“No.” I wasn’t surprised, though. The two catering and event companies employed both humans and shifters, but I was sure they’d required lots of capital to start up, and they’d begun their operations in a very luxe way. That’s kind of a vampire signature.

“So I can’t afford to offend a lot of deaders,” Quinn said, looking away as if he were sure this admission would make him look weak. “They’re silent partners in the rest home my mother stays in, too.” Quinn had already paid off one family debt he owed the vampires.

“They’ve got you every which way,” I said. We looked at each other directly.

“I want you to know,” he said. “I want you to know that if you don’t want to be with Eric, if he’s using any kind of coercion on you, if he’s got any leverage on you the way they do on me . . . I’ll do anything in my power to get you free.”

He’d do it, too. I suddenly saw a whole different life opening up before me, and my imagination painted it rosy, for a moment. I tried to picture living with Quinn, who was warm and generous and a magnificent lover. He really would do everything he could to pry me away from Eric if he thought I had the slightest misgivings about my relationship with the vampire, no matter what the consequences were for him.

I’m not a saint. I thought of how wonderful it would be to be with a man who could go shopping with me in the daytime, a man I could have a baby with, a man who knew how to treat a woman well. But even if I decided I wanted to leave Eric, Eric would always be sure, through his vampire contacts, that Quinn paid and paid and paid.

I looked past his shoulder out the bay window to see Tijgerin, who was happily devouring her third hamburger. I didn’t know much about her, but I did know there were very few weretigers left in the world. If Quinn and Tijgerin mated, they could have a tiger baby. And from the way she’d looked at Quinn, I thought I could assume she was unencumbered by a boyfriend at present. She and Quinn had been smacked in the face with their mutual attraction, and I admired him all the more for sticking to his declared program in making this offer.

I took a deep breath before I spoke, aware that this was a huge honor he’d paid me.