High Stakes (17 page)

Seamus was going to burst a blood vessel when he found out he was planning a night out with Alexis, but Ethan couldn't work up the regret. He did not need to go over another endless round of questions and note cards to prepare. He was as ready as he'd ever be to face his opponent.

Alexis grabbed his arm. "Tom Jones? Wow, I totally love Tom Jones. He's like quintessential Vegas—over the top and indecent fun. Let me just go grab a pair of underwear to throw at him and we'll be all set."

Over his undead body.If anyone was getting her underwear tossed in his face, it was going to be him.

"I don't think so, Ball Buster. You're not giving your panties to an old man."

"Oh, and you're so young, Garlic?"

"Garlic?"What the hell was that?

"Yep.Now we have pet names for each other, isn't that adorable? You're Garlic and I'm Ball Buster.

Now everyone will believe we're a real couple."

Oh, God. Ethan would not laugh. He would not laugh.

He laughed. And Alexis laughed with him.

Normally on a Sunday, her only full day completely free of work,Brittany liked to go swimming in her apartment complex pool, do a little laundry, and cook dinner for her sister. This Sunday she was trolling around the shopping complex at The Ava, trying to run vampires to ground.

Of a vampire.

She wanted to see Corbin again. When she had screamed on the phone the night before, he had suddenly appeared beside her, full of concern. When she had reassured him she was okay, he had left her, but not before he gave her a ride down from the roof. And not before she'd seen the compassion in his eyes.

It had convincedher what she had thought all along about Sea-musand Ethan. Vampires weren't soulless.

They were lost souls. They just needed to give up the whole bloodsucking thing and they could be perfectly happy and productive people, with just an incredibly long life span.

She wasn't sure how long that life span would last if they did give up putting the bite on people, but it seemed worth investigating. It was sort of like with children. Parents didn't like their kids' actions at times but they still loved their offspring. Biting was bad, but vampires weren't.

It all made sense to her, except she didn't know where to find Corbin. He wasn't registered at the front desk, at least not under the name he'd given her, and Ethan didn't seem to be in his room. Hopefully, he was with Alexis being saved from eternal damnation.Brittany thought that would be ideal. Ethan saved,
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Alexislaid . Everyone benefited.

Wandering through the lobby for the fourth time, wondering if she should just go home, she ran into Seamus.

"Hey,Brittany .Have you seen Ethan?"

"No, I haven't. Have you seen Corbin?"

"Who?"Seamus looked at her in confusion. He was wearing a suit, as usual, and he had dark circles under his eyes like there hadn't been a whole lot of sleep for him lately.

"Corbin.The French guy."

He stiffened just a little. "I'm sorry. I don't know who that is."

How obvious was it that he waslying ?

"No? I thought he was a friend of yours."
How does she know the banished one
?

Seamus'sthoughts floated over to her, andBrittany was just itching to know why Corbin had been ejected from the vampire coven, or whatever it was called.

"No, sorry,Brittany .If you'll excuse me?"

"Sure, Seamus."If he wasn't going to tell her, there wasn't much she could do about it. ButBrittany had an idea. If she could hear vamp thoughts, maybe she could make them. Maybe she could locate Corbin by calling him.

Moving down the hall, her heels sinking into the soft gray carpet, she absently adjusted the strap of her orange sundress and clutched her purse. Maybe there was somewhere a bit more private, so she didn't look like an idiot mentally screaming for Corbin. A hand touched her arm. "Kelsey."

She turned, startled, and looked at a man wearing a black silk shirt and dark glasses. Like the prescription sunglasses that take a few minutes to ease up after you've gone inside.

He realized immediately she wasn't the woman he was looking for. "Oh, I'msorry, I thought you were someone else."

"That's okay." She smiled.

There was no responding smile. He just nodded, andBrittany felt the anguish from him roll over her like a rising tide. Theemo-tion swelled and crashed over her, and she gave a little gasp as he talked away.

Swallowing hard, she shuddered as he turned the corner at the end of the hall.

Moving behind a large potted plant and screwing her eyesshut, the mentally screamed for Corbin.

Corbin! Corbin Jean Michel

Atelier, where are you? I need you
! That was a bit of an exaggeration but it never hurt to gain the jury's sympathy. Alex had taught her that.

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Brittany? What
ez
wrong? Where are you?

The lobby at The Ava.

I am coming.

"Cool." She fluffed her hair and touched up her lipstick.Nc reason to look like a wreck. Less than sixty seconds later, he suddenly was right next to her.

Not there one minute, very much there the next.

Corbin grabbed her hand and raked his eyes over her, clearly looking for injury. "Whatez the matter?

Are you ill?"

She smiled. "No, I just wanted to see you."

"What?" He dropped his hand from hers. "Are you serious? You cannot dozat . You cannot call me, letting me think you are bleeding and dying and itez nothing."

"Oh, lighten up. I didn't know how else to find you." Corbin was wearing another one of those perfectly put together man outfits, heavy on the black. "Now that you're here, let's go play."

"Play?Play what?" He gave her a look of distress.

"Just play. I want to get to know you. I want you to tell me all about yourself. You can unburden to me… I'll be your confidant."

"I do not ask for a confidant. I do not want to shareze things with you." He waved his hand in the air. "

Zatis for your Dr. Phil, not for Corbin Atelier."

Alexis pouted. She really thought he was just adorable, but very melodramatic. Memories of him caressing the woman on the chaise lounge rose in her mind. She wondered what it had felt like to be that woman… what his mouth would feel like on her neck, his hand on her thigh.

"Stopzat , with the lip, andze thoughts," he said, looking appalled. "You do not understand who and what I am. You do not even understand who you are."

Hello, this was not news. "Well, I'm trying to understand you. I keep asking you what's up, but you won't tell me."

He crossed his arms, and glanced down the hall. He had thin lips, and an inch-long white scar at the base of his chin, which kept his elegant bone structure and proportioned face from looking too pretty boy.

"Just tell me… why are you banished? It can't be that bad. I mean, you're not like in jail or anything. Did you sleep with someone's wife? Or insult a bigwig?"

"Nothing so ridiculous."Corbin swung his gaze back to hers. His jaw locked. "I killed a woman.Zat is why I am no longer part of the group. Carrick allows me to live here if I do not cause trouble, but I am not welcome at anything vampire."

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Brittanyheard the words, but couldn't quite register their meaning. "You killed a woman? What do you mean?"

"I mean, our kind is not allowed to kill mortals.Zat is the law. I broke it."

She shook her head. "But…" She didn't sense those feelings from him at all. He felt sad, lonely, lost, but not angry. Not murderous, or malevolent, or violent. There must be more to the situation, because she just didn't believe him.

"You will get us both in trouble if you persist in contacting me. I must bid you adieu, before we are seen.

And before I find myself tempted to do something withvouzat I should not."

"Corbin."Brittany knew, as sure as she knew her upper left molar had a cavity, that he wasn't telling her the whole story. She could not believe he was a ruthless, coldhearted killer.

He leaned closer, like he would touch her, but he only whispered, "Guard yourself,
ma
cherie . Eventually they will come for you."

Then he was gone.

ButBrittany felt his hand on her cheek as if hewere still in the room, and she closed her eyes against the confusion, embracing the melancholy feeling of longing instead.

The longing that echoed within her, surprising the heck out of her.

Clearly she was meant to help Corbin, whether he liked it or not.

Ethan wasn't so bad now that he was trying to seduce her instead of her sister.

She just might actually let him. He was working pretty hard.Dinner at a luxurious buffet, where he'd sipped wine while watching her tuck back about nine plates of food.Touring his casino and hotel, strolling down the Strip, and now sitting in a private garden on the roof of the first-floor restaurant on the backside of his building. The little alfresco patio's purpose seemed
to
be to camouflage several large air-conditioning units with indigenous desert plants, but it also made a nice secluded seating area.

The units created a soft hum, drowning out the traffic noise from the street, and there were several seating groups of teak chairs and love seats, with thick aqua cushions. It was a little hot, but not too bad since the heat of the day was over, and Alexis had ditched her shoes.

Normally it was a matter of pride to keep them on, so she could feign height, but Ethan already knew she was the size of a nine-year-old, so she figured it wasn't necessary to keep up appearances. She was stretched out lengthwise on one of the love seats, her legs draped over the opposite arm, and she was feeling content with the company she was keeping.

Ethan was talking about his childhood inEngland as he sat on the love seat opposite her, his feet crossed at the ankles. He was telling her about his mother. "She was blond, like you, with very fair skin.Petite, with a delicate appearance, and a soft voice. At sixteen she was given to my father to help establish Norman control amongst the Anglo-Saxons. My father was older, in his thirties, and a brisk, dominating
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sort of man. Yet it's my understanding that she was the only person on earth who could make my father feel fear."

"My kind of woman."

"No doubt."Ethan placed his hands behind his head and closed his eyes. "It has been over nine hundred years since my mother died, yet I can still see her face. Hear her sweet voice as she sang to me. She was a good woman and I loved her dearly. Love her."

Alexis felt something stirring inside her.A sympathy for him, a compassion for the difficulty of losing everyone in his mortal life nearly a millennium ago. And she felt her own loneliness reflected in him.

"She sounds wonderful." Alexis swung her feet and sighed. She didn't talk about her mother.Ever. Not even withBrittany , unless it was to make a snide comment. She knew that she should be over it, but she wasn't, and so she didn't talk about it. But with

Ethan, somehow she felt he would understand. He had seen a lot of life, known a lot of people, and it wouldn't shock him to hear the story of a woman who'd had four husbands and never been happy.

The woman who had convinced Alexis that marriage wasn't in her future, sparing herself from the torment and drama her mother had gone through.

"My mom… well, she was just someone who shouldn't have had children. She wasn't a badmom, she just wasn't all that great either. She was selfish, you know? Always running around with this or that guy who was the love of her life, or the one who was going to givehera big break in show business. She forgot birthdays, she forgot parent-teacher conferences… and she would give my friends coupons for her strip club to pass on to their fathers."

"That sounds very difficult."

She shrugged. "Yeah, but I know a lot of kids have it worse. I've seen those kids. I've seen horrific abuse cases… I've talked to those children and had to put them on the witness stand. I don't have anything to complain about so why am I such a baby?"

"Maybe because you love your sister and would do anything to protect her, even become a vampire slayer, and you don't understand why other people—including your mother—don't feel the same way about their families."

Alexis closed her eyes against the last fading sunlight and sighed again. Ethan made a lot of sense, and his words made her feel a thousand times better. That scaredher a little, at the same time it thrilled and pleased.

She could like him. She could even sleep with him.

But she could not fall for Ethan Carrick, for about four hundred reasons.

Like… there was no family health insurance for mortal-vampire unions.

And she would eventually be a saggy, wrinkly, incontinent old woman and he would still be sexy.

Plus she was sure her boss would not like her hooking up with a guy who drank blood. It would be
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really lousy publicity for the office.

But just talking? Just hanging with him for a week was a temptation she couldn't pass up.

"You might be on to something, Ethan." She studied him sitting in the shade of the building. "So how come sun doesn't kill you?"

"I don't know. It's very draining but it certainly doesn't kill me. We are night dwellers, but not unholy demonswho will explode in an agonizing death when a cross is shoved at us. I suspect we have mutated genes, but I leave that to the scientists, not politicians."

"
Mutant
doesn't sound any better than
vampire
."

"I'm over it," he said.

Alexis laughed. "So have you been married like thirty times?" She was sure this was going to lead in unpleasant directions, but she couldn't let him kiss her again, with tongue, until she heard that he wasn't a total dog.