Lunch Date(2010)

Rachel Caine

Lunch was always an iffy proposition at the Glass House. Some days all of Claire’s house mates were all in, most days nobody was; some days there was food in the fridge. Most days, not. Claire had made a fine art out of scrounging up crackers and cans of soup. Her favorite was cream of tomato. Yum.

Follow the link to read full short.

I rarely wrote stories from Claire’s point of view, mainly because she’s the main character in the books, so it seemed redundant to have her take the lead in the shorts, too. But I did enjoy it from time to time, like in this short story (free on the website) that just gives us a taste of the romance building between Claire and Shane. This is set in that late-romance period somewhere around Feast of Fools when things are hot … but not yet reaching the boil that they would in Carpe Corpus.
One of Shane’s many terrible jobs is featured, which is always fun for me. Poor Shane. Poor bosses.