Page 17 of Just the Pool Boy at Vampire Mansion

He huffed a laugh, took a pull of beer, and lowered the bottle again. “It was a genuine question, but if you’re going to be a dick, forget it.”

I looked up. “Sorry. Sometimes I can be a bit blunt . . . I’m not very good at peopling.”

“Yeah. I get it.”

“Right. Like you understand? Mister Party Personality.”

His right eyebrow lifted. “You see a party right now? See a whole bunch of people?”

“No,” I admitted.

“No. You think that’s all I am, don’t you? Shallow and flashy.”

I did think that, yes. I wasn’t going to deny it. He was a bored rich party guy with nothing better to do.

“Whatever,” he snorted. “I don’t know why I’m bothering. You clearly think you know me. You can keep on thinking that. Doesn’t matter to me.”

I wanted to apologize again. The words were in me, trying to get out. How had I done something wrong? He owed me an apology. “That stunt you pulled, on Instagram, acting like you know me? I had some random woman come up to me and take a selfie while I was in a . . . while I was meeting someone important. Hashtag MurderMeetCute or something.”

He laughed, fully laughed, and the sound of it carried across his back yard, filling the gardens, while also tugging a smile to my lips.

“It was just a bit of fun. You allergic to fun, Owen? Or maybe you just haven’t had any in a while. Eh?” He smirked, and drank some more beer, his gaze on me.

I looked back into the filter pit and kept right on working, because he was right. I hadn’t had fun in a long time. Years, maybe. I didn’t even know if I could have fun anymore.

“I tried to look you up,” he said, after another five minutes had passed of him just watching me examine all the colored charts. “You don’t do social media, huh? Or you didn’t, until a few months ago. You’re there, but you don’t post.”

I kept my head down and kept on working.

“Owen the Pool Guy didn’t exist much further back than that. And I got to thinking, maybe Owen has other socials, but Owen Marsh is all locked down. Then I remembered you don’t much like the cops. And I started thinking about why a clever, handsome guy like you is cleaning pools and washing cars for less than minimum wage.”

“That’s a lot of thinking,” I muttered, keeping my gaze on the pool filter. Wait, he thought I was handsome? That was a very specific word. Handsome. Hot was throwaway, but handsome was almost romantic. No, don’t go there. He was just playing with me, trying to get me to talk.

“You’re not going to confirm or deny any of it, are you?” he said.

I dried my hands on the towel and looked up, because he’d gone quiet. He gazed over the pool, smirking.

He didn’t like not knowing about me. “You should let the filter run for a few days before swimming in it.”

“They don’t swim in it anyway. Mother is never here, father rarely leaves his room, and Benny is . . . his hair is too precious to get wet.”

I couldn’t imagine Bentley in swim shorts and decided right then I didn’t need to ever see that. “But you swim?” I asked.

He held my gaze, adding intention to his words. “Come by in a few nights, when the pool guy says the water will be okay, and try it with me.”

Now that was a thought. A big, distracting thought. Him, in swimming shorts, wet, hot, in the pool. Under the stars. Pool light reflection in his dark eyes, and that smile . . . No. Nope. That wasn’t ever going to happen. Not in a million years. Not getting involved.

“What?” he said, when I didn’t answer. “You don’t do people, just pools, I get that. But you don’t swim in pools either? That’s a lot of rules.”

“I like rules,” I admitted. “Rules keep things where they should be.”

He grinned, and this time I did see his fangs. Gleaming, curved, sharp. “Fuck rules, Owen.”

“That’s easy for you to say.” He had a safety net, money, a name. The rules probably bent around him.

“Sure,” he half laughed. “Easy for me to say. Billionaire playboy, right?”

“Did you know the guy who died?” I asked, catching him off guard.