Seeing Red(49)

Spike pushed his sunglasses back up but wisely kept his mouth shut.

Stephen sat back in his seat. “Hey. Just be decent, okay? Megan’s a grown-up and she’ll take her lumps like the rest of us, but you gotta back off. I’m drawing the line. That’s my uncle voice, not my lawyer one. The lawyer in me says, however, that I’m having my partner draw up paperwork for you to formally dissolve your rights.”

“Not gonna sign ’em. Folks’ll think I’m some kind of deadbeat. I’ll be no better off than I am now.”

“When we leave this restaurant, I do hope you find an old rusty hoe to walk spleen-first into the blade of.” Stephen stood and cocked his head toward the door. “Drive me to the airport, Seth?”

Seth didn’t answer. At the moment, he was locked in a staring contest with Spike’s manager, whose lips kept twitching at the edges as if he thought this was all so goddamned funny. Seth didn’t see anything funny about it. If this guy in an expensive suit and Italian shoes that probably covered cloven-toed hooves was rearing for a fight, Seth would give him one.

It’d been a long time since his last tussle, but Seth’s quick odds-making put him over the greaseball ten to one.

“Where’d she find this guy, huh?” Spike asked. He cocked his head sideways and tipped his chair back onto the back legs.

Stephen sighed. “You know that place where they have all the classrooms and books? Where young adults go to improve themselves? It’s called a university. Of course you would know that if you’d ever stepped out of your parents’ garage as a kid. Fucking vampire, wish I had a stake on me.”

The manager scoffed, and elbowed Spike in the ribs. “Isn’t this the same guy who made a pass at your drummer and bombed spectacularly?”

Spike pushed his shades down his nose and narrowed his eyes at Stephen. “Yeah, yeah, Chester. I seem to remember that.”

“Are you fucking kidding me? Is that what she told you? Wonder if that was before or after she asked for the sperm donation and I said no.” Stephen lurched toward the table, but Seth grabbed him by the cross of his fancy suspenders and gave him a forceful tug backward.

Shit.

People in the restaurant had been curiously, yet discreetly, watching them before. Now, they stared brazenly at the spectacle.

“High-strung for a lawyer, ain’t he?” Spike asked Chester in a stage whisper. “Must be all the inbreeding. By now, I bet that family has blood that’s pus yellow instead of royal blue.”

Nothing Seth could have done at that point would have kept Stephen away from Spike. He’d probably been tamping down that spark of violence for years, and it exploded with a fist to Spike’s jaw so hard the little fucker flew backward in his chair.

Seth stood and grabbed the back of Stephen’s shirt, keeping him from causing Spike further harm. Where had the man learned to throw a punch like that?

Maybe he didn’t want to know.

“You’ll be hearing from his lawyer over that,” Chester said, and his grin was predatory. It was almost as if he’d planned this disruption. After all, shouldn’t he have been helping his client off the floor?

“Here’s my card,” Stephen said, and he freed himself from Seth’s hold and dug a business card out of his wallet. He flicked it across the table at him. “Have him call my direct line. You want to get off your ass and give me a reason to countersue, or are you afraid of scratching up your manicure? Come on. At least make it look like a good fight. Imagine the headlines, Chester—‘Tight Spike Went Nite-nite.’ He’ll probably lose a few groupies over that.”

Spike pulled himself up, growling, as Chester pushed his chair back from the table. “I’m getting sick and fucking tired of dealing with your family,” Chester said.

“Simple solution,” Seth said. “Stop dealing with them. It’d be healthier for you.” Seth looked up to find the restaurant manager making his way through the tables pressing a cell phone to his ear. Probably calling the cops. “Shit.”

Seth hadn’t been in a real fight in about five years, and even that one was mostly Curt’s fault, but his gut said he was going to get into one now. Cops or no cops.

“Why don’t we take this outside?” He got between Chester and Stephen, who’d started shoving each other in the aisle, bumping nearby tables, oblivious to the cell-phone camera flashes lighting up around them.

“We can finish it right here,” Spike said.

Seth turned and looked over at Spike just in time to see his full water glass leave his hand. The glass that was evidently meant for Stephen clocked Seth in the jaw before it tumbled, shattering, to the floor.