Page 56 of Road Trip with a Vampire

Twenty-Eight

Front-page headline from the Redwoodsville Times , present day

Record-Breaking Rains to Sweep the North Coast All Week

Redwoodsville Times , staff reporter

By the time I finished what I’d needed to accomplish in the studio, the rain had started up again, light enough that I barely noticed it.

An hour later, though, after I’d changed into my pajamas but just before I was about to begin my nightly routine, I heard the distinctive plink, plink, plink of dripping water landing in the various buckets I’d scattered throughout my apartment.

A few minutes later, the drips became thin, steady streams.

If my ceiling was leaking again, it was raining hard . I looked out my bedroom window. Sure enough, it was coming down in sheets.

Was Peter still on the roof? Or had he gone inside when the rain had started picking up? I nearly opened the window so I could stick my head out and check—if Peter was on the roof, he’d be drenched by now—before reminding myself he didn’t need me taking care of him.

He was a grown vampire. If he wanted to be on the roof in a rainstorm, that was not my problem.

Then again, what if he was so determined to fix this roof that he stayed on it longer than he should? As he’d demonstrated time and again in our yoga classes, his balance was terrible. It didn’t take much imagination to picture him slipping off and getting badly hurt.

After another few minutes spent in an internal tug-of-war with myself, the part of me that was worried won out.

I grabbed a raincoat and pulled on a warm pair of leggings so I could go outside and insist he stop working for the night.

Halfway down the stairs I heard a banging on the studio’s front door that was so loud it reverberated through the building.

When I threw open the front door a minute later, Peter blew inside with a gust of wind that rattled the windowpanes.

He scrubbed a hand over his face to clear the water from his eyes, sending droplets flying.

I didn’t know when the rain had kicked up again in earnest, but Peter had clearly been out in it for a while.

He was drenched to the skin, the soaked locks of his dark hair hanging limply in front of his face.

The thin cotton of his T-shirt now clung to his body like a second skin and gods help me—I couldn’t tear my eyes away from his chest. On our trip I’d seen him in every stage of dress and undress, but something about the way his shirt clung to him, hinting at all the muscle that lay beneath without allowing me to see it—

“May I have a towel, please?” Peter’s reasonable and entirely innocent question cut into my filthy imaginings. “It’s pouring.” He was so drenched a puddle of water was forming on the floor at his feet.

“A towel,” I stammered. “Yes, of course.”

I hurried to the back closet, where we kept towels for our students’ use during class. Our towels were small—they weren’t intended to dry off an entire soaking-wet person of Peter’s size—but if he took three or four, it should get the job done.

I ditched my raincoat and slid open the closet door, preparing to grab a handful.

Then I froze when I saw what was inside.

Or rather—what wasn’t inside. The closet was completely empty save for a handful of yoga blocks that must have been mistakenly put there by one of our fill-in instructors.

Where were the dozens of neatly folded towels that were supposed to be in there?

Had Linds or Becky sent them out to be laundered without telling me?

Peter was moving towards me, the squelch of his wet shoes on the tile floor giving him away. When he reached where I stood, he peered over my shoulder into the nearly empty closet. His hair dripped onto my shoulder, the chilly splash seeping through my shirt and all the way down to my skin.

“There are no towels,” he noted.

“Yeah.” I swallowed, hyperaware of him at my back.

“We usually have a ton in here. Maybe they got moved because of the leaking roof? I’m…

not sure.” I was about to offer to bring him a towel from my apartment when I had a better idea.

Or worse, depending. “If you want to dry off and change in my apartment, you can.”

“ What ?” he all but squeaked.

After that, my words came faster than a runaway train. “We can throw your wet clothes into my dryer. I’ll grab some dry things from the studio’s inventory that you can wear until they’re ready.” Surely something on our racks hadn’t been ruined by the leaking roof.

Peter’s throat bobbed, sending a water droplet running down, down, down his neck until it disappeared beneath the collar of his wet shirt. “I don’t want to be any trouble.”

“It’s no trouble.” I gestured to his drenched form. “You’re soaking-wet, and you got that way by helping us. You’ll catch your death of cold if you don’t get out of those clothes.”

He raised an eyebrow as he fought a smile. “I won’t, actually.”

I huffed a laugh, caught off guard. “It was a figure of speech.”

“I know.”

We stood there, staring at each other, the howling wind a perfect accompaniment to the maelstrom of my thoughts.

“Come upstairs with me,” I said. Once the words left my mouth, I realized this was the second time I’d invited him into my apartment. The first had been that night I’d learned who—and what—he was. Gods, so much had happened since then.

Maybe he was remembering that night, too. He hesitated for the briefest of moments before giving me a curt nod.

“Thank you. I—” He trailed off. Swallowed. “Being in these wet clothes is really uncomfortable.”

My apartment was messier than it usually was, with the books and knickknacks I’d had to move from my bedroom stacked in disorderly piles in the main room.

My hands still would have shaken with nerves, even if my apartment had been spotless.

Peter glanced around my living room, eyes catching on the stack of books closest to the door. They were a motley assortment of romance novels I’d picked up at garage sales, travel guides to various spots on the Pacific Coast, and spell books that had been with me for decades.

“These are new,” he mused.

“They’re not,” I said. “They were just in my bedroom when you were here before.”

Something about Peter seeing things I ordinarily kept hidden from everyone else felt strangely intimate. He seemed to feel this, too, judging from the way his gaze skittered from mine.

The awkward reality of the present situation struck me all at once. Peter and I were alone in my home. He was soaking-wet and was about to get naked in my bathroom—on my invitation.

Well , I thought, might as well make this even more awkward.

“Do you want to take a shower?” When he said nothing, only continued to stare at me with something that looked a lot like disbelief, I scrambled to explain myself. “Since you’re all wet I just thought it would be more comfortable.”

“Oh.”

“You don’t have to if you don’t want to.”

“No. That is…yes.” He squeezed his eyes shut tight, then pressed his closed fists into them. Took a long, deep breath before letting it out very slowly. “I do want to. Thank you.”

“You, uh,” I said, then swallowed. “You remember where it is?”

“Yes.” He looked towards my bedroom. “In there, right?”

“Yes.” I nodded towards the closet where I kept my washer and dryer. “If you change out of your clothes, I’ll put them in the dryer for you while you’re showering. They should be ready in an hour.”

“Okay,” he said, expression unreadable. “I’ll just be a moment.”

“Take as long as you need.”

In the meantime, I would go downstairs and see what we had that was undamaged by the leaking roof and might actually fit him.

I also needed to put some physical distance between us while he was showering and changing.

Although I’d been the one to invite him up here in the first place, I no longer trusted myself to make good decisions knowing he was only one room away.

“Thank you,” he said again.

Then he gave a small wave before walking into my bedroom and closing the door behind him.

Lindsay had not yet hauled away the damaged workout clothes, so there was plenty for me to look through once I got back to the studio.

Unfortunately, we didn’t carry much in men’s sizes, as at least eighty-five percent of our students were women.

Peter might have been the only student we’d ever had with his specific proportions.

In our storage unit just outside the studio, though, I did manage to find an extra-large gray men’s sweatshirt that said Bend, Breathe, Believe. Peter would probably hate that slogan, even though the sweatshirt itself was soft and looked comfortable.

I could already picture his scowl when I presented it to him and grinned at the mental image.

Footsteps sounded above my head. That was Peter, in my bathroom. It would take me roughly thirty more minutes to scour the rest of the studio for some sweatpants that might fit him. Thirty more minutes of reprieve before I had to go home and face the situation I’d created.

Before I could get started, my phone buzzed.

Peter: I’ve finished showering.

Peter: No rush to come back.

Peter: But do you have a robe or something I can put on while I wait for my clothes to dry?

I did have a robe. A silky one I’d picked up in Singapore years ago that stopped just above my knee. It was a sexy little thing when I wore it; on Peter it would fit like a crop top. Skimpier than a crop top, actually: There was no way he’d be able to get it to close.

My cheeks burned at the image my mind supplied of him trying it on.

Zelda: My robe won’t fit you

To put it mildly.

Zelda: I’ll be up in a minute with a sweatshirt that probably will, though. Maybe wrap a towel around your waist until your jeans finish drying?

Unhelpfully, my mind supplied an image of that, too. Peter, shirtless, with one of my floral bath towels wrapped around his waist. Mine were larger than the towels we kept in the studio, but only just. It wouldn’t cover much. And would leave even less to the imagination.