Harper Allen - Dressed To Slay

“I told you what I planned to do if I ever turned vampire. It’s time to put that plan into effect.”

I raised my hand to touch Van’s cheek. “When I looked at my sisters, it took all my control not to attack them…and I don’t know how long my control can last. Just say goodbye and let me walk away from you, please .”

“Not this risk-taker, honey.” He gave me a tight smile. “I told you two nights ago how I felt about you, Megan. Nothing’s changed for me.” He tipped my chin up so that my gaze couldn’t avoid his.

I tried to smile, but the tears that had been brimming in my eyes splashed over. “I didn’t plan to tell you like this, but I think I’m falling – ”

Kill him now while he’s vulnerable!

The terrible thought tore through my mind with such cold intensity that I reeled backwards. I could tell from his alarmed gaze that my horror was mirrored in my eyes.

Harper Allen, her husband and their menagerie of cats and dogs divide their time between a home in the country and a house in town. She grew up reading Stephen King, John D MacDonald and John Steinbeck, among others, and has them to blame for her lifelong passion for reading and writing.

By

MILLS & BOON ®

www.millsandboon.co.uk

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To the members of the Syracuse,

New york, chapter of RWA

Dear Reader,

Sisters.

They fight with each other, dis each other and know each other’s most secret weaknesses. But when the chips are down, they’re there for each other. That’s usually the case…but what happens when your sister is under the power of an ancient curse that might turn her into a vampire? And what if you might be the sister who’s about to turn vamp?

Personally, those are questions I’ve never had to face with my sis, but it’s one that’s suddenly disrupted the lives of the fabulous Crosse triplets…and changed their pampered existence of shoe-shopping, dating and partying into a fight against the dark side with their lives and souls on the line. Enter Megan, Kat and Tashya’s world of Manolos and cocktails, stakes and vampires…and learn for yourself just how binding the bonds of sisterhood can be.

Harper Allen

It’s one of those questions that yank me back from the edge of sleep: was there any way things could have turned out differently? If Angelica Crosse had lived long enough to pass on to her daughters some of the knowledge that had been drummed into her from birth, would it have helped? Or if she hadn’t wanted so badly to give the three of us the ordinary life she’d been robbed of that she’d left instructions in her will for Grammie and Popsie to have custody of us, would that have changed anything?

Problem is, once you start playing this game, there’s no good place to stop, leaving a girl slathering on way too much Bobbi Brown concealer to hide the bags under her eyes when her alarm goes off in the morning. Or in my case, simply resigning myself to the possibility of needing my first mini-facelift before I hit the ripe old age of twenty-two. If Katherine and Natashya and I hadn’t been triplets. If we hadn’t gotten engaged when we did. If Grammie and Popsie hadn’t raised us to be indulged, shop-till-we-drop princesses, if—

As I say, no good place to stop; and on those nights, when all this is going through my head and making it impossible for me to get back to sleep, I get the sinking feeling that everything that did happen probably would have happened anyway. Lance and Todd and Dean still would have gone to Dean’s stag party, the stripper who called herself Zena still would have shown up, and our cheating jerks of fiancés still would have said yes to getting down-and-dirty lap dances from her.

Which all added up to Kat and Tash and yours truly, Megan, being totally unprepared when the men we were supposed to walk down the aisle with turned into undead creeps and tried to kill us.

As Tash says, don’t you just hate when that happens?

“My point is, these days girls are supposed to get a wild and crazy send-off the night before their wedding, like guys do.” With a drama-queen toss of her curls as she entered the house, my sister Natashya flounced through the foyer into the living room and plopped herself onto a sofa. “Yet here we are, home before midnight like a bunch of nuns or something, while Dean’s stag is probably just getting to the smoking cigars and watching X-rated DVDs stage. If I were you, I’d be totally pissed, Megan.”

My other sister Katherine didn’t pause in the entrance hall, either. “The brat’s right for once, sweetie. As bachelorette parties go, yours blew bigtime,” she drawled over her shoulder as she headed toward the kitchen, leaving me to punch in the Crosse mansion’s security code. I don’t know if it’s because I’m technically the eldest of the three of us, beating Kat in the getting-born race by ten minutes and Tash by half an hour, but that task always falls to me.

“Somehow I don’t think breaking out the Monte Cristos and popping Dick Does Dallas into the DVD player is Mandy Broyhill’s idea of appropriate entertainment.” I turned from the security keypad and shrugged at Tash. “Or Lance and Todd’s idea of entertainment, to be honest. It’s more likely that they took my darling hubby-to-be to a strip club.”

“They wouldn’t. The only one around is the Hot Box, that sleazy dive on the outskirts of town, and Toddie knows I’d kill him if he ever set foot in there,” Tash said dismissively. She frowned. “Besides, there’s been some weird stories going ’round about that place lately. I know a girl who says after a couple of her brother’s friends went there they ended up calling in sick to work the next few days and the next thing you know, they quit their jobs and just dropped out of sight. I wouldn’t be surprised if the police raid that dump and find some major drug-dealing going on. But my point is that even if you don’t care if your last night as a free woman is a blast or not, I do. When it’s my turn in a couple of months, I want those totally babalicious cowboy dancers who entertained at Brittany’s stagette party.”

“The ones who stripped down to their six-guns?” Silver-blond hair swinging like satin around perfectly tanned shoulders, Kat returned from the kitchen carrying a pitcher full of something frosty-looking in her right hand, with stemmed glasses wedged adroitly between the fingers of her left. She set the glasses and pitcher on the spindly Sheraton table in front of Tash. “Appletinis, anyone?”

She didn’t wait for a reply, but started pouring. I sank onto the sofa beside Tash and eased off my shoes with a sigh of relief. My middle sister, as languidly elegant as her nickname, can power-shop all day in a pair of Manolo stilettos and dance till dawn in strappy Jimmy Choos, while Tash’s idea of casual footwear is a pair of Chanel heels, but I occasionally feel the need to reconnect with my baby toes.