My skin went from warm to burning. My heart leapt into my throat. I recovered, swallowing hard before I grinned at him and brought my glass to my lips. “Should I apologize?”
The lust—or was that hunger?—in James’s eyes was unmistakable. “Don’t you dare.”
I chuckled, thinking about my next question. “Did you know about Hannah before she showed up here drunk?”
“Ryder Clark, a dad? It’s been the talk of the town for months.”
“Why did you pretend to be surprised?”
He shrugged. “You clearly weren’t ready to talk about it. If you were, you would’ve told me in your interview, when I asked what brought you back to Salem.”
I sipped on my second drink. I stared into the glass, debating whether the vodka and Asti were strong enough to get through this conversation. Before I asked for something stronger, James turned toward the bottles.
“Was I thinking out loud?”
“No,” James chuckled. “I don’t need to be a mind reader to know that you might crave something stronger.”
I protested when he selected a bottle of top shelf scotch. “James, that’s too expensive.”
“I pay for it,” he said, “and I say you can have it.”
“I don’t know what I should ask,” I admitted as I accepted the scotch.
He shrugged. “Anything you want.”
I drank, closing my eyes as the smooth, amber liquid spilled down my throat. When I looked up again, James was waitingpatiently for my next question—even if he did look a bit uncomfortable. “How old are you?” I finally asked, starting with an easy one. Or Ithoughtit would be easy. I regretted asking when James mulled over his answer for several long seconds.
“Depends on how you look at it,” he finally said.
I rolled my eyes. “Okay, smartass: what year were you born?”
“1652, or somewhere around there. Birth records were a little spotty back then.”
Wow. “Um, okay.” I didn’t know what else to say, so I turned back to my scotch, drinking as much of it as I could in a single gulp before my eyes started to water.
“Is that a dealbreaker for you?” he asked with a laugh. He joked, but I saw the way he shuffled from foot to foot, eyes darting around the room. He almost looked like he needed to pee.
“Do vampires pee?”
His head snapped up at me, then he tipped it back and laughed. “You’ve a curious mind.”
“That’s not an answer.”
He sipped his drink with a smug expression. “We don’t, but trust me, all of theimportantbodily functions revolving around that particular organ work as intended.”
I snorted. “Good to know.”
“Many of my supernatural abilities are dampened when I’m feeding, however.” He met my eyes. “To give you even more peace of mind.”
He meant with Dani. “Dani agreed to, um, be a blood donor?”
“Of course. We’ve had anarrangementfor a while now. It doesn’t benefit just me; a vampire’s saliva has healing properties. No puncture marks like the movies.”
A light clicked on in my head. “So that’s how she recovered from being sick so quickly.”
James nodded.
“How old were you when…” I pushed off the stool and rounded the bar, passing under the partition to lean against the counter next to James, my drink behind me.
