High Stakes (25 page)

Alexis felt the fat, heavy tears roll down each cheek, but she didn't bother to wipe them off. "I was so happy, because for once everything was so normal, and the way it should be, and I took Bill to the Girl Scout father-daughter dance and I was so proud. I didn't know it at ten years old, but my mom was jealous of that affection he had for us. It took his attention away from her, you know? The more he cared about us, the more she gave him hell for it."

Staring at the glob of yellow putty her eggs had become, Alexis forced the words out. "When I was twelve, she called the cops and told them Bill was molesting us."

"Good God." Ethan's hand jerked in hers. "Alexis, I'm so sorry. What happened? Surely they could tell you weren't being harmed?"

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"They said I was protecting him.That since I was almostthir -teen, I had created a fantasy that I was in love with him, and he had probably told me that if I kept quiet, he would marry me. It was so sick… they were so-called professionals and they were ignoring everything I was saying, ignored the physical evidence that showed I hadn't been sexually assaulted. But I realized I hated my mom when I figured out she was talking to Brittany, telling her things, confusing her, so that when Brittany was interviewed, she said things that the police and my mom led her right into. Yes Daddy Bill likes to tickle me, yes, he helps me get dressed." She shuddered. "It was just disgusting…Brittany was barely six years old and she didn't understand what they were doing. They were taking everyday things a father does in the care of his child—stuff my mother couldn't be bothered to do—and turned it into something vile."

She knew her voice was hoarse, knew she sounded hateful and full of anger, but she didn't care. "That's when I decided to become a lawyer.To wade through all the crap and find the facts. And I decided I would never get married, and that I would never forgive my mother for taking a father away from me twice."

"Did Bill go to prison?"

Ethan's voice was compassionate, though she couldn't bring herself to look at him. "No, thank God. But he was barred from any contact with us ever again." Alexis swiped at her eyes, tears blurring her vision.

"When my mom died, I tried to find him. He had died of a heart attack six months before, but his current wife showed me these boxes he had… filled with pictures of Brittany and I, cards we'd made him for Father's Day. She said it broke his heart to leave us with our mother."

Her voice shattered into a sob, and she was totally mortified. But Ethan stood up, pulled her over to him, and she let him. She was grateful for the way his arms came around her, the way he sat her down on his lap and tucked her head against his shoulder.

She never cried. And now it felt like nearly thirty years' worth dislodged all at once. Weakness was something she despised, but sometimes it was damn hard to always be the strong one, to fight it and shove it all aside, and be tough.

The prosecutor's office was still mostly male territory, and she worked with male criminals. Being the blond broad, as her boss had once eloquently called her, was something she enjoyed.Most of the time.

At the moment, she just wanted to curl into Ethan Carrick and let him support her. Let someone take care of her for a change.

Ethan rubbed Alexis's back and murmured words of comfort. He felt bloody helpless. Women crying had always bewildered him, because they cried over everything.Happy tears, sad tears, laughing tears, manipulative, angry, and fake tears.Tears of pain. It was hard to believe just how much pain he had witnessed in his very long lifetime.

Yet only one other woman's tears had moved him the way Alexis's did.

After his turning, he had gone home, toEngland , and arrived right after his sister's death. His mother had stood overGwenna's body as a woman who had buried all her children, and assumed her oldest son was lost in the Holy War. Silent, stoic tears had trailed down her pale cheeks. Ethan had felt at that moment that his heart had been torn out of his body and hacked by a sword.

He felt that same way now. He couldn't help Alexis, couldn't Wake it better for her, and that was a man's pain.

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"I'm sorry that the woman who gave birth to you didn't know how to be a mother." He brushed his lips over the soft, silken brands of her hair. "But I would imagine that if someone had asked Bill, he was glad to have been part of your life. I would imagine he wouldn't have changed that, despite the outcome."

Her sobs had quieted down to gulping tears. "I guess I know that."

"And I guess you know that you give the woman who gave birth to you too much control over your life.

She doesn't deserve that much attention." She hadn't deserved to be a mother at all, but that was one of life's mysteries Ethan would never understand.

"I guess I know that, too. But it's not all that easy, you know."

"I'm sure it's not. But I have learned through the years that sometimes we make things more complicated than they need to be." He played with the waistband of her skirt and rubbed his thumb-over the small of her back, amazed at the depth of what he felt for this woman. "I'm sorry if I moved too fast for you, but I think I'm at the point in my life where I can trust my feelings and instincts. I've lived long enough to know real versus imagined, and what I feel for you is real. You're the first woman I've asked to live with me."

Neither had he ever told a woman he loved her and truly meant it, but he didn't think he could say that without sounding like a cad. Yes,
with you those words have meaning, but all the other women
before got exaggeration in the course of seduction
. That wouldn't exactly win his case.

Nor could he really explain why he hadn't asked her to marry him. For all his self-realization, something had made him stop short of that, and he was fairly certain it was because he expected her rejection.

"I didn't mean to rush you, Alexis. It's just that I look at you and I think, damn, she's just perfect for me.

Absolutely perfect. I'll never be bored, never stop laughing,never stop desiring her. Do you understand what I mean?" And she'd said he wasn't a touchy feely kind of guy. He was feeling pretty goddamn poetic at the moment.

Not to mention sweatingvampiric bullets. God's teeth, it was painful to lay your heart out on the table for a woman to toss onto the floor.

But he couldn't hide his feelings, didn't want to. He meant what he'd said. When you lived nine hundred years, you knew what you wanted when you found it. Alexis was born to be his mate—the one woman who could lock him out of her thoughts, and the one woman who could drop him to the floor, literally.

"I understand what you mean." She talked to his chest, her voice raspy, but she had definitely stopped crying. "But a decade or so is all we'd have, Ethan, and I just can't give you that much ofmyself then watch you walk away. I can't."

He sighed, burying his chin in her hair, disbelieving. He couldn't have found her, only to never really have her. That he couldn't accept. He would take whatever she was willing to give. "So what can we have?"

"Now.We can have now.This week. Until theelection's over, which is what, six weeks? I can't promise anything beyond that, Ethan, I just can't."

The blood in her veins flowed frantically with the rapid beat of her heart. He could smell her fear, a
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sickly sweet odor that clung to her skin. He didn't want to be the source of that, but he couldn't wing himself to drop the subject either. It felt too cruel just to accept the crumb of six weeks with her.Six bloody weeks in a life that would last another thousand years. Fifty-two thousand weeks… this time with her would be nothing. It would be everything.

"Let me turn you." The words were barely out beforehe regret-tedthem. He'd never offered the Dark Gift to anyone before… it was a temptation too great for most mortals to refuse and he didn't want to think that the lure of immortality was what brought Alexis to him. That .she'd chosen eternal life instead of just him, freely and without doubt.

She moved back away from him and stared. "Are you crazy? Did you drink bad blood? Straight from the psych ward blood? If I became a vampire, I would have to quit my job. I wouldn't be able to play with the kids Brittany's going to have someday. I wouldn't be able to eat chocolate. No, I absolutely do not want to be a vampire."

Pushing on his shoulders, she stood up and wiped her swollen eyes. "You knowwhat, I need to go to work. We can talk about this tonight. I'll be ready at eight, okay?"

Alexis tossed her hair back, blotted her lips and under her eyes with her napkin, then grabbed her purse and rushed out of the room, the door gently gliding shut behind her with a soft snick.

"Smooth, Carrick." He scratched his chin and rubbed his chest. There was a pain there that must be residual aftereffects of the shooting.

No wonder he'd never proposed or professed love to a woman before. He'd completely botched the whole job.

He'd sounded desperate and ridiculous.Impulsive and weird.

And he couldn't even blame it on bad blood.

It was love.

Master Vampire reduced to idiocy by his romantic heart.

How cute. Why didn't he just wear a smiley face button white he was atit.

Ethan threw Alexis's abandoned bowl of fruit across the room, satisfied when it crashed through the glass of his balcony door, juice and shards flying with appropriate drama.

Then he realized that the bowl itself, a white ceramic job, had gone hurtling over the balcony, and would be landing on the Strip—and possibly someone's head—in a second or two.

"Shit." Ethan ran across his room and jumped off the balcony in a swan dive, grabbing the bowl as it flew past about the tenth floor.

Which meant there wasn't time to stop, reverse.

He hit the ground with a splat and a crunch, as his nose and both wrists broke. Pain shot through him and he heard a woman screaming hysterically.

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Damn, love hurt.

And he didn't think Alexis was going to appreciate that he'd literally fallen for her.

Ringothought Kelsey was a lot like herpes.A constant sort of painful itch that reappeared at the worst possible time.

"Hi," she said breathlessly as she stood up, her hair in a pony-tail, still wearing the same red dress from the night before.

He ignored her as he stepped past her on the way out of his hotel room. He'd ditched her twice the night before, but somehow she kept managing to find him. Now he strongly suspected she'd spent the night in the hallway here at Caesar's Palace.

If she wanted to get in his head, she could just read this little thought—Go
away
.

"Mr. Carrick dropped to the sidewalk this morning," she called from behind him. "They thought maybe he was pushed off the first-floor overhang."

"Excuse me?"Ringo froze.

"I didn't spend the whole night sitting outside your door. I'm not that lame." She smiled with a shrug. "I just didn't have time to change. But at The Ava, Mr. Carrick wassplatted on the sidewalk about seven this morning."

"He's dead?" That could be very good, or very, very bad.

"Nope.And he says he just fell. But you could tell the Italian that you pushed him. Then he won't be mad at you."

Ringoturned around, a little desperate, unable to think through the implications of Carrick's accident when it was so damn disturbing to talk to Kelsey. "Why are you in my head? Why are you helping me?"

She bit her lip, for once lipstick-free. Without the crimson smear across her mouth, she looked younger, more vulnerable. "I don't know why I can hear your thoughts so easily. And I'm helping you because I want you to get out of all this stuff."

Her hand came up and stroked his cheek.Ringo moved away. He didn't want anyone's touch on him.

And he despised the way she looked at him, with pity.

"I can feel your pain,Ringo ." Her black eyes swam with compassion. "Tell the Italian you quit and walk away. Save yourself."

The laugh came quick and bitter, especially when he realized she might be able to snatch his name right out of his head, but she couldn't see the plainest truth of all. "Kelsey, honey,it's way too late for that."

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Alexis had calledBrittany three times during the day to reassure herself that her sister was okay. Now before she headed back to the casino, she wanted a quick glance atBrittany in the flesh. And maybe Alexis also needed to see her sister, talk to her,touch her, after everything she had spilled to Ethan that morning about their childhood.

When he had asked her to move in with him, make a commitment to him, and she'd said no.

But she wasn't reassured that all was well when she metBrittany for dinner at a Mexican restaurant on the Strip andBrittany was pale, with dark circles under her eyes. Even her smile looked tired, which wasn't standard forBrittany at all. She had a genuine power .smile, witha hundred -watt brilliance.

"Okay, Brit, what's going on?" Alexis took a sip of her mar-garitaand pressed her temples. She was starting to get a headache. An alcoholic drink probably wasn't the best thing for that, but it sure in the hell tasted good.

"And why is your scarf so tight on your neck? It looks like it's strangling you." The black, teal, and olive scarf was pretty, butBrittany wore it like a noose.

Her fingers went up and fiddled with it. "I didn't want it falling down in my patients' faces. But I get so tired of wearing the same old."

It sounded reasonable, except her sister's eyes were darting all over the restaurant and there was a pink tint to her cheeks.

"How's Ethan?"Brittany asked. "Are you having fun spending time with him?"