The Single Undead Moms Club (Half Moon Hollow series Book 4) by Molly Harper Page B

lie.” It helped separate my car from all of the other mom-vans with stick-figure families on the back. I had briefly thought about getting a zombie stick family, but considering the whole dead-husband-slash-vampire-mom thing, that was probably unseemly.
    And while I found the van easily enough, I also found that there was a motorcycle parked incredibly close to my driver’s-side door. As in, I couldn’t open the damn door. It was a beautiful bike, a sleek black classic Harley-Davidson with a swirling silver pinstripe along the gas tank. But while I could appreciate the aesthetics, I also wanted to drive my car home as opposed to jogging. I loaded the grocery bags into the back hatch and considered using my vampire strength to pick up the Harley and move it. But I’d read somewhere that touching a man’s bike was a big no-no in the motorcycle world, and the last thing I needed to do was piss off a random Hells Angel in a Walmart parking lot.
    I would not crawl to the driver’s seat from the back gate of my van. I wasn’t sure my skinny jeans would hold up to the strain. I could crawl in from the passenger’s seat, but I wasn’t actually sure that I could back out of the space without hitting the bike. And while I wasn’t so worried about being beaten up by a biker, I probably couldn’t afford to replace a vintage Harley.
    Wait. Harley. Oh, crap.
    “Whatever crazy-ass evil thing you’re planning to do to my bike, just back away and do somethin’ else. Crack my kneecap or do the spleen-rippin’ thing, but just leave my bike alone.”
    “I wasn’t going to hurt your precious bike,” I shot back as Wade dropped the backpack into a saddlebag slung over his bike’s seat.
    “You were thinkin’ about it,” he said, pointing his finger at me.
    “I—I was not,” I insisted. “I couldn’t afford to replace it, so I was fighting down the urge.”
    He quirked an eyebrow and actually smiled at me. A real, sincere, mockery-free smile that actually made me want to smile back. I bit back the urge, but it was there. “So why are you standin’ here, eyein’ my bike in a suspicious fashion?”
    “Because you parked it so freaking close to my van that I couldn’t even get into it.”
    “Well, I only parked so close because I got distracted by the ‘big books’ sticker!” he exclaimed.
    “What?” I cried.
    “It was funny!”
    I laughed, pinching the bridge of my nose and trying really hard not to like the cranky redneck. When I looked up, he was still grinning at me. I let loose a shocked gasp. “You’re enjoying this, aren’t you?” I accused. “You enjoy winding me up, like some sort of backward, backwoods form of flirting. You’ve got one of those weird fetishes where you can only get turned on by the sound of a woman yelling at you while pelting you with balloons filled with banana pudding.”
    Wade went pale, and his full mouth fell open. “I’m tryin’ to come up with a smartass comeback, but my brain seems to have gone ‘TILT.’ ”
    I snickered. “That’s not the first time I’ve had that effect on a man.”
    “I don’t doubt it,” he drawled.
    A smoother, more cultured voice sounded behind me. “Is this man bothering you, miss?”
    I turned to find a tall, dark-haired man standing behind us, giving Wade a strong case of side-eye. He was certainly the kind of guy you’d want coming to your rescue—handsome and well dressed in dark jeans and a navy dress shirt rolled at the elbows. His eyes were dark, and his features were even and sort of dignified in that old-fashioned matinee-idol way. Given that I was pretty sure he was a vampire, it was entirely possible he was an old-fashioned matinee idol. He looked vaguely familiar, but I couldn’t quite place him.
    He looked vaguely familiar and yet so out of place in the Hollow. But somehow I was glad that he’d stopped to check on me. It gave me hope for the male gender. How wrong would it be for me to play injured party so this