“Drew Ross, I won’t tolerate sexism or racism or anti-Semitism or any other filth you might be comfortable spewing at the Beat. I’ll sue you if I have to. I will offer my services elsewhere if you have a gripe about that.”
“I said ease up. It’s not like that. C’mon, take this stool.”
She sat beside him to find a clear drink waiting.
“Vodka all right with you?” he asked, reclaiming his stool and swiveling to face her fully. His tapered low-cut hair exposed three-sixty waves that were probably further emphasized by a pomade, and his brown eyes glittered. He reeked of cinnamon-flavored cigarettes, and on closer inspection his jaws jumped about every second and a half. He was chewing cinnamon gum to disguise the cigarette odor.
“I don’t mind vodka,” Bindi said as she flagged a bartender. “But I’d rather have a beer, please. Whatever’s good on tap.” One glass of vodka would hit her faster than three beers, and she wouldn’t put it past Take-Initiative Drew to have banked on that.
“That was a freebie,” Drew protested, raising a hand to ward off the bartender. “Take your drink, Bindi.”
“No, thank you.” She opened her purse, shuffled through a few checkout-lane gadgety trinkets, slid her fingers across her smartphone and grabbed her wallet. Thanks to her video recording of a prime-time drama sweetheart’s tirade at a Reno shopping plaza last month, she could afford to buy herself a beer—and pay Drew for a drink she hadn’t ordered. “Let me reimburse you for the vodka, Drew. The last thing I want is to start this professional relationship indebted to you.”
Drew cursed, turned up the ginger-colored contents of his glass. “Forget it. Business expense. I’ll write it off.”
“My refreshments aren’t your business expenses,” she said after the bartender delivered the beer. “We’re not in business together yet. That’s why we’re here—to establish some boundaries and rethink any unrealistic expectations either of us might have.”
“Unrealistic expectations?” Drew suddenly clamped a hand down on one of her knees. “You won’t be strutting yourself in my face dressed like this and thinking I’m not going to notice. That’s an unrealistic expectation.”
Bindi shook her head, confused. She was wearing a gauzy black sweater and metallic gold jeggings. Not a power suit, but not lingerie and a bow tie, either. And so what if she had been dressed down? It didn’t give him the right to put his hand on her. “Off. Get the hand off. Now.”
He did, though not before squeezing her kneecap harshly. “That’s your problem. You’ve been with men from a different generation. They don’t operate the way I do.”
“Bullies come in all different ages, Drew. Did you enjoy holding on to me like you did a second ago? Because it’s going to have to last you. Don’t touch me again.”
“I will.”
“No.”
“You don’t say no,” he objected, grinning. “All you know is yes. That’s what you’re going to be saying when we take this little discussion out to my car and we get those shiny pants off.”
“No,” she said again firmly. She was wearing crotch-stomping boots tonight, but wouldn’t call on them. She had something else that’d change Drew’s mind. “All these people here don’t want to have their dancing ruined by security guards coming through to show you out.”
“Security? They’d believe someone like you?”
“Eh…” She tipped her head to one side, then the other. “I’d like to think so, since my phone’s been recording this conversation from the moment you tried to force that vodka on me. And I’m thinking security cameras got a great look at you grabbing me. By the way, I really hope you don’t try that again, because next time I will go for the nuts and won’t let up until they look more like raisins.”
“Bitch.”
“If by ‘bitch,’ you mean a clever and perceptive woman who gets things done, then, thanks.” She took a careful swallow of her beer, a toast to her guardian half-nude statue. “Can we discuss business now? I do have other engagements.”
“Other men to hunt?”
“I’m not searching for a relationship now, if that’s what you’re asking.”
“Alessandro Franco scared you celibate?”
“Yes,” she said, smirking so that he couldn’t tell whether she was slyly joking or confessing the truth. If no one counted the no-boundaries night she’d shared with Santino, then yes, she was celibate. And it wasn’t as though she cared that she rested on the shelf. The shelf was safe. For her, sex had never been designed for her pleasure. No man had worked hard to take her up high then let her tumble into the kind of ecstasy that made a woman sweat and scream.
Scream.
Bindi set down her bottle, blinked quickly. Her imagination shook apart, conjuring pictures of her naked with damp hair, sweat-misted skin and an irresistible devil of a man dining on every sensitive spot on her body.
Recalling every spectacularly dirty maneuver, she felt her toes curl in her boots and her fingers flex as though she could feel his taut flesh, and she thought for a simply silly moment that Santino Franco was designed for her pleasure.
Was she designed for his? Of course she wasn’t. He’d said that his ex-girlfriend Tabitha had been his paradise. Paradise would be a tough act to follow, especially for a woman who had the trust capacity of a neglected and abused animal.
For that matter, what was she doing to even consider this? She and Santino had a one-night island fling, and on the island was where the details and the memories should stay. There’d been no mile-highing on the flights back to Las Vegas, no getting laid during the layover.
Only a solemn sense of unresolved tension that neither of them had—or would—explore now that they were in Sin City and partnering up to see to it that his father answered for his sins.
And Santino had double-crossed her. She couldn’t forget that. She couldn’t let that fury slip, because the man was swift and knew to target her weaknesses.
“I want to know why Alessandro Franco’s golden boy would enlist you,” Drew said flatly.
Santino was as far from a “golden boy” as anyone, she thought. No golden boy would hold her down on a fluffy mattress and use his tongue to—
“Uh—uh—” she stuttered, bringing her beer back into close range. She took a swallow. Nope, didn’t work. Her body was still set on five-alarm arousal. “Santino thinks his father wants to find me. He believes I have something Al wants.”
“You?” Drew snorted. “Criminals can be as dumb as rocks, but would a man who ran a billion-dollar gambling ring in this city risk getting caught for you? Doesn’t make sense. I wouldn’t do it.”
“Good to know that should you find yourself facing criminal charges you won’t be coming to me to save you.”
“What does Santino plan to do when he gets hold of his father?”
“Turn him in.”
Drew frowned. “He’d hand his father—and his godfather, Gian effin’ DiGorgio—over to the feds? Not in a million years. Not with all that money at stake. Santino’s got his own fortune, granted, but the Las Vegas Slayers was a billion-dollar franchise that his father sold for cheap. Where are the Slayers now? Damn Disney World.” He laughed. “They’ve got championship rings. Marshall Blue and his wife performed a miracle. They took a scoop of dirt and turned it into gold. They’re the ones raking in all that money, all the publicity. And Santino’s supposed to be all right about it? Hell no, but I’m going see what information you give me. I want weekly updates. That’s nonnegotiable.”
“You called him a golden boy. Why would it be surprising that he’d have Al shake hands with justice?”
“Hey, now. I said he was a golden boy. I never said golden boys were stupid,” Drew said, getting off his stool, holding up one hand and signaling for a fresh brandy with the other. “We’re through here.”
Released, Bindi grabbed her purse, turned off the recorder on her phone and went into the restroom to freshen her makeup. A quick stop to the apartment, and then she’d
be on the road again, headed to Los Angeles. The bloggers she reported to had received a tip that a pair of rival hip-hop artists would be at an after-midnight club on Las Palmas. They’d contacted her, which was a rare event even though she had several months’ seniority with their team. If she successfully made it into the club and walked out with enough pictures and videos to satisfy the team, she’d be able to not only pay the bills, but store a little away in her neglected savings account. One couldn’t live off the sale of a luxury car alone. Beyond that, payday had this way of making her feel accomplished.
“So you finally figured out brunettes have more fun,” a lilting feminine voice said.
Bindi turned away from the mirror with her lipstick uncapped. “Toya. What are you doing at the Barge?”
Toya Messa shook out her coil curls, fluffed her hair and eyed Bindi through naturally lush lashes. The no-mascara-necessary lashes, prominent cheekbones and flawless, consistently toasty skin tone had always provoked Bindi’s envy. “Getting my dance on.”
“You don’t dance,” Bindi pointed out, applying the lipstick with an expert hand. She’d been wearing makeup since age ten, and could probably apply a full face with her eyes closed. “At your wedding reception, you rocked in Asher’s arms but didn’t move your feet.”
“Oh, I’m sure that was just my feet trying to warn me to turn and run from the courtyard,” Toya said drily. She’d been a stunning April bride that year, barely out of college and joined in holy matrimony to Asher Messa of Messa Technologies. “Did it rain that day?”
“No, clear skies during the ceremony and a starry night canopying the reception.” It’d been a fairy-tale kind of day. Perfect wedding, imperfect wedding. It made sense in a twisted way. “Why do you think it rained?”
“It would’ve been appropriate, had it rained.” Toya shrugged. Not exactly petite, but almost shallowly thin, she didn’t appear capable of holding much on those delicate shoulders. Which made it heartbreaking that she was a few months divorced and a single mom on top of it. News of Toya’s divorce, and an estimate of what she’d stood to gain in the settlement, had come directly as Bindi’s prospects were slipping away. Toya had slipped away from whatever impersonation of a friendship they’d shared then, and Bindi had let herself wallow in moments of despair because unlike Toya, she wasn’t under twenty-five and college educated and it all had seemed so unfair.
Today, she could look through the mirror at the woman she’d wanted to be her friend and smile with humanity. “You don’t like the rain, Toya. It makes you have wild hair. You used to call it Cray-Cray Kinky.”
“I still call it that.”
“Oh.” Bindi capped the lipstick. “I didn’t want to assume. I don’t really know what’s changed since your divorce and my broken engagement.” Their friendship had unwoven then, and neither had made efforts to repair the damage.
“We could have coffee, catch up.” Toya hastened to add, “Holden’s off the boob now. I’m coffee approved.”
“Holden. You had a boy?”
“He just turned six months.” Consulting the mirror, she seemed bewildered with the image of herself that confronted her. “I had divorce papers in my purse the morning my water broke and I gave birth. The purse fell on the floor and there went the papers.”
“I’m sor— Well, that’s messed up.”
“That’s really messed up.”
Hazarding a smile, she said, “At least you have a few years before he asks you to tell him about the day he was born. There’s that.”
“You always were the positive one in our circle,” Toya commented.
“Was I too positive? Misery loves company, people say, so maybe now the circle will take me back.” She’d meant to be sarcastic, but underneath was the question of why Toya and the others had retreated when they’d shared more than taste in fashion and preferences in wine. They’d shared ambitions and had been each other’s cheerleaders.
“It’s Las Vegas,” Toya said decisively. “It’s this town, and it’s everyone trying to come out on top when there’s only room for a few.”
“No room for me, huh?” Shrugging, Bindi closed her purse and closed the door on a friendship that had never been there to begin with. “It was nice seeing you, Toya—”
“The coffee?” Toya shook her head as though to add, “Did you forget?”
“Sure, but when? This weekend ought to be fine.”
“I’ll call you. Where do you live?”
“In an apartment complex on East Dune.”
“East Dune? Asher and his cronies call that street Strippers’ Boulevard.”
“I call it where I live. The ladies who live in my building are nice enough and keep to themselves, which I value more than having someone glued to my side when things are great but skip off in the other direction when things are hell.” She headed for the restroom door. “Congratulations on your baby and your settlement.”
She’d named them in order of importance, but likely Toya hadn’t noticed.
*
“There’s great news and not-so-great news,” Bindi announced, her high heels sharp on the travertine tile in her apartment’s modest-size kitchen. It reminded her of the one her childhood clubhouse had come equipped with. The clubhouse had been a flashy gift from her parents on her first Christmas after the overdose incident. To make up for so many restrictions that had come with being privately tutored and forever surrounded by adults whose conversation diets consisted of politics and business strategy, they’d had a construction company build her a minimansion, complete with travertine floors, tiny granite counters and crown molding. It’d been a magnificent gift, and she’d spent many lonely days and nights inside the house, until she’d outgrown it and her father had auctioned it off.
She hadn’t cared all that much about the house anyway. It had always been the swing, something her father had designed during her mother’s pregnancy and had constructed on the day Bindi was born. Toya’s child would grow up and learn that his parents’ marriage dissolution forms had spilled on the floor on the day he’d been born. At least Bindi could always treasure that her father had had the swing, with its cedar seat and vine-wrapped poly-twist rope, built for her.
Bindi smoothed the fringe hemline of her short red dress. After leaving Cleopatra’s Barge, she’d changed her look, putting on a dress and makeup guaranteed to get her inside the La La Land club where she’d, fingers crossed, get the material she would need to earn substantial pay. “Great news? We’re all going to survive and thrive through the next several months if this gig goes well. Not-so-great news? I’m staying overnight in California.”
Silence answered. Bindi gazed across the row of Chia Pets and windowsill plants. A few had begun to lean during her week in the Seychelles, but they’d all survived her neglect and now she was asking for their understanding so she could jet out the door for an overnight jaunt to Hollywood to pry into the supposed bad blood between two hip-hop artists at a club notorious for having crime scene tape up as often as its VIP ropes.
“I’m talking to plants,” she said aloud, rubbing her glossy red-painted lips together as she reached for the pig. The pig was her favorite of the bunch. “I have a four-hour I-15 drive ahead of me, and I’m standing in a my-first-kitchen talking to plants.”
Silently, she confided, I’d rather stay home with you than take this gig.
Because if she said it aloud, she’d be forced to confront what it meant that she was so reluctant to find a scoop and get paid for it. That was her job now. It was behind-the-scenes and it allowed her luxuries: dinners at casino restaurants, a kitchen stocked with gourmet chocolate, memberships to landscaping and horticulture clubs and engagement in eBay bidding wars for excellent finds, such as the Manolo Blahnik shoes decorating her feet now.
Scandal sold, and she could either capitalize on it or fail as a runt of a fish in a huge pond.
“Till tomorrow,” she said, setting down the pig, turning out the kitchen pendant lights and going to the f
oyer to collect her purse and overnight bag.
On the other side of the door came a pounding knock, as if somebody had slammed a go-cart against it again and again. Tossing the bag and swinging up the bat, she went to the door and squinted through the peephole.
“Oh, my—”
“It’s me!”
Toya Messa had been absent from Bindi’s life for six months and was using the “It’s me”? “Toya…what…” Fumbling with the row of locks, she shouted through the door, “Hang tight, okay?”
“This is a nicer building than I’d pictured,” Toya commented conversationally, which meant on the other side of this door was a modelesque twentysomething wearing designer spring fashions and shouting in the hall. “How many locks do you keep on that door anyway?”
Bindi unlatched the final lock and opened the door. “I’m confused.”
“We said we’d have coffee.” Toya peeked around a squirming bundle. Fresh faced and bright eyed, she looked more like a teenager playing grown-up. Coach diaper bag, Christian Louboutin heels, Prada handbag, Tiffany cat’s-eye glasses—
Bindi gave up trying to identify it all and simply opened the door wide. “Uh…come in.” In her voice was inflection. It was better than outright asking, “Are you sure you meant to end up here?”
A squawk came from the bundle and Toya squeezed through, holding her baby in one arm and carrying a bassinet in the other hand. So that was what she’d used to knock on the door.
Bindi took the bassinet, glanced inside. Blankets and…”Are these walkie-talkies?”
“You’re showing your age, thirtysomething.”
“Not thirtysomething. I’m thirty.”
“Miss Thirty, those are baby monitors.” Toya muscled her stuff farther into the apartment, looking like the world’s most fashionable vagrant. “Would you like to meet Holden?”
“Absolutely.” Bindi had no siblings, so no nieces or nephews, and Toya was the only one in her group of wild gals who’d sealed her marriage with a child. Still, she could be captivated staring into the face of any baby. “Toya,” she whispered, getting her first look at the chubby-cheeked brown-skinned baby, “you found it.”
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