Love's Gamble

by Theodora Taylor

  He had ended up putting at least some distance between him and Pru. Leaving their room early and coming back super late, just so he could leave her alone for the thirty-six hours she had with the wallets and phones he’d procured for her.

  He would be giving the wallets and phones back to the other execs at their breakfast meeting today. Then he’d have to wait until lunch for another hour with Pru.

  It was 5:00 a.m. now, which meant seven more hours until he could have her again. Max seriously wasn’t sure he could wait that long. If anything, the two words seemed even louder now inside his head.

  Not enough, not enough, not enough...

  “Max, did you hear anything I just said?”

  Max looked back over his shoulder at Cole, who was holding up the other end of the canoe they were carrying toward the water.

  “Nope,” he admitted. “But I’m guessing it was something boring about business.”

  “Something boring about canoes, actually. I was just asking how much you weigh, because usually you want the heavier person in the front. I think that’s me, but in this case, I should probably be in the back. That’s the best place to guide.”

  “I know how to row, Cole. Just because I wasn’t on the rowing team at our boarding school like you doesn’t mean I can’t handle myself in a canoe.”

  “Maybe not, but it does mean that you don’t understand the value of working as a team, or taking guidance for the greater good. This is supposed to be a team-building exercise, remember?”

  Max did remember. That was just one of the reasons he considered this entire canoeing excursion not worth even a minute of his time. Along with the fact that he’d had to get up at the butt crack of dawn in order to participate in this useless exercise. But it was either this or a morning spent in the room with Pru, watching her work on the case, when all he wanted to do was cash in another wallet before her thirty-six hours were up.

  Not enough...

  And though Pru had worn a relatively demure khaki dress the day before, Max had spent all day embroiled in fantasies about unfastening each button and devouring whatever he found underneath.

  So he signed up for the stupid canoe trip. Him, along with nearly every other executive at the retreat. They were either eager to suck up to Cole or needed a way to handle the smartphone withdrawal Max and Cole were putting them through, supposedly in order to become closer as a team.

  However, when Cole had arrived at the boathouse where all of the lodge’s canoes were stored, instead of choosing one of his sycophant executives to share his canoe, he’d chosen Max.

  And now here was Cole, already trying to boss him around before they were even in the water. They were only a couple of years apart in age, but Cole continued to act as if Max was the little brother he used to be. The damaged kid who’d arrived at boarding school needing his big brother to take him under his wing.

  Things only got worse when they were out on the water, with Cole playing commander in the back of the canoe, telling him which side to paddle on. As if he was a child, without instinct or sense.

  “Look, I’m not into the whole taking-orders thing,” Max told his brother when they were a few good yards in front of the rest of the Benton executives. “So if you need that to make this team-building torture exercise of yours enjoyable, then we should probably paddle back to the rest of the group, so that you can switch out row buddies. Where’s Gus? I’m sure he’d love to have you at his back, telling him what to do with his paddle.”

  Cole, as usual, chose to ignore Max’s not so thinly veiled insults. “Gus is back at the lodge,” he answered, his voice chilly. “Harrison can’t come because of his sprained ankle, and Gus asked if they could use the time to put together another stab at their Benton Las Vegas presentation. That’s what I like about Gus. He’s not lazy. In fact, he always goes the extra mile to show his commitment to the Benton Group.”

  “Yeah, yeah, yeah, he does a better job of being a Benton than your actual brother does. That’s why you love him. You and Granddad, both,” Max answered.

  Behind him the sound of Cole’s steady rowing came to a sudden stop. “What do mean about Granddad loving Gus?” he asked.

  Max looked at him over his shoulder. “Granddad handpicked him for the Benton New Orleans. You didn’t know that?”

  Cole shook his head. “Is this something Pru dug up?”

  “Yeah, that, and his hardscrabble backstory. Born with a congenital heart defect. Abandoned by his mom at the hospital. Dad raises him only to up and die when he’s three, so the New Orleans foster-care system basically raises him. But his congenital heart defect pretty much makes him unadoptable. But eventually he gets a new heart, and he goes on to win one of the Benton Foundation scholarships to attend Cornell, even though he’s never stayed in a hotel himself. Seriously, you didn’t know any of this? Granddad didn’t tell you anything about this guy?”

  A frown came over Cole’s face. “No, Granddad never mentioned him. The only part I knew was that he’d gone to Cornell on a Benton scholarship. But a large number of our management recruits can make that claim.”

  Now it was Max’s turn to frown. Hearing Gus’s sad backstory had actually curbed a little of the animosity Max felt toward the guy. Even after he’d spent nearly all of last night’s dinner hour in the common room flirting with Pru. But the fact that Cole had no idea about any of Gus’s background raised several red flags.

  “Weird. Most of the execs I’ve met would have made sure everyone knew if they had a backstory like that. They would have put it in their corporate bio.”

  Cole agreed with a nod, adding, “All Gus’s bio says is that he grew up in Louisiana, went to Cornell and was general manager of the Benton New Orleans by the time he was thirty. That’s impressive, but even more so, given his background. Maybe he’s ashamed of it?”

  “Maybe...” Max said, his head tilting as he brought the paddle back down to take another swipe at the water.

  “But you don’t think so,” his brother said, reading his mind.

  Max thought about the way Gus had finagled himself into the seat on the other side of Pru during dinner the night before. He had used just about every weapon in his charm arsenal to keep her attention off Max and on him. They’d laughed over mutual friends at the Benton Las Vegas and the fact that spending most of their adult lives working for a Benton had ensured that they would never ever gamble.

  Gus had not only managed to drop his vice president title several times, but had also alluded to what he would do for the Benton Revue now that he had it. He’d told Pru so much about himself that Max had found himself having to tangle with another bout of dark jealousy. Gus had obviously been trying to make it known to Pru and anyone else within earshot how much he had in common with her. And how much Max, who’d pretty much spent most of his adult life hotel hopping in the hottest party cities in the world, didn’t.

  Yet, Gus hadn’t mentioned any of the personal details Pru had dug up on him.

  “I’m just saying he doesn’t seem like the kind of guy who doesn’t know how to properly toot his own horn. And not mentioning that Granddad recruited him—that’s kind of shady.”

  The fact that Cole didn’t jump to his golden boy’s defense meant that he thought so, too. He picked up the paddle and said, “The next time you see Pru, tell her good work and to keep digging on Gus.”

  Max nodded, though he already knew that next time he saw Pru, they wouldn’t be talking.

  Chapter 14

  Max wasn’t there when Pru woke up on Wednesday morning. She wasn’t surprised this time. At first she’d pegged Max to be the kind of guy who stayed in bed until after lunchtime and filled his days with leisure and partying. But so far he’d proved the opposite. Not only had Max attended all the meetings for the retreat but when she’d woke up the morning before, she’d found him typi
ng something into a laptop. A tool she hadn’t even been aware he possessed, much less brought on the trip.

  “What are you doing?” she’d asked him.

  He’d immediately closed the laptop and swiveled to face her, claiming it was nothing.

  Pru didn’t think it was nothing. But she already had a case she was working on, so she’d let it go.

  However, this morning he wasn’t even in the room when she woke up, and the sight of the empty bed caused a small twinge to go off in her heart. One she didn’t care to examine, since what she had with Max was technically a job. A job that Max had chosen to overcomplicate with his stupid sex demands, but a job, nonetheless. The best thing she could do right now, she thought, was forget what happened on Monday night and work on solving the case as quickly as possible. Then she’d have a good excuse to leave Utah before Max could redeem too many more of his wallet hours.

  With her plan made, she moved to get out of bed, only to be served up another reminder of Monday night. Her sex was still tender nearly a day and a half later. It released a dull ache as she sat up, making it impossible for Pru to forget how his lips had felt against her core, the way his tongue had worked in perfect synchronization with his fingers inside her. Or about the rough way he’d taken her, his battering strokes so good, she wouldn’t have stopped him, even if she could have predicted the soreness it would cause her later.

  As she gingerly climbed out of bed, she remembered his response to her question about whether they’d done it on their wedding night.

  If we had hooked up last night, you’d have no doubt about what had happened, because you would be feeling it this morning. All over your body.

  She had to admit he’d been right... A cold shower. The thought dropped down like a lifeline in an otherwise stormy ocean. That would be her first order of business and then she’d get back to work.

  But when she said cold, she didn’t mean ice-cold, which is what the shower in their en suite bathroom produced.

  “Sorry about that,” the lodge manager said when she called down to the front desk. “Those upstairs bathrooms are on a separate water heater from the rest of the lodge. I’ll call maintenance in. Meanwhile you can use the common showers downstairs if you don’t want to wait.”

  She didn’t want to wait. Five years of mothering her brother had taught her to take care of personal hygiene first thing every morning. That, or risk the day and any chance of a shower completely slipping away from you.

  Plus, she wasn’t at all squeamish about the common-shower situation. She’d shared a dressing room with over forty other women and at least a dozen male dancers for most of her working life. Common showers were nothing compared with that.

  But before she went downstairs, she called over to Harrison’s room. Last night at dinner, she’d volunteered the use of their en suite bathroom to the older executive, after finding out that he’d been forced to go all the way down to the common bathroom on the first floor in a boot, because of the ankle he’d sprained shortly before coming to Utah.

  Her research into Harrison had revealed the nearly retired exec to be a sterling employee who had served the Benton Group as a vice president for over twenty years. And, he was an even more first-rate citizen. Not only did he tithe to his church, but he had also given generously to several Las Vegas charities, including Nora Benton’s lung-cancer nonprofit.

  Making the offer hadn’t felt like a hardship, but the exact right thing to do, given what Pru knew about him. But now she was calling him to renege on the offer, which made her feel almost as guilty as fake marrying Max for money.

  However, it wasn’t Harrison who answered his room’s phone, but Gus.

  “Oh, did I call the wrong room?” Pru asked, looking at the phone’s digital readout display. “I’m looking for Harrison.”

  “And you found him. Nearly everybody else is on that team-building canoe trip, but I stayed behind with Harrison to work on a presentation. I came up to his room, because—”

  “Because he sprained his ankle,” Pru finished for him.

  She then quickly relayed the information about their out-of-service bathroom for Gus to pass along.

  “Sure, I can tell him that,” Gus said. “Anything else I can do for you, Pru?”

  The way he leaned on her name conveyed all sorts of innuendo, and Pru shook her head. Apparently the wedding ring that she wore whenever she left the room mattered nil to Gus.

  “No, that’s it,” she answered, deciding against asking him if he had a robe she could borrow for her trip downstairs to the common showers. Gus totally struck her as someone who would take that kind of question as a double entendre.

  Besides, like Gus said, nearly everyone, including her temporary husband, was on the canoe trip anyway. She jogged down the stairs and into the common showers as fast as she could, reminding herself that a towel covered up a lot more than an itty-bitty rhinestone bikini.

  The shower was just the thing she needed. Not only did it take her mind off Max, but it also gave her some time to think about her next move.

  She’d have to return all the wallets and phones today, which meant she would no longer have the benefit of tracking the execs’ communications without being detected.

  Also, her most promising lead was turning out to be a bit of a bust. Despite her strong initial gut feeling that Gus wasn’t quite what he seemed, she couldn’t find any evidence that he was the mole giving away corporate secrets.

  As far as she could see, he didn’t intimately know anyone in high positions at Key Card. Partly because he’d always worked for the Benton New Orleans, and partly because he was so much farther ahead in his career than his peers. Key Card was actually based in Arizona—not Louisiana. And no one in Gus’s graduating class three years before or after outranked him. Even his classmates who’d found jobs at Key Card weren’t in important enough positions to coordinate this kind of information steal.

  Added to those facts, Gus’s record was totally clean. No arrests. No large debts, and he’d finish paying off the few college loans he had the year before. The only large purchase he’d made had been very recently—a Corvette convertible, bought the day after he officially moved to Las Vegas. Again, not a red flag. Buying a car after receiving a huge promotion was pretty much an American rite of passage as far as she knew.

  However, that meant she was no further along in her case than she’d been before she received the wallets. No closer to solving it, and no closer to getting away from Max.

  But that would change today, she decided, turning off the shower and pulling her towel down to dry herself off. She’d managed to secretly sign all of the phones up for a tracking service that would let her know when and where all the devices were at any given time. She’d also concocted a plan for Cole to drop a key piece of information at tonight’s not-yet-announced camping trip. Material so tantalizing their mole would definitely want to pass it on to Key Card as soon as possible. Between being able to track the phones and the fake-info plant, she should be able to bring this case to a close by midday Thursday.

  Feeling optimistic after her shower and plan review, Pru wrapped the towel back around her body and stepped out of the stall with a new spring in her step.

  Only to run straight smack into Gus.

  She stumbled backward with a gasp, but luckily Gus, who evidently hadn’t even been swayed by their collision, caught her by the arm.

  “Whoa, Pru, you okay?” he asked, flashing that easygoing smile of his.

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” she answered, quickly taking her arm back.

  Apparently Gus hadn’t been as worried about covering up with a robe as she had been. He was also dressed in nothing but a towel. Probably because, with all his thick muscles, he looked like the after picture her brother had been pursuing all summer.

  And he seemed to enjoy flaunting it. While
she used her hands to make sure her towel was firmly in place, he put his hands on his hips, giving her a full view of his broad chest and accompanying six-pack of abs.

  However, Pru was way more curious about the long thin scar running down the center of his chest. It was only barely noticeable on its rock-hard tableau, but the evidence that he’d had heart surgery still drew her eye. Until she realized that Gus probably thought she was checking out his impressive body.

  “Sorry, I didn’t think anyone else was in here,” she said, quickly raising her eyes to his face. “I should have been watching where I was going.”

  Unlike her, he didn’t bother to hide that he was checking her out. “I should have been watching, too. But I can’t truly say I’m sorry I bumped into you,” he answered. “I’ve been up all morning, working on this new presentation with Harrison, and I’ve got to confess, looking at you is a nice break from looking at him.”

  “Um...thank you, I guess,” she said, feeling more than a little bit uncomfortable.

  She respected Gus a lot for what he’d been through and the obstacles he’d surmounted. But this was the third time he’d unapologetically flirted with her despite knowing that she was a married woman. Even in her wildest years, she’d carried a basic respect for marriage vows. One that Gus didn’t seem to share.

  As if reading her mind, he gave her another up-and-down look. “Like I said before, Max is a very lucky man, landing a wife like you. Beautiful, savvy, willing to settle.”

  She inclined her head, feeling weirdly defensive of Max, despite the supposed compliment on Gus’s part. “I doubt any other woman would think I settled.”

  “That’s because they only notice Max’s appearance. A lot of women don’t mind dating a man without any ambition, but you seem smarter than that to me. More like your friend Sunny. Someone who can easily move in and out of Las Vegas circles. Someone who’d be comfortable at a charity ball or a nightclub opening. Not every woman has what it takes to serve her man well as a Vegas wife. And women who do—women like you—shouldn’t settle on just any man.”