Must Love Vampires (28 page)

Wandering into the living area of the posh apartment, Sebastian dropped down on the edge of a black, overstuffed leather sofa and buried his face in his hands, scrubbing his eyes roughly before driving his fingers through his hair once more. The nervous gesture wasn’t making his hair look any worse, but it wasn’t making it look better, either.

“So you’re the sister,” he murmured, lifting his head to study her more closely. “Chloe the dancer. The real dancer.”

The way he said “the real dancer” made Chloe’s stomach drop like a stone. Did that mean he’d come into contact with Chuck, after all, and knew she
wasn’t
really a showgirl in the Lust revue?

Oh, no. Was Chuck even now lying lifeless somewhere with a couple of fang marks in her neck, sucked dry by an enraged bloodsucker who would do anything to keep his secret under wraps?

Breathe, Chloe, breathe
, she told herself, even though her heart was beating hard enough to crack a rib.

Aidan had assured her his brother wasn’t the killing type. If Chuck had run into Sebastian and piqued his ire, she was probably just wandering around downtown Vegas with amnesia, thanks to his vampire brainwashing woo-woo. Which wasn’t necessarily better than being dead in an alley somewhere, depending on what kind of Sin City vultures and vermin she ran into, but at least it wasn’t
death
.

Screwing up her courage—which took a couple of deep breaths, a few more fistings and unfistings of her hands, and three clearings of her throat before she could push words past her petrified vocal cords—she asked, “Where’s my sister?”

Aidan’s hand tightened on hers, though she didn’t know if it was to offer his support or warn her away from confronting his brother quite so directly.

Sebastian arched a brow. Any other time, that silent gesture would have had her wetting herself like a toy poodle. As it was, she was a bundle of exposed nerves. But her twin’s safety was at stake here. And even though Chuck was usually the one to ride to her rescue, it was her turn to suck it up and be the hero.

Clearing
his
throat, Aidan did his best to smooth things over. “It seems Chloe and her
identical twin sister
, Charlotte —whose nickname happens to be Chuck—did a little switcheroo before the show. Chuck put on Chloe’s costume and went onstage while Chloe wore Chuck’s street clothes and sneaked off to meet me.”

His brother didn’t respond. He simply sat there looking impervious and amused, waiting for the rest of the story.

“Apparently, Chuck was working on some sort of story about you. She’s a writer for the
Sin City Tattler
.”

“A writer. For the
Tattler
,” Sebastian repeated with what sounded like mild interest.

Though she couldn’t begin to decipher it, a look passed between the two brothers.

Aidan nodded. “We thought you might have run into her. Or caught her on camera following you around, maybe trying to sneak up here.”

One corner of Sebastian’s mouth ticked upward and his gaze skittered off to the left toward the rear of the apartment for just a fraction of a second. Straightening from his hunched position, he leaned back against the sofa and stretched his arms out as far as they would go on either side.

“I saw her,” he told them slowly. “She was skulking around, poking her nose where it didn’t belong.”

Chloe’s pulse jumped as terror washed over her. “What did you do to her?” she demanded in a strangled whisper.

“Why, I killed her, of course.”

King

“Oh, he did not!”

Chloe’s heart stuttered in her chest as she whipped around to face the voice from the far end of the apartment. A second later, her sister appeared wearing only a man’s sapphire-blue dress shirt. It was open at the neck and fell to her thighs, leaving her legs bare the rest of the way down.

Her hair, much like Sebastian’s, was a rat’s nest of spikes and crooked curls and flattened areas.

“Oh. My. God.”

Sailing across the room like a beauty queen, she wrapped her arms around a still open-mouthed Chloe and gave her a quick hug.

“I’m fine. Sebastian has been a perfect gentleman.” Cocking her head and tossing a glance over her shoulder to where he sat, she said, “Well, mostly a gentleman, anyway.”

Sebastian’s only response was a lascivious grin.

“Oh. My. God,” Chloe said again. Oxygen was wheezing in and out of her lungs like they’d sprung a leak. She blinked a couple of times, playing Pong with her eyeballs as she looked from Chuck to Sebastian and back again.

“You slept with him,” she accused, finding her voice and then some. “And you slept with her!”

Why was she shrieking? Why was she acting so shocked and disapproving? She didn’t care whom her sister slept with, as long as she stayed away from the skeevy, disease-riddled segment of society and picked a guy who was half decent to her. Any more than Chuck cared whom she slept with, with the same caveats.

She was just so stunned. She’d thought her twin was working on a story, and had been frantic this last hour or so, worrying about her safety.

Now she discovered that her sister’s idea of “research” apparently included getting naked and boffing her research subject. What had happened to “observe and report”?

Chuck gave her a look, and kicked her lightly in the shin with her bare foot. “Don’t look so surprised. Just because it’s been a while doesn’t mean I don’t still have all the working parts.”

Aidan started to laugh at that. Then he realized his mirth might not be appropriate or appreciated, and tried to swallow it back, making a strangled sound deep in his throat.

“You must be Aidan,” Chuck said, shifting toward him and holding out her hand. “I’m Charlotte, but
please
don’t call me that.”

“It’s Chuck, I know,” he said with a grin, bringing the back of her hand to his lips for a polite, if old-fashioned, kiss.

“It’s nice to meet you. And you,” she said, returning her attention to Chloe, “know Sebastian, but I’m not sure you’ve actually met.”

Chloe squeezed her eyes shut, then covered her face with her hands and gave a silent scream until the sound bounced off the inside of her skull. When she felt as though she could look at her sister and the two Raines brothers without screaming for real, she lowered her arms and snapped her eyes open.

“I thought you were dead,” she told Chuck in such a calm tone, she surprised even herself. “I’ve been frantic, thinking you found out he was . . .”

She trailed off, not sure she should drop that particular bomb on her sister, if Chuck didn’t already know what Sebastian truly was. Especially since revealing Sebastian’s secret identity meant also revealing Aidan’s . . . and the fact that she’d married him regardless.

“Or that he caught you following him, and had you arrested or hauled away by his Goon Squad or something equally horrific.”

Rather than look repentant, Chuck smiled. The bright, wide, teeth-flashing smile of a woman who’d been enjoying herself to the fullest in the most carnal of ways. Chloe should know; she was pretty sure she’d looked that way quite recently herself, after Aidan had rocked her world for the umpteenth time since their quickie wedding vows.

“Nope,” she answered lightly. “And I know all about Sebastian. Aidan, too,” she said, tipping her head in his direction. Then she turned down one side of her shirt’s collar to reveal the reddish-brown puncture marks, surrounded by a small amount of black-and-blue bruising. That, too, Chloe recognized from her own recent Adventures in Vampire Nuptials.

“I need to sit down,” she muttered, teetering her way to the nearest end of the L-shaped sofa and dropping onto the cushioned seat before her legs gave out.

“I know,” Chuck said, wandering over to where Sebastian was stretched out, watching the conversation play out in front of him, and climbed onto the sofa beside him. She sat between him and the arm of the sofa, but he curled his arm around her shoulders and tugged her bare legs across his lap so that she was draped half over him and tucked very protectively against his side.

To his credit, Aidan came to stand beside his woman, as well, seating himself on the opposite sofa arm. He took her hand in one of his own, then put the other on her far shoulder.

“It’s unbelievable, isn’t it?” Chuck continued. “But the funny thing is, I suspected all along. I didn’t tell you, because I thought you’d think I was crazy, but that’s what my story was going to be about. I came here trying to find proof that Sebastian was an honest-to-goodness vampire.”

She looked at him, running her palm along his cheek with affection as she smiled up at him. “And I did. But, of course, I can’t write my article now, because that would hurt him and ruin everything, and I definitely don’t want to do either of those things. Ever.”

Sitting there with the clouds clearing from her brain and all the pieces of the puzzle coming together, Chloe’s pulse began to slow. Chuck looked positively blissful, and though normally, Chloe would be giving her all kinds of warnings about sleeping with a near-stranger, falling in with a man who could destroy her on a whim, getting involved with someone she
knew
to be an actual vampire . . .

But then, she didn’t have a lot of room to talk, did she? She’d done basically the exact same thing.

And how freaky was that? She knew all about the Twin Thing—how often they shared thoughts; felt each other’s pain; even how many married at the same time, gave birth at the same time, and died at the same time.

But though she and Chuck were extremely close, and did often share thoughts and ideas or finish sentences for one another, they’d also been independent enough that she’d never actually believed they’d follow in each other’s footsteps. She was a professional dancer, for heaven’s sake, while Chuck had gone in a completely different direction and started writing for a living.

So what were the chances that they’d fall in love with a couple of brothers—
vampire
brothers, no less—at exactly the same time? Now
that’s
a story just unbelievable enough for Chuck’s tabloid magazine. It ranked right up there with grandmothers giving birth to their own grandchildren and being probed by aliens.

“And you,” Chuck said, dragging her out of her musings. “You two ran off and got married, didn’t you?”

She said it with a secret smile, since she’d known the whole time that was part of Chloe’s plan. What she hadn’t known was that Chloe would end up abandoning her plot to land a rich husband and actually tumble head over heels for Aidan.

Chloe nodded and held out her left hand, showing them both the Rock of Gibraltar now residing there. “I took him to meet Jake and Mom.”

Chuck’s eyes widened slightly at the admission. “And . . . ?”

It was the most prompting she would risk until she knew more about how that visit had gone, and Chloe appreciated her discretion.

“They loved him,” Chloe told her. Then added softly, “I love him, too.”

“You do?” Chuck asked with just a hint of caution to her voice.

Chloe nodded again. “I really do.”

A beat passed, and then Chuck dropped her head onto Sebastian’s bare shoulder. His very broad shoulder, which led down to a very impressive chest and abdomen.

Not that Chloe noticed such things. She had her own handsome Raines brother to drool over, and though Sebastian had quite a nice physique, he wasn’t nearly as well-built as her Aidan. In her humble opinion, anyway.

Beside him, her sister’s mouth slid into a wide grin, her eyes glittering with delighted excitement. “Me, too.”

“So is there a chance the two of you will be tying the knot soon, too?” Aidan asked, oblivious to the undercurrents passing between the two sisters.

Sebastian’s deep voice filled the room. “Not so long ago, I would have said absolutely not. I didn’t think it would be possible for us to carry on normal relationships with human women. But it looks like we’re about to prove that theory wrong.” His arm tightened around Chuck, and he pressed his lips to the crown of her head. “At the very least, I’m willing to give it a shot.”

“Wow,” Aidan breathed, leaning back a few inches in feigned shock. “I never thought I’d see the day.”

His brother flipped him the bird, but his expression was more amused than annoyed.

“It will take some adjusting. The day-to-night thing . . . not so much for you,” she told Chloe, “but for me. Being sure not to let anything slip that might make people suspicious about Sebastian’s and Aidan’s lifestyles. And since revealing Sebastian’s dark side was supposed to be my big break, I might need to do a little soul searching about my career. But I can certainly stay at the
Tattler
doing unrelated stories until I make up my mind. How about you?”

Taking a deep breath, Chloe said, “I think we’re going to take it slow. Everything’s so new and different, we’re just going to keep doing what we’re doing for a while.”

“Except where Jake is concerned,” Aidan put in, lifting her hand to his lips for a quick kiss. “Wait until you meet him, Sebastian. He’s the cutest kid you’ll ever see. I’d like to move him in with us, give him as stable a family life as we can.”

“You know, if we told him about what you really are, he’d be over the moon,” Chloe said. “He’d think you and his new Uncle Sebastian were superheroes or something. And if we made it a game, he’d probably be even better about keeping it a secret than we are.”

Aidan chuckled. “You’re probably right.”

“Uncle Sebastian, huh?” One corner of Sebastian’s mouth quirked upward. “That will take some getting used to, won’t it?”

“It all will. But it will be worth it,” Aidan said with conviction.

“Looks like you’ve gotten the family you’ve always wanted,” Sebastian told his brother in a low, solemn tone. Then he tipped his chin, letting his gaze settle on the woman in his lap while he twirled a strand of her brown, recently tussled hair around one finger. “And I’m getting the one I never knew I needed.”

“Awwww.” Chuck reached up to kiss him, and Sebastian kissed her back in a way that made Chloe think they might have forgotten she and Aidan were even in the room. Then Aidan leaned down to kiss
her
, and she forgot they had an audience, too.