Play Me Real (3 page)

“So, before you come back here tomorrow, humiliated and pumped up and looking to get some of your own back, ask yourself if it’s really worth it. If your pride is more important than what having me as an enemy will do to your bottom line.”

I let him go abruptly, watch with absolutely no interest as he slides down the wall and struggles to catch himself before he hits the ground. He manages it, and when he finally stands up straight, there’s a hatred burning in his eyes that might give me pause on another day at another time. But right now, all it does is piss me off. As does his posturing.

“You say I don’t—”

“Get the fuck out,” I interrupt him. “I’ve wasted all the time I’m going to on you.”

And then, leaving both him and my security guys standing around with their mouths wide open, I turn and walk away. He isn’t worth anything more.

“Make sure he’s out of here in the next five minutes,” I tell Mickey as I pass her.

She’s watching me, too, but she’s got a smile on her face a mile wide. “I will, sir. Absolutely.”

I nod my thanks, and then head upstairs for a drink. Maybe two drinks. Hell, maybe five drinks. It’s definitely been that kind of night.

Ethan’s right behind me and we don’t say a word to each other until the elevator doors open into my private suite. I should go to my office—there’s a shitload of work that I need to plow through—though I’ve been working eighteen and twenty hour days since I got here, trying to bring myself up to speed.

But the truth is, I don’t want to be Richard Caine’s son tonight. I don’t want to be CEO of one of the largest, most lucrative casino and hotel conglomera
tions in the world. I just want to be me. Fucked-up, falling-in-love, totally-not-sure-what-to-do-about-any-of-it me. And I want to sit here and have a drink with my best friend and forget, for a minute, that assholes like Petrov Rubinov exist. Forget for a moment what happened to the last man I called my best friend.

Doing anything else just seems too fucking hard.

“So,” Ethan says as I pour us both a couple fingers of scotch. “How’s the new job been treating you?”

I flip him off. “So, what you’re saying is that I should be drinking both of these, then?” I hold up the glasses.

“Shit. If I were you, I’d just be swigging straight out of the bottle. More efficient that way.”

We both laugh, but by the time I hand him his drink, I’m shaking my head. “Christ. How the hell did I end up here?”

“Considering you’ve spent the last decade in and out of some of the worst hotspots in the world and yet you still say that like this casino is Dante’s seventh circle of hell, I’m thinking maybe you
shouldn’t
be here.”

“Believe me, I tell myself that every damn day. There’s nothing about this city I like, nothing about this hotel I want to be a part of. But I can’t just walk away.”

“Really? Nothing about this city you like?” Ethan raises a brow. “I was pretty sure you liked that gorgeous brunette who busted into your office this afternoon. What’s her name, anyway?”

“Aria.” He’s right. Aria’s the best part of Las Vegas by far, and if I hadn’t come back here I never would have met her. The realization puts everything in perspective. At least until I think about what happened at her apartment tonight—and about how, after an hour with Janet, she probably never wants to see me again.

“You should introduce her to Chloe,” he continues. “I’m pretty sure they’d get along.”

“You got that from a thirty-second meeting with her?”

“You have to admit, it was a pretty unusual meeting.” He grins. “I bet she keeps you on your toes.”

“You have no idea. We met because she works as a cocktail waitress here and she got annoyed enough with Rubinov—the asshole I was just talking to downstairs
—that she racked him with her drink tray.”

Ethan bursts out laughing. “Oh, yeah. She and Chloe will totally get along.”

“Chloe goes around racking obnoxious billionaires?”

“Pretty much every chance she gets. God knows, she’s taken me down a peg or five since we met.”

“Don’t act like you didn’t need it,” I tell him with a snort. “You’ve been hailed as the greatest thing for the tech industry since the personal computer. Your ego probably needed to be a little deflated.”

He just smiles at me, looking for all the world like the cat that ate the canary. “I’m not saying anything.”

“Yeah, well, you don’t need to. That shit-eating grin says it all.”

I’m giving him a hard time, but the truth is, I’m happy for Ethan. He’s got his own demons, and just because he doesn’t talk about them any more than I talk about mine, that doesn’t mean they don’t exist. He’s one of the best people I’ve ever met and if anyone deserves to be happy, it’s him.

Plus, looking at what he and Chloe are going through with Brandon gives me faith. Aria is another one of the best people I know and if Chloe can live through what she did and love Ethan anyway, maybe, just maybe, Aria can learn to accept my past. My mistakes. It’s a long shot, but this is Vegas. If there’s anywhere on earth to believe in bad odds paying off, it’s right here in this city.

We drink in silence for a couple of minutes, both of us lost in thought. But when I get up to refill our drinks, Ethan breaks out of his reverie enough to ask, “You want to tell me what that was about down there?”

“You mean with Rubinov?”

“Did you nearly choke the shit out of someone else I should know about? If not, then yeah, I want to hear about Rubinov,” he tells me with a smirk.

He’s trying to wind me up, but I decide not to let him. Instead, I just say, “He’s a bastard. A total prick who made his money doing every despicable thing a human being can do. Because of it, he thinks he can do whatever he wants to whomever he wants whenever he wants. I beg to differ.”

“I bet you do.” He’s looking at me now, his eyes shrewd and more than a little knowing. It makes me wonder just how much about my past Ethan has figured out through the years. Probably as much as I have about his. Still, the idea that he knows about Dylan, about the shit that happened to him, how he ended up—and my culpability in the whole thing—makes me a little sick. No one needs to know that stuff. Hell, I wish I didn’t know it.

“Still,” he continues after accepting his new drink. “You’re always so in control that it was weird to see you snap like that. I’ve known you for most of a decade and I didn’t know you had that in you.”

Yeah, neither did I. I’ve worked so hard to bury the violent legacy my father left me with, worked so hard to always remain in control, that I forget sometimes how bad my temper can be when I let it loose. Or, at least, I try to forget. “He was talking shit about Aria,” I tell Ethan after a minute, hoping it’s enough of an explanation.

Considering why he’s here and what he wants to do to avenge Chloe, I figure it should be.

Still, he’s looking at me like he wants to say more. But before he can, the elevator dings and we both turn to watch as Aria bursts into the room.

She’s still dressed in her cocktail waitress uniform and she looks good. Really good. Especially when there was a part of me that was convinced she wouldn’t want anything to do with me after hearing what Janet said. Not that I’d let her get away with that—I planned on giving her the night to assimilate what she heard and then finding her in the morning. Making her talk to me.

Instead, she’s here. She’s pale and frantic and more than a little frazzled, but she’s here. For now, that’s more than enough.

“Aria.”

“Sebastian. I need you to—”

“And I’m out of here.” Ethan pops out of the chair like a jack-in-the-box—probably PTSD from the last time Aria came bursting into a room and announced that she needed me to fuck her.

But unlike last time the two were in a room together, Aria actually notices him. Her eyes go wide and she steps back. “I can come back later—”

“No!” Ethan and I say at once.

“It’s fine. We were just talking.” I reach for her hand, pull her into my body. “Aria, this is Ethan Frost. Ethan, this is my girlfriend, Aria.”

Her eyes widen at my use of the word girlfriend, which I completely understand. Partly because we haven’t talked about what we are to each other yet and partly because girlfriend seems like such an insipid, ridiculous word for what Aria is to me.

For the fire that rages between us whenever we get within ten feet of each other.

For what we are, and what we have.

“It’s nice to meet you, Aria.” Ethan holds a hand out. “Sebastian’s told me quite a bit about you.”

“Nice to meet you, too,” she says faintly. She looks even more confused, if possible. It’s obvious she recognizes Ethan—hard not to when he’s known far and wide as one of the most visionary men on the planet. It’s just as obvious that she can’t imagine why he and I would be talking about her.

“I’ll be going now. But Chloe and I are in town for a couple more days. Maybe the four of us can have dinner one night.”

“I’d like that?” It comes out sounding like a question. And she still hasn’t blinked.

Poor Aria. On top of everything else tonight, meeting Ethan just might be too much. I decide to nip things in the bud before they get even more awkward. “Thanks for coming up, Eth.” I start ushering him toward the elevator. “I’ll text you tomorrow and we can meet to discuss the necessary plans.”

“Here’s your hat, what’s your hurry?” he mumbles to me as the elevator slides open.

I just lift a brow. “You are the one who said you were out of here.”

“Because I was afraid of what I might overhear if I stayed.” He grins. “Your girl seems to be the kind who knows exactly what she wants.”

I flip him off again, just as the elevator doors swoosh shut.

When I turn back to Aria, she’s staring at me with a cross between consternation and concern.

“What’s wrong, sweetheart?” I ask, crossing to her. As soon as the words are out of my mouth, I feel like a total dick. She just spent an hour with Dylan’s mom—there are probably more things wrong than she can even begin to name.

But she’s here, I remind myself. It’s a start. More than a start, really.

“I’m having a flashback to this afternoon.”

They aren’t the words I expect to hear from her and I grin before I can stop myself. “Yeah?”

“Was Ethan Frost in your office when I…” Her voice trails off.

“When you came in demanding that I fuck you? Pretty much, yeah.”

“Ethan. Frost.”

“Yep.”

“Ethan—”

“It’s fine.”

“It’s not fine. He heard me—”

Despite the situation, despite how fucked up everything is, I can’t help but laugh. But that’s Aria’s gift. She can always get to me, always reach me, no matter how dark my mood or how bad the mess is.

“Ethan’s one of my best friends. Trust me when I say he knows I have sex.”

“I propositioned you in front of a stranger. And not just any stranger but E—”

“Yeah. Ethan Frost. I get it. Are we going to spend all night rehashing it or are we going to talk about why you’re here?”

“Oh, right.” She shakes her head, pulls herself back together. And when she looks at me, her eyes are liquid, luminous and more loving than I have any right to expect. “I’m sorry about Janet. When she’s drunk she’s pretty incoherent.”

Fresh guilt swamps me, pulls me under as it meets up with the ocean of remorse, of culpability, that I’ve been drowning in for ten long years. “Is she drunk a lot?”

Aria winces, looks like she’s trying to temper her answer. Which tells me everything I need to know. Fuck. I cross to the window, stare out at the bright, bright lights. And try to forget all the reasons I hate this place. All the reasons I hate myself.

“It’s not your fault.”

I laugh, but this time it’s not what anyone would call a happy sound. “Did Janet tell you that?”

“Janet didn’t tell me much.”

“That’s surprising. It used to be her favorite story to tell.”

“I wanted to hear it from you.” She comes up behind me, wraps her arms around my waist and presses soft kisses between my shoulder blades.

“Yeah, well, it’s not a story I like telling.”

“The hard ones never are.” She strokes my stomach softly, her fingers tracing the waistband of my jeans. “Doesn’t make them any less worth hearing.”