KENSINGTON PUBLISHING CORP.

       http://www.kensingtonbooks.com

      For Emily.

       You can read this in fifteen years,

       but by then, I bet you won’t want to.

      Contents

      Acknowledgments

      Chapter 1

      Chapter 2

      Chapter 3

      Chapter 4

      Chapter 5

      Chapter 6

      Chapter 7

      Chapter 8

      Chapter 9

      Chapter 10

      Chapter 11

      Chapter 12

      Chapter 13

      Chapter 14

      Chapter 15

      Chapter 16

      Chapter 17

      Chapter 18

      Chapter 19

      Chapter 20

      Chapter 21

      Chapter 22

      Chapter 23

      Chapter 24

      Chapter 25

      Chapter 26

      Chapter 27

      Chapter 28

      Chapter 29

      Epilogue

      Acknowledgments

      Thanks to the Tarts. Thanks, Janet, for the “tying one on” info!

      Thank you, Mom and Dad, for the month-long writing boot camp.

      Thank you, Lisa, Chris, Sheryl, and Karen. I so appreciate the great feedback.

      Thanks to Sandie of the Underground, who I missed last time. Sorry!

      I really want to thank a few of my best writing buddies who have made this whole adventure tons of fun: Julie Cohen, Christie Kelley, Janet Mullany, Kate Dolan, Beth Ciotta, Jordan Summers, Arianna Hart, Julia Templeton, Mary Stella, Sue Fickel, and Suzanne Walter. You are the greatest!

      I also want to thank all the wonderful authors at Romance Unleashed, with special thanks to: Lori Devoti, Kathleen Long, Kristina Cook, Kate Rothwell, Flo Fitzpatrick, Teresa Bodwell, Jessica Trapp, and Sally Mackenzie.

      You were the first of the group I met, and you made me feel very welcome.

      And to all the ladies there—you keep me sane. Thanks.

      Thanks Jul for the last minute read through.

      And, finally, thanks Kate. You were so right.

      Chapter 1

      The pink flamingos had to die!

      Christian groaned and slammed a flattened, musty pillow over his head, trying to block out the grating noise. But the endless whirring would not be silenced. Add the clack, clack, clack of the little man sawing wood, and the noise was almost unbearable.

      He threw the pillow aside and sat up on the sagging mattress. A spring poked at the back of his thigh, although he barely registered the stab.

      He shoved up from the bed and walked to the window, or rather stepped to the window, as the square room was about the size of one of his Monte Carlo bungalow’s walk-in closets.

      Grime hazed the small rectangular window, but he could still see the offending noisemakers. He wished he could grow accustomed to them like he had his lumpy bed. But the racket never seemed to end.

      The goddamned lawn ornaments would be the thing that finally drove him stark raving mad.

      An enormous assortment of ornaments rose from the neighboring trailer’s lawn like a twirling and spinning army of kitsch. Flowers, flamingos, other random animals, their petals, wings, and appendages whirling deafeningly in the breeze. And then there was that little man with the saw like an army sergeant, bobbing away, clacking endlessly, spurring the others on. Damn, he hated that little man.

      He even hated the ornaments that didn’t move. The gnomes. The plastic geese. The wooden cutout that was supposed to look like a lady with an unusually well-endowed backside, bending over among the bedraggled flowerbed.

      Christian closed his eyes for a moment, but the menagerie of tastelessness just appeared behind his closed eyelids in full, swirling color.

      Giving up the hope of peace, he left his closetlike bedroom to enter a dark, paneled hallway that was just wide enough for the expanse of his shoulders. As he passed the bathroom, the toilet, which seemed to have a will of its own, gurgled to life in greeting. The hiss of water was a welcome distraction from the saw man.

      He walked out to the narrow galley-style kitchen, which was large enough for a stained and nicked counter, ancient appliances, and a kitchen table with metal legs and a speckled gray and white top. The cracked linoleum chafed the soles of his bare feet.

      He walked over to the computer, which sat on the kitchen table, and pressed the power button. The hard drive hummed to life. Christian then wandered over to the ancient fridge and grabbed a packet of his nightly meal. Blood, pre-measured into small pouches. Eight ounces, just the right amount to keep him from going absolutely mad, but not enough to feed his preternatural abilities.

      He dug around in one of the kitchen drawers until he found a straw. Puncturing the plastic, he swallowed a groan—the image of his fangs puncturing the fragile barrier of human flesh flashed through his mind. Damn, he missed that.

      Why was he so antsy tonight? So uncomfortable with his developed routine? He made himself go over to the typed out and bulleted list on the fridge, held with a Red Cross Blood Drive magnet. His twelve-step program. Based on the A.A. program, the steps changed to fit his own particular problem.

      He read them again, and chanted the steps over and over to himself as he headed to his computer. He clicked onto the Internet and his site came up: Being Human.

      Tonight, he didn’t check the comments on yesterday’s blog entry, although he did notice thirty-three people had posted. It was truly amazing what people would waste their time reading. Of course, he was the one who was wasting his time writing it.

      “Therapy,” he reminded