Page 5 of My Big Fat Vampire Wedding

“I think we need to ask the hard questions up front,” Lucy said, using the company clipboard to scribble her plans. “Your parents will sniff out a fraud in minutes. So we have to dig deep.”

“Oh, please enlighten me, oh wise one,” Pandora teased her friend as she refilled the tea caddy. “What are these hard questions?”

“Well, first,” Lucy said, holding up a finger. “Can he hold a brooding stare for longer than thirty seconds without looking thick? Or, you know, constipated.” A snort escaped Pandora. “Because you vampire types, you love a good brood.”

Despite herself, Pandora’s mind flashed to Caramel Macchiato Cutie. Who, she’d noticed on many an occasion, had the hot brooding-guy thing down pat.

But he wasn’t in the running. And she needed to stop thinking about him.

“OK. Second question?”

“Can he deliver grand romantic lines and make them believable?”

“Like what?”

“Oh, maybe, ‘My love, you are the moon to my eternal darkness.’ But not be cringy about it. It’s a critical skill.”

“I don’t talk like that,” Pandora said, rolling her eyes at her friend.

Lucy ignored that, tapping her pen against her clipboard.

“Third, what are his dance skills? The wedding is going to require dancing. And your parents are old-school. They are going to expect him to be able to do a standard waltz. Maybe a tango. Bonus points if he can do the spinny bit and doesn’t get too green in the face. ”

“I concede that he needs to know, or learn, how to waltz,” Pandora said. “But even I don’t know how to tango.”

“You’ve been alive one hundred and twenty-four years, and you haven’t learned to tango?” Lucy asked, shaking her head. “What’s next? You never learned to Cha-Cha Slide or the Macarena?” At Pandora’s guilty look, Lucy sighed. “Well, I guess I know what we are doing on our next girls’ night.”

“I think I’d rather listen to one of my uncles talk about the ‘good old days’,” Pandora said.

“All right. Anyway. Back to our list. We can’t forget possibly the most important skill of all.

The smolder. Because all of this will be for nothing if he can’t pull that off.

I mean, if he doesn’t look at you like the last drop of water in the desert, then what’s the point? Your parents will never buy it.”

That was fair.

Even just a normal vampire would pick up on there being no real chemistry between them. But before Pandora’s mother had fallen in love with her father and agreed to become a vampire for him, she’d been a powerful succubus.

That meant she was not only insanely beautiful and alluring, and capable of using lust and love to entrance her targets, but she was also able to sense things like love and sexual attraction between others.

Sure, when her mother had become a vampire, some of her succubi powers had weakened. But Pandora was reasonably sure Ophelia could still sense attraction.

“Fine, yes, smolder. Anything else?”

“Plenty,” Lucy said, checking her list. Which looked like it was three full pages.

Front and back. “Let’s talk fashion. Can he rock a waistcoat?

Pull off a cravat? Gothic-chic is going to be needed at some point.

Being able to wear it comfortably, so he doesn’t seem like he’s cosplaying, would be important. ”

Pandora would like to claim that things like clothing didn’t matter. But her family was big on their fashion. Sure, that fashion was stuck in the Victorian period for many. And the Renaissance or Medieval periods for others. Still, it mattered to them.

Her mind flashed back to her mother’s obvious displeas-ure about her work uniform earlier that evening. “All right. Maybe we can buy a nice suit and make the finalists try it on.”

“Now you’re getting on board,” Lucy said, grinning.

“Are we setting the bar too high?” Pandora asked.

“Hey, if we are going to do this, we are going to do it right,” Lucy said. “And when you are super rich and power-ful, don’t forget who helped you get there.”

“Oh, I won’t forget. Yours is the couch I will be sleeping on for eternity when all of this falls apart and my parents completely disown me.”

“OK. Someone is getting grumbly. Are you hungry?” she asked. “I think your fangs are looking a little longer. You’re probably hungry.”

Pandora reached for her mobile, bringing up the camera and pulling up her lips to inspect her teeth. They looked perfectly fine to her.

“I’m going to go get some dinner,” Lucy said. “A nice, juicy steak for me,” she added, her eyes seeming to flash a little yellow at the idea of some relatively fresh meat.

Pandora noticed that her best friend’s werewolf tendencies got stronger as the moon cycled toward full. From her estimation, they were two days away from the hunter’s moon. Which meant that, for three nights in a row, she wouldn’t see Lucy as she went and wolfed out with her pack.

“And a pint or so of some vein-vino for you,” Lucy said, leaving her clipboard on the counter and going to grab her handbag.

“Hold down the fort. And start to think about features. Do you want a brunette? A blond? Maybe even a redhead?” She made her way toward the front door, pulling it open and allowing the wind to send a small flurry of dried leaves into the shop, then disappeared out into the night.

Pandora was truly thankful for Lucy in times like these. She would normally be in an anxiety spiral, if not for Lucy’s upbeat enthusiasm. But thanks to her encouragement, Pa ndora was almost starting to believe she could pull this off.

Her best friend had spent the better part of an hour discussing all of the plots of the arranged-marriage books they’d read, and the mistakes that had made the situationships fall apart, so that Pandora would be smart enough to avoid them.

Even just ten minutes after Lucy had left, her uncertainty started to creep back in, making her set her mind to deep-cleaning to avoid overthinking things.

That was why she missed it when someone walked in.

“What is this?” a familiar voice called. She popped up so fast she whacked her head on the underside of the countertop, making pain ricochet across her scalp.

“Ow.” She rubbed her head as she stood and turned to find Caramel Macchiato Cutie standing there.

With the clipboard in his hand.

Pandora squeaked. “Oh, um, notes.”

He started to read out loud. “ Good at waltzing . Smoldering … delivering romantic lines …”

“It’s for a … er … play!” she said.

“You’re putting on a play?” he asked, brows pinched.

“We’re considering it.” She took the clipboard out of his hands and stuffed it under the counter, hoping her embarrassment wasn’t written all over her face.

“The usual?” she asked, forcing her gaze to stay on his pretty eyes and not, under any circumstances, slip to those generous, frowning lips of his.

And she certainly couldn’t let herself imagine reaching across the counter, grabbing him by the front of his shirt, dragging him halfway across the counter, and sealing her lips to his.

Or, at least, she couldn’t let herself imagine that for long.

“Ah, yeah,” he said, making her gaze flick up, realizing with no small amount of humiliation that she had, in fact, been watching his lips.

“Coming right up.” Pandora slipped some extra cheerfulness in her voice, hoping it might distract him from the aforementioned ogling. “I was starting to think you weren’t coming in tonight,” she said as she pumped caramel syrup into his cup.

“Actually, this is going to be my last time,” he said, making her head whip up.

“What?” she gasped out.

“Yeah, I, ah, it looks like I am going to need to drop out of UCL,” he said.

“But why?”

“Out of money,” he said, clearly trying to shrug it off, but Pandora could see how gutted he was.

Clearly, the guy was dedicated to his studies, whatever they were. He was there every single night, poring over his texts, writing endless notes, working hard toward whatever his goal was.

“I had held out hope for some grants to finish my PhD,” he went on. “Just heard that the last one fell through. I’m already in debilitating debt. I can’t take on any more loans. Gotta pack it up and head back home to live with my parents until I figure things out.”

“I’m so sorry …” Pandora trailed off, hating that when he was admitting something so personal, she didn’t even have his real name to try to comfort him with.

“Victor,” he said. “What can you do? That’s life, I guess.” He tapped his card, then made his way over to his table.

Victor. Pandora had mused over what his name might be more times than she cared to admit. “Victor” had never made the list. Somehow, though, it was better than anything she’d dreamed up. But now she wouldn’t get a chance to use it.

Pandora kept sneaking glances over at him as she went through the motions of making his macchiato for the last time.

Her heart twinged at that thought.

At the idea that this would be the last time she would ever see his face.

Unless …

No.

No, absolutely not.

Victor didn’t seem like the kind of guy who would be willing to even entertain the thought of such an absurd plan, let alone actually go through with it.

But it would solve both of their problems, wouldn’t it?

Pandora thought of Lucy’s list, thinking that Victor certainly had the brooding thing down. And if his face in her fantasies was anything to go by, he could absolutely pull off a convincing smolder.

He was always dressed rather smartly, never coming in wearing something as casual as a tee like your typical university student. Pandora could absolutely see him rocking a waistcoat. Maybe even a cravat.

He didn’t seem like the dancing sort, but she was sure that he could be taught a basic waltz. And she totally didn’t want him to learn just because she wanted to feel his hand at the small of her back, his other one holding hers, their bodies pressed close as he moved her around the floor …

Pandora shook her head, trying to stop getting swept up in fantasies, so she could focus on the potential reality.

Victor needed money.

Pandora was just months away from having an astronomical sum of it.

A marriage could solve both of their problems.

It couldn’t hurt to ask him, right?

The hot macchiato in her hand was excuse enough to go over and test the waters, see if he would even entertain a conversation about it.

He looked so dejected.

He didn’t pull out his laptop or notebook, just sat there at his table, a closed book on the surface, his hand resting on top of it curled into a tense fist. His gaze was fixed on the wall, all of his defeat and disappointment etching sad lines in his forehead.

If there was one thing Pandora could relate to, it was the feeling of everything you ever wanted your whole life slipping away – all your dreams shattering around you.

The only good thing that came from that kind of destruction, by her estimation, was a bone-deep sort of desperation.

The kind of desperation that made her open to a fake marriage, to lying to her family, to living a lie herself.

The same kind of desperation she hoped might make Victor willing to hear her out. And not laugh in her face.

Rolling the tension out of her shoulders, Pandora moved out from behind the counter and made her way toward Victor’s table.

It took him a long second to snap out of his own mind and notice she was standing there.

When he did, she could have sworn she saw something warm flash in his eyes. Though that was almost certainly her own wishful thinking.

“Victor,” she said, passing him his coffee and then pulling out the chair opposite him to sit down. “I was wondering if I could discuss a potential … arrangement with you.”