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“Baby— Stella Lamour, the one-hit wonder.” He’d laughed at her. “All right. Fire me. But take the job, baby—if you wanna eat.”
She’d taken the job, but every night it was harder to pretend she would ever make it as a singer.
Now, Stella turned on the mike and got a lot of back feed. When she adjusted it, and it squealed again, the broad-shouldered man at the bar jammed his big hands over his ears but edged closer. Again, the way he moved, reminded her so much of Phillip, her knees went a little weak and her pulse knocked against her rib age. Oh, Phillip….
Don’t think about the past or Phillip. Just sing.
Why bother? Nobody’s listening.
“I’ll start off with a little number I wrote,” she purred to Mo and the man. “Back in Texas.”
The customer stared at her intently as if he liked what he saw.
“I wrote this seven years ago before I came to Vegas.” She fiddled with the mike some more, and then she began to sing, “Nobody but you/Only you/And yet I had to say goodbye…”
She forgot she was in Harry’s. She was back on the ranch on Phillip’s front porch where the air was hot and dusty, where the long summer nights smelled of warm grass and mesquite, and the nights buzzed with the music of cicadas.
“I thought love cost too much,” she purred in the smoky voice she’d counted on to make her famous, to make her somebody like her mother had promised. “But I didn’t know.”
Then she realized she was in Harry’s, and her failures made her voice quiver with regret. “Everywhere I go/There’s nobody but you in my heart/Only you.”
Somehow she felt so weak all she could do was whisper the last refrain. “And yet I had to say goodbye.”
Phillip was the only good man, the only really good thing that had ever happened to her. And she’d walked out on him. Big mistake. Huge.
She’d wanted to make it big to prove to Phillip she was as good as he was…that she wasn’t just some cheap tart he’d picked up in a bar and brought home and bedded…that she was somebody…a real somebody he could be proud of.
She frowned when she heard a car zoom up the back alley. Oh, dear. That sounded like Johnny’s Corvette sportscar. The last thing she needed was Johnny on her case. Sure enough, within seconds, the front door banged open and Johnny raced through it on his short legs. His thick, barrel chest was heaving. His eyes bulged out of their deep, pouchy sockets. The poor, little dear looked like a fat, out-of-shape rabbit the hounds were chasing, but his florid face lit up when he saw her.
“Baby!”
Oh, no. He definitely wanted something!
“You and I are through,” she mouthed.
Johnny lit a cigarette. Then his short, fat legs went into motion again and carried him across the bar toward her.
He was a heavy smoker, so running wasn’t easy. When he reached the stage, he gasped in fits and starts, which made his voice even more hoarse and raspy than usual.
“Take a break, baby…” Pant. Wheeze. “I’ve got to talk to you.” Puff. Puff.
Fanning his smoke out of her face, she turned off the mike and followed him to her end of the bar.
Johnny ordered a drink and belted it down. He ordered a second one and said, “Put some booze in this one, you cheap son of a—”
“Johnny, you can’t talk to Mo like—”
Mo slammed the second drink down so hard it sloshed all over Johnny’s cigarette. Mo was big. A lot bigger than Johnny. He had a bad temper, too. His face had darkened the way it did when he had an impossible customer and had to play bouncer. Stella was afraid he’d pound Johnny.
“Easy, Mo,” she whispered, wondering why she was bothering to defend Johnny, who’d brought her so much bad luck.
Mo whirled and went to tend to his other customer.
Johnny lit another cigarette. “Thanks, babe.” Wheeze. Gulp. “I need money fast.”
“I don’t get paid till Monday.” She clamped a hand over her mouth. “It’s none of your business when I get paid.”
“I got you this great new gig. Your ship’s about to come in. You gotta help me, baby.”
“That’s what you said when you stole my royalties to buy those stolen tires and to pay your—”
“How was I— No-o-o. Baby!” Puff. Wheeze. “I borrowed a little cash to pay a few gambling debts. That’s all! Honest! Now a couple of unreasonable guys are making insane demands on a poor guy trying to make his top girl a star—”
“I’m not your girl anymore!”
“Are you going to help me or not?” He was so charged with fear, his eyes stuck out on stems.
When would she ever learn? She hated herself for being such a softie.
“How much?”
“You’ve gotta big heart. You can’t say that about many girls in Vegas.”
Just as she slid her fingers into her bra and pulled out what little money she had, the front door banged open and two men in black, who instantly made her think of snakes—and she hated snakes—oozed inside.
“You’d better pay me back this time,” she said.
“Sure, baby.”
When the snakes yelled Johnny’s name, he grabbed the money and ran out the back way, screaming, “She has it.”
The two men raced past her after him. There was some sort of scuffle. Bodies thudded against a wall. The men shouted. Johnny squealed in pain. Then his super-charged, fancy black Corvette drove away fast, tires spinning gravel.
She was asking Mo for more water when the two snakes slithered quietly up behind her, grabbed her arms and shoved her against the bar.
“Hey, take your hands off me!”
Both of them had black, beady eyes. When their gazes drifted up and down her body, her heart raced.
“Johnny says you and he…. He says you’ve got our money.” The man who held her had olive skin, a big nose and lots of pimples.
“I don’t know what you’re talking about.” She began to shake. Everybody in Vegas knew guys like this didn’t play around.
“Nero has methods to freshen a girl’s memory,” the taller snake said. “We’re in the collection business. We specialize in gambling debts. Our customers lose. They borrow. If they don’t want to pay, we motivate them. End of story.”
The taller man was potato-pale. Gold-rimmed glasses pinched his nose as he stared at her breasts. “Name’s The Pope. You’re cute. You could work some of Johnny’s debt off…if you get my drift.”
“How much money does he owe you?” she whispered. Her heart was really knocking now.
The Pope named a preposterous sum that made her gasp.
“Johnny says you rolled the dice for him,” The Pope said. “He says he gave you our money. Pay us, and we’re out of here.”
“I don’t have it.”
“Then get it. If you don’t, we hurt you. Understand, sexy girl?” Nero said, pinching her arms.
She shivered. Oh, dear. They weren’t kidding. Her eyes flew to the front door and to the back. She had to run. But before she took even one step, they read her mind.
“Oh, no you don’t—” Nero grabbed her by the hair, intending to haul her out the door with him, when she bit his hand and then screamed for help.
On a howl of pain, he let her go. Since The Pope was blocking the exit, she ran toward the ladies’ room. Nero would have chased her, but the wide-shouldered customer who reminded her of Phillip had sprung from the bar, stuck out a booted foot and tripped him.
“The lady said to let her go,” said a hard voice as the short, dark thug went sprawling into chairs and tables that toppled on top of him.
“Stay out of this. The witch owes us money.”
It was an exciting conversation. She would have loved to have stayed and listened, but it didn’t seem smart to stick around. There was a window in the ladies’ room just big enough for her to squeeze out of.
Once she made it to the ladies’ room, the shouts from the bar got louder. Mo must have tackled the other guy.
“You a cop?” The Pope yelled.
“He’s got cops’ eyes. He moves like a cop, too—”
“We gotta blow this joint.”
“What about her?”
“Later—”
As Stella stood on the toilet and opened the window, she heard gunshots pop in the bar. In a panic, she shoved her guitar through the window. Then she scrambled out of it herself, only to lose her hold on the window frame and fall so hard, she nearly broke her ankle.
She got to her feet, straightened her ripped gown and then fluffed her hair. When she reached down to get her guitar, it wasn’t there.
A large hand curved out of the darkness, and she jumped about a mile and then moaned in pain because she’d landed with all her weight on her bad ankle.
“Easy. I won’t hurt you.”
The big, handsome guy from the other end of the bar, the one who’d tripped Nero, held out her guitar.
She grabbed it and hugged it to her chest.
“Need a ride?” he asked in a hard, precise voice.
“As a matter of fact—” She blurted out her address.
“You can’t go home. Can’t stay in Vegas, either. Not with those guys after you. They’ll kill you…or worse.”
She gulped in a breath and then followed him to a sedan that was parked in the shadows. “But—”
“Do you think those guys are going to quit if you can’t give them what they want?”
She swallowed.
“Honey, they know where you live.”
“You’re scaring me.”
After he helped her into the front seat of the vehicle, he said, “Didn’t your mama ever teach you never to ride with strangers?”
“I didn’t have a mama.”
He shut her door. “Everybody has a mama.”
When he slid behind the wheel, she said, “I was five when she died.”
“Too bad.” He started the engine and revved it.
“You don’t know the half of it. Foster homes. Cinderella. The whole bit. Only without the prince. But when I was little, I used to sing with my mama on stage. She told me I was going to be a star. And…and I believed her. But she died….” Her voice shook. “On a cheerier note, if you’re a bad stranger, I can always beat you up with my guitar.”
He didn’t laugh as they sped away. “That’d be a waste of a good guitar.”
“Thanks for saving me.”
“So, where to?”
“The bus station.”
“And then?” he persisted.
“Texas.” She was surprised by her answer. Texas?
“Is that home?”
“Not exactly. But I have an old boyfriend with a hero complex.” Phillip—he was the only man she knew tough enough to save her if those guys ever caught up with her. Oh, dear. Phillip—
“The poor sucker your song’s about. You left him, didn’t you?”
“He’ll still help me.” He would. She knew he would.
“What if he’s married?”
“He’s not.”
“And you know this how?”
She stared out her window at the bright glitter of Vegas. She wasn’t about to admit she’d kept tabs by reading the Mission Creek newspaper online, so she bit her lip and said nothing.
