Biting Serendipity: April Fools For Love (Biting Love Short Bites Book 4)

Biting Serendipity

Dedication

Chapter One

Chapter Two

Chapter Three

Chapter Four

Chapter Five

Chapter Six

Chapter Seven

Chapter Eight

Chapter Nine

Cast of Characters

Norwegian profanity

About the Author

Look for these titles by Mary Hughes

Double Dare

When the Lights Go Out

Fringe Benefits

Heart Mates

"A joy to read"
~ Dragon Minx, Literary Nymphs Reviews on
Assassins Bite

BOOK OF THE MONTH
"I recommend reading this with a fan and ice water, because this one is hot enough to melt the screen of any device." ~ Foxglove, Long and Short Reviews on
Assassins Bite

Part of the April Fools For Love collection
Biting Love Short Bites, Book 4

Serendipity “Sera” Braun wears glasses and a bun to teach during the day, but at night, she adds a breast-plumping vest and dirndl for her job hoisting beer steins at Nieman’s. The big, leather-vest-and-earringed Viking bouncer? He’s bedsheets waiting to get sweaty, but all he does is scowl at her. She’s trying to keep her geriatric stripper of a granny from breaking a hip, but it’s hard when she keeps getting distracted by that sexy, smoky baritone.

Thorvald Thorsson is bitingly lonely—every vampire around him is mating. But his ex-fiancée rejected him as a killjoy (her exact words were he ate rules and s*** misery), so it’s high time Fun Thor comes out to play. No way he’d pair up with the cute but too-serious little schoolmarm who waits tables at the bar.

Sera bridles the wicked, delicious things she’d like to do with the muscular Viking, suppressing herself until she’s a volcano about to blow. Then they are thrown together in a prank war, and all his potent masculinity is focused on her. He makes her burn to let loose, but how can she and still be responsible for Granny and set a good example?

Warning: A terribly lonely vampire, a conflicted schoolmarm with a caged wild side, nosy roommates and the female version of a bromance, not to mention scorching sex, swearing with the **** filled in, a whole town full of busybodies—and the best April Fools joke ever.

This story contains material intended for mature audiences. Reader discretion advised.

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This book is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the writer’s imagination or have been used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to persons, living or dead, actual events, locale or organizations is entirely coincidental.

All Rights Are Reserved. No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever without written permission, except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews.

Biting Serendipity

Mary Hughes

Dedication

Hoisting a beer to fellow Lusty Linguists Roxy Mews, Jodi Redford, and SL Carpenter! Fun, smart, talented one and all, and with great senses of humor.

Thanks to Roxy Mews for her invaluable help sharpening the blurb for this book.

Huge thanks to SL Carpenter and P and N graphics for the genius cover, and to Stacy D. Holmes for her incisive edits. All mistakes are my own.

To Gregg, who continues to read my writing and laugh.

This story takes place five years after the events in
Assassins Bite
.

A list of characters and short list of Norwegian profanity used in this story are at the end.

Chapter One

Secrets. We all have them—or we think we do.

Live in a small town, though, and you found out differently. Every deep, dark thought, every stupid act you’d like to erase, all those sins and secrets going back generations were there for anyone to read, like an open TwitFace profile.

True for us humans, but doubly true for vampires.

“Granny, wait up.” I hurried toward the spry, white-haired woman as she put her arthritis-knobbled hand on the front door to Nieman’s Bar. “Please don’t. Not tonight.”

“Sera, dear, I’ll be just fine.” Granny Brunhilde Butt smiled at me.

It was meant to be a reassuring smile, but I’d seen it too often coming from this imp of a geriatric stripper. I ignored the March breeze doing a Marilyn Monroe on my full peasant skirt—part of my
de rigueur
tavern-wench dirndl—to concentrate on her.

“Please? Dancing on the bar is dangerous. You nearly fell off last time.”

“Don’t worry, hon. I’m wearing my lucky bra.” She reached inside her blouse to snag a strap like a Humvee’s timing chain.

“Granny, I’m sorry, but there’s no such thing as luck.”

She rolled her eyes. “Says the woman named Serendipity.”

Secret number one. She knew my real name, not staid Sera as I’d have everyone believe, but whimsical Serendipity.

Although, she didn’t know because we lived in tiny Meiers Corners, Illinois. No, she knew because Granny Brunhilde Butt was my real granny and had helped name me.

“That’s why I prefer Sera…” I dribbled off as the brand new windowless door opened under Granny’s hand.

Six-three of glorious Viking male stood on the door sill. A black leather vest and sleeveless black tee clung to a torso as muscular as a swelling sea. Black jeans molded strong legs, fell over well-worn boots. Ash-blond waves tumbled to the tops of his leather-clad shoulders. A diamond studded one ear, and rings decorated his fingers like brass knuckles.

Thorvald Thorsson, Nieman’s bouncer, was the only man who punched my internal temperature to broil; the man who made me want to unwrap my schoolmarm bun, throw away my glasses and rub myself against him like butter on a corncob.

Or I should say the only
male
who did that. Secret number two—Thor was a vampire. How did I know? Later.

He glared at me as my granny tottered inside. “Leave the old lady alone.” He had a smoky baritone, a fine whiskey of a voice. It made me shiver when I heard it, which wasn’t often.

He also had ears like a bat’s and had obviously heard me begging her not to strip again.

“Why?” I knew why, but I wanted to hear more of that
voice.

“She only wants to have some fun. Let her.”

“Right. Fun.” I could have told him about the “fun” she’d had bungee jumping—until she’d snapped her collar bone. I’d finally gotten her to take her calcium supplements after that. Or the “fun” she’d had on the pie-eating championship circuit—until she got type II diabetes. We now had that under control with diet, but it had been a near thing.

I could have told him all of that and more, but I didn’t want to get into it with him.

His disapproving glare was bad enough.

That glare rumpled me in all the wrong places. Raised goosebumps in the right ones, too, but he sure made it harder for me to keep Granny from hurting herself doing “fun” stuff. I told myself I disliked him for it. I even pointed a stern finger at myself and waggled it.

“Listen to the cute boy.” Granny grinned, dimples peeking out from the creases in her cheeks.

That dimple boded ill for us folk who colored inside the lines. What made it harder was that at one time, I’d been just like her. Talk about sins passed forward even unto the seventh generation. A part of me wanted to return to those carefree, wild child days. I waggled a finger at it, too.

“Yeah, it’s all fun and games until someone gets their eye poked out.” I wanted to glare back at Thor, but chickened out at the last minute. After all, he was a vampire, and while I didn’t think he played fang juicebox with random jugulars, I didn’t want to provoke him.

Or maybe I
did,
that wild child part of me, a little too much. The idea of him thrusting fangs, or
anything
long and hard into my flesh…uh.

While I stood there squirming, Granny scooted toward the bar.

I jumped, dashed in after her, then immediately stopped to let my eyes adjust. Nieman’s “lighting” was just short of blackout. Deliberately so, to give the clientele a chance to look good to the opposite sex. Not saying everyone in the bar was over seventy, but the USA has an aging population, and Nieman’s was ahead of the curve.

Despite the darkness, Thor moved with his usual fluidity to escort my grandmother to the rail, where, with all the fine manners of an 18th century duke, he helped her mount a stool and guided her onto the counter.

Sure, his ease seeing in the dark could’ve been because he’d been inside and his eyes had adjusted. But the ever-so-slight violet glow from between his lashes gave him away.

Yeah. That, among other things, was how I knew he was a vampire.

Nieman’s was long and narrow, the bar to the left running nearly the length of the room, a big mirror behind reflecting Thor just fine.

Up on the counter, my granny tried an experimental bump and grind—the literal grinding sound telling me her arthritis was acting up again. I started for my stash of ibuprofen under the counter.

Then Thor leaned his hips against the rail near her, as if ready to catch her if she fell, and scanned the barroom. Doing his job, but my feet slowed down so my eyes could enjoy his powerful arms, crossed over a bulging chest, a brass-knuckle-like array of rings topping basketball biceps. His long hair curled around his pirate’s earring, and his legs were like trees, so masculine I wanted to throw my leg over him and ride him like a stallion.

He caught me goggling and glared.

That hurt. Especially since, the first time we’d met, when I’d come into the bar with Granny in January, his gaze had been warm following me, even interested. Winter had frosted those Nordic blue eyes only after he’d heard me very reasonably ask her not to add the fire baton to her act. At the time, I wasn’t familiar enough with him to ask why, and by the time I did know him, his shell of ice was only too thick.

Now his opinion of me was all too plain, so after getting rid of my coat and stashing the ibuprofen in an apron pocket, I grabbed a tray and got to work ferrying beer, half an eye on Granny as she worked her way down to her orthopedic hose.

I reminded myself
she
was the reason I’d returned to Meiers Corners when the technical college had a teaching position open up spring semester. She was the reason I’d jumped to land this job when bar-owner Camille added waitstaff at the beginning of March. Not sexy Vikings.
Granny
was the reason I was here, the reason I got this second job, to watch over her.

Which I could do—as long as I kept the job.

As if Fate’s flying fickle finger heard me, at that moment my boss swooped in. “Sera. Stop what you’re doing, this instant.”

I sucked in my breath and froze. Not only Thor disapproved of me. My new boss did, too.

Camille Lebeau was five-nine of green eyes, black hair, and curves that could shame a racetrack. While I was certainly not all bones—I tried to keep my ideal weight, not easy in a world with chocolate and beer in it—I don’t come anywhere near her lush sensuality.

In fact, I tried not to. Sober Sera wasn’t just a nickname for me, it was an ideal.

So when, stance radiating displeasure, Camille hooked a red-nailed finger in the neckline of my peasant blouse, and with a sharp tug, drew the bodice down to the vicinity of my navel, I started to pull it back up.

Okay, it wasn’t really down to my navel, but as far as cleavage went, I was revealing a crack so long even a plumber would be embarrassed.

“Sera.” Her tone stopped me. “What are our watchwords here at Nieman’s Bar?”

My hand froze. “Sexy And Fun.”

“That’s right. You’ll notice
sexy
is first.” She
tsked
at me. “We’ve talked about this, Sera.”

My name, twice, in as many sentences. It was a rebuke. I resisted the urge to hang my head.

“Your skirt.”

It went against everything I’d worked for my whole adult life.
My
watchwords were Trustworthy and Reliable. I was the eternal designated driver, not just because I’d appointed myself Granny’s Saint Bernard, but because of an incident in high school, where the actions of my wild child left me riddled with guilt.

But this was Camille’s bar. I couldn’t argue with her, and not just because she was a vampire too (frankly, as long as she paid me, I didn’t worry about extra dentition). Her Sexy And Fun approach had doubled Nieman’s customer base and gave rise to needing us tavern wenches to help out with the St. Patrick’s Day rush, without which I wouldn’t have been hired and thus been available to monitor my granny.

Yeah, my other job was tech school professor. We got paid for talking that way.

Bottom line, Camille was my boss, she demanded cleavage to keep the job, and I needed this job if I was to keep an eye on Granny. Therefore, cleavage it was.

Speaking of Granny…yikes. She’d gotten tangled in her garter belt’s slings, and tottered dangerously on the bar. Panic shooting through me, I leaped toward her.

Before I could take more than a step, Thor reached up with a casual hand and righted her. He lowered both ash-blond eyebrows at me, a clear “back off.”

Great. I got both Camille’s and Mr. Winter-Fjord-Blue Eyes’ condemnation.

Yes, Thor had a point; Granny deserved to kick loose. I was only trying to avoid her foot coming off.

“The skirt, Sera.”

Under Camille’s stink-eye, I rolled the skirt’s waist, snugging it under my apron’s belt (knot on the left, signifying I was single—the rest of the world may have the language of flowers, but leave it to Meiers Corners to know the language of apron knots). This raised my hemline only just south of my Bermuda triangle. It was a good thing I’d trimmed or I’d have had a few curls waving in the breeze.

“This is definitely not sexy.” She lifted a hand to the tight twist of my hair.

I pulled back before she could release it. “You said I could wear this. I come straight from school, and it’s the only way I can get here on time.”

She made a noise of annoyance. “Fine. I want a word with you.”

I froze, my heart pounding. Those sounded an awful lot like the four words most likely to lead up to disaster,
We need to talk.

“And you.” She pointed at me—then Thor. “Both of you. My office. Now.” She swung around and strode toward the louvered door at the back of the barroom.

I glanced at Thor. The man was outrageously observant and knew everything.

He and I shared a momentary confused look.

My belly did a little happy dance. We’d connected, just for an instant, at a level other than our mutual dislike.

Then, with a jerk of his head, he indicated we should follow her, and the moment was over.

Though Camille had said, “my office,” she didn’t really have one, or at least not the usual kind. Nieman’s was wall to wall drinking, darts, and cards, every spare inch taken up by bar, barstools or tall, postage stamp tables. But we both knew what she meant, and we followed her as she swept through the swinging door.

The back room was really more of a wide corridor with a couple tables. Men’s and women’s one-seater bathrooms were to the left, an exit leading to the alley beyond them. To the right was a big picture window of the scenic east parking lot, recently repaved. One thing I’ll say for Camille, she plowed her profits back into the business, and not just into stock, but also wages and infrastructure.

She leaned against the open door of the women’s restroom, tapping one impatient foot.

We hustled into the narrow, tiled room smelling of pine disinfectant and lime-and-coconut foaming soap.

Shutting the door, she came right to the point. “Our motto is Sexy And Fun. In the spirit of Fun, I’ve entered Nieman’s into the annual citywide April Fools’ Day competition.”

“That’s nice,” Thor said in a tone of voice that I’d use for snaking hair-clogged drains.

“Nice,” I echoed feebly.

April First in Meiers Corners was like New Years Eve in the rest of the world. Tons of people went out, did things they’d never do the rest of the year, and made utter asses out of themselves. The more sober townsfolk cringed at the antics and stayed home. But enough pranksters would be out, trying to get their video into the haloed winner’s circle, that I’d planned to call in sick to work and lock myself in my bedroom with a good book until it was all over.

“I’m so glad you think it’s nice, because I’ve entered the you two.” She jabbed an index finger at me and Thor.

That finger could have been an icicle, jabbing me in the gut. “No. No way. That competition is for the most outrageous prankster. That’s not me.” Me, outrageous? These days, I colored so much within the lines, I felt weird smudging my eyeliner.