Paranormal Rom Com New Release! ROAD TRIP WITH A VAMPIRE by Jenna Lavine ~ Includes an Excerpt + 3 FREE First-in-Series Reads!

He was at my side half a heartbeat later, moving with an effortless kind of speed I hadn’t seen from anyone in a very long time. As I watched, the man scooped up the junk on the ground in one fluid movement. Then he hefted the box into his arms like it weighed nothing at all and chucked everything into the dumpster. I had to force myself not to gape at the flex of corded muscle in his forearms while he moved.

Maybe this guy was a runway model, I thought dazedly, watching him brush his hands off on the front of his jeans. He certainly looked like one. Or maybe he was some other kind of celebrity, someone who’d fled to the Northern California coast to escape the nonsense that the beautiful and famous often faced in LA. This area was full of people like that, folks who’d wanted to relocate somewhere coastal and remote to get away from unpleasantness in their old lives.

Like me, I supposed.

“Is there anything else I can help you with?” The man stepped close enough that I could smell his cologne, a hint of something dark and spicy. His dark brown eyes caught the reflection of the moon, and he smiled a little, tentatively, not showing his teeth. Despite his apparent keen interest in helping strangers like me, I got the impression he was shy.

“I’m all set,” I said. There were more boxes of ruined things in the studio, but those could wait until Lindsay and Becky, my friends and Yoga Magic co-owners, showed up in the morning. “Thanks, Mr. . . .”

“Peter.”

“Mr. Peter?”

“Just Peter.” A corner of his mouth quirked up into a half smile, throwing a small scar above his upper lip into sharp relief. I wondered if he’d just given me a fake name. Not that I’d blame him if he had; we were strangers, after all. Gods, his mouth was gorgeous. It took all my restraint not to stare at it as his smile grew into something warm and genuine. “And you are?”

I gave him the name I gave everyone. “Zelda,” I said. Not my real name, either. But close enough.

“Zelda,” he repeated. In his deep, seductive voice, my new nickname sounded like music. “It’s nice to meet you.”

He made to turn and head back in the direction he’d come from. But some long-dormant flirtatious instinct recoiled at the idea of letting this beautiful man walk away so soon after meeting him.

“Are you new here?” I blurted before I could talk myself out of saying something stupid like . . . that. My flirtatious instincts should have stayed dormant. I was terrible at this. “Sorry if that’s a weird thing to ask. It’s just this town is microscopic. If I’ve never seen someone before, they’re either a tourist or new to town.”

“I’m not a tourist,” he said. “I’m new here. At least, I think I am.”

Huh. That was a weird answer. I decided to breeze past it. “And how are you finding it here?”

“Hot.”

I laughed. “It’s not usually quite this hot.” Which was true. We were in the middle of a rare October heat wave. California’s famously temperate climate had been one of the main reasons I’d relocated here, but we hadn’t seen her in weeks.

“No?”

I shook my head. “This string of ninety-plus-degree days is unusual.”

He considered that. “Is it normally quite this sunny?”

“It rained the other day.” I pointed at the dumpster. “That box is full of stuff that got ruined when our roof leaked. But yes, most of the time it’s very sunny. It’s wonderful, isn’t it?”

“No,” he said emphatically.

My eyebrows rose. “No?”

“I can understand why others might enjoy a nice sunny day. It’s just that I get . . .” He trailed off, frowning.  “Overheated.”

I took in his fair complexion. Considered the Midwest accent. Most of my visits to the Midwest had been in deep winter, under thick and low-hanging cloud cover. He likely just wasn’t used to hot weather. “Is that why you’re out for a walk late at night? To avoid the sun?”

The corner of his mouth ticked upward again. “Something like that.”

An awkward quiet settled between us after that. If I were smart, I would thank this stranger for the help and go home. The pinprick tingles in my fingertips were now spreading up through my arms. I couldn’t ignore them for much longer.

But I didn’t want to say good night. Maybe it was just because it had been so long since I’d encountered someone so attractive, but there was something about this man that compelled me.

I wanted to keep him there. Keep him talking.

“So, Peter,” I began. “What do you do when you’re not either helping strangers with their trash or avoiding the sun?”

He slid his hands into his pockets, rocking back on his heels as he considered the question. “You could say I’m engaging in a . . . How did I hear someone put it the other day?” He pursed his lips, searching for the right words. “A journey of self-discovery.”

He said it like he was speaking an unfamiliar language. I laughed. “Sounds like something a person around here would say.”

“Really?”

“Yes. It could have even been someone who takes classes at my studio.”

“Your studio?”

I jerked my thumb over my shoulder, in the direction of Yoga Magic. “We hold yoga classes six days a week. Pilates, too, on Tuesdays. All ability levels.” The smile I gave him was one part sales pitch, one part my continued weak attempt at flirting. “If you’re engaging in a journey of self-discovery, yoga could be just the thing.”

He frowned. “How so?”

How much truth should I offer this guy? Some partial truths would probably be all right. “I’m not sure where I’d be today without yoga. My students share similar stories with me all the time.”

He considered that. “Do you think someone like me, who, as far as I can recall, has no yoga experience, might benefit?”

“Definitely,” I said. “First class is free if you want to try it.”

“I do appreciate free.” Then he added, so quietly I didn’t know whether I was meant to hear, “Right now I’ll try anything.”

There was pain in his expression, in the way his brows knit together for just a whisper of a moment. When a car horn blared some distance away, it seemed to bring him back to the present. He shook his head slightly, as if to shake off an errant thought. “Thank you for the invitation.” His voice was back to the warm neutrality it had held before. “I’ll think about it.”

“I hope you do,” I said.

Silence again. I needed to get started on my bedtime routine to have any chance of sleeping that night, but Peter was still watching me like I was a puzzle he was determined to solve.

I couldn’t look away.

Would it be a bad idea to ask for his number? To invite him up to my apartment? Probably. But it had been ages since my last hookup. I didn’t do real romantic entanglements with anyone with a normal human lifespan, but perhaps spending one night with this guy was just what I needed to blow off some steam.

I closed my eyes for the span of a handful of heartbeats, gathering the nerve to ask if he’d like to join me upstairs for a cup of coffee.

When I opened them again, he was gone.

The hairs on the back of my neck stood on end.

I’d seen this kind of silent speed before. People who could just disappear like that were usually very bad news.

Renault, the dog who lived in the apartment complex next to my studio, started barking. It snapped me out of my irrational wave of paranoia.

I was being ridiculous. There had been some false alarms, particularly recently—but no one from my old life had ever found me here.

There was no reason to think they would now.