I approach the small group, placing a kiss on Sin’s upturned face and clasping Jake’s hand in a tight grasp. “You turn these heathens loose on my studio, and Sin will be look for a new husband.”
His big laugh fills the room once again. bringing eyes in our direction. “You heard that, huh?”
“Don’t”—Sin points a finger at me—“call my babies heathens. Only we get to call them that. And Jake, stop being difficult. We still need to ask him to babysit for a week when we go to Macau for the opening of the hotel.” She’s talking to him but that is her obviously asking me.
I lean down to pick up Noah and walk with him to the dinner table, jostling him up and down as I ask in the high-pitch voice everyone uses when speaking to children. “You wanna stay with me and Uncle Seth while Mommy and Daddy go on a trip?” He nods, so I guess that’s settled.
“Mijo, put the baby down and help me place the rest of this food on the table,” Lucia, Seth’s mom, calls from her position near the stove. “Darse prisa, Adam,” she snaps when I don’t move fast enough. I don’t speak Spanish, but I know she’s telling me to hurry the hell up.
Sin and Jake take two open seats near the head of the table, and Seth and I deposit their children into their laps and quickly move into the kitchen to help Lucia with the mound of food she cooked.
Seth’s dad blesses the food and we all dig in. Sin and Jake alternately feed themselves and then feed Naomi and Noah. Dan, normally outgoing and jovial, seems a little sullen tonight. He’s casting long glances at the other end of the table at Jake’s sister, Jessica, who is doing her damnedest to ignore him. Miles, Kisha, and their baby, Amani, take up their own corner, next to Tori and Ms. Regina. Rounding out our ragtag makeshift group is Seth’s parents, Lucia and Kyle.
Every person at this table is family. Not the one I was born into but the one given to me by fate and circumstance.
I glance out across the pool to the city lights that twinkle in the distance. The distinct flash of hotel marquees pops of red and blue on the horizon. From my backyard, the Strip carries an almost dreamlike quality, the City of Sin, nestled on the desert floor, surrounded by mountains.
“Baby, why are you sitting out here? It’s cold as hell.” Seth steps out the sliding glass door, rubbing his hands together.
I open the blanket I have wrapped around my body and he comes forward easily settling in my arms. His back to my chest, head resting on my shoulder, our legs intertwined.
It feels like yesterday I was sitting in this same seat, watching him swim laps, miserable because I wanted him but wouldn’t allow myself to have him. Now I can’t picture a life where he’s not front and center.
“That went better than expected,” he says, burrowing closer.
“Mmm . . .” I say noncommittedly, still staring out at the lights that seem to bloom out of the darkness.
“Adam?” He moves his head to the edge of my shoulder, eyes focused on my face. I roll toward him, shifting so we’re face-to-face, bodies aligned.
“What up?”
“I don’t know, you just seem like something’s . . . off.”
“Nah, just thinking.” I press a kiss to his lips.
“About . . . ?” he prompts.
“Dinner, you, all this . . .”
“Truly enlightening,” he deadpans.
“I know, right?”
Seth runs his fingers over my torso, finding every ticklish spot until I’m squirming. “Stop, stop.” I laugh.
“Then tell me.”
“At dinner it hit me. You know, always wanted a family that cooked on holidays, and had kids running around.” I lean in, taking his mouth again because I can and he’s so close. “That cared where you were and what you did. That wanted the best for you, and I finally have it. Well, I almost have it.”
“There is no almost, baby. You have it.”
I shake my head and dig the velvet box I’ve been carrying all day from my pocket. His eyes widen when he finally sees the box.
I flip it open, exposing the black titanium band. “I want what your parents have. My ring on your finger. My name next to yours on a stupid piece of paper, telling the entire world I choose you. Anytime. Every fucking time I choose you.”
I pull his hands up to my mouth, kissing the ring finger of his left hand before pushing the ring down the digit. “I love you more than I ever knew possible. I asked your parents for their blessing, and you would make me the happiest man alive if you’d agree to marry me.”
I hold my breath while he looks from the ring on his finger back to my eyes.
“You asked my parents?” He lets out a soft chuckle.
“That’s the way it’s done, right?” I cup the back of his neck, brushing the underside of his jaw with my thumb. “You’re killing me right now. Tell me you want this. The house, the wedding, the marriage, the babies . . . a family. You do want that?”
“I want that.” He says in a rush. “Yes, to being your husband,” Seth whispers, sucking my bottom lip between his, licking into my mouth, tongue twisting with mine, sweet and sensual. He pulls back eyes, immediately finding mine. “With you, I want everything.”
The End
What happens in Vegas needs to stay there, and live there, and never see the light of day there.
Keep reading for a glimpse at a sexy romance that will pull on your heart strings and make you remember that every decision counts!
Exquisitely Broken
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Jake
I glance down at my Tag Heuer watch just to make sure the second hand is still moving. These meetings are long, tedious, and a waste of my time. As chief financial officer of The Hotel, a newer casino on the Las Vegas Strip, my job is to oversee every account, secure funding for every project, and sign my name on the dotted line to make sure hundreds of employees are paid on time, every time.
Sitting in a meeting about the changes the beverage managers want to make regarding how they contact the extra board cocktail servers for a shift is not really my thing. Will the change improve customer service without increasing costs? Then do it.
I glance up at Dave, the director of the food and beverage department, as he collects his notes and steps down from the podium to make room for Aaron from marketing. As soon as Aaron opens his mouth, my already frayed nerves rip to the seam. He’s animated and excited over minutia like an annoying cheerleader from high school still cheering when the team is losing by fifty points. No one is that happy at nine in the morning. Correction, only Aaron Martinez is that happy at nine in the morning. Maybe he wakes up seeing butterflies and rainbows.
I fight the urge to roll my eyes as I glance at my watch again. This is going to be a long meeting. We’re not even halfway done and I already know I’m not making it through the whole thing. Connor Rappaport, my business partner and the CEO, requires all members of the executive team to attend quarterly meetings on the casino’s goals and progress, but here’s the thing: It’s hard to fire the money man. Finding money, spending money and, more importantly, making money for this casino is what I do.
I learned from my father who learned from his father who learned from his father. My family moved to Nevada when Las Vegas Boulevard was still a two-lane dirt road in the middle of nowhere. My great grandfather got his first casino in a winning hand of poker and the second casino came as a pat on the head from the mafia outfit that was running Las Vegas at the time. Elijah Johnson was a hard drinker, a womanizer, a degenerate gambler but he was also a mathematical savant with a business acumen for gaming that multiplied my family’s wealth and influence tenfold. In Las Vegas, the last name Johnson is nowhere near common. It is a gaming empire. A legacy that every man in my family has upheld. A legacy that is unparalleled by any
other gaming family. The Johnson men are not just shrewd in business but we have a reputation for finding water when the well has run dry.
When Connor first approached me about opening an independent casino, I thought he was joking. Individuals almost never open casinos anymore. Contrary to its reputation, Las Vegas is no longer the Mafia’s washing machine for dirty money or the hardcore gambler’s playground. Vegas reinvented itself as a luxurious destination for playboy millionaires and socialites. Thank you, Kim Kardashian and Paris Hilton. Their type of celebrity helped kick off a new era, a changing of the guard if you will.
Connor was poised to take the reins. If my family are the rainmakers in casinos, then his family are the brains. Connor’s father had the insight to bring big corporations to Las Vegas. Avery Rappaport is the leader of the pack. He sets the pace and dares everyone else to keep up. Conner, although he doesn’t want to admit it, is the same. He’s strategic and intelligent, always ten steps ahead of his competitors. He has a big enough ego to demand a spot at the table and enough self-confidence to own it. When his father began the process of retirement Connor was the only one capable of filling his Allen Edmond Oxford loafers. He quickly claimed a spot on the ‘Executives to Watch’ list in the local media and that was before he had the idea to open a new casino. Connor needed a little help to bring that idea to fruition and that’s where I came in.
The first thing that any start-up needs is money. The capital needed to start a casino is astronomical. Even the most daring venture capitalists are leery about investing in a business that comes with the high degree of risk associated with gaming. That’s why most of the casinos on the Strip are publicly owned and traded. It’s easy to convince many investors to give a small amount versus getting a smaller number of investors to give large sums of money.
Connor personally invested fifty percent of our capital. Getting the other fifty took six months, give or take, and I worked my ass off for it. I tapped every connection my family had and some we didn’t. Many of the investments came as a personal favor to my father and others came with strings loose enough to give us room to hang ourselves because a favor owed to you by the Johnsons and Rappaports in this town is better than money in the bank.
Second, we had to reinvent the wheel. Consumers are no longer interested in Steve Wynn’s Vegas. His world of themed casinos that depend on gimmicks to get people in the door are a trend of the past. They want the opulence of the Waldorf combined with the nostalgia of slot machines and poker rooms. They want great food and the chance to be very important in an environment where anyone willing to spend money is important. Now people come to Vegas for the experience. A chance to say they walked on the same street where they filmed The Hangover or they threw dice at the table where Bugsy Siegel lost his bankroll. They want to sit in the showroom that hosted acts like the Rat Pack and Elvis and have a chance to play on the golf course where notorious mobsters out smarted the FBI.
When we finally made our move, we vowed to do it different. Do it with fresh eyes and on our terms, which is the main reason we decided to name our casino The Hotel. The name doesn’t promise a tropical paradise or a trip to another country, but in a market saturated by the biggest, the flashiest and the gaudiest, it was our way to stand out, and it worked.
It’s been a crazy ride, but if I could do it all over again, I’m not sure I would. There was a brief time four years ago when I thought I could walk away. Turn my back on everything. Seventy plus years of familial obligation and the weight of becoming a pillar to a community that already made my knees buckle under its weight. But I fucked up my chance, let her slip through my fingers, and the trappings of the life I’d wanted so badly to escape are now the only things I have left.
I check my watch again. Ten minutes later, Aaron is still going. It feels more like twenty. They have five more minutes then I’m out. If Connor has a problem, he can come find me. Truth be told, he has no more interest in this banal meeting than I do, so we’ll see if he comes looking.
Aaron is at the podium. His slight frame a wisp of color behind the heavy wood. The room erupts in applause, and I realize I’ve blocked out everything he was saying. He waits for the clapping to die down before he continues, too pleased with himself.
“As many of you know this is a huge deal for The Hotel. Landing an artist of this caliber for a residency finally puts us in a position to compete with some of the larger corporate hotels on the Strip.”
I’ve seen the list of local bands under consideration for the residency, but there was definitely no one of caliber and nothing to applaud over.
“Sin City is the local band, and according to most critics and fans, they’re the architects of the “Las Vegas Sound.” All four members are native to Las Vegas, but Sinclair James and Adam Beckham have to be two of the brightest stars this valley has ever produced. We’ll be holding a press conference Friday immediately followed by a reception.”
I jolt forward in my seat. The news like a cattle prod to my spine. Sin City? As in Sinclair James’s band. I rest shaking hands on the table, intently focused on Aaron. There is no way in hell I missed a memo about Sin City. I’d just met with Connor a couple of days ago to finalize the budget for the upcoming residency, and he hadn’t said a word. If the CEO didn’t know, they must have just confirmed.
Sin City is coming back to Vegas. Sinclair James will be back in Vegas, at my casino.
I dated Sin forever ago, long before Connor moved back to the States and we started The Hotel, way before I chose to conform and assume my father’s role. Hell, for most of our relationship, the band was a lounge act. What my mother took great joy in calling the Las Vegas equivalent to a factory worker and I was still trying to forge my own path instead of following the one that had been laid out at birth.
It’s been years. Four years… since I’ve seen or spoken to Sin. The last time I had any real connection happened a couple of months after we broke up. A video of her singing at a studio in London went viral on YouTube. She was breathtaking in her pain, and I took comfort in the fact she was just as miserable as I was. That I still made her feel something.
When I finally got past the visuals long enough to listen to the song, I was sick. Disgusted with what I’d done and how I’d broken us. That goddamn song was awful. All my missteps, all the regret, all the heartbreak laid bare for public consumption. I must’ve heard her sing “Exquisitely Broken” every day for months, and that was before the official video came out. One that featured a man who looked exactly like me caught in a twisted web of his own making, just like I had. I remember it like it was yesterday. Sitting on the sofa watching my TV doppelganger act out the worst day of my life. I just kept thinking, This isn’t a game, it’s my life. Even though the listening public didn’t know TV guy was supposed to be me I felt exposed. Flayed open in the worse possible way.
The single went platinum, and so did the EP that followed. I watched her star rise just like I imagined it would, but the higher she rose, the farther she moved away from me. There wasn’t only time and space between us anymore. There was media and fans. There was persona and security. There was a completely different life I wasn’t privy to and that reality sucked.
Through the years, I’ve followed her career. Year one post Sin, I turned into a low-key stalker. She avoided the valley, which meant I had to find her. I’d coincidentally end up at signings. I created dummy social media accounts to follow Sin City’s posts without alerting Sin or the band to my presence. I listened incessantly to local radio channels. I would show up at concerts and try unsuccessfully to get backstage. I read all her interviews and watched every TV appearance. When she started modeling for high-end designers, I bought fashion magazines just to feel a little closer to her. That was a low point, but it was all I had so I took it.
It was around that time that the articles started to shift. The interviews didn’t focus on Sin’s heartbreak anymore or the asshole, me, who broke it. They focused on her current love life. Not a day went
by I didn’t see a headline linking her with tortured artsy types, from actors to pro athletes, and then I saw the picture of her with the ultimate, tortured, artsy type Adam, her so-called best friend and the lead guitarist for Sin City. The picture was taken backstage at a concert. From the look of the image, they had no idea a camera was present. His forehead rested against hers. He had a hand on either side of her face, and that connection that I’d always felt between them was palpable from the pages of a magazine.
Now I get to see her again. The only woman to ever hold my heart. The one that slipped through my fingers taking a part of me, the best part that only existed in her presence. Sin City will be working for my hotel, and I’m pretty sure Sin has no idea I work here. I don’t know if the universe is finally throwing me a bone or if it’s a rare combination of factors setting up the perfect storm. Whatever it is, years of curiosity will be satisfied. I want to know if there are vestiges of the girl that I met ten years ago and the woman that I have never stopped loving. The girl I knew craved passion and creativity. She exuded a social magnitude that drew me in from the first encounter, and we were in love. If that girl still exists, if there’s a chance, no matter how farfetched, I’m taking it.
“We’re requesting that all senior management be present for the press release and reception that will immediately follow. Before the media arrives, we’ll have a less formal meet and greet where you all will get an introduction to the artists. After meeting with them multiple times, I guarantee you all will be just as excited as we are to have them with us for the next year. Are there any questions?” Aaron looks around the room expectantly.
Exquisitely Hidden: A Sin City Tale Page 27
