Take Me (2 page)

But he didn’t love her.

And he was mating with another woman.

Chapter 2

One month earlier

The blaring ring of the phone sent Felicity scampering down the hall to the kitchen. As soon as she neared it, her cat Hugo darted in front of her. With a cry, she jumped over the rascally feline but missed her footing as she came down. Her knee gave out as she landed awkwardly on her ankle, which sent her sprawling into the kitchen cabinet.

“Ouch, damn it!”

She inspected the damage and saw her knee had taken the brunt of the damage. Well, that and her cheap cabinet that now had a hole in it.

“Just great,” she muttered. “Thanks a lot, Hugo.”

The phone still blared. Fighting through the fiery pain throbbing in her knee, she reached for the wall-mounted phone and snatched it off its set.

“Hello?” she said, her voice as close to a growl as she could manage.

“Ms. Shaw?”

“Who is this?” Felicity quickly wracked her mind for any late bills she had. Crap, she could think of several.

“Is this Ms. Shaw?” the man pressed. He sounded bored and had an uppity, snobbish quality to his voice. It’s how she imagined an educated old professor might speak.

Felicity rolled her eyes. “Yes it is. Are you from the internet company? Listen, I know I’m late but I don’t have the money so just cancel my service again.”

For the past year and half this had been her life. At time it felt like a lot longer than that though. Sometimes having internet and sometimes having television, but mostly paying late fees to try to keep on the services. She’d go without if she could but she needed her internet for job hunting, internet shopping where she endlessly added some much-needed or much-wanted items to her shopping cart that never got purchased, and she needed her television big time. It was the only form of entertainment she had. Honestly.

“Ms. Shaw, my name is Ian Nevell. I am calling—”

Hugo jumped on the counter in front of her and began crying as if he was dying.
“Raaur! Rrrraaarrr! Raaaaar!”

“Shut up, Hugo! I’m not giving you any wet food. You tripped me,” she hissed. The man on the phone cleared his throat, bringing her attention back to the call. “I’m sorry what was it you wanted?”

She gave Hugo a warning look then turned her back on him. “As I was saying, Ms. Shaw, I am calling on behalf of the Blackmoore family.”

“The-the Blackmoores?” Felicity’s eyes widened as her stomach plummeted. She’d applied for the gig of a lifetime there only a week ago, but she’d never thought in a million years she’d get a call back.

The man sighed wearily. “Yes, indeed, Ms. Shaw. The Blackmoore family is in need of an event planner and they have selected your resume for an interview. If you could bring your portfolio to the Blackmoore estate tonight at 7:30 you will meet with Mr. Dominic Blackmoore. He will judge your portfolio and deem whether or not you will suit the occasion. If you are chosen, pay and other benefits will be discussed then.”

Her eyes darted to the clock on her microwave. “But it’s already 6:30. That’s not enough time!” No way could she shower, dress, and make herself up in order to present herself to the likes of seeing a Blackmoore—the wealthiest, most blue-blooded vampires in society—in less than an hour.

But she needed a job so badly. She could hardly afford food anymore. She had to take a bite, literally, out of her friend Beth last week. It was the ultimate shame. To land a job the size of a Blackmoore event—she could practically see the dollar signs dancing around in her head. She could pay her bills, put some away in savings, and buy new clothes and shoes. Oh, and one of those new laptops she saw in a commercial since her computer loved to reboot on her when she wasn’t even using it. But what if they found out about her little lie? She bit her lip, running through the possibilities.

Another sigh on the line. “Ms. Shaw, are you coming or not?”

“Yes, yes, I’ll be there!” She hung up, her mind already running a mile a minute.

She was in the shower, a toothbrush slammed between her teeth and shampoo in her barely-wet hair in under a minute. She ran a razor quickly over her calves; she didn’t have time to do the whole leg, and then hopped out of the shower. In what she deemed to be a very impressive time, she had on her nicest dress—a dark cherry red number with wide straps, a cinched in waist with a thin black belt with her conservative but pretty black heels. The ones that still looked new even though she’d bought them on sale two years ago. The dress said chic, modern, but professional. Exactly what an event planner for a Blackmoore event look like.

The sun had already set. She’d only been awake for two hours. She hated to rush like this because she couldn’t screw this up.

“Just wait ‘till Beth hears about this.” Her best friend and recent blood donor would scale the walls if she got this job, then insist she take her shopping.

Felicity snatched her portfolio off the kitchen the table, grabbed her purse from the hook behind the front door, and then stopped to check her surroundings. She couldn’t forget anything.

Mentally, she went over the list. Hair, done. Makeup, light but professional. Shoes, old but shiny. Purse not designer but not hand-me-down. Portfolio, in arm with résumés sitting inside.

Hugo sidled up to her, his back arching high and fur sticking out on end. “
Rrraaawwr
,” he purred sweetly.

“Not now baby, momma’s got a job interview.”

He looked up at her, cocked his head to the side. “
Raawr
?”

Felicity shook her head. Her blown dry hair felt a bit coarse because she’d forgotten to condition it in her rush, but oh well. A month, or even a week from now she could be cashing such a big check she could go to the salon and get one of those deep conditioning treatments. A soft sigh escaped her at the thought.

“Bye Hugo, momma loves you!” she called then swept out her apartment locking it behind her.

God, this could really be it. She hated her seventy-dollar couch she bought at a thrift store. She hated her scratched up ugly kitchen table. She hated that the only clocks she had in the whole apartment was the stove and her alarm clock. She hated her cheap glasses bought off the clearance rack in a Wal-Mart. She was so sick of not having nice things, of not wanting her friends to come over and see just how poor she really was. It might be petty, but her surroundings embarrassed her. She wanted to do better for herself. And damn it she worked hard and was damn good at her job. If she could get a job...

Felicity got in her car—another despicable thing. Sure it’d once been shiny and working nicely, but that’d been before Bud. Bud was a human who liked to drink and drive. Being a vampire and all Felicity kind of preferred night life. So  she was surprised when one night she took a  green light towards downtown St. Louis, Missouri and heard the sound of screeching tires. No amount of vampire speed could make her car go any faster. The drunken bastard slammed his black Ford F150 into her car so hard it flipped three times before landing upside down in oncoming traffic.

He, and all the others at the light who helped her out of the car, all seemed a bit surprised that she was alive with no broken bones or even a nosebleed. Well, actually, Bud wasn’t that concerned seeing as he was hurling his guts up outside his truck.

It was thanks to that drunken asshole’s lack of insurance that her car looked as it did. It cost too much to repair so she never got her car fixed. She’d lucked out that aside from a new oil filter and some other sensor thing being put on, her car ‘ran.’ If one called the chugging sound it made and the black puffs of smoking coming out the tail end ‘running’.

Of course, the right side where she got t-boned was completely busted in as if a car slammed into it. If she and Beth ever took her car, which they didn’t, then Beth would have to crawl in through the driver’s side door.

Who the heck had that kind of money to get it fixed? Well, not her.

She had no one to turn to for help, as if she would anyway. So she had a super busted car littered with dents on the left and right side, plus a roof that sported a divot the size of a kiddie pool. The roof dipped down so low that if she was taller she might have a hard time sitting up straight in the seat. Luckily for her she was short, just like her mother. A snarl escaped her.

“Don’t even think about her. Stay positive!” she told herself.

With a turn of the key, she started her hunk of metal and tore off to the Blackmoore estate. She knew where it was. Anyone who was anyone knew where the Blackmoores lived. They were only the oldest living vampire fa
mily in the world. Originally from the Middle East, somewhere near present day Turkey, they’d traveled all over the world as the years past and humans evolved.

Felicity didn’t need to be their accountant to know that the Blackmoores were from big money as in b-i-g money. The kind that worked in politics and threw rich dinners for big government and investor types for ten thousand dollar plate dinners.

“Damn!”

Felicity slammed her hand against her steering wheel wishing she still had her cell phone. She hadn’t been able to keep it. Sixty bucks a month for a single phone wasn’t cutting it on her budget. She really wanted to call Beth right now. Her best friend would give her all the positive ear candy she could want.

Felicity pulled onto the highway and checked the clock. “We’re good, Felicity. Still got a good twenty minutes to get there.” The Blackmoores lived in a ritzy neighborhood tucked back in a deceivingly middle-income looking area where coffee shops littered every corner and the homeowners refused to allow Wal-Mart to build so they wouldn’t put out the mom and pop shops that still hung around. It was an area where bicycle lines marked the road and where people took their small dogs into gas stations and grocery stores.

It was weird.

 The house was in the back of the area where ominous black gates stood towering like menacing wraiths above the street. The Blackmoore house rested up on the hill behind the gates. Many tall, old trees blocked the view so you’d be hard pressed to see the house unless you walked by the gate and found just enough of a crack between limbs and trunks. Felicity had seen it though, just part of it when she’d driven by before.

When Felicity had applied for the job she had done it quickly and without much thought. That was because she knew she’d never land a job with the Blackmoores. They hired world-renowned artists for even the simplest of things. They would not hire some nobody vampire girl from the city. Still, she’d been desperate and a little hopeful that just maybe she’d get the job.

Usually when she went to a job interview she was as prepared as possible, sometimes she even spent days learning about a specific client and then scouted locations, created designs, and came up with ideas to dazzle them. True, many of those times she’d forgotten her briefcase or portfolio when she’d gone to the interview, but she’d learned her lesson.  

Whether it was the economy or the fact that times had changed from the early days where throwing a gala and impressing everyone with your wealth and status was all the rage, but now people didn’t do that. Too bad, she missed those times, the elegance, the jewelry, lavish gowns.

A soft sigh escaped her.

Sometimes she’d read in
V-Society
about the Blackmoore’s throwing such parties. Felicity bit her lip as she bounced in her seat with excitement. If she could land this job and they liked her, she could have a permanent new income. They would return to her because they’d be so in love with her design choices. She could almost see it now.

That was it, she decided then. She would just have to become their permanent event planner no matter what it took. This was just the kind of job she’d been searching for and it’d just fallen in her lap—nearly.

A thought struck her. The head of the Blackmoore family and president of the vampire and
were
council had recently died from a rare blood disease, Arromunia. That’s why they needed her. Talks of his death still hadn’t stopped among vamp society. The disease didn’t occur often. The last time a vampire died of it was more than fifty years ago and the time before that spanned another seventy-five years. Very rare indeed.

The disease was the only sickness her kind was susceptible to aside from pure silver, the hot rays of sunlight, and decapitation. No one knew how to get the strange sickness, and it was so rare scientists had not been able to study it in the past. It simply came, chose a victim, and then slowly sucked the life from them like a poison. No amount of blood transfusions could help. The immortal body, after a slow and debilitating trial, would die withering like a body with too much skin clinging to it, eyes sunken, and cheeks gaunt.

That meant Mr. Blackmoore’s eldest son would be in charge—Dominic the one who’d interview her.        

A chill raced over her body. Felicity shook it off and took the road that would hopefully change her life forever. If she could only get a gig like this, her name would be famous among society. Everyone would know the name Felicity Shaw.

She could finally donate her crappy thrift store furniture and buy something real that was just hers. Something she actually liked because it was beautiful and comfortable not because it was cheap.

The Blackmoore’s estate was the only house street on the block. It wasn’t like they owned the street, more like the many acres of land surrounding the house, all of which was gated in by the towering black gate over six feet tall. The black, spiked tops didn’t look sharp but they served as a warning—do not enter.

A small call box waited at the front of the drive. It reminded her of the drive-thru microphones that mortals used when they ordered fast food.

She rolled down her window with the lever then pressed the small black button on the box.

A moment later a clear, male voice rang out. “Who’s calling?”

“It’s Felicity Shaw, the event planner.”

She waited for an answer but nothing came. Then a loud metal clang sounded and the black gates started swinging inward with a mechanical whirring.