“Oh.” Sherry relaxed.
“Anyway,” Alexander continued, “I started overindulging, going a little wild, doing stupid things. Just petty things, really, but it was enough. My father pulled me in to rake me over the coals. I decided in my arrogance that he was a stupid old fool who didn’t have a clue, told him to go to hell and stormed out.”
“I find it hard to believe Reg took that well,” Basil said dryly.
“Yeah, I figured you knew him when you called him Reg the first time,” Alexander said with a wry smile. “He makes most people call him Regulus. Only his friends call him Reg.”
“We have served on the council together for a long time,” Basil said with a shrug.
Alexander nodded. “To tell you the truth, I don’t know how he took it. I wanted to get as far away as I could, somewhere he wouldn’t find me.”
“And you chose Canada?” Sherry asked with a wince. “Why not somewhere warm and balmy like Florida?”
“Honey, you have an hour and a half more darkness here in southern Ontario in the winter than Florida. For a couple of young vamps eager to party, the longer the darkness lasted meant the longer the party. Besides, someone told us the girls here were . . . er . . . friendlier.”
“Those were your deciding factors?” she asked dryly. “Darkness and hos? Really? God, you were young.”
“We all were once,” he said with amusement.
Shaking her head, she waved at him to continue. “So you and Ben came to Canada, and . . . ?”
“Yeah.” He sighed. “I was away from home, my father wouldn’t know what I was up to and so couldn’t chastise me, and I went a little crazy. We were always partying. We bought bagged mixed blood by the case, and to tell you the truth, I think Ben might have slipped in a couple of black market bags, stuff we shouldn’t have been touching. There were a couple of times when I know I had more than an alcohol buzz.” He paused briefly, his expression reflective, and then he sighed and shook his head. “Anyway, that’s the state I was in when I met your mother.”
Alexander met her gaze and admitted, “I said I didn’t know she was married, that I merely dipped into her head to see that she was attracted to me and that was it. And that’s true, but the fact is, I was in no shape to dip deeper than that. I was so out of it, I’m not even sure I didn’t get some whiff that she was married. I mean, it’s possible one of the other girls said something, isn’t it? If so, I was too far gone to pick up on it.”
Basil shifted behind her, and Sherry glanced over her shoulder to see that he was now frowning. After a hesitation, he said, “The nanos would have cleared your system relatively quickly. You said you sat with them until they left. You should have been clear-headed by then and—Oh,” he ended on a sigh.
“What ‘oh’?” Sherry asked, frowning now herself as she turned back to her father.
“Basil just read my mind,” Alexander explained to her, and then said, “What he found was that, like I said, we were buying it in boxes. We had a box in the back of our car most nights, including that one, and we would excuse ourselves saying we were going to take a leak, but instead of going to the men’s room we would slip out to suck back another bag or three. We did that any time our buzz showed the least sign of wearing off.”
“You were a mess,” Sherry said solemnly.
He nodded. “To tell you the truth, if your mother hadn’t been so exceptionally lovely, I’m not sure I would have recognized her in the ER when they rolled her in. I didn’t remember most of the women I slept with during that time.”
Sherry bit her lip. His being drunk didn’t excuse what he’d done, but surely it mitigated it somewhat? Maybe?
“I didn’t tell you this to give you an excuse. Being in that state does not take away my responsibility for my actions. I chose to be in that state, and then I went out and did exactly what my father said I would do and hurt someone,” Alexander said quietly now. “I didn’t know it until two months later, but I did. And when I realized . . . well, it was a wake-up call. I haven’t touched mixed blood since the day I saw your mother being wheeled into the ER.”
“Sherry said she didn’t think you’ve dated since then either,” Basil said, and it was a question.
Alexander nodded. “It wasn’t because . . . well, I just devoted all my time to Sherry and didn’t have time for women.” He shifted his gaze to Sherry and moved forward to grip the bars as he said, “So you see, I really did earn my punishment. And it won’t be so bad. I was only nineteen, and I’m still young so I heal fast. It’ll be over in no time,” he said with false bravado.
His expression turned serious then and he said, “I just . . . You’re my daughter. I love you, Sherry, and I have since the minute I laid eyes on your wrinkled, red little face in the hospital. And I hope you’ll come to forgive me for what I did to you as well as your mother. I want to continue to be a part of your life.”
She had a father. One who had always been there for her, and always would, Sherry realized. Tears blurring her eyes, she started to nod and then whipped her head around at the sound of a door opening. Lucian came into the hall with Mortimer on his heels. Her ten minutes were up.
Turning to her father, she reached through the bars to squeeze his hand, blurted, “You’ve always been here for me. I love you too,” and turned to hurry past Lucian and Mortimer with her head bowed so they wouldn’t see her tears.
She didn’t slow until she was outside the building, and then she spun to grab Basil by the front of the shirt and asked, “He was lying when he said it would be over in no time, wasn’t he?”
Basil grimaced. “I’m afraid so. Even though he was only nineteen, it takes time to heal between each . . . er . . . round of punishment,” he finished finally.
“Then you need to do two things for me,” Sherry said firmly.
“What’s that?” he asked warily.
“You need to get me a couple bags of one of those black market blood mixes, the blood of someone who has taken morphine maybe. And you need to get me in to see him right before the punishment, and I mean like right before.”