by Cat Miller
“Fuck you. I’m not playing you now or ever. I beat you before. The Inferno is mine.”
“That’s a shame. You see, I have this contract all drawn up. You learned that trick from me, didn’t you, son?” He grinned evilly.
“I’m not playing you. I dug that place out of the hole you drove it into. It’s actually a viable business now. It’s mine. That’s that.” Fuck him. Luc wasn’t going for it.
“Aww. And I thought I had just the right bait.” He didn’t really sound disappointed. “I guess I’ll keep the girl after all. At least until you come to your senses and man up to the table,” Charlie teased. “I’m sure she’ll stay mostly untouched. Mostly.”
The red haze returned, and Luc was about to jerk the man off of his high-backed chair and choke him until he told Luc where to find Everly. But he didn’t have to.
Two small caliber pistols came into view from the behind the chair. Everly eased out from the left. Her gun was trained on the thug in charge of watching Charlie’s back. He hadn’t done a very good job. She’d crept up and no one even noticed.
Dolce moved on Charlie from the right.
“Don’t move. We don’t like you. And I’m PMS’ing. I could probably shoot you and get away with it. Did you know PMS can get you out of a murder rap? It’s true.” Dolce pressed the barrel of her gun against Charlie Christianson’s head.
“How the hell did you get here, Dolce?” Luc asked. Not that he was grateful she was there. He was just surprised.
“Oh, I called a cab,” was her smartass answer. God, he loved that woman. He was going to give her a raise.
“Dolce! Dammit! Where did you come from?” Rourke stepped out of the mingling crowd where he’d been blending in at the front of VIP.
The rest of the team emerged from various places. Those boys were good. Luc hadn’t seen any of them. He wasn’t ex-military either. So there was that.
Rourke’s sidearm was pointed at Riggs, making sure Charlie Christianson’s other son didn’t get any bright fucking ideas and shoot or otherwise take down either Everly or Dolce.
Riggs put his hands in the air. Showing no signs of aggression. He took several steps away from the scene.
Dolce rolled her eyes and looked to the heavens for patience when dealing with her adoptive brother, but she never pulled her gun away from Charlie’s head.
Charlie was furious. The plan to get his hotel and casino back had taken him months to execute. Dolce and Everly had blown it out the water in under two hours.
“How did you get out of my room?” Charlie seethed. “There were armed guards.”
“They didn’t take my phone. I called Dolce. She busted me out in no time.” Everly shrugged.
“And why didn’t you call me, Dolce?” Rourke accused.
“I did. You didn’t answer. I couldn’t find either of you. Somebody had to come get Everly. If we hadn’t seen the pissing contest here we would have slipped out unnoticed. Again, somebody had to save the day.” Dolce gave a sniff of annoyance.
“Men are such suckers for a pretty face. Really, it was too easy to disable your boy, Charlie. A little cleavage and an invitation for a threesome had me inside your room. Then it was as simple as pistol whipping one and holding the other at gunpoint while Everly used curtain tiebacks to bind them both. Did you know ladies who grow up on ranches tie really good knots? I might have nicked that second one with a bullet. He didn’t take me seriously at first. Oops. His bad.”
Dolce reported the violent happening as if she was telling them about just another day at the office. Luc and Rourke really did need to get a handle on the woman. He was too pleased with her today to mention it though. Rourke could be the bad cop today.
“Gun!” A waitress shouted and people started to panic and scurry around.
There were several guns out but who was counting. That was their cue to get gone.
“Let’s go people!” Rourke shouted but kept his sidearm at the ready.
“Aw. I gotta go now,” Dolce told Charlie. She backed away with her pistol still aimed at his head. “Tell my lovers I’ll miss them,” she said sweetly. She blew Charlie a kiss. Then she flipped him the bird.
“Dear Lord, Dolce. Get your ass out of here, would you? Maybe before you get arrested for assault with a deadly weapon?” Rourke was trying not to laugh at her antics.
“Yes sir,” she said as she passed Rourke. She blew him a kiss too. Minus the middle finger salute.
Everly ran by Luc without making eye contact. She handed the gun she was carrying to Rourke before running after Dolce. Rourke made the gun disappear into his magic gun jacket. You never knew how many weapons that man was carrying.
Luc stepped up to his father. Two matching sets of eyes bored into each other. He hated that he looked so much like this son of a bitch.
“If you touch, look at, or even think about anyone I even remotely know again they won’t find you. This is your only warning.” It was a promise. Luc would end this man if he didn’t crawl back into the whole he’d been hiding in.
“I should have made your mother swallow you. She was a shitty lay anyway,” Charlie taunted.
The red haze. It was there so fast Luc couldn’t control his actions. His poor mother was a twenty year old kid. She’d died because of this piece of shit. Luc wouldn’t abide any insult to her memory.
He laid into Charlie with a volley of blows that quickly had blood spraying over both of them. Charlie hadn’t even gotten his hands up before Luc knocked him out. Charlie was sprawled on the floor next to his fancy fucking chair.
“Let’s go, man,” Rourke tugged his arm.
Luc followed reluctantly. His rage wasn’t assuaged, but Rourke was right. He didn’t need trouble with the law.
They were almost out of the casino when Riggs appeared.
“Can I speak with you?”
Luc didn’t have anything to say to his father’s thug. But this was his brother. So he nodded and stepped out of the path of foot traffic in the busy casino.
“What do you want?”
“I want to apologize. I never knew who my father was,” he said.
“You weren’t missing much.”
“I see that now. When I first arrived in town I was told you were a criminal who cheated our father.”
“Dear old Dad told you that?” Luc asked.
“Yes.” Riggs nodded.
“I wish you would have talked to me. I could have cleared things up quickly.”
“Yeah, me too. I was supposed to gather intelligence on the crooked brother and report back. Only the longer I was there, the more I saw I didn’t have the whole story. I’m not innocent. I did what he asked me to do. But I regret it. I was harassing Dolce, hoping to maybe get private information from her.”
“Well, we all make mistakes. I heard that didn’t go well.” Luc smirked.
“Nope. My nuts will never be the same.” Riggs subconsciously adjusted the front of his pants before he continued. “The thing with Everly, I didn’t mean her any real harm. I just wanted you to know that. I needed to get fired, and she was my fastest ticket out. I grabbed her in a high traffic area with waitresses constantly passing by. I knew I’d get caught. I just didn’t think it would be by a giant fucking cowboy with murder in his eyes.”
“Her brother came to visit,” Luc explained.
“Yeah, I learned that later. Anyway, I wanted you to know that and tell you that I think Charlie has a couple more moles in your ranks. I didn’t have anything to do with today’s escapade. He didn’t tell me anything because I’ve been questioning him too often. This isn’t what I signed up for. I’m a retired fucking Navy SEAL. Not a lackey for this jerk. I guess I was blinded for a minute by the daddy thing. I’m sorry man. I’m really sorry.”
Andy Riggs, Luc’s brother, held out his hand to Luc. Luc took his hand and shook it. He believed the man.
“I think I’ll get out of here now. I’m going to head back east and look for work. I’m done with Daddy.”
“Good luck. If you find yourself back in Vegas, call me. I could help you find work here,” Luc offered.
“I’ll do that. Thanks.” Andy walked away and was swiftly swallowed up by the Vegas crowd.
The ride back to The Inferno was uncomfortable. The security guys were all bummed that the girls had all the fun without them. There was a generally jovial mood in the cramped space. Luc wasn’t feeling cheerful at all.
There were four guards all joking with and generally admiring Everly for getting herself out of a sticky situation. Everly listened politely but she didn’t join in. She kept shooting side glances at Luc. He knew because he was unabashedly staring at her.
Luc was looking for scratches or injuries of any type. She had red puffy eyes. He could only assume from her earlier crying jag. Other than that, she looked unaffected.
The guys wanted to give Dolce the hero treatment for showing up to bail out her partner in crime, but it wasn’t possible. Rourke was driving, and he had Dolce in the front seat giving her an earful about running into a dangerous situation alone.
Dolce was ignoring him. The butt of the pistol she’d pressed to his father’s head was poking out of the end of her too small handbag.
Rourke paused in his tirade to ask Everly. “Are you going back to your room or do you need to go to your truck?”
She looked at Rourke’s reflection in the rearview mirror and answered, “I no longer have a room. I’m going home today. So please take me to my truck.”
Dolce spun around with her mouth agape. Rourke frowned and looked to Luc who studiously ignored them both. They were the only people who knew he and Everly married that morning. Luc planned on keeping it that way.
He had a lot of shit to sort out. Not the least of which was why he felt so sick to his stomach when Everly said she still planned to leave that day. He’d sent her away, so he should be happy, but he wasn’t. Not at all.
The suspicion that he’d made a mistake with Everly grew by the moment. When he’d seen her snatched out of her truck, something inside of him snapped. She was his to protect. His.
But he didn’t trust her. Did he? No, he didn’t trust anyone except Rourke and Dolce.
Luc pressed on his temples to massage away the ache. That woman caused more trouble than anyone he’d ever met.
Rourke pulled the truck into the parking garage, stopped behind Everly’s truck, and she hopped out. Luc also jumped out and waved Rourke on. He would take the elevator up to the lobby.
Rourke gave him a jerky nod of acknowledgement. Dolce gave him her patented death stare as they drove off.
Everly’s truck door had thankfully been closed. Her keys were still in the ignition, and her things were all still inside. She was climbing in when she noticed Luc hadn’t gone with everyone else. She didn’t say anything. Only looked like she was waiting for him to hurl more insults at her.
“I just wanted to apologize for getting you entangled in my sorted family business. It won’t happen again, I promise.”
He didn’t know what else to say. He’d said too much already. The damage was done. Her hollow eyes were mirrors of pain and sorrow. Had he really hurt her that badly? And when was that ache in his chest going to quit?
Everly climbed into her truck and rolled down the window.
“Goodbye, Luc,” she told him before she backed out of the space and drove out of his life forever.
TWENTY-ONE
Luc stared at the unsigned divorce papers on his desk, and the pit of uncertainty he’d been suspended over widened a little more. It had been a month since the fiasco with his father. A month since he’d married Everly. A month since he’d said goodbye to her in the parking garage of the casino.
He’d known it was a mistake to let her go, but the damage was done. The hurt and pain in her lovely green eyes was staggering. He’d put that look in her eyes. He’d done real harm to her, to them, and he didn’t know how to fix it.
He wasn’t even sure he wanted to fix it. A nagging suspicion still plagued his every thought. He didn’t think he would ever understand Everly’s intentions for all she’d done, all she’d put up with from him. Honestly, he didn’t think he’d believe her if she tried to explain it to him.
Not that she’d tried to deny his accusations. She didn’t argue. She didn’t plead with him. She didn’t shout or call him names. No. Not Everly Parker. Or was it Everly Christianson? Either way, she hadn’t even tried to convince him of her innocence.
Had he expected her to? Yes, now that he really examined that morning in his mind, Luc knew that he’d wanted her to find a way to prove her love for him. He wanted her to say or do something, anything to help him swallow that kernel of mistrust that lodged itself in his throat as soon as he’d rolled over in bed and realized the wedding had not been a dream.
How could he expect that of her after the things he’d said? If someone who professed their love for him before God and his closest friends one night then turned around in the cold light of day and called him a gold digger, he wouldn’t have argued either. Maybe he hadn’t used those words exactly, but that was what he’d meant, and Everly knew it. Luc would have walked away just at expediently as Everly had.
What she had done before she left was ask him some very valid questions. She had him thinking about his life and why he lived it the way he did. Was he punishing himself her his mother’s death? He wasn’t sure.
It was funny though, for a gold digger, Everly was very forgetful. She hadn’t bothered to take anything Luc had given her. She left carrying the same ratty duffle bag and suitcase she’d moved in with and packed only the possessions she’d paid for herself. Luc knew this because Isa had asked him what she should do with the clothes and shoes in his guest suite.
It wasn’t a lot, really. They’d only gone shopping that one time, but she should have taken the stuff with her. She hadn’t even taken the lingerie. What was he supposed to do with La Perla? And why hadn’t they done more shopping if she was trying to get in his pockets? Wouldn’t a woman after money bat her eyelashes and beg sweetly for pretty things? God knew she had the power to get anything she wanted out of him. So why hadn’t she? He’d practically forced Everly to go into the stores with him.
He was sick of rehashing it all in his head. Enough was now enough. Luc needed to move past this speed bump in his life. It was time to get this messy business over with. It was past time, really. He was sick of thinking about it and wondering if he’d done the right thing. He was sick of dreaming about Everly every fucking night too, but he didn’t think that would end any time soon.
The last straw came earlier that day when he’d seen a redhead with a body to die for out of his peripheral vision. She’d disappeared around a corner before he got a good look but Luc had been sure it was it was his Fury back to torment him.
Luc chased after the woman trying to decide if he should kiss her and haul her back to his suite for a good long ride or put her sexy ass out on the sidewalk. Grabbing a patron and jerking them around to face you was not cool. Not at all acceptable for him or anyone else on his staff to do. He’d apologized and hurried away after instructing a nearby employee to have the stranger’s room comped for the night.
Luc needed closure. She hadn’t made any contact with him at all. She obviously felt the same way he did. It just needed to be done. That was for the best. He was sure she’d received the divorce papers by now. In the divorce settlement he’d agreed to alimony and given her his portion of her family business. She’d earned it. Whether the marriage was a mistake or not, she was his wife, and he wouldn’t leave her high and dry.
In that fucking contract they’d both signed the day she’d showed up in his office looking hotter in her dusty boots, jeans, and tank top than any woman had a right to, her brother had retained the family home, half the land, and half of the cattle. Luc got the business and the other half of the land and cattle. That was all Everly’s now. Luc didn’t want it anymore. He didn’t want any reminders of the la
st two months. None.
Luc signed the fucking papers after reading them over for the thousandth time and stared at his hated name written so elegantly on the paper that would end his time with Everly forever.
He hurled his gold pen across the room and cursed. He leapt to his feet and swiped an angry arm over his desk, sending papers, an empty glass, and his laptop flying.
He snatched up his heavy leather chair and launched it at the two-way mirror that overlooked the pit of Hell. The glass held but it spider webbed and cracked where the chair made contact.
After taking several calming pulls of oxygen into his lungs, Luc retrieved the chair. He straightened his mess and pulled himself together. He needed to get out of that office for a while. He was literally going nuts.
He called for a messenger to carry the divorce papers across town to the lawyer. He’d hired one outside of his own legal department for the divorce. His employees didn’t need to be in his personal affairs. Someone in his legal department had shared private information about his contract with Everly. That was how Archie knew so much about her. He had a leak that Rourke was working on plugging. Hopefully with his fist. Luc only used them for official business related to the hotel and legal casino now.
A short time later, Luc had changed into riding clothes and was climbing onto the back of his Ducati and strapping on his helmet. She was a sleek matte black beauty with thunder in her belly and enough speed to blow a man’s cares away, at least for a little while. Luc turned the ignition and revved the engine, just to hear her purr.
A long ride with the wind in his face and the Nevada heat surrounding him was just what Luc needed. It had been far too long since he’d set out and just let the road help clear his head.
Luc drove through the Vegas traffic with an itch under his skin. Nothing had been right in his world in what felt like forever. He just wanted to get out of the overcrowded city. There was a problem with that plan, and he knew it. There was no escaping what ailed him. How do you escape yourself? Luc himself was the problem. He was a fucking head case.
