Wild Card (Wild At Heart Series Book 3)

by Christine Hartmann

  “Mal, let’s dance.” She shifted his tumbler of whiskey away from him.

  He threw down the remainder of his drink and leaned forward. “They’re quite the couple.” He waved at his grandmother who waved her cell phone before turning back to Ryder. When Bree moved to pass them, Ryder put his hand around her waist and held her back. Bree wiggled uncomfortably, but he pressed her and Juli firmly into either side of him. “Come on, Mal. Let’s show these ladies a good time.” Juli giggled and Bree frowned as Ryder swung them toward an elevator. Mal followed.

  The glass elevator doors opened directly onto the floor and the mob in front of them seemed impenetrable as it gyrated and bounced to the beat of the rhythm that shook the floor. Bree was tempted for a second to hold her hands over her ears; the noise felt like such an assault. But the rhythm was familiar and her hips started moving of their own accord, the feeling in her stomach left somewhere on the floor above. There was a reason, she thought, they played music loud in places like this. It was like a drug.

  Watching Ryder cut through the crowd, she grabbed Mal’s hand and tramped after him, ignoring annoyed looks from dancers who effortlessly parted for Ryder and the small woman in black still attached to his hip, but were instantly eager to close ranks again. Ryder looked like a blond piece of metal drawn by an invisible magnet to the middle of the floor. Bree elbowed and apologized her way after him, dragging Mal behind her. By the time they reached a space that could accommodate the four of them, she was out of breath and laughing.

  Ryder clasped Juli’s hands and swayed with her in the practiced manner of an expert. People nearby nudged each other and pointed, but only with smiles and signs of encouragement. Bree felt overwhelmed with gratitude. If Mal, Juli, and she had come on their own, they would have been relegated to the edges of the floor, an awkward threesome, ignored and pushed to the side. Instead, Ryder lunged with Juli into the center of the action. His assurance rubbed off on the older woman. He was confident, she was confident. He belonged, she belonged. He was having fun, and it was clear from the expression on her face that she was having the time of her life. Bree’s mouth hung open as she watched her grandmother-to-be learn to whip and nae nae, to cheers and nods from young dancers.

  Not to be outdone, Bree turned to Mal, who swayed imperceptibly, the bending of his knees barely visible through his slacks. When they danced together, it was Bree who took the lead. She loved the throb of the rhythm and the freedom of semidarkness, the freedom to feel pretty because people’s eyes were on their own partners or on themselves. If Mal had enough alcohol in his veins, she could get him moving, in an out of control, stick figure kind of way. But how much Mal moved usually it didn’t matter to her. In the riotous exhilaration of the moment, he was just another dance partner, a body to flow with hers. Someone else to breathe the same electrified air. He could’ve been Stephanie or Juli or one of the twins. There were times when he left her on the dance floor by herself and she hardly noticed, absorbed in the music and the energy around her, unconscious of her looks, at one with the crowd.

  As she danced she thought of her friends back in San Francisco. She flipped her hair and danced for them. She thought of Faye and the tight confines of the world she created for herself. She threw her arms above her head and danced for her. She thought of nights in bed with Mal and bumped against his hips and danced with him. Sweat ran down her temples and between her shoulder blades. Her dress inched higher up her thighs and she stopped pulling it back into place, content and eager to jump into the next song, and the next, and the next. When Juli motioned for Mal to be her partner, Bree waved him along and closed her eyes, letting the music take over. She let her head rock. Upstairs, she had been very wrong. Sitting on a bench was not heaven. Heaven was down here. The crowd became denser.

  She opened her eyes and found herself staring at Ryder only a foot away. He thrust his hands in his pockets, moving his shoulders in a terrifyingly familiar way. She felt panic rise in her throat, felt as if there wasn’t enough air. People shoved against them. The space between her and Ryder declined until she was moving against him more often than not. She stood still, no longer capable of dancing, wanting only to escape.

  He reached for her hands and squeezed them. He held her hips, his palms against her chunky contours, and she wrenched away against the pressure of his arms. A woman knocked into her, forcing her to stumble forward into Ryder’s arms. He propped her up, his face concerned.

  He arched his eyebrows in the direction of the still flailing woman. “Out of control.” He grabbed her elbow and jerked his chin, just as before, a fisherman reeling in a catch. Only this time, she wasn’t biting.

  He encircled her still form with both arms. His chest leaned in. His biceps framed her breasts. His breath tickled her neck. She stiffened and pushed away but he held her tightly. His lips touched hers, the merest flutter, like a dragonfly skimming a pond. But her skin felt as though a set of live wires were run across it. She raised her hand and, before she knew what she was doing, slapped him, hard, across the cheek.

  Bree stepped back, only able to retreat an inch in the crowded space, but creating what felt like a mile between herself and Ryder. Out of breath and out of words, she stared, mouth slack, heart pounding, thoughts racing. What just happened?

  Tears of frustration, anger, and shame welled in her eyes. Her face burned. She turned. The escalators beckoned and she dove into the crush around them, the dancers parting for her as though she had absorbed the patina of his aura.

  You idiot. The words reverberated in her mind, drowning out the music. She held her hands to her cheeks as she stomped to the edge of the throng. Why did you let him do it? Her head reeled. The escalator, both directions packed with joyful partiers, loomed above her, all of a sudden terrifyingly high. She looked around for signs to a restroom. When she couldn’t see one, she grabbed the arm of the nearest young woman and asked. Tucked in a shiny black wall was a discreet light over a wide hallway. Bree jostled her way toward it, elbowing and shoving her way, her shoulders slumped, her eyes blinking back tears.

  If she had come to the club on her own, she thought, she would run past the exit and out on the street, away from the club, from the hotel, from Vegas. Only pictures of Mal and her future with him prevented her from rushing to the exit. At the back of the line that extended out the women’s room door and into the hall, Bree ran her fingers through tangled hair. Why does he like making a fool of me? She wiped the back of her hand around the contours of her mouth and used her pinky to dab the corners of her eyes. She tugged her dress down and pulled the creases flat over her stomach. Around her, young women chatted, giddy, drunk, and excited. The anonymity of the darkness calmed her, like crawling into a cave. She leaned against the cool stone and closed her eyes.

  “Bree?”

  The question came out of nowhere. She squinted into the gloom but couldn’t identify its source. Someone tapped her arm. She focused on a mass of gray hair floating above a dark, disembodied head. “Grandma?”

  The head moved toward her. “I was imagining I would never find you again.”

  Bree rubbed the older woman’s shoulder. “You could have called me. We’d never leave without you.”

  “Ryder is having my phone in his pocket. Have you seen him?”

  The heat that rose instantly to Bree’s cheeks felt as though it made them glow. She shook her head. She licked her lips, her voice trembling as she fumbled for a story that would tie together. “First, I had to go…” She nodded in the direction of the restroom door. “But then I was coming to look for you and Mal.”

  The older woman pulled on her arm, urging her to lower her ear. Bree felt as though a police car behind her on a highway had switched on its lights. Guilt and shame rushed through her. She lowered her head. The woman’s warm breath skimmed her ear. “It’s not a clean loo.”

  Bree exhaled. “I’m sure I’ve seen worse.”

  “India has worse. But this is Vegas.” Grandma smiled. “The home of E
lvis.”

  “Elvis?”

  The gray head nodded vigorously. “You know him? The King of Rock and Roll?” She wiggled her hips seductively and lowered her voice. “Elvis the Pelvis.” She clapped her hand over her mouth. Above it, her eyes glimmered with mirth.

  Bree laughed. “You used to like Elvis?”

  “I am still liking him.” She pointed to the dance floor. “I saw one.”

  “One what?”

  “An Elvis impersonator. But too skinny. Not enough…” She pumped her hips again.

  The line moved and Bree shuffled forward a few steps. “Juli, you just made my night.”

  “Ryder is finding information on an Elvis impersonator contest.” She gazed wistfully past Bree. “I was never seeing the King in concert. Maybe now is my chance.”

  “Grabbing a chance doesn’t always turn out well.”

  The gray head shook slowly. “I was never telling my husband about Elvis…” She looked around as though someone might be listening. “Passion.” She peeked at Bree. “Maybe I was needing to live a secret life.”

  “I hate living a secret life.”

  Brown eyes stared up at her. “Something is happening?”

  Bree shrugged. “A stupid work thing. Not worth talking about. We’re here to have fun.” She swung the older woman’s hand to and fro but met with resistance and dropped her fingers.

  The hand pulled her down again. “Your work is making you trouble?”

  She forced a laugh. “Everything’s fine.”

  But the older woman persisted. “A few days before, Faye was talking about you and Mal. I was overhearing something about her hiding your work cell phone.”

  Bree shook her head. “You must have misheard. I don’t have a work cell phone.” She pointed to the large door to the restroom that opened. “I’ll just pop in.”

  The noisy bathroom, where piped in music from the dance floor, flushing toilets, and excited chatter reverberated off the mirrors, black tile, and high ceiling, provided a comparatively still background to the cacophony in her head. Bree examined herself askance in the ubiquitous mirrors. She ran her fingers through her hair and eyeballed her makeup, blotting her lids with a paper towel and correcting her smudged lipstick with a fingernail. Next to her, a model-thin woman in a skintight gold lame halter dress that ended centimeters below her rear reapplied her own cosmetics and gave Bree a knowing leer through the glass. “They want us to look beautiful, then kiss us and make us look a mess.” She winked.

  Bree looked away, blushing to the roots of her hair. Her hands wrenched at the back of her dress and hauled at the neckline. She couldn’t remember what she looked like hours ago in the hotel bathroom but was sure she looked different now. She shook her arms, flapping her wrists as though to shake residue from them and raised her chin to meet her own eyes in the mirror, ignoring the desire to flinch and look away. Get out of here. Then you never have to speak to him again. She stepped back into the hallway and marched determinedly with Juli to the escalators.

  In the open air lounge near where they had first sat, she saw the twins chatting with a pair of long-haired young men. Juli pulled Bree’s arm and asked whether they should ignore or interrupt them when, in one movement, the twins answered her question by waving furiously in their direction. The two admirers aimed toward the bar, seemingly content with the phone numbers they had just entered into their cell phones and leaving only the scent of too eagerly applied cologne behind them. Bree studied the girls’ eyes for a sign that they suspected her of wrongdoing but quickly realized they were preoccupied with their own evolving infatuations. The dance floor also sucked them in with its intoxicating embrace. They gushed about falling in love, their young heads spinning with fantasies to which their mouths gave voice.

  Out of the hubbub below, Juli leaned against Bree, her eyes blinking with fatigue. Bree put her arm around the older woman’s shoulders and scanned the area for an empty chair on which she could deposit her. But the crowd had doubled in size and decreased exponentially in average age. Everyone around them looked through anyone over thirty as though they didn’t exist. No one jumped from their seat to wave a gallant arm toward a senior citizen. “Mal has the keys and my ID, but we could ask Soumil and Faye to let you rest in their room.”

  The color had drained from Juli’s face and under the intermittent lighting, her features looked blotchy. Bree explained the situation to the twins, who all but jumped up and down at the idea of “needing” to stay at the club to convey to Mal why his grandmother and fiancé had disappeared. Bree gave them a wan smile. Half of her wanted to escape before Mal arrived and the other half couldn’t stand the suspense of not knowing what he would, or would not, read in her expression.

  Juli’s feet stumbled over each other, the wild dancing septuagenarian of an hour ago vanished. Bree propped her up with a sturdy arm under her shoulder. The cool night air was redolent with intermingled cologne, perfume, and alcohol. Bree steered Juli toward the bar, thinking a cold glass of water before they left the building might be in order. She left the older woman propped against a pillar and elbowed through the three-person deep crowd to the white marble counter. When the man to her right complained about her elbow in his ribs, she ignored him and waved at the bartender, who ignored her in turn. The aggrieved man turned. Bree stood face-to-face with Mal.

  He threw his arms around her. She smelled the whiskey that hung in a cloud around his face.

  He kissed her sloppily on the lips. “Kept calling your cell. But I had it.” He pulled a phone with a pink case from his pants pocket. “Ryder thought you’d be back here.” He backed up to give her a glimpse of the man standing next to him, stepping on Bree’s toes in the process. She yelped and looked down at her feet.

  “I hurt you?” Mal stepped on them again.

  Bree backed away. “Grandma’s really tired. I left her over there.” She pointed in the general direction of the post. “I think she needs some water before I take her home.”

  Mal fumbled in his back pocket for his wallet. “I’ll…”

  “I’ll get it and bring it over.” Ryder waved at a female bartender whizzing by who skidded to a halt and whirled to face him, her tight silver T-shirt sparkling only slightly more than her smile.

  Bree hobbled more than she needed to as she and Mal fought their way from the bar.

  Mal’s mouth hovered near her ear. “Most fun I’ve had in years.” His lips aimed for her cheek but missed and slobbered a kiss on her ear. “So glad we’re getting married. Want lots more nights like this.”

  Bree felt a headache coming on. She slipped her arm through his. “Don’t count on it, darling.”

  Chapter 12

  For Greenwood, the second night in the car felt less like a punishment and more like a special assignment. After ten, the pedestrian traffic entering and exiting the garage increased, with couples in evening wear, noisy groups of men in cowboy hats and women in tight jeans, and families with dozing toddlers in strollers. Fantasies about what he planned to do to Brianna Acosta kept him alert. The prior evening, at two in the morning, he had double parked his car behind the SUV to keep it from moving and fallen asleep, waking at six with a heart-stopping start to the blast of a car horn. His eyes snapped open and he focused on the retreating white taillights of an impatient driver’s car. He slumped at the wheel. He planned to adopt the same tactic every night when he could no longer keep his eyes open. But for the moment, he had no trouble focusing.

  A pile of empty aluminum soda cans he had liberated from nearby trash cans rolled over the leather next to him in the back seat. His balled up suit jacket served as a pillow between his spine and the hard, wood paneled door. From where he sat, he had a clear view of the SUV when he raised his head.

  The only sound was the tinkling of metal as he rhythmically bent a can until it broke in half. Then he crushed the pieces with the heel of his foot and bent the metal more, carefully folding section upon section. When he finished, he tossed the completed ob
ject on the front passenger seat and resumed the same pattern with the next can. The repetition and the slow building of tension to a final moment of creation and release reminded him of sex. When the memories grew too strong and the pressure within him built to an unbearable degree, he cut strips off the rubber floor mats and wrapped them around his wrists like handcuffs, twisting his arms over one another to tighten the loops until his hands tingled and his mind focused only on Paulo.

  Paulo didn’t want to wear handcuffs the first time Greenwood presented them. His face turned as pale at the dangling silver object that shone dully in the muted light of very distant streetlamps. He scooted his naked body across the rough carpet of the folded down minivan seatbacks, shaking his head. Handcuffs, he said, reminded him too much of the police, of people being arrested, of screaming and violence, of his half unconscious father being hauled down the access steps of their building, his boots banging their protest against the concrete. It took Greenwood half an hour to convince him that these handcuffs were different, that Greenwood would wear them as often as he, that they represented good things like trust and longing, and that they paradoxically freed them both from the nonsensical restrictions of the world. Paulo, as with everything, eventually assented.