Beautiful Bombshell (Beautiful Bastard 2.5)

I liked Mustache because of said mustache of course, but also the fact that he looked like he spent a lot of birthdays alone. He had a way about him that mixed ease and desperation, and yet here he was, cracking dirty jokes with perfect finesse with a bunch of half-sloshed strangers. I didn’t even mind his gaze turning dopey and loaded when he turned and smiled at Sara. Couldn’t blame the bloke; I had no choice but to fall for her; Sara was as irresistible as gravity.

“So here they are: ten shots in front of this skinny beanpole kid. The kid knocks them all back one after the other, barely blinking. ‘Wow,’ says the barman, ‘what’re you celebrating?’”

Sara was already laughing, and I turned to watch her in wonder. She would never stop being a tangle of mystery, this one, anticipating dirty jokes told by an eccentric stranger in Vegas.

Mustache chuckled, shaking his head. “‘My first bl*w j*b,’ says the kid. The bartender looks surprised and says, ‘In that case let me buy you another.’” He stopped looking over at Sara expectantly.

And with both hands in the air as if dancing in victory, Sara yelled, “Kid shakes his head. ‘No thanks, man. If ten shots won’t get rid of the taste, another won’t make a lick of difference!’”

Around us, laughter roared and I realized that we had begun to attract quite a crowd to the table. Chloe was on a roll, Mustache was aces, and at nearly two in the morning, we were clearly the table having the most fun in the casino. Sara and Mustache high-fived as the dealer began flipping out the cards, wearing an amused smile.

The card play turned into a blur of jokes and drinks; Chloe whooping in celebration was interrupted often by sound of Sara’s loud, hysterical laugh. With a jerk of awareness, I turned, looking for Will at the bar. It had been a long while since I indicated we’d be done soon, and I’d completely lost track of time.

He was gone.

I pulled my phone out of my pocket, glancing up with resignation at my two remaining twenty-five-dollar chips, and texted him, We’re set. Where are you?

He texted back a few moments later, Meet you at the Venetian. I’m getting head from a dude.

“Arsehole,” I mumbled, just as Mustache started a new joke.

But the sound of his voice beside me fell silent as a hand wrapped around my shoulder. “Mr. Stella.”

The table and the boisterous crowd went silent. I caught a look of concern on Sara’s face just as I looked up, turning to see a man wearing a dark tailored suit and a very serious expression.

“Yeah, mate?”

He wore an earpiece and an expression that communicated I was meant to take him very bloody seriously. “I’m going to have to ask you and Mr. Ryan to come with me, please.”

“What’s this about?” Bennett asked, laying his cards face down on the table. The crowd broke out into speculating whispers.

“I’m not at liberty to discuss it out here on the floor. I’ll ask you once again, gentlemen, to follow me. Now.”

Without further question, we stood, exchanging baffled looks and following the man away from the table. I turned, giving Sara an encouraging smile, mouthing, “It’s fine.”

What, after all, could we possibly have done?

The man in the black suit led us through a service doorway, down a long, empty corridor, and then through an unlabeled door. Inside the stark, white room was a metal table not unlike the one I’d started my evening with, and three metal folding chairs.

“Have a seat.” The man indicated that we each sit in one of the chairs, and then turned to leave.

“What’s going on?” Bennett asked. “We’ve followed you here readily out of courtesy. The least you can do is tell us why you asked us to leave the table.”

“Wait for Hammer.” The man nodded toward the remaining empty chair, and then left.

I settled back into my seat while Bennett stood, pacing for a few quiet minutes before sighing, and sitting down next to me again. He pulled his phone from his pocket and texted something, presumably to Chloe.

“This is a load of shit,” he grumbled.

I made a noise of agreement, but then stopped from saying more when we heard footsteps coming down the hall toward us.

Two guys walked through the door, both sporting dark suits, short-cropped hair, and hands the size of watermelons. Neither man was taller than me, but I had the distinct impression they had more hand-to-hand combat training than did I. Which is to say, some.

They stared at us for what seemed like full, heavy minutes of silence. Assessing. I felt sweat bead at my forehead, wondering if these men were the owners of the limo I’d . . . borrowed for my short romp with Sara. They were definitely either limo drivers or hit men.

Or, perhaps, they were undercover policemen here to reprimand us for hiring a prostitute. Had we actually paid for her? Could she be traced to us? Or . . . bollocks. Maybe Sara and I had been caught on camera and they were here to bust us for our public escapades earlier. I mentally filed through the phone calls I would need to make once booked on charges of public indecency. Lawyer, Sara, Mum, smug business partner, hysterical sisters. And then I saw the image of all the creepy mug shots in the paper of men and women arrested for f**king in cars, or on bridges, or on school grounds and realized this is why Sara and I kept our activities to Johnny’s club. There, we’d never see a man in a suit coming to reprimand us; Johnny would shut that nonsense down before the police even had time to enter the club’s coordinates into their GPS.

I glanced at Bennett, who, now that the men had joined the room, was sitting in his own chair looking as relaxed as he would be at the head of a boardroom table. He had one hand in his pocket, the other resting on his thigh, and was staring evenly up at the two men in front of us.

“Good evening, gentlemen,” I said, deciding someone needed to start the festivities. The guys were hulks, brutes, goons, getting their ideas for facial expressions from comic books or Tarantino films. It was almost too easy to want to have fun, just a little.

The first one to speak was the shorter of the two—though by no means short—and had a voice about as deep as a five-year-old girl’s. “I’m Hammer. This here is Kim.”

Beside me, Bennett Ryan was just drunk enough to say, “I appreciate the irony of that. On both counts.”

The man who introduced himself as Hammer stared at Bennett for a long pause before asking, “Any idea why we asked Leroy to bring the two of you back here?”

I answered, “Uh, no?” just as Bennett answered, “Well, it’s definitely not because we cleaned out the house.”

When he said that, and for the first time since we were brought back into the room, it occurred to me that we were more likely here for gambling-associated reasons than grand theft auto or public indecency. Instead of being booked and ultimately released, we were going to have our fingers broken one by one by a eunuch named Hammer and a brute named Kim. Brilliant.

Hammer smirked, saying, “Do you have any idea how many a**holes like you we see back here? Out for a weekend with their STD-infested douche-bag friends, thinking they’ll use their brand-new copy of Card Counting for Dummies to clean out the house so they can go back and bang their ugly-ass girlfriends and impress them with the five hundred dollars they won?”

Clearing his throat with authority, Bennett asked, “Do we really look to you like two men who would find thrill in winning five hundred dollars?”

Kim, who was somehow both much larger and less intimidating than Hammer because of the rubies in both of his ears, lurched forward, slamming his fists down on the table, making the entire f**king room shake. I couldn’t help but notice that Bennett barely flinched at all. I sure as hell jumped; I’d been convinced the metal table was going to collapse on our legs.

“You think this is your motherf**king mommy’s house?” Kim growled, his voice as low and gravelly as Hammer’s was girlish. “You think you’re playing Go Fish at a f**king linoleum table?”

Bennett sat motionless, his face impassive.

The man turned to me, eyebrows raised as if I was meant to speak for both of us.

“No,” I said, giving my best, relaxed smile. “If we were at my mum’s house we would have been offered chips and Guinness.”

Ignoring my wisecrack, Hammer stepped forward. “What do you think the house does when we get card counters in here?”