Because Your Vampire Said So - By Michele Bardsley Page 0,1

- he'd attempted a radical cure. The cure turned him into a two-legged, hairy, stinky beast. He romped around ol' Broken Heart and killed eleven of us single parents.

Oh, now, don't worry. He's back to being a vampire. He married my friend Eva, Broken Heart's only teacher. She was obviously the forgiving sort, but I still felt uneasy around Lorcan.

The night he attacked me, I'd been outside my shop, smoking a cigarette. If I'd known that was the last smoke I was ever gonna have, I would've enjoyed it a lot more. Anyway, I died. Wham! Knocked down, knocked out, and snacked on. Next night, I woke up on a steel table in a white room, feeling more alive than ever - only to be told I wasn't. And I figured out real quick that I had gained a few new tricks.

It wasn't all bad. My crow's-feet, cellulite, age spots, and the ol' saggies went bye-bye. I had clear, wrinkle-free skin, but no amount of vampifying could rid me of my height, a couple inches shy of six feet, or what my son called "fluffiness." Eva said I reminded her of a Valkyrie, which was some sort of Viking chick who kicked ass. I liked that description, I'll tell you.

The Consortium bought my place and gave it to me lock, stock, and barrel, and they paid all bills associated with it and my double-wide, which was twenty feet behind the salon. I didn't have much to do with the money I made, except abuse my credit card on the Home Shopping Network.

"Good evening, Patricia."

The man's voice startled me, but I kept my cool. One thing I'd learned from my ex-husband was that offense was the best defense. "Do you ignore all the signs you read, or just the ones on doors?"

I turned around and leaned on the broom. A man I'd never seen stood inside the doorway, staring at me. And he was built, honey. Mm-hmm. I saw the muscles bulging underneath the crisp white shirt opened at the collar. He also wore a pair of tight black jeans and ... I'll be damned. He had himself a pair of black Prada Croc Sneakers. I liked boots and didn't wear much else. Wilson had shown me a magazine ad with those crocs and said he wanted them. Even though our existence was no longer hand-to-mouth, I couldn't justify buying a pair of shoes that cost twice as much as my mortgage payment.

What was a guy wearing a thousand-dollar pair of kicks doing in my shop? Shoot. What did it matter? Most of the paranormal beings running around our fair town were richer than God.

He didn't seem to mind I was looking him over. As I took his measure, he took mine. His long hair was so white it looked like captured moonbeams. It was drawn into a queue at the back of his neck. If that hair wasn't enough to make the hairstylist in me slobber, then his golden eyes made the woman in me go mreow. Those mesmerizing amber orbs reminded me of the sunsets I would never see again.

Damn. He was temptation itself. I was as celibate as a nun because vampires had a hitched-for-a-hundred-years sex clause. My last marriage lasted eighteen years and that was seventeen years, three-hundred-and-sixty-four days longer than it should have. I swore I wouldn't walk down the aisle ever again, much less fall in love. No, thank you.

"Who are you?" I asked.

"My name's Gabriel." He smiled, but it wasn't a nice smile. It was more like an I'll-eat-you -up grin. I shivered all the way to my toes. "Damian sent me. His orders are to secure your beauty shop and to walk you home."

"Why? Are more Wraiths sneaking around or something?"

Wraiths were vampires who thought they should rule the world, being the superior race. Hah. They'd attacked Broken Heart twice and hadn't accomplished much more than pissing off the residents.

He shrugged. "I do what the boss tells me."

I clutched the broom handle, suddenly uneasy. Handsome as he was, I'd never seen him before. Drake and Darrius were always showing up round here for one thing or another, but it didn't make a lick of sense for Damian to send me a guardian.

The man seemed to sense my distress. "You want to call him and ask?" He unclipped his cell phone from his belt and extended it toward me.

I looked at the phone and then at him. If he was willing to let me