrowth with an expression of mild amusement on his older, weathered face.
Tufts of black chest hair poked out from his robe and glistened in the sun. He wasn’t wearing any shoes. It was just his toes, right there. Stubby man toes.
“Oh, hey.” I brushed my hands together, like I’d just taken out the trash. “Possum,” I said. “It’s gone now.” I shoved my hand through the railings for him to shake. “I’m Owen. Nice pool you’ve got there.”
What the fudge was I doing? I’d skipped the part where you run after witnessing the aftermath of a murder and gone straight to introductions.
Look, I don’t get out much. Meeting people is difficult. People are tricky. Pools are easy. Pools are predictable. And this person was looking at me as though deciding whether I should join the body in the water behind him. Whatever I said next would probably make the decision for him.
I tried to give him the friendly “we’re just two guys going about our day meeting by a fence nothing to see here” face.
He looked at my hand . . . then up at my face, so he could memorize it and murder me later. “I’m the pool boy,” I said, like that explained everything. Maybe it did. Because the guy’s eyebrows swept up, tugging the corners of his mouth with them.
“So uhm . . .” I pulled my hand back, shoved it in my pocket, and took out a business card. “If you need any work doing, I’m available.”
Stop. Talking. Dumbass.
He reached through the railings and plucked the card from my fingers. I hadn’t expected him to actually take it.
“How fortuitous,” he said, voice rich and dark and full of bad things. “An opening just came up.”
“Oh good. Great.” I grinned. Oh fabulous.
The opening was because of the body in the pool, wasn’t it? The body in the water was their pool boy. And I’d just volunteered for his job.
I blinked too fast. “So . . . uhm . . . your gardens are very well maintained.”
His gaze finally left me to look around the grounds, as though seeing them for the first time.
“Yes. They are this morning. My name is Jeremy Briar. I’ll be in touch.
” He tucked the card deep into his bathrobe pocket, turned on his heel, and walked barefoot back across his lush garden, toward the pool.
I watched him go for a few beats, then stumbled back a few steps and breathed. Alright. Okay. Everything was fine. Apart from the dead guy. Things were not fine for him. Jeremy Briar didn’t stop by the pool, but instead headed into his glossy box house.
The body was still there.
Alright then.
I dove back into the bush and dropped to my knees beside the crumpled Theo. “Hey!” A few pats to his cheek didn’t do anything. I couldn’t even tell if he was breathing. He had to be. If he died too, then I was clearly trapped in a bad dream.
“Okay.” I rocked back on my heels, swiping at the flowers and leaves to get them out of my face. “Alright. Wait here. I’ll go get someone.”
This was way above my pay grade. I did not do murders, or passed-out party vampires, but mostly not murders. I’d go back to the house, get someone who could deal with all this, go home, and pretend none of it had happened.
I dashed back across the yard, ran past the pool, and yanked open the sliding doors.
“Uh, hello?” My voice echoed off all the shiny marble surfaces and cavernously high ceilings.
“Hello?” Where the heck was everyone? What if Theo was home alone?
I could call the cops . . . Yeah, maybe not. Law enforcement and I didn’t get along.
“Who are you?” a haughty, jagged voice asked.
The man standing in the doorway, as though he’d just appeared there, wore a white dress, and for a second my brain painted a picture of a man in a wedding gown with short blond hair.
I blinked, my mouth falling open. No, not a dress, a dressing gown.
Tied closed around his waist. Made of fluffy white cotton.
One of those eye masks that help you sleep had been pushed onto his forehead, making his blond bangs stick up in a fan.
It took a second for my panicked thoughts to stitch all these random bits of information together.
The brother.
The blond bombshell to Theo’s dark energy. Taller, slimmer, mean face, cold eyes. I knew his name but couldn’t recall it right then. Barren, Boris, Ben, Bastian?
“So, uh . . . Theo’s in a bush in your back yard and your neighbor maybe killed someone. And I really have to go now, so if you can deal with that? That’s great. Bye.”
I was out of there. Not hanging around. Done.
Go back to my apartment. Hide under the covers. Watch trashy TV.
“Wait!” the brother snapped.
His voice come from across the room, but when I glanced back at the sliding doors, he somehow got in front of me, blocking my exit. I got an eyeful of fluffy gown, pale skin, sharp chin . . . and yup, there they were, the tiny points of sharp fangs hiding behind pale pink lips.
“I asked who you are.”
I swallowed. “The pool boy?”
“You left my brother in a bush?”
Oh. His snarl grew, more fangs showing. There’s knowing vampires are a thing, and then there’s seeing the sharp canine teeth up close. My heart was ready to leap out of my chest and flee the country, something I probably should have done a few years ago.
“Uhm . . . he said to put him there . . .” Sort of. “Look, man, I don’t know anything about any of this. I just have to be somewhere else.”
“You put my brother in a bush,” he said again. Not asking this time. More coming around to the idea that his brother was in a bush in the yard and I had something to do with it. His eyes narrowed, his gaze hot and heavy, pinning me down.
“Oh well,” he said flippantly, suddenly breaking the spell. “I suppose it’s for the best. You want a drink?” he asked, nodding toward the bar set on its own little raised area at the side of the living room.
“Uh, no, not really.”
He still blocked my exit. I tried to discreetly step around him, but he braced an arm against the glass, using his body to block my exit.
“What did you say your name was again?” he asked.
“I didn’t.”
He walked forward, and unless I wanted to get a face full of fluffy towel and man chest, I had to back up too. I stumbled over my own feet.
“Mother!” he called. “Theo is dying again!”
“Bentley dear, do keep the noise down.”
Bentley, that was it.
A woman appeared through a marble archway that I assumed led into the hallway, wearing a bright purple dress, as though she’d just stepped off a red carpet.
Her long blonde hair was curled and pinned high in the kind of design that took three people to arrange.
She strode into the living room, or whatever this fancy room was, plucking off earrings and unclasping the jewelry around her neck.
It was then I remembered the ring from the pool filter. But now didn’t really seem the time to bring it up. Theo was outside, dying in a bush. Why weren’t these people more concerned?
She eyed me like she was scrutinizing the neighborhood yappy dog, one she wanted to drop-kick across the block. I swallowed hard. The only Witherborne who actually knew me was Leander, the father who’d hired me off Facebook, and he didn’t seem to be around.
The mother draped herself into an armchair beside the cold marble fireplace. She eyed me hard, and I had the sensation of finding myself in a lion’s cage.
She clicked her fingers at Bentley. “Go find your brother.”
“I’m in a Gucci gown, Mother.”
Her gaze, when she turned it on Bentley, turned bitterly cold. She didn’t have to say another word. The gaze did all the talking for her.
Bentley huffed. “Ugh. Fuck my life.” He tore off his sleep mask, tossed it onto the couch, and strode toward the sliding door.
This was my chance to escape. “I’m just going to—”
“Come along, pool boy.” He grabbed my shoulders with stonelike fingers and steered me back outside. “Show me which bush.”
Bentley let go when we were outside, but I was getting the impression I didn’t really have a choice.
I retraced my earlier steps, crossing the yard again, following the flattened grass path between the bushes, toward the fence. Bentley marched me along, tall and imposing beside me. A muscle in his cheek fluttered, probably because the sunlight was about to ruin his already foul mood.
“What did he bring you out here for, huh? You two fucking?” he asked.
“What? N-no!” I spluttered. “We just met.”
“That’s never stopped him before.”
Wow. “No, he uh . . . There was a possum.”
“A what?” Bentley snapped. “What the fuck is a possum?”
“Uh, small furry creature—never mind.”
“You were chasing this possum?”
I frowned. “No, uhm. He uh . . . We were going to look at the neighbors’ pool.” No way was I going to mention payment. If I did, he’d definitely think I’d whored myself out behind the bushes. Honestly, that would have been better and less traumatic than whatever was happening now.
“That’s some bullshit, pool boy. You think I’m a fucking idiot? Huh? Just because I’m blond? Huh? You think I’m a himbo like mother says I am?”
What? “No, I just . . . that was . . .” I trailed off, because as we neared the bush I’d stashed Theo under, it was plain to see he wasn’t there. No legs sticking out. No sign of him anywhere. “Oh.”
“Oh, what?”
“He uh . . . he was right there. Under that bush.”
Bentley looked around us, then his gaze settled on the neighbors’ house and his hand fell to my shoulder again. A shiver trembled through his whole body, into the hand on my shoulder and down, into me.
Bentley cut his glare to me, and his pale blue eyes turned an angry violet. “My brother wasn’t here, was he? You lured me out here in my best slippers to give me a wretched headache. You think this is amusing? Drag the vampire into the sun? Are you fucking with me?”
“No, I swear it, he was right there!”
Bentley bared his fangs in a hiss, and whatever sense of self-preservation I had left finally kicked in. I bolted, legs pumping, across the yard, through the side-gate, flung open my car door, dropped in, started it, gunned the engine, and I was out of there, tires squealing.
I didn’t slow until I was a mile from the Witherborne mansion and deep into Miami’s bay area.
Through the window, it was all picture-postcard reality.
Palms stood in tidy rows, and the bay threw back the sun, flooding pastel buildings with bright daylight.
A convertible worth more than everything I’d ever owned slid past me at the lights, top down, the driver’s sunglasses catching the glare.
My AC wheezed, but at least my heart had slowed.
This was the same city I’d gone to work in this morning, but after everything I’d just seen, it felt as though I’d just left a whole other planet.
“Holy macaroni.” Okay. It was fine. Whatever all of that was, it had nothing to do with me.
A few days would pass, and by the next time I went back to check the filter, they would probably have forgotten all about it and I could just do my job.
No more sexy vampire playboys, no more bodies in the neighbors’ pool, no more vicious brothers. Just a pool and my job.
My phone rang.
I jumped—swerved. Caught the wheel again and glanced down at the phone in the cup holder. Unknown number. What if it was the black-robe guy? Why had I given him my number? Hey, Mr. Murderer, call me.
“Stupid!” I thumped the wheel, then ran a hand through my hair. “So stupid. Every time. I just gotta open my mouth. Here’s my card,” I mocked myself. “Murder me next, creepy next-door man. Stupid mouth.”
“I like that mouth,” Theo said from the back seat.
I yelped and stomped on the brake. The wheels locked, the tires screamed again, and we came to a sudden stop at the roadside to a hail of angry car horns.
I didn’t care. My nerves were shot. I was done with Witherbornes.
I twisted in the seat and looked at him, sprawled in the back.
Relaxed, loose, half smiling. Cool as a cucumber.
A sexy, smirking, toxic cucumber in a pink and green flower shirt.
“Get out.”
He frowned. “Is that any way to treat a friend?”
“We are not friends. We just met.” I flung open my door, marched to the back of the car, and yanked that door open. “Out.”
Sunlight flooded over him. He flinched and turned his face away. “Another hundred to sleep at yours.”
“Ugh.” This man. But also . . . a hundred bucks? Hm.
He lifted his tired gaze. “My family won’t come after me, if that’s what you’re worried about. Nobody is going to think I’d be at your shithole apartment.”
I hadn’t been worried about that, but now I’d add it to the list. “How do you know my apartment’s a shithole?”
A quick grin. “You just confirmed it.”
I opened my mouth to tell him to get lost again.
He showed me two fingers. “Two hundred.”
He wasn’t going to get out of my car, that much was obvious. I’d picked up a stray and now it wouldn’t leave. “You’ll be gone tonight, right? Just today. No funny business. All of this goes away with you.”
He grinned, finding something funny in what I’d said. “Sure.”
I slammed the door, climbed back behind the wheel, and pulled into traffic. On my top ten list of bad decisions, this was right up there. Right beside giving my card to a murdering weirdo. At least the phone had stopped ringing.
I glanced at Theo in the rearview mirror—eyes closed, dark lashes on pale cheeks, torn jeans, unlaced boots, flower-print shirt—and maybe somewhere alongside my racing heart, somewhere in my panicked thoughts, a little part of me wanted him there, in my back seat.
Because it meant I didn’t have to go home alone again.