High Stakes (Vegas Vampires #1)(3)
Author: Erin McCarthy

As far as she was concerned, Brittany had been kidnapped and brainwashed, and this man in front of her was responsible for the whole nightmare.

"Is there something wrong with your eye?"

"No. Now show me the elevator." Alexis headed back toward the hall, barging past him. Her shoulder clipped his forearm, and instead of stumbling back, he never moved an inch. She, on the other hand, bounced back like a tennis ball making contact with a racket.

"Will you get out of my way?" Alexis brushed at her jacket, not wanting any part of him touching her. "Give your guests Brittany ‘s apologies, but she won’t be attending any dinner party."

"Why would that be?"

His faint British accent was as annoying as his perfect good looks. Alexis knew his type. He was like a poster child forSinCity . Come to Vegas and get swept off your feet by a tasteful, rich Brit who will make you a star or more likely, charm you out of your panties and leave you a pregnant cocktail waitress.

"I would have thought it was obvious, but since you need it spelled out—she’s leaving with me," Alexis tossed over her shoulder, heading toward the door, hoping the location of a private elevator to the twenty-third floor would be obvious. That exit line would sound just plain old stupid if she couldn’t figure out where she was going, but sometimes acting confident was more important than actually knowing anything.

" Brittany doesn’t want to leave. She’s quite happy here."

That smug, arrogant tone had Alexis jerking to a stop, thoroughly irritated. She whirled around. "You’re an ass**le." With that, she stomped to the elevator, hit the up button, and gave him her back.

Ethan watched Alexis Baldiz/i punch the elevator button a second time, her foot tapping impatiently, her hand clutching her purse. A few moments earlier, he had been thinking that perhaps just one hot little affair before he settled down would be a really smart idea, and that the feisty Alexiswas a damn good candidate for such a partner. He’d been thinking that she was sensual, passionate, erotic, and would taste juicy and feel soft as he took her.

But that was a few minutes in the past.

Before she’d called him an ass**le.

Now desire had been replaced by annoyance. No one in nine hundred years had called him an ass**le.To his face anyway. Who talked like that? Well, he did, but what woman said that to him? It was crude and unnecessary and he completely failed to see what he had done to inspire such rudeness.

Seamus came up behind him as he leaned against the doorframe of the reception room.

"Who the hell is that?" he asked in a low voice audible to vampire ears, but not mortals. "And why are you letting her go upstairs?"

Ethan forced himself to relax. For several hundred years, he had been gaining steadily on his temper, displacing his passions from the battlefield to the bedroom, and he wasn’t going to let one ill-mannered woman destroy that progress. "She says she’s Brittany ‘s sister. But I can’t say I see the resemblance."

His dentist was tall, slender, with fair skin and dark, straight hair. This Alexis was flat-out short, not much higher than his shoulder. She had wispy blond hair that had been escaping from a twist at the back of her neck. She was curvier, too, if that glimpse he’d caught of her backside when she was sprawled out on his carpet was any indication.

She was the complete genetic opposite of Brittany .

"That can’t be Brittany ‘s sister." Seamus adjusted his red tie and shook his head, dark eyes’ clouded with disbelief. " Brittany is sweet."

"Yes, she is," Ethan said, rather grimly. " Brittany is pleasant, naive, cheerful "And got on his everlasting nerves. Being with her was rather like ingesting too many sweets in a short period of time.

But that was his problem, not hers. He clearly was a bloody in-grate, and not nearly as civilized as he liked to think. Yet he still didn’t see how a "woman like Alexis—pushy, impatient, short— could share the same DNA with Brittany .

"That woman is a harpy," Seamus said firmly, as Alexis slapped the elevator door with her hand and swore eloquently at it.

"That’s a little harsh, don’t you think?" Ethan spoke with little conviction. Alexis had been, well, harping at him. But what puzzled him—or rather irritated him—was the realization that Brittany in all her sweet feminine perfection got on his nerves, while Alexis, who certainly had shades of the harpy about her, stirred his blood.

Just a little.

Enough to puzzle him.

Well, hell, actually a lot.

Which infuriated him.He was supposed to be giving up on women. He had promised Seamus and the entire Vampire Nation that his randy days were over and he had grown serious and wise with age. He was supposed to chose a suitable wife andget on with i it, not visualize a most unsuitable woman lifting her skirt for him.

"Harpy’s not quite the right word for her."Luscious ‘tsexy edible, maybe.

"Bitch?"Seamus asked with a grimace.

Ethan laughed loudly, earning him a glare tossed over Alexis’s shoulder. "No. Not what I had in mind. And I suppose she has the right to feel put off, you know. That was a nasty spill she took when James pushed her."

"I thought you said James tripped her on accident. I wasn’t looking too busy checking the latest exit polls on my Sidekick."

Holding his hand up, Ethan prevented Seamus from spewing out a half-dozen statistics that meant nothing to him.One of the downsides of his career choice. "Later on the exit polls, please. And James didn’t push or trip Alexis, technically. I think he was reaching out to get her attention and forgot that he is much stronger than he used to be."

"Ah, to be a young vampire again."Seamus shook his head. "Whenall the world was new and exciting and everyone looked like a meal " He grinned. "It’s hell to get old. Now it’s all responsibilities and shaping a new world order. I haven’t even put the bite on anyone in a hundred years."

"Whine to me when you hit your five-hundredth birthday. Until then I don’t want to hear it." Especially since Ethan was distracted at the moment. "So why do you think Alexis is here?" he asked quietly, aware that mortal ears had severe limits, but not wanting to chance Alexis hearing him.

"To save her sister from your evil clutches, I take it."

That was what concerned Ethan. His mild interest in Brittany had become much more when he had realized who she was. What she was. And Seamus had been ecstatic. Neither one of them wanted to give up the idea of Brittany .

"I don’t have any evil clutches.Haven’t since at least the sixteenth century. But if they are well and truly sisters is Alexis an Impure like Brittany is?" He wasn’t sure if that was a plus or a minus, or if it mattered in the slightest. Alexis was not a woman who could be easily persuaded or guided.