Luck Be a Lady

by Cathie Linz

  He glanced over at Megan and wondered if she felt the same way. She’d been through a hell of a lot in a short period of time. Finding out your mom wasn’t dead had to be rough. His own mom was very much alive and kicking, still furious with Logan’s dad even though they’d been divorced for years now.

  His mother lived in one of Chicago’s famous brick bungalows on the South Side with his Polish grandmother, who made the best pierogies on the planet. Chicago had a huge Polish population—which his grandmother, who’d been born in Warsaw, took great pleasure in reminding him of every time he saw her for dinner on the first Sunday of every month.

  He used to be joined at the family dinners by his two younger brothers, Aidan and Connor, but Aidan was now on the Seattle police force and Connor was a sheriff in a small town in Ohio.

  Logan had added another brother his first day on the job when he’d met Will Riley. Logan rubbed a clenched fist across his forehead. No, he couldn’t think of that now. He had to block out the grim memories.

  “There you go,” Rowdy said, sliding plates across the counter to him and Megan.

  Logan started eating automatically.

  “It’s good,” Megan said, daintily dabbing at her lips with a paper napkin, drawing his attention to her lush mouth.

  Damn, his self-control was slipping badly. Not a good thing. He finished his food and stepped away from the counter and temptation.

  “I need a little shut-eye. I’m going to stretch out in the backseat of the car.”

  “Don’t be silly. You can stay in the motel,” Rowdy said. “We’ve only renovated one room, but it looks really nice and has a very comfortable king-sized bed.”

  Logan shook his head. “No, really ...”

  “Nonsense. I insist,” Rowdy said.

  “What about the phones?”

  “Nothing yet,” Rowdy said cheerfully. “But if there’s a change, I’ll let you know. Megan, you’re welcome to join him if you need to . . . uh, rest.”

  She blushed. “I’m okay. Thanks anyway.”

  “Would you like to see some of my costumes from the golden days of Las Vegas?” Pepper asked Megan.

  Megan’s eyes lit up. “That would be nice. I don’t want to be a bother though.”

  “You’re no bother, girl.” Pepper linked her arm in Megan’s and pulled her out of the café. “Let’s go. My house is right behind the café.”

  Logan watched Megan walk away, noting the sway of her hips in the black dress she’d worn since the wedding. She should have looked rumpled after being up all night. Instead she looked . . . well, rumpled but sexy rumpled. Just-got-out-of-bed rumpled. Ready-for-sex rumpled.

  Damn. He was getting hard again.

  When would he learn that helping damsels in distress always landed him in deep shit?

  “Ah, those were the days,” Pepper said as she gazed at her closet with wistful pride. “Vegas in the fifties. This is the costume I wore for my Marilyn Monroe impersonations. It’s a copy of the one she wore to sing ‘Diamonds are a Girl’s Best Friend’ in the movie How to Marry a Millionaire. Nice, huh?”

  Megan nodded. The bubble-gum-pink satin evening gown was tight and strapless. The big bow near the back and the slit up the side were edged with black lace.

  “I even have the matching pink elbow-length gloves,” Pepper said. “And, of course, the bling.” She opened a heart-shaped box containing a jumble of costume jewelry. “Not the real stuff, but still nice.” She held up a rhinestone bracelet to the ray of sunshine streaming in a side window before dropping it back into the box. “In the scene in the movie, all the other girls are wearing frothy full skirts with tons of tulle. Then there was Marilyn in this sheath gown. Such a stunning difference.”

  “I’ll bet.”

  “I read someplace that the actual pink gown Marilyn wore was made from upholstery satin and lined with felt. I don’t know if it’s true or not. But mine isn’t made that way. You can actually buy costumes of her dress online now. They aren’t as nice as mine, of course.”

  “I’m sure they aren’t,” Megan said.

  “What got you interested in vintage clothing?”

  “My grandmother. She has several classic Chanel suits. They never went out of style. In fact, she wore one to the wedding.”

  “I could never afford designer stuff,” Pepper said. “Too pricey. I’d rather have twelve dresses than one ritzy one. Not that I went for quantity rather than quality; I just picked stuff I liked. Same goes for men.”

  Afraid that Pepper was going to drill her about Logan, Megan quickly said, “Did you ever meet Frank Sinatra?”

  “No, but I met Dean Martin once. I bumped into him backstage at the Sands. And I saw Elvis Presley several times. The city is very different these days.”

  “I imagine so.”

  “I started out as a dancer, but I wasn’t very good at it. And those headpieces almost weighed more than I did. I kept losing my balance. But I was good at impersonations and singing.”

  “You were a showgirl?”

  “In the beginning, yes.” Pepper showed her a photo of a row of dancers who looked like the Rockettes. They wore skimpy red costumes and flashy feather-laden headpieces. “We showed a lot of leg for the 1950s, so our audience was mostly male. For the most part they weren’t rowdy unless they had too much to drink. Then I could relate to what the saloon girls here in Last Resort or over in Virginia City must have put up with during the silver rush. Did you know there was something like a hundred saloons in Virginia City alone? We didn’t have that many in Last Resort.”

  “Were you born here?”

  “Yes. Same with Rowdy and Chuck. We’re all Last Resorters.” She giggled. “That sounds funny when you say it that way. My family has been in Nevada for generations. My grandfather actually mined for gold and silver up in Virginia City. I remember the stories he told me when I was a little girl. Not that Virginia City was the only town with a colorful history. We have our own heritage here in Last Resort. A man named Fritz Holzenberger, who owned the Last Resort Silver Mine, founded the town in the 1880s. My granddad almost stayed in Virginia City. He tossed a coin my grandmother handed him and it came up heads, which meant moving to Last Resort, as my grandmother wanted. She was tired of Virginia City. Only later did my grandmother admit that the coin had heads on both sides. She was clever that way. Some might say I take after her. You know, our pasts have a huge influence on who we are today.”

  Megan couldn’t argue with that. The problem was that the past she thought she had was disrupted by lies, leaving her off balance and searching for answers. She wasn’t going to find them here in Last Resort, but this was a bit of a breather before she had to face her father back in Las Vegas.

  “Did your grandparents tell you stories?” Pepper asked.

  “Sometimes. But it turned out that my father told the wildest story of all.” That Megan’s mother was dead when she wasn’t.

  “Oh yeah? Is he a writer or something?”

  “He’s an accountant. A math whiz.”

  “And he told wild stories?”

  Megan nodded.

  “Wow. I love it. I would never have expected that from a math guy.”

  “He surprised me too.” Megan knew her dad liked Thurber’s short stories, but she never would have thought him capable of concocting the story about her mom that he apparently had.

  “I never had kids,” Pepper said before pulling a dress from the closet. “What do you think of this?”

  Megan took a deep breath and shifted gears. She welcomed the distraction. “It’s beautiful.” The sundress had a full skirt and bold bunches of blue and purple flowers scattered across it.

  “I’ll bet you’re what . . . a size ten?”

  Megan nodded.

  “Then this should fit you. Try it on. Go ahead. I’m glad you’re not one of those super-skinny size-zero women. When I was young, there was no such thing. Women were proud of their curves. Look at Marilyn Monroe.” Pepper pointed to a framed post
er of her on the wall from the movie Some Like It Hot.“She had curves in all the right places, to quote Rowdy. A real hourglass figure. So did I, in my heyday.”

  “Did you ever meet her in Las Vegas?”

  “Sadly, no. Here, take these two while you’re trying that one on. And this one ...”

  Before Megan knew it, she had a pile of clothes that Pepper sent her into the large bathroom to try on.

  “There’s a full-length mirror in there so you can see yourself,” Pepper said, “but do come out so I can see as well.”

  Pepper was right: The outfits all fit. From the beautiful sundress to the pastel baby blue sweater set and plaid skirt to the black pencil dress.

  “I want you to have them. And this one.” She held up a 1950s style blue floral print cocktail party dress. “These as well.” She added a lavender lace hourglass cocktail dress and a pink taffeta full skirt shelf-bust cocktail party dress that swirled around her ankles.

  Megan adored them all. But to be polite she said, “No, I couldn’t ...”

  “You’re right. You need more casual outfits too.” Pepper added a plaid jumper and a black floral cotton full skirt to the pile. “And you must have this one, girl.” She placed an ivory pleated skirt on top before returning to the closet. “This one is special. It’s a landscape skirt. See?” She held out the full skirt, which had an amazing scenic print featuring rolling hills, a farmhouse, gorgeous vibrant flowers and bunches of wheat.

  Megan couldn’t resist touching the skirt. It was love at first sight. Ditto for the full-length party dress that Grace Kelly would have worn. Actually, she loved them all. “But I can’t ...” Her words sounded much weaker this time.

  “It would save me having to sell them on eBay. I can’t wear them anymore. They don’t fit me.”

  “How about I pay you for them?” Megan said. “I mean, if you were going to sell them on eBay anyway. How much do you want for them?”

  “I don’t know. I’m not an expert at prices for vintage clothes these days.”

  “I’m no expert but I do have a good idea,” Megan said. She did a quick mental tally of the items and offered Pepper a fair price.

  “Let me throw in my old American Tourister purple hard shell suitcase to put it all in. I realize that nothing here is quite right for today’s casual wear though, so we’ll stop at the gift shop on the way down to the motel.”

  “The town has a gift shop?”

  Pepper nodded. “It’s not large but it’s attached to the motel office. We have T-shirts and some other things.”

  Half an hour later, Megan tiptoed into the motel room where Logan was still sleeping. Pepper had given her a key. The drapes were drawn against the outside sunshine and she had to pause a moment to allow her eyes to adjust to the darkness.

  Logan was sprawled out on the bed. He’d removed his T-shirt and loosened his jeans but hadn’t removed them. He rolled away from her, leaving space on the king-size bed for her to sit down.

  Megan cautiously moved forward. She didn’t want to wake him, but she was so tired she was afraid she’d end up in a boneless puddle on the carpet, which was orange shag despite Pepper’s assurances that this room had been rehabbed.

  One step, two . . . She reached for the bed. She’d just rest for a few minutes . . .

  She sank onto the soft mattress. She only had a second to enjoy the fact that the bed was so comfortable before she was grabbed and flattened by a half-naked Logan.

  Chapter Six

  Megan looked up at Logan’s face as he glared down at her, his arm across her upper chest. He blinked at her a few times before his expression changed and he quickly released her.

  Scooting off the bed, she said, “Hey, if you didn’t want to share the bed, you only had to tell me instead of grabbing me that way.” She rubbed her shoulders.

  “Did I hurt you?” His voice was husky and gruff.

  She backed away. “You like your space. No problem.”

  “No, it’s not that.” He rubbed his hand over his face, drawing her attention to his shadowy stubble, which gave him a dangerously sexy look. “I’m sorry I grabbed you that way. I didn’t mean to scare you.”

  “What did you mean to do?”

  He shook his head and looked away. “I was having a nightmare,” he muttered.

  “About being attacked by a librarian?”

  “No.” His bark of laughter held no humor. “A lot worse than that.”

  She moved a little closer. “Something to do with your job?”

  “Yeah. So now you’re probably adding this incident to your list of reasons why you dislike cops.”

  “I realize your job is stressful.”

  “You don’t have to make excuses for me.”

  “Trust me, I’m not.”

  “So why do you have this thing against cops? Did a former boyfriend cheat on you? Or is it a philosophical thing?”

  “No, it’s very personal.”

  “So you did date a cop.”

  Megan shook her head. “Not me. Wendy, my best friend in college. We were roommates and bonded the minute we met. We were both a little dorky, loved reading and were Nancy Drew fans as kids. Oh, and we both collected vintage Lilly Pulitzer. What are the odds of that?”

  “Since I have no idea who or what Lilly Pulitzer is, I can’t give you the odds.”

  “She’s a designer. Wendy and I both loved her floral dresses from the sixties.”

  “Some fancy designer to go with your fancy Streeterville address?”

  “Hey, I was not born with a silver spoon. Far from it. I grew up on the South Side. Two blocks from Faith’s house. Both our houses were brick bungalows and had the same floor plan.”

  “Yeah, I know all about brick bungalows. I grew up in one too.”

  “My family’s business didn’t take off until I was a teenager. The dresses that Wendy and I collected in college were picked up at garage sales and thrift stores. It was the fun of the hunt. We’d hit church rummage sales searching for our next find. You wouldn’t understand.”

  “Sounds like me and my brother looking for parts for the 1969 Mustang we restored together. We’d go to swap meets and car shows searching for parts. So, yeah, I know about the fun of the hunt.”

  She suspected looking for car parts wasn’t Logan’s only hunt. He went after what he wanted. Sometimes that was a good thing. Sometimes it wasn’t.

  “Anyway,” she continued, “our friendship just got deeper after graduation. She got her teaching degree. I got my library degree. We started our first jobs in our new professions. There was this cop who used to stop by the library where I worked. He was funny and nice and we became friends. But there was no chemistry between us. So I recommended that he meet my best friend, Wendy. Sure enough, they hit it off and began dating. They got married a year later. They had a baby girl a year after that.”

  “So what’s the problem?”

  “The problem is that he abused her. Verbally at first. Then physically. He terrified her. Warned her that if she called the police, they wouldn’t do anything. And he was right. They refused to help. They looked the other way. His buddies at the precinct were all on his side, blaming Wendy for being a bad wife, for not understanding the stresses he was under.” Megan paused, trying to get her residual anger under control. Her emotions were so close to the surface right now, not just because of Wendy but also because of what Megan had been through in the past twenty-four hours and the fact that she hadn’t gotten any sleep. “She was afraid to tell me. I couldn’t understand why she’d cancel our get-togethers. I thought she was just busy with the baby and her new life. I had no idea what was going on until she showed up out of the blue on my doorstep with her daughter and nothing but her purse and the clothes on their backs. Wendy had a black eye and a loose front tooth.”

  Megan took a deep breath before admitting. “I felt so guilty.”

  “Why?”

  “Because I was the one who introduced her to the bastard.”

  �
��Did he abuse her when they were dating?” Logan asked.

  “No, not at all.”

  “Then how could you have known?”

  “I should have picked up on something. He blamed Wendy for setting him off. Then afterward he’d be all apologetic and say it would never happen again. But it did. She was afraid to tell anyone. Afraid they wouldn’t believe her because everyone said what a great guy he was. And she was also afraid for their safety, because he’d make threats about what he and his buddies on the force would do if she ever tried to leave him or tell anyone.”

  “He sounds like a real bastard. You should blame him, not the entire force.”

  “Come on. You know spousal abuse is a problem among law enforcement,”

  “A few rotten apples ...”

  “It wasn’t a few rotten apples. It’s the mentality that cops are special. Special allowances are made for them. And alcohol didn’t help matters any. I don’t have to tell you about the us-versus-them mentality that is so pervasive. You’re not denying that, are you?”

  “You have to understand that it’s hard to realize what the job is like unless you’ve done it yourself. That’s why cops stick together.”

  “The only thing I understand is that there is an underlying violence in them that can be unleashed on the people they claim to love.”

  “Look, I don’t deny that cops are exposed to violence on a daily basis. That doesn’t mean they’re all abusers. Plenty of bankers, lawyers and doctors are guilty of domestic violence too.”

  “The difference is that cops are used to giving orders and having them obeyed. They are control freaks.”

  “There’s too damn much we can’t control,” he said bitterly. “I only wish we could. Maybe then ...”

  She saw the darkness flickering in his eyes. She knew anguish when she saw it. Her voice softened. “Maybe then what?”

  “Things might be different.”

  “Things? What kind of things?”

  “All kinds of things.”

  “Care to be more specific than that?”

  “Not really.” He rubbed his hand over his face. “What happened to your friend?”