“You all good, Cami?” Crystal looked doubtful.
Cami felt a little lost at sea—not drunk, not drugged, exactly, just tired and ready for home. “Yeah, everything’s all right,” she said. “I’m going to get an Uber home.” Crystal looked at Alistair skeptically. Cami leaned a bit against him.
“I’ll make sure she gets in the right car,” Alistair said.
“I’m going to text you in the morning, okay, Cami? And remember to text Jess,” Crystal said, as Cami inelegantly hopped off of the bar stool Alistair had gotten for her.
“I’ll text you both,” Cami said. It felt like she was on a boat, almost—as if the floor under her was moving. She didn’t feel that drunk, though. What is going on with me?
“Let’s get you outside, get you some fresh air and a car home,” Alistair said. He took her arm, and somehow Cami felt both more lost and more comforted at the same time as he helped her steer her way through the club to the entrance. Alix, the bouncer at the door, gave her new friend a dubious look, but when Cami reassured him that she was fine, he let them leave the club together.
Alistair steered her toward a nearby bench, and Cami took out her phone, struggling with the fingerprint ID for a few seconds before she could get it to work. She opened the Uber app and peered at the screen, trying to see if it had found her location properly.
“Can you check this for me? I don’t want to deal with an annoyed driver trying to find me,” Cami said and then giggled with the memory of the last time that had happened.
“Yeah, that’s where we are,” Alistair confirmed, setting the pickup.
“Oh no!” Cami said, sitting up a bit. “I meant to get pizza before I went home.”
Alistair chuckled. “I don’t think you’ll be awake long enough to eat it,” Alistair pointed out.
“Still,” Cami said, pouting.
Alistair looked across the street to the open Rose Street Pizzeria, and then glanced at her phone. “He’s ten minutes away,” Alistair said. “Let me get you some pizza. I’ll be right back. Are you going to be okay?”
Cami considered the question. “For ten minutes? Yeah, I’ll be all right,” she said, smiling fondly at him. “You’re so nice!”
Alistair snorted. “Be right back,” he said, starting off across the street to the pizzeria.
Cami watched him, her thoughts free-floating and irrelevant as she waited for either her car to arrive or her new friend to come back.
By the time Alistair approached with a takeout box of pizza slices, the car arrived. By then, though, Cami barely knew where she was. The last thing she remembered was getting into the car, and Alistair climbing in behind her, saying something to the driver. After that, everything went dark.
CHAPTER TWO
Nicholas
Nicholas looked at his cousin, still holding the takeout box from Rose Street Pizzeria. Alistair didn’t look exactly proud of himself, but there was the faint sign in his expression that told Nicholas that his cousin wasn’t exactly displeased with the situation either.
“You’re sure it’s her?”
Alistair nodded. “I checked her ID when we were in the car,” Alistair said.
Nicholas glanced at the guest room door, closed to give their unexpected guest some privacy, and sighed. He’d seen the girl—Camille Bakersfield, Alistair had said her name was—when his cousin had brought her in, fully asleep. “She’s going to be pissed when she wakes up,” Nicholas pointed out.
Alistair shrugged. “Nobody has touched her, and nobody will,” he said. “I can just say that I was worried about her, wanted to make sure she was safe. Besides,” he hefted the takeout box, “I have pizza for her. Peace offering.”
“You still should have been more cautious,” Nicholas said. He looked at the closed door again. If his cousin was right, the fortunes of the Overton clan would change practically overnight—but only if they moved quickly. And only if they could get Camille on their side.
“You wanted her,” Alistair pointed out. “I managed to find her. I think we can make this work.”
Nicholas pressed his lips together, exhaling slowly through his nose. “Eli and Dylan will be here soon,” Nicholas said. “Somebody had better be up when she comes out of it. Somebody has to explain.”
“I’m good for another few hours, at least,” Alistair said brightly.
Nicholas rolled his eyes. “What are you going to do? Explain to her that she needs to stay here for at least a week? Do you even know anything about her other than who she is?”
Alistair frowned, losing some of his exhilaration at his success, and Nicholas felt a mixture of satisfaction and guilt at letting the wind out of his cousin’s sails. “She doesn’t have to stay for a week right away,” Alistair said. “We let her wake up, meet us, explain some of the situation” He shrugged.
Nicholas shook his head. “We can’t explain some of the situation without explaining all of the situation,” he pointed out to Alistair. “She’s going to have questions. You should have started slow.”
“She’s too” Alistair sighed. “You’ll see when she wakes up.”
Nicholas raised an eyebrow. “Too what?”
Alistair shrugged. “As soon as I spotted her, I couldn’t not bring her home,” Alistair said. “I mean, I know she’s supposed to be different. But if anything convinced me that she’s the one we need”
“We’ll see,” Nicholas said, turning his back on the door. He heard Elijah and Dylan—the other two Overton clan members looking for the woman Alistair had managed to find—coming into the house and started down the hall to meet them. He’d sent a text when Alistair had arrived home, easily balancing the unconscious Camille and box of pizza slices, hurriedly explaining that he’d found the one they were looking for.
“Did Alistair really find her?”
Nicholas shrugged off Elijah’s question. “He says the ID checks out,” Nicholas replied. “But we’ll see when she wakes up.”
“If he has, then thank God,” Dylan chimed in. “I’ve been getting tired of the search.”
Nicholas scowled at his older cousin. The stakes were not quite as high for Dylan as they were for the rest of the clan; his part of the family was still doing well. But if they didn’t manage to secure Camille—assuming she was who they thought she was—then even Dylan’s branch of the Overton clan would go down, as the rest of their kind would.
“We have to take care of this,” Nicholas said firmly. “We have to win her over to our side of things as quickly as possible, since Alistair decided to just bring her here right away.”
“Well, what else was he going to do?” Elijah asked. “Playing it slow risks someone else finding her and playing ‘keep away.’”
“Thank you, Eli,” Alistair said, appearing from the hallway. “That was exactly my point.”
“I still think that if we’d taken it slow and introduced ourselves to her gradually, we’d get a better result,” Nicholas said.
“You’re just jealous Alistair found her and not you,” Dylan suggested. Nicholas growled low in his throat, but he couldn’t quite argue the point. They’d been looking for the woman for months, ever since they’d gotten an update about how to find her; he’d been hoping that he’d be the one to track her down, to introduce her to what she needed to know. And the woman Alistair had brought in, if she really was the woman the prophecy meant, was definitely someone Nicholas wanted to spend a lot of quality time with—in spite of the fact that she’d been unconscious.
The woman Alistair had brought in was beautiful, there was no question. She’d been in a slinky, curve-hugging dark green dress with a moderately low neckline, along with heels high enough that when Alistair told Nicholas that she’d apparently been bar-hopping that night as part of a bachelorette party, Nicholas had let out a low, respectful whistle. She had long, dark hair that was in a slightly messy bun, and delicate features highlighted by just enough makeup to do the job. They’d taken care of her and tucked her into the bed
in the guest room together, and Camille Bakersfield had looked tiny among the pillows and blankets; Nicholas guessed that she was maybe 5’5”, at most 5’6” tall, and with curves that had practically begged to be touched. All of her height was in her legs; her torso was short, adding to the hourglass effect of her figure.
“No,” Nicholas said to Dylan’s accusation. “I’m worried that Alistair bringing her right here is going to create an issue where she’s going to freak out, run away, and immediately not trust us.”
“We just have to handle it the right way,” Eli said with a shrug. “I mean, neither of you did anything creepy to her while she was out, did you?” He raised an eyebrow, and Nicholas looked at Alistair. Technically, nothing they had done was--strictly speaking--creepy. But depending on Camille’s state of mind on waking up, Nicholas could easily imagine that she wouldn’t agree.
“One of us--at least one of us--needs to be awake when she gets up,” Nicholas said firmly. “Someone needs to be on hand to explain the situation to her.”
“We haven’t even agreed on how much we’re going to tell her,” Alistair pointed out.
“As little as possible,” Nicholas said. “She doesn’t need to hear it all at once. She won’t believe it if she does.
“Then just how are you going to get her to stay here for a week, at least?” Dylan asked.
“We’ll deal with that later,” Nicholas said. “The first thing is to make her as sympathetic to us as possible.”
“You’re making it sound like we’re kidnappers,” Elijah said.
“Technically, we kind of are,” Dylan pointed out.
“She got in the Uber willingly,” Alistair said.
“Yeah, but where did she think she was going?” Dylan asked, crossing his arms over his chest.
Nicholas sighed. “She’s here now,” Nicholas said. “The goal is to keep her here as long as possible—and to make sure she does it willingly. We can handle the rest of it when we’ve gotten her to agree to stay with us for a while.” He looked at his three cousins and took a deep breath.
“So, which one of us is going to sit up and wait for her to wake up all hungover?” Elijah looked around the group, and Nicholas knew that they were waiting to see if he was going to take responsibility or delegate it.
“We’re all going to be on hand,” he said. “We’ll take turns napping until she gets up, but we need to all be available.” Annoyance flickered across Dylan’s face, and resignation across Elijah’s. Alistair had likely—Nicholas thought—expected him to make that exact decision.
“Can we at least get a peek at her before we commit to staying up until probably—what—noon?” Dylan asked.
Nicholas shrugged. “If you can be absolutely silent and not risk waking her up, then sure,” Nicholas said. He knew that if he forbade it, the two cousins who hadn’t been there when Alistair arrived home with their quarry would just do it while he napped during the wait for the woman to wake up.
“She’s pretty fully out of it,” Alistair pointed out. “I mean”
Nicholas looked at his cousin sharply.
“Oh god, you didn’t, like, bathe her or anything, did you?” Elijah looked almost horrified at the idea.
“No!” Nicholas said.
“Justmade her a little more comfortable than she would probably be in going-out clothes and makeup,” Alistair said, looking away.
“Yeah, she’s immediately going to think we’re the creepiest creeps that ever creeped,” Elijah said.
“Hopefully, we can talk her out of pressing charges,” Dylan mused. “‘I know you’re probably super freaked out right now, but hey, we’re looking out for your skincare routine!’”
“What’s done is done,” Nicholas said.
“Oh, is that what you’re going to tell her? I’m sure that will win her over,” Dylan said.
Nicholas scowled at his cousin. “What are you going to tell her?”
Dylan shrugged. “I’d go with, ‘If you agree to stay here for a week, I’ll buy you the pet of your choice, anything other than snakes,’” he said.
Nicholas snorted. “You are not going to do that,” he told his cousin. “Not the least of which because, ideally, she’ll stay here longer than a week, and I’m not taking care of whatever pet she decides she wants.”
“She could decide she wants an entire Iditarod dog sled team, and you’d put up with it,” Dylan pointed out. “All four of us would.”
Elijah shrugged, and Alistair smiled wryly. Nicholas tried to scowl, but instead, he sighed because Dylan was right: Camille was too important. They’d agree to just about any terms she could come up with because all of them needed her.
“Let’s go and sneak a peek,” Elijah suggested. “Then, we can figure out who takes the first nap.”
CHAPTER THREE
Cami
Cami woke up all at once, her heart beating fast. Somehow, even asleep, some part of her brain had realized that something was wrong. Her head throbbed, but she didn’t feel the usual hangover nausea or body aches; in fact, she felt remarkably well-rested. But even before she opened her eyes, Cami knew she wasn’t in her own bed. Her own bed—while she had put as much money as she could afford into making it as comfortable as possible—was not nearly as comfortable as the one she woke up in. What the fuck? What the fuck? What the fuck? She took a deep breath and opened her eyes. She definitely was not in her own bed, in her own apartment, or anything like it.
“What the fuck,” she murmured, looking around.
The first thing she noticed was that she was not in the dress and heels she’d worn out; somewhere along the line, either she or someone else had taken those off, switching them for a pair of expensive but extremely comfortable silk pajamas. Her hair was down out of the bun she’d put it in, and the lack of colorful smears on the pillow told her without checking a mirror that her makeup was off.
Then there was the fact that she was in a bed at least twice the size of her bed at home. It was an antique, four-poster behemoth, with half a dozen pillows and what felt like a quality duvet covering her. The room was almost the size of her whole apartment, with a fireplace on the wall directly facing her, a door leading to what Cami thought—hoped—was a bathroom, and a comfortable-looking chair and couch alongside a window that looked out on a heavily gardened yard. The floor was antique hardwood, dark and smoky looking from years of use, and she thought the dresser in one corner of the room might be older than she was.
“What the hell happened last night?” Cami sat up in bed, trying to piece together what she could remember. Getting into the Uber, Alistair climbing in next to her, and then? “Son of a bitch!”
She nearly tangled herself in the blankets hurriedly getting out of the bed, stumbling before she righted herself and threw the heavy, warm material back. Cami roughly combed her fingers through her messy hair, looking around, trying to find her clothes. “Not important,” she told herself, anger bubbling up through her brain as the rest of the possible events of the night—events that she had apparently either been blacked out or unconscious for—became apparent to her. She saw a pair of slippers, clearly placed for her use, but kicked them aside on her way out of the bedroom she’d woken up in, grabbing the ornate doorknob and twisting it as hard as she could.
“Where the hell are you?” Cami shouted as soon as she left the room, following the hallway the door opened on. “Alistair?” Fear warred with anger in her mind for two seconds, as the possibilities—increasingly outlandish but no less worrying—presented themselves to her.
“Guys? I think she’s awake,” Cami heard someone say a moment before she emerged from the hallway and into a marble-floored foyer. On one side, a grand staircase with brass handrails led upward; to her right, Cami saw a small entry space and ornate, carved wooden doors with wrought-iron decorations. The marble was cold underfoot, and for maybe half a second, Cami regretted not putting the offered slippers on—but a heartbeat later, her anger came back, and she continued forward
toward the sound of the voice, through another set of double doors.
“Alistair!” Cami trudged into the room, and then—as she took in the sight in front of her—came to an abrupt stop. She had expected to see the man she’d met at Lost Weekend the night before, and Alistair was there, sitting slouched on a long Chesterfield, in pajama pants and a tee shirt. What she hadn’t expected was to see three other men, all of them equally good-looking—though in different ways—all looking up at her from their positions about the room.
One of the men sat in an oversized wingback chair, one leg crossed over the other, a phone in his hand. He had short, dark blond hair and chiseled features, light eyes, and a broad chest that his tight tee shirt did nothing to disguise. Another man was sprawled on a second couch in the room: his light brown hair fell to just under his chin, messy but still appealing as a frame for a strong-featured face with generous lips and big, brown eyes. He was broad-chested, with strong upper arms and wide hands, his lean body not quite hidden by the baggy tee shirt and faded sweatpants he had on. A third man was perched in another chair, all legs and arms: his medium-brown hair fell to his shoulders in loose waves, the ends curling in different directions. When he put his feet down on the floor and sat up, Cami saw that the rest of him was just as slim as his slightly gangly legs and arms, his artistically ripped shirt and pajama pants hanging on him strategically.
“I still have your pizza,” Alistair said. “If you’re hungry, I mean.”
Cami stared at Alistair for a moment and opened her mouth, but nothing came out. She closed her mouth, took a deep breath, and tried again. “What...the hell...is going on here?”
Alistair glanced at the man with the short blond hair in the oversized wingback chair.
“Who the hell are these people?”
“Who won the betting pool on what her first words to us would be?” the long, skinny one asked.
“Technically, no one,” the blond on the couch said, sitting up. “Since none of us went with ‘where the hell are you.’”
House Of Dragons (The Cami Bakersfield Saga Book 1) Page 2