Colleen Collins - Sleepless in Las Vegas

Another guilty look. “F’true, you got me there. But you’re wrong about the rest. I’m not selling anything.”

“Right,” he muttered, “and I’m Mickey Mouse.”

Sally appeared, set the cola in front of the girl.

He tugged loose a five and handed it to Sally. “Keep the change.”

“Going home?” She slipped the bill into the tip jar.

He nodded. “Time to take my dog for a walk.”

“Don’t be a stranger.” She pulled out her cell phone and headed down the bar.

He didn’t look at “Remy” as he plucked his jacket off the high back of the stool. Folding it over his arm, he headed to the door as the music swelled and Frank warbled a long, long note that faded to nothing.

Drake stepped outside, and the heat hit him like a blast furnace. He wondered when he’d last taken a breath that didn’t smell like exhaust and warm asphalt.

Looking up at the night sky, he picked out the Big Dipper. When he was a kid, the skies had been cleaner, the stars brighter. But like everything else in life, things changed.

He was tired of change. It demanded too much and left too little. Never understood why people liked to say “embrace change,” as though it was fun, like wrapping your arms around the waist of some hot babe on a Harley, the two of you streaking toward some exhilarating destination. Change was more like sitting in the back of a taxi with some hard-nosed cabbie who drove recklessly, padded the fare and dumped you at the wrong address.

That was the problem with being a practical man. You knew life was no easy ride.

Sometimes, though, he envied the dreamers of the world, wondered what it was like to hope. To believe without the benefit of physical evidence. Staring at the stars again, he wished he could trust that something lay beyond life’s closed door, because he sure as hell couldn’t find the answers here.

He walked across the parking lot to the darkened kiosk, brushed off the seat of an abandoned stool and laid his jacket neatly over it. Rolling up a shirt sleeve, he watched the traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard. Cars, trucks and those life-changing taxis streamed past, filling the night with scraps of laughter, music and the occasional horn blast.

He scanned Topaz’s parking lot. No yellow Porsche parked in its regular spot. No black Mercedes, either, but it could be parked in a section not visible from here. He’d walk through the lot on his way to his truck, see what was there.

Fighting a yawn, he rolled up his other sleeve. He felt drained. Time to close the lid on today’s troubles, go home, walk his dog, then get some rest.

Click click click.

“Hello, sir?” called out a too-familiar female voice.

So much for closing that lid.

CHAPTER THREE

VAL SLOWED HER steps as she approached the darkened kiosk. The overhang cast a deep shadow around the building, making it difficult to see what or who was there, but from Dino’s window she had seen Drake stop somewhere around here.

“Hello, you there?” She squinted into the gloom.

“If I told you I wasn’t, would you go away?”

She huffed a breath. “Good thing that bad mood of yours isn’t luggage or it’d be too heavy to carry.”

“You came out here to tell me that?”

“No. You forgot your phone.” She thrust out her hand, more than ready to give it up. Whatever pulsations she had felt, or thought she felt, were gone.

“You want me to come to you?”

“Mercy, must everything be an issue?” Silence. “Yes, I want you to come to me.”

“Why? Afraid I’ll bite?”

“Yes. But I have to warn you, I bite back.”

She swiped a bead of sweat off her hairline. This damn wig was too tight, too hot. And these fishnet stockings made her legs itch something fierce. They never bothered her when she’d worn them at her old job, but that was indoors with plenty of air-conditioning, not outside where temps were pushing a hundred. Honestly, she could almost feel the steam rising from the pavement, even at this time of night.

She debated whether to set the damn phone on the ground and leave, but she didn’t want to fail at this. F’sure, she’d told Marta there were no guarantees to the honey trap, but what if Drake, her fiancé, told her about the weird hooker who claimed she felt pulsations through his phone, channeled his father, then stalked him into the parking lot? Hardly the techniques of a seasoned, knowledgeable private eye.

Marta would demand back every cent of the retainer.

Val would not let that happen. She had to suck it up, figure out how to salvage this mess. She and Grumpy were here now, alone. Which meant she had one more chance to sweeten the honey trap.

“You’re right, I’m a girl for sale.” Technically, she sold her investigator services, so that was true. “But I played the wrong man. You’re too smart, too hip to fall for this silly costume and come-on. I apologize.”

Her vision had adjusted enough to the shadows so that she could see his dark silhouette. He leaned against the building, and from the angle of his head, he was watching her. She remembered that gaze at the bar. The faint lines that fanned from the corners of his eyes, their smoky color. How they shone with intensity, as though he was on the verge of asking a question or in the process of formulating one. But when he angered, their color darkened to a flat, dull shade like gunmetal.

She wondered what color they were right now.

“Let’s call a truce, okay? I’ll bring your phone to you, then you can thank me.”

He didn’t respond. She had probably taken him by surprise with her no-harm-no-foul attitude. Or maybe he was mulling over her ability to actually tell the truth. That man sure spent a lot of time in his head.

She walked almost to the edge of the shadow and stopped. “I’d walk to you, but it’s not so easy to see in there, and I’d hate to fumble and drop the phone while handing it over. Of course, it might survive bouncing on the ground a few times, and you wouldn’t need to replace it, so—”

“Stay put.”

He stepped forward. Hazy moonlight slanted across his face, not enough to clearly see his features, but enough to see the pronounced line of his jaw, the bulk of his shoulders. He reached out with both hands and wrapped them around hers.

“Do you still feel those pulsations?” he asked, his voice husky, and unless she had lost her sense of hearing, more than a little suggestive.

“No,” she whispered. His hands were big and warm, triggering pulsations that had nothing to do with the phone. In the space of a heartbeat, the edginess between them had shifted, intensified, from a mental struggle to a physical one.

“Nothing at all?”

He tightened his hold, stroking his thumb in a light, lingering path on the back of her hand. Sensations sparked within her.

“Of course I feel something,” she managed to say around her heart thundering in her throat. “I’m flesh and blood, aren’t I?”

A throaty chuckle. “I like it when you’re honest. One moment, let me put the phone away.”

She realized she was holding her hands in midair, suspended where he’d abandoned them, as though they had no purpose other than waiting for his touch. “Don’t leave me hanging.”

He captured them again. With a squeeze, he drew her closer, then placed her palms flat against his chest. Through his shirt, she felt his heart pumping, its beat steady and strong. That’s how he is. Steady, strong, focused.

Raising one hand, he kissed her index finger before drawing it into his mouth. She shuddered a release of breath as he suckled it. Maybe she should admit she wasn’t really a hooker.

Slowly, his mouth released its hold on her finger and moved to her wrist, which he kissed and nuzzled.