Time to go. I tore my gaze away from him and over to Chanel as I stood. “Let’s go dancing.”
“Oh.” Chanel beamed. “Great.” I grabbed her hand and all but yanked her out of her seat and pulled her along behind me without so much as one last look at Mr. Irish.
No more eye contact with that man. He may not have been a killer, but my sudden and very intense response to him had me uneasy.
“I need a drink,” I announced once Chanel and I were out of the noise and chaos of the arena, my heels loudly clicking as I fast-tracked us farther away. “Champagne?”
“‘I only drink champagne on two occasions, when I am in love and when I am not,’” Chanel teased, pulling out another Coco Chanel quote.
Chanel was nineteen, but her ID had her at twenty-three, so we’d be good at the clubs.
“And what are you now?” I asked with a smile.
“Looking to get laid. So, I’ll need something stronger.” She began speaking in her own special language—that mix of French and Greek, which I jokingly called “Freek”—that she assumed I understood.
I checked the time. Fourteen minutes until my birthday. I was on the cusp of turning twenty-one.
I was born at 12:01a.m., so technically my birthday was the 31st, but I liked to straddle the two days and celebrate right smack between the 30th and 31st. My last birthday as a free woman. Who am I kidding? Was I ever really free?
A free woman wouldn’t have to turn off her phone because her friend was visiting. She wouldn’t have to avoid the hotel desk messages and detach the hotel phone from the wall because that red blinking light, indicating Papà had called, made her stomach hurt.
For such a strong woman, I was . . . weak when it came to him.
I abruptly stopped walking near the lobby of the hotel when I could have sworn I saw a League fixer turn down the hall up ahead, on his way for the main casino.
League fixers worked for League leaders, their job as straightforward and self-explanatory as it sounded. They did a whole slew of tasks for the men in charge.
Had Papà sent someone to bring me home?
When I was in Sicily for Christmas last week, I’d begged for more time, asked for one more week—just until the end of the year. I’d lied to Papà and told him it was about spending my twenty-first birthday in Vegas. I couldn’t have told him the truth, that I wasn’t ready to join The League, to become a killer.
And on top of that, I’d officially be obligated to partake in the feud between my family and Chanel’s. Her father was a notorious criminal and one of the leaders of an enemy group known as The Alliance, but I’d always felt that the hate between our families went beyond who our fathers were.
I wasn’t even allowed to breathe the same air as Chanel. When our families discovered she attended boarding school in London while I was at Oxford for university, Papà forced me to transfer out of England. He didn’t want us living in the same city. Out of anger, I simply dropped out of school and took off to Vegas at nineteen. I had a feeling I’d never bother to finish my degree. I had plenty of real world experience that couldn’t be taught in a classroom, anyway.
“What, you see a ghost?” Chanel joked as I stole a careful glimpse around the corner to where I’d thought Sebastian Renaud had disappeared.
“No, more like Sebastian.”
“The Sebastian? That super hot but total badass League fixer feared by even my father?”
Sebastian was gorgeous, but he treated me like a sister, as did most League fixers. Only one fixer, Luca Moreau, had ever come on to me, and that had been a drunken mistake. Luca was the nephew of the French League leader. He was also Sebastian’s best friend, but he was a master manipulator, and I didn’t trust him. Sex with that man was one of my biggest regrets.
I turned back to face her. “I thought it was him, but I think my mind is playing tricks on me.” I was overreacting. A big, fat checkmark in the column of strange tonight since that was also not my style. “Alcohol. I need it.” I hooked my arm around Chanel’s waist. “Let’s go dancing.”
Ten minutes later, I found myself alone at the bar while Chanel danced with a guy probably twice her age.
The bartender closest to me, Jason, knew me well. He was one of the few men I trusted in Vegas, probably because he never hit on me since he played for the other team.
“Birthday girl,” Jason announced and leaned over the counter to plant a kiss on my left, then right cheek.
“Almost,” I said while surveying the crowd dancing to a song that was a throwback to the ’90s and electronic dance music. I was pretty sure it was Confusion by New Order, made famous by the movie Blade. The good-versus-evil theme of the Wesley Snipes vampire movie reminded me of my own life. Well, minus the vampires. I was forever caught between the two worlds.
“You here to celebrate?” Jason asked after delivering a cocktail to the woman on the stool next to me.
“Yes,” I said over the pounding music pulsating through my body. It was time to relax and enjoy the evening, push my worries aside for one last night. “Whip me up something special, will you? But let’s make it official and wait until midnight since we’re in the States.”
“Ridiculous, right? Not allowed to drink until twenty-one, but you can die for your country at eighteen.”
I stilled at the sound of the deep voice behind me, that sexy Irish brogue wrapped around me like a warm caress. The man radiated “confident alpha” without the slightest hint of arrogance and had my nipples standing at attention. Good thing I was wearing sticky nipple pads beneath my halter.
“I would have to agree.” At least my voice worked this time. I slowly turned and faced the Irishman with the incredible eyes from the arena. “Did you follow me here?”
“I’m torn about how to answer.” He didn’t set a hand on the bar and lean in like most men probably would have. He kept his distance as though sensing I was a woman who liked my space. But he was close enough that the smell of his cologne fluttered to my nose. “If I say no, then it appears fate brought us together again, but I hate lying. If I say yes, then I look like a stalker.”
Or a hitman, but I quickly shelved that idea as being paranoid because the man had me smiling right now. “I happen to value honesty.”
“Then I ditched the boring businessmen and searched all the clubs at the hotel in hopes you’d be in one.” The booming surround sound muffled his gorgeous accent. “Because it’s not every day a woman knocks the breath out of me without actually doing anything other than look my way.”
It was just as hard to see in the club as it had been in the arena, the darkness fractured only by intermittent flashes of colored lights. But we were facing each other now, so I took a tour of his body with my eyes, drinking in the sight of him.
Black trousers encased his long legs. A crisp, white dress shirt, top two buttons popped, with an open jacket. A casual business look.
He had money, but he didn’t flaunt it. I’d been around plenty of wealthy men in my life, and there was definitely a stereotype out there, but he didn’t fall into that category. But I liked what I saw. My body responded, electricity zipping to every erogenous zone. I grew even hotter whenever our gazes collided.