Sucker Bet (Vegas Vampires #4)(25)
Author: Erin McCarthy

The doorbell rang behind him. "Expecting company?" If she had a date, he was pretty sure he was going to be ugly jealous. On the other hand, if it was her loser ex-husband, Nate was going to enjoy threatening him with a little force.

"I’m going out with my girlfriends." She moved around him, adjusting the waistband of her pants—which he had messed up—and opened the door.

Nate saw an amazingly thin woman with long dark hair dressed in the tiniest red outfit he’d ever seen in his life. It was like a headband masquerading as a dress. Next to her was a blonde who was a solid ten inches shorter, wearing jeans, high heels, and a sparkly blue shirt. Gwenna looked a little under-dressed for whatever night out they had planned.

"Who are you?" the brunette asked. She didn’t sound accusatory, just sort of mildly curious.

"I’m Nate Thomas. Who are you?"

She walked into the apartment and blinked. "I’m Kelsey Columbia, but after my divorce, I’ll have to decide if I want to go back to being Kelsey Dickens or not. I’ve never really liked that name. I was kind of thinking this is my chance to just pick whatever name I want. What do you think of Kelsey Kinko?"

Nate kept his voice even. "That works."

The blonde shook her head. "I told you that sounds like a stripper name."

His thoughts exactly.

While Kelsey pouted, the blonde stuck her hand out in his direction. "I’m Alexis Baldizzi-Carrick, Gwenna’s sister-in-law."

He shook. Firm, confident grip. "Nice to meet you. I’m Nate Thomas, a detective with the Las Vegas Police."

At which point Gwenna grabbed his other hand and tugged on him. "Well, thanks for dropping by. I don’t want to be late for the concert and I’m not even dressed, so sorry to rush you off, but we’ll speak soon, and I’ll see you on Sunday."

Gee, he could take a very subtle hint.

But while she could shove him out the door, he wasn’t about to let her forget the unfinished business they had for Sunday.

Nate tugged Gwenna up against his chest. "Sounds good." Then he gave her a big-ass kiss, with tongue, sliding his hand all up and down her backside for good measure. "See ya, Gwenna."

Then he left, absolutely positive he had a shit-eating grin plastered across his face.

Chapter Eight

Ethan Carrick hated Roberto Donatelli with every f**king bone in his body. Once they had been friends, back when London was nothing but a mudhole and the Americas didn’t exist to Europeans. But then Donatelli had seduced Gwenna and left her to die giving birth to his bastard child, and Ethan would never forgive him for that. Donatelli was a cruel, heartless son of a bitch who enjoyed playing people for power, and would trample anyone who got in the way of his self-serving plans.

Not to mention that he was just annoying as hell. A metrosexual moron.

God, Ethan hated him.

They stared across the conference table at each other.

Donatelli leaned back into his leather chair. "I can practically hear your teeth grinding, Carrick. You need to at least pretend to like me at the Inaugural Ball tomorrow night."

"I’ll tolerate you, nothing more. Everyone knows this is a political alliance, not a friendship."

A smirk on his smarmy face, Donatelli said, "You mean I’m not invited to your ranch for fishing, hunting, and relaxing man talk away from the office?"

"I don’t own a ranch. And if I did, I’d burn it down before I let you set foot in it." Ethan was still appalled that Donatelli was vice president of the Vampire Nation, while he was president. But there had been no choice. Ethan had been on the verge of losing the election because of the growing unrest of Impure vampires, born mortal with vampire genes, and later turned to vampire. They felt that vampires like Donatelli, who encourage vampire population growth, spoke to their rights more than a conservative like Ethan did. Then when Gregor Chechikov had entered the race, Ethan had known they would have a disaster on their hands if Chechikov won. He was a Russian lunatic, plain and simple, with plans for cloning vampires. Ethan had seen an opportunity to ensure Chechikov didn’t come into power by aligning himself with Donatelli. Together they became a moderate, all-inclusive ticket, and it had won them the election, averting what amounted to vampire civil war.

But the immediate result was also that Ethan had to work together with Donatelli in some functioning capacity for the next forty years, and he needed to learn to control his dislike of the bastard or they would never accomplish anything. And unless he got a handle on his anger, Ethan would spend the next four decades walking around pissed off, which was bad for his mental health.

"Let’s just get to the point here. Tomorrow we walk in together, get sworn in, and have drinks. It should go smoothly enough. Are you bringing a date or something? Because you can’t be strolling into this with some bimbo mortal or eighteen-year-old vampire chick. We all know the truth about you, but you have to least pretend to have some sort of class." Maybe he was just getting a dig in, but hell, he wouldn’t put it past Donatelli to do something as stupid as bring his mortal blood slave to the Inaugural Ball.

Donatelli didn’t rise to the bait. He shrugged. "I didn’t think having your sister as an escort would be in the least bit offensive. Gwenna has always conducted herself with perfect decorum."

The Italian was just so good at infuriating him. "Gwenna isn’t your date." He didn’t think. She had made it sound like she wasn’t against speaking to her ex-husband, but surely that didn’t extend to putting on a party dress and walking with Donatelli into a room filled with a thousand vampires. Gwenna didn’t like attention, and the kind of buzz their being together would create was enough of a deterrent for his sister, he was sure.

Besides, she had been with a mortal and Alexis was right. Dating two men was not Gwenna’s style. Hell, as far as he knew, she hadn’t dated any man but Donatelli.

"She’s not my date yet. But she will be. I’ll drop by her suite after we’re done here."

The bastard’s self-assurance irritated Ethan. What gave the jerk-off the right to even ask Gwenna to be his date? She’d divorced his sorry ass three hundred years earlier, which meant she wasn’t obligated to be seen in public with him. "She won’t say yes."

"Yes, she will. She and I have been on much friendlier terms lately. She’ll do it as a favor to me, and as a favor to you. She’ll understand how important it is for our government to show unity."

There was truth to that, and Ethan didn’t like it. But he still said, "I wouldn’t expect her to bleed for me like that, and she knows it."

"Being my date is bleeding?"