I stood so still, felt the weight of the moment so deeply as I whispered: “my heart belongs to another.”
“Kane,” said Tommie slowly, evenly. She bit her lip, put her hat on her head and breathed out. “Of course. But I had to know. I had to try. I have loved you,” she said, then, and when she looked up at me, the fervency in her eyes took my breath away. “And I won’t stop,” she murmured. “I can not.”
The door closed behind her strongly, and an especially unfurled rose shuddered against its brothers in the crystal vase.
A single petal dislodged and plummeted to the note that had been pinned to the vase, that I’d taken from its pin and read and let drop to the tabletop because it was too painful to hold. How Tommie had repeated the words “I love you” over and over again in tiny, desperate pen strokes.
But as I strode forward to look down at the note, I couldn’t quite see it, because a voice was calling my name…
---
Which is how Gwen woke me up.
“Oh, my God, Rose, I need your help,” she hissed, shaking my shoulder again and again. Hard.
“What?” I mumbled, blinking my bleary eyes, trying to dislodge the ominous feeling the dream had given me. I rubbed at them and tried to focus on her. I hadn’t taken off my makeup, and my mascara was making my eyelids glued together at the corners. “What’s the matter?” I spluttered to her. “What time is it?”
“Almost eight. At night. Look, I’m so, so, so sorry to spring this on you,” said Gwen, not even taking a breath as she bit her lip, tucking a loose curl behind her ear, “but you have got to help me—Rose, I’m desperate.”
Immediately, I was sitting up in bed, searching for bite marks on Gwen’s very exposed neck and shoulders. Nothing. Had she been bitten? Was she in trouble? My heart rate began to skyrocket. What could possibly have happened to her?
“What’s the matter?” I asked, shoving hair out of my eyes.
“It’s Clare,” said Gwen, all in a rush, her brows furrowed and stray curls of her hair escaping the pins. “She was supposed to help me serve the cocktails at this drawing room soiree or whatever the hell it is, but she can’t, because she got sick. Something about bad chowder. She’s really sick; she isn’t faking. There’s just no way she can help. And, oh, my God, there are so many people, Rose… Like a hundred or something in that one drawing room. I can’t serve the cocktails alone, there’s too many people. I’ve tried to manage, and I just can’t—it’s impossible. Please, please, please help me?”
My best friend clasped her hands and began to wring them in front of my eyes like a silent film actress in a very desperate situation.
“I’m going mad,” Gwen continued after a second of my silence as I pieced everything together. “You don’t even know. I mean, they want all of this special stuff, these really elaborate drinks that I don’t have made up, because of course they’re rich people, and rich people are picky, I guess. I don’t know!” She was practically wailing as I opened my mouth and tried to say something, but she was shaking her head, continuing, “So then I have to rush down to the kitchens, and I’d like to point out that we don’t have an elevator, and everyone wants something different, and if you don’t help me, I think I’m going to keel over in ten more minutes. I can’t do this alone,” she moaned.
“You want me to help you serve cocktails,” I managed, blinking. “But…I was fired—”
“Oh, who gives a shit about that? I’ll pay you,” said Gwen, her eyes wide.
“It’s not about the money,” I said quickly, shaking my head. I would never take money from Gwen for helping her out. “It’s Melody,” I said softly, with a grimace. “If Melody sees me—”
“Let her. Everyone knows we’re understaffed, and I challenge any one of those Sullivan women to argue against someone offering to help me in my hour of need,” muttered Gwen, bristling. “If Melody says anything to you, you just tell me. It’ll be like—justified homicide.”
I smiled in spite of myself at my best friend’s fierceness. The fact that Melody was a vampire—that if she didn’t exactly like me being here, she could do something quite drastic and final about it—wasn’t exactly a piece of information I could share with Gwen.
Honestly, though, I didn’t think Melody would be so bold as to drain me dry.
Still, Mags had certainly tried it. I massaged my forehead and took a deep breath.
But the truth of the matter was this: I wasn’t afraid of Melody. And I was no longer afraid of Mags. I didn’t have anything to lose.
And that made me just as dangerous as they were.
“Okay,” I said quickly, sliding my legs over the side of the bed and standing with a stretch. “Just tell me what to do and how to do it. I’ve never served cocktails before.”
“You’re a lifesaver,” Gwen said with a squeal, hugging me tightly. “There’s just…one more thing,” she murmured with a wince. She glanced down at herself.
And at her tiny, very revealing maid outfit.
“Oh, no,” I muttered, holding up one hand. “I’ll help you serve the cocktails, but I have to draw the line at a skirt that’s too short to even be defined as a skirt.”
“Hey, Tommie went to so much trouble to pick these costumes out.” She held up another dry-cleaner’s bag with a chuckle and a wink.
“Yeah, well, you can bet that I’m going to give Tommie an earful later,” I muttered, snatching the bag from Gwen’s hands and turning to trudge into the bathroom.
“You know she’d probably find that earful sexy,” said Gwen from the bedroom, as I sighed with a smile and unzipped my skirt, unbuttoned my blouse and took off my clothes, stepping into the maid uniform.
One glance in the mirror, and I chuckled beneath my breath. Oh, God, I looked completely ridiculous.
I usually wear old-fashioned sorts of clothes. I guess my style is a little retro, classic, elegant, and when I wear costumes, I’m usually cross-dressing—as a pirate or a male vampire, laughably—not as a scantily clad female servant.
I looked genuinely pained and uncomfortable in the dress. I noticed as I turned in front of the mirror that I was trying to walk a little lower, with my knees bent—not that this would actually aid the skirt’s ability to cover my rear.
I have a long torso and legs which requires me to wear long-waisted garments, or things just end up looking too short on me. It is a very specific woman who looks great in a very short skirt and plunging neckline.
And trust me: I was not that specific woman.
“Rose, I’ve already been gone ten minutes. We might have a riot on our hands if we stay away any longer,” Gwen muttered outside the door. I swept my hair up in a high ponytail and applied Gwen’s lipstick, and then I was out the door, self-consciously shifting from one foot to the other as Gwen looked me up and down.
“Pretty terrible, right?” I asked, and Gwen wrinkled her nose, head to the side.
“I mean, no. It’s not bad,” she said carefully, which is Gwen’s way of saying yes, absolutely terrible in the nicest way possible. “But we have to go,” she said, threading her arm through mine and all but dragging me out her bedroom door and down the hallway.
Now that I was in the corridor where anyone could, in fact, see me in this ridiculous outfit, I felt more embarrassed than ever. A breeze could be felt in bodily regions that made me highly aware of how little I was wearing. We trotted down the spiral staircase to the drawing room floor, and we clicked across the red and black tiles as Gwen muttered information over her shoulder—how to hold the drinks tray; the fact that it was an open bar, so money wasn’t changing hands, but that the guests were tipping.
If my run-in that morning with the hundred-dollar tipper was any indication, vampires tipped very well. So at least there was that to look forward to.
But it was a small consolation as we reached the drawing room door. The door was partially open, and a few vampires lingered outside of it, smoking and talking in small groups as they lounged against the wall. T
hey didn’t pay Gwen and me any sort of attention as we walked past them, and then we were in the drawing room itself, where it was, blessedly, dark enough that my hideous outfit would be partially hidden—I hoped.
The far wide fireplace was lit, and a few lamps were on, but their small bulbs were of such a low wattage that my eyes actually had to adjust from the dimly lit hallway to the very dimly lit drawing room.
The room was very crowded but hushed. Everyone spoke in low tones, and there were a few punctuations of laughter, but for the most part, vampires lounged on couches and chairs or leaned against walls and milled in the center of the room. It was a very low-key party, with cigarettes dangling from lips and wine glasses and martini glasses in hand as they bent their heads to one another and discussed things in soft voices.
“Here,” Gwen whispered, picking up a tray of full glasses from a table by the door. “Carry it in front of you and ask people nicely if they’d like a drink. They’ll put their finished glasses on your tray, too, if they have one, so bring those back to this table and keep going, okay?”
I nodded, took a deep breath and accepted the tray. I glanced around the room, steeling myself as I remembered who exactly was here. The tray itself and its glassware wasn’t very heavy, but the prospect of interacting with Melody had taken the wind out of my sails. It’s one thing to have bravado before the event, and another thing entirely to be brave during it. I was doing my best. I just didn’t want a scene. I didn’t want her to pick me apart in front of Kane, something I believed that she was entirely capable of doing.
I carried the antique tray into the room, aware of the wood against my palms, of the gentle clink of the glasses together as I shifted my weight to hold the tray more securely. The scent of tobacco, of expensive perfume and clove cigarettes began to merge with the scent of the alcohol as I drifted to the right, looking for a familiar face.
“Would you like a drink?” I asked the occupants of a low, red velvet loveseat, narrow but still long enough to hold five women. They’d had to get creative with the seating arrangements to make themselves all fit, however. Dolly sat on the far right end of the loveseat, in the lap of a woman dressed in a suit, the woman’s buzz cut blonde hair and flashing eyes utterly captivating. Dolly herself was resplendent, her short blonde curls swept back from her face. She wore a plunging blue dress that the Leave it to Beaver mother might have shown off in a more liberated time than the fifties. Dolly leaned forward with a bright smile as she glanced up at me, her necklace of fat pearls dripping down over her décolletage and making her even more beautiful with its refined elegance. But, to be perfectly honest, Dolly would have been beautiful in a potato sack.
“Rose, are you helping Gwen out with the drinks? That’s so wonderful of you! I heard about Clare being sick. That’s just awful. I hope she’s all right soon,” said Dolly all in a rush as she snatched up a martini glass from my tray. “And, oh, my gosh, Rose, how lovely you look! You totally have the legs to pull off that dress. I don’t think I could quite manage it,” she laughed and winked at me.
“I think it’s ridiculous,” said Jane succinctly, from beside Dolly. She had her left ankle on her right knee and an arm around the woman who held Dolly in her lap. Jane’s mouth was in a thin, hard line, and she looked as sour as usual as her eyes swept over me. She, too, wore a suit, her blonde hair formed into a pompadour style, the tie over her chest shot through with silver thread that glittered in the low light. She frowned deeper as she gave me the once over. “It’s ludicrous, that maid’s uniform. Why was Tommie permitted to be so self-indulgent?”
“No one else wanted to think about it, and Tommie stepped up to the plate,” said Dolly. “And Rose looks fine, Jane. Don’t be so insulting.”
One of Jane’s brows went up, and she shrugged, pointedly glancing elsewhere as she shot back the drink in her hands. It looked like a scotch.
“Does anyone else want a drink?” I asked the rest of the loveseat. My cheeks were flushed, but I doubted that anyone could make out my blush in the dark room.
When no one else took a glass or showed any interest in my question whatsoever, I left the loveseat and turned, carefully balancing the tray of drinks as a man brushed past me too closely, upsetting the balance of the tray on my hand. I steadied it, breathed out a sigh of relief, and glanced up.
And there was Kane.
My heart leapt into my throat as I stared at her, and she stared at me. She leaned, of course, against the fireplace—one of her favorite haunts in the room. And, of course, she held a slim cigarette to her lips. As I watched, she narrowed her eyes and inhaled deeply from it, the cigarette smoke spiraling up and around her face, shrouding her features for half a heartbeat…but incapable of shadowing her eyes. Even through the smoke, her powerful blue eyes burned their gaze into me, down into the very deepest parts of me.
I stood, stilled by an invisible force, as Kane and I gazed at one another.
Kane Sullivan, like always, held me spellbound.
Tearing my gaze away—because I had to; because I couldn’t lose myself to those electrifying eyes again—I woodenly asked the next group of people if they’d like something to drink. I don’t remember if anyone took a glass, or even if they acknowledged me. Because like a certain and absolute gravity, my entire body was turning toward Kane again. I was so close to the fireplace. A few more groups of vampires, asking them if they were thirsty (of course they were thirsty, but not for what I held in front of me) and a few more drinks taken, I’d be right in front of her, asking her that laughable question:
Can I get you anything? Are you thirsty?
Time moved forward too quickly. Because of course I went through those groups, asked my inane questions.
And then I was standing in front of her.
Kane flicked the ash off the end of her cigarette and regarded me with her head to the side, her mouth parted a little, her lips wet and glistening in the light from the fireplace. Or maybe she was wearing lip gloss—though she didn’t really strike me as the type of woman to do such a thing. I stared at that mouth, couldn’t help but stare at that exquisite mouth.
Kane shifted ever so slightly toward me, angling her body away from the crowds, leaning one shoulder against the mantle.
“How are you, Rose?” she asked with that beautiful, deep voice.
Considering the circumstances, considering what had happened to me today, I couldn’t help but splutter, holding the tray tightly in front of me, like a shield.
“Maybe it isn’t for the best,” is what I managed to tell her, then. Her brows furrowed, and those deep blue eyes narrowed further. I wanted to tell her that I didn’t want to go. I wanted to tell her that I felt complete here, at the Sullivan Hotel.
I knew, in that moment, that even just seeing Kane every day would be enough for me. I knew, essentially, that that wasn’t really true. Being tortured every day by the realization that someone I utterly and truly despised could hold and touch and kiss the woman who’d stolen my heart…I mean, it was the most masochistic way to live imaginable.
But I’d do it. I’d do it for her. To see her. To be near her.
My jaw clenched, and I worked up the courage to tell her this, because her face belied pain, beneath the surface of her skin, deep in her heart, as she leaned forward, toward me, so much taller than me. I inhaled the scent of her, and my knees—already weak—weakened further, and then her cold, sure fingers were at the curve of my hip, radiating coolness through the cloth of my tiny dress…
And Melody came sweeping out of the crowd, like a shark descending toward its prey with grim and absolute resolve. She snaked an arm around Kane’s waist, and then she was glaring at me, her eyes flashing so dangerously, I took an involuntary step backward.
And Kane’s touch left me.
I almost cried out from how painful that was, how my heart twisted inside of me, beating too quickly, searing and anguished.
“You have drinks to serve,” Melody hissed at me, and then she wrapped h
er arms tightly around Kane’s waist. But Kane didn’t turn to meet Melody’s body. She stood square, her feet hip-width apart, her jaw clenched, too, and her shoulders rigid as she watched me back away, back away from the both of them.
Kane opened her mouth to say something, her blue eyes bright, but she closed her mouth again after a heartbeat.
What could she say, after all?
Melody looked surprised that Kane wasn’t turning toward her, wasn’t responding to her obvious advances and signs of affection, but the surprise didn’t last long. She stood up on her tiptoes and pressed her full lips to Kane’s cheek. And then she began to whisper in Kane’s ear.
It made me sick to my stomach to see how familiar she was with Kane. I turned, blinded by tears I absolutely refused to shed, and then I stood for a long moment, my back to the two of them, until I could turn and realize that the crowd had swallowed them from my view.
Why did it have to be so painful, seeing Melody with Kane?
Why did it have to feel so wrong? A kind of wrongness that made my insides cry out, that made my heart stir in me. There was so much injustice in the entire arrangement, and at that moment, I couldn’t have told you why I felt like that.
I just knew that Kane and Melody together was…wrong.
I moved on to a low antique sofa and woodenly opened my mouth to inquire whether the occupants of it were thirsty, my heart aching so dangerously it was hard to draw a deep breath.
Branna lounged on that couch, her legs crossed, and her men’s suit being worn with such grace that no one could ever call it a “man’s” suit again—it was solely meant for her. Her red-brown hair was perfectly greased back, and she was tugging a little at her bow tie to loosen it around her neck when she glanced up at me, and her large brown eyes widened as she took me in.
She stood in one smooth motion, and put a gentle hand at my back. “Are you all right?” she asked me quietly, steering me toward the door and the table to set my tray of drinks on.
Trusting Eternity (The Sullivan Vampires, Volume 2 Page 5
