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The sitting room, especially, was completely different, now full of rugs and brightly colored furniture, ten-foot plants, and a bevy of family portraits. And on that comfy furniture lounged a bevy of Merits.
"Merit!" squealed the youngest in the family, the nearly two-year-old Olivia, my sister Charlotte's daughter. She was adorably dressed in a green velvet dress that matched her mother's, her hair in pigtails that poked from each side of her head.
She ran haltingly toward me and held up her hands, clenching her fists, demanding that I pick her up.
"Hello, Miss Olivia," I said, putting my flute on a nearby cocktail table and propping her onto my hip. "You are so heavy! How did you get so heavy?"
"I grow," she said simply.
"I think you weigh as much as your mother does."
"I'm taking that as a compliment to me, little sister." Charlotte, wearing a green sheath, her dark hair cut into a short, pixie cut, kissed my cheek. "How are you?"
"I'm good. And it looks like Olivia's good."
"I'm two," Olivia said, holding up the requisite number of fingers.
"That is really old," I said. "You're a big girl now."
Olivia nodded gravely, then took a shy peek at the man who stood beside me. Charlotte was much less subtle.
"Oh my God, you are gorgeous!" Charlotte exclaimed. She had a cocktail in one hand and, suddenly, Ethan's arm in the other. "I told her to nab you while she could."
Ethan beamed at me. "She nabbed," he said, apparently delighted by the familial attention.
"Maybe now she'll finally trust that I'm right about everything," Charlotte said. "She had a very difficult time with that growing up."
"She still has a difficult time with it. I'm nearly always right, and she seems to forget that fact rather often. It's unfortunate, really."
"I bet," Charlotte said.
"Where's Major?" I asked. Major Corkberger was Charlotte's heart-surgeon husband.
"On call, of course, as usual. He's a surgeon," she added to Ethan, as if the news was confidential. Ethan nodded politely.
"Here, Olivia, why don't we let Auntie Merit and Uncle Ethan say hello to everyone else?" Charlotte asked. Olivia held out her hands to be swept away by her mother.
Ethan didn't verbally object to being called Uncle Ethan, although he did look a bit paler than usual - a difficult feat for a vampire.
"Uncle Ethan?" he asked, when Charlotte walked away.
I slipped my arm in his. "Just keep breathing, Sullivan. Isn't that what you've been telling me?"
I introduced him to Elizabeth, Robert's sable-haired wife, who looked nearly ready to pop with child number three. Ethan helped her off the couch when she needed a hand, and he managed not to wince when she wrapped him in a hug.
"We are just so glad Merit's found someone who makes her happy."
"Thank you," he said. "I do my best."
Elizabeth looked back and forth between us, a knowing smile on her face. "Mm-hmm," she said, a hand on her belly. "There's a lot of potential here. I can see it."
I finished my champagne in a single gulp. "Another glass maybe, Mom?"
"Oh hush," Elizabeth said, giving me a playful slap on the arm.
I'd always liked Elizabeth. Where Robert was the spitting image of my father, physically and emotionally, Elizabeth was funny and grounded. She was still a society girl, her father a magnate in his own right, but she'd always seemed comfortable in her own skin, like she didn't need to show off in order to prove her worth to everyone else.
"I assume your intentions are honorable?" she asked Ethan.
"What answer won't get me in trouble?" he asked, and to a one, every human female in the room over the age of ten sighed.
I rolled my eyes, but inwardly, the entire conversation was kind of . . . awesome. For the first time in my life, I didn't feel like an outsider in my own family. I had a family of my own, a partner in my escapades. We were here - together - so I didn't feel like the odd duck out.
And then, on the other end of the spectrum, was the man who'd seemed to make it his life's purpose to transform me into something else. From shy teenager to socialite. From human to vampire.
"You're here."
We turned to find my father in the doorway. Joshua Merit walked in, utter confidence in his stride. My older brother, Robert, joined him.
Like me, my father had dark hair and pale blue eyes. Robert had my mother's fair coloring, but he and my father shared the same aristocratic features and square shoulders.
"Ethan," my father said, walking forward with a hand outstretched. They shook hands, but Ethan's posture didn't change.
There was no sense of sycophancy or toadying about him. He might have been a guest in my father's home, but he was a force to be reckoned with in his own right, not a politico eager to hop onto my father's coattails.
"Joshua," Ethan said. They shook on it, and my father turned to me.
"Merit," he said, a bit awkwardly, and without offering a handshake or a hug.
"Dad," I said, then looked at my brother. "Robert."
Robert seemed older than the last time I'd seen him. More mature, or perhaps simply with more weight on his shoulders. He stood in line to take over Merit Properties, so there would have been plenty of weight to go around.
"Hello, Merit," he said, then nodded at Ethan. "Robert Merit."
"Ethan Sullivan."
They looked at each other for a moment. I wouldn't have called my brother the protective type, but there was something vaguely threatening in his eyes. I wasn't na?ve enough to think it had anything to do with me. Robert was protective of my father and the family name, and I imagine he hadn't yet decided whether Ethan was a threat.
After a moment of staring each other down, Robert's posture eased a bit. "You're looking well," he said to me.
I nodded. "Thanks. Congratulations on the baby. Elizabeth seems very happy."
He nodded the same way my father did. Just a bob of the head, as if he were too busy to waste motion on anything more excessive.
"We're very blessed," he said. "It looks like you're having a rough go of it this week."
"Our popularity waxes and wanes," Ethan said, "as it always has. At the moment, there is very clearly a vocal crowd of anti-vampire Chicagoans."
"Unfortunate," my father said, "that they would judge a man based on his physical attributes, rather than his deeds."
"Hear! Hear!" Ethan said.
