Page 20 of The Donor’s Dilemma

After her first donor support meeting she realised it wasn’t weird because Vivienne was there, it was somehow worse without her. The divide in the room was stark. There were the veteran donors, led by Mike, so they all hated her, and there were the cool kids, led by Sienna, who pretended she didn’t exist.

High school politics, eat your heart out.

The vets, she didn’t care about. But the cool kids? There was something very wrong with them. She overheard the club mentioned all the time and it never sat right with her. Adam was too chatty for his own good and got his fair share of kicks from Sienna for it.

From what Verity could work out, Sienna wasn’t Queen-Bee through her own scheming. She led the group because she was donor of the highest-ranking vampire among them, Harris. Yet another reason for her to dislike Verity. Everyone knew there was no love lost between Harris and Theo.

“Toby’s got an interview tonight, so hopefully he can help out,” Cora said, pulling Verity back to the room. Back to the issue at hand.

“Oh, yeah?”

Shit shit shit!

“Listen…” Verity started.

“And he got me flowers this evening,” Cora beamed. “Said I deserved a little pick-me-up.”

“Did he now?” Verity sighed.

She knew she needed to tell her but talk about kicking a girl when she’s down.

“Yeah,” Cora went on. “He’s talking about going to the sea for a few days once it warms up. It’ll be so nice to get away for a bit.”

A customer headed to the counter for another coffee and Verity realised she was wimping out. Maybe she could tell Cora later.

“You dressing up for Lord Mayor Sexy?” Cora asked, giving Verity a once-over with a low whistle. “Babe, you look hot!”

Verity laughed. “Please, I just thought I’d try something a bit different.”

“Well, I likey!” Cora exclaimed, making Verity blush.

Maybe the skirt was a little shorter than she would normally wear but she didn’t think it was that obvious.

“Talking of Theo, I’d better get going.”

Cora nodded, giving Verity a hug before slapping her ass as she left.

By the time she arrived outside Theo’s office, the early morning wasn’t so early. Over the past month they had fallen into a routine where Verity would visit at the end of the night, after his appointments and meetings when they didn’t need to rush. Sometimes their appointments were quick and sometimes they would lose track of time chatting after Theo fed. It was on one of those mornings a few weeks ago, when they talked until the sun threatened to rise, that they discussed careers.

Verity had asked if he always wanted to be a politician and he had laughed. Theo seemed a little embarrassed to admit he was eighty years old before he learnt to read, but Verity thought it was adorable. He explained that history had always been his passion, and if given the choice he would have been a teacher, giving people the education he had been denied as a human.

It was with that knowledge, and another juicy little hint from Stella, that she knocked on his office door with a wrapped box in her hands.

“What’s that?” he asked, hands on hips, when she opened the door with a wicked grin.

“Well,” she said, stepping inside and closing the door behind her. “A little birdy told me it’s someone’s birthday today.”

His eyebrow rose as she walked closer, eyes snagging on her exposed legs until she cleared her throat and he looked up with a smirk.

“I err… don’t even know where to start,” he said, as she stepped closer and thrust the box towards him.

“Happy birthday, Theo.” She smiled, waiting for him to take the box.

“You really shouldn’t have,” he said, looking between her and the box.

“Well, I already did. It isn’t much, I just thought it was cool.”

He sighed. “Thank you, Verity.”