“Holy hell!” I yelped, turning and flinging the heavy round paperweight from my hall table toward the voice.
“What the— Why did you just throw that at my head?”
I flicked the lights on and found Dick Cheney sitting on my couch, holding the glass paperweight centimeters from his face.
“How did you get inside my house?” I demanded, determined not to notice the languid, casual grace with which he was draped across my sofa. I stared at the window behind him with great determination. Great. Determination.
Dick lifted the glass orb to eye level, and I had to switch my determination to not noticing how much he resembled a redneck David Bowie in a backwoods version of Labyrinth.
Maybe it was time for me to get back in touch with my therapist.
“Why did you throw this at my face?” he asked again.
“How did you get into my house?” I asked again, dropping my purse on the table.
“Do you really want to know?” he asked.
I shook my head. “No. I honestly don’t want to know what you’re capable of. Please, just don’t do it again. And if you do, don’t sit on my couch in the dark, waiting for me to come home. It’s creepy.”
Dick wiped his hands on his jeans and stood. He was wearing a T-shirt that said, “Gettin’ Lucky in Kentucky,” which—compared with the rest of his collection—was very sedate and dignified. “I wanted to apologize for last night.”
“Whatever do you mean?” I asked, smiling blithely, though my hands shook as I took a glass down from the cabinet.
“The kissin’ thing,” he said. I could hear every measured footstep as he approached me from behind. I busied myself with pouring a tall glass of filtered water. “I was pissed at myself, and it splashed out on you. And I’m sorry about that.”
“I thought we’d agreed not to talk about this.”
“I never agreed to any such thing,” he protested.
“OK, maybe that was just me.” I turned, and he was standing right in front of me, not quite pinning me against the counter but not giving me a lot of maneuvering room, either. And despite the inches between us, I could still feel him like a crackle of energy brushing over my skin, raising goose bumps.
Dick gave me a lopsided smile. “I’m not sayin’ I regret kissin’ you, but I—I wanted the first time I kissed you to be different. I just wanted to explain why I was in such a weird place last night.”
“Everybody’s upset over Mr. Wainwright dying, Dick.” The smile fell from his face, which only added to my confusion. But I continued, “You seem to be taking it awfully personally, though.”
Dick took a step back, and I immediately felt his absence. “Dick?”
He ran his hand through his hair and let his palm rest against the back of his neck. “Uh, yeah. You see, Mr. Wainwright—Gilbert—he was my family, my great-great-great-great-grandson. He was the last of my family—the last in the Cheney line—with the exception of Emery, who I’m considerin’ testing for Cheney DNA.”
I stared at him, speechless. “What do you mean?”
“Well, I know it’s not nice to make fun of your own grandkids, but honestly, the boy’s got all the personality of a dish sponge. I figure it’s possible his mama slept aroun—”
“No, no. I mean how is it possible—biologically—that you have grandchildren?” I asked him. “I thought vampires didn’t have working—”
I glanced down toward his crotch. I couldn’t help it. You try thinking about the functionality of vampire reproductive organs without glancing downward. Honestly.
“My eyes are up here, Byrne,” Dick muttered.
“Sorry,” I said, though I couldn’t help but giggle a little bit. I clamped my bottom lip between my teeth to prevent undignified grinning.
Dick sighed. “Back before I was turned, I had a, let’s say, ‘fondness’ for the family laundress. Eugenia was a sweet girl and very pretty. My father would have called her ‘comely.’ We enjoyed each other in a tender but vigorous—”
“Please don’t go into details.”
“Well, I guess you’ve figured that part out. She got in the family way. But she told my father, instead of telling me, and he sent her away before I found out. She had my son, and then, well, she fell on hard times—single mother with a ruined reputation raising a baby. Back in those days, that meant more and made life more difficult, and she got desperate. She jumped in the river, and the baby was sent to an orphanage.”
“Wh-what?” I sputtered. “What are you telling me?”
Dick threw up his hands. “I never even knew about the baby until after I was turned. I was too late to help Eugenia, but I could help Albert. I was able to watch my son grow up from far away. By then, I’d made more than a few, well, I don’t like to use the term ‘enemies’—”
“People you screwed over in business dealings?” I supplied.
He nodded. “I left money for Albert when I could, tried to make his life easier. I watched him make all of the same mistakes I did—marry, have a son, not stick around to raise him. So I became a sort of benevolent long-lost uncle to the bloodline, dropping in when they needed something and finding a way to get it to them.
“When Gilbert was born, I could already tell there was something different about him. He was kinder, smarter, and just better than any of us ever tried to be. When he needed schoolbooks, he got them. When he needed glasses, he got them. When he needed college tuition, well—I don’t want to tell you what I had to do to get that for him.”