Hearts in Vegas (Harlequin Superromance)

by Colleen Collins - Hearts in Vegas (Harlequin Superromance)

  “Don’t have a bag, man. This is how I roll.”

  “Well, you can’t roll into the fitness center wearing flip-flops. Fortunately, they sell workout shoes there, so we’ll buy you a pair.”

  “Rules, man.”

  “Yeah, well, that’s how the universe rolls.” He looked into Li’l Bit’s eyes, pinker than a Ruby Red grapefruit. “You’re stoned.”

  Li’l Bit reared his head back. “Dude, I get the bad-attitude thing, but who died and made you the ganja police?”

  Maybe he was worn down by one long, strange day, but the question hit Braxton’s funny bone. Who cared if Li’l Bit got zonked out of his gourd? This weeklong workout was for a freaking Manwich auction, not the Olympics.

  “Sorry,” he muttered, “I’ve been under some stress lately.”

  Li’l Bit placed a meaty hand on his shoulder. “It’s that blonde, right? Your mom talked to me about her, says you don’t really know anything about her, not even her last name—”

  “She’s talking to you about Frances?”

  What was it with his family? At least when they’d started gossiping about him, they kept it among themselves. Now it was spilling over to outsiders.

  “Hey, man, we were just talkin’ a little while playing slots. No big deal—”

  “Slots?” Braxton looked around. “Mom’s here?”

  “Yeah, she’s signing up for that contest thing....”

  “What contest thing?”

  “Poker contest.”

  “Poker tournament?”

  “Tournament, yeah, that’s what they call it.” Li’l Bit scratched his double chin. “Dorothy’s really stoked about doing this, man, been talking about it for weeks, so since I was cruisin’ to Bally’s to meet you, I asked her along, figured she could catch a ride home with you after our workout.”

  As a rendition of “Stairway to Heaven” started playing, competing with the symphony of whizzing, chirping slot machines, Braxton thought back to his mom playing poker years ago, mostly at Bally’s while waiting for his dad to get off work. He’d had no idea she still played...or was stoked to enter a tournament.

  It already rankled him that his family could talk about him, but to know they weren’t sharing themselves with him? What was the point of returning to the family fold if he stayed outside the crease?

  “She could’ve told me about the tournament,” he groused, shooting a quick look toward the restrooms. No Frances.

  “Dude, it’s not like anybody’s keeping secrets, man. It’s just—”

  “Just what?” Braxton snapped.

  Li’l Bit shook his head sorrowfully, his woolly mane quivering a second or two longer.

  “I’m saying this from a place of love, Brax, but you gotta shine life on, dude. Like the Eagles said, you gotta start taking it a whole lot easier.”

  “Take it easy, you mean.”

  “Yeah, man, you’re getting the message.” His pink eyes got pinker as they started welling up. “Because I love you like a brother, dude.”

  “I’m not your...” The rest of his sentence faded away as he saw Frances heading toward them.

  She held herself stiffly as she walked, her shoulders still hunched, but not as much as before, her mass of blond hair looking slightly different, as if she’d rearranged it or something....

  She held her hand cupped close to her face, which made him think she was talking into a cell phone, then remembered hers was in her purse, locked in Dima’s office. Then he wondered if she was eating something, but as she came closer he saw that wasn’t the case. Yet her hand hovered near her face.

  Twenty or so feet away she paused, her eyes locked on his, her hand, small and white, hovering near her cheek.

  “Wow,” Li’l Bit said, “that chick with the Lion King hair is wearing a trench coat just like yours.”

  “That’s because it is my coat,” he muttered.

  Reaching them, she stopped, her body angled as though she were ready to bolt at a moment’s notice. The way she was turned, he and Li’l Bit could only see half of her face.

  “Sorry I took so long,” she said quietly, “but you wouldn’t believe the lines.” She glanced at Li’l Bit’s T-shirt and smiled. “That’s one of my favorite lines. I’m a big fan of the Coen brothers.”

  He stared at her, his face slack with awe, the way the kid in the movie E.T. looked after the alien’s glowing finger touched his forehead. Then, as though zapped back to life, he lurched forward and clasped her hand with both of his.

  “My name’s Nathan, but everyone calls me Li’l Bit.”

  “And I’m Dorothy,” a voice said, “Braxton’s mother.”

  His mother stood erect, dressed in gray pants and her yellow bowling league shirt with Dot stitched in red over the pocket. Her short-nailed fingers played on the strap of her shoulder bag as her hazel eyes focused on the trench coat, then took in the explosion of blond hair.

  “I’m Frances Jefferies.” Maintaining her angled stance, she dipped her head in greeting. “I’m wearing your son’s coat because mine got locked in our boss’s office.”

  “Our boss,” Dorothy repeated, brightening. “So when do you start, Braxton?”

  “It’s a, uh, two-part venture,” he said. “I’ll tell you about it later.”

  “Are you a lawyer at this company?” she asked Frances, who looked momentarily confused.

  “No.”

  “She’s a vice president, Mom.”

  “Vice president of...?”

  “Marketing,” Frances answered.

  “Sales,” Braxton said at the same time.

  “Marketing and sales,” she quickly corrected, “although Dmitri just calls it sales.”

  Braxton thought it was odd for Dima to lop off part of a job title. The guy disagreed with Shakespeare, for God’s sake, for writing “What’s in a name?” Couldn’t simply say his ringtone was just Tchaikovsky—no, it was Tchaikovsky’s concerto for violin in something major.

  “Okay,” he said, “time to get this show on the road. Mom, would you mind walking Li’l Bit to the fitness center while I get Frances set up?”

  “Set up?” his mom asked.

  “He’s treating her to dinner while we work out,” Li’l Bit explained.

  “But...she’ll be alone.” Dorothy pressed the air with her hands in a this-is-how-we’ll-do-it gesture. “You and Li’l Bit go to the fitness center while I take Frances to the sports book—left my jacket there with Ross, so I have to pick it up anyway—and she can grab a bite to eat there.”

  “Ross still bartends at the sports book?” Braxton gave his head a disbelieving shake. “He must be a hundred years old by now.”

  Dorothy scoffed, “Mid-seventies isn’t old...well, much. Anyway, he only works a few nights a week and still makes the best Zombie in town.”

  “Sorry,” Frances interrupted, starting to unbutton the trench coat, “but I can’t stay. My dad’s on his way here to give me a ride home.”

  Stung by the news, Braxton stared at her, or the half of her he could see. “But...when I asked to treat you to dinner...”

  “I said yes, I know, but then we got stuck in traffic, and I didn’t realize how late it was getting,” she said, her words tumbling over each other, her hand fluttering up to her face again. “It just seemed, you know, easier to call my father, have him pick me up.”

  In the awkward, strung-out moments that followed, Braxton tried to contain his disappointment—and his hurt.

  “When did you call your father?” he asked quietly.

  “When I visited the ladies’ room.”

  “Whose phone?”

  “Don’t know her name....”

  “A stranger.”

  She nodded.

  “Could’ve borrow
ed my phone at any time. On the ride over. Here....”

  “Thought you needed it to call Li’l Bit—”

  His gut flipped. “I get the picture,” he murmured. “You borrowed some stranger’s cell phone because you wanted to call your dad. Or a boyfriend—”

  “I don’t have a boy—”

  “Look,” he interrupted, “if you didn’t want to do dinner, fine. Didn’t want me to drive you home, okay. But you could have told me to my face.”

  He looked at Li’l Bit and his mom. “Yeah, I liked her, okay?” He laughed as though all this had just been some kind of joke, no big deal. “But I’ll get over it. Feel free to share this end-of-the-great-love-affair-that-never-happened with Drake, Val, Grams, Richmond, your bowling league, your ganja pals, the Las Vegas Sun....” He paused, the reality catching up that he, the guy whose black book had been the envy of his buddies—who used to brag that he understood women better than they understood themselves—had missed the signs that Frances wasn’t all that into him.

  His mom reached out to him. “Braxton, darling—”

  “I’m okay, Mom,” he said as he strode away, half hearing Li’l Bit calling for him to wait up, but he wasn’t slowing, wasn’t waiting.

  He probably should have taken his cue when Frances had slid out of their near-kiss earlier today, but that wouldn’t have stopped him from returning later to escort her to her car, show her he could be a gentleman.

  Good thing he had, too, because she’d been stranded in a desolate industrial park, only minutes of sunlight left. No jacket. No keys to her car. No phone to call for help.

  Braxton toyed with the idea of calling Dima in the morning, explaining something else had come up, sorry, that he couldn’t fulfill the part-time executive-protection gig. Suggest that Dima hire that best-in-Vegas bodyguard pal of Frances’s instead.

  Meanwhile, Braxton would fulfill the Yuri investigation, burn through that retainer. After that, his head and heart should be in better shape about Frances, making it easier to tackle that Security Director position.

  “Dude, please...wait up.”

  Braxton stopped and turned.

  Li’l Bit, trying to jog in his flip-flops, held up his hand as though hailing a cab. Seeing Braxton had stopped for him, he sank heavily against a slot machine, his face the color of a ripe tomato, gasping for air.

  “Man, I haven’t...run this much...since fourth grade....” He lifted the hem of his T-shirt and stared at the waistband of his plaid shorts. “Wow...I popped a button....”

  The little old lady playing the slot machine stared, horrified, at Li’l Bit’s round, hairy gut.

  Braxton headed over before she called security. Tonight was bad enough without his family losing their lifetime discount, too.

  “Check the button in the men’s locker room,” he said, taking Li’l Bit by the elbow and steering him away from disaster.

  “But—”

  “No buts,” he said, “or showing guts. You can quote me on that.”

  “Dude, I’m sorry...about Frances.”

  “I’m sorry, too,” he murmured.

  * * *

  FRANCES STOOD NEAR Dorothy Morgan, slowly unbuttoning the trench coat, unnerved by the woman’s unflinching stare. Michael Jackson’s song “Bad” pulsed over the speakers.

  Frances felt badder, if that was even a word.

  She understood how it looked, leaving to make a “secret” call, but she hadn’t done it to deceive Braxton. Didn’t mean she wasn’t sorry that he’d felt hurt.

  “My son might not be perfect,” Dorothy finally said, keeping her eyes on Frances’s face, “but he’s a good man who’s trying to live an honest life, and he deserves honesty—” her chin trembled “—from all of us in return.”

  “I didn’t realize he’d take it this way. I’m sorry,” she managed to say around the ache in her throat.

  “Me, too.” Dorothy released a heavy sigh. “I feel like a hypocrite. Always said I don’t believe in gossip, told my friends I won’t condone it, and then I go and blab about my son to others.”

  “Your intention wasn’t to hurt him,” she said softly, as much to herself as Dorothy.

  “But I did.”

  A sadness engulfed Frances as she missed her own mother, who wasn’t as tough as Braxton’s mom seemed to be, but had been every bit as caring and loyal.

  “Well,” Dorothy said, rolling back her shoulders, “it’s none of my business what you feel for him, but if you didn’t want him to treat you to dinner, he’s right, you should have told him up front, before you made your plans to leave.” The furrow between her eyebrows deepened. “Do you have a boyfriend? Is that who you called?”

  “No.” She swallowed hard. “I really did call my dad.”

  “You needed privacy to do that?”

  “Yes.”

  “If I didn’t know better, I’d say you don’t want Braxton to have your dad’s phone number.”

  That was blunt and to the point. And partially correct. If Frances had made the call from Braxton’s phone, her dad’s cell number would have been stored as an outgoing call. Investigators had all kinds of tricks they could run with phone numbers, such as plugging them into proprietary and specialized phone-number databases. A really good investigator could take a seemingly insignificant result from one of those researches and extract new leads from it, and she didn’t want to risk Braxton identifying her as a Vanderbilt investigator.

  But mostly, she didn’t want Braxton or anyone else to overhear her telling her dad her scar was starting to show, and to please come quickly, and bring her makeup bag off her dresser. She’d whispered all this to him over the stranger’s phone while standing in a corner stall in the women’s bathroom, the door locked. He hadn’t questioned her shaky-voiced request, just said he’d be on his way.

  “What time is it?” Frances asked.

  After shooting her a quizzical look, Dorothy checked her wristwatch. “Six-forty.”

  She probably should have called a cab instead of her dad, but Frances had felt rushed, panicked. With the mess of traffic along the Strip, who knew when he’d get here. Her scar was already visible, would be more so as the minutes ticked past....

  “Frances, this is already an awkward conversation, but it would help if you looked at me while we’re talking. I feel as though I’m talking to your shoulder.”

  Frances nodded, knowing that her stance, mostly turned away, likely came across as rude. Cupping her hand over her scar, she turned toward Dorothy, her head bowed.

  “I need special makeup,” she whispered.

  Dorothy leaned closer. “I’m having trouble hearing you....”

  Frances raised her head a little. “I always keep special makeup in my purse, in my car, but I couldn’t get to them.” Her nerves wound tighter with each second, her worries bubbling and churning like boiling water.

  She swallowed hard, wondering if she should go outside and wait for her dad, but it was chilly out there and she couldn’t keep Braxton’s coat, and who knew how long she’d be waiting, surrounded by crowds of strangers, and she didn’t want anybody seeing, staring.

  She glanced at the ladies’ restroom, which, although a short walk, was packed with women standing in line.

  Her panic rising, she looked across the casino at the swarms of laughing, chatting people, at the restaurants crammed with customers, more lines of people waiting to get inside.

  There was nowhere to go....

  “Special makeup,” Dorothy said, gazing at her curiously. “I don’t understand.”

  Frances nodded, a headache throbbing to life behind her eyes. She’d shared her darkest, ugliest secret with so few people in her life—five or six, maybe—but never with a stranger.

  With her free hand, she gripped Dorothy’s arm and tugged her cl
oser, so close she could smell the older woman’s rose-scented perfume.

  Turning her head slightly, she uncupped her hand, holding her fingers stiffly at the side of her face, like a fan, so passersby wouldn’t see.

  “Oh, Frances,” Dorothy murmured.

  Cupping her cheek again, she met Dorothy’s worried gaze.

  “Please,” she whispered hoarsely, “help me hide.”

  * * *

  AS DOROTHY GUIDED Frances—her head bowed, hand cupped on her cheek—across the crowded lobby, Frances felt like a kid being steered across a street by a no-nonsense crossing guard.

  When she’d first met Braxton’s mom, Frances had been hit with how different she was from her son. Rigid and critical, compared to his fervent charisma. Even her clothes were practical, whereas Braxton’s were designer all the way. She’d kept her cool, while Braxton had a tendency to run hot.

  But Frances saw one trait mother and son shared—they both had caring, protective natures.

  The jingling slot machines and pop music faded as they entered the sports book, a theaterlike auditorium. People, many with drinks in their hands, sat in rows of seats facing walls embedded with screens silently playing different sports events. Occasionally there’d be yells and clapping, along with a disgruntled sports fan barking an expletive.

  “You like white wine?” Dorothy asked.

  “Sure.”

  As they passed the bar, she said to a silver-haired bartender, “Two glasses of house white, Ross. Taking my friend to the boys’ booth.”

  He nodded. “Haven’t sold your jacket yet.”

  Moments later, Dorothy ushered Frances into a red vinyl booth nestled in the back of the sports book, quietly ensuring that her right cheek faced a wall. There were a few scattered tables nearby, all empty. Lights were dim back here, the area giving Frances an added sense of safety.

  “Two chardonnays,” announced a skinny waitress with pale skin whose name tag read Jan—Fresno, CA. As she set the glasses on the table, Frances noticed a silver tag engraved with a heart and the date 03-16-2009 dangling from a chain around her neck.

  Dorothy reached for her purse.

  Jan waved it off. “Ross says it’s on the house.”