Being a fallen angel came with all sorts of otherworld perks, but it didn’t come with a paycheck. To keep himself in cloud pillows and ambrosia (okay, beer and pizza), Alex kept his bank account padded with occasional work with the San Francisco Police Department. To them he was an undercover FBI field agent whose long disappearances were chalked up to hush-hush cases in the field; to me he was just annoyingly undependable.
Currently, San Francisco was Alex’s home base. His paychecks and credit card bills went to an apartment he kept in the Richmond district; I happened to notice the address on a piece of mail that was inadvertently left in my apartment (after it fell out of Alex’s office). When I happened to drive by the Turk Street address, I found it was an empty storefront with newspaper-covered windows and a heap of Target ads and Safeway circulars jammed in the mail slot. I hadn’t gotten around to asking Alex about his fake address—mainly because he never asked me if I’d stolen any of his mail.
“I just don’t know if I want to get involved,” I said.
At one time I had considered Alex and my dead/undead relationship passionate and romantically star-crossed; now I considered it hopelessly dead-end.
Mostly.
There was something about his sexy half-smile, his lush, pink-tinged lips, and my dating drought that made me swoon in a way that brought a blush to my cheeks, a tingle to my nether regions, and made me deeply consider the benefit of one-night stands.
I readjusted myself on the couch and tried to remind myself that losing Alex the first time was gut-wrenchingly, Lifetime-television bad. I didn’t know if I could—or wanted to—go through it again.
Nina cocked her head, picked a glob of jelly off the lapel of my bathrobe. “You mean because you’re so busy here.”
I tried to glare. “I mean I’m not sure if I want to get involved with Alex again. The last year has been so ...” I let the word trail off and tried to avoid Nina’s annoyed stare as self-pity ballooned in my chest.
“The last year has been so what? Ordinary? You may not have been hung up by your ankles lately, but you’ve also managed to watch the entire seven seasons of The Golden Girls multiple times. And”—Nina held up a single index f inger—“you’ve alphabetized our spice rack. Twice. If that’s not a body calling out for a little extracurricular activity, I don’t know what is.”
I remained unconvinced—and gun shy. I had fallen hook, line, and sinker for Alex’s baby blues once, and after a few steamy scenes he disappeared for six months without a word. When I finally got over the heartbreak and stopped listening to mopey love songs, Alex popped back into my life—this time, with bad news.
“It’s not like the relationship is going to go anywhere. He wants to go—” I paused, looking for the right word. “Back.” I sighed miserably. “Last I heard Heaven-to-Earth long-distance relationships didn’t ever pan out too well.”
“So it’s destined to be a dead-end relationship?”
I nodded.
“Even more reason to jump in with both feet and no panties on!”
I licked some peanut butter off my index finger and blew out a tortured sigh. “Why even bother if you know a relationship is doomed from the get-go? It’s just asking for heartbreak.”
“And a few steamy months of hot, sweaty monkey love.”
I raised my eyebrows.
Nina stuck out her tongue. “Oh, come on. All my relationships are doomed. Or damned. Besides, just working with the guy isn’t going to get you all hot and bothered. Is it?”
I avoided Nina’s gaze but couldn’t avoid the telltale blush that crept over my cheeks.
“Slut!” I eyed Nina’s gleeful face and she rolled her eyes. “Really, Sophie. What’s there to be worried about? He’s a lovely specimen of manhood; you’re a museum-quality specimen of undersexed womanhood. Don’t they say—what is it?—better to have gotten a little and lost, than never to have gotten a little at all.”
“Poetic.”
Nina poked her foot in between the couch cushion and wiggled her toes underneath my backside. “Whew. Just checking. Wanted to make sure you and the couch weren’t sharing a bloodline. Ooh, that reminds me, I’m hungry.”
I swatted Nina’s foot away and stood up. “You suck.”
“It’s what we do.” She grinned. “So we’re helping?”
I pursed my lips. “He’s coming over tomorrow night.”
I watched as Nina’s libido-meter went up to her ears. “We’ll have to go to Victoria’s Secret at lunch.”
“It’s purely a business meeting,” I said. And then, with a quick lick of my lips, “For now.”
Nina grinned and socked me in the shoulder. “That’s my slutty friend.”
I rolled my eyes and Nina prattled on. “We need to get all our excitement in while we can. This is just between you and me, but I heard that the new UDA management will be in place soon.”
“Hey! That was supposed to be between me and Lorraine !”
Nina tugged her ear “Vampire perk. It’s not like I can turn off the supersonic hearing.”