He studied the card carefully.

Friggin' great. Now he was suspecting her of credit card fraud.

"It's good!" Kylie said. "I swear."

He didn't look convinced. "Can I see an ID?"

She heard Burnett and Holiday somewhere a few aisles behind her. Biting her lip, she opened her wallet and let him see her driver's license. She had never seen anyone take so much time reading a license.

Fear that she was going to let Holiday down had her stomach clenching. "I'm kind of in a hurry," Kylie said.

Finally, he dropped her license and finished the transaction. She heard someone shift behind her, and her heart tightened. She glanced down to see shoes, praying they weren't going to be Burnett's tennis shoes.

It wasn't Burnett. A pair of dress shoes, the kind businesspeople wore, adorned the feet of the man standing behind her. Thank God.

The cashier pushed a receipt over to her. "Would you mind some informational pamphlets?" he asked.

"Fine." Kylie signed the receipt then watched him drop sex pamphlets in her bag with the pregnancy tests.

Little did he know, those pamphlets were outdated. She'd read those over a year ago.

When at last he handed her the bag, Kylie swung around to leave, but came to an abrupt stop when she saw the face of the man standing behind her.

"Oh, shit," Kylie said again.

Chapter Twenty

Holy hell! Of all the people in the world to have witnessed her buy three pregnancy tests, this was the absolute worst.

"They are for a friend," Kylie blurted out.

"What?" her grandfather asked, and his brow wrinkled with concern when he looked at her little white sack. Okay, so he obviously hadn't seen her purchases. But now he probably thought she was buying condoms or something. And with this size sack, she was stockpiling them, too.

All of a sudden, Kylie realized a concern bigger than her grandfather thinking she'd bought a bag of rubbers. If Burnett spotted her grandfather, there would be hell to pay.

"What are you doing here?" Kylie's nervous gaze zipped around praying she wouldn't spot Holiday or Burnett. She didn't.

"I wanted to bring you this." He pulled her the phone out of his shirt pocket. "And to make sure you believed that I wasn't behind the ploy to keep you from leaving. I gave my word to Burnett. I don't do that lightly. I will go now."

Kylie couldn't help it, she moved in for a hug and she clung to him a fraction of a second longer than she should.

For when she pulled back, she saw Burnett barreling down the aisle toward her.

Thankfully, her grandfather vanished.

"What the hell?" the cashier said behind her.

"This is why you wanted to come here!" Burnett bit out.

"Is there a problem?" the cashier asked, and then added, "Did you see..."

"It's fine," Kylie said, and waved at the cashier.

"I wouldn't say it's fine," Burnett said. "I'm tired of these lies!"

"Should I call the police?" the cashier asked.

"No," both Burnett and Kylie said at the same time.

Burnett took her by the arm and started leading her out.

"Are you okay, young lady?" the cashier called out.

"I'm fine." Kylie looked back. "He's my friend." Never mind he wasn't acting like it.

"What happened?" Holiday came running up.

"Let's get out of here first," he seethed, and glanced at Kylie, eyes bright with anger.

He led them to Holiday's car parked right out front.

"What happened?" Holiday looked at Kylie because obviously she knew Burnett was being unreasonable.

She clicked open the car locks a fraction of a second before Burnett yanked open the back door. The angry vamp motioned for Kylie to get inside.Kylie hesitated, not sure what to say. She knew Burnett was furious about her grandfather showing up, but that wasn't her fault.

She held her shoulder back. "If you will let me explain..."

"Get in the car!" he demanded.

Now angry at him for being so damn unreasonable, she flung herself in the backseat. Burnett reached in and snatched the bag from her hands. And then slammed the car door shut.

Oh, hell! This was not going to go well.

Kylie peered out the window. Burnett shot around to the driver's side of the car and motioned for Holiday to get in the passenger side.

As soon as Holiday got in, she flipped around to look at Kylie with questions in her eyes.

"My grandfather was there," Kylie said.

"She lied to you!" Burnett snapped out. "She didn't need any damn tampons! This was a ploy to see her grandfather!" He shook the sack at her.

"It was not a ploy!" Kylie leaned up and gripped the back of the passenger's seat.

"She didn't lie!" Holiday pressed a hand to Burnett's arm. No doubt to calm the man.

All Kylie could think was she needed a touch, too. Because right now all the anger at the vampire for keeping secrets from her rose back up and was accompanied by her anger at being falsely accused. "I did not know he was going to be here!" she said, her voice an octave too high.

"She couldn't have known he was going to be here," Holiday said.

The fierceness in Burnett's expression lessened, but not enough to make Kylie happy.

He stared at Holiday. "She asked to come here and you expect me to believe it's a coincidence that he just shows up?"