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room. “Quite a setup you have here.”
    Ronan stepped close to her, his butterscotch hair spiking erratically around his face, accenting his arched brow. “You are a fascinating woman, Alexandra. I am bewitched by your beauty.” With a graceful wave of his wrist, his finger swept a short lock of hair behind her ear. “You don’t worry about the locals wondering how a lassie stays so young?”
    His gaze roamed her face, lingering on her mouth before taking a leisurely glide back to her eyes. Something oddly familiar and completely dangerous crawled just beneath the man’s polished veneer and though she had no desire to set it free, she couldn’t seem to look away from his hypnotic gaze.
    “Hello,” a male voice called from upstairs.
    Like a switch, the heavy footfalls coming down the stairs broke their odd connection. Alex cleared her throat and stepped away. “I know you’ve been talking with Glenn about the progression of your orders.” Alex rifled through the stacks of papers on the heavy oak desk in the corner until she found the clipboard with the orders. Flipping a couple of pages, she worked to focus on the task at hand and not the heartbeat pounding in her ears. “Ah yes, you’re at two bottles.”
    “Alex, you down here?” called the voice again.
    “In the wine cellars,” she hollered back. Alex didn’t need to consult the appointment calendar to know who was thumping down her stairs.
    “Glenn called and asked me …” Reese Colton strode around the corner, coming to a dead stop at the threshold as if he’d hit a wall. Questions ricocheted over the vampire’s face. Time hung suspended as the two men seemed to be sizing up their competition.
    Reese had done nothing more than spend time at her bar with the rest of the off-duty firefighters. Perhaps he was a bit more flirtatious, even shared several toe-curling kisses with her on several occasions, and though she’d wanted more, Reese had taken it no further. Despite all of that, Alex felt as if she’d just been caught cheating on the man—and didn’t that just piss her off. She didn’t owe the vampire crowding the doorway any explanations. Then why did she feel like the proverbial kid with her hand in the cookie jar?
    “Reese. You know Ronan Nason?” she asked, pleased it sounded as cavalier as she’d intended. “He’s here to pick up his order.”
    “Um … yeah, we met a couple of months ago at the university.” Reese removed his sunglasses with such deliberate precision, Alex was sure they would slice the heavy tension in the air.
    “Reese was one of the firefighters who responded to that horrible fire in my chemistry lab,” she said, working to fill the uncomfortable silence. “The one where my grad student was killed?” The young woman had only recently settled in South Kenton as a doctoral student of Alex’s. The lab and all its contents had been burned so badly, the university wasn’t sure the insurance would be enough to replace everything. Fortunately, the grant money from the tribunal would guarantee a complete refurbishment and extra funding for Alex’s research. “The family still has no answers.”
    “The death was ruled accidental.” Both men spoke at the same time.
    Her gaze flew between them. “Yes,” the word dragged slowly out of her mouth. “Still, it’s hard for me to understand how a grad student in chemistry could’ve been so careless.”
    “No doubt the poor woman let the Bunsen burner from one of her experiments get out of control,” Ronan said. “Thank goodness no one else was caught in the blaze.” He looked to Reese for corroboration.
    “Any life lost in a senseless fire is one too many.” Reese’s words were as hard as the look he shot Ronan. “It’s a code to live by.”
    “Aye, ‘tis true for sure. Still, we have to be grateful it wasn’t worse. Perhaps more safety education needs to be done. I’m all for keeping students safe.”
    “So I hear.” The half-smile Reese flashed