Total pages in book: 105
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Estimated words: 99700 (not accurate)
Estimated Reading Time in minutes: 499(@200wpm)___ 399(@250wpm)___ 332(@300wpm)
Vampires live forever…and so do his in-laws
Pandora has real problems. She’s working a dead-end job as the night barista at a 24/7 coffee-shop, she still lives with her parents, and, oh yeah, she’s a vampire who has to get married by the end of the year or she won’t inherit her ancient family fortune. One slight catch: she’s single.
When PhD student and coffee shop regular (and Pandora's work crush) Victor mentions his crippling debt, Pandora is overjoyed. She’s found the perfect solution to her problem. She can marry Victor, inherit the family fortune, pay off his debt, and divorce him as quickly as they married. It should be simple!
But things in Pandora’s life are never that easy. Victor doesn’t know she’s a vampire, and absolutely cannot find out. On top of that, her whole family is getting involved in the wedding planning, turning Pandora’s proposed elopement into an extravaganza not fit for humans.
Plus, the growing attraction between Pandora and Victor has her questioning whether she even wants this marriage to be fake at all. Can the pair survive this big fat vampire wedding?
*************FULL BOOK START HERE*************
1
The whole situation was hopeless.
Pandora wiped the counter for the twentieth time in as many minutes, frustrated that the overnight shift at the coffee shop didn’t give her the rush of customers to distract her from the swirling thoughts stirred up by the impromptu meeting with her family just before her shift had started.
Wasn’t it just like immortal creatures who’d had, oh, a hundred and twenty-four years to outline the exact parameters for inheriting her rightful fortune to wait until three months before her birthday to give her the news?
“You know, darling, this is the way things have always been. I don’t know why you are acting like it is such a surprise,” her mother had said. The words came out slurred, thanks to unusually large fangs that Pandora suspected were surgically enhanced, though her mother would never admit to such a thing.
“All right,” Pandora’s manager, Lucy, said, interrupting the whirling thoughts that were threatening to work themselves up into an outright cyclone. “What’s going on?” She reached up to pull her thick sable hair into a clip. Pandora had long envied that hair, wondering if the thickness and its ability never to frizz even in the relentless autumnal London rain were due to Lucy’s werewolf genes.
Pandora’s own deep-red hair threatened to puff up just from standing over the milk steamer for too many mixed drinks.
“It’s nothing.” Even Pandora heard the defeat in her own voice.
Lucy’s brows rose above her golden-brown eyes. Pandora knew her friend well enough to know that she would never let something go when her curiosity was piqued. A dog with a bone, if you will.
“My parents,” Pandora said.
“Uh-oh. What did they do now? Replace your bed with a coffin again?”
That had been a whole month-long ordeal where her parents had gone on and on about how important traditions were, while Pandora had insisted that coffins just weren’t comfortable. Was it her fault she liked to sleep on her side?
“No, they just told me that there’s some fine print on my inheritance.”
“What kind of fine print?” Lucy asked as she straightened the coffee syrups. They were running dangerously low on spiced chai.
“Oh, you know, nothing crazy. Just that I have to be married to receive it.”
“Wait. What? Married? Your birthday is in—”
“Three months. And I’m, you know, single. Hopelessly, miserably single.”
“Well,” Lucy said, smirking. “At least you’ll have eternity to enjoy your upcoming poverty.”
“What is the point of living forever if I am going to be working for minimum wage? Can you picture it? Me, three hundred years old, scavenging around the shops for discount blood.”
“Type O-So-Pathetic.” Lucy laughed.
“It’s not funny,” Pandora grumbled as she smacked Lucy with a tea towel.
“It’s actually hilarious. Don’t they say that love strikes when you least expect it? Given your recent dating record, maybe you’re due to actually find someone.”
“Gee, thanks,” Pandora said with a miserable little laugh.
She had to admit that Lucy was right about her love life. Or complete and utter lack of it, to be more accurate. What could she say? It wasn’t easy to meet people when you were of the nocturnal variety. Unless, of course, she wanted to date a fellow vampire.
She didn’t, for the record. At least not any of the vampires that she’d met so far. Much to her family’s dismay. They’d spent the last fifty years trying to set her up with everyone, from some slimy vamp who’d claimed to be a direct descendent of Dracula himself – yeah, right – to some random vampire they’d met at a blood bar who’d been old enough to be Pandora’s grandfather.
Was it too much to ask for sparks and butterflies? And not having to try to figure out the schematics of trying to get all glandular with each other in a coffin?
“Just trying to be realistic here,” Lucy said. “You know what? I think I just found the perfect guy.” She gave Pandora ridiculously cheesy eyebrow wiggles and a nod toward the front of the shop.
Pandora turned around, trying not to seem too obvious.
Her gaze slid out of the front windows.
The sun had been set for hours, but the lights lining the street illuminated the steady trickle of rain, soaking the colourful leaves scattered on the pavement.
Droplets slipped down the windows as Pandora finally spotted the man Lucy was talking about.
It took everything in her not to burst out laughing.
Because there, sitting at his usual table near the front of the shop, was one of their regulars. A man with a personality as dry as a sheet of paper and a tendency to noisily blow his nose into a filthy-looking handkerchief every few minutes.
Not to mention that he had a love of blue polka-dots and green-and-red tartan. Often at the same time.
Or the fact that he had not only a crop of white hair on top of his head, but also no small amount growing out of his nose and, somehow, his ears.