In his mind’s eye, Ryan saw the sassy, confident Lisa of just two days ago, strutting across the honeymoon suite in black lace and marabou feathers like she had all of Las Vegas in her hand.
That had been the walk of an accomplished actress, playing a role. In front of him now was a broken woman, a real woman, mourning what she saw as lost forever.
Both of them tore at his heart as he remembered the true Lisa—the passionate and compassionate woman who kissed like a firework and protected those she loved like a guard dog.
Lisa swiped the key card in the lock of the door and pressed down on the handle, swinging the polished wooden door open slowly and fearfully.
Once they were out of the entry, Ryan pushed gently around her right side. He could be Lisa’s voice and take that burden away from her.
“Gina Mae? Are you here? It’s Ryan.”
His voice echoed off the marble and glass of the suite. Only silence answered back.
Lisa didn’t say anything, just headed toward the bedroom, opening every door in her path and giving a cursory look inside.
“Ryan, she’s not here.”
Ryan’s own adrenaline pulsed a little more quickly. He’d been certain Gina Mae would be back in her suite getting ready for this evening’s ceremony and awaiting an olive branch from her granddaughter. But instead of Gina Mae, they were greeted only by silence.
“Ok. Let me call Pops. If she’s not here, she’s with him.”
Ryan pulled his cell phone out of his pocket and dialed Pops. When his grandfather answered, he cut straight to the chase.
“Hey, Pops. Is Gina Mae with you?”
“No, I just woke up from a nap.” The older man punctuated his sentence with a shallow yawn. "Isn’t she with Lisa at the spa?”
“No.” He didn’t want his grandfather to worry, but he couldn’t sugarcoat what was going on. “They had an argument and Gina Mae left. Lisa and I are in the suite now. She’s not here.”
Lisa stood at the expanse of glass at the back of the room, looking out. Her shoulders began to tremble and Ryan knew she’d begun to cry.
“Pops, just stay put and don’t worry. I’ll call the hotel staff. I’ll take care of it. They’ll find her.”
“You’ll call me as soon as you hear, right, Ryan?” Worry had overtaken the sleepiness in Pops’ voice.
He could reassure Pops, he could reassure Lisa. He hoped he could reassure himself. “Of course, Pops. You know I will.”
Ryan disconnected the call and started to dial the concierge desk like he had the other night. He hesitated, wanting to wrap Lisa in his arms first and dry her tears.
But her tears would stop for good when she knew where Nana was, and the sooner he made the call, the faster that could happen.
As soon as the attendant at the desk answered, Ryan cut off her formal answering speech. “Winter, it’s Ryan McBride. I need your help again, this time to look for Gina Mae Fleming, my grandfather’s fiancée. She’s gone missing. Can you talk to security?”
“Certainly, Mr. McBride. Give me ten minutes and I’ll call you back.”
“Thanks, Winter. I appreciate it.”
Ryan put the phone back in his pocket. He started to reach for Lisa, then hesitated. “They’re going to find her, Lisa. Remember what I told you last time? There are a thousand eyes in this hotel. Security knows everything. No one just disappears in a Las Vegas casino.”
The glassy topaz sparkle had fled from her eyes, chased away by the dull gray haze of worry. He’d lost himself in her eyes before. Now Lisa was the one who was lost. And so was Gina Mae.
Ryan knew he had to do everything in his power to rescue the older woman.
The two most important people in his life—Pops and Lisa—were counting on him.
“Ryan, what if she doesn’t come back?” Lisa’s shoulders shook briefly with the stifled hiccup that signaled a lingering desire to cry.
“Lisa, why wouldn’t she come back? People have disagreements. They get angry. Then they work it out. Gina Mae does not seem like the kind to hold a grudge. Especially not against you.”
Lisa continued to stare straight ahead, focusing her emotion on the to-and-fro so many floors below where they stood.
“Because she has Alzheimer’s. I’ve seen stories on the news about Alzheimer’s patients who get lost and can’t get home. They put things like Amber Alerts out for them.” Her voice wavered slightly as she talked about the idea of a warning being issued across cell phone texts, TV alerts, and highway signs.
Ryan tried to will his phone to ring with an update, but it stayed silent.
“You don’t know that for sure. You won’t know until you get her into a doctor. She’s probably just out buying a new pair of shoes or earrings for tonight. You know, something borrowed, something blue...and all that.”
Lisa turned around to face him. Fresh tear tracks snaked down her cheeks, bordered by the thinnest thread of mascara on the edges. “No, she told me this morning as she was walking away. She went to Dr. Reynolds herself months ago and kept it from me. That’s why she wants to marry Bill. She wants to be happy and enjoy herself while she still can.”
Ryan touched the pad of his thumb to one of Lisa’s trails of tears, wiping them gently away. He wished he could wipe away her sorrow and fear as easily.
She leaned forward, falling into his chest, and he collected her in his arms, cradling her as gently as a kitten. He pulled her tight with one arm and stroked her hair rhythmically with the other, providing her a safe place to sob as her fears pushed to the surface and refused to be contained.
“We’re going to find her, Lisa.”
Her tears soaked circles in the front of his shirt. “We have to, Ryan. It’s all my fault. It’s all my fault.”
“Let’s go downstairs. I know the chief of security. We’ll talk to him directly. We’ll find her, Lisa. Whatever it takes.”
Ryan felt his heart crack with each haltingly choked sob that came from Lisa.
And that’s when he knew his whole world had changed.
He didn’t want to marry Lisa, like he’d half-joked yesterday, because it would make their grandparents happy and would solve some problems. He didn’t want a marriage of convenience just to check some boxes.
He realized he wanted a marriage of inconvenience.
Because he’d fallen in love with Lisa Fleming when he’d least expected to. And that was seriously inconvenient for a man who’d just quit his job and didn’t know where he was heading with his life.
All he knew was he loved this honey-eyed woman who completely loved her Nana and her students and her belief in happily ever after.
He wanted her to love him too. She deserved her own happily ever after, and he was going to make it happen.
Neither of them grew up with a traditional family. But they had the chance to come together and create their own, with Nana and Pops too. Ryan knew whatever his next steps were, he needed to use his time and energy to make a difference.
And right now, he needed to be that difference for Lisa. He needed to be her rock. And he needed to make sure that he left no stone unturned to find Nana.
Lisa pulled back and wiped her eyes with her fingers, wiping mascara toward the side of her face. She looked like a raccoon.
But as long as she was his raccoon, Ryan didn’t care.
“What are you smiling at?” Lisa sniffled as she tried to get the words out.
Ryan hesitated slightly, not knowing if this was the right time to say what was on his mind. He’d made a living taking calculated risks. And saying the right thing to Lisa right now was probably the highest-stakes event he’d ever been in.
Lisa deserved the best he could give right now, though, and that was honesty. So he decided to reply simply.
“You.”
“Me?” Her shoulders squared slightly.
“You’re just beautiful, that’s all.” He decided to deny Lisa the opportunity to protest. They had work to do. “Let’s go downstairs
and find Nana.”
The elevator was not descending to the lobby fast enough.
The doors were not opening fast enough.
The path down the large hallway was not clear enough.
The butterflies in her stomach were not flying away enough.
Lisa could not keep the nervous energy from shaking every fiber of her being. Her hands felt as though she’d had a cappuccino with a double shot of espresso, followed by a mochaccino chaser. Her heart raced like one belonging to a sprinter at the finish line. Her thoughts flitted around, as mixed and jumbled as a toddler’s toy box.
“Ryan, I’ve got some information for you.” An imposingly tall man in a midnight black suit waved them over as soon as they came near the concierge desk.
“Have you spotted her, McGivern?”
“Well, yes and no. Come over here to the security desk and I’ll show you some of our CCTV footage.”
“Lisa, this is Blake McGivern, the Renaissance’s head of security.” Ryan held Lisa’s hand and gently directed her toward a desk near the back of the expansive lobby. As they stopped at the desk, Ryan gestured back toward Lisa with his free hand. “This is Lisa Fleming, Mrs. Fleming’s granddaughter.”
“Miss Fleming, we’re doing everything we can to locate your grandmother. Can you tell me if the woman in this footage is her?”
Lisa leaned in toward the small TV and tried to decipher the figures on the black and white image. “That one, back there by the lounge chair on the right. That’s her.”
At least she thought it was. The image was small and a little grainy, and she couldn’t say with one hundred percent certainty.
She knew only two things for certain right now. One, she had to find Nana—and quickly—before her heart burst from nervous adrenaline overload. And two, she didn’t know how she could ever repay Ryan for his cool, yet compassionate, handling of the situation.
He’d taken control, made phone calls, directed her movements. When they found Nana, it would be largely due to Ryan’s quick thinking, seemingly endless contacts and resources, and unflappable presence under pressure.
As he spoke in deliberate undertones with McGivern, Lisa forced her mind to slow enough to think about the situation from a different angle. Not the Nana angle. The Ryan angle.
In so many ways, Ryan McBride was Lisa’s polar opposite. She was a drama nerd, driven by emotions and grand gestures, and a sense of scene and moment.
Ryan was deeply analytical, kept his emotions in check, and never made a move without considering the consequences.
And while her first priority was finding Nana, as Lisa watched Ryan take control of the situation with a practiced authority, she wondered what her life would be like if she lost Ryan’s presence in her life too.
“Lisa? Did you hear me?” Ryan tapped her on the shoulder to get her attention.
“No, I’m sorry. My mind is wandering.”
Ryan let his hand linger on her shoulder. The simple gesture gave her some grounding, some strength.
“I know. It’s ok. If that woman you identified by the pool is Nana, they also have footage of her leaving the hotel.”
Fear closed her throat with the breath-robbing choke of a roundhouse kick to the throat.
“Oh, dear God, please, no.” The short, ineloquent prayer escaped Lisa’s lips with the last bit of air she had left. Tears brimmed along the edge of her eyelids. “She doesn’t know her way around Las Vegas. Where would she go? How will we find her, Ryan?”
“We’ve already called the police, Miss Fleming.” The Renaissance Grand’s head of security nodded at the officer behind the desk. “And I’m alerting the security teams at the other hotels in our immediate area. We will find her.”
“He means it, Lisa. They’ll find her.” Ryan placed a hand on each shoulder and squared up her posture. He looked her straight in the eye.
A parade of worst-case scenarios started a relentless march through her mind. A dreamer’s imagination could be a wonderful tool, or the script for an outlandish made-for-TV-style movie, full of twists and turns and fictional implausibilities that seemed real.
“Ryan, they have to.”
“They will. Do you want to go back to your room and wait?”
Lisa locked her gaze straight on him. She needed him like a life preserver in a cold, battering ocean. She couldn’t process all the emotions in her veins and all the thoughts that continued to whirl.
“No. Please don’t leave me by myself. I just keep thinking of all these things that could happen to Nana, alone on the streets of a strange city.”
“Okay. Come with me. I need to drop by the Shamrocks for Students tournament and tell NCN that I need to reschedule my interview.”
Ryan’s voice sounded calm and gentle. The syllables reassured Lisa. Ryan knew so many people all over this town. Lisa knew he’d use every contact he had, every string he could pull to make sure Nana returned safely.
Lisa knew she just needed to trust him.
Except for Nana, Lisa had trusted lots of people in her life, and they’d always let her down. A playboy bachelor gambler in the middle of Las Vegas didn’t seem like someone to break that streak, even though she had to admit, Ryan was not the stereotype.
Still, trust didn’t always come easy to Lisa, and she knew it. But Nana was alone on the streets of Las Vegas. Lisa didn’t have any choice. She had to put all the faith and trust she had in Ryan’s hands.
Lisa had to bet it all on Ryan.
They wound around the hotel and through the casino area before coming to an area roped off near the main auditorium where the Shamrocks for Students tournament was being held. Posters of schoolchildren lined the walls in the immediate area, larger-than-life-sized black and white images of kids working with technology, studying, and finding the spark ignited by learning. Each photograph was accented with details that had been shaded in primary colors. The pop of color drew in the eyes and Lisa found herself studying each child’s face closely.
It was a welcome respite from the worry about Nana that had gnawed at the corners of her mind since she first woke up this morning and decided to use their trip to the spa to cover contentious territory.
She knew then that she’d have kicked herself for not talking to Nana about calling off the wedding.
She just didn’t know how much harder she’d kick herself for the consequences of that conversation.
“This won’t take long, I promise. Then we’ll go check back in at the security desk and see what they’ve found out, and make our plan from there.”
Every security team in this part of Las Vegas had been alerted to look for Nana, as had the police department.
“I know. I don’t know the city or the hotels around here. There’s not much I can do right now.”
“It’s going to be okay, Lisa.” He gave her hand a light squeeze. The significance of the gentle touch felt heavy—they were in this together, a team.
Holding Ryan’s hand served as a tangible reminder that she wasn’t alone.
Even if she felt completely alone without Nana.
Ryan spoke quickly with an NCN producer. “All right, I’ll see you back in a few hours. Thanks for understanding.”
“Everything settled?” Lisa hadn’t been able to keep her wandering mind focused on anything Ryan had said to the TV crew.
“They’ll have to rearrange a little bit, but Tony assured me he could do it. They want an interview with me, so they may not like my terms, but they’ll agree to them because it gets them ten exclusive minutes with the guy who walked away from the table. I’m the hottest story in their beat right now.”
“Mmm-hmm.” Lisa looked at a white-haired woman sitting down in front of a flamingo pink slot machine. It could have been Nana, but it wasn’t.
“The hottest story in my beat right now, though, is finding Nana.” Ryan stopped in the middle of the room. “Look at me.”
Flashing lights blinked and digital music snippets played all around them. He placed
one hand under Lisa’s chin and turned her head slightly.
Lisa forced the fog from her mind and pulled the muscles in her eyelids up.
“I told them I had a family crisis to take care of.”
“A family crisis?” Lisa pushed the words out on a shaky breath. Why had he described it that way to the TV crew?
Ryan nodded and held her hand tightly. She could feel herself trying to pull his strength through where their palms touched, so she could use it as her own.
“A family crisis. Today is the day our grandparents are getting married. We’re going to find Gina Mae and she’s going to marry Pops and achieve her goal of having the best life she can in the time she has left to enjoy it. And you and I are going to enjoy life right alongside them. We are all in this together, Lisa.”
Lisa’s throat tightened like the grip of a Venus flytrap on an unsuspecting insect. She swallowed hard, trying to open up the passage so she could breathe.
The only words strong enough to battle through to the surface were those of her deepest fear.
“What happens when she fades away and no longer knows who I am, Ryan?”
“The heart never forgets, Lisa.” The blue of his eyes was as open as the sea where it meets the sky to form the horizon. She looked closely and saw the edge of forever in them. “And when the mind does, I’ll be there with you.”
Ryan leaned over and touched his lips to hers, a gentle kiss that punctuated his statement with a language her heart would understand long after her own mind had forgotten most of what had happened today. Lisa allowed herself to fold into Ryan to pull even more of his strength to her, to give her the support she so desperately needed. As she did, she felt the weight that had dragged behind her since childhood fall away.
Ryan met her wordless invitation, deepening the kiss, and as Lisa opened her mouth slightly, she felt a gentle river of emotion push through her veins and open her heart as well.
She’d spent far too long being lonely. But her heart told her that if she’d just believe in Ryan, she wouldn’t be alone, no matter what lay ahead.
Lucky in Love Page 14