Call My Bluff

by Elizabeth Knox

  “You two go,” Alexander urged, that deep look of concentration taking over again as he kissed his wife-to-be on the cheek and stepped away. “I need to make a couple of phone calls.”

  Dawn ushered him away before turning her attention back to me, her smile growing a little more. “Come on, the kitchen’s this way.”

  With a deep breath, I surged forward, following the woman in front of me as she practically glided down the hall. She is a damn princess. When we reached the end, she rushed over to the windows, hurrying to press buttons on a keypad which resulted in thick dark blinds rolling down over the windows.

  “Thanks,” I croaked, stepping up to the island in the middle of the kitchen and hefting my tired body onto a stool.

  “Not a problem,” she reassured me, busying herself. “I’m really glad you decided to come. After I heard what happened, I made sure the second he had a spare moment, he was back down there, apologizing for being an ass.”

  Ah, so Snow White was responsible for this weird Prince Charming version of my father.

  “Apologizing might be pushing it a little,” I scoffed, thinking of the way he went straight to my mom. Knowing he could still talk her into almost anything because she was a gentle soul, someone who was always determined to see the best in others. Always determined to forgive and forget the people who hurt her.

  Maybe I was more like my father when it came to that part.

  Dawn slipped the bowl of soup across the counter to me, the steam and smell that was wafting off it delighted my senses. “This smells good.”

  “You sound surprised,” she chuckled softly, propping her hip against the counter. “I heard Cruella didn’t cook.”

  The spoonful of hot liquid hovered in front of my mouth, it was taking everything in me not to release the laughter I could feel building and send the precariously balanced hot soup, splashing back into the bowl.

  Was it too early to say that maybe Alexander Presscott had got it right this time?

  What’s that saying?

  Third time’s a charm.

  “Touché,” I praised, holding my shit together long enough to sip at the edge of the spoon. The taste? Amazing. “You made this?”

  She nodded. “I was the only girl with three brothers,” she explained, a warm smile crossing her face. “So, I was the one who had to learn how to cook, and who had to do all the cleaning.”

  “No maid then?”

  The snort that came from her made me jump. A noise that was rudely unladylike, but that proved just how real this woman was. She brushed her dark locks back from her face with a heavy sigh. “No, I practically was the maid. I definitely didn’t grow up in places like this.” Her eyes wandered the vast space, the kitchen itself almost the size of mine and Mom’s house in Phoenix. “Eden, on the other hand…”

  “Is a spoiled brat,” a high-pitched voice cackled, as a young blonde girl stepping around the corner, almost as though she had been there this whole time, waiting in the wings for her perfect entrance. Her eyes ignored the rest of the room and focused on me. “Wow, you’re beautiful,” she gushed, her eyes widening, her smile growing with them.

  “You seem shocked at this discovery.”

  She huffed, slipping around behind her mother and grabbing a bowl from the shelf before scooping out her own helping of soup. “Well, I figured if that last piece of work he was with was his type, then I shouldn’t get my hopes up.”

  “Eden…” Dawn warned while shaking her head.

  Eden just shrugged. “It’s a good thing! It means she can come with me to the party tomorrow night, and everyone is going to lose their shit.” I was honestly surprised she wasn’t rubbing her hands together and cackling like some kind of evil scientist.

  The contrast between Eden and Dawn was like night and day.

  Where Dawn was soft and warm, Eden was loud and boisterous, her long blonde hair whipping excitedly around her face as she talked loudly.

  I couldn’t help but question where that part of her personality came from.

  Dawn’s eyes caught mine and she forced a smile. “You don’t have to go to any party tomorrow night.”

  “Yes, she does,” Eden argued, spinning on her heel and narrowing her eyes at her mother before turning those light blue orbs on me. “You’ll come, right? Please? I’ve never had a sister before, and I’m so freaking excited to introduce you to the world and have them be so damn jealous.”

  “Like I said…” Dawn repeated, the words barely making their way past her pursed lips. “… you don’t have to go.”

  “No,” I argued, shaking my head. “It’s fine. I’ll go. And you can see first-hand just how unexciting I am.”

  I should have taken my notes from Dawn on just how eager she was for me to stay here.

  But I promised myself I would give this a go.

  I promised myself I wouldn’t just give in when shit was uncomfortable or hard because this could be something great, if I gave it the chance to be.

  Or it could be something so freaking horrible that I leave even more destroyed than when I arrived.

  I guess my first step toward getting that answer was going to a party.

  Chapter Six

  Coralie

  “I really like your dad,” Eden beamed as she weaved through the suburbs, the bright city lights disappearing behind us. “He’s been really nice to my mom and me.”

  I tugged at the hem of the little black dress that was clinging to my body like a second skin. It was some kind of leather I was pretty sure—my mind already considering whether I would need a crowbar or a block of butter to get the damn thing off.

  I’d let her put me in it.

  Listening to her gush about how her friends were going to be so jealous of her new sister.

  Like that was the aim of the game in these circles—using whatever ammunition possible to get one-up on the people around you. Your ‘friends.’

  “Well, that makes one of us, I guess,” I scoffed, turning to stare out the window.

  The lights flashed by and the further we drove from the city the bigger the houses seemed to grow. I couldn’t help but wonder where the hell we were headed.

  “Sorry,” Eden murmured softly, drawing my attention back to her. Her hands gripped the wheel tightly, her bottom lip sticking out in an exaggerated pout that almost made me want to slap it off her face. “Alex hasn’t mentioned much about your relationship, but my mom said the last wife got between you two.”

  Alex.

  Not Alexander—Alex.

  Eden had this whole innocent act going on.

  But an act was all it was.

  She played the dumb blonde act quite well. Around people she was this perky, energetic and over the top personality, but everything that came out of her mouth was devious and it was calculated. The girl was smart—smarter than she wanted people to know.

  Dumb girls are a lot easier to tell your secrets to.

  They wouldn’t know what to do with them.

  Or how to use them against you.

  But Eden was far from a dumb girl. And as much as I wanted to trust my eager new sister, I knew I needed to keep my walls up, because the second she found a weak spot, she was going to hammer at it until it began to fall.

  The pouty look on her face said she was sorry, but the way her ears were practically growing by the second, searching for some information, something she could use, I knew it was an act.

  “She was a bitch,” I answered strategically, not giving too much away, though I wasn’t sure why I would ever give a damn. I was definitely vocal about my distaste for the late Cruella de Vil. “But it wasn’t as though he fought for me. He simply let her rule the roost.”

  Her head bobbed up and down in agreement. “Yes. That is so true. He could have done more to be there for you.” She smacked her lips together, flicking her long-bleached blonde hair back over her shoulder. “He’s trying now.”

  “Is he, though?”

  “Here we are,” she beamed, f
orcing me to look up. My eyes doubled in size as we cruised down the slim road with cars lining both sides of the street, leaving barely enough room for us to get through. “This is going to be so great.”

  “People are already here?” I questioned, wondering where the hell the damn house was, but the packed suburban street seemed to be going on forever. “I thought this was your party?”

  “It is,” she chimed, her sly smile growing as we finally pulled into the wide driveway. Two large security guards moving toward the car. “But who shows up to a party on time?”

  “These people.”

  “No one important,” she contradicted, the guard nodding for her to pull in through the large gates. The car jerked forward, my seatbelt tugging me back as she rolled up in front of the third garage and slammed on the brakes. “The entrance is everything. You want people around so they can notice you show up.”

  “I prefer to blend in, not stand out,” I murmured, taking in a deep breath as I reached for the door handle. “You should try that sometime.”

  “Sounds horrible,” she scoffed, throwing the car door open before looking back over her shoulder at me. “Come on, you’ve put that dress on, you may as well show off how amazing you look in it.”

  This house was something fucking else.

  It took everything in me to keep my jaw from dragging along the floor as Eden pulled me from one group to another, working our way through the mansion. It sat right on the edge of Lake Las Vegas, one of the most expensive parts of town.

  It had its own damn beach.

  An infinity pool that currently had at least three couples fucking in it—like that shit wasn’t freaking obvious.

  Four living areas, a theater, six bedrooms and eight bathrooms later and I’d come to a conclusion—this was a house on fucking crack.

  Whoever owned it, just had too much money, or too much time. Maybe both. I couldn’t imagine ever needing a house this big unless you had a huge family. Who would want to live in this massive, empty space by themselves?

  “Come,” Eden urged, taking my hand and yanking my body back toward the opposite end of the busy room.

  I could feel eyes on me as I trudged along behind Eden.

  It shouldn’t have been surprising given the way these people seemed to track my every move. Shuffling from one group to another, Eden rattling off a bunch of names I would never remember.

  This, though? This was different.

  A more intense feeling.

  That one you got when you forgot to close the curtains before it got dark, and you were almost sure someone was outside, looking in, and yet, you couldn’t see out.

  That was how I felt.

  Like I was in a room and everyone could see in, could see me, and I couldn’t see out.

  I couldn’t see them.

  I didn’t know who these people were, or what they wanted. The only thing I could feel was just how desperate they were to know me, or at least tell people that they did.

  “And that over there is Striker.” Eden pulled me in beside her, her sharp witchlike nails pointing across the room to a pair of eyes.

  His two dark orbs were glued to me, despite the chaos and crazy that muddied the space between us. Escape seemed impossible, even as I stumbled backward I didn’t want to look away, not after this fire in my stomach had been doused in gasoline and lit.

  “I’ll introduce you to him later when he’s not so busy. He’s kind of a big deal,” Eden announced, her eyes scanning the crowd for the possibility she’d missed someone she could introduce me to, but at this stage I was almost positive I’d met every man, woman and versions of both who occupied the party. Even the ones living out their sexual fantasies in the pool out back.

  The longer I stood there, holding this impromptu staring contest with a guy across the room, the more I found my body pulled toward him. I couldn’t help myself, inching forward, the corner of his mouth curling up with every movement as if he were daring me to come closer.

  Who the hell was this guy?

  Chapter Seven

  Coralie

  “So, what is there to do in Phoenix?”

  “Uh…” I thought out loud. “There’s Empire and Dynasty, the two nightclubs. They’re pretty awesome.”

  Eden’s friend Dara rolled her eyes and took a sip of her appletini. “But does it have anything as good as here? We’re in Vegas. We know clubs. We’ve been there and done that since we were like seventeen.”

  I mulled over the question for a second before shrugging. “They have girls dancing on platforms and stripper poles.”

  The young girl’s eyes lit up and she scrambled forward, her knee slipping for a second between her boyfriend’s legs and almost crushing his manhood.

  She didn’t notice.

  Or if she did, she honestly didn’t care enough to apologize to her man as he said a quiet prayer and thanked the Lord he still had the ability to produce children.

  “We should go there,” Dara announced with a nod toward Eden. My new sister, on the other hand, rolled her eyes and sloshed her drink in the air.

  “We have places like that here,” she argued, sinking back into her seat.

  “But not owned by sexy men riding motorcycles,” Dara threw back, followed by a rush of support from the teen girls around us, oh, and a couple of guys, to which my lips curled and I pushed away from the arm of the chair I’d been propped up against.

  “I’m gonna get some air,” I told Eden as I backed away.

  “But—”

  I cut her off with a wave, my eyes catching the reflection of the water through an open door. Eden’s protests quickly became background noise as I made a beeline for the exit, sidestepping several stumbling girls and a guy with grabby hands before I finally sucked in a breath of fresh air. I worked in a damn nightclub every weekend and that house was getting far too hot for even me. But maybe that wasn’t because of the people dancing, or the way people cozied up beside me when they figured out who I was.

  Maybe it was more to do with the incessant attention.

  The constant questions.

  The stupid questions.

  The offer of friendships, and boyfriends, and even the odd one who wanted to take photographs with me so if I got famous later they could say they knew me.

  My brain hurt.

  It didn’t work that way and I was seriously struggling to get my head around just how ruthless and determined some of these teens were. To get their name out there. To be recognized. This was the culture. One that was just so damn overwhelming.

  Most of the people at the party must have been around my age, or seniors in high school like Eden. But I was so sure I felt like we were on completely different levels—or maybe our goals for the future forced us to approach life differently.

  I stumbled, reaching for one heel and ripping it off, tossing it out onto the grass before going for the other. The music from the party behind me wasn’t like at Empire, it was more subtle, no thumping bass or a lot of upbeat tunes for dancing.

  The music they had on was meant to be more for the environment. To create the atmosphere that promoted conversations full of gossip rather than to get hot and sweaty while dancing to.

  I needed some peace, a moment to get back to being me.

  Not Eden’s new sister.

  Not Alexander Presscott’s daughter.

  Stumbling off the edge of the lawn, my knees almost gave way as my feet sunk into the coarse sand. I paused, throwing my head back and squeezing my eyes shut. “Heaven,” I whispered, wiggling my toes and digging them deeper. The soft splash of water against the lake’s edge was like music to my soul.

  Mom and I took trips to California to go to the beach whenever possible. There was something about being here that warmed me, something about standing at the water’s edge listening to the waves crashing and feeling the sand scratch at my feet. It was different like another world.

  One where nothing else mattered.

  One where I could simply take
a moment to breathe.

  And I needed that right now.

  I was already considering whether I should leave right now, head back to the casino and tell Alexander that I just couldn’t do it. That I didn’t belong here. This rich, fancy, intense environment was too much for me. The people, the expectations, there was no way I could live up to those.

  It wasn’t me.

  A shuffling in the darkness had me sucking in a long breath, my body froze on the spot.

  Eden said security doesn’t like to let people onto the small beach, fearful that they’ll be drunk and attempt to go swimming.

  They’re probably not wrong.

  “So, you’re the new sister, right?”

  My heart leaped into my throat, my hand grabbing at my chest. “Holy. Shit!” I cursed, falling back onto my ass, sand instantly shooting right up into a million different places it was never meant to go.

  I wanted to laugh and shake my head, but I was so entranced by the figure walking down the beach toward me with his stark white t-shirt which was tight around his chest and arms, highlighting a strong upper body. My eyes followed his shape as he moved closer, the ripped black jeans he had on also seemed to fit perfectly, but at the same time, sag in all the right fucking places.

  Maybe I should have been scared. This guy standing out here on the beach, on his own, just lurking in the damn shadows, was probably waiting for an idiot like me to walk out here so he could kidnap me for some kind of ransom.

  I wonder if Alexander would pay a ransom for me?

  My common sense was telling me to get the hell out of there.

  Unfortunately, it wasn’t in control at that moment.

  Instead, a rush of heat began working its way up my neck and across my cheeks. Maybe because I looked like a damn idiot, but more than likely because my potential abductor was fucking gorgeous.

  He worked his way through the sand, coming to a stop right in front of me. When I looked up, my heart stuttered. His mouth was turned up at the corners in this devious but delicious fucking smirk that had me fighting for breath. His hair was thick, and just long enough to fall to the side after he swept his fingers through the front to try and keep it away from his face.