Must Love Vampires (2 page)

“Uh-huh.”

She winced as hairpins were driven into her scalp to keep it in place. “Aren’t you moving kind of fast?”

“You know my policy—the faster the better. And this one is on the hook.”

Speaking of hooks . . . Chuck wiggled around, trying to get comfortable in the costume her sister wore every night. Or some variation of it, anyway.

Black fishnet hose and five-inch, rhinestone-studded heels. Faux onyx and ruby chandelier earrings and choker necklace so heavy they were becoming embedded in her flesh. Feathers and sequins everywhere. She couldn’t decide if she’d be better off walking The Strip thumbing for johns, acting as a standin for one of the Gabor sisters (Zsa Zsa, for sure), or running for her life from Colonel Sanders.

How did Chloe do this on a regular basis without either breaking her neck or slowly losing every ounce of her selfrespect?

Of course, Chloe would never willingly switch roles with Chuck, either. The most creative storytelling her sister had ever done was when she’d tried to convince herself the stick hadn’t turned blue.

“Just be careful, okay?”

Chloe’s penchant for serial dating made Chuck nervous. This was Las Vegas, for God’s sake. And even though they’d both grown up here, both been raised by a former showgirl who’d taught them street smarts before she’d taught them to use the big girl potty, that did not mean they couldn’t still be hurt.

They called it Sin City for a reason, and there were all sorts of unsavory elements crawling around, just waiting for an eager, vulnerable woman to cross their paths. Or even a reluctant, self-sufficient one who wasn’t paying close enough attention to her surroundings.

Then again, perhaps Chuck didn’t have room to talk. She hadn’t had a date since
MacGyver
was still on the air. Nuns got more action than she did, and lately, she’d even begun to wonder if her virginity might be growing back.

Medical experts would probably say that was impossible, but stranger things had happened. And she should know—she was the Queen of Strange and Bizarre Occurrences.

“I will. You, too. This is kind of dangerous, you know,” Chloe reminded her, as though they hadn’t had this discussion a million times since Chuck had concocted her plan just one short week ago after trailing Sebastian Raines through his casino for several hours and turning up nothing. Now she intended to snoop around his home turf—preferably without getting caught. “If anyone finds out what you’re doing and why . . .”

“They won’t.” She hoped. “We’re identical”—give or take a few Little Debbie Snack Cakes—“remember? We used to do this all the time in school. I can pretend to be you almost as well as I pretend to be me.”

Chloe chuckled at that just as a shout from the dressing room on the other side of the minuscule bathroom door made them both jump. Their eyes met, and even though Chuck had run through this a thousand times in her head, her heart was still pounding, and tension bounced between them.

“Showtime,” Chloe said, and she meant it in more ways than one. She gave Chuck a final once-over, checking her long, fake, glittery lashes, the lines going up the back of her stockings, the fluff of her feathers.

“All right,” she said, pressing a slim plastic card into Chuck’s hand. “Here’s my employee key card. It will get you into all the areas we’re allowed to go, but guests aren’t.” She blew out a nervous breath. “Break a leg.”

Chuck winced. She knew her sister meant it in the best possible way, but Chuck didn’t want to hear about breaking anything when she was very afraid she might end up doing just that.

“You go out first, and I’ll hide here until the coast is clear.”

That, too, was part of The Plan. Chuck nodded, and when Chloe leaned in for a quick hug, she hugged her sister back—really, really tight.

This wasn’t the first time she’d done something slightly wacky or gone above and beyond for a story, but it
was
the first time she’d come up with something quite this over the top. Or dragged her sister into one of her wild and crazy schemes. Which meant that if it went wrong, it could go terribly wrong for both of them.

Sebastian Raines stood in the backstage shadows of Lust, watching the end of the evening’s final performance. No one saw him; or if they did, their brains didn’t register his presence.

He was one of the richest men in Nevada, possibly the entire United States or even the world. He’d built the Inferno from the ground up, making it the single most popular casino in Sin City. But that didn’t mean he spent a lot of time observing the everyday goings-on of the place or the activities of the countless humans who kept his business ventures flush with greenbacks.

He made his rounds, popped in on some of the big spenders, and let himself be seen out in public just enough for people to know he was the boss and he
was
in charge of everything that went on under his roof.

But after the last hour, he could understand why Lust—the Inferno’s version of an entertainment venue-slash-gentleman’s club—was so very popular.

The dancers onstage were fully dressed and doing nothing more than shaking their perfectly synchronized bon-bons, but their costumes were sexy enough—and suggestive enough—to convince the hundreds of men in the audience that they might have a chance at something more at the end of the night.

There would be no lap dances at Lust, though, and no dollar bills being stuffed into g-strings, either. Not as long as Sebastian’s men did the job they’d been hired to do.

All of the dancers onstage were walking wet dreams, beautiful and shapely, and flashing just enough skin to tease the audience, working them into a fine lather before trotting off to the safety of their group dressing room.

But only one interested Sebastian.

The one who had been following him on and off for the past few weeks. The one who was soon to be engaged to his brother, unless Sebastian could find a way to stop her.

This wasn’t the first time Aidan had fallen head over heels for a pretty face—or a tight body. It wasn’t even the first time he’d seemed determined to shackle himself to one of them.

When it came to other people’s motives, Sebastian’s little brother had a tendency to be slightly naïve. He’d been that way before they’d been turned, and hadn’t changed much in the last few centuries.

Which was why Sebastian once again found himself in the unenviable position of having to play . . . well, big brother. But in a manner he didn’t particularly like, and that he was sure Aidan wouldn’t approve of if he knew what Sebastian was up to.

There had been many times in the past when he’d had to run off eager lasses intent on landing themselves a wealthy husband in Aidan. More recently, he’d been able to run simple background checks, and then a hefty check of a different sort—along with a well-worded, but solemn threat—was usually enough to send them packing.

This time was different, though. Something about this particular woman was different.

According to Aidan, Chloe Lamoreaux was nothing more than a showgirl in his (Sebastian’s) own casino. And that was something Sebastian would normally believe . . . Aidan always went for the showgirl types. But that didn’t explain why someone who was supposed to be a simple dancer, with no ulterior motives for dating his brother, had been following
him
.

Even in a casino full of people . . . full of cigarette smoke and the mingling of a zillion different perfumes and colognes . . . he’d sensed her almost immediately. Smelled something sweet on the air that had never been there before.

He hadn’t been able to place it; still couldn’t. But it had caught his attention and caused him to roll his gaze in a slow sweep of the area until he’d spotted her standing on the far end of the room, doing her best to blend in with the small crowd surrounding a blackjack table.

She hadn’t done a very good job. Not only did she not look terribly interested in the card game, but she’d worn sunglasses indoors—something only he had a habit of doing—and cast furtive glances over her shoulder every few seconds . . . very pointedly in his direction.

So what did a woman involved with his brother want with him?

Was it simply a money thing? Sidle up to one brother, but keep her options open in case the older sibling—who happened to be the power behind the monetary success of Raines Enterprises—might be a better bet?

Or was there something else going on?

The only thing Sebastian felt certain of was that Chloe Lamoreaux was not to be trusted. The first he’d heard of her was when Aidan had announced that he planned to pop the question to a woman he’d been dating less than a month, then rush her off to the nearest all-night chapel for a quickie wedding.

Which was
so
not going to happen. Not if Sebastian had anything to say about it. (Which he most certainly did.)

Aidan might be content to fly headlong into yet another disastrous relationship; to take a woman at face value and simply assume she was exactly what she said she was. But Sebastian wasn’t nearly as trusting. There was much more to learn about this Lamoreaux chick before he would be willing to welcome her into the family.

Like what she was up to. And what she
really
wanted with Aidan . . . and with him.

Deal

By the time Chuck followed the other dancers offstage, she was sweating like a pig and breathing like a cow in labor. She felt like a cow in labor, too.

She might go through Chloe’s dance routine with her almost every night for the sheer calorie burn, but knowing the moves and actually doing them onstage with a dozen other girls . . . under blazing-hot lights . . . in full battle regalia . . . were two totally,
totally
different things.

Never again would she scoff at her sister’s choice of occupation or play into any of the stereotypical beliefs that showgirls were nothing more than high-priced strippers. And never again would she concoct any ridiculous plans that even remotely had her stepping into her sister’s rhinestone-dotted, five-inch heels.

She was lucky to be alive! Lucky to have made it through Chloe’s three-in-a-row performances without either passing out or fracturing something vital. There had been some close calls, too, and she was sure Chloe’s fellow dancers were wondering what the hell was wrong with her tonight. She just kept smiling, pretending to be her sister, and was ready to pull out the “inner ear infection” excuse, if she needed to.

Still huffing, Chuck fell back to the end of the chorus line as they
tick-tick-tack
ed their way across the stage and down the short flight of stairs. She needed to get out of this getup and into street clothes, but knew from Chloe and her own after-show visits to Lust’s dressing room that it tended to be a bustle of sequins and feathers and loud, boisterous girl talk for about an hour after a show.

Not something she was opposed to normally, even if her life wasn’t nearly as exciting as some of the dancers’. She might investigate Elvis sightings—which in this town, Elvis Impersonator Central, was a job and a half—and hang out in trailer parks where seven-hundred-pound women grew
around
their living room furniture, but that was a snoozefest compared to some of the things Chloe’s fellow dancers had experienced. Being propositioned by honest-to-goodness mobsters . . . dancing—and more—in Amsterdam, Tokyo, Hong Kong. One of Chloe’s friends had even done a tour with the Hell’s Angels.

Tonight, though, she had things to do, and sharing war stories—of which she had very few—wasn’t one of them.

She minced her way down the steps leading offstage, being very,
very
careful not to twist her ankle (or worse) only to draw up short when a long, imposing shadow fell across her path. Jerking her head and twenty pounds of headdress up, she found herself staring into a pair of dark, mesmerizing eyes . . . set into the face of the very man she’d been following for weeks now. The very man whose apartment she’d been planning to somehow break, slip, or finagle her way into later tonight.

Eep.

Had he found out about her sloppy attempts at stalking him? Somehow learned that she’d been digging into his past? Or maybe he’d figured out that she wasn’t who she was pretending to be tonight.

If any of those turned out to be true, this could be very bad for her. Very, very bad.

Getting on the wrong side of the richest man in Las Vegas—a man who likely owned the ground you were standing on at any given moment, if you were standing within the city limits—was never a good thing. Getting on the wrong side of the richest man in Las Vegas who just happened to
also
possibly be a bloodsucking creature of the night . . .

She was a writer, and even she didn’t have the words to describe what a cluster fuck that could turn out to be.

She swallowed hard, mind racing as she tried to come up with an excuse for why she’d been following him, checking him out, why she’d switched places with her sister. Nothing came to mind, which made her sweat even more than the past three hours of hoofing it under the thousand-watt stage lights.

“Um . . . hello,” she squeaked when he showed no signs of moving out of her way.

How would an employee of the Inferno greet its rich and powerful owner? Would there be obeisance? Groveling? As a showgirl, would she bat her overly glittered lashes and cock an inviting hip?

She shifted around awkwardly, raising a hand to the back of her head, thrust her breasts forward, and fluttered her lashes until one of them got stuck, rendering her blind in her right eye.

When she reached up to pry them apart, she lost her balance and flailed wildly on her platform ice-pick heels, frantically attempting to stay upright.

Sebastian . . . Raines . . . Dracula reached out and grasped her upper arms just as she began to topple, effectively stopping her from falling on her keister.

Well, how embarrassing to be rescued from certain doom by the very person she intended to “out” as a bloodsucking fiend. But doubly embarrassing was the fact that when he touched her, a zip of electricity ran all the way down her spine and into her girly places from where his fingers gripped her bare arms.
That
hadn’t happened since cell phones were the size of lunch boxes.