Once again, she found herself with the eerie feeling she was being presented with A Sign.
Angels, signs . . . pretty grandiose stuff for a night out in Sin City. The streets were probably littered with casino chips, dropped by stumbling drunks, in addition to the many cards and flyers advertising call girls and strippers. And unlike, say, a penny, which she wouldn’t have given a second thought to, casino chips were always stamped with the name. So that wasn’t all that strange either.
Still, she’d have to be a cynical fool not to go there.
Just in case some great Fate was waiting for her.
It wasn’t hard to find Aladdin’s Cave. It was one of the first of many tall, broad, neon-clad buildings on the strip, and not surprisingly, it appeared to be themed after the Disney version of old Arabia.
She went to the roulette table with the ten-dollar chip she’d found and considered her options. Red or black had good odds, but made for a compulsive game, and Abbey didn’t want to be here all night playing fifty–fifty. After a few minutes she decided just to bet on her son’s birth date, which was January 18.
The croupier called for last bets, then spun the wheel. For a moment all Abbey could think of was Pat Sajak spinning the Wheel of Fortune and how boring her life had gotten. But no, her life wasn’t boring. It was sinful even to think that, even for a moment.
The ball clicked and bounced and clattered along the spinner until it landed on thirty-one . . . no, it bumped one more time into the next slot.
Eighteen.
She’d won.
She’d won.
Boy, it was a long time since she’d felt lucky, and with her single ten-dollar bet earning her $360, she was feeling really lucky.
This was more money than Abbey had had in hand for more than ten years. She felt rich. And when a waiter came over and poured her a glass of Bollinger champagne, she probably looked rich. And though it wasn’t really hers—she’d donate the money to the church, of course—and though she knew it wasn’t very pious either, she was enjoying it, just for this one moment.
And what harm did it do? There was no one around who knew her. Yes, Loreen and Tiffany were in town, too, but they weren’t right here. Even if they were, they wouldn’t judge. The judgmental moms, like Deb Leventer, Nancy Hart, and Suzy Collins, were elsewhere. There was no way they’d venture into the gaming rooms of a casino, Abbey was sure of it.
She smiled slightly at the thought. Twelve years ago she wouldn’t have wanted to give the money away. Twelve years ago she wouldn’t have wanted to leave Vegas, and she would have stayed in one of the bigger, more ostentatious hotels.
But that was a whole different lifetime. She was on the right path now, and if it occasionally led to a low-budget motel or the Big Fresh on Super Sale Tuesday in the name of taking care of her family, she’d gladly do it.
“Bets down,” the croupier said.
Abbey returned her attention to the roulette table. The croupier caught her eye, and she shook her head slightly.
Nowadays she knew enough not to push her luck.
She took her glass and got up, knocked aside by a pudgy redheaded woman who had apparently been waiting for a seat. It took about ten minutes to figure out where to cash in her chips, and the route took her past virtually every gaming table. She wasn’t tempted, though. With single-minded purpose, she cashed in, put the neat pile of bills in her wallet, and left the casino. She was in the lobby, almost at the entrance, when a voice spoke right behind her.
“Look who it is. Wonders never cease.”
She didn’t stop. Whoever it was obviously wasn’t talking to her. For one thing, it was a man’s voice, and the only people she knew who were nearby right now were women and children.
Still, she could have been clued in by the fact that the statement had given her pause.
Two, three steps, then, softly, almost taunting, “Hello-o.”
She kept walking.
“Abigail.”
Not me.
Someone else.
Heartbeat.
No one calls me Abigail. Not since Dad died. And . . . no, no one calls me Abigail.
The hand on her shoulder stopped her.
“Abigail Generes.”
She turned around.
The second or two that followed were surreal. For an instant, while she was turning, she thought she knew whose the voice was, but her memory of the lean, dark-skinned, handsome bad boy from her past didn’t quite mesh with the stocky pale-faced man in front of her.
So, mercifully, it was a mistake.
“I’m sorry. . . .”She scrutinized the face. Wait. Could it be? Could he have changed that much in just twelve years? Where once there had been the contours of a sharp, square jawline, there was now slightly slack, aging flesh.
“Now, don’t tell me you don’t remember me,” he said, revealing the ghost of a smile that had once left her weak in the knees.
Oh, no . . .
“You must have me confused with someone else.” She turned to leave, but he grabbed her arm, making her drop the small clutch bag she had brought with her. Her license, credit cards, and cell phone spilled out and clattered onto the polished floor.
She dropped immediately to pick the stuff up, but so did he, zeroing in on her wallet like a vulture and standing up slowly as he read her license. “Abigail Generes Walsh, fourteen-eleven Lamplighter Lane”—he raised his eyebrows—“and not a bad neighborhood. If you’re into minivans.” He pulled the cash out and rifled through it before starting to put it in his pocket.
She snatched at it, a cat going for a rat. “I beg your pardon.”
“You used to beg for a lot more than that, as I recall.”
She was unable to move, unable to do anything but gape at the man before her, with the disconcerting thought that a woman who didn’t know him might still think he was attractive.
“I think you have the wrong person,” she tried at last.
“Now, honey, it’s been a long time, but not so long I don’t know that gorgeous bod when I see it.” His breath smelled like alcohol. “Believe me, I had a lot of time to think about it while I was in the pen.”
Oh, God. It was him. Of course, she’d known it from the moment she’d heard his voice. “Damon Zucker.”
“That’s better.” He gave a broad smile, the pirate grin that, when she was twenty years old, had practically made her clothes drop off spontaneously.
Her throat tightened at the memory of his tongue in her mouth, along her body . . . She shuddered.
“I can tell you’re thrilled to see me.”
“I thought you were in jail.”
“Yeah.” He gave a mirthless laugh. “Thanks to you.”
It felt like cockroaches were running up and down her spine. “It wasn’t my fault.”
He took a long, thin cigar out of his pocket, bit the end off, and spit it on the floor. “That’s, uh, that’s not true. When the public defender went to find you, you’d split. Nowhere to be found.” He lifted the cigar. “Gimme a light.”
“I don’t have a light,” she said, looking him up and down with disgust.
“Bullshit, you always have a light. Gotta heat the bazooka, am I right?”
She swallowed hard. “I don’t do that anymore.”
He gave a shout of laughter. “Yeah, and I’m the fuckin’ pope.” He stopped a woman passing by. “Pardon me, honey, can I borrow a light?” The woman, clearly seeing something in him that was now practically invisible to Abbey, laughed and handed him her cigarette, which he held to his cigar, puffing like a cartoon villain until it was lit. “Thanks, sugar.” He gave the cigarette back to her, then turned back to Abbey.
“Charming as ever, I see,” Abbey said. “If you hurry, you can catch up to her.”
He gave a laugh. “I can catch up to her even if I don’t hurry.”
She wanted to slap that smug look right off his face. “I see your time in the slammer didn’t change you much.”
“N
ot so, Abigail. It taught me not to take no shit from nobody. Including you. Make that—” He puffed his cigar thoughtfully. “—make that especially you. I’ve been trying to find you, you know. There we were in the same town and it takes a trip to Vegas to find you. We’ve got business to discuss.”
“We don’t have any business in common.”
He took her shoulder and spun her around. “I think we do. And you know damn fucking well what it is.”
Something in Abbey cracked. Actually, it might be more accurate to say something on Abbey cracked, because the façade she’d been wearing since meeting Brian—polite, mild-mannered, your basic Clark Kent personality—felt like it was crumbling into rubble at her feet. “We’ve got no business, you jackass!”
Damon rose to the occasion immediately. “Look,” he snarled. “You owe me.”
“I don’t owe you anything.”
Damon’s eyes, which used to seem like hot, molten chocolate, were now dull black slits. “You’re just lucky I didn’t tell the police how involved you were.”
Panic coursed through her. What was the statute of limitations on being an accomplice to a felony? “You’ve got no proof.”
He laughed. It was an ugly sound. Cruel. “You wish.”
Did he? Could he? Well, of course he could. She wasn’t careful in those days, not about anything. There were probably any number of things she could still be arrested for. “You don’t scare me.”
There was still a smile pasted across his face, like a smudge of pink on a bad painting. “Baby, I spent twelve years in the slammer thinking about you. I know every expression, every movement you have. And the way you’re trying to look down on me? The way your hands are moving in and out of fists? The little shake you hope I don’t see? You’re fucking terrified.” He chuckled. “And you should be.”
“What do you want, Damon?” But she knew what he was going to say.
And he did. “I want the necklace back.”
“I don’t have it anymore,” Abbey snapped. This was rapidly turning into a nightmare.
Damon snorted a laugh. “Right. You just happened to, what, lose it? Sell it?”
“I gave it away.”
For just a fraction of a second he looked shocked. Then skeptical. “Like you’d give away a necklace worth eight grand.” But there was a question in his voice.
She nodded. “I did.” It was true, though she wasn’t above lying to scum like Damon in order to get him off her back. “I gave it to the church.”
His skepticism exploded into outright disbelief. “You . . . church? Right.”
“I did.” She didn’t want to tell him about Brian. She didn’t want him to know anything about her life now. “It seemed like the right thing to do, so I did it.”
“Somehow I can’t picture it.”
Her anger grew disproportionately, and she had a little momentary fantasy about punching him in the face with brass knuckles. “I don’t give a damn if you can picture it or not. We’re finished here.” She turned to walk away.
“Not so fast.” He grabbed her arm, hard, probably leaving a red mark behind.
She whirled to face him, shaking his arm off her. “Do not touch me,” she warned.
He rolled his eyes. “Or what? You’ll create a scene and I’ll have to contact your husband at one-four-one-one Lamplighter Lane and tell him about your dirty, dirty past?”
Abbey felt the blood drain from her face, and hated the fact that she couldn’t control such an obvious giveaway.
He saw it, too. “You used to have a better poker face than that, babe. A little better. Not much.”
“You used to be nicer.”
He shrugged, a slight movement that somehow suggested sharp anger. “That was before my girl let me down and sent me to jail.”
The designation of Abbey as “his girl” sickened her, even if it was true once. She wanted to punch him in his doughy gut. “Like I already said, it’s not my fault you went to jail for your crimes.”
“Actually, yeah, it is.” He nodded and looked off into the distance. He might as well have been chewing a piece of straw and contemplating if it was going to be a rough winter for the crops. “And I think the price for that should be nine thousand. Eight thousand for the necklace you won’t give back to me—”
“I don’t have it!”
“—and another thousand we’ll call interest. Maybe we should make it two. A nice even ten grand.”
If she didn’t get away from him quickly, his price was going to rise to include her firstborn, and knowing Damon, he’d find a way to exact it, one way or the other. “Tell me where to find you and I’ll see what I can come up with.” Her voice was hard with anger. “But it should interest you to know, though I doubt it will, that the necklace was valued at five thousand, not eight thousand, and the proceeds went to help HIV-positive children in a foster home in Bethesda.”
“Charity begins at home.” He shook his head, keeping his gaze leveled on her like a shotgun. “And that ain’t my home.”
“Five thousand,” she said, her voice hard. Somewhere deep in her subconscious she must have known this day was coming. The only way to buy herself enough time to figure out how to deal with it was to pretend to play his game, and to play it hard. “Just tell me where to send a cashier’s check.”
“Tell you where the police can find me again, maybe on some trumped-up charge you come up with?” He gave a bark of laughter. “I’ll contact you. Soon. Just get the money together—ten grand—and be ready for me.”
Chapter
3
Tiffany Vanderslice Dreyer had spent enough sleepless nights watching infomercials to know that there were a lot of people out here who spent a ton of money on stupid things, particularly expensive clothes, shoes, and beauty products.
She just never thought she’d be one of them.
Her sister, Sandra, was a different story. Sandra spent hundreds of dollars on a single pair of shoes—shoes!—at a time, but on the rare occasion Tiffany would get herself something new, it would be from TJ Maxx or Payless, and even then only when her shoes were totally worn out or she needed a pair for a special occasion.
So the idea that Tiffany might spend her way into trouble was ridiculous.
But, then again, Tiffany had never been much of a drinker either, and tonight, in Vegas, with free drinks and open-all-night shops, bets were off on both counts.
Everything had been just fine until she spotted a clothing shop in the lower level of the hotel, called Finola Pims, named for the British designer. Finola, as Tiffany came to think of her, had classic sensibilities, but with vivid, beautiful fabrics, and a modest-yet-sexy style that spoke to Tiffany.
Everything Tiffany tried on looked amazing on her, even a couple of funky dresses she’d trotted out as a sort of private joke because they were so outrageous, she was sure they’d look silly. But no, they hugged her figure in all the right places while miraculously giving her room to move and bend without showing her privates to everyone within fifty yards. She was tall and blond, with light blue eyes, so she’d gotten her share of attention back when she was dating, but since that time she’d begun to feel like she was in a rut.
Finola Pims lifted her out of that rut.
Within forty-five minutes of walking into the shop, she was sitting in the dressing room with an empty margarita glass and fifteen thousand dollars’ worth of once-in-a-lifetime clothes she had to put back.
The pile wasn’t so big as one might expect.
But quality cost a lot. And before she put the clothes back, she decided to try on a few shoes. She’d never been a shoe person—that was her sister. In fact, she’d always sort of been an anti-shoe person because of her sister’s weird penchant for them. She couldn’t understand how a person could put four-hundred-dollar shoes on their feet and then walk around in them, ruining them with every step. The cost-to-loss analysis on that sucked.
So Tiffany went to Finola’s shoe collection, hoping to get herself out
of spending mode and back under control.
Now, seriously, Tiffany was not planning to love the shoes. In fact, with her long history of shoe disdain, she honestly thought it would shake her out of her shopping spree. If there had been a John Deere dealer in the hotel, it could have served the same purpose, but there wasn’t, so she was stuck with the shoe section.
How was she to know she’d love them?
Seriously, how had she gone thirty-six years and never realized that shoes could make your legs look like a movie star’s? Especially these shoes, which were so blah on the shelf. First there were the pale denim espadrilles with two-inch heels. Easy, right? They were denim—ew—with big heels.
It should have been as anti-spending as formaldehyde.
But the pale blue denim enhanced her new Las Vegas poolside tan in a way she could never have imagined, and the height of the heels beautifully emphasized the calf muscles she’d developed carrying two-year-old Andy (currently at his grandparents’ house, since Charlie couldn’t—or wouldn’t—take the time off work) up the stairs almost every night when he fell asleep.
On top of that, the shoes had ankle straps, which she’d expected to look like silly sixth-grade toe-shoe straps, but which instead just added the perfect finishing touch to the shoe, creating a long, tan, shapely leg line that she totally had not expected.
Given all of that, $150—down from $426—truly did seem like a bargain. She’d gone all these years without ever being particularly inspired by shoes, so if these struck her that way, there had to be something special about them.
How would she feel if she walked away and didn’t buy them?
She could imagine herself going out with Charlie to one of those boring company events three, four, five weeks from now and wishing she had these very shoes, which she could never find again, to set off her outfit and make her a standout.
Not that she could see Charlie agreeing to such a thing. If it were the NFL Channel on cable TV, he might try to find a way to swing it, but it had been established a long time ago that if Tiffany wasn’t going to have a “real job” outside of the home, then she wasn’t entitled to a whole lot of luxuries.
Secrets of a Shoe Addict Page 3