Shuffle

One week later . . .

“Thanks for letting me do this,” Chuck said somewhat breathlessly to her twin sister, Chloe.

“Oh, sweetie, you’re the one doing me the favor,” Chloe replied. “Aidan and I have been trying to get some alone time all week. But you better hope nobody catches on, or we’re both in trouble.”

Chuck wiggled her hips and jiggled her bazooms, feeling for all the world like a marlin on the business end of some deep-sea fisherman’s hook while the two of them struggled to get her into Chloe’s skimpy costume. It was more than skintight. It was the first layer of dermis; the drywall beneath three layers of paint, two layers of wallpaper, and a couple more layers of paint.

It also didn’t help that, even though they were identical twins, Charlotte was just a little bigger on top. Which meant that by the time they managed to squeeze her into the red-and-orange sequined ensemble, designed to look like the fires of Hell, she was ready to pop right back out again.

“Nobody will catch on,” she insisted, sucking in a breath and praying the twins—the other twins—would stay put long enough for her to get through the night.

“If they do, we’ll both get fired. You’re sure you know the routine? All of it?”

“Backward, forward, and inside out,” Chuck assured her sister. “We practice together almost every day. You know darn well I could do this in my sleep.”

Chuck was no showgirl, nor did she want to be. But their mother had signed them both up for dance classes almost before they could walk. Ballet, tap, ballroom . . . Charlotte and Chloe had tipped their toes and twisted their hips to just about every type of music in existence. They’d also gone the whole Toddlers and Tiarasteen beauty queencollege scholarship by way of pageant route, but that wasn’t something Chuck liked to talk—or think—about.

But even though you could take the girl out of the dance class, you couldn’t always take the dance out of the girl. Chloe had followed in their mother’s footsteps—quite literally—by becoming a showgirl, shaking her stuff onstage six nights a week at Lust, and doing her part to keep Vegas’s tourism boom booming. The male faction of it, at any rate.

Chuck, however, only worked through Chloe’s routines with her because it was a great workout. If she didn’t, she would probably never exercise, and her penchant for junk food already made her the bustier, hippier twin. She didn’t need to become the “morbidly obese one” while her sister remained the perpetually “pretty one.”

“If you mess up,” Chloe continued to fret, “tell them you aren’t feeling well. Tell them you have an inner ear infection that’s throwing your balance off.”

“You’ve been saving that one, haven’t you?”

Chloe didn’t blush—they’d been too close all their lives and had gone through too much together to be embarrassed by much of anything. Instead, she cocked her head and flashed a wide grin.

“Yeah, but you can use it if you need to.”

“I won’t need to,” Chuck assured her. “You can still use it to beg off for some hot date.”

Chloe fiddled a bit more with Chuck’s makeup, fluffed the long, orange feathers hanging off her butt and making her look—in Chuck’s opinion, anyway—like a giant rooster, and then reached for the humongous headdress that was the one piece of the costume that gave Chuck pause. The thing weighed a ton, and visions of her neck snapping in half, her skull hanging at a perfect ninety-degree angle, kept flashing through her head.

This entire scheme had been her idea, but that didn’t mean she wanted to spend the rest of her life as a quadriplegic. Not for a story. Not even this story. It was a good one; a make-orbreak, career-building story. She just wasn’t sure it was worth sipping Thanksgiving dinner through a straw.

“With any luck,” Chloe said, oblivious to the squeak of wheelchairs rolling through her sister’s mind, “I won’t have any more hot dates to call in sick for. I think Aidan might be the one.”

“The One?” Chuck asked as Chloe lifted the feathered, sequined, five-thousand-pound medieval torture device onto her head. “Capital T, capital O?”

“Uh-huh.”

She winced as hairpins were driven into her scalp to keep it in place. “Aren’t you moving kind of fast?”

“You know my policy—the faster the better. And this one is on the hook.”

Speaking of hooks . . . Chuck wiggled around, trying to get comfortable in the costume her sister wore every night. Or some variation of it, anyway.

Black fishnet hose and five-inch, rhinestone-studded heels. Faux onyx and ruby chandelier earrings and choker necklace so heavy they were becoming embedded in her flesh. Feathers and sequins everywhere. She couldn’t decide if she’d be better off walking The Strip thumbing for johns, acting as a standin for one of the Gabor sisters (Zsa Zsa, for sure), or running for her life from Colonel Sanders.

How did Chloe do this on a regular basis without either breaking her neck or slowly losing every ounce of her selfrespect?

Of course, Chloe would never willingly switch roles with Chuck, either. The most creative storytelling her sister had ever done was when she’d tried to convince herself the stick hadn’t turned blue.

“Just be careful, okay?”

Chloe’s penchant for serial dating made Chuck nervous. This was Las Vegas, for God’s sake. And even though they’d both grown up here, both been raised by a former showgirl who’d taught them street smarts before she’d taught them to use the big girl potty, that did not mean they couldn’t still be hurt.

They called it Sin City for a reason, and there were all sorts of unsavory elements crawling around, just waiting for an eager, vulnerable woman to cross their paths. Or even a reluctant, self-sufficient one who wasn’t paying close enough attention to her surroundings.

Then again, perhaps Chuck didn’t have room to talk. She hadn’t had a date since MacGyver was still on the air. Nuns got more action than she did, and lately, she’d even begun to wonder if her virginity might be growing back.

Medical experts would probably say that was impossible, but stranger things had happened. And she should know—she was the Queen of Strange and Bizarre Occurrences.

“I will. You, too. This is kind of dangerous, you know,” Chloe reminded her, as though they hadn’t had this discussion a million times since Chuck had concocted her plan just one short week ago after trailing Sebastian Raines through his casino for several hours and turning up nothing. Now she intended to snoop around his home turf—preferably without getting caught. “If anyone finds out what you’re doing and why . . .”

“They won’t.” She hoped. “We’re identical”—give or take a few Little Debbie Snack Cakes—“remember? We used to do this all the time in school. I can pretend to be you almost as well as I pretend to be me.”

Chloe chuckled at that just as a shout from the dressing room on the other side of the minuscule bathroom door made them both jump. Their eyes met, and even though Chuck had run through this a thousand times in her head, her heart was still pounding, and tension bounced between them.

“Showtime,” Chloe said, and she meant it in more ways than one. She gave Chuck a final once-over, checking her long, fake, glittery lashes, the lines going up the back of her stockings, the fluff of her feathers.

“All right,” she said, pressing a slim plastic card into Chuck’s hand. “Here’s my employee key card. It will get you into all the areas we’re allowed to go, but guests aren’t.” She blew out a nervous breath. “Break a leg.”

Chuck winced. She knew her sister meant it in the best possible way, but Chuck didn’t want to hear about breaking anything when she was very afraid she might end up doing just that.

“You go out first, and I’ll hide here until the coast is clear.”

That, too, was part of The Plan. Chuck nodded, and when Chloe leaned in for a quick hug, she hugged her sister back—really, really tight.

This wasn’t the first time she’d done something slightly wacky or gone above and beyond for a story, but it was the first time she’d come up with something quite this over the top. Or dragged her sister into one of her wild and crazy schemes. Which meant that if it went wrong, it could go terribly wrong for both of them.

Sebastian Raines stood in the backstage shadows of Lust, watching the end of the evening’s final performance. No one saw him; or if they did, their brains didn’t register his presence.

He was one of the richest men in Nevada, possibly the entire United States or even the world. He’d built the Inferno from the ground up, making it the single most popular casino in Sin City. But that didn’t mean he spent a lot of time observing the everyday goings-on of the place or the activities of the countless humans who kept his business ventures flush with greenbacks.

He made his rounds, popped in on some of the big spenders, and let himself be seen out in public just enough for people to know he was the boss and he was in charge of everything that went on under his roof.

But after the last hour, he could understand why Lust—the Inferno’s version of an entertainment venue-slash-gentleman’s club—was so very popular.

The dancers onstage were fully dressed and doing nothing more than shaking their perfectly synchronized bon-bons, but their costumes were sexy enough—and suggestive enough—to convince the hundreds of men in the audience that they might have a chance at something more at the end of the night.

There would be no lap dances at Lust, though, and no dollar bills being stuffed into g-strings, either. Not as long as Sebastian’s men did the job they’d been hired to do.

All of the dancers onstage were walking wet dreams, beautiful and shapely, and flashing just enough skin to tease the audience, working them into a fine lather before trotting off to the safety of their group dressing room.

But only one interested Sebastian.

The one who had been following him on and off for the past few weeks. The one who was soon to be engaged to his brother, unless Sebastian could find a way to stop her.

This wasn’t the first time Aidan had fallen head over heels for a pretty face—or a tight body. It wasn’t even the first time he’d seemed determined to shackle himself to one of them.

When it came to other people’s motives, Sebastian’s little brother had a tendency to be slightly naïve. He’d been that way before they’d been turned, and hadn’t changed much in the last few centuries.

Which was why Sebastian once again found himself in the unenviable position of having to play . . . well, big brother. But in a manner he didn’t particularly like, and that he was sure Aidan wouldn’t approve of if he knew what Sebastian was up to.

There had been many times in the past when he’d had to run off eager lasses intent on landing themselves a wealthy husband in Aidan. More recently, he’d been able to run simple background checks, and then a hefty check of a different sort—along with a well-worded, but solemn threat—was usually enough to send them packing.

This time was different, though. Something about this particular woman was different.

According to Aidan, Chloe Lamoreaux was nothing more than a showgirl in his (Sebastian’s) own casino. And that was something Sebastian would normally believe . . . Aidan always went for the showgirl types. But that didn’t explain why someone who was supposed to be a simple dancer, with no ulterior motives for dating his brother, had been following him.

Even in a casino full of people . . . full of cigarette smoke and the mingling of a zillion different perfumes and colognes . . . he’d sensed her almost immediately. Smelled something sweet on the air that had never been there before.

He hadn’t been able to place it; still couldn’t. But it had caught his attention and caused him to roll his gaze in a slow sweep of the area until he’d spotted her standing on the far end of the room, doing her best to blend in with the small crowd surrounding a blackjack table.

She hadn’t done a very good job. Not only did she not look terribly interested in the card game, but she’d worn sunglasses indoors—something only he had a habit of doing—and cast furtive glances over her shoulder every few seconds . . . very pointedly in his direction.

So what did a woman involved with his brother want with him?

Was it simply a money thing? Sidle up to one brother, but keep her options open in case the older sibling—who happened to be the 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.