Must Love Vampires Read Free Page A

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