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)
While, hopefully, staying sane.
Which, she thought, was not going to be easy once her family got wind of things.
But that was a bridge she could cross when she got to it.
She could only cross one at a time.
And right now, she needed to find her fiancé.
5
“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 displeasure 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 powerful, 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.