“Are you…okay?” my father asked my mother. The color leaked from his face, his eyes mirrored his confusion as he struggled with Mona’s blind side.
Having been the first lucky recipient of this little tidbit, I knew how he felt.
“And the baby?” he asked.
“We’re both fine, Darling.” Her eyes saucers of fear, Mona brushed her fingers across his cheek. “And past the danger point.”
The Big Boss extricated his hand from hers and came to stand by me, leaving her marooned with her fear. Passing a hand wearily over his eyes, he looked out at the lights.
I doubt he saw them.
I hooked my arm through his, but said nothing, leaving him with his thoughts. Mother’s bombshell had hit him hard—I could feel him shaking.
The minutes ticked by as we stood like that, father and daughter, together facing the world. I could hear my mother fidgeting nervously behind us, but for once she kept her mouth shut.
Finally, The Big Boss broke the silence. “You and your mother were the best things to ever happen to me. No matter what happened, I always knew I had you. I love you, you know.”
I’d waited a lifetime to hear my father say that to me. And now that he had, it didn’t change anything—the earth didn’t move, my world wasn’t rocked, bright lights didn’t flash, and bells and whistles didn’t go off. In that moment I realized I’d been standing on the bedrock of The Big Boss’s love for years. The words merely repeated what I already knew. “I know.”
He nervously swiped at a tear. I did the same.
Then he patted my hand and, pulling his arm from mine, he returned to his spot on the couch next to Mother. She looked terrified.
Gently, he stroked her face. “How?” he asked.
“The usual way. You were there.” Mona’s cheeks reddened. Well, if this wasn’t a night of firsts all the way around!
A grin spit his face. “That much I know, but I thought you were too—”
“Old?” Mona huffed, but she still looked like a deer caught in headlights. “Thank you for pointing that out.”
“You must admit, this child is pushing the envelope,” my father teased.
“The final treason of my shriveled-up ovaries.” Mona deflated. “I know you’re angry.”
“Angry? Why would you ever think that? I admit, I am a bit stunned, but angry? No.”
Mother and I stared at him, mouths agape.
“Really?” I said. “So this is okay with you?” I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t relieved. Mother deserved her shot at true love. So did The Big Boss, for that matter.
“A child is a gift,” my father explained to me. “With your mother and me, the gifts seem to come at the oddest times, but that doesn’t make them any less special. It took me a lifetime of suffering, watching you grow up from afar, not sharing the joy or the responsibility. When you were fifteen and couldn’t live in Mona’s Place anymore and your mother sent you to me… that was the happiest day of my life.”
My mother gripped his hand until her knuckles turned white. Tears leaked down her face.
“I made a choice years ago,” my father said, his face sobering. “I took the easy way out. I didn’t do right by either of you—I cheated all of us—and I’ve carried that burden ever since.”
Mother and I both started to argue, but he held up his hand, silencing us.
“Now, amazingly, life has offered us a second chance, and me, a chance at redemption. I don’t know what I did to deserve it, but I couldn’t be happier.” He turned his attention to me as he pulled my mother back to his shoulder. “I want you to know how sorry I am, Lucky. I wish I could make it up to you—all the lost years—but your childhood is a thing of the past.”
“Oh, I wouldn’t be too sure,” I said, trying to lighten the mood. Drama makes me nervous, and this evening had served up more than I could handle. “Take care of Mother. That will be more than enough for me.”
***
I left them like that, cocooned together on the couch, savoring their togetherness.
I’d never felt so alone. Everyone else’s happiness painted my loneliness in stark relief.
While thrilled for them, my heart ached for that kind of joy for me—not the pregnant kind, but the together kind. My parents had carried their torches for a lifetime. I don’t know how they’d stood it. Six weeks and I was ready to chuck everything and race to Teddie’s side. Totally pathetic. And futile. It wouldn’t work—the price was too high. Vegas was my town—a square peg, I fit here. This hotel was my home; my co-workers, my chosen family. If I turned my back on my life here, I’d be like the girl in Lost Horizon who attempted to leave Shangri-La—I’d shrivel and die before I made it past the city limits.
Sometimes life sucks.
The lights still burned in my office as I pushed through the door. “Any luck?” I asked Miss P, who looked like she was making preparations to call it a night.
“Your cowboy is calling the last of them.” Clearly she wanted more info on how Dane happened to be corralled into the evening’s excitement, but she didn’t ask. “He’s in your office.And I’m going home to a warm bed.”
“And a hot guy,” I said, wanting to see her blush.
She didn’t disappoint. Waving, she disappeared through the door.
Dane, his feet on the desk, nodded at me, the phone pressed to his ear as he listened to someone on the other end of the line.
Plopping myself on my couch and kicking off my shoes, I leaned back, closed my eyes and tried not to think about the last time I’d been on that couch. Teddie had been angry. I’d been hurt. Who knew office make-up sex could be so delicious?
“Thank you,” Dane said, then slammed the receiver back in the cradle. “What are you grinning at?” he asked.
“A memory.”
“It must’ve been good.”
“The best.” I raised my head and opened my eyes. He had a weird look on his incredible face. For a moment I thought he could read my mind. Now that would be really awkward. “Any luck?” I asked.
“Are you sure the paramedics came and got your magician friend?”
“Absolutely. Two guys, bodybuilder types, little red shields on their sleeves, their shirts a couple of sizes too small.”
“You would notice that,” Dane said with a smile.
“I’m human; sue me,” I countered. “They even had the gurney and the breathing thing. Why do you ask?”
“I struck out with the hospitals, so I called the ambulance companies. No one answered a call at the Athena.”
“What are you saying?”
“I don’t know who picked him up, or where they took him. Quite simply, your Mr. Fortunoff has disappeared.”
***
After he gave me all the details—whom he called and what they told him—Dane went off in search of liquid fortification. I don’t know why I agreed to stay and have a drink with him—weakness, perhaps, or not wanting to be alone. but whatever it was, I felt like I’d started down a path toward perdition. Either that or I was a glutton for punishment. Hanging around Dane right now was like working in a candy store after having sworn off chocolate.
As I moved from the couch to the neutral ground of my desk chair, I pulled my cell phone out of my pocket and checked it. Yep, still on, but eerily quiet. Usually the thing was as irritating as an itch I couldn’t scratch. No missed calls either. I tried to calculate what time it was on the other side of the world, but I couldn’t get my mind around the math. Was Teddie awake, asleep, eating a meal? I hadn’t a clue. The only thing I was sure of was that he hadn’t called… in several days.
I flipped open the thing and dialed Romeo, trying not to be troubled by the fact I had a police detective’s number on speed-dial.
“What did you find out about the magician?” he asked without preliminaries.
“He’s been abducted by aliens.”
“Is that fact or speculation?”
Oh, I liked this kid. I liked him a lot. “How do you p
rove a theory?”
“How would I know?” Romeo said—his way of conceding defeat. “I flunked geometry.”
“That makes two of us.”
“Then, back to my original question: Where’s the magician and what killed him?”
“I have no idea and I don’t know.” I proceeded to give the detective the details.
“Let me get this straight,” he said when I’d finished. “We have Houdini’s Water Torture Cell. Nobody knows where it came from, who owns it, or how it works; Practically the entire universe had access to the thing before the show. And, Dimitri Fortunoff appeared dead when two guys claiming to be paramedics came and whisked him away, leaving us with no body.”
“Did anyone see anything unusual?” I asked, ever hopeful.
“Exactly how would you define unusual in a case like this?”
“Good point.” I heard the outer door open—Dane back with a much-needed elixir.
“Your magician has disappeared,” Romeo said, restating the obvious.
I refused to be amused by the irony. “I’ll try to get a line on the owner of the Houdini thing. I’ll keep you posted,” I said then closed my phone, ending the call.
Dane set a tall glass filled with pink liquid and capped by a tiny umbrella on the desk in front of me, as I closed my phone and redeposited it in my pocket.
“What is that?” I asked, eying the cutsey drink. “I know you don’t do umbrellas.”
Dane grinned as he lowered himself into one of the chairs on the far side of my desk. “Don’t worry, I have a backup.” He set a tumbler filled with two fingers of amber liquid in front of him, next to his Bud longneck.
“Unadulterated liquor is more my style.” I held up the glass and gave it a jaundiced eye. “What is this?”
“It’s called a Bacardi Party. There’s a professional mixologist at the bar, Ron something. Sean insisted you try it—he wouldn’t take no for an answer.”
Sean, our head bartender, was always trying something new. I gave the brew a sip. “Not bad.”
“He said to warn you, it packs a punch.”
“Now you’re speaking my language.”
***
After the Bacardi Party, I stashed the tumbler of Wild Turkey 101 Dane had brought as a backup and my medicinal beverage of choice, in the fridge as emergency rations. This night had packed a wallop already. Still reeling, I didn’t need to add too much alcohol to my already overloaded system.
Dane had polished off two beers while regaling me with stories of his west Texas childhood, with two brothers and a mother perpetually at sea as to how to handle all that testosterone. He’d joined the military to get the heck out of the dust bowl of Lubbock, learned to fly, then landed in Atlantic City when his military commitment ended. The Gaming Control Board there had loaned him to its Nevada counterpart, and he’d stayed.
As I listened, I wished I didn’t find so much comfort in Dane’s nearness. He was a wonderful storyteller—each of us found humor in the same quirks of life. Warm and gentle, yet strong, I felt drawn to him, and I didn’t like myself for it. Loneliness has a way of creeping under one’s skin and festering like an infection.
Teddie was so far away—the distance diluting the immediacy of our relationship. No longer could we share the details of our days, or ride the waves of our attraction, or simply find comfort and connection in each other’s touch. I needed that… we needed that… if there was a “we” anymore….
“Thanks,” I said when Dane finished. From the look in his eye, I saw he knew what I was thanking him for. Unable to avoid the siren call of sleep, I added, “I better head for the barn.”
“Let me walk with you,” Dane offered. “It’s late.”
Rubbing my swollen feet, I eyed my stilettos. There was no way my screaming dogs were going back in those things, so I opted for a pair of Ferragamo flats I kept in the closet. Stuffing my heels in my Hermès Birkin bag, an insanely expensive gift from The Big Boss, I shouldered it and began flipping off lights.
“Thanks for the offer, but I don’t think that would be a good idea,” I said as I motioned Dane through the door, took one last glance around, then pulled it shut behind me.
“Why not? I promise I’ll keep my hands off.”
“It’s not that.” His shoulder touched mine as he walked toward the elevator—I liked it. Which made the developing ease between us all the more uncomfortable. “We have an insurmountable problem, you and I. Apart from the obvious, we work opposite sides of the fence. A Gaming Control Inspector and an executive with a major hotel cannot be seen to be… too chummy.” I’d almost said “in bed together”—for once my mouth listened to my brain. “A friendship between us would create a huge conflict of interest.”
“I’ve taken care of that. I put in my notice.”
“What?” I whirled on him.
He calmly reached for the handle on the stairwell door, then held it open for me.
“You quit your job? Don’t tell me I had anything to do with that.” I matched his stride down the stairs.
He repeated the door thing at the bottom, then we headed across the lobby. “No, you didn’t…well, not really. I quit my job to take a better one. But I’d be lying if I said I didn’t consider the added bonus of eliminating the conflict between us.”
I didn’t know whether to be flattered or appalled. “Where will you be working?” We pushed out into the night air—the evening’s coolness had given way to cold.
Distracted when I’d closed up the office, I had left my wrap on the couch.
Dane shrugged out of his blazer and settled it over my shoulders.
I started to argue, but found myself fresh out of backbone.
“Jeremy has asked me to join his agency.”
“Private detective? That’s an interesting choice.” Dane and The Beautiful Jeremy Whitlock, two more gorgeous men would be hard to find—women would pay just to have an hour of their undivided attention.
I crossed my arms, hugging myself as Dane fell into step beside me, heading down the driveway toward the Strip. I thought about asking him what part of “no” he hadn’t understood, but didn’t. The truth of it was, I liked having him around, and I didn’t want to be alone. But letting him get close was like playing with fire.
“I’ve been handling investigations for the Control Board, so it shouldn’t be too big a leap. And I like the idea of working for myself—I have a bit of an authority issue.”
“I noticed.”
A comfortable silence settled between us as we made the turn around the hotel, leaving the Strip behind. Like a handful of diamonds tossed on velvet, the stars twinkled overhead, just out of reach. To our south, the landing lights of planes on approach to McCarran hung in the sky like a string of lanterns lighting a path to the party. As we moved farther from the bright lights, the inky black of the night enveloped us. I felt the world fall away.
For some odd reason, a childhood memory hit me. I remembered covering myself with a blanket, creating a void to block out the real world. In that darkness, I imagined my own fantasy world—one with handsome princes, a real father, and a mother whose spirit wasn’t bent beneath a burden of a sadness I saw but didn’t understand.
And it struck me: That’s exactly what I was doing right now—I was pretending. Pretending I could have it all—a father without accepting the burden of being his daughter, true love without surrendering completely, the life I wanted without making the hard choices, joy without pain, happiness while avoiding anger.
Anger. That was it. Anger.
Hit with an unfamiliar urge for introspection, I dug deeper.
No, I wasn’t angry… I was pissed.
Years of bottled-up frustration, of burying emotion, of going along, of not saying how I really felt and of never being asked, bubbled up through the cracks in my self-delusion.
I was mad at Teddie for leaving, for turning his back on us so easily. I was mad at my father for waiting a lifetime to tell me. I was mad at Dane for b
eing so damned good-looking and for not taking no for an answer. I was mad at my mother for teaching me my problems came second to everyone else’s.
But most of all, I was mad at myself for believing her, for lacking the courage to fight for me, to fight for what I wanted… without feeling guilty or selfish. This was my life, damn it, and I’d better start fighting for it.
“Dane.”
“Hmmm.”
“Where do you find courage?” The need for human contact overriding good sense and propriety, I looped my arm through his.
“I’ve found courage shows up when you need it.” If he thought the question odd, I couldn’t tell.
He didn’t ask me why I asked.
He was making it impossible not to like him.
***
Flashing lights atop a horde of police cruisers greeted us as we turned up the drive to the Presidio—my home away from work. A tall column of glass and steel, the Presidio was considered to be the toniest, near-strip address in Vegas. On Teddie’s suggestion, I had bought the next-to-the-top floor at preconstruction, prehype prices. I would have sprung for the top floor, but Teddie had already laid claim to it.
Out of habit and a penchant for self-flagellation, I glanced toward the penthouse—it was dark; I couldn’t see Teddie’s balcony, nor my own, both of which were on the west side of the building facing the Strip.
I didn’t see any fire trucks amid the cruisers, no flames licking the side of the building, no plume of smoke rising from the roof, so I didn’t panic.
A throng had gathered at the entrance. Clustered in small knots, people nervously whispered as Dane and I walked up.
I spied a familiar face. Tugging Dane’s hand, I said, “Over here. I see somebody who can tell us what’s going on.”
A former NFL lineman, Forrest was the bulk of our security force—both figuratively and literally. Tall, black, and menacing when he wanted to be, he gave the residents, including, me a comfort we otherwise wouldn’t have.
His face brightened when he saw me, but his eyes still looked troubled. “Miss Lucky, you can’t go inside yet.”
So Damn Lucky (Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Book 3) Page 5