High Stakes Read Free

elevator button a second time, her foot tapping impatiently, her hand clutching her purse. A few moments earlier, he had been thinking that perhaps just one hot little affair before he settled down would be a really smart idea, and that the feisty Alexiswas a damn good candidate for such a partner. He'd been thinking that she was sensual, passionate, erotic, and would taste juicy and feel soft as he took her.
    But that was a few minutes in the past.
    Before she'd called him an asshole.
    Now desire had been replaced by annoyance. No one in nine hundred years had called him an asshole.
    To his face anyway. Who talked like that? Well, he did, but what woman said that to him? It was crude and unnecessary and he completely failed to see what he had done to inspire such rudeness.
    Seamus came up behind him as he leaned against the doorframe of the reception room.
    "Who the hell is that?" he asked in a low voice audible to vampire ears, but not mortals. "And why are you letting her go upstairs?"
    Ethan forced himself to relax. For several hundred years, he had been gaining steadily on his temper, displacing his passions from the battlefield to the bedroom, and he wasn't going to let one ill-mannered woman destroy that progress. "She says she'sBrittany 's sister. But I can't say I see the resemblance."
    His dentist was tall, slender, with fair skin and dark, straight hair. This Alexis was flat-out short, not much higher than his shoulder. She had wispy blond hair that had been escaping from a twist at the back of her neck. She was curvier, too, if that glimpse he'd caught of her backside when she was sprawled out on his carpet was any indication.
    She was the complete genetic opposite ofBrittany .
    "That can't beBrittany 's sister." Seamus adjusted his red tie and shook his head, dark eyes' clouded with disbelief. "Brittanyis… sweet."
    "Yes, she is," Ethan said, rather grimly. "Brittanyis pleasant, naive, cheerful…"And got on his everlasting nerves. Being with her was rather like ingesting too many sweets in a short period of time.

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    But that was his problem, not hers. He clearly was a bloody in-grate, and not nearly as civilized as he liked to think. Yet he still didn't see how a "woman like Alexis—pushy, impatient, short— could share the same DNA withBrittany .
    "That woman is a harpy," Seamus said firmly, as Alexis slapped the elevator door with her hand and swore eloquently at it.
    "That's a little harsh, don't you think?" Ethan spoke with little conviction. Alexis had been, well, harping at him. But what puzzled him—or rather irritated him—was the realization thatBrittany in all her sweet feminine perfection got on his nerves, while Alexis, who certainly had shades of the harpy about her, stirred his blood.
    Just a little.
    Enough to puzzle him.
    Well, hell, actually a lot.
    Which infuriated him.He was supposed to be giving up on women. He had promised Seamus and the entire Vampire Nation that his randy days were over and he had grown serious and wise with age. He was supposed to chose a suitable wife andget on withi it, not visualize a most unsuitable woman lifting her skirt for him.
    "Harpy's not quite the right word for her."Luscious…' t sexy… edible, maybe.
    "Bitch?"Seamus asked with a grimace.
    Ethan laughed loudly, earning him a glare tossed over Alexis's shoulder. "No. Not what I had in mind.
    And I suppose she has the right to feel put off, you know. That was a nasty spill she took when James pushed her."
    "I thought you said James tripped her on accident. I wasn't looking… too busy checking the latest exit polls on my Sidekick."
    Holding his hand up, Ethan prevented Seamus from spewing out a half-dozen statistics that meant nothing to him.One of the downsides of his career choice. "Later on the exit polls, please. And James didn't push or trip Alexis, technically. I think he was reaching out to get her attention and forgot