She gave Ben a little wave, then turned to her friends, telling them to drink up.
Liz remained at the bar. Her martini glass was empty, but she shook her head at the bartender, refusing a refill.
“So, Ben,” she said. “What’re you doing after this?”
Her friends walked off with final smiles at him. It was as if he’d been welcomed into the club and Liz had been left to close the deal.
This was all too easy, even as “just Ben.”
“I didn’t have any big plans.”
“Wonerful.” She tripped over the word and put her fingers to her mouth, laughing. She tried again. “Wonderful.” She nodded. “The girls and I are going to Bordello early, way before it opens. Did you know you could rent it out for private parties?”
Jesus, was she telling him that she’d rented out the club herself? There was no way she had enough money . . . unless she’d snagged twenty-thousand dollars from more men than Jameson recently. To make matters stickier, the Hughes family had helped in developing Bordello, which was a part of a new, chrome-and-glass complex down the Strip called Haven. It had three hotel-casinos, shopping venues, and over thirty restaurants and bars.
“I did not know,” he said, trying to stay loose, not giving himself away.
“Well, if you’re up for it, we’ll have an upstairs table starting at four o’clock. I know—early for a party, but it’s happy hour, right? Just tell the hostess that you know Liz Palazzo.”
“Maybe I will.”
God. Just an upstairs VIP table at Bordello required connections and hefty tips, or a rental fee that could go upwards of a thousand dollars. Or you had to buy at least one five-hundred-dollar bottle of vodka to start out.
All in all, this was some birthday for Anita, and some “buckle down and save” for Ms. Palazzo, with her big hopes and dreams for an old school dinner club. She had to have been feeding Ben a story for the last twenty minutes, gaining his sympathy so he’d buy drinks for the rest of the night for her. But how could she think he’d be able to afford it? Was she used to squeezing cash out of men, like some of the regulars at the R&T did with tourists during their backroom poker games?
His doubts about her pinged, but when she stood to her full height, flexing that amazing, creamy body, his mind went as blank as Jameson’s probably had.
And when she bent close to whisper to him, he turned to a pillar of seething desire.
“I’ll be watching for you,” she said, her breath tickling his ear.
He couldn’t tear his gaze away as the gold digger left, her hips swaying, catching the attention of every male in the vicinity as she went to her chaise and fetched her bag. She went to the exit, winking at him on the way out before she donned a pair of sunglasses and disappeared.
Ben turned to his drink, needing to put out this damned fire before he really ventured into the inferno tonight.
Crystal Green is a RITA nominated romantic fiction author. She is the author of both the Ghost for Hire and Vampire Babylon urban fantasy series, writing as Chris Marie Green.
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