chapter Five
Brittany was starting to think she shouldn't have let Alexis talk her into leaving. They were driving on U.S. 95 toward Alexis's house in Summerlin and all she could think about was that man? that vampire?and how he had caressed the woman outside the restroom, suckling her, making her moan with pleasure while he drank her blood.
It had been like watching two people have sex?embarrassing, arousing,shocking .Exciting. And that disturbed her What those people were was wrong?soulless, evil?yet she was fascinated by them, and she had to do something.
"I need to go back." She had agreed to leave only because Alexis had threatened never to speak to her again?which they both knew was a lie, but if Alexis was worried enough to say it, Brittany knew it was serious. She never wanted to cause Alexis worry. Her sister had had her childhood yanked away from her way too early, and she'd spent a lot of years stressing about money and Brittany , when she should have been dating and having fun.
So Brittany had left the hotel because she didn't want to see that look in Alexis's eye, the frantic concern that made her look older than she was. But she couldn't get the image out of her head of the man with the expensive suit, rich caramel hair, and a little lab kit in his pocket.
There had to be a way to form an intervention or something. But first she needed to know everything about Vegas vampires. If she understood them and their ways, she could figure out how to save their souls. And the only way to learn about them was to spend time with them.
"Over my dead body," Alexis said, turning into the driveway of her stucco house, the garage light glowing in the dark. She opened the car door and cursed."Flipping yucca bush! I hate this ugly, spiky plant. I can't believe the landscaper put it right where I park the car and need to get out. I hit it every single time."
She forced her way out of the car.
"Alex " Brittany bit her lip.
Her sister stopped whacking at the foliage with her purse and bent over to stare at her suspiciously. "What? You've got that pretty girl wants something voice going on."
"I have to go back." Lives depended on it. She might be just a dentist, and too trusting, according to Alex, but there was a reason she had met Ethan Carrick. A reason he had invited her to his hotel, and she didn't think it had anything to do with oral hygiene.
It was a cry for help, and she had to answer it.
Alexis saw the stubborn tilt to Brittany 's chin, and the very impressive pout her lower lip was creating. She knew that look.Had caved under it many, many times. But this she couldn't compromise on.
"No."
"I'll go on my own."
"I'll lock you in my spare bedroom."
"No, you won't." Brittany scoffed.
Shit, she was right. Alexis would never do that. "You're serious?"
"Very." .
"You'd go back without me?"
"Yes."
Then Alexis had no choice. She sighed.Leaned on her car door.Crossed her arms.
Despite her earlier conversation with Ethan, once she had Brittany out of the hotel, she had rethought the whole staying with him thing. If she had Brittany out on her own powers of persuasion, what did she need him for?
Nothing.Her whole willingness to stay had been based on his offer to kick Brittany out. So when that became unnecessary, she had figured their little agreement was just null and void.
Brittany 's one-eighty changed things again.
"Alright, how about I go back? You stay here and I'll take your place at the hotel and keep an eye on them." That was a little vague, but she was just feeling Brittany out for the time being.
Brittany wasn't buying it. "Alex. I want to find a cure for their vampirism. Not prosecute them."
Here's where it got dicey. "Who said anything about prosecution? I could do that?cure them." Maybe a high kick to the head would solve their problems. "I'm persuasive."
"If that's what you want to call it." Brittany still wouldn't get out of the car, just sat there in her cocktail dress, long legs crossed.
Alexis couldn't imagine where Brittany got her stubbornness. Alexis would have thought she herself had drained the family gene pool of that particular trait long before Brittany was born.
"Okay, here's the thing." Alexis wiped her hands on her jeans and prepared to eat crow for her sister's sake. "Ethan, well, he, uh, invited me to dinner.As his date."
Brittany 's face lit up. "Alex! That's wonderful. When was the last time you went on a date? Like six years ago?"
It hadn't been that long. Surely there had been someone like Jim back in law school okay, so that had been six years. Damn. "I was thinking maybe I need to open myself up to new experiences." There, that sounded like Brittany-speak.All warm and fuzzy and full of self-realization.
Brittany got out of the car finally, thank God, and winked at her. "That's not all you're going to be opening, if you know what I mean."
"Brittany Anne!" Crap, she was blushing.Mostly because she'd had a flash of memory of being under Ethan, her body hot and humming. She had so been lying when she'd said she wasn't attracted to him.
Brittany grabbed her suitcase out of the backseat and giggled.
"It'sdinner, not a night of wild monkey sex."
"I bet vampires have great stamina."
"I'm sure they do." But Ethan wasn't a vampire, because vam-pires didn't exist, and she wasn't going to sleep with him anyway. And if you really think he's a vampire, you shouldn't be encour -aging me to have dinner with him."
"Why not?He's a great guy.Very charming, with loads of manners. You could do worse."
"What if he sucks my blood?" Alexis asked.
"He hasn't sucked my blood yet." Brittany carried her suitcase toward the open garage door. "Besides, vampires puta glamour on you when they do it. You don't feel anything but pleasure."
"That sounds like kinky shit to me, and I don't do kinky. Nobody's puttinga glamour on me if they value their life." Not that they could, because they weren't really vampires. It. Was. A. Game.
"If they want to puta glamour on you, they can. But don'tworry, I don't think he would do that to you. If Ethan invited you to eat dinner, he's much too well mannered tomake youdinner, you know what I mean, sweetie?"
Jesus. Brittany was making her head spin. And the wordseat andEthan in the same sentence weren't a good direction to be sending her libido in.
Alexis opened the interior door in the garage and walked into her white-on-white kitchen. "All I know is that someday you're going to settle down and marry an accountant and have cute, black-hairedbabies, and a little house inBoulderCity , and I am going to breathe a huge sigh of relief." She tossed her keys on the counter and wondered what was appropriate to pack for a week with a bunch of psychos playing an adult version of Dungeons and Dragons. Her wardrobe was sadly lacking in velvet capes.
Vampires.Please.
Brittany startled her by throwing her arms around her from behind and giving her a big hug. "Alex, you know I love you. You're the best sister in the universe, and I don't mean to make you worry."
She patted Brittany 's arms and felt the sudden embarrassing rush of hot tears to her eyes. "I love you, too, Brit. And I mean it about the accountant."
"Yeah, right." Brittany let her go and laughed. "The day I marry an accountant is the day you marry Ethan Carrick."
Alexis winced. Damn, she really hated to let go of the Brittany-accountant fantasy.
From his vantage point at the blackjack table, Ringo watched Ethan Carrick emerge from the private elevator with his right-hand man at 10 p.m. just as he did every night. Carrick was a creature of habit, and Ringo appreciated that.
Made his job easier, that Carrick took his so seriously.
Ringotook his job seriously, too, and could be considered a workaholic by some. But he didn't do anything stupid, and what Donatelli wanted was stupid. Nodding to the dealer, he kept an eye on Carrick as he moved around the casino floor, chatting to an employee here and there. Ringo inhaled from his cigarette before resting it in the glass ashtray.
Another reason he loved Vegas. He could smoke wherever the tuck he wanted. None of that huddling around a garbage can with twelve other people outside a crowded restaurant freezing his balls off- Here he could blow his secondhand smoke in anybody's face he felt like, and he appreciated that.
You look like you're doing prettygood ," a perky voice said next to him.
Glancing to his left, he noticed that a skinny brunette had taken the vacant seat, previously occupied by an ancient oil refinery owner. This woman was easier on the eyes than old Arthur had been, he'd admit that, but he didn't like to chitchat when he was working.
"Not bad," he said in a cool tone.
"Enough to buy me a drink," she said with a giggle.
Ringostifled his irritation. He hated women who giggled. It was like air escaping from a tire, a signal that, once expelled, nothing but an empty shell would remain.
This girl definitely didn't look too heavy in the IQ department, even if she had a pretty face, shiny black hair, and breasts that were too large to be natural on her thin frame. Yet he didn't think she was a hooker. There was too much genuine mischief in her eyes, a lusty sort of hunger hovering around her face.
Probably one of the girls who were dead broke, and enjoyed milking men out of meals and drinks, then leaving them panting and desperate. Ringo wasn't desperate for anything.Hadn't been since he'd left the Marines and half of his humanity behind.
With a flick of his wrist, he flipped a twenty-dollar chip toward her. "Go buy yourself a drink, gorgeous. And leave me alone to concentrate before I lose this whole pile because I'm staring at you instead of the wheel."
She took the chip, wrapping her fist around it and caressing it with her thumb. "Thanks. I'll be back with your change, cutie."
Yeah, right.Giggles was going to pocket that change, no doubt in his mind. But he didn't care, because she was blocking his view of Carrick. As he picked up his cigarette and took a hit, she blew him a kiss with moist, cherry red lips, and sashayed off.
Damn. He couldn't see Carrick anymore. He'd left the floor.
Not that it mattered, really. Carrick did the same thing every night, and he never left his casino.Ever. He was a rich, young, reclusive nut-job. And contrary to Donatelli's crazy decapitation request, Ringo was going to plug the casino owner with a bullet, right to the heart. Dead was dead, and a bullet was cleaner than that mess Donatelli wanted.
The Italian was an eccentric client?he supposed they all were?and demanding, but Ringo knew his job, and he'd do it the right way.The low-risk way.
"I'm back. Did you miss me?" Giggles reappeared a minute later, a martini in one hand and a five-dollar bill in the other, which she set in front of him.
"Not at all," he told her truthfully, taking a hit from the dealer on his hand.
She giggled. "I'm Kelsey. I work here." If she started singing for him, he was going to shoot himself."Yeah?" He might as well have said, "I don't give a shit," but that didn't stop Kelsey.
"I'm a receptionist. Bet you thought I was a dancer or something, didn't you?" She winked at him. "I know how men are. But seriously, I'm a receptionist.For Mr. Carrick, the casino owner. I answer the phones," she added helpfully, like he lived under a rock and might not know what a receptionist was.
Stabbing his butt out in the ashtray, he turned a little and gave her half of his attention instead of a tenth. "You like your job, Kelsey? Mr. Carrick a good boss?"
He had no intention of involving Kelsey in his plans, but maybe she could tell him the layout of the private floors, and where Car- rickwent for dinner every night, since he didn't seem to eat in any of the hotel restaurants.
And if she was his receptionist/lover, why was she trolling his casino for sugar daddies? Carrick was a big-ass sugar daddy in his own right with his two-thousand-room hotel and ten-million-a-day casino.
"Oh, he's the best boss. I'll never leave him," she said solemnly.
Ringocould practically hear the rocks in her head rattling. "You're doing it again," he reprimanded, going over twenty-one on his hand."Distracting me from my game."
"Sorry." She laughed, her lips around a swizzle stick, licking martini juice from the tip. "I'll be a good girl and behave." With a twist of her wrist, she made as if she were zipping her lips shut.
It was too easy.Carrick's receptionist landing in his lap. Maybe she had been sent to distract him.
That seemed far-fetched. Carrick didn't know who the hell he was.
But it made sense to keep an eye on Kelsey. "Never behave, gorgeous, that would be a waste on you. Let me close out here and we'll go grab a table and get to know each other a little better."
Zipped lips were forgotten. "Cool!" She leaned over and kissed him quickly. "I like the way you smell," she murmured against his mouth.
Then she giggled again.