What she finally managed to say was, “Sorry.”
Which said nothing.
It seemed to confuse Wyatt. He frowned as he zipped his jeans. His jaw worked, like he was going to say something, then changed his mind. “I’ll, uh, just call the band and let them know what’s going on.”
Right. Yeah. They needed to deal with the situation at hand. “Okay, thanks.”
“We could plan a wake for tomorrow or the night after. Probably tomorrow since we don’t have to work. We could use the riverboat where we played that gig last Mardi Gras.”
Stella wasn’t sure if it was the alcohol or the reality of her brother’s death, but she just felt numb, incapable of thinking. So she nodded, and let Wyatt handle it all. “I need to get out of here.”
“Go ahead, that’s fine. I’ll take care of everything.”
Fumbling to pull up her own jeans as she walked, Stella lost her footing. Going down on one knee, she caught her fall.
With her hand in Johnny. Pulling it back, she stared in horror at the layer of ash now coating her skin. Seriously? Could this night suck any more?
Johnny didn’t even own a dustpan. So she wasn’t even sure how she was supposed to clean up his final mess.
Wyatt’s firm grip on her waist yanked her out of her pity party. Actually, it yanked her right off the floor and upright.
“It’s okay. You’re okay.”
Um, no she wasn’t. Her brother was dead. She was a random slut. And she was the clumsiest vampire ever. “I’m all alone, Wyatt,” she repeated, the tears returning. Johnny was dead. What the hell.
“You’re not alone.” Wyatt leaned in, brown eyes dark with desire, and something else. “I love you, Stella.”
Oh, yeah. This night could get worse and that was it. Why would Wyatt say that? And why did him saying those words strike a fear almost greater than death in her heart?
“Thanks,” she said, in what was arguably the lamest response ever. “I have to go.”
And she bolted. Like a slutty, ash-covered coward.
Maybe she and Johnny weren’t so different after all.
Chapter Two
THE WAKE
(Or What They Remembered of It)
WYATT was grateful that he’d played “Carry On Wayward Son” approximately nine thousand times in his years playing with The Impalers on Bourbon Street, because he was completely distracted at Johnny’s wake.
Johnny was dead and he’d slept with Stella.
He’d told Stella he loved her and she’d run away.
He wasn’t even sure why he’d said that. He had meant it more in the way of reassurance that she wasn’t alone. That he cared about her. He did love her. He wasn’t exactly sure to what extent, but he totally did.
But what kind of crap-ass timing had that been? Her brother was dead, they had just spontaneously screwed, and oh yeah, I love you.
He would have run from that.
So basically, everything sucked and he wanted to crawl into a coffin and sleep for a century. He hadn’t slept in forty-eight hours and his eyes felt like sandpaper with an overlay of crushed glass. He had actually even reached up to wipe something off his cheek at one point during his eulogy for Johnny and had discovered it was a blood tear. Never in his whole 150 years of life had he been so mortified. Except for when he’d told Stella he loved her and she’d said thanks and left. There was that.
How could Johnny have committed suicide? And how could Wyatt have blurted out some weird random vow of love to his sister over his ashes?
Stupid. Stupid, stupid. Now he was standing onstage at Johnny’s wake in a haze of grief and liquor, staring out at the crowd of vampires who were mingling, talking, drinking, dancing in remembrance of a life, if not well lived, at least fairly long lived.
Wyatt’s eyes followed Stella, worried about her. He’d been happy to handle all the arrangements of collecting Johnny and planning the wake, to lessen her burden. He’d also been quite happy to stick his dick in her. Who did that? He was absolutely disgusted with himself. The only thing he could say in his own defense was that he hadn’t experienced the death of a friend in a very long time. Clearly, he didn’t know how to do grief anymore. He just knew how to do Stella.
Now he was playing by rote, wondering if she had enjoyed their five-minute encounter as much as he had. She seemed to have been into it while it was happening. He was positive she’d even had an orgasm. He’d felt it, that tightening around his cock, that shiver of her inner muscles, and the catch of her breath before she had called out . . .
Wyatt shifted his guitar in front of his newly sprung erection. Yeah, he was a sick bastard.
A bastard who didn’t want to be there. He’d never been big on funerals or wakes. Back in his mortal days out West, someone died, you dug them a hole, and kept on riding. There was none of this fuss and bother, and the good thing about that was you had the luxury of ignoring your feelings. You didn’t have to stand around and acknowledge that you felt lousy that you’d lost someone important to you. You could just stuff your grief down inside and never deal with it. It was the man’s way of handling death.
Saxon was showing off on the keyboard, adding unnecessary notes left and right, and Wyatt wanted to hit him on the head with his guitar. He also wanted to whisk Stella off and spend a few days naked with her until this whole thing blew over.
Then he wanted to find a way to convince her that they really should be a couple.
He settled for flicking a guitar pick at Saxon, bouncing it off his shoulder, but the satisfaction was short-lived when the keyboardist didn’t even notice, too busy flinging his long hair back over his shoulder.
Then Wyatt saw Stella. She was standing by the bar, a glass in her hand, which she drained with one smooth tilt of her head. She looked pale, even for a vampire. The dusting of freckles on her pert nose was visible from across the room, and there was a droop to her shoulders, which he imagined was from lack of sleep. Every minute or two, a vampire approached her, offered a few murmured words, sometimes a hug. Stella nodded, gave tight smiles, stiffly accepted embraces. But the whole time she clung to the bar, leaning on it, gesturing to the bartender, Jacob, to fill her empty glass no less than four times.
In all the years Wyatt had known her, she’d never been a drinker. Now twice in twenty-four hours, he’d seen her tossing them back. Apparently she didn’t know how to deal with grief any better than he did. But at least she wasn’t crying. Wyatt couldn’t take it when women cried. He found himself promising everything from diamonds to puppies to unlimited o**l s*x just to get them to stop. Wait. Maybe he should offer Stella that anyway—the o**l s*x, not a puppy.