‘We’re good,’ Michael agreed. ‘Watch your back.’

‘I hear ya. My worst problem right now is dishpan hands.’

‘I’ll send you some lotion and nail polish. Want me to buy you a mani-pedi, too?’

‘Mother—’ He hung up on me before I could get the rest of it out, which was probably for the best. I shook my head and scrubbed glasses – damn, I hated lipstick, at least in this context – for another twenty minutes or so before Jesse suddenly tapped me on the shoulder. I jumped and almost dropped a martini glass, which would have come out of my not-so-great pay, but she caught it on the way down. She had great reflexes.

Too great.

‘Your girlfriend is Claire Danvers?’ she asked me, and set the martini glass in the clean tray.

‘Yeah. Is she still here?’

‘No, I never saw her in there, but I got a message she’d be waiting in the back. Do you want to talk to her?’

Yes. I wanted to talk to her so badly it made my stomach churn. ‘No,’ I said. ‘Just don’t tell her I’m here, okay? It’s complicated.’ Dammit, my arm twinged again, and the muscles burned and contracted. I rubbed it, frowning, and wondered if I’d been overworking the recovery just a little.

‘Copy that, friend. All right, she asked for me, so I’m going. Keep up the good work.’ She winked at me, and yeah, she was hotter than just about any girl who’d ever winked at me, at least in a theoretical sense. But I’d had plenty of experience around hot vampire chicks, and it had never ended well for me. So I sent back a non-committal nod, and tried not to watch her ass as she headed for the door. I was the only one managing to resist, looked like. She drew male attention the way pitcher plants draw bugs … and the outcome would be the same.

You could drown in that honey.

Jesse was gone her full fifteen for her break, and when she came back in she gave me a quick thumbs up. ‘She’s okay,’ she told me. ‘Heading home. So, although you haven’t said so, I’m guessing you’re also from her hometown.’

I nodded without committing to anything; I didn’t know if Jesse actually knew where Claire was from, after all. But she must have, because she glanced around the kitchen to be sure Luis was neck-deep in his own work before turning back to me with her eyes flaring a brief, bloody red. Her lips parted just enough to show me the tips of her fangs, sliding smoothly down, sharp enough to pierce steel.