Huh. So what did that make me if I chose his room? I didn’t care. “I’d love to try some new stuff.”
“Cool. It’s hard to find time to sample everything.” He led the way to the elevator.
“What, no stairs? And how is it that you are not drunk?”
“It’s been a while since the tiki bar,” he said. “Nothing sobers me up like worry. And I have a feeling my tolerance is better than yours.”
“Bigger isn’t necessarily better,” I scoffed.
“That’s not what I hear.”
I looked at him in shock, then nearly collapsed in a gust of laughter. He laughed, too, helping me into the elevator when it opened. We joined eight other revelers in the tiny space. I swear, at this point, everyone and everything in the Hotel Lebeau smelled of alcohol, but we survived the packed bodies and popped out at the fourth floor.
“I need to stop in my room,” I said when we reached our little corridor.
“Sure. I mean, if you want to go to sleep … ”
“Two minutes.”
“Do you want me to check it first?”
I shook my head. “If you hear a scream, come running.” But he did have a point. I opened the door cautiously, turned on the light and checked the closet before using the bathroom. I caught a glimpse of myself in the mirror, and the horrors of the night came back to me. Among them, my hair. And the ruined dress, tainted with paint, a reminder of how close I’d been to—to something very bad. I yanked it off, kicked off my shoes, removed my glasses, washed off my face, combed out my hair and slipped a soft, casual, sleeveless tropical dress over the crinoline. It paid to have emergency outfits.
Feeling better, I took Neil’s medal out of my purse and opened my door.
“Sorry I took so long,” I said when I realized Neil was still standing in the hall.
He smiled. “I wanted to be sure I could hear you scream.”
“At least the tuba player isn’t as loud tonight.”
“I think he’s around the corner.” He held his key card up to his lock, then opened the door for me to enter. As he ducked into his bathroom, I looked around. The room was a mirror of mine, small but elegantly old-fashioned. The bed was perfectly made. That’s the beauty of hotels and also the trickery. I wondered if Neil made his bed at home. Was he a neatnik? A horrible slob? Hell, I didn’t even know where he lived.
Personally, I didn’t make my bed at home, but I pulled the duvet up so it was more or less neat, and I tried to keep the main rooms of my duplex clean. As for the closets—it wasn’t a bad idea to wear a helmet when opening them.
Neil emerged and gestured to the desk, which was almost covered in little bottles. “So what do you want to drink?”
“Holy shit,” I said.
“Yeah. They used to have a lot more of this kind of stuff at the seminars and tastings, but now most of it exchanges hands behind the scenes. Bar owners like me get a lot of it. Everybody wants us to carry their liquor.”
“But I’m a bar owner. Half of one, anyway.”
“But you didn’t register till the last minute, right? I’ve been registered for months, plenty of time for people to add me to their lists, plus I was a presenter, which means I got a nice swag bag.”
“And this.” I handed him the medal.
“You sure you don’t want to keep that in your purse?”
“Ha ha,” I said without humor. “You have the Frilly Fairy? We’ve been talking so much about it, I want to try it.”
“Yes. It’s really nice. Even their Vexatious Vodka isn’t bad, but don’t tell anyone I said that.” I giggled as he produced a couple of rocks glasses with logos on them—more swag—and poured us each a finger of the gin.
I took the glass and sat on the end of the bed. Neil sat in the desk chair at an annoyingly courteous distance, eyeing me as I sniffed the gin. The botanicals tickled my nose, floral and spicy. I inhaled deeply, then took a sip.
“Oh, yeah,” I said. “I guess their award wasn’t undeserved.”
“They’re good,” he said. “They have a Navy strength gin, too, and they’re experimenting with rum, but that has a little ways to go.”
I knocked back the gin. “What else you got?”
“Well …” He had this look like he wanted to caution me. Whereas I shot him a look that said, If you lecture me about drinking right now, I will stab you with a pair of ice tongs. And yes, I knew ice tongs weren’t particularly sharp. Which would make them all the more painful as stabbing instruments.
He drank down his gin, too, and set down his glass. He loosened his tie and slipped it off, dropping it over the back of his chair. I held my breath. Then he unbuttoned a button. Then another one. Then he popped open the buttons of his vest. Then he stopped loosening things and picked out a flask-size bottle. Damn it.
“This is a wicked good bourbon out of Kentucky. Twelve-year-old. Want to try it?”
I swallowed, maintaining my buzz, trying to maintain my composure. “Got ice?”
“In the mini fridge.”
I was closer, so I set my glass on the desk, opened the fridge and pulled an ice tray from the tiny freezer. It was a red square silicone tray divided into fourths, so it made four big cubes, the kind that were perfect in a glass of whiskey. “I can’t believe you have this.”
He grinned. “I’d like to say I remembered to bring it from home, but it was in the swag bag, too.”
I rolled my eyes and plopped a cube in each of our glasses, then put the tray back in the fridge. “Hit me.”
He chuckled and poured enough whiskey into our glasses to almost cover each fat cube.
I sat on the end of the bed again, a little closer to him this time, and held up mine. “To new friends.” Only the way I said friends, it implied a lot more. Hey, I was almost drunk.
Neil looked me in the eye. “Here’s champagne to our real friends and real pain to our sham friends.”
I guffawed. “Did you just make that up?”
“Francis Bacon,” he said, taking a deep sip of the whiskey.
I followed suit. “How do you have all this stuff in your head?”
“Slow nights behind the bar. Gotta read something.”
“Cocktail books,” I said. “I need to do more of that. I mean, I read yours, of course.”
“You did?” He visibly brightened.
“Well, duh. Of course I did. You’re fucking brilliant.” I drank some more to cover up my embarrassment. Now I was drunk, for real and sure and true. And when I was drunk, my halfhearted campaign to clean up my language really went out the window.
“That means a lot, coming from you,” he said, his voice low and warm.
“Aw, stop it.”
“I mean it. What are you doing?”
I was wrestling the crinoline out from under my dress. I pulled it off my legs and dropped the puffy, frilly pink thing next to the bed. “Sorry. It itches.”
He looked like he was torn between laughing and—oh, my. That spark of heat was back in his eye. He took another sip of bourbon.
“Are you drunk again?” I asked.
“Not nearly enough,” he said.
“Enough for what?”
“For this.” He put the glass down and sat next to me on the bed. He took my glass and set it on the desk as well, then cupped my chin, searched my eyes, leaned in …
The kiss was even better this time, because he initiated it. Because I knew he wanted me. Because he chose this moment, and I dove into it, opening to him, to the delicious bourbon and Neil cocktail that made me higher than a parasailing parrot over Bohemia Beach.
I wasn’t making much sense.
I pushed his vest off his shoulders, and he let it drop. He moved his mouth to my neck, the sensitive spot behind my ear, and I moaned.
And he jumped back as if he’d been stung. “What the hell am I doing?”
“I don’t know, but I liked it,” I said, breathless, reaching out for him.
He dropped back into the desk chair. “W
hoa, now.”
“You started it! Are you going to lecture me about human resources again?”
He laughed, and then I laughed.
“Come here,” I said.
He shook his head. “We can’t do this now.”
“We damn well can.”
“Pepper.” He moved slowly and sat next to me on the bed. “You’re drunk. I don’t want to do this—I mean, I do want to do this, OK?”
“So what’s the problem?”
“I don’t want to do it when you’re drunk. I want you to know what you’re doing.”
“Baby, I know what I’m doing,” I said in my best Mae West accent.
He exhaled. “Oh, boy. No. No, you can’t do this.” Talking to himself. I could relate.
“Neil, honey?” I ran a hand over his trim beard, leaned in and nuzzled his neck, wrapping my arms around him.
“Not tonight, Pepper,” he said, but his tone said he was struggling. And a glance down confirmed my conclusion.
Good, damn it. I wanted him to struggle if he was rejecting me again.
He gently disentangled my arms from his person and stood. “You’d better go. We’ll have breakfast in the morning, OK?”
“Oh my God. I cannot believe you are throwing me out.”
“It’s not like that—”
“Yes, it is. Yes, it is!”
“Pepper, please. It’s because I respect you.”
“I don’t want you to fucking respect me! I want you to—” When I realized what I was about to say, I put my hand over my mouth to keep it in. He had a pained look on his face, and I felt dizzy. The liquor hit me hard, all of a sudden, and all the stress and terror of the evening came rushing back to me. I looked up at him and spoke in a small voice. “Listen. Just listen for a second. If you don’t want to ravish me, fine. But don’t let me sleep alone tonight, OK?”
He let out a long breath, his face softening. He sat next to me again and gathered me in his arms. “OK, Pepper. Stay with me. I’ll keep you safe.” He kissed my neck again, but this time, it wasn’t as hot. Not quite as hot.
“Undress me.”
He pulled back a little, his face still reflecting his inner struggle, and looked me over. I leaned forward and cocked my head, expectant. After a moment, he ran his hands over my bare shoulders, checked out my packaging, then reached down and grabbed my hem. Awkwardly, as I shifted my body, he peeled the dress over my head and handed it to me. I tossed it to the side.
“Jesus,” he said, his eyes wide as he scanned me in my matching green bra and panties.
I was just drunk enough to pop off my bra as he stared, drop it to the floor and slip under the covers. Half asleep, I watched him as he tried to put his eyeballs back into his head. He slowly took off his formal shirt, shoes, socks and pants, leaving on his black boxer briefs (oh, my!), which were noticeably strained, thank you very much, and a clingy, plain white T-shirt that suggested a lean, muscled torso. But I didn’t get to savor the sight. He turned off the light and slid into bed next to me.
If I’d been a little braver, I would’ve tried to make something happen then, but things had shifted again between us. I didn’t know where they were going, and I was too tired to worry about it. But in a moment, he pulled me close to him, wrapping an arm around me, warm and strong.
I relaxed into him, liking the feel of my breasts rubbing up against his shirt, his hard chest.
He probably liked it, too.
“Goodnight, Pepper,” he whispered.
21
The morning after a night of drinking can go a number of different ways. I was pretty good about not getting hangovers, because I usually drank a lot of water along with my alcohol. Except for last night.
And usually, on the rare occasions when I succumbed to the charms of a guy, I had zero expectations about what would come next, other than a quick trip home to shower and nap. Or, if I really liked him, brunch.
Except this morning, I woke up alone and hung over, and it took me several seconds to realize why my room looked backward. It was because I was in Neil’s room, and there was no Neil in it. I’d not only failed at seduction; my behavior had been so excruciatingly embarrassing that he’d fled the room before I even woke up.
I glanced at the digital clock. Just after eleven. Crap. Brunch wasn’t even an option. Now I was going to need lunch, if the snakes in my tummy ever stopped doing the samba.
At least the walk of shame was relatively quick. Right across the hallway. And what did I have to be ashamed about, anyway? I worked hard on rationalizing last night as I took a nice, hot shower. I’d been attacked. I’d been drinking, which one absolutely must do at Cocktailia anyway. And Neil had kissed me. I mean, he’d started it. Sort of.
By the time I’d donned stretchy gray jeans, a low-cut white T-shirt, a tight black vest and my gator-tooth necklace, along with shockingly red lipstick, I’d come to terms with my failure as a floozy. The priority at this point was finding and stopping whoever was targeting Dash and me. Us. All of us. Or else I wouldn’t be able to sleep at all without the aid of a whole lot of whiskey.
That said, I didn’t much want to be alone. I thought about texting Melody, but I figured she might still be sliding the old trombone, if you know what I mean. As for Neil—OK, I was a big chicken and wasn’t ready to face Neil. So I texted Millie instead.
Fifteen minutes later, I met her and Bennett in the hotel restaurant, and we ordered lunch. None of our crew was in evidence, which was just as well.
“I didn’t see you guys at the awards ceremony,” I noted as I stirred sugar into my coffee.
They exchanged a disgustingly sweet smile. “We wanted to spend some time alone, and we didn’t have tickets anyway,” Millie said.
“Millie likes hotel rooms.” Mischief gleamed in Bennett’s eyes, and Millie elbowed him hard, prompting an “Ooof!” He recovered enough to add, “Though our evening was interrupted when Neil sent me to track after Travis.”
I smiled at his teasing. “What did you learn?”
“Millie and I saw him go to the hotel bar, where he had a drink with Dash. We hung back. Then Dash left, and we followed Travis to Napoleon House. A woman met him there, and they had a drink, and then they went back to our hotel.”
“That was fast,” I said.
“I got the feeling they’d met before,” Bennett said, making me wonder about the friend Travis had enlisted to go with Barnie to the hospital. “I’d had no chance to quiz him about his love life earlier, before we started playing Sherlock Holmes. I assume they went right to his room, or at least I think that’s where they went. They got in the elevator, and so he wouldn’t catch on, we went up the stairs to the floor where the elevator stopped. We didn’t see anyone in the halls, so we went to our room. And then we were—kind of busy.”
Millie’s smile got even wider, and I sort of wanted to scream. Well, I’d been chased and mugged and touched by a voodoo priestess and also flashed my boobs at Neil to pretty much zero effect, so yeah, I was sure our evenings were comparable.
“Would you recognize the woman if you saw her again?” I asked.
“I think so,” Millie said. “Pretty. Light hair caught up under a hat. Hard to be sure of the color.”
That narrowed it down. Not. I looked around. Light-haired women everywhere. Blondes. Redheads. A few in between like me. And every other person wore a hat. It was a target-rich environment.
“I got a picture,” Bennett said, and I almost tore the phone out of his hand. It was shot on the dark street outside Napoleon House, and it was blurry and grainy. Travis had his arm around the woman, and her face was obscured. So much for instant identification. “I know it’s not that great,” he said, echoing my thoughts. “What did you hope to get from her anyway?”
I sighed. “We were just curious about where Travis went after we got the boomerangs the other night. Whether he hooked up with this woman in particular. Just to rule him out.”
Our server arrived with our food. I was goi
ng with a burger and fries that cost almost as much as my car payment, but this was a hangover emergency.
Millie lowered her voice after the waitress left. “Here’s the thing. If Travis had wanted to do anything to his cousin, wouldn’t he have had a thousand opportunities even before he got to Cocktailia? And why would he do it anyway? They seemed chummy last night.”
“All good questions,” I admitted, rummaging in my brain for other ideas as I devoured my burger. “Did you find out anything about the delivery company, the ones who were late with the whiskey?”
Millie nodded. “The office manager at Bohemia Distillery gave me their number, and I called and asked them what happened with the delivery. They said what you already know—the driver had mechanical trouble. They were very apologetic. They wouldn’t let me talk with the driver. I think they were afraid I’d chew him out.” She laughed.
“Hey, Dash mentioned a developer had been bugging him about selling his building for condos in Bohemia. Tocks Development Group, owned by Raquel Tocks, a sponsor of Cocktailia. Ever heard of it?”
“I guess I’ve seen her mentioned in the news,” Millie said. “Want me to see what I can find out?”
“That’s exactly what I was going to ask.” Relief filled me. It was good to have friends like these who could back me up, back us all up, and get things done.
It was also good to have french fries.
My phone buzzed in my bag—I was back to the bigger bag, sans medal—and I checked the screen. The number looked familiar. “Hello?”
“Ms. Revelle?” came the soft female voice, so soft she was whispering.
“Yes?”
“This is Sherry at the lost and found. You asked if I could give you a call if someone picked up that hat you left. A gentleman just picked it up.”
“Sh—I mean, sorry. Which way did he go?”
“Toward the stairs. I’m not sure where he was going, but a few seminars are ending and starting. Maybe— ”
“Thank you!” I cut her off and ended the call. “I’ve got to catch the guy with the hat. He might be headed for the ballrooms. Oh, crap, the bill—”
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