Bit the Jackpot (26 page)

Rascal, her orange tabby, was sleeping in a basket in the dining room and she put him in the bag along with Mimi. They both gave mewls of protest, but she stuck it on her arm anyway. They weren't going very far.

"Cara…"

She ignored Seamus and went for the door. Going back to her apartment wasn't an option right this minute since it was daylight and there were killer vampires running around. She was pissed, not stupid. But she figured she could get a room on a different floor.

"Come on, Fritz." She held out her hand for her other Lab, but Fritz just wagged his tail at her and stayed next to Seamus.

"Fritz! Here." Desperate to get out, she slapped her leg to get him to come to her. He just gave a friendly bark, then licked Sea-mus's hand.

Wonderful. Seamus had seduced her dog, too.

"Cara. Just take a deep breath and let's talk about this. We can work this out. We both want the same thing here, I know it."

"We both want you dead?"

"No. We want to be together. I know we do. Let's go to counseling. Remember you wanted to do that? Let's try that."

"Vampires don't go to counseling." She threw his words back at him, gathered all her animals minus Fritz, and marched out the door, eyes blurry from threatening tears. Over her shoulder she called, "And I'll be back for my dog when you're not here to manipulate him the way you have me."

Seamus watched Cara storm out, bags hanging and banging against her leg, dogs tangled together, cats meowing in protest.

He looked down at Fritz, stunned. "What the hell just happened?"

Fritz barked and sat down.

That seemed like a good idea, so Seamus sat down, too. "Holy shit."

He'd just had his heart ripped out of his chest and, he had to say, it didn't feel all that great.

Cara knew she must look like a psycho with her clothes a mismatched mess, her hair going in twelve directions, swollen eyes and red cheeks from crying, animals and luggage hanging off her. But it never occurred to her that she would be denied a room.

"I can't give you a room without an ID or a credit card, miss," the desk clerk said like this was totally obvious, which normally it would be to Cara.

At the moment, though, she was feeling just a hair shy of hysterical. "But I left my purse in Mr. Fox's room and I just can't go back up there. I just can't!"

"Okay," the man said carefully, like he was afraid to argue with her. "Is there a friend you could call?"

"A friend? Yes." She nodded in relief. "I'll just call Alexis. Can I borrow your phone?"

He hesitated, then lifted the receiver, finger posed over the touchpad. "What's the number?"

"It's here in the hotel. Room thirty-two-twenty, Mrs. Carrick's room."

Now his eyes went wide. "Your friend is Mrs. Carrick?"

"Yes." She held her hand out. "Give me the phone!"

Except Ethan answered, so she hung up on him. She couldn't face him, not even on the phone, knowing he probably knew about Seamus and their argument. Knew that Seamus was feeding her like a… like a… sex slave. She shuddered.

The desk phone rang immediately and the clerk answered, looking relieved to be diverted from Cara. But two seconds later he was shaking his head in alarm. "No, Mr. Carrick, I absolutely did not hang up on you. There is this, this woman here and she's insisting she knows your wife and she wants a room but she doesn't have any ID and she has these dogs with her… I don't know." He shifted the phone and asked Cara, "What's your name?"

"Cara Kim."

"Cara Kim." He listened. "Uh-huh. Alright. Okay. Definitely, yes, sir. Thank you. Have a nice day, sir." There was a sweat breaking out on the guy's forehead, and when he hung up, he let out a sigh before glaring at Cara. "I can't believe you hung up on Mr. Carrick!"

"Sorry, but I didn't want to talk to Ethan because he'll talk to Seamus and then Seamus will come looking for me, and… and…" She tried to stifle a sob, but it slipped out. "What did Ethan say? Can I have a room or not? I'm just so tired." Now she was crying full force and Button was starting to rub against her leg in sympathy.

"Oh, God, it's okay," the guy said, adjusting his tie. "Don't cry, God." He darted a nervous look left and right. "Mr. Carrick said to give you a room and charge it to the business expense account. He said you're Mr. Fox's girlfriend and to give you whatever you want. So, I'm really sorry, but I didn't know, you didn't have any ID or a credit card or anything and I was just doing my job, so… what do you want? Mr. Carrick said to give you whatever you want."

"I want a room!" Cara spoke so frantically the woman checking in with the desk clerk to the right glanced over in alarm. "And I am no longer Mr. Fox's girlfriend as of ten minutes ago. So I would like a bellman to go to Mr. Fox's apartment and get my belongings and bring them to my new room. I have some clothes and toiletries, plus all the pet supplies, and I want the raspberry and orange crush drapes hanging in the living room. And the pink towels in his bathroom."

He had never wanted them in the first place, so she'd be damned if she'd leave them there. They had been expensive, and when she'd ordered them online she'd put them on her credit card.

The desk clerk, whose name badge said HARRY, was scrambling around, yanking a piece of paper out of the printer and quickly writing. "Clothes, pet supplies, drapes, pink towels. Anything else? Turn-down service in your new room? A robe or something?"

Turn-down service for a vampire. That struck Cara as funny. "No thanks, I'm not big on chocolates on my pillow. I just want a place to sleep for a little while. I'm really, really tired."

"Got it," He typed with manic speed and produced a key card for her. "Fourteenth floor. Far enough away from the noise of the casino and the pool, but plenty far enough away from him, too."

Cara took the card. "Thanks."

"Hey, I understand. I just went through a nasty breakup myself. The last thing in the world you want is to run into the shit by the ice machine, you know what I'm saying?"

"Yeah. I know exactly what you're saying." Cara turned.

"You can leave the bags. I'll have them sent up," said suddenly helpful Hansen.

"Thanks." Cara trudged over to the elevator, made it up to the room, got inside, and collapsed on the bed.

She was sobbing before her head even hit the pillow.

Seamus was trying to sleep, with zero luck, when the doorbell rang. He sprang out of bed and headed for the door vampire speed, hoping it was Cara. She'd only been gone for an hour. Maybe she had taken a walk in the casino, cooled off, and now they could talk rationally about the situation.

He yanked the door open. "Cara."

It was a bellman.

"Can I help you?" Seamus asked, incredibly, sickeningly disappointed.

"Good morning, Mr. Fox. I'm here to, uh, collect Miss Kim's things." He looked at the list in his hand. "Her clothes and some other things."

"You're kidding." Just drive the stake farther into his chest. Damn. It hadn't taken her long to act on her anger. She was really and truly moving out.

The chunky middle-aged man shook his head. "No. I'm sorry, sir."

Seamus started to get angry. She could have at least given him time to explain. She could have come back herself and said goodbye. "Fine." He swung the door open wide. "Come in."

In the bedroom, Seamus jerked Cara's dirty jeans out of the hamper and threw them on the bed along with her hairbrush and nine thousand hair bands, which had been cluttering up his dresser top. From the bathroom, he scavenged all her face and body junk and threw it all into two plastic bags. He had to shove the expensive smelly shit out of the way every time he brushed his teeth. It would be nice to have all his counter space back.

The bellman hovered in the doorway. "And the pink towels, too, sir."

"The towels?" Seamus asked in outrage. "She wants the fucking towels?"

"Yes, sir."

Now that took some kind of nerve. "Fine." He ripped them off the towel bar. "Hot pink isn't really my color anyway."

The bellman took them and headed for the front door with the other plastic bags. "Can you get the pet supplies out while I put these on the cart?"

"Sure. Absolutely." Seamus opened the hall closet and pulled out the crates, the leashes. In the kitchen he gathered bowls and cat and dog food. Fritz danced around behind him, playing with a rag rope. "But she can't have this dog. He stays with me until she comes and gets him herself."

"The dog isn't on the list." The bellman deposited the crates on the luggage rack in the hall and came back for the food. "But the drapes are."

"The drapes?" Seamus ran a hand through his hair, appalled.

"Yes. I'm sorry, sir. You know women just get a little, well, emotional when you have a fight." The bellman shifted back and forth uneasily.

"Isn't that the truth." Seamus clapped the poor guy on the shoulder. "Sorry you got stuck with this detail." Then he shoved a dining room chair over to the windows and lifted the curtain rod down. "She can take these ugly-ass things. Won't break my heart. They look like the circus puked on my windows."

The bellman let out a snort.

"Do me a favor. Grab all that pink crap off my desk, too. She can take her pencil holder and mail slots and organize the hell out of her new pink room."

"There's stuff in these organizers," the bellman said as he picked over the desk.

"Just dump it all out and get rid of anything pink." Seamus moved on to the second window. "What's her new room number anyway?"

"Sorry, sir, I was told not to say."

Seamus made a rude sound. What, did she think he was going to come after her? Stalk her? Please. He was way too proud to come begging after her. He stared at the stripe in the drape, the pattern blurring together as his heart splintered into a thousand pieces, his skin feeling like a denizen of wasps were stinging simultaneously. He wanted to beg. He wanted her back. He wanted her drapes.

He was fondling the silk material when Ethan walked into the room.

"What the hell happened, Seamus?"

"I have no idea. What about you?"

"Alexis isn't speaking to me. She went to Brittany's with an overnight bag."

"Shit." They stared at each other, confused and hapless. Seamus climbed off the chair. "Let's get drunk."

"That is a beautiful idea."

The idea seemed decidedly less brilliant twelve hours later when Seamus was tied up alongside Ethan on the rooftop of the Venetian, alcohol buzz wearing off.

"So," he said to Ethan, staring up at the sky ablaze with the orange afteraffects of a sunset, his head pounding and his lower back aching. "Maybe confronting Donatelli dead drunk wasn't the best idea we've ever had."

"I don't think so," Ethan agreed. "And I have to say I wasn't aware how much tolerance for liquor I've lost in the last eighty years. If I had known, I might have stopped at nine gin and bloody tonics. The tenth was the one that did me in."

Seamus's mouth was thick and thirsty. He shifted, trying to get his wrists out from under his back, but was unsuccessful. "When I was a mortal lad, I could drink my age in ale. Age sixteen, sixteen mugs of ale. Got me quite a bit of attention."

"I didn't know that about you. Seems astonishing that after nearly four hundred years there is actually still something I don't know about you."

"There's something else you don't know." Seamus gave up trying to get comfortable and lay still on the hard poured concrete. "Since the night I turned her, I've been feeding Cara myself." He wasn't sure why he told Ethan, other than maybe he needed someone to understand, to recognize that he hadn't meant to be a sick bastard. He'd just wanted to please Cara. And keep her with him.

"Ah. And she found out that isn't the usual way of things?"

"Yes."

"Why were you?" Ethan didn't sound judgmental, just curious.

"At first, she didn't want to feed, so I didn't want her to starve. She wasn't ready for cold, bagged blood. Then, she got so much pleasure from feeding from me, and I admit, I enjoyed it… well, it didn't seem like a big deal. It felt right, not wrong." Seamus closed his eyes. "The bottom line is I didn't have a good reason. I just wanted to. I wanted her, that's all."

"I could see the temptation. But you should have given her a choice."

"I know. And now she's never going to speak to me again." He groaned. "I've screwed everything up and now I've dragged you down with me."

"No, I dragged myself down with you. I pissed Alexis off all on my own." Ethan gave a snort. "I bet Donatelli is downstairs just laughing his scrawny ass off. We must have sounded like absolute idiots down there."

Seamus could only imagine because truthfully he didn't remember a whole lot after the seventh shot in the fourth bar. Then it was a blank until they were being shackled with industrial-strength chains and Donatelli was threatening them. "
Total
idiots. Do you think he meant it about leaving us out here to starve while the sun drains us of our strength?"

"Oh, yes. He meant it."

"You don't sound worried. Have you called Alexis?" Seamus had already tried to mentally contact Cara. She had him completely blocked out.

"No. I'm too drunk still. I can't focus." Ethan laughed. "I can't feel my feet."

"And that's funny?"

"Yes."

Seamus managed to move his foot far enough to kick Ethan. "Feel that?"

"Yes, you asshole."

Seamus grinned at him. "Well, if I have to starve and be drained of my energy by the sun, I'm honored to do it with you, Carrick."

"We're not going to die. It would take three weeks for me to starve. I am a Master Vampire. I do not die easily."

"Ooohh. Bad ass."

"Fuck off, Fox. I'm trying to die with dignity."

Seamus laughed so hard he made his gut ache. "Maybe I am still drunk."

"And maybe you're ugly, too."

That cracked them both up all over again.

"Try to call Cara," Ethan suggested when they could breathe.

"Doesn't work. She's got her Call Block on for me."

"Who else do you have a mental connection with? You're less drunk than me. You should be able to contact someone."