High Stakes (Vegas Vampires #1)(34)
Author: Erin McCarthy

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.

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. "What ez 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 do zat . You cannot call me, letting me think you are bleeding and dying and it ez 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 share ze 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.

"Stop zat , with the lip, and ze 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."

Brittany heard 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 with vou zat 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.

But Brittany 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 seemedto 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 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 with Brittany , 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 give hera 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."