Down and Dirty

by Crystal Green

  When Jameson looked disturbed—an admission of guilt, no doubt about it—Ben nearly flinched. So there it was, Ben’s true value. He had no value, other than being a fixer for the family or the Best Party Boy Ever.

  But Ben made no apologies for his position in life—he’d known what he was doing by hanging out in places like Rough & Tumble, a crude and unvarnished refuge, a second home where no one ever judged him because the regulars had too many secrets of their own to keep.

  Jameson shook his head, looking beaten. “That’s not what I meant by coming here, Ben. I only thought that, since this gold digger told me she lives in Vegas, you’d have more connections here than I do.” He paused, then chopped out a nod. “Okay—Lincoln and I decided that news of this wouldn’t be good for business, either.”

  His honesty went a long way in making Ben more receptive. Truthfully, something like this might create doubt in their clients if they knew the company’s chief financial officer had so easily lost money to a common thief when he was blasted. Ben might not have been a good son to his father, but he was still a Hughes.

  “So you were saying . . .”

  Semirelief smoothed Jameson’s shoulders down. “Last I heard, you were crashing at some PI’s house here. Boomer’s his name?”

  “Yeah. He’s on a long assignment again, but I can contact him.” When Boomer was out of town, there was always a bachelor around to look after his place. Ben had been there a few months now. “You’ve been checking up on me, have you?”

  “You’re my brother. That’s what we do, Ben, no matter how estranged life has made us.”

  Dammit. Jameson hadn’t called him Ben in . . . Well, he couldn’t remember the last time. And, weirdly, there was something else that was getting to him about Jameson, too, because no one in the family ever turned to Ben for help. They’d rarely even listened to his ideas for development projects back when he hadn’t known any better and he’d proposed them before realizing he’d never be listened to.

  Something like strange pride swarmed him now, and he grabbed on to it. There might have even been some affection in there for the Jameson he used to know—the brother who was putting trust in him now.

  “So what do you want me to do after I find this woman?” he asked.

  A surprised warmth spread through Jameson’s gaze before it eased down, going cool again as his voice hardened. “As I said—I don’t care about the money, but I do have a nondisclosure form she’s got to sign. Since you’ve always been the smooth talker, I need you to make contact with her. Let her know in your charming way that spreading tales about that night won’t be tolerated.”

  Ice. Jameson really was like their father, just like Lincoln, too.

  “Make this go away, Ben,” Jameson added, “and I’ll owe you big.”

  Maybe it wasn’t a mend in the tear between two brothers, but it was something.

  Ben leaned his elbows on the table, closer to Jameson than he’d been in a long time.

  “Okay. Tell me this piece of trouble’s name and we’ll go from there.”

  2

  Liz Palazzo.

  When Jameson had told Ben the gold digger’s name, a chuckle had been in order. Liz Palazzo? It couldn’t be real. And when Jameson had added that she was an ex-showgirl, Ben had nearly doubled over in laughter right there in his Rough & Tumble seat.

  The Prince of Industry and the Klepto Showgirl. Dad would really have blown a gasket if he’d gotten wind of Jameson’s mess.

  Then Ben had seen the picture Jameson had taken of her just after he’d brought her home: a redhead with a sassy bob, a tight black dress, and a deceptively sweet smile.

  Even though his sex drive had burned rubber, he’d shut out any other response. He was going to get this done. He hadn’t agreed to help Jameson so he could hit on this woman, or even gather amazing blackmail material for a dysfunctional family gathering that probably wouldn’t ever happen. First off, no one in their family had time for heartwarming dinners. Second off, a meal with the whole family was a hilarious fantasy. Besides, Ben sincerely meant to do some damage control for Jameson.

  He was his brother. And maybe, just maybe, Jameson would be the first to cut him some slack in life and see that the family black sheep wasn’t all that useless.

  Yeah, Ben was shocked that he even wanted that sort of validation, but there it was—he’d seen an opening and all he wanted to do was take it, show everyone that he could matter.

  He was sick of being a void.

  So the first thing Ben had done after Jameson had boarded the company jet for New York that night was ring up his PI friend Boomer, who was in Carson City on some sort of infidelity case for a longtime client who could claim as many marriages as Ben’s own father . . . however many that was.

  “An ex-showgirl, huh?” Boomer had said in that dark voice that made everyone wonder if the guy was some sort of Cajun ne’er-do-well who’d escaped from the South. Not that Boomer would share details with anyone, especially since most of the bayou had worn off of his speech, telling Ben that he’d worked to leave whatever past he had behind. “Isn’t this woman more your speed, pretty boy?”

  Ben went ahead and let his friend think what he wanted to think as he fed Boomer the details from Jameson.

  Name: Liz Palazzo, probably a stage name.

  Age: looks hot, but retired from the biz, so probably no older than midthirties.

  Location: could have returned home to Vegas by now, where she said she lived with a showgirl roommate.

  Of course, Ben texted Boomer the picture Jameson had shown him, adding a few other tidbits, like Jameson had said Liz was “a seductive sneak” and that’s why his brain hadn’t functioned around her. That she was tall and as “slim as smoke from a good cigar.” (Jameson’s words—or, it might’ve been fairer to say, his dick’s words.) That she had chic, bobbed red hair that made her look like a “gun moll.” (The dick strikes again.) And then there were her violet eyes, just like Liz Taylor used to have, and maybe that’s where she’d gotten the first part of her stage name.

  Boomer had taken all of it in, told Ben he’d get on it, then made a verbal pivot to ask how his house was doing.

  “It’s trashed,” Ben said, kidding. “Too many bachelors housesitting, my friend. You’d better get home.”

  “And rob you of a love nest near your saloon hunting grounds? Not likely soon.”

  Boomer had hung up and, the very next day, had gotten back to Ben. Thanks to the casual spying ability of Facebook, he was able to reveal exactly where he believed Liz Palazzo was spending Jameson’s money.

  Le Galion Bay on the Strip.

  Ben proceeded to book a regular room there—nothing fancy since he only wanted to have something convenient that wouldn’t call attention to him. Then he packed a duffel bag and headed to the Rough & Tumble for a bite of brunch, if that’s what you wanted to call Kat’s infamous breakfast burritos.

  While she whipped up the dish in the back kitchen, she left Ben at the nearly empty bar with Gideon Lane, another regular who often nursed his hangovers with Kat’s comforting food.

  Gideon’s gray Stetson shaded his light brown eyes but not the gunpowder mark below his cheekbone. He looked mysterious and dangerous in his beaten denim jacket, jeans, and black square-toe boots, and that was probably a good thing for a freelance bodyguard who quietly kicked ass when required to.

  “You’re up early,” Gideon said in his deep twang. Like Boomer, Gideon didn’t talk much about his past, even though he’d mostly grown up here. No one asked, either. This was the Rough & Tumble, after all.

  Ben slid into a seat. “It’s not a day for sleeping in, quick-draw. I’m hitting the road.”

  “Are you?” Gideon wrapped his fingers around a coffee mug and flicked a glance to a line of postcards that Kat had posted behind the far side of the mirrored liquor bottle shelves.

  They were postcards from one of their own, Cash Campbell, who’d taken off overseas with a daytime tourist woman he’d
met here in the saloon a few months ago. Ben still couldn’t get over the tone of those cards: happy, carefree, very unlike the Cash he’d known whenever he’d drifted in and out of Rough & Tumble, Nevada. But Molly—a damn accountant, of all things—had done something to the rebel and gambler, and Cash wasn’t ever coming back.

  Ben wasn’t jealous, exactly. Cash had actually met a woman who had gotten him to change and even improve. Ben himself had always loved his life too much to do that. Besides, Cash and Molly would probably find out the hard way that love was a joke.

  He ignored the weight in his gut and tore his gaze away from the postcards. “I’m not going all that far away,” he said to Gideon. “Just to the Strip.”

  The cowboy smirked to himself.

  “What?” Ben asked.

  “Does this have anything to do with the mission you took up last night for your brother?”

  Sometimes word got around in this place, but Gideon and Kat weren’t the types who’d spread tales beyond this point. “It’s got everything to do with my brother, and Boomer came through for me with some information about the gold digger,” Ben said, just as Kat came out of the back room with his breakfast. “It looks like she might be blowing Jameson’s wad at Le Galion Bay.”

  While Kat slid the plate in front of him, her big blue eyes went dreamy, and if Ben hadn’t been here to witness it, no one outside the R&T would’ve believed the expression possible on her usually guarded yet friendly face.

  “Le Galion Bay,” she said. “I live less than a half hour from it, but it’s like a fantasy.”

  “Just go sometime,” Ben said, digging into his food.

  “With what? My piles of gold at the end of this rainbow?” Kat laughed right along with Gideon. “Good one, Ben.”

  In very typical Ben fashion, his heart had flipped at her wistfulness, so he shouldn’t have been surprised at what happened next.

  An hour later, Kat was right by his side as he walked out from the Le Galion Bay hotel and into a beautiful, warm, sunny October afternoon toward the pool area.

  Always giving in to the ladies, he thought. A weakness that was likely to kill him someday.

  Kat tipped down her sunglasses and swept her gaze over the palm trees that waved over what passed as a Vegas beach, with rocky walls and sand and even a machine that generated waves, making swimmers bob in the water then gently setting them back down. Vivid cabanas lingered in back of lounges, more pools, and hot tubs.

  “Closest I’m ever going to get to paradise,” she said.

  Ben nudged her. “One day, I’ll take you to a real resort in the tropics.”

  “I’ll get in line, Hughes.” She sent him a little-sister grin, but there was a trace of sadness there, like she was resigned to sticking around Rough & Tumble. There was a reason Kat never ventured far, laying low in the tiny ex-boomtown with its lone diner, pioneer cemetery, whitewashed church, and adobe houses with sunshades over the windows. And it had everything to do with the scar near her ribs—a secret her friends at the Rough & Tumble would protect until their dying breaths.

  She didn’t dwell on his impulsive promises, though. “So this Liz Palazzo . . . She’s got red hair, huh?”

  Ben took his phone out of the front pocket of his linen shirt, which he’d rolled up to his elbows, highlighting his ever-present Rolex.

  He brought up his picture roll, where the photo waited: Liz Palazzo, her legs as long as champagne-glass stems in her small black dress. Breasts—small, shapely, real ones?—pushed out of her bodice, heating Ben up until his cock hardened. And, yes, red gun-moll hair and violet eyes that promised any man who looked at her a good time.

  Then there was her smile. . . .

  Ben didn’t think too much about that, even if it made his belly clench. The smile certainly wasn’t real, just the fake, disingenuous weapon of a gold digger who’d gotten the best of his brother.

  “Liz Palazzo,” Kat said, looking away from the phone and around the massive pool area. “If only she knew that Facebook is a fugitive’s worst enemy.”

  Indeed. Liz had posted every move she was making at the hotel as if she hadn’t expected Jameson to track her down and make her pay. Either she didn’t have a lot of cells in that brain of hers or she was damned arrogant about getting away with stealing.

  “I know where to start.” Ben motioned toward an area that he knew well from some time he’d spent here during the summer—a closed-off pool where everyone worshipped the sun “European-style.”

  “Last time Liz Palazzo posted, an hour ago,” he said, “she was in there with some new friends who were buying her drinks.” Male friends.

  “Friends who’ll probably be helping her spend Jameson’s money by the end of the day?”

  “No doubt.”

  When Ben started to walk toward the intimate pool, Kat tossed her woven bag on the ground and dropped to a lounge chair. At Ben’s bewildered glance, she shrugged.

  “You think I’m taking off my top for a bunch of convention pervs to look at during their breaks? Screw that. You don’t need my help anyway. You’ve got all that charm at your disposal.”

  Since the last thing Ben wanted was to involve the law or any publicity, he was determined to wrangle Liz Palazzo by quietly using—yes, it was true—charm. He’d wielded it every day of his life to talk teachers into better grades, to wheedle a friend or two into divulging inside information about profitable stocks, and . . . well, he didn’t do too badly in the female department with it, either.

  He was going to use some of that charm on Liz Palazzo, too, winning her over enough to get her in a position to understand that, if she didn’t sign the nondisclosure form, the Hughes Corporation would make her regret what she’d done, and she really didn’t want that, did she? Without necessarily revealing who he was, he’d tell her that the family was rich and powerful enough to quietly make sure she paid for stealing from Jameson if she didn’t cooperate.

  If he could scare a thief into thinking that the Hugheses were going to ruin her if she talked—and they had the resources to do it under the radar—he’d have done his job.

  But even more important? It was a chance for Ben to maybe earn some respect from his family rather than inheriting it.

  Can you imagine that? Him, still wanting his family’s respect.

  The only trick would be to avoid having her know who he was for at least the time being, until she could trust him. He might even be able to learn a few secrets about her that she didn’t want revealed—leverage. The thing was, Ben wasn’t used to brandishing his charm without the money to go along with it, but he needed an Average Joe low profile in this situation. Who knew how far smooth words would go with a woman who obviously was all about the cash?

  “Good luck,” Kat said as she leaned back on her lounger, smiling as if she was definitely in paradise.

  Ben looked at the plain yellow T-shirt she’d worn along with her jean shorts and flip-flops—a shirt that had that scar under the material.

  Someday he was going to take her to a real paradise.

  He brought out his wallet, then some bills, leaning down to tuck them into Kat’s front shorts pocket.

  “Live it up,” he said. “Have a few drinks then wait for me in your room. We’ll go out somewhere good for dinner.”

  Kat made as if to take the bills out and give them back. “I don’t take money from anyone, and you know it. Even if I did, I don’t have anything to wear for a nice meal.”

  “There’s enough there to take care of your wardrobe.” She never treated herself.

  “I’m giving the money back—just you wait.”

  He was having none of it. “Don’t get burned, sis,” he said, walking away.

  She blew out a breath, then yelled after him. “Likewise!”

  He waved her off, sauntering toward the European-style area, presenting his hotel key and cover charge to the attendant and entering a private wonderland of pools and a Jacuzzi, blowing sheer white curtains from the cabanas, pop mu
sic, chaises with rich red cushions, and . . .

  At the sight of beautiful topless women laughing and splashing each other in the pool, Ben almost forgot why he was here. It was just that there was so much gorgeousness, so much temptation . . .

  Dammit, he was Ben right now, not Bennett.

  This was for Jameson.

  A peal of light laughter caught his attention from his left, and even before he looked over, he knew what he’d find.

  Who he’d find.

  Liz Palazzo climbing out of the pool, a fall of water tumbling over a statuesque, creamy body covered only by crimson string bikini bottoms. Her round breasts were bare and tipped by the most delectable pink nipples he’d ever seen, the wetness giving her skin a shimmering glow.

  The Hughes fatal libido raged to life, sending a pulse of blood so powerful to his cock that it hurt.

  I’m Ben, the normal guy who isn’t Jameson’s brother, he thought. Not Bennett.

  And after taking a deep cool-off breath, he officially embarked on Mission: Gold Digger.

  ***

  As Liz got to her feet, slicking her hair away from her face and wiping a hand over her eyes to get the water out, she realized that two suntan-oiled young men had been waiting for her near her chaise.

  “Ha-cha-cha, Liz,” said one of her inebriated friends, Anita, from behind her in the pool.

  Even though Liz had downed her share of martinis, she made an effort to subtly shush her drunk roommate with a wave of her hand—hopefully the other four friends she’d brought here for a few days of freedom and laughter would catch on, too. It was Anita’s birthday, and they were living it up before buckling back down to the business of life, but no matter how many drinks they’d had today, there were still rules every girl abided by.

  Never be cruel to fans. It was very bad karma.

  One of the boys couldn’t keep his eyes off her tits and the other was giving her such a big, just-out-of-college smile that she wanted to pet his shaggy hair and tell him that he’d probably find his voice in a moment. Grinning back at them, she walked in an admirably straight line past the kids and to her chaise, blocking out Anita’s little catcalls.