by Holly Rayner
Love will come when you least expect it, and from an unlikely direction.
Fortune telling isn’t real, though. There’s no way that could have meant Luciano.
Right?
Chapter 8
Luciano
Nick is waiting for me at the bar adjoining the first-floor lobby of my apartment building. This bar is owned by our mutual friend Henry, and although he isn’t here tonight, it’s become a favorite drinking spot for our entire social circle. I can be assured of finding at least one of them here on any given evening, which is a good thing, because tonight, I could really stand to spend time with a friend. The past twenty-four hours have been too strange, too much a whirlwind of events. I need something regular and reliable, something that will make me feel like my feet are firmly on the ground.
Nick is still in his suit, although he has loosened the slim red tie he always wears around his neck. As I approach the bar, I see that he’s drinking a martini. I watch as he sets the glass down, picks up a toothpick, and begins poking around to get the olive. I make my way up to the bar and take the seat beside him. Today has run me down so much, between one thing and another, that I feel like slumping over and resting my chin on my hands, but of course, I don’t. People are watching.
The problem is Dani. I can’t believe she’s gotten under my skin this much. I keep replaying in my mind all the rude things she’s done and said to me today, all the ways she’s sold me short since I met her. It’s as if she’s determined to think I’m a bad person, and I can’t understand why. Why would she assume, without even knowing me, that my intentions are suspect?
And what exactly are my intentions, for that matter? I think back to my conversation with Maggie last night. Was it really that I wanted to take Dani to bed? That doesn’t feel right, somehow. I mean, I would like that—she’s a very attractive woman—but I certainly didn’t go to her hotel this morning and offer to buy her and her friends breakfast just so I could get with her.
It’s Las Vegas, after all. Half the people here are looking for a one-night stand they can forget about over breakfast. If that was all I wanted, I could get it, and I certainly have in the past. If that was all I wanted, it wouldn’t matter to me if Dani respected me or not. Let her think I’m a dumb jerk, as long as we can have a hot, passionate night together.
But I do care that she thinks so little of me. Why?
I flag down the bartender and order myself an expensive scotch. Nick’s eyebrows go up when he hears the name.
“What are we celebrating?” he asks as the bartender pours.
“We’re chasing our blues away,” I correct him. I tip my glass in his direction, down the whole thing in one swallow, and push it back to the bartender. “Make it a double this time.”
Nick pivots on the barstool so he’s facing me. “What’s the problem?” he asks. “You lose some money at the tables?”
“No, I’m actually up,” I reply. “Not by any substantial amount, but I hit a few lucky numbers last night.”
“So, what seems to be the problem?”
“Oh, I don’t know. I met this woman.”
“Cute?”
“Hot. Very.”
“Nice.” Nick winks.
“I don’t know. She was pretty rude to me. We kind of ended on bad terms. Actually, I shouted at her the last time I saw her.”
“Wait,” Nick says, setting down his drink. “The last time you saw her? How long have you been seeing her? You didn’t tell me you were involved with someone. How long has this been going on?”
“No, no, hang on,” I cut him off. “We’re not involved. We met last night.” I explain the events of the last twenty-four hours, from my initial fight with Dani over the car show tickets to our blowout when I tried to buy breakfast, and finally, the shouting match that just took place outside the theater when she tripped in the crosswalk.
Nick blows out a breath. “Wow.”
“Yeah,” I agree.
He drains his drink and signals for another. “I haven’t seen you like this about a woman since Ilsa. Is this the next Mrs. Oliveira?”
“I’d say no,” I tell him. “She can’t stand the sight of me, and to be honest, at the moment, I’m not too impressed with her, either.”
“Well,” says Nick. “That’s obviously not true.”
“What do you mean?”
“She’s all you can talk about, isn’t she? From the moment you came in here, you’ve been moping about her. It’s very unlike you, Luciano.”
“I know,” I say. “I don’t know why I can’t get her off my mind.”
“Isn’t it obvious?” Nick says maddeningly. “You’ve got feelings for her.”
“I haven’t got feelings for her!”
“Of course you have.” He ticks things off on his fingers. “You took her into the platinum game room at the casino, and you never bring people back there. You’ve only taken me in there once. Then, you sought her out at breakfast and offered to treat not just her, but her friends, too. You can’t stop obsessing over the fact that her opinion of you isn’t what you want it to be. I mean, my God, Luciano, your voice changes when you say her name. You actually care about her.”
My stomach drops unpleasantly.
“I can’t care about her,” I say. “She’s not local. She’s from California. She’s going home in a few days.”
“What, California on Mars?” Nick scoffs. “You can’t be talking about the California that’s just a few hours’ drive from here.”
“Nick—”
“I’m serious. It’s been a long time since I’ve seen you like this. I think you need to make a move. Throw some money around. Rent a stretch limo, drive her around town, bring some nice champagne and take her out to dinner…”
“No,” I say shortly. “I don’t want to do any of that. Not after what happened with Ilsa.”
“What do you mean?”
“You know. She took me for everything I had in the divorce.”
“Oh.” Nick takes a long, thoughtful sip of his drink and begins work on fishing out the olive again.
I think back to my relationship with Ilsa. I truly did love her in the beginning, and I thought she loved me too. She certainly acted like she did. I remember being so infatuated with her that I would remember tiny details in the stories she told me and bring her little gifts having to do with them, just to make her smile. She always exclaimed over the gifts, rewarding me with kisses and declarations of love, and as time went on, my gift-giving became more and more elaborate. By the time we’d been dating a year, I was regularly buying her jewelry and designer clothes. When I proposed to her, I actually flew us to France so we could have our iconic moment in front of the Eiffel Tower.
I thought she was in love with me. In reality, though, she was more in love with the lifestyle, in love with the fact that I could give her anything she wanted. And eventually, inevitably, she realized she didn’t need to stay tied to me for the rest of her life, and she left.
At least I’m not heartbroken over it. I was, at first. But I very quickly adjusted to my new single life, and I’ve made the most of it these past five years. I’m not sad, and I’m not lonely. And I’m certainly not going to make the same mistake with another woman.
Maybe Nick is right. Maybe I do have feelings for Dani. Honestly, the fact that I’m still thinking about her after our last encounter makes it pretty hard to ignore. I should have put her out of my mind. I’m angry with her. But part of me is still wondering how long she’ll be in town, still hoping I’ll run into her again. She’ll be here tomorrow morning, I’m sure. I doubt she’s flying out late tonight. Maybe I can go over to her hotel in the morning.
And do what? Offer to buy breakfast again? She’ll just turn me down and accuse me of stalking her. Besides, I just decided I didn’t want to try to win her over by spending money. That was my mistake with Ilsa.
Nick swirls his drink and sucks the pit from his olive.
“If you don’t want to rent
a nice car and buy her champagne,” he says, “you’ll just have to be your usual charming self.”
“What are you talking about?”
“You know what I’m talking about. You’re witty. People like you, especially when you do that self-deprecating thing. How many women have you scored since I’ve known you?”
I don’t answer. The truth is, plenty, but it’s different now. Because Nick’s right. I do care about Dani. The time I spent with her, fighting included, was more fun than I’ve had with a woman in years. And I want to resolve the unpleasantness between us so that we can continue having fun together.
“When is she leaving town?” Nick asks.
“I don’t know,” I admit. “She seems like she has plans tonight, at least.”
“But she could be leaving in the morning,” Nick says. “Tomorrow is Sunday, after all. I bet she has a life she has to get back to. Tonight could be your last chance to talk to her.”
“I can’t. She was going to the show.”
“What show?”
I tell him, and he laughs derisively, which I can understand; this particular magician is famously kind of a hack. He’s good-looking, and tourists love him, but I don’t think anyone local ever goes to his shows. Nick moonlights as a magician himself, but he considers himself to be on the serious side of magic—not the pure showmanship that this guy is known for.
“That show gets out at nine, though,” Nick says. “You can catch her afterward.”
“How?”
“Do I have to do everything for you?” He leans over the bar and sticks his toothpick into the bartender’s bin of olives, spearing a couple. “Lurk outside the venue, how about that?”
“Oh, I’m sure that won’t scare her at all.”
“Then, you think of something.”
I sigh and get up from the bar, dropping a few bills to pay for my drink. As much as I hate to admit it, I know Nick is right: this could very well be Dani’s last night in town, and if she leaves Las Vegas, it’s almost certain that I’ll never see her again. I may have to resort to stalker tactics if I want to track her down and try one last time to clear the air between us, but it will be worth it if we can get back to that camaraderie we had when we first met.
Not to mention the fact that I’d love to recapture—and further explore—the chemistry I felt between us just now out on the street. Whatever that was, it was powerful.
I say goodbye to Nick and head outside. Where would a group of bachelorettes go? Here in Las Vegas, it’s impossible to predict. They’re going to want to be somewhere they can get a drink, of course, but that’s everywhere.
There are only two things I can know for sure, I realize as I stand on the street corner, trying to make up my mind where to head next. They’ll emerge from the magic show around nine, and at some point, they’ll make their way back to their hotel.
But what should I do? I don’t want to just sit around at the casino drinking and watching the lobby. Should I take my chances and wait until breakfast tomorrow? I’ll know better than to offer to pay this time—I could just ask her to join me for a bite. After the way her friends reacted to me this morning, I feel pretty sure they wouldn’t mind me borrowing her.
I don’t want to wait, though. I don’t want to go home and sleep through the next twelve hours when I could be spending time with her. After all, once she goes home, that’s it. We’re unlikely to ever see each other again, no matter what Nick says.
With a sigh, I turn and head back to Dani’s hotel, the Castello. Realistically, it’s the best chance I have of finding her tonight, and it might be my only chance. I’ll just have to hope it’s the right call.
Chapter 9
Dani
The magic show turns out to be a lot of fun. It’s flashy, over the top, ostentatious, and a little ridiculous—everything I would have asked of a Vegas show.
We buy popcorn and beer at the concession stand, despite Liz’s admonition that if we’re going to drink beer now, we probably won’t be able to drink cocktails later, and pester Sandy about whether we should try to sneak into the young, attractive magician’s dressing room so she can have a last fling before she becomes an old married lady. It’s nice to have someone else on the relationship hot seat for a while, and Sandy doesn’t seem to mind. She’s laughing right along with us, encouraging us to find the door to the backstage area and asking whether we think she should ask the magician to make his clothes disappear when she sees him.
When the show is over, we wander out onto the street, still talking about the magician’s last illusion, in which he levitated a ball and made it float out over the audience’s heads. It was a pretty cool trick, and Melanie and Rhonda are debating how he might have done it. Liz thinks he must have used strings, but Rhonda insists that the ball went right over her head and she didn’t see any strings.
Molly taps a few buttons on her phone and says a car is coming to pick us up.
“Where are we going?” I ask her. Our hotel is only a few blocks away, so she can’t be calling a car to drive us that distance. For that matter, Las Vegas is so jam-packed that everything we need is within a few blocks. We’ve walked everywhere we’ve wanted to go so far, and I expected to go on doing that.
“We’re taking the scenic route back to the hotel,” Molly explains. “I just hired a limo to drive us around the city so we can get an informal tour, and they’ll have plenty of drinks in the back for us.”
“Will we be back in time for karaoke?” Sandy asks. She’s been talking all day about a sign she saw in the hotel lobby advertising karaoke until midnight.
“There’s three more hours of it,” Molly says. “We’ll be back in plenty of time, I promise.”
“Sounds awesome, then!” Sandy says.
The limo pulls up and the six of us pile in. It’s a little cramped in the back, but that’s part of the fun of the experience. Melanie, who is nearest to the fridge, reaches in and pulls out a bottle of champagne and some chilled glasses, which she begins filling and passing around to the rest of us.
When everyone has a glass, Melanie raises hers. “To a magical night!”
“Hear, hear!” we say, and drink.
Outside, the bright neon lights flash by in a rush, blurring together, seeming to form lines of color around us. The effect is hypnotic, and I sit back and gaze out the window, letting the chatter of my friends wash over me.
It’s been a tiring weekend already. Back home, I certainly wouldn’t drink like this two nights in a row, nor would I spend hours and hours out on the town. And thanks to all the drinking and being out in the desert heat, I’m starting to feel sort of dehydrated. I think I’m getting a headache, and I realize I’ve barely drunk any water all day. When we get back to the hotel, I’ll get some.
Unbidden, Luciano makes his way into my thoughts. I nearly groan aloud, trying to shove him back out. Who does he think he is, popping up everywhere the way he does? Even in my head! And shouting at me the way he did on our last meeting, in front of all my friends, as if I’d done something horrible to him. And accusing me of inserting myself into his routine! If he didn’t want to be around people, he shouldn’t have made his home in one of the most popular tourist destinations in America, for God’s sake. Besides, he’s the one who’s following me, not the other way around. I don’t need any more proof of that than the fact that he showed up at the hotel breakfast. There was no reason to be there if he wasn’t looking for me. He as good as admitted it.
The limo jolts, hitting a pothole. My brain feels like it’s rattling in my skull. This headache is definitely escalating.
I wish we could go back to the oxygen bar. Maybe I’ll sneak out and find my way over there while the others are doing karaoke. I personally have no wish to get up on a stage and make a fool of myself in front of people, no matter how drunk they—and I—may be. Karaoke is exactly the kind of activity that will leave me wincing with regret in the morning. I’ll find a way out of it.
I nudge Sandy, who is
sitting beside me. “You don’t have any headache medicine on you, do you?”
She frowns. “You okay?”
“Just dehydrated, I think. I’ll get some water when we get back to the hotel, but I’d rather cut this headache off before it escalates, you know?”
“Gotcha.” Sandy fishes in her purse for a minute and then tips two white pills into my palm. “There you go.”
I swallow the pills dry. The effect is almost immediate—the tension in my head drains away. In fact, it feels great. It’s as if relaxation has been liquefied and is being poured down my spine, spreading to my limbs. I feel a smile make its way across my face. I should have asked for this painkiller earlier.
My headache neutralized, I pass my glass back to Melanie, who is now issuing refills to the other girls, and accept a second helping of champagne. Tonight is going to be great; I can tell already.
A little while later, the limo pulls to a stop in front of the hotel and we pile out. My friends are laughing, which is making me laugh, which is making them laugh even harder. Everything seems inordinately funny right now. I stumble a little and catch myself on Rhonda’s shoulder, and she embraces me, still laughing.
Sandy grabs my wrist and tugs me toward the bar area of the hotel, where the karaoke is in full swing. I’m already pondering which song I might be willing to sing with her. I’m dimly aware of the fact that just twenty minutes ago, I was certain I wouldn’t be participating in karaoke, that I would be finding an excuse to slip away, but what was I so grumpy about?
Chapter 10
Dani
An hour later, and the six of us are perched at a high table in front of the stage where the karaoke machine is set up. We’ve already been called up once—to sing our standard group female empowerment anthem for karaoke nights and dance parties—and Rhonda and Sandy have put their names in for another song. Now, the songbook is making its way around the room again, and I’m considering going up for a second time myself. We’re drinking rum and cola, and I’m feeling loose and floaty and carefree. I don’t think anything could bring me down right now.