chapter Seven
Alexis was debating the rules of chess with a kooky Russian when Ethan reappeared at her side. "Look, Peter, with all due respect, you can't castle after moving your king."
He shrugged with that cool nonchalance all Russians seemed to have mastered. "Says who?"
"The rules!"
"What rules? Do you have these rules? Can you prove these rules to me?"
"I don't have them right this second up my dress, but I can prove it to you."
"That's a shame there are no rules up that dress, because now I can call you a liar."
Alexis laughed. Peter amused her. He was like an arrogant walrus.
Ethan took her elbow. "I have something to show you, my dear. Please excuse us, Peter."
"Yes, yes, young passion." Peter waved his arm in a grand sweep. "There is nothing like the firstflush of mutual sexual desire you go show her your secret something, Carrick, this old Russian understands."
Oh, that was subtle. "Did you pay him to say that?" Alexis asked Ethan. Somehow she wouldn't put it past him.
"No! And I'm quite shocked that he did say that." Ethan nudged Peter. "You're going to get me in trouble here, old chap."
Peter winked at Alexis. "Orlaid , which would be better."
"In his dreams," Alexis said before Ethan could reply.
But instead of laughing or getting annoyed with her, Ethan gave her a smoldering look, like the one he had when he'd pinned her on the floor. "Yes, that is definitely a dream of mine. Recurring frequently, I might add."
Damn it, she felt the beginning of a blush rising up her cheeks."Down, boy. Take me to my dinner." At Peter's smirk, she added, "Food.My pepper steak."
Ethan's shoulders were vibrating as they moved toward the door, like he was having trouble containing an obnoxious laugh. Alexis couldn't even reprimand him because she was having trouble not cracking a grin herself.
They stepped into the hall and a tall, skinny mass of long black hair and legs came at them in a blur.
"Kelsey!" Ethan put his hands up and stopped the blob. "Where are you going in such a hurry?"
A gasp left Kelsey's mouth.
"Calm down," Ethan said. "What's wrong?"
Oh, great, there was going to be some scene with an ex-girlfriend.Just what she wanted to witness while her food was getting cold in some unknown break room.
The brunette gave a sob, than flipped her hair back, exposing her alabaster cheeks and red lips.Really red lips. Like bloody red lips. A wet sheen covered them, and she must not use color stay, because that lipstick had feathered out in the corners of her mouth and
"Wipe your mouth, Kelsey." Ethan pulled out a handkerchief and gently cleaned her off, like she was a child.
"Oh!Sorry, Mr. Carrick." And she burst intotears, great big loud sobs that produced no actual moisture, but made her chest heave and her shoulders shake, and her cleavage come perilously close to bursting out of the tiny black dress that could have doubled as a hair ribbon.
Alexis glanced right and left, wondering where her dinner was and if it would be rude to ask Ethan. She really didn't want to hear whatever conversation was about to ensue.
"What's the matter, Kelsey?" Ethan returned his handkerchief to his pocket and squeezed her hand.
"Mr. Carrick, it's just so awful I'm so glad I found you I was with him and I was, um, eating, and then I heard it. He's go- ingto kill you!" This was capped off with another round of crying.
Very dramatic.And bizarre.But Alexis wouldn't expect anything less from Ethan and Company."Kill Ethan? A man gave a verbal threat against Mr. Carrick? Does he have a weapon? We should call the cops."
'That isn't necessary," Ethan said, rubbing Kelsey's arms and staring at her.
Kelsey's brow furrowed, and she tipped her head like she was thinking hard or listening to something. "Okay," she said. "I know I'm not supposed to, but he was sorry, Mr., Carrick. I won't do it again." She shuddered. "It was gross. It was Hike he was empty in there, you know what I mean?"
" Shh. Why don't you go get a drink in the reception room? Find Seamus and tell him what you told me. How did you leave him?"
Kelsey flushed, her pale cheeks staining red. "I just left him.By my desk. I wasn't thinking " She covered her face with her hands and groaned. "I'm so stupid!"
Alexis was getting impatient. "If someone threatened you, we need to call the police. People lose their whole life savings in these casinos sometimes, and then go nuts and shoot the owner or half the people on the floor. You can't dismiss this."
"I'm not dismissing it." Ethan let go of Kelsey and turned to Alexis. "I'll handle it myself with my own casino security. Go back into the reception room with Kelsey, please, and I'll be along shortly."
Without another word or waiting for any response, Ethan headed to the elevators, already flipping open his cell phone and punching in a number.
Alexis looked at Kelsey, still a little confused and uneasy about the whole thing. "Hey, aren't you the chick who sits at the front desk? I remember you from yesterday."
Kelsey nodded. "I'm Kelsey."
"Hi, Kelsey, I'm Alexis. Where did you leave the guy? By your desk, you said? Did you tie him up or what?"
Kelsey bit her lip and shook her head slowly.
Alexis watched the elevator numbers go from twenty-six to twenty-two in a smooth thirty seconds. It stopped at twenty-two. Ethan was going to confront the man himself, the dumb ass.
"You going to stay here, Kelsey the receptionist, or are you going down with me?Because I'm following Ethan."
So she didn't really like Ethan all that much?that didn't mean she wanted him to get beat up or killed or anything. He could use Alexis "Ball Buster" Baldizzi covering his back with a few quick maneuvers. She had been trained to deflect an attacker, and while she knew Ethan was strong, the odds would be better if she went with him.
"Mr. Carrick told me to go get Mr. Fox. I have to do what he says or I'll get fired. Besides, I don't want to see him again that man."
Alexis pushed the down button on the elevator. "Who is he?"
"I don't know. He didn't tell me his name. I met him down in the casino at the blackjack table and we came up to the office to, uh " Kelsey had the grace to blush.
Putting her hand up, Alexis said, "I don't need details. I know what you mean." She got in the elevator. "Sure you're not coming?"
Kelsey shook her head violently. "I'll get Mr. Fox."
"Suit yourself. See you in five." Alexis waved as the door shut. She slipped her high heels off, leaving one on the floor and wield- ingthe other as a weapon.
Twenty-two was quiet when the door whooshed open, and at the last second, self-preservation made her hang back. Maybe she should leave this to the experts. Then when she glanced out of the elevator, she saw Ethan lying on the floor in front of the reception desk.
"Shit!" Dropping the shoe, she sprinted the twenty feet and fell to her knees. "Ethan? Are you okay?" The room was dim, the office overnight spots on, but not the regular fluorescent day lights.
She crouched over him, heart in her throat. His eyes were closed, and he was very, very still. There was a strange smell in the air that seemed familiar before her brain told her what it was.Blood. Oh, God, that was blood. Patting his head, she didn't see any injury, so she moved down his shoulders and peeled back his black jacket.
"Oh, Jesus."Her stomach rolled over as her hand touched his sopping wet dress shirt. "Ethan?"
He'd been shot. Right near the heart, if the rip in his shirt and the growing circle of blood were any indication. Maybe two times, because it looked like there was another hole slightly right of center and raised. Covering him back up with his jacket, Alexis pushed down on the fabric to stop all that blood from gushing out.
A hot, panicked taste filled her mouth. She didn't have her cell phone. But the reception desk was right behind her. "Hang in there, Ethan, I'm calling 911."
Scrambling up, she tripped on the hem of her dress and hit the desk. Grabbing the phone, she picked it up and hit the buttons. A squawking sounded in her ear. "Damn it!" Maybe she had to dial nine for an outside line or something. It didn't work. The phone yelled at her again. The third try dialing nine plus the number, she got through and breathlessly explained the situation and her location in the casino to the operator.
"Does he have a pulse? I don't know." Stretching the phone cord, she picked up Ethan's wrist and felt around. "I don't feel any thing." She didn't feel anything. That was bad.
"Someone will be there momentarily."
"Thank you." Alexis hung up the phone and started digging around in Ethan's neck for a pulse. She had to find one, there had to be one somewhere. He couldn't be dead. That just wasn't believable.
He had been pissing her off five minutes ago and now he couldn't just be dead.
"Where's your pulse, damn it! I really don't like you, you know, but shit, Ethan, I don't want you dead."
There was no pulse or heartbeat, and she could see clearly that his chest wasn't rising and falling either. The tears came then, which shocked the hell out of her. She never cried. And unlike Kelsey, her tears were loud and wet. They blurred her vision as she pressed her hands hard over Ethan's wound, feeling helpless and a little frantic.
"Okay, I'm lying. I do like you infact, I've been lying when I said I wasn't attracted to you. Every time you look at me, I get that weird sort of tingling sexual awareness. And you may be insane, but you're always polite, and you seem to treat your employees well, so I guess you're not a total pig, and you shouldn't really die. I mean, you're not dead." She waited a second, well aware that Ethan was exhibiting all the obvious signs of death, and that his entire shirt, jacket, and waistband were now drenched with his blood.
Closing her eyes tightly and pulling her hands back, she begged, "You're not dead are you?"
"No. Could you please call Seamus for me? He's number two on my cell phone. It's in my pants pocket."
Alexis screamed and opened her eyes. Ethan was sitting up, resting on his elbows, eyes wide open. "Ethan! How? What
oh, shit, I'm hallucinating. I fainted, didn't I? See, I didn't eat dinner and I drank that champagne, and now I've let my wants replace reality." She had never been unstable before or prone to delusions, so that was the only explanation.
"Never mind, I'll call him myself." Ethan dug his phone out with jerky movements and flipped it open. He pushed a button. "It's me. Can you intercept 911, please? I was shot and Alexis called the EMTs in. Yeah. I'm fine. Thanks."
"Um "'Alexis bit the inside of her cheek and tried not to disintegrate into hysterics. "How are you sitting up? Talking? You didn't have a pulse a minute ago!"
Ethan was stripping off his jacket and his blood-soaked dress shirt. When he bared his chest, she gasped. A nasty flesh woundgaped wide open above his heart.
That was absolutely sick looking, all puckered flesh and slimy, coagulating blood. "Oh, crap, that's like a science lab. Dissection 101 God, you must be in so much pain. And how are you even sitting up, and why did you tell Seamus to intercept the EMTs ?" Her voice rose shrilly, because even as she stared at the torn flesh of his pectoral muscle, the wound got smaller.
She blinked. Okay, no more champagne for Alexis. Either that or it had been spiked with a friendly little plug of acid. "I don't feel so good."
Because now when she pried her eyes open, the wound was closed.Just gone. Bye-bye.Like it had never been there.
"Alexis." Ethan wiped the blood off his chest and waist with his balled-up shirt and looked her straight in the eye. "I'm a vampire.For real. No game. No pretend. I am a vampire, and I can't be killed with a bullet."
Everything she'd ever eaten in her life threatened to come back up."Ha ha .Very funny. This is some kind of trick.A joke. Let's make an ass out of Alexis." But even as she said it, she knew it wasn't true. She was a logical person, and what she'd said was illogical. There was no way Ethan could have faked lacking a pulse.
He'd been shot.In the heart. The wound had closed. Which meant the only thing that made sense was if
"I'm a vampire."
Oh, crap. She'd been insulting a vampire for two days.Yelling at him. She'd kicked him in the nuts. "Well. Okay. Lucky you, I guess." She went for a laugh, but it sounded like a bad hyena impersonation.
"In this case, yes." Hewinced a little as he touched his chest. "I wasn't trying to misleadyou, it just seemed easier to let you think I was playing some kind of game."
"Are you all vampires? Seamus, Kelsey, Peter?" She felt betrayed, like everyone else had a secret and didn't bother to tell her. It was prom all over again.
"Everyone at the reception tonight is, yes. It really is a fund-raising dinner. I really am president of all registered vampire voters."
"Cool." If she was going to hang with vampires, she might as well go for the head honcho. Alexis dug her fingers into her thigh. This was going to take a mental readjustment.A big one.
Ethan's eyes briefly closed, and he lay back down on the floor. "Sorry, just a little dizzy still. I think I lost too much blood."
Alexis didn't have a response for that. "Sorry" seemed trite and she had no idea where vampires replenished lost blood oh, yuck. Yes, she did.
Ethan looked pale, his lips parted and still. His face was contorted in lines of discomfort. Alexis rolled her eyes, checked out the ceiling. Wiped her sweaty palms on her dress and pondered why she had for one minute thought her life was unexciting.
"Um would it help if you know, you had like some of mine? Just a little, though!" Alexis felt her cheeks burn as Ethan's eyes popped open.
"You're offering your blood to me?" He studied her, midnight blue eyes boring into her. "You surprise me, Alexis."
Embarrassed, she tried to backpedal. "Well, this is an unusual circumstance, obviously, and it wouldn't be like an open-ended invitation. This is a onetime deal, because you clearly are in pain. You look like shit. I would do it for anyone."
Liar.
He smiled. "It doesn't have anything to do with the fact that you're attracted to me? That you like me and, whenever I look at you, you feel a tingling sexual awareness?"
Ethan struggled not to laugh at the outrage and horror that flooded Alexis's face. He shouldn't tease her, but even in his half-conscious state, he had reveled in her words.
She was attracted to him. He hadn't lost his touch with women. Not that any other women had entered his thoughts since he'd met her. After nearly a millennium of living, he had finally found a woman who intrigued him enough to stay in his head nearly every second since the moment he'd met her.
And she liked him. That was enough to help him ignore the wave of pain the bullet ripping into his chest had caused.
"If you weren't wounded, I'd hurt you right now."
"I know you would. You'd kick my ass, right?"
"Absolutely," she said, even as her lip trembled. "And for the record, people say all kinds of weird things when they're under stress. So don't read too much into that sexual tingling thing."
"Of course, I understand." Ethan stayed on the floor, even though he could stand up now. In fact, he should be getting up and checking the security cameras for the man who had shot him. There would be clips of him in the casino with Kelsey, and going up the elevator.
But he just wanted to lie there and bask in Alexis's sympathy for just another minute. It had been a long time since a woman had bothered to fuss over him. That implied an intimacy that was lacking in his life and relationships.
"So, do you want the blood or not?" Her voice started to sound a little testy, though her hand hovered over him like she wanted to pat him, soothe him.
Ethan stared up at her, trying to get inside her head. But it was blocked, like it always was. "I can't, Alexis. It would be painful for you."
She frowned, tucking her hair behind her ear. "Then how do you feed normally? You can't run around hurting people. It would be on Jerry Springer if vamps were biting people left and right."
There was an image. He sat half up. "A lot of our feeding is done from blood banks. But when we feed from a live source, we wake sure they don't feel pain. We either puta glamour on them or give them pleasure to distract from the pain."
Let's see how she took that.
"A glamour? Like a trance? No way in hell anyone is doing that to me."
That's what he'd thought her reaction would be. "I can't put one on you anyway, because I can't read your thoughts. You're the first person who has ever been completely closed to me." Ethan was starting to suspect the reason for that and he wasn't sure he liked it.
"Really?Wow. That's cool, because I totally wouldn't want you getting into my head. That would really piss me off."
"Don't worry. I can't."
She looked thoughtful."So no glamour.And the pleasure thing I'm not in the mood right now. Besides, I'm not sure you could turn me on."
He snorted, shifting his elbow away from the bloodstain on the carpet. "I most certainly could arouse you. But I'm not really in the mood either, to tell you the truth. I'm feeling a little like I took a bullet in the chest."
Alexis rolled her eyes.
With a laugh, he said, "So why don't we go up to my room and I'll grab a bag from the fridge? I'll order you another dinner since I'm sure yours is cold by now. I'll have Seamus make our apologies to the guests, and we can eat while I have security scan the tapes for the attacker. I want to know how he brought a weapon into my casino."
Alexis swallowed hard, but nodded. "We can eat together?Sounds good. Steak blood they're not so different, right?"
He grinned. "Not really." Alexis had some grit, and he admired that.
"Do I have to call you Mr. President?" She stood up and tugged at her dress just about everywhere she could tug, ending with the straps.
"No, you can call me Ethan. But if you want to hum 'Hail to the Chief' whenever I walk into theroom, that would be appropriate." With a charming smile, he stood up. Not normal vampire speed, since he was low on blood, but faster than a human.Faster than most mortal eyes could follow.
She blinked. "Show off. Last time I offer you blood, geez , you obviously don't need it."
Feeling downright giddy, which must be the lack ofblood, Ethan flung his arm over his face and winced.Doubled over.
"What? What is it! Are you bleeding again?" Alexis reached for him.
He dropped his arm and smiled. "No. It's just that I was momentarily blinded by your beauty."
Her jaw dropped and she slapped his arm."Idiot."
But as he laughed, he saw her struggle not to grin.