Driving Mr. Dead

Nice Girls Don’t Have Fangs

Nice Girls Don’t Date Dead Men

Nice Girls Don’t Live Forever

How to Flirt with a Naked Werewolf

The Art of Seducing a Naked Werewolf

And One Last Thing …

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This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

Copyright © 2011 by Molly Harper White

Originally published by Audible in December 2011

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First Pocket Books ebook edition January 2012

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Driving Mr. Dead

Nice Girls Don’t Bite Their Neighbors - Teaser

The Care and Feeding of Stray Vampires - Teaser

Don’t forget

to click through after

DRIVING MR. DEAD

for two exclusive sneak peeks

at Molly Harper’s next

delicious novels

NICE GIRLS DON’T BITE THEIR NEIGHBORS

and

THE CARE AND FEEDING OF STRAY VAMPIRES

I was lost, hopelessly, irretrievably lost. Amelia Earhart lost. All-that’s-missing-is-the-smoke-monster lost. The kind of lost you only got when you were running seriously late and were
this
close to being fired. Again.

“I suppose a little visibility would be too much to ask,” I muttered, rubbing my sleeve against the fogged glass of the windshield. I squinted at the faded, peeling road sign that marked the fork off Sedgemoore Road. I was pretty sure the bold block letters were painted sometime during the Lewis and Clark expedition. Did my client live so far away from civilization that the Washington highway department simply forgot his road existed? My cell phone’s navigation app had certainly glossed over it. Smartphone, my ass.

I pulled the pimped-out, late-model Suburban I’d dubbed the “Batmobile” onto the muddy shoulder and checked the map again. Sedgemoore Road had several forks. Then again, I wasn’t sure I was still on Sedgemoore. Pierce County only went so far. In my vehicular meanderings through the forest, had I accidentally broken immigration laws and ventured into Canada? I checked the glowing green lights of the digital clock. I was forty minutes behind schedule. Well, yesterday’s schedule. Either way, I should have had
Mr. Sutherland loaded up and halfway to Tacoma by now.

Panic surged through my chest, a hot, acidic burn that humiliated as much as it pained. How did this crap always end up happening to me? I wasn’t stupid, careless, or lazy. I didn’t wake up in the morning and think,
You know what? Today’s a good day for massive, humiliating failure.

I didn’t intend to be this late in my first official pickup as a “transport specialist” for Beeline, Half-Moon Hollow’s only daytime vampire concierge service. I didn’t intend for a depressed chicken to leap to its death from a Sunny Farms truck, splintering my windshield and requiring a daylong delay in Kansas City for repairs. I certainly didn’t intend for the Batmobile’s post-cross-country/pre-cross-country tune-up to take an hour longer than promised by that sketchy gas-station mechanic, putting me behind schedule and on the road after dark, where no person with ordinary human vision would be able to see through the rain, much less read Sacagawea’s road signs.

Can an inner monologue hyperventilate?

I squeezed my eyes shut, breathing slowly and deliberately through my nose, just like the therapist told me … before I stopped going … after the second session. I focused on the sound of the rain pounding against the roof of the car. I inhaled the scent of the cheap pine air freshener that the detailers used on the upholstery, which was sort of superfluous considering my evergreen surroundings. The steering wheel was warm and smooth beneath my palms, slightly damp.

I forced myself to open my eyes. I was a Puckett, damn it. And Pucketts didn’t lose our nerve. We schemed, we interjected, we occasionally drank too much and told someone what we really
thought of them at a Christmas party, but we never lost our nerve. I’d faced situations far more complicated than this before and emerged un-, well, relatively unscathed—without lasting damage, at least. And I’d laughed most of the way. There was no reason to get wound up now.

The water rippled down the windshield, turning the Washington countryside into a murky, verdant mess. Taking another deep breath, I turned off the shoulder, pulled toward the fork, bore right, and then changed to left at the last minute.

It’s a process, and occasionally, it works.

A few miles later, I saw lights through the trees. It took only three attempts for me to find the shrubbery-shrouded driveway entrance, marked with the smallest fricking address plaque in the world. The house itself was gorgeous, one of those timeless cabins of stone and cedar shake built so it looked like part of the terrain. I wanted to weep with relief as I parked the car in front of the vaultlike pine door, but showing up with big mascara tracks down one’s face seemed unprofessional.

I peered up at the huge windows, inconveniently hung with white sheer curtains, so I couldn’t see inside. A man who lived in the middle of nowhere … who didn’t want anyone looking in his windows. That wasn’t a red flag or anything.

“You can do this, Miranda,” I murmured. “There’s nothing to be afraid of. This is just another adventure, uncharted territory … the kind with abandoned country roads … and a creepy guy who needs curtains to hide his activities from his nonexistent neighbors. And that’s definitely new.”

Angry alt rock blared through the pitter-pattering against my windshield. My eyes flicked toward my cell phone and spotted an
unwelcome number on the caller ID. I sighed and pressed “ignore,” then silenced the ringer. It wouldn’t do for Mr. Sutherland to know that my on-again, off-again fiancé’s ringtone was Henry Rollins singing, “I’m a liar!”

I had my reasons.

I took a deep breath before hopping out of the car and dashing to the front door. The rain picked up the moment I was out, the wind sweeping in from both sides, pelting my back with sheets of water. In just a few steps, I was soaked, my feet squishing and squeaking inside my low-heeled black boots.

Of course.

Before I could knock, the door swung open. Blue eyes. Ice-blue, with only the tiniest hint of darker sapphire around the pupils. And those peepers were not happy. Yelping, I jumped back and would have fallen on my ass in the mud had not a pale hand shot out to grasp my wrist and yank me inside.

The moment I was through the door, he dropped my wrist as if the contact burned. I pulled my hand back, cradling it to my body and shrinking against the door.

Vampires were generally more attractive than the human population. Whatever they were in life, they ended up just a little bit sexier, with a dash of that “dangerous to know” appeal. Well, Mr. Sutherland had obviously started off with a pretty high bar. His ridiculously shiny coffee-colored hair was tousled in that intentionally messy-sexy way that begged for fingers to comb through it. The dark hair accentuated pale skin and aristocratic features, a high forehead, a straight nose, cheekbones so high that they left sharp hollows on either side of his face, and a generous mouth posed in a permanent sneer.

Given our surroundings, I’d foreseen a vampire Grizzly Adams opening the door. But my new client had been turned sometime in his late thirties. He wore a dapper, almost Victorian, gray three-piece suit with a crisp white shirt, no tie. Frankly, I expected him to whip out a
Phantom of the Opera
cape any moment.