“Toya. She was one of the girls you ran with last year. Kind of surprising.”
“What?”
“That she’d get married without insurance.”
Bindi tried to block the sting of offense, but it got to her anyway. The truth had venom. She and the others had been all about self-protection, warding off prenups and searching for almost fatherly security in marriages to rich, powerful, older men. “She thought she had insurance, but there was a loophole that revealed her hubby to be a horrible father and—” Bristling, she took a breath and a right at the intersection. “Listen, they both made awful decisions and now their only child is so stuck in the middle that he’s counting on me and he doesn’t even know how scary that is.”
Santino cast a look toward the backseat, though the baby faced the rear of the vehicle. “He seems to be okay with you.”
“And you. Thanks for not holding him like a football. I thought you would and I was prepared to grab him.”
The man’s laughter made her feel as gooey as an oven-warmed chocolate-chip cookie. “I’ve got distant cousins and friends who think procreating is a nice hobby. Might not be long before I have a nephew. Or a niece.”
Bindi’s eyes bugged and her tabloid fodder sensors glared. The bloggers loved baby-bump stories almost as much as sex scandals. “Is Charlotte Blue pregnant?”
“No, but Nate’s marrying her. He told me today.”
“Why did you tell me?” she asked. She was damn skilled at hiding her freelance activities, but he couldn’t deny he didn’t fully trust her.
“I want to see what you’ll do with the information.”
“I won’t tell anyone,” she said, and was taken aback by her own decision. “Charlotte and Nate aren’t people I want to hurt, so it wouldn’t be worth it, now, would it?”
Santino was silent for a beat. “Okay. Point is, I know how to handle a baby.”
“Oh, then it makes total sense why you didn’t freak when Holden gurgled spit bubbles on your Armani jacket.”
“It’s not the end of the world. It’s just the beginning of his.” Santino touched her thigh. It was more an encouraging gesture than anything sexual. “You’re doing all right with the kid.”
“For a woman who’s not fit to care for plants?” She meant to sound playful, but it came out a lot more anxious than intended.
“You’re okay, Bindi.”
At the store, they opted for efficiency, ripped the shopping list in half and took separate carts. Bindi was in the laundry-care aisle, debating between two brands of safe-for-baby detergent with Holden preoccupied with slobbering on his plump fingers, when Santino’s cart parked beside hers.
“You’re going to block the aisle,” she warned, going all gooey chocolate again. The guy had on an expensive suit and was confidently pushing around a cart half-filled with diapers, wipes and bottles. His hands were large, dexterous and multitalented. She wouldn’t mind having them on her again. “Did you find everything?”
“Yeah. Check the list.” He gave her the list and she compared it to the contents in the cart.
“Well done.” She lifted a fist for a bump. “Boom.”
“What about you?”
“Almost,” she said, choosing a jug of detergent to put at the bottom of the cart. Cooing to the baby, “Bindi needs something now.” She nudged her cart forward and reached for a box of dryer sheets.
“That—” Santino took the box, sniffed it and looked her up and down. His mouth inched up at the corner. “You smell like dryer sheets.”
“I like to put them in my dresser and closet.”
Santino edged closer so he could whisper in her ear, “That’s so damn hot. I don’t know why, but it is.”
“So add it to the list of things you like about me.”
“Why’d you kiss me at your apartment?”
“Can’t let that go, can you?”
“Uh-uh. We can talk about the stripper pole another time.”
“I kissed you because I wanted to. Reason enough?”
You’re cute—flirting with a man who had you tailed to the Seychelles. Get over it. Remember to get over it.
Except she wasn’t getting over it, and she suddenly felt trapped again. Despite all of her new goals, all the effort to reinvent herself, she was still getting ensnared in the sort of drama she’d meant to leave behind.
“I got things from here,” she said, clearing her throat to get rid of the panic she could taste there. “I can drive you back for your truck.”
“I’ll take care of it. Not a problem. But what’s up with you?”
“We—we’re tripping if we can act as if this is normal. Shopping together like a daddy and mommy with a baby. The baby isn’t mine and you’re not mine and I can’t get attached to either of you.” Wigging out in a market wasn’t the most pleasant way to get over it, but it gave her the oomph to transfer the items from his cart to hers and start making her way toward the checkout lanes. “I’ll pay you back for the car seat,” she called over her shoulder.
“With dinner.”
Uh…huh? “What?”
“Dinner. Food. Good food, hopefully. I’m asking you out to dinner.”
Bindi looked at the baby, but he only stared back at her curiously. “B-but I can’t commit to that. The baby.”
“Another day, then.”
“If she doesn’t say yes, I’ll go,” a woman volunteered eagerly, and Bindi finally noticed the smattering of shoppers who’d paused to get all up in her business.
“She’s going to say yes,” Santino said.
Narrowing her eyes, because she didn’t want to imagine him having dinner with that woman or any other, unreasonable as it was, she shouted, “Yes, okay?”
People laughed and murmured and stared, and when the shopper said to him, “Hmm, well, can I get an autograph?” Bindi left him occupied with his superstar life and she returned to her ordinary one.
Chapter 8
Paris.
Bindi studied her smartphone, examining the one-word response from Toya. She turned it sideways, then upside down, then tossed the device into her Grand Cherokee’s cup holder.
Darkness was starting to hover over the palm trees lining the streets. The baby was fussy—no doubt bored to be spending so much time in a car seat, no matter how state of the art it was. Bindi had forgotten to rescue her impulse-buy chocolate bar from the cheery red-and-white shopping bags she’d loaded into the back of her vehicle.
Now she was pissed.
Paris? As in France? Not likely, even if Toya had gotten control of the Messa company jet. So as in on her way to Paris? No. That didn’t sound right. She’d seen the love on Toya’s face when she’d bathed her son in the sink and when she’d stood so still next to the crib, watching him sleep. She wouldn’t skip the country and leave behind the child she loved.
Except, it wasn’t unheard of. Child abandonment happened for a multitude of reasons. People left the ones they loved all the time. This very second, someone was giving up a future with someone they cared about.
Bindi swallowed—she was thirsty and her palms were getting uncomfortably clammy on the steering wheel. “Paris? Le Paris.”
Then, as though a rolling shade been snapped open to reveal the clarity of a bright, open window, it made sense. Paris Las Vegas.
“Hang on, honey,” she said aloud, redirecting her course. “We’re going to find Mommy.”
When Bindi at last confronted the glorious hotel casino, with its Eiffel Tower roof and nothing but temptation in the air, she gingerly switched the car seat’s handle from one hand to the other. Carrying a fifteen-pound infant bundled inside a heavy-duty carrier was all the workout her arms needed today.
Where to begin in this place, she wondered, considering all the places Toya could be. The woman attended London Fashion Week last year, had no shame in modeling trends and advertising top designers’ handiwork, so she wouldn’t be hiding out in Paris Las Vegas. So she’d be visible, with attention on her.
Bindi only hoped Toya wasn’t gambling—she wouldn’t attempt to venture into a gambling room with the baby.
She considered the restaurants, scrolling through her mental Rolodex for memories of her experiences dining in these places. She’d lived in Las Vegas for years, and it seemed every moment had been filled with seeking all the luxury the city had to offer a twentysomething living off the endless supply of wealthy men’s money.
She chose Gordon Ramsay Steak because the restaurant was said to be upscale and, if she was recalling her old circle’s outing to a famous restaurant in Los Angeles, where the chef had come to their table and requested that he personally prepare their menu, Toya could really put away a steak.
Inside the restaurant, the high technology and glimmering luxury had her mouth watering. Or it was the delicious aromas of everything she wouldn’t mind sitting down and sampling?
Focusing on locating her friend, she feigned ignorance when people casually glanced up from their digital menus to frown at her and leaned forward in their high-backed chairs to murmur to each other as she shuffled past with the carrier’s handle in both hands.
Bindi’s hair had by now slipped free of the bobby pins she’d stuck all over her head this morning, her top was wrinkled and she had a burp cloth draped over one shoulder.
Give it up, she considered snapping to the downstairs dining room at large. Have you never had a hot-mess day?
She’d almost given up when she noticed a mane of curly dark hair on the dining room’s second story. Taking the stairs cautiously, she carted little Holden. “Where have you been, Toya?”
Toya, in a white one-shouldered wrap dress, sat alone at a table with a single goblet of wine in front of her…and a scatter of balled-up tissues. She looked up at Bindi through tear-filled eyes. “I’m sorry!”
“Shh. Silent ugly cry is okay,” she said, setting down the car seat and taking the seat next to her friend, “but start bawling and you might get us ushered out.”
Toya scooted her chair and dropped against her shoulder, hiccupping.
“Wait a second,” Bindi said, dislodging herself to flip over the burp cloth. “There. Cry.”
Waitstaff attentively gravitated to their table, but Bindi politely fielded their inquiries and offers for assistance. One woman all gussied up with runny mascara and in the throes of a bawl-fest and the other wilted and wrinkled accessorizing with a burp cloth and a transportable car seat could draw a crowd.
But starting the second act of your life, whether you were a twenty-five-year-old divorced single mom or a thirty-year-old secret tabloid rat with a sketchy past and an unfortunate connection to a white-collar criminal, wasn’t guaranteed to be pretty or painless.
Sometimes you had to cry the tears and swim across to get to the other side.
“I can’t help you if you try to figure this out on your own,” Bindi said gently. “Have you been here at Paris since last night?”
“No. First I went home—to his house.”
“Asher’s?”
“Yes. He texted me yesterday, asked me to meet up with him. It was this big freaking ambush. His legal team was there, at the house, and they surrounded me and he asked me to change my name. He said Holden can keep his last name, since the paternity test he’d had ordered confirmed the biological match. But he wants me to give up Messa and go back to Keech.”
“Toya…” Bindi awkwardly patted her curly hair. She’d never been the there-there type—she had learned by her mother’s example that compassion wasn’t necessarily innate, but she had to do something that might be comforting. “Listen, Toya Messa is a woman bound to a man who doesn’t want her. Toya Keech is a woman ready to get cracking on her second chance. You don’t need his name. You belong to you.”
“I took a bunch of my clothes,” Toya said, sitting up and leaving the mascara-smeared cloth on Bindi’s shoulder, “and stuffed them in my car. I put on this dress and I’ve been at this hotel for hours, wondering if… I wanted to see if anyone… God, I’m pathetic.”
“You wondered if a man like Asher Messa would come along?” Bindi understood. She’d been in this position before—but she hadn’t allowed her broken engagement to send her back into the cycle. “Starting over hurts. I know it. But it gets better, Toya. Someone who’s good for you comes into your life.” For Bindi, it was a man she hadn’t let herself anticipate. Beneath all the complicated threads, Santino Franco was undefined and new and sexy and dangerous—as hopeful as it was risky. Chances were it would be over the second he tracked down his father and found out she’d one-upped him, but until then, she’d enjoy the kissing. The sex. Being asked out to dinner on a real, honest-to-God date. When was the last time that had happened?
“Your baby is right here.” Bindi removed the burp cloth and scooped the infant from the car seat to pass to his mother. “Did you drink this wine or have any other drinks? I’m going to call a car service so you won’t drive home emotional and intoxicated.”
“I didn’t drink and the tears are gone. I’m fine to drive back to East Dune.”
“Please don’t look past him or let fear come between you. Just take him home and hug him.”
“Okay. What are you going to do?”
“Don’t know. Maybe I’ll buy myself a steak.” She watched Toya stand up with the baby tucked tight against her. “I won’t hang out here too long. There are baby goods in my Jeep.”
“You didn’t have a car seat. Where did this come from?”
“A friend brought it over so Holden and I could hit the road.”
“One of the girls?”
“No,” she said with a wistful smile. The circle was broken and the girls had kept their distance. “A different friend.”
“A man? Who?”
“Someone,” she said elusively. It was a much neater answer than “My ex-fiancé’s son, the man I had unforgettable Valentine’s sex with on the Seychelles. The man who’s possibly still having me tailed and, yes, the guy I agreed to sell out for some steady employment.”
That last part gave her bats in the stomach. It wasn’t that she owed Santino her loyalty—she owed him nothing at all. But she felt guilty all the same, as though she was hanging on too tightly to tactics that had never benefitted her.
“We should set up a system, should you and Mister Someone want a sleepover at the apartment. Bra on the doorknob?”
“Yuck, no.”
“Sticker?”
“No. It’s not going to happen. He and I—we can’t happen.”
“Why do love and romance have to be so hard to get?”
Bindi shrugged. “I think it comes in its own time, and if you miss it…”
“It’s gone? For real?”
“Yeah, possibly. Don’t squander it if you catch it. And that, guys and dolls, is the moral of our story.” She smiled broadly, waved as Toya left with her son, then let the smile slip away and signaled for a waiter. She didn’t order a steak, but went instead for dessert.
The decadent toffee dessert was devoured too soon, but she felt rejuvenated as she got up from the table to wash her hands in the powder room. She stepped away from her table but turned back when she realized she’d left the car seat. Snatching it up, she started back for the restrooms and halted to let a man and two women pass her. A long-legged woman with curly hair lighter and shorter than Toya’s dropped her handbag.
A bottle with pills rattling inside rolled to Bindi’s feet. She managed to pick it up. Prenatal vitamins. “Your vitamins?”
The woman turned with her hand out and took the bottle. “Thanks— Oh.” Martha Blue, youngest daughter of the Las Vegas Slayers’ new owners, was involved with a recently retired crazy-rich champion boxer. And she, according to her fat bottle of prenatal vitamins, had a bun baking in her oven.
The juicy tidbits were piling up in her lap—why hadn’t she capitalized on any of it by now? Why was she having so much trouble going through the motions of the procedure that had for months satisfied her cost of living?
In the powder room, she set the seat on the counter and—
A gust of fragrant air preceded the drop-dead classy woman who entered the restroom on Bindi’s heels and engaged the lock.
“Hey—”
Temperance Blue interrupted her with the iciest glare Bindi had ever seen in a pair of such warm brown eyes. “Bindi Paxton, before you get on your phone, we need to have a little chat. Go ahead as you were. I’ll talk.”
“Talk all you’d like. I’m out.”
“Martha’s pregnancy is a private matter, but you’re going to exploit it for revenge or personal gain, just as you did when you launched that little media attack on my daughter Charlotte.”
“Do you think I’m proud of everything I’ve done? Thirty years gives a hell of a lot opportunity to screw up. Did I take photos of Martha’s pills? Nope.”
“Gossip doesn’t need proof.”
“Credibility helps.” Bindi proceeded to wash her hands, and by the time she was done lathering, rinsing and drying, she’d be done with this terse conversation. “Temperance, I am not a threat to your daughters.”
“You’re a threat to anyone who gets in your way,” the woman retorted. “You and Alessandro Franco—”
“Are not of the same mind or body. His sins aren’t mine, and I’m damn sick and damn tired of people linking me to what he did. Is this how you see Nate—as an extension of his father? The man’s got balls of steel if he’s committed to marrying Charlotte, knowing she comes with you and Marshall.”
Temperance’s white-gold bracelets gleamed under the powder room lights as her arms shook. “What did you say?”
A whole heaping lot of stuff. Bindi started for the hand dryer, but the other woman darted in front of her.
“You said ‘marrying Charlotte.’ Nate Franco—”
“Is marrying your daughter. His brother told me. Now ask yourself why I knew that before you did.” Bindi gestured for Temperance to step back, and she continued drying her hands. “Your daughters don’t seem the type to hold back, so I’m sure your nightmarish parenting techniques have already been pointed out to you. If I had a mother like you— Actually, I do have a mother like you, and she’s in Illinois while I’m in Las Vegas. Connect the dots.”
Mine Tonight Page 13