by Beverly Long
“I remember you thinking a lot of Wayne Isman,” he said, pointing at the man’s picture.
She was grateful that he didn’t want to talk about her. “He was a wonderful boss. I learned so much from him. Very bright and, of course, he’s got that killer accent, too,” she added.
“Australian, right?” he asked.
She nodded. “I could listen to him read the phone book and be totally entertained.”
“The phone book, huh? I haven’t run across one of those, but there’s a manual that describes how the dishwasher works in that cupboard.” He pointed across the room.
It was a spark of the old Royce, the one who made easy jokes and found pleasure in silly things.
“I’m sure that would be lovely, too. Wayne is one of the most respected people in the industry,” JC said. “The project we’ve been collaborating on is making children’s vaccines more readily available in underdeveloped countries.” She paused. “Of course, I let him do most of the talking in the meetings.”
“The accent thing,” he said. “I got it.”
He was staring at the paper. Wayne was a good-looking man. Was it possible that Royce thought they were collaborating on more than the vaccine project?
“Wayne Isman has been married for many years. He talks about his wife all the time. I met her once and thought she was lovely. And he’s crazy about his three daughters.”
“How nice for him,” he said, as if he couldn’t care less.
Maybe she’d read him wrong. Or maybe she’d been hoping that he was just a teensy bit jealous.
She was pathetic.
“Do attendees preregister for these sessions?” he asked.
“No. This is like most conferences. There are concurrent sessions and attendees are free to choose whatever sparks their interest at the time. There are probably seven or eight different sessions in each time slot. Presenters have been advised to plan for 150 to 200 attendees.”
“I wish you wouldn’t do this,” he said.
“We’re not confident that it’s even a real threat.”
“We’re not confident that it isn’t.”
She sighed. “Look, I don’t want it to be obvious that I’ve got security.”
“I’ll do the best I can,” he said. “But no promises. If I feel that the situation warrants it, I’m going to shut it down.”
“The session?” she said incredulously.
“At least your participation in it.”
He was serious. “Royce, I have a professional reputation to maintain.”
“My job is to keep you safe. That’s the priority.”
Of course that was what she wanted, too. “All I’m asking is that if it’s possible, I’d like the two goals not to be mutually exclusive.”
He shifted his attention back to the calendar. Six to ten on Thursday night was colored green and labeled Ballroom. “Is that the awards dinner?” he asked.
“Yes. It may not last that long, but I wanted to plan on the careful side.”
She was not the type to arrive three minutes before going onstage—after anyone remotely responsible for the event had had a mild stroke for fear that she wasn’t going to show—and then leave as soon as the applause had ended.
She would arrive on time, mingle with other attendees, participate in dinner conversation, hopefully give a great speech and then hang around to answer questions afterward.
He leaned back in his chair. “Who else has access to your schedule?”
“Glory, my administrative assistant, and I are the only one who can see the details. Others, many others, of course, can look at my calendar and know if I’m busy or out of the office. Makes it easier to schedule things.”
“We need to change that. Immediately.”
“But—”
Royce shook his head. “Can Glory do that on your behalf?”
She nodded. This was a small hill. Certainly not one she intended to die upon. “Yes.”
“Good. And I need Glory’s information. Full name, address, social.”
“Miatroth has a rigid background screening process, I assure you.”
“I don’t care. How long has she worked for you?”
“Five years.”
“No recent issues? Strange behaviors? Odd conversations?”
She shook her head. “She’s amazing.” She wanted to implore Royce not to do anything that might upset Glory. The woman was already a little irritated with JC because she hadn’t gotten to come to Vegas, one of her very favorite places. “A good assistant is worth his or her weight in gold.”
“Noted,” he said.
A knock on the door made her jerk. Royce motioned for her to stay where she was. He looked through the peephole. “Room service,” he whispered, turning to look back at her. “Fast.”
“Bet the orders from the suites get priority.”
This from Charity who’d again emerged from her bedroom. She was carrying Hogi. The cat seemed calmer and when Charity put him down, he promptly jumped into one of the deep windowsills and pressed his nose up against the pane.
Royce opened the door and motioned the young man outside to come in. Then he watched him like a hawk, as if confident that he was intent upon doing them harm versus getting the tray delivered and returning to the kitchen for the next one.
She signed the room charge slip and added a generous tip, not only because of Royce’s scrutiny but partially in pity for the checkered bow tie and cummerbund the poor man had to wear. She’d always thought periwinkle blue was sort of a pretty color before this, but the combination of it and olive green just wasn’t nice.
Once he was gone, the three of them sat down at the glass-topped table. For a few minutes, the only sounds in the room was silverware softly clicking against the plates.
Royce was almost half-done with his burger before he spoke again. “So, Charity, are you a student?”
“Like in college?” Charity said, her upper lip raised in a sneer.
Royce nodded.
“Not for me,” Charity said.
Royce put down his fork. “So you’re working?”
“I would,” Charity said. “But nobody seems inclined to help me have the American dream.”
If Charity had come across as snippy in the interviews as she was acting now, JC understood why she was unemployed. But based on what the private detective had been able to dig up, the kid had had some hard knocks and she suspected some of Charity’s bravado was more for show. “I have a few contacts,” JC said. “I’d be happy to make some calls.”
“We’ll see,” Charity said.
JC snuck a look at the clock in the kitchen. She did not live in a world where one wasted a whole morning. Not that meeting Charity had been a waste. No, that was totally worth it. But to miss a whole morning of work was going to set her back substantially. “I have to be at the Wallington in an hour,” she said, looking at Royce.
He nodded. “That hotel is fairly new, at the far end of the strip. Will take about fifteen minutes to get there.”
JC pushed back her chair. “I’m going to get ready,” she said.
Charity stood up, too. “I’m going down to the pool.”
She smiled at the young woman. “Great. Have a good afternoon. Let’s plan to eat dinner together at seven.”
* * *
He knew there really was no reason that Charity couldn’t use the hotel services. While they’d arrived back at the hotel together, it was still unlikely that anyone would readily connect her to Jules. And, even if scumbag Bobby had somehow already wrangled a way out of jail, he wouldn’t know to come to the Periwinkle.
Besides, it wasn’t his job to protect Charity.
But for whatever reason, it seemed as if Charity was important to Jules, and tha
t quite frankly made her important to Royce. Even if she was uneducated, unemployed and not terribly concerned about either.
Not in school, not working. Not impressive. If she intended to shake down Jules for money, he hoped Jules was smarter than that.
While Jules got ready for her meeting and Charity got ready for the pool, Royce made phone calls. The first one was to a trusted contact within the Vegas police department. After their brief conversation, Royce was satisfied that he’d know about Bobby’s release before Bobby would.
The man had had his hands around Jules’s neck. That vision was going to linger in Royce’s brain for a while and it put Bobby on the list of people to watch.
Next he started a background search on Charity. Jules seemed satisfied that their mothers had been friends, so that automatically made Charity a friend. Royce wasn’t so easily convinced. He suspected Jules would be irritated that he’d initiated the background search, but that wasn’t his concern right now.
He was focused on keeping her alive.
When Jules came out of her bedroom, she’d changed out of her casual sweater, skirt and boots to a sapphire-blue suit with a white blouse. She looked crisp and professional, and he knew that when she walked into a room, both the women and the men there would take notice. The women would be a little jealous, secretly wishing they could pull off the same look.
The men—well, that was simple. They’d all want to have her in their beds.
It had gotten him in trouble once before.
Chapter 8
They’d been three weeks into their relationship, a week past the mind-blowing experience in the pool cabana, when Jules had invited him to attend a work thing. It was a banquet and she was on the short list for something called the President’s Award of Distinction.
The thing was black tie and he spent two hundred bucks he didn’t have renting a tuxedo. The shirt was too tight around the collar and the pants loose enough that Jules had joked, on the way to the event in the cab, that she could easily slip a hand inside.
The thought of that kept a smile on his face even as they walked into a cloud of heavy perfume and forced laughter. The event was on the top floor of the Waldorf Astoria in New York City, and the room had been full of vice presidents, senior vice presidents and all kinds of other self-important titles. Then there were the up-and-comers, the saps a few corporate layers down who had aspirations of rising to the top.
Jules was technically one of the saps, but he knew she was different. For one thing, she was the most beautiful woman in the room. She’d worn a gold gown, and her skin had fairly shimmered in the dim lighting. He saw the men in the room looking her direction, and somehow, his brain cells evaporated and he morphed into a monosyllabic grunter who had difficulty matching nouns with verbs.
He was not just a fish out of water; he was more like a fish washed up and rotting on the shore.
He knew his deficiencies. There was no prep school or Ivy League university on his résumé. No internship with one of the big six consulting firms. He’d been an unengaged student who’d graduated from high school and then spent a good portion of the next decade in countries the people in that ballroom didn’t want to think about, let alone talk about.
Jules had tried to include him in the dinner conversation, but after the third or fourth knowing look from someone else that made him realize he hadn’t said exactly the right thing in the right way, he’d pretty much stopped talking altogether.
There was a pompous ass at the table happy to step in and monopolize Jules’s attention. And when the awards had been announced, and Jules named the winner, his hug and congratulatory kiss on the cheek had lasted seconds too long for Royce.
And like a damn caveman, he’d grabbed the back of the guy’s tux and yanked him a foot off the ground. It had been Jules’s pinched white face that had finally cleared his head.
He’d set the man back on his feet, knowing he’d embarrassed Jules on her big night and that it wasn’t going to be possible to redeem himself.
The cab ride home had been absolutely silent. They reached her apartment and he expected that she’d tell him not to bother getting out.
But Jules had held out her hand, looked into his eyes and said, “Come up. We can talk where it’s private.”
And the short story was that she’d forgiven him. That’s what she’d said and what he believed. At least until that fateful day in her father’s apartment. After that, he’d had lots of time to wonder if that night hadn’t been the beginning of the end.
Had that been the night when she’d realized he was never going to fit into her world?
“Are you ready?” she asked as she slung her leather bag over her shoulder.
He held up his keys. “Are you nervous about leaving Charity alone in your suite?” He spoke softly. She had not yet left for the pool and he didn’t want her to hear him.
She shook her head. “No.”
“If your clothes, jewelry and other valuables are gone when we come back, don’t blame me.”
She looked him in the eye. “I have my wallet, my computer and all my extra jewelry in this bag. If she’s so determined to rob me that she wants to go to the trouble of hawking some clothes, well, so be it. I’m not an idiot, Royce.”
“I have never thought you were an idiot, Jules,” he said, his teeth almost gnashing together.
“Never?” she challenged.
What was she looking for? An affirmation that she’d been smart to kick him to the curb? A declaration that she obviously didn’t make great decisions because look how well her marriage had turned out?
Not a lot to be gained by staring into the rearview mirror. Distortion and regret were a bad combination.
He opened the door a crack to check the hallway. Then he motioned for her. “If we’re going, let’s get to it.”
* * *
Traffic on the strip was heavy, and the sidewalks were filled with people strolling around in light jackets on the pleasant winter day. She’d seen the New York weather this morning on the news, and it was snowing there.
“I suppose putting the top down is out of the question,” she said.
He nodded. “Probably not in your best interest.”
She didn’t argue. Couldn’t fault Royce for taking his job seriously. Couldn’t fault him, either, for questioning her judgment in befriending Charity and giving her the run of the suite.
But she needed to trust Charity so that, in turn, Charity would trust her. They were going to have to bond together to find the truth. At this point, JC wasn’t settling for anything else.
She and Royce did not talk again for the fifteen minutes it took to reach the Wallington Hotel. Once they arrived, she saw him give the valet parking attendant a hundred dollars to park his car just so. It dawned on her that he easily handled the transaction, and she had the feeling that he had come a long way from the young man who’d gone a bit pale when he’d seen the menu prices at the restaurant that first night they’d dined together.
She’d wanted to pick up the check but had refrained from insisting. He’d been thoroughly charming in a most refreshing way, but she’d worried that he might be a traditionalist and be offended if she offered to pay.
And she hadn’t wanted to risk that because she’d had such a good time talking.
Here they were, eight years later, all the words evidently having been said. She stepped into the revolving door and he crowded in behind her. They were so close they were almost touching. She caught his scent of sandalwood and took another quick breath so that she could draw it deep into her lungs.
Her body felt instantly warm. Memories. So many memories.
In bed. Him behind her. Pounding flesh. Hot skin.
So much pleasure.
As soon as the path was clear, she moved fast, desperate for some
distance, some perspective.
“Stay close,” he whispered, his hand clamping down on her upper arm.
“Fine,” she said, shaking him off. Inside the lavish hotel, she wasn’t surprised to see slot machines just off the large lobby. Almost every place in Vegas had gaming. She knew it was available at the Periwinkle as well, just not quite this close to the registration desk. She wasn’t averse to pulling the handle of a slot machine a time or two. But she hated the idea that people were losing money they didn’t have on the foolishness.
She headed toward the bar, looking for Cole Hager. The first time she’d met him, she’d thought he was smart and asked good questions. She saw him at the back booth. He had a drink in front of him and he was reading something on his phone.
She motioned to Royce and he gave her a short nod in response.
She stopped in front of the booth. “Mr. Hager. JC Cambridge. So good to see you again.”
He slid out of the booth and extended his hand. “Please, just Cole. Very nice to see you as well, JC.” He glanced at Royce.
“This is Royce. He’s...a friend. You don’t mind if he joins us, do you?”
Cole smiled. “As long as he’s not bored by return on investment and equity growth charts.”
“I’m sure he’s not,” JC said easily and slid into the booth.
* * *
She undoubtedly thought he would be bored because the discussion would be above his head. Had no way of knowing that after New York he’d gone to college and gotten not only an undergraduate degree but also an MBA with an emphasis in finance. He could definitely keep up. Still, he pretended to ignore them, not willing to let them know that he was tracking with everything being said. Instead, he sat at an angle in the booth, where he could watch the front door. He couldn’t see the back exit of the bar, just a swinging door that led to the kitchen. The only people coming through it were servers carrying trays of food.
