Hellos were exchanged and Dane gave Ross a look. The one that said he needed to talk privately. Which meant either some kind of outlandish request or an extension on his credit. The outlandish request, he could handle. The credit extension? Not so much. Dane had been on a losing streak at Dominion and was already in the hole for almost a million dollars.
“You know,” Kate said, “I could use a trip to the ladies room.”
Ross ran a hand across her back, offering what he hoped was a silent apology for the interruption. “Do you know where it is?”
She nodded, clearly understanding his message. “No worries. I’ll find it.”
Two minutes later, Dane Carlisle had done his pitch for a credit extension. Given the situation at Dominion, Ross needed to consult with Samuels. But rather than piss off a guest, he’d managed to compromise by loading Dane up on comps for the bar to get him through tonight.
He texted Holly and instructed her on how to handle Dane and just as he put his phone away, Kate appeared.
“You’re back. Excellent.”
“I am. It seemed like you needed a second.”
“I’m sorry.”
“It’s all right. This is your job. That I don’t mind.” Kate pursed her lips. “Ross, I enjoy you. I do.”
Here it was. The drop kick. “But?”
“No but.”
“Then what?”
She held his stare for a few seconds. “I don’t mind work interruptions, but earlier, with the redhead that came over? I have no interest in being a recycled redhead.”
A what? He cocked his head. “Pardon?”
She held up her phone, swiped at the screen and handed it to him. “As you said, I did my research. Scroll.”
On the phone’s screen was a photo of he and Liz Baker. He’d taken her to a restaurant opening in Vegas and they’d posed for a photographer from a local magazine. He swiped the screen and another photo came up. This one of Melanie. Also a redhead. Next picture. A redhead. Jesus.
The redhead brigade.
He stopped swiping. Who knew how many photos she had? Could be plenty. Over the years, he’d had a string of redheads who’d kept him company.
“Kate—”
She held up her hand. “She looked familiar. While I was in the ladies room, I checked my research photos and…”
“There she was. Along with all the other redheads.”
“Yes. You and I both have a lot at stake here. I’m a consultant hired by your boss to scrutinize your security. If this getting to know each other thing goes wrong, I’ll be the female security consultant who socializes with her male clients. And you know what that implies. Frankly, I’m too smart to let that happen.”
“First, you are not a recycled redhead. I promise you that.” He handed the phone back to her. “That looks bad, I know it does. Some of those women I took out one time. That was it. And, yeah, I’ll admit, some were one-night stands.”
“Too much information.”
He inched forward, ran the tips of his fingers down her cheek.
“No, it isn’t.” He waited for her to look up. To meet his gaze so she’d see how serious he was. Slowly, she brought her gaze up and locked on. “I want you to know I understand the difference between a one-night stand and what this is. What I think we can be. You’re different. I know what I feel. And I’ve never felt it before. Ever.”
Kate continued to stare at him, her face blank.
Her hair, that burnt red that had snagged his attention the first day, slid across her shoulder and he dragged his fingers over it. Enough for him to get lost in its thickness and realize his fixation with red hair might be his downfall. “This time,” he said. “I want more. Let me prove that to you.”
“Ross? Sorry to bother you.”
Holly, his VIP hostess. Dammit with the interruptions. He scrubbed his hands over his face. “This is such a cluster.”
Kate grinned and dropped a kiss on his cheek. “It’s fine. This conversation was getting too intense anyway. Take care of what you need to and let’s have some fun. Apparently, you’re a man who has something to prove.”
* * *
By 10:30 the next morning, after Marcia informed Kate that the previous evening’s numbers held no concerns about possible cheats, Don walked into Kate’s office where she prepped for her meeting with another batch of Fortuna’s dealers later that day.
Don shut the door. Uh-oh. Closed doors never meant good news. Whatever it was, she hoped he wasn’t about to throw her day into a tizzy. She’d scheduled an off-site meeting with John, her ex, to see if he’d heard any new details about Mark’s murder and the cheat working the strip.
As Don moved toward her, closed door aside, he appeared calmer today and his color was better, but with this man, that could change at any second.
She folded her hands on top of the desk. “Did you make that doctor’s appointment?”
The glare he leveled on her was meant to frighten. To back her off. To intimidate her. What Don hadn’t yet realized was Kate had grown up on a ranch surrounded by ornery men.
She didn’t bend to intimidation.
“I forgot.”
She spun the desk phone and shoved it at him. “Do it. Right now.”
“Listen—”
“No. I don’t want to hear Ross lecturing you. He’s concerned about you and frankly, so am I. Why that is, I have no idea because you’re really a pain in the rear, but there you have it.” He laughed and she nudged the phone closer. “Either you make the call or I will ask Marcia to help me find out who your doctor is.”
His head snapped back. Now they were getting somewhere. He dropped into the guest chair, his bulk landing hard and he ran both hands over his bald head. He may have been sweating.
Whatever he was doing, he was most certainly stalling.
She narrowed her eyes and pointed at the phone.
A noise came from his throat and he shook his head. “Jesus, you’re mean.”
The Marcia card did it. She knew it would. After watching Ross and Don interact with the woman, she’d sensed a tiny bit of fear on their parts. Marcia—yay for her—could make their lives hell.
And they knew it.
Don snatched the receiver up and dialed. Obviously, he’d memorized the number. That, at least, was a good sign. In an odd sort of way.
She sat back and listened in while he made an appointment for the following week.
He set the phone down and sat back. “Happy?”
“Immensely. You didn’t call your sister, right? That was actually the doctor’s office?”
“Quit busting my balls! It was the doctor.” He pushed the phone at her. “Redial and see.”
Part of her wanted to. But Don didn’t strike her as a man to go to such extremes. He was stubborn enough to simply tell her to go to hell and walk out. No need for a pretend phone call.
“I believe you. And make sure you tell Ross. It’ll keep him off your back. You’ll thank us for this.”
Finally, he laughed. “I like you, Kate. You’d make a good member of my team.”
And, whoa…was that…a hint? A subtle cue to gauge her reaction?
Probably not. If Don had a job offer, he’d offer it. What she had here was an off-handed comment. That’s all.
“Thanks for the compliment. I’m good where I am.”
Most of the time. At least until she got to Fortuna and saw the way this crew interacted. As stressful as their lives were, they had fun. Every day, even for a few seconds, someone around here laughed. And that, she didn’t have.
“Who gives a shit about being good. You like it here. I can tell.”
Okay, now she was really confused. What exactly were they talking about?
“I do like it here. But being here as a consultant is a whole lot different than being an employee.”
Plus, she couldn’t work around Ross on a permanent basis. He distracted her and she needed to complete this assignment and leave Fortuna before that distraction caused her to do some
thing stupid.
Like sleep with her client.
“Well,” he said, “I’m putting it out there. So far, I like what I see in you. And I don’t have anyone here who can jump in if I have a heart attack.”
“If you take care of yourself, that won’t happen.”
He waved it off. “Yada, yada. I know. But younger men than me drop dead all the time. All I’m saying is, at the end of this consulting assignment, if you’re interested in coming on board, let’s talk about it.”
The idea of having a home again, interacting with friends each day rather than her insane boss in their shoebox of an office, held appeal. Sure did.
But…Ross. When he got over his little infatuation and moved on, she’d be the cliché she never wanted to be and, worse, she’d have to see him every day.
Not happening.
She smiled at Don, poked a finger at him. “You are just about irresistible.”
“Told ya.”
“But I need to stay where I am. For now.”
He shrugged. “All right. You let me know if you change your mind.”
“I will. And thank you. Coming from you, that’s extremely high praise.” She tapped her fingers on the edge of the desk. “I’m assuming you came in here for something?”
“Yeah. We switched the camera angles, like you asked.”
On her way to her office earlier that morning, she’d stopped to see Don and made suggestions about fine tuning the camera angles. Now curious, she spun back to her laptop and logged into the surveillance system. She pulled up a live feed of the mini-bac table they suspected had gotten hit.
“Yes, this is perfect.” She tapped the screen where the dealer shuffled cards. “See the difference? Now we can see more of a side angle of the cards. Before we could only see the top of the cards.”
“Yeah. I like it. And”—he waggled a finger, —“we finished running credit checks on all the dealers at the tables in question. Clean as whistle.”
Darn it. A good thing all in all, but that little development left her no further along. “It was worth checking.”
“Always. What else did you find on video?”
Kate formed a zero with her fingers. “Nothing. One player wrote down the order of the cards—”
“That’s allowed in mini-bac.”
“I know.” She dug into her briefcase, pulled out her notes from the night before. “I doubt it’s anything but couldn’t hurt to run her name. See what her story is.” She copied her notes from the night before onto another page and handed it over to Don. “Here’s the time stamp from the video. She’s in seat three.”
“We’ll see who she is.”
High-end casinos knew their big players. From the moment those players set foot in Vegas, the casino host took control. If the player wasn’t a known whale, the minute he or she sat down at the table, they were asked if they had a player’s card, if not, they were offered one. From there, the casino had their legal name and address. Information that could be used to find out all sorts of things. A simple internet search could reveal a criminal background.
“Excellent.”
A knock sounded on the door. “Come in.”
The door cracked open and Ross stuck his head in. “Oh, hey. Sorry to interrupt.”
Don angled back. “We’re done. Kate just bullied me into making a goddamned doctor’s appointment.”
Ross hitched his eyebrows up. “No shit?”
“No shit, kid. Next week.” Don pushed himself out of the chair. “Now get off my ass about it. Kate, find me if you need me. I’ll be working on our mini-bac broad.”
Broad? Lovely. Kate sighed. “Thank you.”
Don pulled the door all the way open and Ross stepped aside to let him pass.
Ross remained in the doorway, focusing on her but motioning to Don’s back. “What’s that about?”
“Last night there was a woman at mini-bac keeping track of the cards.” He opened his mouth and she stuck her hand up. “Which I know she’s allowed to do. Something was bugging me though. I asked Don to look into it. See what he could find on her.”
“If she’s a regular at Dominion and came over when we opened, we’ll have a file. Hell, we’ll probably have her baby weight. Samuels doesn’t screw around with that stuff. Anyway, I’m heading to the casino for a fly-by. Wanna come?”
Did she ever. But really, the thing she should do is stay away from Ross and the lust he induced. Before this assignment ended, the push-pull of emotions would wear her out.
His appeal, she knew, went beyond physical. Beyond that of a woman who hadn’t had a lot of male company in the last few months.
Lust she could deal with. Her problem was she liked Ross. He made her laugh, he respected her as a businesswoman and, yes, he found her attractive. A grand trifecta.
Something she should probably run from because their lifestyles simply didn’t mesh.
“Kate,” he said, a wicked grin lighting his face. “It wasn’t a marriage proposal. Relax. Right now, we’re cruising the casino.”
Funny man. She checked the clock on her laptop. Twenty minutes before she needed to leave for her meeting. “I could use a latte.”
Ha. A latte. Yep, she might be in trouble.
Downstairs, after tossing her latte cup in a trash can, Kate stood to the side, casually observing while Ross did his back-slapping. The man was a master and each day, each second, she spent in his presence reminded her he loved this life. The schmoozing, the sucking up, the wooing. All of it like a body part he couldn’t function without.
At the ripe old age of thirty-four, he knew what he wanted and that was enviable. Despite her intense boss, she liked her job but had yet to figure out if this was where she wanted to be in ten years. She simply didn’t know.
Giving up on the Ross show, she scrolled her phone for a quick perusal of her emails. A message from Dev telling her the Dominion mini-bac numbers were down slightly from yesterday but nothing noteworthy and that she needed to call him ASAP.
Ross finished schmoozing one of the poker players and wandered back to her. “One of our whales,” he said. “Mr. Miller. The son of the woman you pawned my caviar off on.”
Kate snorted. “Don’t be that way.”
He smiled and squeezed her arm. “I’m teasing you. You know that, right?”
Unable to resist touching him because, after all, that was always a rush, she patted his hand, still attached to her arm and—oh, boy—their hands on each other, all that heat and buzzing, felt a tad too good. “Yes. I know that.”
Not good. Any of this. The way her body responded to him, the way her mind responded to him. Dammit. She waggled her phone. “My boss is looking for me.”
“Go ahead. I’m gonna check with the pit.”
She watched him go, walk back to his work among the shouts of winning players and blinging of slots. His life. The thing that drove him.
The thing she never wanted.
Why was she wasting her time thinking about this now? A day at a time. That’s all she could do.
She poked at Dev’s name on her phone’s screen.
One ring in, he picked up. “What the hell are you thinking screwing Ross Cooper?”
What the hell indeed. Up to this point, she’d given Dev the benefit of the doubt. All these months when he’d said something inappropriate, she’d let it slide, considered the source and didn’t get worked up over it. Now? With him making an accusation without giving her the courtesy of a conversation? She might hate her boss.
“First of all, watch your tone. Not that it’s any of your business, but I’m not screwing Ross Cooper. Whoever your spy is got that wrong. You are insane, Dev.”
“You got cozy with him in the bar last night. You gonna tell me that didn’t happen?”
On that one, he had her. “No. It happened. I went to the club at Ross’s request. One of his whales was throwing a party and he wanted me to see the entire operation. And, not that it’s your business, but I told him I was
n’t interested in sleeping with my client.”
Sort of.
Spin-alert. Maybe she wasn’t so innocent after all.
“You know if you fuck this guy, your career is over.”
Yep. She officially hated Dev. But she’d handle this like the professional she’d groomed herself to be. Without sighing, without huffing, without any show of emotion—total robot. “I think we’re done. I’m hanging up now. If you ever speak to me this way again, I’m quitting.”
She poked at the screen muttering about the firing squad she’d like to line up for her boss.
“Problem?”
Ross strode up to her and she let out an irritated laugh.
You.
Could this assignment get any stickier?
Once again, she’d be a professional, put on her stoic face and play this cool. “I’m fine.”
The absolute wrong thing to do right now would be to rage about her boss to her client. Even if her client had a personal interest in the matter.
“Sometimes, I swear I could strangle my boss.” Well, there went playing it cool.
“What happened?”
“Samuels isn’t the only one spying on us. Someone told Dev they saw us in the club last night. He wanted to tell me that if I fucked you—his word, certainly not mine—my career would be destroyed. At which point, I told him the conversation was over.”
And she might also be chatting with Don about that job in the near future. After that conversation, she wasn’t sure she could look at Dev, much less work for him.
“He really wound you up.”
Kate closed her eyes, drew air through her nose, held it until her chest constricted and then released the breath. Letting Dev get to her would not get this job done. She needed to focus on her assignment and then figure out what to do with her boss. “It’s all right. This is nothing new with him. He hit a nerve.”
The one that made her wonder if Ross Cooper would be professional suicide.
* * *
The Sunnyside diner was a dive spot four blocks off the strip and Kate knew it all too well. Locals loved it due to the lack of tourist activity. She had beat the lunch rush and snagged a booth along the window. Della swung by and dropped a cup of tea with lemon without Kate even asking for it. That was the lure of the Sunnyside. Waitresses who knew their regulars and took care of them.
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