“Rest assured. Your money’s safe with us,” I say, mimicking the fake-sounding voice of a TV commercial.
We step inside the elevator.
Landon grins. “Until you lose it all at my totally stacked tables.”
We both laugh while the elevator swoops closed.
There’s a few moments of silence while the elevator whisks us to the casino floor. Alone in the elevator with Landon, I fight back the fear over what I’ve stumbled into. Truth is I think I’m in some kind of mental shock. My mind shut down, unable to deal with the truth of what I saw at the speedway. I was playing it cool in the car on the ride back. Trying to appear more…together than I really am. It’s not only that Landon’s different than I thought.
It’s that the entire world’s different.
I think about all the cracks and kooks I’ve heard over the years. The tinfoil hat conspiracy theorists. The lizards-from-space-are-infiltrating-our-government guys. Thought control devices in cell phones. All of it’s loony, and all of it pales to what I saw tonight.
A secret species living among us? Fuck.
Even better: I’ve got one of them holding my hand, and he’s a billionaire lion who’s taken to calling me his lifemate? Could shit get any less nine-to-five?
I need a shower. I need a drink. I probably need a fistful of anti-psychotics. But most of all I need my gun.
I check to make sure Layla’s in my backpack. Her comforting weight makes me give less of a shit, which right now is exactly what I need.
The elevator dings. The doors begin to slide open.
A wave of self-consciousness slams into me.
This is such a shit idea.
What am I doing? Pretending? Posing? I should’ve insisted he take me to his penthouse to wash up before strolling the casino floor at his side. Fortunately we were wearing the car racing suits during the fight at the speedway, so we’re not splattered in blood—
But we both look like hell.
“You know, Landon, on second thought—”
“Relax,” he whispers. “You own these people. They can’t touch you.”
“I’d be more relaxed if I was here to rob the place.”
“I bet you would.”
The elevator opens on a grand entrance foyer that leads to some kind of exclusive VIP-only high-roller’s lounge. The floors are gold-speckled marble. There’s a curved mahogany desk stretching across one wall. But what catches my eye is the chandelier sparkling overhead. It looks like a million drops of yellow-gold rain—
“Swarovski crystal,” Landon says. “Austrian. Designed in collaboration with the American pop artist Jeff Koons.”
“It’s gorgeous.”
“Yes.”
“Am I gawking?” I whisper as Landon wraps his arm through the crook of my elbow and leads me toward the desk.
“You’re totally gawking,” he says. “It’s refreshing. I’m surrounded by jaded people. They’ve forgetten how to appreciate beauty.”
We make it halfway across the foyer when Landon’s swarmed by attendants and well-wishers and people so rich they’re famous simply for being rich. A woman in an extravagant sapphire-blue gown presses against Landon’s shoulder and whispers something in his ear. I grind my teeth and smile, shocked by the jealousy burning through me. I never really thought about what life was like for Landon Stone.
Money. Power. Women.
Whatever he wants is his.
Shit. I cast a quick glance at my faded blue jeans and tank top. The backpack slung over my shoulder feels particularly sophisticated—
An Asian man wearing an impeccably tailored suit pauses to shake Landon’s hand.
“I trust Savannah’s craps tables are keeping you entertained, Mr. Sayaka?” Landon says, effecting an air of distanced civility.
“They are entertaining indeed, Mr. Stone,” the man says, smiling. “I lose more with each visit.”
“Well, here’s to a change in you luck.” Landon motions to an attendant, then asks the eager-looking guy to upgrade Mr. Sayaka’s complimentary suite and arrange a private helicopter tour of the Grand Canyon. Mr. Sayaka gives Landon a slight bow of gratitude.
“Please,” Landon says, “Do not hesitate to contact me personally should you require anything at all.”
Mr. Sayaka nods and wanders off and is quickly replaced by someone else reaching for Landon’s hand.
I blink, then plaster a strained smile on my face.
I’m feeling a bit dizzy—
“Mr. Sayaka is the largest land developer in Tokyo,” Landon explains in between handshakes and smiles and glibly passed-over sexual advances from a variety of dolled-up women, some subtle in their come-ons, others less so.
“He didn’t seem so large to me.”
Landon laughs while a tattooed Latino guy with slicked hair swats him on the back. When he’s gone Landon whispers, “Vueza Cartel. Brazil.”
“Money’s money?”
“Exactly.”
“You and me are more alike than you think.”
“No. Than you think.”
We pass through the foyer and into the VIP lounge proper. All four walls are framed by massive stone fireplaces. The lighting is low and intimate. The decor consists of low-slung brown and black leather couches and armchairs arranged in informal clusters designed to help the one percent mingle. The marble floor is covered in richly woven Persian carpets. The art on the walls is a mix of antique oil paintings and more modern abstraction, but it doesn’t feel jarring or haphazard. Everything feels perfectly…designed. Intentional.
The only thing out of place is me.
Usually I don’t mind myself. I know what I am. Where I come from. And this world’s always been so far out of my realm of experience it felt like a fairy tale. Like it wasn’t even real. But now here I am, experiencing it, and it is real. People actually live like this.
Suddenly I feel very small and silly. “Landon? I’d like to… I think I need to leave.”
He doesn’t hear me. He’s talking to a heavyset woman in a peacock-themed outfit that introduced herself as the Swedish Ambassador.
I lift a glass of champaign from a server’s tray and down it in a single gulp. Shit. I wish I still smoked. I’d light a cigarette right now. Give the yoga-juicing-detox bitches a panic attack—
An attendant asks Landon if he can bring him anything. Landon looks at me. I shake my head. A good-sized crowd’s surrounded us, making my head swim. Or maybe it’s just the scent of all this easy money. Virtually every person in the room is a potential mark. My grifter senses are running on overdrive.
I’m also getting more than my fair share of hostile glances, particularly from the snooty-looking bitches who thought they had a claw or two in Landon Stone. No one seems to know where to place me. How do I rank? Landon’s holding my arm like we’re an item…but I’m dressed like a biker bitch he picked up hitchhiking.
My cheeks flush red.
Landon stops to chat with a group of businessmen.
I’m hovering around their circle, feeling awkward, feeling…like a paid escort. That’s what the people in the room think I am. They sense I don’t belong here. So now they’re laughing inside, thinking the handsome business magnate Mr. Landon Stone has a rather eccentric fetish for peasant girls—
Maybe he does.
Suddenly I hate this place and everyone in it. I want to rob these pompous and privileged fucks blind, then burn Savannah’s Casino to the ground. I’m standing ramrod-straight, my fingernails digging into my palms.
“Landon?” I say, loud enough so my voice carries over the din. “I need to get out of here.”
“You’re doing great.”
“Are you getting a kick out of this?” I hiss.
“What?” He looks genuinely startled.
“Embarrassing me?”
With a slight flick of his wrist Landon sends another attendant scurrying away. “No. Of course not. I just thought…you’d want to be seen with me…now that we’re…�
�
He looks totally lost. Shit.
Here I go again.
Always searching for the worst in people.
“I do,” I say, holding one of his large hands in both of mine, acutely aware everyone in the room is watching us. “I just need…well, some fucking deodorant would be a good start. Maybe even a shower.”
“You don’t have to worry about what anyone thinks. You look like a rock star.”
“No. You’re wrong. You don’t have to worry. Because you’re you. You’re like…untouchable. But me? I’d feel better with some armor on. Or at least a clean pair of jeans.”
That seems to get him. His eyes brighten. “Of course. We should get freshened. But you’re in Savannah’s. We’ll do you one better.”
Landon motions for an attendant. “My guest and I would like to visit the Oasis Spa. Please make arrangements?”
The attendant nods and hurries off.
“Avocado mud baths are a wonder for the pores,” Landon says, looking perfectly serious
I stare at him with my mouth hanging open.
“What? A modern man can’t enjoy a pumice-stone rub now and then?”
“I know you enjoy a rub. Just didn’t take you for a metrosexual.”
“You think my skin’s healthy, ageless glow just happened? That shit takes work. And avocado. And whatever else they tell me to smear on.”
“See? Metro all the way.”
Landon chuckles. “C’mon, Summer. Don’t be sexist. If it makes you happier we can visit the steam room. It’s modeled after the Russian steam baths in Moscow. I pay very husky Eastern European housewives a lot of money to dress up like it’s the Eighteenth Century and beat my clients with a switch of birch.”
“Sounds lovely.”
“Mud bath it is then?”
I’m about to nod when I see a man who looks so totally out of place even I’m left feeling like I belong. He has a matted mess of blonde dreadlocks. He’s wearing a tie-dyed shirt that’s so threadbare it’s filled with holes, and a pair of hemp pants that look like baggy, bright purple pajamas. He’s barefoot. Carrying what at first I think is a giant walking stick or some sort of—
“Is that hippy guy carrying the world’s biggest wooden bong?”
The guy turns and stares at me. Golden green eyes. A familiar-feeling strength in his jawline. He’s kind of cute, actually. Would probably clean up nice. Built a little slimmer than—
Landon’s back is turned to the guy, but when I mention the bong he closes his eyes and takes a long breath. “It’s not a bong. It’s a didgeridoo.”
“A what?”
I keep thinking he’s going to turn around and face the guy. But he doesn’t. Instead he nods at a waiter wearing a cream-colored suit. The waiter glides over. Landon takes a glass of wine from the waiter’s tray and hands it to me.
“No thanks. That champaign went right to my head. I’d like to keep what little wits I still have.”
“Oh, you’re gunna need this,” Landon says, lifting the glass in my direction. “Trust me.”
I sigh, take it from him and have a sip. “I hate wine.”
“Me too,” Landon says, downing his glass in a single gulp and reaching for another. “What’s the hippy doing?”
“Wandering toward us. Slowly. All dazed looking. Mumbling to himself.”
“Sound’s about right.”
“You know him?”
Landon finishes the second glass of wine.
“A didgeridoo is wind instrument developed by the Australian aborigines. Today they’re popular among the trustafarian hippie crowd—”
Suddenly a loud, bellowing horn-like honk echoes through the VIP lounge. Everyone freezes. I think I hear a glass shattering. Maybe even a woman screaming. The horn sound continues. It sounds like a plugged tuba. No. That’s being too charitable.
It sounds like an elephant with gas.
Laughter bubbles up from my belly. I do my best to keep it down, but the sound is just too funny and so ridiculously out of place…in a way it’s perfect. A shot of messy reality into this buttoned-down, dream-like world of perfection.
Suddenly the horn-noise stops and there’s only me, leaning into Landon, spilling super-fancy wine on my shirt and laughing so hard tears roll down my cheeks.
Landon slowly turns to face the creator of the obnoxious sound.
“My brother!” the hippy yells from across the deathly quiet room.
I spit wine onto the doubtlessly priceless rug.
“Your brother?
“Summer Mason,” Landon says, barely hiding his grimace, “meet Elliot Stone. Although I believe he’s officially changed his legal name to—”
“Bodhi Dawn,” the hippy says, suddenly right beside us, and how quick he crossed the room makes the laughter die in my throat, because this is one hippy who’s really in touch with his inner animal—
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN
LANDON
“BODHI DAWN. YES. How are you, Elliot?”
“Namaste, my brother,” Elliot says, pressing his palms together and giving me a slight bow. Then he flings himself into my arms, smacking me in the face with his dreadlocks and enveloping me in a cloud of patchouli and weed stench.
I pat him on the back. Once.
When he finally releases me there’s a tear running down his cheek. Elliot studied at the Actor’s Studio in New York, until he got bored. I always thought he missed his life calling.
I glance around the room. Savannah’s most valued guests are returning to their drinks and gossip. Good. Let them say what they will. Unlike Summer, I’m not worried.
When you’re broke they call you crazy.
When you’re rich they call you eccentric.
But I know Elliot well enough to know he’s neither—
“Amazing gravity waves at the Integratron this morning,” Elliot says, glancing at Summer. “I feel completely tuned in, you know? The bowls were singing their universal crystal lullaby—”
“Elliot…uh…Bodhi? Allow me to introduce my guest for the evening, Summer Mason.”
“—we should head out there sometime, Landon. It’s built above the confluence of three subterranean rivers. The energy is quite magnificent. You’d love the building’s craftsmanship. Its acoustics are unrivaled.”
Elliot takes Summer’s hand and kisses it, barely looking at her.
Summer’s smiling ear to ear. She gives me a laughing wink. “What’s the Integratron?”
“A stunning achievement. A dome built in the Mojave desert by a ufologist and contactee at the site of contact. A nexus of magnetic fields. Capable of plasma regeneration. Time travel. Anti-gravity.”
“Sounds like a trip.”
Elliot flips Summer’s hand over and traces his index finger down her palm. “It is. You’d love it. And these palm-lines! So unique—”
Summer snatches her hand back, nearly scowling.
“Summer’s a cool name,” Elliot says with a note of seriousness I’m not used to hearing in his voice. “What cultural background?”
“Hippy,” Summer says, not missing a beat. “Moms was into the love-ins for a while. Went to shit when she realized it was mostly about losers gunning for easy pussy.”
Elliot’s eyes glitter.
“What’s your new name mean?” Summer asks, sipping her wine. “And why’d you change it?”
“Actually it’s my old name. I’ve discovered it predates ‘Elliot’ by several reincarnations—”
“Of course,” Summer says.
I snatch a Scotch from a passing waiter. Maybe it was a bad idea to take Summer through the casino without getting the lay of the land first. The patrons I can handle. Blake and Rachael too. But Elliot? He’s the only pride member that’s able to get under my skin—
“Bodhi,” Elliot says, raising his index finger in the air, “means awakened. Or aware. Or know. Or understand. Or all those, depending on which Sanskrit translation you prefer. I find the ambiguity very appealing. Also the name of a
tree common to the Indian subcontinent, under which the Buddha received enlightenment.”
“You sure it doesn’t mean steaming pile of horseshit?” I say.
Elliot’s lips twitch, but only once. He ignores me and meets Summer’s eyes. “You’ll have to excuse my brother. Landon likes to describe himself as a realist. But to me he’s simply…lost in the disturbances of the mind we call life on this physical earth.”
“Why are you here?” I ask, already tiring of Elliot’s pretentious new-age bullshit.
“Because the world’s largest den of illusion and greed is having an opening gala, and was invited. The astral energies decided I would attend. Don’t worry, brother. You don’t need to comp me a room. I’m more than happy to sleep rough in the indoor jungle safari.”
“Bathe in the waterfall?” Summer says.
Elliot pauses. “I see why you like her, Landon. She has a working class wit. Crude but entertaining.”
Summer sidles close to Elliot. Presses her tits against his arm. Runs her fingers down his chest. “I am a working girl…”
Elliot stiffens.
Summer laughs, snatches the didgeridoo. “Maybe you’ll let me blow your impressive wood, huh…Bodhi?”
Elliot’s usually slack, carefully-cultivated hippie demeanor vanishes, and for a second he looks absolutely furious. I take a calming breath, step between them and decide to try and start over. “Elliot designed the fuel cells we sell at Blue Line,” I say to Summer. “He’s something of a genius in the field.”
Elliot grabs the end of one of his dreadlocks and rolls it between his thumb and finger, tangling it further, pretending not to hear what I said.
“That’s cool,” Summer says. “Hey, Landon? About that spa? That sounds like a really good idea—”
“If I’d known how strong the energy was going to be with her I wouldn’t have bothered with the Integratron,” Elliot says, staring at Summer with a calculating gleam in his eye.
“Um…okay? Awkward much?” Summer says, taking a step away from Elliot.
“She’s quite something, Landon,” Elliot says, the hippy-dippy affectation in his voice gone. “How long have you been…together?”
Elliot reaches out and brushes his fingers to Summer’s cheek before she knows what he’s doing.
High Card: A Billionaire Shifter Novel (Lions of Las Vegas Book 1) Page 19
