What to Read After FSOG: The Gemstone Collection (WTRAFSOG Book 2)

by Vi Keeland

  I spent the rest of the evening watching a few of Max’s movies on Netflix and wondering when, or even if, I’d see him again.

  Chapter Two

  I didn’t see Max the next week. I did talk to him once when Kevin asked me to get him on the line.

  Jacqueline called every day to ask if we’d heard anything about her getting the part in the movie. Kevin assured her that the wait time was normal and by Thursday he had instructed me to tell her he was in a meeting, which meant I had to take over the comforting and reassuring.

  One night, after dinner and over a glass of wine, I told Krystal about having met Max.

  “Max Dalton?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Who’s that?”

  I laughed. “I didn’t know who he was, either, until I looked it up. And this was after I met him.” I told her the whole story about the meeting.

  “Oh, yeah. I know his movies. Hell yeah. I just didn’t know the name.”

  We were in the majority. According to Kevin, and confirmed by my own experience, people rarely know the writers and producers, save for a few big names.

  “And,” I said, “the worst part is, he’s hot as hell.”

  “Why is that the worst part?”

  “Because I have to work with him and I can’t focus when I’m around him or when he’s on the phone.”

  Krystal swallowed the last of her drink, and shook her head. “You’re in Hollywood, honey. Get ready to be smitten with a lot of people.”

  Krystal called the office on Friday afternoon and said, “Let’s go to Vegas!”

  “What? When?”

  “This weekend.”

  I wasn’t up for a trip anywhere, let alone to Vegas. “For what?”

  “For what? It’s Vegas, baby! We don’t need a reason beyond that. But if you really do need a reason, I think it would be a great way to celebrate your first month out here working in the biz.”

  Krystal was the only person I knew who called it “the biz.” It made me wonder if she was trying too hard. Maybe that’s why she hadn’t been able to get representation.

  I looked at the clock on my computer—4:16. “That sounds like fun, but I don’t think I have any Vegas attire, first of all, and—”

  “Okay, you’re looking for excuses not to go, but you’re going.”

  “Says who?”

  Her voice echoed, like she’d walked into the bathroom. “Says me. It’s part of initiation. Come on. It’s just two days. Trust me, you won’t regret it.”

  A few seconds of silence passed, then I thought of something. “Who’s going?”

  “Just me and you.”

  I was glad to hear that her new friend Marco wasn’t going. There was something about that guy I didn’t like, something about the way he looked at Krystal, and the way he looked at me when Krystal left the room. He didn’t talk much, but he sure liked to stare a lot. He was unsettling, to say the least. I couldn’t figure out what she saw in him, and I hadn’t asked. It was none of my business.

  She pressed on making her case. “I’ll pay for the gas and all the other stuff. It’s all on me.”

  “You don’t have to do that.”

  “I know I don’t have to. I want to.”

  “All right,” I said. “When do you want to leave?”

  By nine o’clock that night, we were two hours into the roughly four-hour drive to Vegas. We had great travel weather, and little traffic, although we did get stuck behind an RV for a while somewhere in Nevada that slowed us down.

  “So how’s Grace?” Krystal asked at one point during the drive.

  It made me realize I hadn’t talked to my sister in over a week, a record for us. I was just so busy and so preoccupied I hadn’t gotten around to calling her. Of course, she hadn’t called me, either, so I didn’t feel guilty. Two-way streets, and all that.

  “I guess she’s okay,” I said.

  “You guess?”

  I explained how I hadn’t talked to Grace lately.

  Krystal reached to turn the stereo down. “I think she’d like it here.”

  “Ha. I doubt it.”

  “I know. I just mean, if she gave it a chance. If she gave anything a chance.”

  This was my sister we were talking about, and Krystal’s tone had a little too much sarcastic negativity to it, so I just shrugged and said, “Yeah.”

  What she was referring to was my sister having taken the same route as my mother. Married young, two kids, stay-at-home mom, no apparent ambition outside of those things. Honestly, I can respect that. I just wish Grace had given the world a look before she settled down. She was only two years older than me, but she acted like she was thirty years older. She acted like my mom. And seeing as how I already had two parents who’d like to make every life decision for me, the last thing I needed was a third one.

  And, really, she should have known that. The pressure I’d felt to become Mrs. Chris Cooper was like a slow, constant suffocation. Several times after I broke up with him, my mom had pushed me so close to spilling the whole truth about what Chris had done. What stopped me from doing it was the sense that it would have only made them even more protective of me. And with the town being as small as it was, there was every chance in the world that my story would get around, and people wouldn’t believe me. Instead, they’d rally behind Chris Cooper, all –American church-going guy and former quarterback of the two-time champion football team at our high school. My only choice was to keep my head down and just leave.

  “Oh, well,” Krystal was saying. “Her loss.”

  “Yeah.”

  That conversation wouldn’t have gotten far even if I hadn’t stopped it, because it wasn’t long before we saw the lights of Vegas twinkling in the distance—almost beckoning people to come there. I felt the pull of excitement.

  We got to our hotel, handed the keys to the valet, and walked into what I can only describe as sensory overload.

  Lights. Music. Gaming machines clinking and humming and buzzing and ringing. People everywhere. People looking sad. People looking elated. People looking like they were in a trance. I was definitely part of the latter group.

  We went straight up to our room, freshened up, and got dressed for our first night in Vegas. I had on my favorite little black dress, black heels, silver hoop earrings, and a silver necklace with a Gehry orchid pendant—a gift from my mother.

  “I don’t look like a hooker, do I?” Krystal said.

  I poked my head out of the bathroom, putting on my earrings. “Hell, no, girl. You look sexy.”

  I looked at myself again in the mirror. I actually felt kind of sexy, myself.

  We were downstairs and in the casino by midnight. It had gotten busier in the relatively short time we were upstairs.

  “This is when Vegas really gets started,” Krystal told me as we exited the elevator.

  While she had insisted on paying for everything, I wouldn’t let her give me any gambling money. I appreciated her footing the bill for our stay but there was no way I was going to lose her money. I felt more comfortable losing my own.

  Which is exactly what happened, and in short order. The roulette wheel had sucked me in and taken my conservative gambling budget for the night. After that, it was just drinks—three glasses of wine—and people watching, an endlessly fascinating form of entertainment in a place like Las Vegas.

  The last person I expected to be watching was Max, but there he was, standing at the craps table. Looking stunning, of course. He had two-day stubble on his otherwise smooth face, and he wore black slacks, black blazer, and a blue shirt, no tie. He looked taller than I thought this time. Maybe it was just the contrast of his powerful frame next to a half dozen or so other men. And women. Who could miss those women? They were all blondes, and they were all hanging on him between rolls of the dice.

  I thought back to Krystal’s earlier question about looking like a hooker and realized I had nothing to worry about. These women looked more the part. Maybe that’s what they were.
My estimation of Max suddenly dropped a little.

  I stood there for maybe five minutes, watching the spectacle, and then Krystal appeared beside me.

  “Fucking blackjack. It’s rigged!”

  Without taking my eyes off of Max, I said, “Lost big, huh?”

  “Yup. I’m usually better at… what are you staring at?”

  “Not what,” I said. “Who.”

  “Okay. Who?” She turned to stand beside me and look where I was looking. “He’s hot.”

  “Told you so. That’s Max Dalton.”

  Krystal held the wineglass tipped at her mouth. “Oh, wow.”

  “Yeah. Wow doesn’t quite cover it.”

  “Look at those shameless bitches around him.”

  By now, that’s pretty much all I was looking at. Some of them appeared to be one step away from dropping their dresses right there in the open casino and letting him have his way with them.

  “Let’s go somewhere else,” I said.

  Krystal started to say something about a game called Keno when I looked at Max one more time. I shouldn’t have. Then I wouldn’t have locked eyes with him, and he wouldn’t have been waving me over to where he was.

  “Oh, no,” I said under my breath.

  “It doesn’t have to be Keno. We could find a—”

  “No,” I said. “He saw me.”

  Krystal looked across the way to Max. “He’s calling you over there.”

  I knew I should go. We had business to do with him and ignoring him wouldn’t exactly be a smart business decision. A lot was riding on his decision about whether to cast Jacqueline or not.

  “Go!” Krystal gave me a nudge. “I want to see the looks on those chicks’ faces when you get there.”

  I looked at her. “Thanks a lot.”

  She smiled and said, “You can always count on me for support.”

  As I started walking toward Max, it was like someone had turned down the volume on the entire casino. My eyes were fixed on him. It was my first experience with tunnel vision. I shouldered my way through the throng of women around him. They were reluctant to give me room until Max extended his hand and I reached up to take it.

  “Hello, Olivia.”

  “Mr. Max. I mean, hi, Max. Sorry. You told me not to call you Mr. Dalton, and I…” Jesus, how embarrassing. I was sounding so dumb, I didn’t even finish the sentence. I decided to just shut up.

  “Actually, I kind of like Mr. Max.”

  I appreciated his sense of humor. It put me at ease a little.

  “What are you drinking?”

  “Wine. Chardonnay.”

  He flagged down a waitress and told her to bring another Chardonnay. “And another White Russian for me.”

  The waitress said, “Yes, sir,” and when she walked away Max turned back to me.

  “Thanks,” I said.

  “Olivia, do you know anything about craps?”

  I looked at the confusing table, then up at the dealer. I’d never played it and figured there was no way I would figure it out in the next two seconds, especially with the wine cruising through my bloodstream and the temperature rising from being in this situation.

  “I’ll take that as a no,” Max said.

  “You would be correct.”

  “No problem.” He reached down to the table and picked up the dice. “You’re just here for luck, anyway.”

  “I’m not sure I’m the type of luck you want.” I stopped just short of telling him I had blown my nightly gambling budget in under thirty minutes.

  Max eyed me up and down, then up again. “I think you’re exactly what I want.”

  My face flushed. I felt the heat start in my chest and rise up my neck. What I needed after hearing that was a cold glass of water. Not to drink; to throw in my face and wake me from this bizarre experience.

  The waitress returned with our drinks. Max put a hundred dollar bill on her tray and thanked her. He handed me the glass of wine, raised his tumbler of White Russian and said, “To Vegas.” We clinked our glasses together, and as I sipped my wine I let my eyes roam the crowd around us. The women definitely were not liking what they were seeing. I imagined some of them had spent hours clinging to him like lint, and here I was, a girl who to them appeared to come out of nowhere, and now was the object of Max’s flirting. Intense flirting. Maybe more than that….

  He brought his fist up between our faces and opened his fingers, revealing the dice. “Blow on these.”

  My eyebrows shot up my forehead. It didn’t take a dirty mind to come up with all kinds of wicked interpretations of his words, but it wasn’t even so much what he said. It was how he said it. There was a commanding tone to the words, carried on the deep resonance of his intensely male voice.

  “Go ahead,” he urged as I hesitated.

  He held his hand up close to my face. I took in a sharp breath, then blew on the dice, and a split second later he launched them down the table. When they finally stopped, I saw that each had landed on two.

  “Hard way four,” the dealer called out, and scooped up the dice.

  People around us cheered.

  Max looked at me. “Nice work.”

  “That’s good, I guess?”

  Over the next fifteen minutes, he tried to explain the game to me. I understood very little of it. But Max was very good. In the time I stood next to him, he must have won fifty thousand dollars. It was just one more aspect of the night that had my head spinning.

  Krystal had been hanging around in the crowd, and when we stopped playing I introduced her to Max.

  “Krystal, very nice to meet you. Max Dalton.”

  She smiled as they shook hands. “I’m a huge fan of your work.”

  “Thank you.”

  This is the part where I thought Krystal would drop a subtle—or maybe not so subtle—hint that she was an aspiring actress, but she didn’t.

  So I did. But she stopped me before I got too far into it.

  “I’m going to leave you two alone,” she said suddenly. “Mr. Dalton, it was really nice meeting you.” When she looked at me I saw that she was really uncomfortable. “I’ll see you later in the room. Or…whenever. Have fun!”

  And with that, she was off to somewhere else in the casino, leaving me standing there with Max, wondering just what the hell I was supposed to do now.

  Chapter Three

  Max and I ended up in a little bar area that was enclosed by glass. The room was filled with live piano music. The quiet was a nice respite from the incessant energy of the casino floor.

  I had my fifth glass of wine. Not being a big drinker, I probably should have stopped at four. Maybe three. But there I was, sipping the fifth one in a matter of just two hours, while Max enjoyed another White Russian.

  Just what the hell I thought I was doing, I have no idea. I was in over my head spending time alone with a guy like this. I thought there would be a lot of business talk, but in less than ten minutes he was asking me questions I wouldn’t have predicted in a million years.

  “Why are you single, Olivia?”

  “Maybe I’m not.” I decided to go the playful route, rather than tell him the truth: Oh, my only long-term boyfriend cheated on me three times and then freaked out one night, basically scaring me out of town, and I haven’t dated since, and by the way I’ve had many sleepless nights wondering if I’ll ever really trust a man again because Chris had hidden his true dark self so well, even though I thought I knew his soul. Still interested?

  A smile curled the edges of his mouth. “You don’t have a ring on your finger.” He took my hand and his thumb caressed the bare place where a ring would have been. “And you didn’t come here with a guy.”

  I looked up from my hand and met his gaze. “This could be a girls’ only weekend. Get away from the boyfriends for a few days.”

  “Right.” His eyes expressed his amusement. He could see right through me.

  “And who are you with?”

  He looked around the bar, then back
at me. “You.”

  With Max touching me, and with the way he said “you,” my nerves were tingling. I crossed one leg over the other, and the pressure between my legs sparked a ripple of excitement. I’d never been this turned on just sitting with a guy before. Then again, I’d never been just sitting around with anyone who came anywhere close to rivaling Max Dalton’s sex appeal.

  This was a bad idea. I needed to change the subject or get the hell out of there. Getting involved with Max was something that could be bad business. And it might even be worse to let him continue hitting on me and then turn him down. I didn’t just have to protect myself; I had to protect my job.

  I politely thanked him for the glass of wine and stood.

  “Got another hot date?” he asked.

  “Is that what this was?”

  “It could have been.”

  “It was good to see you, Max. But I really need to get going. I’m exhausted from the trip and…from the last couple of hours of this.” I motioned to the casino floor.

  “At least let me take you back to your room.”

  “All right,” I said.

  We made our way to the elevator and I couldn’t help but think he might try something on the ride up. Luckily, the elevator was crowded. Unluckily, we were squished together, with Max right behind me. I could feel his hard cock against my ass.

  Opening the door to our hotel room, I said, “Krystal might be here. So, thanks again.”

  He held the door open and looked over my head into the room. “She’s not here. How about a goodnight kiss?”

  I shook my head. “I’m sorry—”

  Before I could finish the sentence, he leaned toward me, swiftly, pressing his mouth to mine. His tongue parted my lips and slid into my mouth. He tasted faintly of Kahlua. The two-day stubble was rough and masculine, a feeling I hadn’t had against my face in a too long. Max smelled of expensive cologne and it made me want to bury my face in his neck and inhale him.

  I knew I shouldn’t have, but I let him keep kissing me. And I let him step into the room, over the threshold of the doorway, and all bets were off by then. The door closed behind him with a snap, and he was walking me backward as his tongue explored my mouth.