The VIP Doubles Down (Wager of Hearts Book 3)

by Nancy Herkness

  So she pulled out her phone and typed: I’m standing on the steps of the Bellwether Club, and it’s cold out here. Tell TPTB to let me in.

  It took close to a full minute before Gavin’s reply popped up on her screen. Go away.

  “Well, that’s rude.” But at least he was reading her texts. No. If you find me frozen to death out here, it will be on your conscience.

  Is Hugh with you?

  Would Hugh’s presence be positive or negative in Gavin’s eyes? It didn’t matter. She wasn’t going to lie to him. No. I’m alone.

  Then Jaros brought you. Get in the nice warm car and go home.

  So his brain was still functioning. Too bad. She waved at the security camera again and gave it her friendliest smile.

  Since there was still no response, she walked down two steps and took a seat right in the middle of the staircase. She checked to make sure the camera could see her.

  It began to sleet. Jaros started up the steps with an umbrella, but she waved him back to his position by the car. She pulled the hood of her jacket up over her head and stuffed her hands in her pockets, hunching over so her jeans wouldn’t get too soaked. She hoped whoever was watching her on the camera would feel sorry for her.

  It took longer than she expected, but finally she heard the quiet click of a well-oiled latch and footsteps. “Ma’am, this is private property,” a deep male voice said from behind her. “You’ll have to move on.”

  She turned to look up at a large man dressed in a dark suit, his hair cut short, with an earbud wire running down the side of his neck.

  “I’m here to see Gavin Miller. He’s upstairs in the bar.”

  “Ma’am, you need to remove yourself from these steps.”

  Allie gestured toward Jaros. “You must recognize Mr. Miller’s driver, Jaros. He’ll vouch for me.”

  Jaros jogged up the steps. “Miss Allie is friend of Mr. Gavin’s. He will like to see her.”

  The security guard hesitated, clearly unsettled by the presence of the Bentley and its driver.

  The door swung open again, and a small, slender woman with silver hair wearing a navy pantsuit stepped onto the portico. “Are you Allie?” she asked in a voice that held a lilt of Irish in its husky tones.

  Allie stood. “Yes, I am. Did Gavin send you?”

  “Come in,” she said, nodding as the security guard leaped to hold the door for both of them.

  Allie gave Jaros a covert thumbs-up before she followed the woman through the well-secured portal into the hallowed entrance hall of the Bellwether Club. She couldn’t help gawking at the gigantic flower arrangement on the marble-topped table. It must have taken half a greenhouse to fill up the monstrous bronze vase. She got a quick glimpse of Oriental rugs on polished floors and a grand staircase with a carved banister before the silver-haired woman led her into a small parlor much like the first room she’d visited in Gavin’s mansion. She guessed all these rich folks had to have someplace to put the unwanted commoners who dared to come to their front door.

  “I’m Frankie Hogan,” the woman said, holding out her hand. “I own this club.”

  “Allie Nichols. Thank you for letting me in.”

  The woman’s handshake was brief but firm. She scanned Allie from head to toe before saying, “Ordinarily, I would have allowed Vincent to escort you off my property. However, Gavin could use a friend right now.”

  “How do you know I’m his friend?”

  “I was sitting with him when your texts came in.” Frankie gave her a wry smile. “He said a few things that I won’t repeat, but I caught your name among them.”

  “Is he drunk?”

  “It’s hard to tell. He often pretends to be drunker than he is.”

  “He was thinking pretty clearly during our text exchange,” Allie said. “He would have been easier to persuade if he was further under the influence.”

  Frankie gave her another of those assessing stares. “How long were you going to sit on the steps?”

  Allie met her gaze straight on. “As long as it took.”

  “Come with me.” Frankie headed for the door where a woman in an old-fashioned butler’s uniform met them. “Jasmine, please take Ms. Nichols’s coat.”

  Allie shrugged out of her sodden jacket, and Jasmine whisked it away. Frankie started up the stairs. Once again, Allie had to keep her jaw from dropping. The walls were paneled with gleaming dark wood while a massive brass chandelier hung from the center of a stained-glass skylight four stories above them. Oil paintings of fox hunts, sailing ships, and seventeenth-century ladies and gentlemen dotted the walls, each lit by its own brass lamp. Her ankle boots sank into the thick blue-and-burgundy Oriental runner that covered the steps.

  Frankie caught her staring and smiled slyly. “It’s my little joke.”

  “Whatever it is, it’s not little.” Allie shook her head in wonder.

  “My members appreciate the humor of a club so clubby that it’s a caricature.”

  “Because?”

  Frankie paused at the top of the steps. “Every member made his or her fortune from the ground up. Many of us were not welcomed at the more established clubs. So I started a place where initiative and drive are valued above accidents of birth.”

  Allie looked at her hostess—with her smooth pageboy, the tailored suit that fit her slender figure to perfection, the fierce intelligence shining in her eyes—and grinned. “I knew I liked you.”

  “I’ll reserve judgment until Gavin sees you,” Frankie said, but there was an amused note in her voice.

  Allie walked beside her into another paneled room, this one containing a brass-topped bar that matched the brass-topped tables placed at wide intervals around the room. She scanned the scattered patrons and saw Gavin sprawled in one of the upholstered leather chairs, scowling at a waiter who offered a tray with a mug on it.

  “Why the hell would I want coffee?” Gavin growled as Allie and Frankie approached. “I’ve worked hard to get this drunk.”

  “Ms. Hogan ordered it for you,” the waiter said, nodding toward them.

  Gavin followed the waiter’s movement and transferred his gaze to Allie. As he half rose from his chair, an expression she couldn’t quite read crossed his face, something vulnerable and maybe even relieved. The tension in her chest softened. “Allie!” Then he dropped back down into the chair, and a cynical smile twisted his lips. “Talked your way past the fire-breathing dragons at the gate, did you? I should have known you could do it.”

  Allie wanted to take him in her arms and smooth down his wildly rumpled hair, like her mother used to do when she was upset. Instead, she perched on the chair beside him. “Ms. Hogan was nice enough to save me from pneumonia.”

  “Frankie hasn’t got a nice bone in her body,” Gavin said. “She just doesn’t want to deal with me herself.”

  “Or maybe I’m trying to help you win your bet,” Frankie said.

  For a moment, Gavin looked baffled. “Oh, the drunken idiocy from last fall.” He surveyed Allie with a speculative gaze before he shook his head. “She’s my muse.”

  “What bet?” Allie asked, glancing between Frankie and Gavin.

  Frankie lifted one shoulder in a shrug. “Evidently, I was wrong.” Then she walked away.

  “Would you like some coffee to chase away the chill?” Gavin nodded to the mug the waiter had left on the table. “Although it would serve you right if you got sick. I told you to go home.”

  Allie wrapped her cold fingers around the steaming mug gratefully, even though she didn’t want the coffee itself. “Hugh told me what happened.” The slump of Gavin’s shoulders made her heart twist. “Movie people have the attention span of gnats.”

  “They gave up on me, Allie.” He sloshed more liquor into his tumbler. “Abandoned me like rats from a sinking ship. And it was their goddamn idea to end that last film on a cliff-hanger, not mine.”

  “Last I checked, you don’t write your books for the movies. You write them for your readers.” She moved t
he bottle out of his reach. “And your readers have not abandoned you. Look at the turnout last Thursday.”

  “My readers. I’ve failed them, too.” The desolation in his eyes made Allie shiver despite the warm mug in her hands.

  She put down the coffee and leaned forward to take his free hand between hers. He let her, which she considered a good sign, but his fingers lay inert. “Gavin, you have the Christmas book.”

  “Ah, yes. I am exuding Christmas spirit right now.”

  “That will make Julian’s point of view all the more emotionally compelling. Because you understand how he’s feeling.”

  “It’s gone.” He knocked back half his drink.

  “What is?”

  “The spark. The idea. It was barely there to begin with.”

  “Are you kidding? We discussed it for over an hour. You scribbled on your legal pad for another two hours.”

  He withdrew his hand from her grasp. “Sweetheart, I appreciate your attempt to cheer me up, but you’re fighting a losing battle.”

  “So you were just wasting my time and energy today. I call that mighty inconsiderate.”

  “I’m paying you for it.” His lips curled into a hard smile.

  That hit a nerve, so she snapped at him, “You insisted on that, not me.”

  “You should leave.”

  “So you can wallow in self-pity?”

  “Because I’m going to say something I’ll regret.”

  Tamping down her annoyance, she laid her hand on his thigh, feeling the soft wool of his trousers over the hard warmth of his muscle. “Gavin, come home with me.”

  “Move your hand a little higher and maybe you can persuade me.”

  She lifted it to cup his cheek. “It’s a better idea than giving yourself a whopping hangover.”

  Stubble scraped at her palm as he jerked his head back. “I can have you thrown out. That’s one of the perks of being a member.”

  Allie knew he was attacking her to stave off his anguish, but her temper was fraying. “Frankie let me in because she thought you needed a friend.”

  “You are not my friend. You are my employee and my lover. The latter not nearly often enough.” He toasted her mockingly.

  His repudiation sliced through her, so she pulled in a deep breath to counteract the hurt. He was just like Pie, struggling against her rescuer. Except the blood Gavin drew couldn’t be stanched with a Band-Aid.

  Folding her arms over her chest, she narrowed her eyes at him. “You want to pick a fight in the super fancy Bellwether Club? It’s no skin off my back, because I don’t know a soul here. But these are your people. You have to face them in the morning.” She leaned in and lowered her voice while she held his gaze. “I get it. You’re trying to make me leave. And you’re just about to succeed.”

  He shifted in his chair as something that might be guilt flickered in his eyes.

  She leaned farther in and dropped her voice to a whisper. “But I want you to think about whether you really want me to go.”

  She was so close to his face that she could see the lines of pain etched around his mouth and the purplish shadows under his eyes. Her anger began to seep away.

  He turned his head to stare down into his glass, swirling the amber liquid while a muscle twitched in his jaw. “I’m trying to do you a favor.”

  She sighed in exasperation. “I sat outside in the sleet until they opened the door, so I’ve already proved that I want to be here. Now it’s your turn. If you say to stay, I will. If you insult me one more time, I will leave faster than a mule running from a swarm of pissed-off bees.” Maybe an appeal to his sense of humor would break down his reluctance to accept her help.

  Not even a shadow of laughter lurked in his eyes as he raised them to her. They had darkened to nearly gray, without any light in them. He just looked at her in silence for a long moment, giving nothing away.

  She held her breath. Maybe he did want to be alone to lick his wounds in miserable solitude.

  “I—” He stopped and took a swallow of his drink. “Stay.” Then he added a plea she never expected to hear from him. “Please.”

  Gavin knew he’d revealed too much, but her words had brought light into one small corner of the gaping black hole inside him. He couldn’t tell if she was simply too stubborn to admit defeat or if she really cared, but right now, it didn’t make much of a difference. She’d told him she would stay.

  And his Allie always kept her word.

  He glanced up to find that she was no longer glaring at him. Instead, her face was gentle with understanding. He didn’t want to contemplate what she thought she had discovered about him.

  As he brooded on that, he realized that this was the second time he’d been pitied at the Bellwether Club. Maybe he would have to find a new place to hide. Or new friends to hide from.

  Friends. All of a sudden he had more of them than he could handle. That thought brightened another corner of the void.

  He started to reach for the bottle before he realized that Allie had moved it across the table again. He should finish it off just to prove he hadn’t totally given in. As he leaned forward to seize it, he realized he had lost interest in getting drunk.

  There were other, more interesting paths to forgetfulness.

  “Let’s go home,” he said, leaving the bourbon where it sat.

  Her face lit up. “Great idea.”

  “Don’t humor me. I’m not doing it because you want me to.”

  “I didn’t think that for even a split second.” She stood and watched as he lurched to his feet.

  Alcohol affected him in an unusual way. A surprisingly small amount knocked his sense of balance askew, so he staggered as though he were falling-down drunk. Yet inside his mind, everything was painfully clear. Which was a damned nuisance when he was trying to drown his troubles in drink.

  It worked in his favor this time, because it gave him a reasonable, rational excuse to put his arm around Allie. “Would you mind giving me a hand, sweetheart? Bourbon affects my inner ear.”

  “Conveniently,” she said, but she moved to his side and let him drape his arm over her shoulders while she wrapped her arm around his waist. He didn’t even have to pull her close to him, because she got right up against his body, her grip surprisingly powerful. Then he remembered that her job included helping the injured and paralyzed learn to walk again.

  How appropriate.

  Chapter 18

  Allie could tell when someone was faking it. Gavin wasn’t. He leaned heavily on her as they wove across the thick carpeting of the bar. She was accustomed to holding up those who were unsteady on their feet, but Gavin was much larger than she was, and she usually had some equipment to help her. She had to wedge herself against his warm, hard body to keep him upright.

  Which was the best kind of torture, as she felt the imprint of his fingers on her shoulder, the lean strength of his oblique muscle under her palm, the graze of his thigh against her hip, and the heat of him infusing his cashmere sweater. The scent of expensive bourbon wafted past her nostrils as he exhaled a huff of frustration when he veered off course.

  Either he was much drunker than he wanted to admit or he wasn’t lying about how he reacted to alcohol.

  As they emerged from the bar, Frankie appeared at the top of the stairs. “I think you’d better use the elevator,” she said, gesturing down the hallway. “I don’t want a lawsuit for two broken necks. Jaros will meet you at the back entrance so you don’t have to deal with the front steps, either.”

  “Frankie, you are an arch manipulator,” Gavin said. “How did you guess that my little slip of an Allie could practically carry me out bodily?”

  “I know a strong woman when I see one,” Frankie said, giving Allie a wink.

  “Considering the amount of money I pay to belong to this club, I would think you’d let me get drunk here in lonely majesty,” Gavin said.

  “You weren’t meant to drink alone,” Frankie said as the elevator door slid open.

>   Gavin stumbled forward into the elevator, taking Allie along with him.

  Frankie leaned in and pushed the lowest button. “Vincent will meet you downstairs.”

  “Thank you for everything,” Allie called out as the door glided closed.

  She thought she caught a smile of satisfaction on Frankie’s face, but her glimpse was too brief to be sure.

  The club owner was more proof that Gavin could command loyal friendship.

  Gavin braced himself against the wall, taking some of his weight off Allie’s shoulders. “I knew you’d come,” he said.

  She wished she could see his face to find out if that was good or bad. “You didn’t make it easy.”

  “It was the Bellwether Club or Southampton, so be grateful I chose the former.”

  The doors slid open on a stone-floored hallway with flickering wall sconces that were shaped like human arms holding torches. The security guard, Vincent, stood waiting.

  As Gavin staggered out of the elevator, Vincent stepped forward to lift the writer’s other arm onto his shoulders.

  “Thank you,” Allie said with sincerity as her load lightened.

  “Yes, ma’am,” Vincent said.

  “I feel like a sack of coal,” Gavin complained.

  “Yes, you do,” Allie said. “A very heavy one.”

  Gavin laughed, and she felt him shift more of his weight away from her.

  Vincent steered them out a door made of massive wooden planks bound together by medieval-looking metalwork.

  “It’s a dungeon,” Allie murmured, entertained by Frankie’s whimsy.

  “But Frankie won’t tell me where the torture chamber is,” Gavin said.

  The Bentley gleamed in the light cast by a heavy iron lantern, and Jaros leaped forward to help guide Gavin into the backseat.

  Allie settled in beside him, waving her appreciation to Vincent before Jaros closed the door with a solid thunk. The privacy screen was raised, and Jaros’s voice came through the intercom. “Home, Mr. Gavin?”