Page 29 of My Vampire Plus-One

My bedside clock showed it was nearly two in the morning. No one I knew would be calling at this hour. I rolled over and burrowed under the covers, trying to ignore my phone. But instead of giving it up, when the caller got my voicemail, they called again.

And then again.

I fumbled around blindly on my nightstand. When my fingers closed around my phone, I held it up to my face so I could see who was calling before I shut it off.

It was Reggie.

I sat bolt upright in bed.

Why washecalling in the middle of the night?

I thought of what I was wearing—a skimpy T-shirt and pajama shorts. And that I was in my bed.

I groaned. I was being stupid.

Why did it matter that I probably looked like hell and wasn’t wearing much clothing?

It didn’t.

I ran a hand reflexively through my bedhead all the same before answering. “Hello?” I winced at the sound of my voice, still froggy with sleep.

“Amelia Collins.” Reggie’s voice was as deep and pleasant as it had been at the coffee shop. He sounded wide awake. That made one of us. “Did I catch you at a bad time?”

Was he serious? “It’s nearly two in the morning. I was sleeping.”

A pause. “Shit. Sorry about that. I hadn’t realized.”

“You didn’t realize it was the middle of the night?” He had to be kidding me. I had something akin to an internal stopwatch that kept track of time almost as well as my phone did. It was impossible to believe that somehow it hadn’t occurred to him that I’d be sleeping.

“I’m kind of nocturnal.”

I flopped back down onto my bed, throwing an arm across my face. “Why are you calling?” And then I realized, too late, that instead of asking this question, I should have simply gotten off the phone. In my limited experience, phone calls that began in the middle of the night usually involved either a booty call or the fire department. I wasn’t in the mood for either.

“It’s late,” he said, sounding sheepish. “I’m…sorry for waking you. We can talk later.”

Okay, then—not a booty call. Or a four-alarm fire. “You woke me up for this,” I said. “I’m busy tomorrow. If it’s important enough to call in the middle of the night, let’s do it now.”

“Okay.” He took a deep breath that was loud enough for me to hear through the phone. “When I got back home tonight, I realized we hadn’t decided what to tell your family about ourrelationship.” He put so much emphasis on the wordrelationship, I could all but see him making air quotes. “We should get those details sorted before Sunday.”

I blinked up at the ceiling.Crap.He was right. Agreeing on a fake backstory for our relationship hadn’t even occurred to me. Itshouldhave, though.

Why was I so bad at this?

“I hadn’t thought of that.” I told myself I probably would have, eventually. I’d just been so preoccupied with finding a fake date in the first place, I hadn’t gotten that far.

He chuckled. “You really weren’t lying when you said you hadn’t thought this through.”

“No,” I admitted, and rolled over in bed. “So, what should we tell them?”

“Just some basic things,” he said. “You know. Where we met, how long we’ve been dating.” A pause. “The last time I rescued you from the clutches of an angry dragon. That sort of thing.”

I could hear the grin in his voice. Despite the hour, I laughed. “Right. Basic things like that.”

“I know you’re busy, and you’ve clearly established that you’re terrible both at pretending and the preparations you gotta make before you can pretend well.” There was an insult in there, though his tone wasn’t cruel. Also, I could hardly be mad; he was right. “But you know your family better than I do, so the details should come from you. Even though making things up is one of my favorite hobbies.” He paused. “If it’s part of an elaborate practical joke, so much the better.”

“Why does this not surprise me about you?” I was smiling now, despite myself.

“Am I that obvious?”