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  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual events or locales or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  Vampire Encounters - Second Chances

  Copyright ã 2005 T.D. McKinney

  ISBN: 1-55410-569-2

  Cover art and design by Martine Jardin

  All rights reserved. Except for use in any review, the reproduction or utilization of this work in whole or in part in any form by any electronic, mechanical or other means, now known or hereafter invented, is forbidden without the written permission of the publisher.

  Published by eXtasy Books, a division of Zumaya Publications, 2005

  Look for us online at:

  www.zumayapublications.com

  www.extasybooks.com

  Dedication

  The author would like to thank Aimée Masion, Kathy Toles, Deborah Savage, & Trudy Miller

  Chapter One

  “You need a real man.”

  “Lurleen! Please!” Samantha’s smile was half-exasperated, half-amused.

  “Well, it’s true! When was the last time you went out on a date?” Lurleen tossed a carefully highlighted hank of ash-blond hair over her shoulder. “And discussing server issues and new programming concerns over lunch with Billy Wheaton doesn’t count,” she quickly added.

  Sam sighed and pushed her more prosaic brown hair away from her face. “Billy Wheaton’s married.”

  “Like I said, he doesn’t count.” Lurleen checked her reflection in the night-darkened window behind Sam. “Do these pants make me look fat?”

  Sam was used to the tangents and convolutions inherent to conversations with her friend and just went with the flow of it. She was also used to the other woman’s preoccupation with her looks. Sam often felt mousy and drab standing beside all that flamboyance. Still, Lurleen was her best friend, and Sam was more than willing to supply the reassurance she needed. “You weigh ninety-eight pounds with your boots on, and ten pounds of that is hairspray and make-up. Nothing makes you look fat. Fat wouldn’t even make you look fat.”

  “That’s why I love you, Sammie.” Lurleen’s west Texas accent was even denser and more pronounced than Sam’s. She was also the only person alive who could get away with using that hated nickname. Anyone else who addressed Samantha as Sammie was likely to discover just how redneck Sam could be when she was agitated. But Lurleen was Sam’s friend and had been since kindergarten. She’d picked up the nickname from Sam’s father.

  The only other person who dared use the diminutive was Sam’s brother. But she hated to hear Frank say it. It reminded her her father was gone. It had been three years since Jock Bailey’s death but the pain was still sharp. Frank couldn’t seem to understand her lingering grief and despite his sister’s repeated requests, he insisted on calling her by her family pet name. Oddly, it didn’t hurt when Lurleen said ’Sammie’. Of course, Lurleen’s voice wasn’t nearly identical to Jock’s, and didn’t call up that sense of loss and sorrow. The twinge of grief was still there but it was somehow softer, and only made her feel wistful.

  Lurleen grinned brightly at her friend, unfazed by dismal thoughts and pleased with the ego boost she’d just received. “You always make me feel good about me, Sammie.”

  Sam chuckled at the blonde’s bouncy response. “That’s what girlfriends are for. So who’s got you all fancied up?”

  Lurleen’s grin grew and gained a certain salacious edge. Her eyes went glassy with desire and her voice dropped half an octave in pitch. “Edmundo.”

  “Lord help him,” Sam said with just a hint of sarcasm. If she was any judge of Lurleen’s intentions, Edmundo was in for a long and strenuous Friday night.

  Sam glanced at her reflection in the window and firmly resisted the urge to feel jealous. She had no reason to dress up. With an inward sigh, she admitted she was about as far from dressed up as she could be. Her long brown hair was unfettered by styling products and hung free over her shoulders. It was tidy enough, but certainly not tinted and styled the way it would have been a few years earlier. There were no cosmetics on her face, and she couldn’t remember the last time she bothered to put on make-up.

  Her fashion statement these days was clean and neat rather than fashionable or sexy. There was a time when Friday night meant she would be just as dolled up as Lurleen, with hair fresh from the beauty parlor and lips bright with lipstick. Now it meant Casual Friday at the office and a chance to relax in jeans and a T-shirt instead of the usual business wear. It meant working late and not thinking about going home to an empty apartment.

  When had she stopped caring about how she looked? When had she quit trying?

  With a smile she didn’t really feel stretching her unvarnished lips, she turned her attention back to Lurleen, took a long look at her friend’s wardrobe choices, and amended her earlier thought. Edmundo was in for a long and strenuous weekend. The garish shirt and tight, starched, pink jeans Lurleen wore were new. Since she didn’t buy new clothes for just any man, Sam figured Edmundo must be pretty far up her friend’s rating scale. Maybe Lurleen had finally found the man she had been looking for since the two girls first started talking about their dream guy back in middle school. Sam hoped so.

  A bit of reality crept into her smile. She also hoped Edmundo was taking his vitamins and drinking lots of Red Bull. He was going to need them. And as long as he made Lurleen happy, Sam was pleased.

  “So should I call your cell phone Sunday night to remind you to get out of bed and go home?” Sam asked with a sardonic smile. It helped to cover up the empty feeling inside.

  “Oh, God, I hope so,” Lurleen said fervently with a far away and happy expression firmly in place. Then she seemed to shake off thoughts of Edmundo and headed back to her earlier subject. “And that reminds me. You need a real man.”

  “Lurleen!” Sam didn’t want to think about men. She didn’t want to think about finding one or the current lack of a lover in her life.

  “I’m serious,” Lurleen persisted. “All you do any more is work and read those stupid romance novels.” She picked up the book lying face down on Sam’s desk and grimaced. “Good Lord. This one is the absolute worst!” She pointed to the cover. “No man looks like that in real life, not even Edmundo. And let me tell you, that boy can stop traffic when he doesn’t wear a shirt! This is, well...impossible. No one looks this good without a production crew, a makeup team, and an airbrush artist.” Her perfectly plucked eyebrows drew together in a frown of intense displeasure.

  Sam nodded reluctant agreement. It was true that the art on the cover was beyond what any rational person could expect of a human male, but that didn’t matter. It wasn’t the overblown cover that kept her attention glued to the pages the cover protected. She needed the escape. She needed to feel like there was something better somewhere. And if the only place she could find that was between the pages of a book, then so be it.

  Still, Sam protested softly, “He doesn’t look like that in my head.” In her imagination, he looked real and somehow that made him much more attractive than the impossible beauty on the cover, but she wasn’t going to tell her that. The headache niggling behind her eyes was growing.

  “You shouldn’t be looking at guys in your head, Sam,” Lurleen protested. �
�You should be looking at them in your bed!” She thumbed through the paperback and snorted derisively. “How many times have you read this one?”

  “I haven’t,” Sam countered defensively, snatching the book from her friend’s contemptuous hold. “It’s new. I just started it and I haven’t gotten to read it yet.”

  She rolled her eyes. “Wonderful. Just what you need, another story to get you further hung up on Cole Grayson.”

  “I am not hung up on Cole Grayson.” Sam held her novel against her chest protectively. “I’m not hung up on anyone. And if I was, it wouldn’t be with someone in a book. I have better sense than to fall for a fictional character.”

  Cole was just a diversion, something to keep her apartment from feeling so hollow. If Sam used reading as a way to escape, well it was healthier than using booze. She glared at her friend.

  Lurleen wasn’t the least intimidated. “Bullshit,” she said pleasantly, and propped her denim-clad hip against the side of Sam’s desk. “You are so in love with him it isn’t even funny.”

  Sam winced. Did she have to use that word? “I am not in love with anyone.” Why didn’t her objection sound more emphatic? Her friend couldn’t be right. Cole wasn’t real; it didn’t matter how alluring and wonderful he was. He lived between the pages of a book. There was no rational way she could be in love with him. She glared accusingly at her friend. “Least of all, Cole Grayson.”

  Lurleen snorted delicately. “Yeah, right. You measure every man you meet by his standard. Well you know what? He’s a fantasy guy. He’s perfect, and no man is ever going to measure up to him.” She stared down at her bright pink nails, checking for any imperfection that might offend Edmundo. “You need to stop thinking about Cole Grayson. You need to get out. Find yourself some real guy and tie one on for about a week.” She glanced back up. “You could do it easy enough. You know plenty of men.”

  “Oh, please!” Sam protested. “I know plenty of programmers and scientists. Most of whom would rather be off playing EverQuest online than out on the town.” She shook her head. “You think I have issues with fantasy and reality! Spend some time with those guys and I’ll look like Miss Normality to you. I don’t feel like dressing up in a chain mail bikini and pretending to be Zena, Warrior Princess just to get their attention. Thanks, but no thanks.”

  “Chain mail bikinis can be fun. Remember that year we went to Waxahachie for the Renaissance festival? That was lots of fun. Besides, you of all people should understand escapism. And you know men who aren’t on the Geek Gamers Squad,” Lurleen insisted with a dismissive wave and an expectant twinkle in her blue eyes.

  Sam sighed, wishing she would just give up. But she wasn’t the giving up type, and Sam knew her friend would perch on the edge of the desk until the Oilers won a Super Bowl waiting for an answer. She might as well humor her and get it over with before her headache turned into a migraine.

  “Well, let me see. Men other than computer nuts...Hmm, what’s that leave? My worthless brother’s friends? Again, no, thank you. I’ve had more than my share of cowboys and ranchers. I’ve dated enough broncobusters and bull riders to start my own rodeo. Not interested. There’s too much crap attached to dating cowboys. They’re never home unless you consider a bar their home. They can be total assholes.”

  Lurleen waved a hand in protest. “I don’t know. That one from Abilene was kind of sweet. And cute as a bug!” At Sam’s quelling look, she shrugged. “I keep telling you that you need to find some pretty Latino boy. Those Hispanic men are something else! Get you a Mexican man.”

  Sam rolled her eyes. “I can’t take the machismo. Makes me want to hurt them, and not in a good way. Besides, I’m taller than most of them.”

  “And actually you’re more macho than they are,” Lurleen added. “Most of them are afraid you’ll kick their ass.” She laughed. “They’ve heard stories from all your brother’s friends. You’ll never live down what you did to Gilbert Martinez graduation night.”

  “True,” Sam conceded with a touch of regret.

  “Not that he didn’t deserve everything you did!” Lurleen tried to put on a consoling expression. Sam didn’t think it was working very well. Mostly, it looked smug. “In fact, you should have cracked his head open instead of just taking him out to Kermit and leaving him in the Sand Hills. Naked.” She couldn’t help giggling over the memory.

  “I should have killed the sorry S.O.B.,” Sam agreed. “But killing him would’ve gotten me sent to the women’s prison in Huntsville. I figured I could get out of dumping his ass in the Sand Hills and letting him walk back to Odessa.” Looking back, it was quite possibly the stupidest thing she’d ever done. Now she knew it would be called kidnapping, but back then it was justice, and at the time it made sense. A lot of things made sense where you were seventeen that made no sense at all when you were thirty.

  While she regretted the action she couldn’t regret any pain Gilbert felt. No man should be allowed to treat a fourteen-year-old kid the way Gilbert treated Lurleen’s little sister and get away with it. She and Lurleen had proven to him in terms even scum like Gilbert could understand just how unacceptable it was to coerce a little girl into sex and then leave her pregnant. Because Gilbert was seventeen, the police couldn’t do anything. But once the danger of expulsion from school was removed, the girls had acted. And since Sam was the one who got Gilbert falling down drunk, dumped him into the back of her pickup truck and then stripped him buck naked, it was Sam who had to live down the tale for the rest of her life. Lurleen had merely rode shotgun on the trip.

  It had been a well-intentioned, brainless thing to do but dumb or not, at least Sam felt alive back then. She’d stood with her father’s crew out in the oil field grinning while they heckled and jeered at Gilbert as he tried to maneuver through the acres of broken glass left by generations of Odessa’s youth and their not-so-surreptitious partying.

  It took him most of the night to make his way back to town. No one in her dad’s crew had offered Gilbert a lift. Neither had any of the other roughnecks working the rigs in the other fields on the fifteen-mile trek back to town. They all knew what he’d done to Lisa. Justice, small town Texas style, suited them just fine.

  Sam sighed at the memory. She’d cared enough about something to take action back then. She hadn’t felt alive or cared about much in a while. She smiled wanly at Lurleen. “Well, I did get away with it. The police wouldn’t even arrest me when Gilbert tried to file a complaint.”

  “Yeah. They knew Gilbert was a worthless piece of trash. Hell, all of Midland-Odessa knew that! Over all, it was fun.” Lurleen put memory aside and went back to the subject at hand. “Still, it sure as shit messed up your rep with a certain class of men. You scare the hell out of the Texicanos. They don’t want to date you much. They’re afraid if they break up with you, you’ll get pissed and cut off their cojones or leave them in the middle of the desert like you did Gilbert, or something.” She thought for a moment. “You know, Edmundo has some friends from Nogales. They likely haven’t heard about Gilbert Martinez. I can probably get him to fix you up. He’ll do just about anything I want him to.” She smiled toothily. “You want me to talk to him about it? I bet he could find you a good man.”

  Right now, Sam didn’t want a good man. She wanted to smack Lurleen for her tenacity, but she’d gladly settle for the other woman leaving. “No, I don’t want him to fix me up,” she said. I don’t need a man in my life. I’m fine just the way I am. She couldn’t meet her friend's clear gaze. Yeah, and I don’t lie worth shit. Even to myself.

  Sam sighed aloud, weariness permeating the action. She was just as tired of the topic as she sounded. Tonight’s conversation was nothing but a repeat of last Thursday’s talk and the one they’d had the Friday before that. They had it at least once a week, if not more often. It happened whenever Lurleen noticed Sam reading a new romance novel or rereading an old one. And God help her if she happened to be rereading one of The Vampire Encounters books and Lurleen caught her. The l
ecture could go on for hours. Sam just didn’t feel like dealing with it tonight.

  Sam glanced back at her computer as it beeped again. Spam. She gave a mental sigh. She was hoping for a real email that would require her attention. Then Lurleen might leave. Sam simply wanted some peace and quiet and—she was forced to admit it privately, though she’d let Gilbert Martinez get his pay back and dump her naked in the Sand Hill wastes before she admitted it to Lurleen—she wanted her new novel. But the gods who watched over west Texas redneck girls didn’t seem to be on her side tonight; Lurleen was still staring at her expectantly.

  Sam needed to hurry her friend along and she knew just how to do it. “Aren’t you going to be late for your date with Edmundo?” she said with an innocent air. The one thing Lurleen liked more than trying to organize Sam’s nonexistent love life was participating in her own very active one.

  “Oh, shit.” Lurleen looked around frantically, gathering up her purse, her lunch cooler, and the bag that contained her work clothes since God and Samantha knew she couldn’t wear those skin-tight pink jeans and a sparkly crop top during the workday. “Come with me,” she half-ordered, half-pled.

  Sam smiled. “I’m working overtime, remember?”

  “You work too much,” Lurleen protested.

  “I’ll be fine. Promise.”

  It was true; Sam didn’t mind working late. She was salaried and didn’t get paid for anything over forty hours, but she’d gladly take the comp time. She almost had enough hours built up for a long weekend in Mexico. She’d like to go somewhere nice. Probably not Cancun, since that took real money but somewhere down the coast or maybe on the Pacific side. A little vacation was a definite possibility as early as next month. And Lurleen was not going to be invited along! Not as long as she was on a find-Sam-a-man kick.

  In fact, it was past time Lurleen left her in peace for a while. “Get out of here before Edmundo dies of longing for you.”