Chapter 3

Mila

“He was a serial killer?” Laura asks in disbelief, crashing her coffee mug onto the table and sloshing dark-brown liquid everywhere. “Are you kidding me?”

It’s the day after my would-be murder, and I’m sitting in my best friend’s kitchen in Richmond. Needless to say, I didn’t get an awful lot of shut-eye last night. Being targeted by London’s most wanted can really mess with a sleeping pattern.

I shake my head. “I wish I were.”

“And he tried to murder you in an alley?”

“Yep.”

After I’ve told her the full story, she sits back in her seat, staring at me across the table with a curious mixture of awe and horror. “Only you, Mila,” she says finally. “Only you.”

“I know,” I say, pulling a chocolate cookie from the tin. “If they’re not cheating, they’re trying to kill me. It’s gone beyond a joke.”

“So, what happens now?” Laura asks, eyes wide. “He won’t come after you, will he? He doesn’t know where you live?”

I shake my head, reaching across the table to pat her hand. “Don’t worry. He didn’t even have my telephone number. We arranged it all through V-Date. There’s no way he can trace me.”

Laura nods, some of the tension leaking out of her shoulders. “And the guy who rescued you was a vampire too?”

“Yeah.” I pause, remembering his strong arms around my waist. “He was totally hot.”

Laura’s dour face brightens. “Really? What was his name? Did you see a wedding ring?”

This is one of the things I love most about Laura. She sits through a dramatic account of my near-death experience on a date and still believes there’s a chance I might get a boyfriend out of it.

“Inspector Ferrer,” I say, biting off a chunk of cookie. “I can’t say I was really in the frame of mind to be looking out for a wedding ring though. He just sort of fell from the sky.”

“When you say hot, how hot?”

“Super hot. You know that guy on the billboard as you drive along the M40? The one frolicking in the surf? That hot.”

Laura’s jaw drops. “Jesus.”

We don’t speak for a few seconds, silent in our worship of the billboard hottie.

“He was nice too. He loaned me his jacket. Too bad I’ll never see him again.”

Laura frowns. “Why won’t you see him again? Don’t they want to question you some more?”

I glance down at my wristwatch, vaguely aware I was supposed to be there half an hour ago. Sometime during my sleepless night, I decided wild horses wouldn’t be enough to drag me to Scotland Yard today.

“I’ve already told them everything,” I say, taking a sip of tea. “I just want to put the whole sorry mess behind me.”

“But what if they catch him?” Laura says, her blue eyes wide. “You would have to do one of those lineup things like they have on CSI. Then afterward, Inspector Hot Guy would ask you for coffee. He’d say something like”—she adopts a deeper voice—“‘In a way, I should thank that psycho for bringing you into my life.’”

Despite my weariness, I chuckle. “Didn’t we make a pact to quit pretending life is like the movies?”

“Yeah, we did,” she says, a pink glow appearing in her cheeks. “Until I met Tom.”

I narrow my eyes, pretending to scowl. “Yeah, thanks again for leaving me alone on Bitter Island.”

Up until a few years ago, Laura had been in the exact same situation as me—building an impressive collection of douche bag ex-boyfriends and wondering if there was such a thing as happy ever after. Then the stars aligned. She met her now-husband, Tom, and experienced one of those miraculous moments when both timing and attraction come together in perfect harmony, the holy grail of dating.

Of course, I wasn’t the least bit jealous.

Well, okay, maybe a tiny bit.

“I reckon something good will happen for you soon, Mila. Your days on Bitter Island are numbered,” she says, gazing dreamily out the window at her gardenias. She opens her mouth to add something but then thinks better of it, pursing her lips shut instead.

I wave an accusing finger in her face. “Were you about to say what I think you were about to say?”

She shakes her head vigorously before breaking into a devious smile. “It’ll happen when you least expect it.”

I snatch up a tea towel dangling from the back of a chair and fling it at her. If there’s one thing that drives me mental, it’s hearing that phrase.

“But actually,” Laura says, picking up the cloth and refolding it, “maybe it’s true this time. I bet you weren’t expecting to meet the gorgeous inspector in that alleyway.”

“No, Laura. At that point, I was more focused on the hands about to break my neck than meeting the love of my life.”

“Exactly. So, this could be it.”

“With a vampire?” I ask incredulously. “Even if he swept in that door right now with a diamond engagement ring, it’s completely pointless. There’s no future in dating a man forever trapped in youth. I mean, it’s tough enough trying to keep a regular man faithful for a lifetime. Think what life would be like with some model sort who remains eternally young. Look at Demi Moore.”

She frowns. “So why were you using that site in the first place if you didn’t want to seriously meet someone?”

I shrug, running a finger around the edge of my mug. “Because it interested me, that’s all. I wanted to meet one. After Josh and that whole ‘Oh, by the way, I’m still married to someone and we have two kids together’ fiasco, I felt like dipping a toe in foreign waters. See what the other species are like. Now my curiosity is sated. The end.”

Laura throws me a smug grin and raises a dark brow. “We’ll see about that.”