Your Coffin or Mine? by Kimberly Raye Read Free Book Online Page A

Maybe your father said veal, and I just misheard him.”
    “Why would Dad hire a small calf to go up against a werewolf?”
    “Who knows? I told you. He’s possessed. I wouldn’t put anything past him.”
    “Why doesn’t he just buy another chainsaw?” A majorly stupid question to which I already knew the answer. My dad was a born vampire and Viola wasn’t. The reputation of the entire race—as fearless, superior, condescending bloodsuckers—depended on his recovery of that one power tool.
    “It isn’t the chainsaw. It’s the principle of the thing.” What’d I tell ya? “She waltzed right in and took it out from under him. Speaking of which, he’s checked every entrance, every security camera, and he still can’t figure out how she got into the garage.”
    “She is a werewolf.”
    “That means she’s hairy, not invisible. Your father has spent hours staring at the video surveillance and there’s nothing. Just the normal comings and goings of you and your brothers. Our friends.”
    I.e., bats. In particular, a pink one.
    Guilt rifled through me.
    See, Viola didn’t actually steal my father’s chain-saw.
    I might have let her borrow it a few months back when I was finding mates for her and twenty-seven other female werewolves. They’d needed alpha males in time for the lunar eclipse and a major mating fest, and I’d needed the hefty check Viola had doled out. I’d handed over the chainsaw as a bonus when one of the alpha males hadn’t met the exact criteria. Viola had welcomed a negotiating tool to get my father to stop cutting down her hedges.
    Or his.
    No one really knew which side of the property line the azalea bushes actually fell on, which was why my father and Viola had been going at it in court as well as at home. One judge had sided with my father, while another had ruled in Viola’s favor. The battle was still on, and I’d obviously managed to land myself right in the middle.
    “So your relationship with Dad is all good?”
    “Of course.”
    Phew.
    Now that I’d gotten over my initial fears, something wonderful occurred to me. My mother actually wanted to hire me. Translation: She had finally realized that I wasn’t wasting my life doing something frivolous. She’d recognized my talent and she was now taking me seriously. A lump jumped in my throat and I barely managed to croak, “So, um, what can I do for you?”
    “You can find an appropriate match for your brother.”
    “No problem. I’ve got just the vampire for Max—”
    “Not Max, dear.” Max was my oldest brother. He was hot and hunky and single, and totally full of himself.
    “Isn’t Rob already living with someone?” Rob was next in line to Max, also hot and hunky and single, and equally full of himself.
    “It’s not Rob. I want you to find someone for Jack.” Jack was the third brother, ditto on the hot and hunky and full of himself, but he wasn’t single. Not for long, anyhow.
    “Isn’t Jack marrying Mandy?”
    “Of course not. Vampires don’t get married. They commit. And only to other born vampires. He’s just infatuated right now. Once he sees that she is far from an appropriate match, he’ll forget all about Mindy and this marriage nonsense.”
    “Her name is Mandy and they’ve already booked the hotel.” Jack had been, by far, the worst of all my brothers when it came to being an egotistical, self-centered, do-me-and-get-lost player. Until he’d met Mandy. Now he actually passed for decent, and I didn’t have to kick his ass every time he opened his mouth.
    “I think three matches will be sufficient,” my mother went on as if I hadn’t said a word. “I want the crème of the crop. Nothing less than a double-digit Orgasm Quotient.”
    Quick FYI: The current OQ record sat at sixteen (an impressive baker’s dozen for yours truly), while the average lingered somewhere around seven or eight. Why the big deal? Each time a BV female orgasmed, she released an egg. No orgasm meant no egg, which