EXCERPT

 

CHAPTER ONE

 

I stood in the early morning sunshine outside Sacramento City Hospital where I work my second job as a night filing clerk every Sunday through Thursday night of the whole blessed year (including holidays because I get paid double for those). I stretched my arms, breathed in deep through my nose and then nearly coughed my lungs out my mouth as the fumes from the ambulance bay mixed with the scent of freshly poured blacktop and damn near choked me.

 

“Gotta watch that breathing thing,” a voice said behind me. “It’ll kill you.”

If only it were that easy. I turned. His voice hadn’t surprised me. I’d known he was there within a few seconds of walking out of the hospital and onto the sidewalk. I can’t quite describe what it’s like. It’s not like a smell or a sound. It’s more like a vibration, like a buzzing that I feel in my flesh, a lifting of the hair on the back of my neck. A bit of a tingle.

 

To be fair, that wasn’t the only thing that tingled and buzzed when he was around. Knowing he was there had a way of sending electric shocks up my nerve endings and down to places that a lady doesn’t mention in public.

I wasn’t sure exactly why he wanted to risk being out here after dawn had broken on the horizon, but that was most decidedly his business and not mine. As long as I stayed in the sun’s path, it was bound to stay that way, too. I inched a little farther from the shadows.

 

The he in question was Dr. Alexander Bledsoe. Dr. Bledsoe was six foot two inches of broad shoulders and thick chest and long legs. He had thick black hair with a touch of gray here and there that he wore swept back from his face and a little tousled. I’d never gotten close enough to touch it and see if he had product in it or if it was just naturally hella sexy. I certainly didn’t plan to get that close now.

 

Getting close to Alex could be dangerous, even for me.

 

His eyes were the rich brown of the dark chocolate roux my grandmother uses as the base for her jambalaya, and he invariably had a touch of stubble no matter what the time of day. Basically, every time he walked through the corridors of the hospital, he left groups of nurses, techs, support staff and a few patients swooning behind him, female and male. Not me, though. I’m not the swooning type. Plus, as I mentioned, I keep my distance from the not-so-good doctor. That doesn’t meant I didn’t notice, however. Dr. Bledsoe was very hard not to notice.

 

He was also a vampire.