Love's Gamble

by Theodora Taylor

  It was the usual suspects. A bunch of senior managers from the various casino-resort properties, and quite a few executives from the main Las Vegas office, many of whom Max had met before at the annual board meeting. The Latino guy turned out not to be as boring as the rest of the executives around the table. Cole took the lead on his introduction, inviting the gathered group to congratulate their newest VP, Gustavo Martinez. Apparently he was some kind of hotel wunderkind who’d been recruited straight out of Cornell and had worked his way up to senior management at the Benton New Orleans before he’d even hit his late twenties.

  Now at the tender age of thirty-one, he had been trained by Harrison Connors—the soon-to-retire vice president whose job he was actually taking over—and Cole himself. Cole’s involvement was what caught Max’s attention back from the short list of designers he’d like to work with on his own hotel.

  From what Max had seen, Cole never took an interest in the younger execs. In his brother’s mind, you either did your job well or you got cut from his team—no mentoring required. But either some of Sunny’s natural altruism had rubbed off on Cole, or he’d taken a genuine interest in this guy, because he was grooming him for an even bigger role in their company than vice president.

  Given his recent dealings with Cole, Max doubted it was the former. And his suspicions were confirmed when instead of conducting the first presentation on the Benton Las Vegas himself, he handed the floor over to Gustavo.

  First he thanked Cole for “that great introduction.” He had a very Southern flavor to his accent, Max noticed. Louisiana through and through, even if he was dressed up in a suit at an executive retreat in Utah.

  “I’m not that fancy. You all can just call me Gus,” Gustavo said to the rest of the table. Then he launched into a speech about what he and the rest of the management team had planned for the Benton Las Vegas, the original Benton property, over the next few years. If Cole had a stockier build, a slightly Cajun accent and a lot more charm, he’d be Gus, Max thought as he listened to the guy deliver his long presentation. No wonder his older brother was so into this guy.

  But even Gus couldn’t make a presentation filled with number projections all that interesting. Max was about ready to mentally check out on the rest of the speech, when Gus said, “And here’s something our newly reinstated brand ambassador will find interesting...”

  He went on to say that the Benton Las Vegas was currently in negotiations with Grey Soul, a popular Top 40 DJ, for a residence year at the Max.

  “Why?” The one word slipped out of Max’s mouth before he had time to remember that Cole had forced him into this meeting and that he wasn’t really interested in any of this.

  Gus looked down at him, his charming smile still on full beam. “Why?” he repeated, as if Max’s question were completely incomprehensible. “Because he’s one of the biggest DJs in the world right now.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah,” Max said. “And he just came off a resident year at The Abelli. One of the Benton LV’s biggest competitors.”

  Gus’s smile stayed put but came down a few watts. “Yes, we’d be stealing him away from The Abelli, which is why this would be a great coup.”

  “You’re thinking like Cole now,” Max said, interrupting him once again.

  Another quizzical look from Gus. “And thinking like the man who’s led the Benton Group into unprecedented profits is a bad thing because...?”

  “Because Cole thinks about everything as a battle between us and our competitors—which is a good thing when you’re talking about business. But what you’re doing—what you’re supposed to be doing with the Max nightclub isn’t about business. It’s about psychology, about compelling the right people and controlling how our customers view the Benton LV.”

  “I know that. That’s basic marketing,” Gus answered. “And we’ve got one of the best marketing companies in LA primed and ready to design a new campaign for the Max when we get this DJ.”

  “That’s great, Gus. Good work,” Max said. “I’m glad you and the rest of management are ready to spend a ton of money telling our patrons that we’ve now got The Abelli’s leftovers, because that’s how it’s going to look to them. Not like we stole him, but like we now have yesterday’s news. Because they’re not going to know or care about whatever you went through to secure this guy. All they’re going to see is sloppy leftovers.”

  Silence filled the room. But Max’s point must have hit home because the impressed look had fallen off of Cole’s face, and a few of the other execs seemed to be mulling over what Max had said.

  Also, Gus was no longer smiling. “And what would you suggest would be a way to put Max in the spotlight?”

  “Less Tack. More Lux. All Gamble,” Max answered.

  Their grandfather’s original six-word mission statement for the Benton brought Cole’s head around to Max. “Keep talking,” he said.

  So Max did. “Granddad didn’t want the Benton doing what every other hotel was doing in Vegas. That was his thing from the start. He took a risk building a sleek and modern hotel back in the age of glitz, and if we want to do this Granddad’s way, we don’t go after the latest thing. We take a gamble and go after the next thing. That’s how you get the clientele you want. You get the DJs that only rich guys who have the money to party in Ibiza know about.”

  Max had no idea he had so much to say on this subject until fifteen minutes passed and he’d given Gus not only a list of DJs to pursue for monthlong resident spots, but the celebrities who wouldn’t have to be paid to make an appearance at one of their gigs.

  And it didn’t stop there. Later on during Gus’s presentation, he also discovered he had a lot of opinions about their plan to hire the same design firm that’d done the last set of updates back toward the beginning of the millennium. And a few suggestions for East Asian cities they’d left off their list to run Benton Las Vegas ad campaigns. Gus’s presentation ended up going well over its allotted two hours, and by the time Max made his last point, it was time to break for lunch.

  As all the execs were standing to leave, Cole said to the room, “I suggest you all take notes about what went wrong during Gus’s presentation. Use the time before your presentation wisely. Reconnect with your teams and make sure your presentations won’t fall apart if Max asks you the same marketing questions he has asked Gus.”

  No one was more surprised by this announcement than Max. He’d thought this was all supposed to be an act. But judging from the way a few of the executives rushed out of there, they were actually planning to rework their presentations in order to garner Max’s approval. Also, Gus, who remained behind, didn’t look nearly as confident as he had at the start of the meeting.

  He approached Cole with downcast eyes. “May I have a word with you, Mr. Benton?”

  Cole leveled a displeased look on Gus. “Later,” he answered. “I have a few things to go over with my brother.”

  Gus’s jaw tightened, but he gave Cole a quick nod and followed the rest of the executives out. Soon Max and Cole were the only two people left in the room.

  “Must be hard for the guy,” Max observed. “Actually giving a damn about what you think.”

  Cole didn’t answer, just smirked at Max.

  “What?” Max asked, though he already knew.

  Cole just continued to stand there, smirking.

  Max shook his head. “I was bored,” he told Cole. “I figured why not mess with your carefully crafted Cole clone. What else did I have to do?”

  Cole gave him an appraising look. “Yes, that must be it. Either that or you have a lot more of Granddad in you than he ever gave you credit for. More than I ever gave you credit for.”

  Max wanted to roundly deny Cole’s assessment. He was nothing like their grandfather, who’d been even stodgier than Cole. As far as Max could tell, he’d ever done only two exciting things in his
life: married their grandmother, Nora, who had been a showgirl when they met, and founded his own hotel.

  But then Max thought about his plans for the New Orleans property he was developing and closed his mouth.

  Mistaking his silence for agreement, Cole stood up and said, “You’re going to fit into the Benton Group just fine. Let’s go have some lunch. You can tell me all about the reconnaissance work you were apparently doing on the Benton’s behalf by partying all over the world.”

  Cole’s words were actually dangerously close to the truth. Max had decided to start his own hotel using little more than his past experiences with hotels and nightclubs of all types to develop his own property. But Cole didn’t know that.

  “Pru should be getting back anytime now, and I promised I’d take her into town for lunch,” Max lied.

  Of course Cole invited himself along.

  They went back and forth for a few minutes, before Max gave up and decided to just have lunch with his brother in the common room with the rest of the executives. He doubted Pru would appreciate having to play the part of his wife at a restaurant with Cole anyway.

  “I’ll just stay here and have lunch with you,” he said to Cole.

  Cole didn’t even try to hide his smile over winning their latest battle. “Probably for the best,” he said, guiding his brother out of the conference room. “We wouldn’t want to arrive late for the rest of the presentations. The CEO not being there on time reflects badly on the whole company.”

  Max was about to tell Cole where he could put the rest of his sure-to-be-boring presentations, when he stopped short, his eyes narrowing.

  Gus Martinez stood at the bottom of the lodge’s main staircase, with one hand wrapped around a suitcase Max recognized from New Orleans, partly because its owner was close by. Pru, dressed in a green polo top and hot pants, smiled up at Gus as they talked near the stairs.

  Max clenched his back teeth. Apparently his wife had returned from Vegas, and Gus had taken it upon himself to welcome her back to the Sinclair Lodge.

  Chapter 10

  There was a very handsome man standing outside the Sinclair Lodge doors when Pru pulled up in Max’s yellow Ferrari. He had a gloomy look on his face and what looked like a lollipop lodged into the side of his mouth.

  She immediately recognized him as Gustavo Martinez, Cole’s new VP hire, but of course, she wasn’t supposed to know that. So when she got out of the car, she just gave him a friendly wave before heading toward the back of the Ferrari to retrieve her bag.

  He, however, seemed to have no such qualms about revealing that he already knew who she was. “Prudence Washington,” he called around the lollipop as he jogged over.

  Then he lifted her bag out of the trunk before she could and said, “How’s it going?”

  Despite the lollipop, he was outrageously good-looking, she noted with the distant assessment of an investigator doing her job. He also had a very charming Southern accent. So down-home, it made her feel as if they already knew each other.

  “I’m great...um...” She trailed off, so that he’d supply his name and she wouldn’t have to keep on pretending she didn’t know it.

  “Gustavo Martinez, but everybody calls me Gus.” He shifted her suitcase to his left hand, so that he could extend his right one for a shake.

  “Former smoker?” she asked him as they made their way toward the lodge’s front doors.

  “How did you know?” he asked, his head tilting with surprise.

  She pointed to his lollipop. “A few of the girls on the line used lollipops to tide them over until their next cigarette.”

  Gus removed the lollipop and chucked it in the trash can to the right of the doors. “Well, I’ve quit for good. Mostly I just use them for when I want to smoke but can’t.”

  Pru grimaced with empathy. “First meeting that bad?”

  He answered with a wry laugh. “And long. It was also my first time presenting—I started at the Benton right after you retired.”

  “But you know who I am,” Pru said.

  “You’re kind of famous, since you’re still in all the hotel’s print campaigns for the Benton Revue. There are even a few with Sunny floating around, and she’s been off the line for nearly two years.”

  “Well, we haven’t exactly been replaced yet,” Pru observed. She kept her words circumspect, but she had a feeling that Gus, being one of the few Latinos in upper management, would understand her meaning.

  Sunny and Pru had been the only two black dancers on the line. Now that they were both gone, there were exactly zero black women dancing on it. But like most hotels that attracted a diverse clientele, the Benton wasn’t exactly out to advertise that it didn’t currently have any African-American dancers on its revue line. So Sunny and Pru had remained in many of the print-ad campaigns.

  “No you haven’t, but I’m sure Sunny’s gonna make sure that’s no longer an issue when she takes over as lead choreographer in the fall. Then we’ll shoot some new ad campaigns.” He winked at her. “That’s a promise, Miss Washington—though I guess I should call you Mrs. Benton now, right? Saw that crazy wedding video of yours online yesterday.”

  Pru stumbled to catch up. “Yes, I suppose you could call me Mrs. Benton,” she answered, though she had no intention of taking Max’s name, considering they’d be filing for divorce by the following Monday. “Or you could just call me Pru like everybody else.”

  “Okay, if you want me to call you Pru, that’s what I’m gonna call you.” He threw her a smile that probably had slayed many a woman’s heart in Louisiana, and held the lodge door open for her.

  Inside there were several other executives she recognized from the short dossiers she’d compiled on them with Cole’s help the night before. The smell of hot food lingered in the air, and the majority of them were either standing in line or loading up their plates, which meant they must have just broken for lunch.

  She scanned the common room and didn’t see Max in line or at any of the long tables that had been set up for dining. Nor did she see Cole. Maybe they’d decided to go out for lunch.

  “I see you went and got yourself a haircut, Pru,” Gus said, falling back in step beside her as they headed for the stairs.

  Pru raised her hands to her now extension-free locks. She’d gotten them taken out this morning and was now sporting a short kinky-coiled pixie cut. The shorter length already felt like a great relief after years of wearing long extensions, and she quickly found she didn’t miss having long hair at all.

  She patted her new do and said, “Yeah, I thought it was time for a change.”

  “Change looks good on you,” he told her as they headed over to the stairs together. “Very good. Makes me wonder how Max Benton got so lucky.”

  Pru waved off the compliment. “I’m sure most people who saw that wedding video are wondering how I got so lucky.”

  Gus stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

  “Well, I’m not most people, Pru, and I like to call things like I see them.” His eyes twinkled as he looked down at her. “In this case, I’d say, Max is definitely the lucky one.”

  “Yes, I am,” Max said, suddenly appearing at her side. He slipped what felt to Pru like one very possessive arm around her shoulders, and then used the other one to pull her around so that she was now facing him instead of Gus.

  “You’re back,” he said to her. And that was all the warning she got before he laid a kiss on her. One so bone melting that she momentarily forgot about Gus, or any of the other businesspeople currently occupying the lodge’s nearby common area.

  The kiss might have gone on forever, if Max hadn’t eventually lifted his head and murmured, “I missed you.”

  “I missed you, too,” she said softly, the words tumbling out of her mouth without conscious thought.

  A slow an
d ridiculously smug smile spread across his face as he said, “Good.”

  Then he took her bag from a wide-eyed Gus and all but hauled Pru up the stairs and back to their room.

  * * *

  “What was that?” Pru demanded as soon as they were back in the room.

  “Me saving you from a guy with crap taste in DJs,” Max answered, closing the door behind them. As soon as it shut, he reinserted himself into her personal space, getting way closer than he needed to, to say, “You’re welcome.”

  Pru took a step back. “I didn’t need saving.”

  Max took a step forward. “I think you did. This morning I found out that Gus is the kind of guy who likes stealing what isn’t his. For the good of the plan—you know the original job you’re getting paid for—you’ll want to stay away from him.”

  Then in what felt to Pru like a total non sequitur, he said, “So I’m pretty sure Wedding Night Pru put in a cameo during that kiss. Can you let her out again? Because we have some unfinished business.”

  He leaned down, and Pru had to put her hands on his chest to stop him from advancing. “There’s only me here. And for the good of the case I’m also working on in order to maintain our original story, if Gustavo Martinez is the kind of guy you say he is, I probably don’t want to stay away from him. In fact, since he seems to enjoy flirting with me, I should probably use that as an in to get closer to him.”

  An angry scowl flashed across Max’s face. “Closer how?” he asked, pressing against her hands as he moved in even closer.

  She could feel him now, against her stomach, his arousal long and hard and obvious. Pru swallowed. Apparently she’d accidentally hit Max’s competition button.

  Even more reason she should make solving this case her number-one priority, she decided. The sooner she did, the sooner she could reasonably get out of here and back to her life in Vegas, far away from her fake husband.