The Keepers (The Alchemy Series) (2 page)

“It feels weird to have my hair down while I’m working.”

“You’re
serving drinks, not food. Plus, we are supposed to be attractive, not look like milk maids. And if I had hair like yours, I wouldn’t put it up in that ugly ratty pony tail all the time.”

“It’s irritating, and it’s getting too long. I’m just too cheap to get it cut.”

“You’re lucky you’re a natural blonde and don’t have to dye it all the time. God only knows how bad you’d let your roots get. You have no idea how expensive this gets to be, too,” Lacey said as she pulled a lock of hair forward over her shoulder. “Now, Jonny, the bartender, is kinda creepy, but he gives me free shots when it’s slow, so be nice to him.”

“I know;
I’ve got to be nice. You told me five times already.”

“Ugggh.”

“What? I said I’d be nice.”

“No, not you. See over there?” I looked where she was pointing to the corner of the bar where the bartender, a nice looking dark Italian guy who
m I guessed was Jonny, was leaning forward talking to another waitress. She looked to be in her early twenties, with black hair and a slightly Asian appearance, and was dressed like us.

“Yeah, why?”

“That’s Vicky. She doesn’t normally work this shift. She must have switched. She thinks she’s boss because she’s sleeping with the owner.”

“She’s the owner’s girlfriend?” I thought it a little odd that the owner’s girlfriend would be pushing drinks with the rest of us.

“No, she’s not his girlfriend. She just doesn’t seem to realize that, or doesn’t want to.”

“She’s pretty
. She looks kind of like Lucy Liu.”

Lacey jumped in front of my path and held her hand up
, eyes round as saucers. “Whatever you do, don’t say that to her. She’s already about to explode from the size of her ego.”

“Lacey!”

We both swung around to where a bear of a man was standing about ten feet to the side of us. His hair was crazy thick and bushy, even cropped as close to his head as it was. He wore a nice suit, but he looked like a thug. He was also a complete softy and my new boss.

“Hi
, Arnold,” we greeted him together.

“You’re both late.”

“I’m sorry, Jo felt funny in her new uniform.”

I gasped in indignation at being th
rown under the bus so blatantly, then followed up with an elbow to her ribs.

“Like it wasn’
t true? You were being prudish.”

I didn’t say a word, not wanting to prolong the subject.

He just shook his head and sighed. “Show Jo around. And, Lacey, you have to start showing up on time.”

“I’m sorry
, Arnold.” Lacey smiled her Monroe smile and the big bear looking thug visibly melted.

“Just try not to do it
, again,” he said. Lacey was late every day of the week. I knew this because she told me in the locker room just thirty minutes ago. “I need someone to run Mr. Hawking up a bottle of the scotch he likes. We’re slow, so you can bring Jo with you while you show her the ropes.”

“Where’s Perry?”

“Lacey, can’t you just do something when I ask you?”

“But that’s not my job. Make Vicky do it, y
ou know she’d be quite
happy
to.” Lacey put just enough extra inflection on the word happy to make it more than obvious what she was insinuating.

“If I send Vicky, she won’t
come back tonight, and I can’t exactly call the boss and complain. I’m already down a girl.”

“Fine.” Lacey stalked off in a pout, and I had no choice but to follow her having no idea what else to do. I started to remember quickly why I had no friends. I hadn’t wanted any.

“What’s the big deal if we run an errand?” I asked her after we had gotten out of earshot of Arnold.

“Because Mr. Cormac Hawking is the owner, and he makes me nervous.”

She stepped up to the bar, made a face at Vicky, and introduced me to Jonny. He smiled flirtatiously, and I had the distinct impression that he would have made a move on me if Lacey hadn’t sent him off quickly to go fetch the scotch for Mr. Hawking.

“Is he sleazy or something?” I asked Lacey, still wondering how somebody made her unsettled. No one unsettled her.

“No, he’s actually really hot. He’s just… I don’t know how to explain it.” She hesitated and looked back at me. “It’s hard to put into words. If he’s up there when we bring this, you’ll see.”

Jonny plunked down a bottle o
f scotch on the bar and threw me another smile.

“Stop looking at her like that. It’s just creepy!” Lacey said as she grabbed the scotch in one hand and my arm in the other. “Don’t sleep with him. He gets around and from the tally I’ve got, has g
iven at least four waitresses an STD,” she told me as we headed up to the private elevator that went to the private top floors. The door men that kept the general population of the casino out, held the doors for us.

We got out at the fiftieth floo
r. A large sumo wrestler look alike, with his sparring partner by his side, was standing in front of the elevator doors when they slide open. They nodded to us as we passed.

“This floor is Mr. Hawking
’s only. If we were strangers, Tweedle Dee and Tweedle Dum back there, would have ripped us to pieces. I’ve heard there are about fifty more of their type lurking around this floor.”

             
My heels sank into the thick cream carpet surrounded by tan walls. It was set up like a gallery, with paintings on either side, lighting above each piece of artwork.

“Is that a real Monet?” I asked, as I paused in front of oil painted water
lilies. I was far from a connoisseur of art, but on my eleventh birthday, Rick, one of the foster kids who had been living at the same house I was, had given me a used book of Monet prints. I’d had to tape the binding back together last month, but I couldn’t bring myself to throw it out.

“Probably, he’s a huge art collector.”

When we reached the end of the hallway, we came to a massive, carved wood door. The grain swirled underneath a thick coat of clear lacquer that accentuated the warmth and highlighted the skill of the artisan who had made it. Lacey reached her hand up to press the doorbell to the right, and I saw a slight tremor as her fingers hovered over the button for a moment. She pressed it, and the doors swung open before her arm had dropped back to her side.

“You have his scotch?” A tall thin blond man asked.

“Duh.” She held up the bottle as if he needed visual proof. Just like the scotch, Lacey tended to be an acquired taste.

The man eyed Lacey, and then me, and stepped aside to let us in. “Put the scotch on the bar in the other room.”

The moment we walked in, I felt a tingle of electricity flow over my skin, and my hair stood on end. A prehistoric remnant, left over from thousands of years ago, issued a warning that my evolved brain could no longer decipher. Combined with my lack of direction, it was hard not to wonder if evolution hadn’t cut some corners along the way.

I looked over at Lacey
, and when she met my gaze her eyes doubled in diameter with a blatant,
I told you I didn’t want to come here. Now do you get it?

I simply nodded and gave a silent reply to her with my eyes that said
let’s drop off the bottle and get the hell out of here.

The entire far wall of the foyer was glass, and it offered a spectacular view of th
e Vegas Strip. At night, like it was now, with the lights dimmed low, you could see the light going on for miles. I had a hard time breaking my gaze away from the stunning view.

I followed her into the next room that looked to be the living room. It had the same outer wall of windows
, with a large screen TV that somehow floated in the center. A matching set of tan suede couches faced each other and a full-length bar made of black stone ran along the back wall. My eyes searched out the view again. All I could think of was how wonderful it must be to live high up here with the world at your feet.

The apartment was eerily quiet, and we instinctively honored the silence. Somehow afraid if we uttered a word, we would draw the attention of whatever was
lying in wait, the eerie presence hovering nearby that we couldn’t quite define. Lacey was just about to place the bottle on the bar when we heard a rustling from the other room.

“Hello.”

The deep gravelly voice sent a shiver down my spine. I looked over at the doorway to see a pair of the palest blue eyes I’d ever encountered, set like aquamarines in a frame of dark black lashes. His dark tan skin, and black wavy hair framing them, just made them even more unusual. I knew instantly that this had to be Cormac Hawking. I would have known him even in a crowded room, surrounded by hundreds of others. Lacey wasn’t the type to avoid attractive men, and he was incredibly handsome in a deeply sexual way. He was nicely over six feet, with broad shoulders encased in a white tuxedo shirt that hung slightly open. But it was the power that seeped from him, not his size, that made him alarming to even my senses, not that I’d ever show it, but I felt it in spades. It rolled off him in wave after wave until it practically smothered all my other senses. He was the kind of man who dominated a room without even trying. The primitive part of my brain was screaming for me to leave, but the female in me wanted to get closer, even as I knew that this man was dangerous.

I looked
at Lacey to see if she was ready to make an exit, but at the current moment, she stood so still she would have made a deer in the headlights look animated.

“We were just dropping off your scotch,” I stated, as Lacey remained where she was frozen.

“Thank you.” He looked sparingly at Lacey, but quickly dismissed her and returned his gaze to mine. “Would you mind?” He held out his hand that had a pair of cuff links resting on his palm. “It’s easier with two hands.”

“Sure.” He stood where he was, making me walk to him as he waited, and I think maybe
assessing me. I took one link from his hand, trying to make as little contact with his skin as possible, afraid that somehow he’d discover my unease. One thing I’ve learned from a life of shuffling from place to place, never let them know you’re nervous. Then I blew it and dropped the second link on the carpet.

“Sorry,” I said, as I reached down and grabbed it.

“No problem,” he replied with a smile on his lips.

I felt like he was playing a game with me
, but no one had bothered to fill me in on the rules.

“Your eyes are very unusual, s
uch a vivid green.”

I met his stare fully now. I didn’t like being toyed with, and some part of me knew he was playing my reactions like a fiddle.

“Thank you,” I replied, and continued to hold his gaze.

“Do they run in your family?”

I hesitated, which probably seemed weird to him, being such a straightforward question. “No,” I lied. Some kernel of preservation in my brain was screaming the less he knew the better. Another part of me, maybe the larger part, didn’t want to admit to not knowing my parents.

He lost his smile and looked at me intently, but not aggressively. He knew I was lying. By that simple answer, I had just somehow cemented my position on his radar. He knew something was off.

He lifted his hand slowly toward my face. This game I knew well, he was playing chicken, seeing if I’d stand my ground or pull back. I stood my ground and he ran his index finger along my cheekbone.

“Pretty.”

His smile was back. It was a smile of a man used to winning.

“Thank you,” I countered
in the blasé tone of a woman used to being pursued. He was going to have to up his game if he was going to try to storm this castle. Men had chased me for months, let alone weeks, and had gotten nowhere.

The clanking sound
of Lacey banging into a glass drew our notice and broke the tension.

“S
orry,” she muttered softly across the room, a few shards of glass lay at her feet.

He looked unfazed. “Leave it
; I’ll have one of the maids get it.” He turned his attention back to me. “I’m sure I’ll be seeing you, again.” He turned and left.

The minute he was gone, Lacey had her hand clamped
around my wrist and tugged me out of there, as quickly as she could drag me.

Lacey came back to her normal self once the elevator doors slid shut
, leaving the two of us alone, again. “Oh, my god!” she said. “He was so into you! I’ve never seen him act like that with anyone. He barely acknowledges Vicky and
he’s slept with her!
”

“It’s only because he’s never seen me before. Those kind
s of men are always like that.” I hoped that was what it was, because I didn’t want his kind of attention. I was all about keeping my nose clean, getting into med school, and hopefully figuring out what the hell was wrong with me before NASA came and decided to find out for me. Getting derailed by some thirty something playboy, in his expensive penthouse, who wanted a little amusement wasn’t what I needed. I was well past the point in my life where I believed in happily ever after. My reality didn’t include castles and gallant knights, and I didn’t need them. I handled my own problems. Romance and men were a luxury I couldn’t afford, right now.