Sasha stared at Dante. “She’s a player.”
“Game theory. That’s her specialty.” Dante nodded. “Theory and practice, I finally figured out. She didn’t buy the team just because she likes the tight pants.”
“She likes games.”
“She loves games. Playing them. Watching them. Analyzing them, too.”
Sasha thought about the dive she had made, to win the bet. Now it made sense. Now he understood why she had become annoyed when she thought that Dante was merely showing off. She had felt that Dante had proved his point. Anything more was an unnecessary gilding of the lily.
“So you are friends,” Sasha said.
“Way beyond friends,” Dante said flatly. “Just not lovers.” He reached for the bottle and shook the last inch in it. “Split this?”
Sasha pushed his glass forward. His hand was not quite steady. “To friends.”
“Friends, lovers and everything in between.”
They drank.
Chapter Eleven
After they had finished moving the almost comatose Sasha and Dante indoors, out of the sun, Roman went looking for Kate. It was close to sunset and he knew damn well that she had not stopped all day. He would find her hunched over the computer, her shoulders tense, her eyes bleary, as she worked with feverish intensity, aiming for perfection and nearly, almost, getting it. It was the tiny imperfections that obsessed her, that would have kept her working long after the average human had given up.
There was a lot riding on this movie, too. She and Patrick and Garrett had decided to go indie and finance the movie with their own personal funds. Not because the Hollywood system wouldn’t support Kate and Patrick. These days, Patrick especially was one of the hottest items in Los Angeles. He could have raised enough money for a blockbuster budget movie in three phone calls if he’d cared to try…and if the movie had been a special effects blockbuster. Which it wasn’t.
The small, intimate war-time drama was the antithesis of everything in the theaters these days. A rousing, values-driven story about courage under fire, resilience, sacrifice and loss…it just wasn’t sexy, according to those who “understood” Hollywood.
Roman happened to think it was the perfect time for such a film. But what did he know? He was just a props collector.
Kate was still sitting at the electronics-strewn dining table, only she wasn’t working.
Garrett sat in the chair Patrick usually used. His legs were propped out in front of him. He looked almost ill, which wasn’t possible for a vampire.
Roman’s gut clenched. “What’s wrong?” he demanded.
Garrett pushed his fingers through his red hair, which explained the disheveled appearance of it.
Kate turned the big screen around so Roman could read it. There was a letter there, with an official looking letterhead and a flourishing, illegible scrawl at the bottom.
He scanned the letter, picking out the guts of it. His gut squeezed harder. “What the fuck?” he breathed and came closer. This time, he read it word for word, absorbing the details. Then he realized he was sitting, too. He had lowered himself into a chair without noticing.
He looked at Garrett. “Jesus wept….”
“Can they do that?” Kate asked. “Sue him for false pretenses?”
Roman could feel all his rusty legal training grind back into active status in his mind. “It’s the Department of Labor doing the suing.”
“They say he earned all his money, everything he’s got, by false pretenses.”
“I read the summary,” Roman told her gently.
“Micheil isn’t a con man!”
“Garrett did lie about who and what he really was,” Roman replied. “We all did. Whether that constitutes fraud, is the huge, billion dollar question. We’re talking about vampires and the law, Kate. It’s…murky. There’s no precedence. They’re using Garrett as a test case, to make the laws.”
“In the meantime, they’ve frozen his assets,” she said stiffly.
“Which ones?”
“All of them,” Garrett said stiffly. He sounded as though someone had just driven a baseball bat into his stomach, end-on. “I get a stipend, administered by a third-party adjudicator, until this is all over. A thousand a month. That’s it.”
“That’s why your credit card bounced.” Roman winced. “Well, they’re being nice. They could have told you to fuck off until this was all over.”
“I was bankrolling Kate’s movie,” Garrett said stiffly.
Roman shrugged. “So, use my money instead. I’ll earn it back, guaranteed.”
Garret flinched and suddenly, Roman understood. He sighed. “Kate doesn’t care, Mikey,” he said gently.
“Care about what?” Kate asked quickly, looking from Garrett to him and back.
Roman got to his feet and moved around the table to where Garrett was slouched in the chair with all the fight pulled out of him. Roman hugged him, holding him hard. “She really doesn’t,” he whispered.
Garrett looked up at him. The expression on his face was wretched. “It feels….” He shook his head.
“Micheil?” Kate whispered. She was on her feet now, alarmed by Garrett’s face.
Roman sighed and leaned against the edge of the table between them and picked up Garrett’s hand. “You were drawn to him because of his financial acumen,” he said.
“Sure,” Kate said and shrugged. Then her mouth dropped open and she reached for Garrett, her hand cupping his jaw. “Micheil, no! That was the tiniest, the very smallest of the reasons why I fell in love with you. And I do love you! You really think this is going to make me…what? Change my mind, or something?”
Garrett licked his lips. “When you say it that way it sounds stupid.”
“It is stupid!” Kate declared. “I love you and that isn’t going away just because some fucking idiots are afraid vampires will take over their life if they don’t lock you all in legal boxes as soon as possible. As if humans haven’t got enough to worry about without becoming paranoid about you!”
Garrett swallowed. “It feels as if I’ve had the stuffing ripped out of me. I’m hollow inside.”
“You have been disemboweled, publicly and symbolically,” Roman told him. “It’s temporary, Mikey. You’ve lived through worse.”
“It’s been a while and never in front of people I love,” Garrett admitted. “That’s the worst of it.”
“You never could deal with humiliation very well,” Roman said. He gave Garrett a smile. “High-tempered highlander,” he teased. “Fling your sword around tonight. You’ll feel better.”
Garrett gave a small smile of his own. “I might if I get to wiggle it around in you. Byzantine.”
There was a knock on the door and it cracked open a couple of inches. “Kate? Can I come in?” The voice was high and light.
“Yes, come in,” Kate said.
Roman hung on to Garrett’s hand, even though Garrett normally hated public displays of affection. Garrett didn’t protest or try to take his hand back, either.
One of Blythe’s daughters came into the room, carrying a tray with a plate of food and a bottle of mineral water on it. “Patrick said I should stand over you and make sure you eat it,” she told Kate.
“I can do that,” Roman told her. He wasn’t sure which twin it was. He thought it might be Eloise, because Simone was in trouble over some boy or something. The voices coming from the kitchen just after lunch had not been modulated at all.
“You can put it here, thanks, Eloise,” Kate said, putting the keyboard on top of the stack of external hard drives next to the computer’s big CPU and clearing the space in front of the monitor. “Please tell Patrick thank you.”
“No problems.” Eloise put the tray down and stood back, hesitating.
“Something else?” Kate prompted her gently.
Eloise her bottom lip. “It’s stupid.”
Roman almost laughed aloud. He carefully didn’t look at Garrett.
“Stupid is something
I hear every day,” Kate assured the girl.
Eloise nodded. “When you started going out with Roman and Garrett, did everyone pick on you?”
“Is someone being mean to your mom about Patrick and Dominic?” Kate asked.
“It’s Simone. There’s a boy at school.” Eloise sighed. “He’s Elah.”
“And that’s what your mom and Patrick and Dominic said? That Simone would be bullied if she went out with him?”
“Not by everyone,” Eloise said. “Enough people to make it tough. Now Mom is thinking about it, because she doesn’t want Simone to get hurt.” It came out in a rush, as if Eloise was getting it all off her chest.
“Your mom is a smart lady,” Roman told Eloise. She glanced at him and blushed, then looked back at Kate expectantly.
Kate gave her a small smile. “Your mom is right, sweetheart. When I first starting dating Roman and Garrett, I didn’t have people calling me names—”
“Yes, you did,” Roman interrupted.
Kate sighed. “Yes, I suppose I did. Not to my face, but on TV and the Internet and everywhere in between. I was bullied by studio executives, who withheld financing because they didn’t like who I was sleeping with, too. At the time, it did feel as if everyone was picking on me.”
Eloise chewed at her lip. “That’s what will happen to Simone, then?”
“Possibly,” Kate said carefully.
“Probably,” Roman amended. “Kids can be vicious. They don’t always know when enough is enough.”
Eloise swallowed.
Kate leaned toward her. “The thing is, Eloise, I didn’t care about any of that…well, except when it stopped me making movies, only that was a spoiled brat thing. I didn’t care about what people thought of me personally, because I was so very, very happy living my life with Roman and Garrett in it. I was in love and that was enough to make it all worthwhile.”
Garrett’s hand clamped down on Roman’s. He heard Garrett suck in a deep breath. He didn’t take his eyes off Kate.
Eloise was staring at Kate. “That’s what Patrick and Dominic said. Make sure it’s worth the trouble.”
Kate nodded. “It’s good advice. Tell Simone that. I think she’d like to know she has her sister’s support, no matter what she chooses.”
“If my Mom says yes,” Eloise said.
“If Simone really wants to date the Elah boy, I know your Mom will understand. She’s had to go through the same garbage I did when she and Patrick and Dominic got together.”
“Except everyone could only talk about Patrick, that whole time,” Eloise said primly. “I don’t think they could even spell Mom’s name right. It was the fact that Patrick was living with two people at once.” Her nose wrinkled. “If they got to see what a slob he is in the bathroom, they’d stop being all gaga about him.”
Roman gave up then. He let himself laugh. Even Garrett chuckled.
Kate smiled sunnily. “Then they’d stop coming to my movies. We can’t have that,” she said lightly.
Eloise grinned, too. “Then we wouldn’t be able to sell Patrick’s autographs for twenty bucks a copy, either.”
“You’re faking his autograph?” Kate asked, appalled.
“Hell, no. He signs photos for us. Ten at a time. Simone and I pay him a buck per sale.” She smiled happily. “I bought all new make-up from my half.”
She left, looking happier than she had when she had carried the tray into the room.
Roman watched Kate as she followed the girl with her gaze, then gave a sigh that would have been inaudible to anyone except a vampire. Garrett missed it because he was getting to his feet and untangling his hand from Roman’s. He bent over Kate and kissed her. “Thank you,” he said softly.
“For what?” Kate asked, tearing her gaze away from the door.
“For reminding me of what I do have and will always have, so long as I stop being an idiot.”
Kate’s expression softened. “Always have,” she amended, “even when you are an idiot.”
“Do you think I can finance the movie with sweat equity, instead?” Garrett asked. “It seems I’m out of a job right now.”
“I could always use another PA,” Kate said judiciously.
“No, wait,” Roman said urgently. “You’re changing the subject.”
“We are not,” Kate said.
“No…wait.” Roman frowned, holding up his hand. “It almost slid by just then. You’ve been managing to do that way too often, lately, Kate. You move the conversation on before we can nail you on it.”
Kate’s gaze flickered away from Roman.
“What are you talking about?” Garrett demanded. “Eloise getting a second opinion about her sister’s dating choices?”
“Motherhood,” Roman said flatly.
Kate licked her lips and refused to meet his gaze.
Garrett turned to look at her, as though she had suddenly changed in front of him. “Kate?”
Kate sighed and glared at them. “It’s not a topic that is even worth discussing.”
“You’re hurting about it. Of course it’s worth discussing,” Roman shot back.
Garrett was back to looking as if someone had kicked him in the chest. “Because we can’t give you children, is why ye won’t talk about it,” he said, his brogue thick. “Ye not mean enough to blame us for that, so you’re ducking it because you don’t want to upset either of us over something we can’t change.”
Kate hung her head. “I’m sorry,” she said, her voice muffled. “It’s not even fair to think that I’m missing anything at all. I see Blythe’s kids and how they’ve…how all five of them—Patrick and Dominic, too—how they all work together and I get this horrible ache in my chest. I feel sick with it.”
She lifted her head and there were tears sparkling in her eyes.
Roman let out an uneven breath. His chest was hurting, now.
Garrett dropped to a crouch next to Kate’s chair, which brought his face even with hers. He brushed the tendrils of hair that had escaped the casual top knot she’d twisted her hair into on top of her head and secured with two pencils. “You know we’d both saw off a limb instantly if it would change things.”
She nodded. “I know that. I do. It’s not your fault. I keep telling myself I’m so damn fucking lucky to have you. That should be enough. Most days and most of the day, it is. It’s more than enough.” Her smile was weak.
“Only, sometimes it’s not,” Garrett said. His voice was low and rough.
Her tears spilled down her cheeks. “I’m selfish. I can’t have a child in my life. It’s too busy, too demanding. I’d make a shitty mother, anyway. I’ve never raised so much as a kitten.”
“I have, though,” Roman said.
They both looked at him, equally startled.
“You…have had children?” Garrett said, amazed. And yes, there was a note of envy there, too.
Roman grimaced. “My own? No. I was turned before I even had a chance to think about a wife and children and we married young in those days. I helped raise cousins and some of the…some of my wives had children from previous relationships. One way or another, I’ve been around kids a lot.”
Garrett got to his feet, moving slowly. “I think, Kate, I now understand exactly how you feel. Just for a moment, then, I envied Roman his chance at being a father. It seems we’re both inflicted.”
“All of us are,” Roman said gently.
They looked at him again.
Roman grimaced. “It doesn’t ever go away completely. Now I have both of you, so lately it’s been prodding me.”
“Except now is such a bad time,” Kate said softly. “The war….”
“Yes, the war,” Garrett agreed with a sigh.
“Whoever says ‘when this cruel war is over’ gets pelted with my chicken dinner,” Kate warned.
No one said it, yet it hung there between them while Kate ate, Garrett poured her water for her and Roman worked on her shoulders, smoothing out the knots and kinks.
W
hen the war was over, everything would change.
Again.
Chapter Twelve
Dante didn’t so much wake up as return to consciousness, an inch at a time. His head hurt like a dozen concussions at once and his mouth and throat were drier than the Mojave.
He was on his back, propped up at a slight tilt. His arms and legs were flung out at odd angles, almost as if he had been dumped on his back by someone and hadn’t moved from the position for what felt like hours. Every joint and muscle was as stiff as a board.
He groaned as he crept toward full awareness. The whisky. The vodka. Sasha’s blue eyes, drilling into him. Seeing way too much in his quiet, miss-nothing way.
What had Dante said? He couldn’t remember much right now. He couldn’t remember getting here. He wasn’t sure where ‘here’ was, either.
There was a breeze playing over his skin, which was sweaty. Was he still outside? He could smell green, growing things. Damp soil. Only, there was an absence of sound he would normally associate with the outdoors. It felt muffled, like a closed room, yet not exactly.
He poured effort into it and cracked one eye open a small sliver. It was nighttime. The dark might have been complete except there was a full moon overhead. Dante coupled that up with casual comments he’d heard that morning about waiting until the moon rose to hunt, tonight.
The hunters in the house would have left for their night’s work. That left very few people behind. Even Winter, the red-headed healer, headed out with the hunters to act as a field medic. Kate would still be here as she acted as babysitter for Blythe’s children while Blythe, Dominic and Patrick were all out hunting. Marcus and Ilaria, who had arrived that morning, would still be here. Rory and Dante would be setting up a unit of their own in the next few days. Hunting as a single pair until then was madness, especially here in the northwest hills of L.A., where the Summanus were thick and persistent. It was likely Rory had gone out with Patrick’s units, instead.
There were guards at the gate and there would be one in the kitchen. Otherwise, Dante was alone here.
Blood Ascendant (Blood Stone Book 5) Page 12
