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Big freakin’ mistake.
My real name is Stella, but everyone, except my parents, has called me Steele since I was nine years old. After I bluffed him out of his pocket change playing stud poker, my Uncle Vin used to shake his head and mutter, “That girl’s got nerves of steel.”
I need them in my line of work. In the end we all agreed to part ways: Scarlet with a torn handbag and an ex-lover; Rat with a bloody nose and sore balls; me with a headache and a broken camera lens. I did manage to save the image storage card, though. So, even though it was an affair to forget, my client would get proof and I would get paid.
Good thing since now I was out a three-hundred-dollar Sony Cybershot.
Mission accomplished, I slid into the Toyota and cranked the air conditioner to “arctic.” Then I looked down, cursing when I saw Rat’s blood on the hem of my favorite T-shirt, the powder-blue one that read Spoil Me and We’ll Get Along Just Fine.
Some days I love my job. This was not one of them.
I’D JUST LEFT one bar and was headed for another, this time in my father’s restaurant across from the University of Las Vegas campus. Mezzanotte’s offers authentic Tuscan recipes straight out of my Nonna Angela’s trattoria in Siena. The pappardelle primavera and the bistecca alla fiorentina are to die for. It’s a family business. My father, Paolo, and my brother Raffaele run the kitchen while my mother, Vivian, acts as hostess.
Since I have no life outside of work—much to my mother’s disappointment—I help out at the bar a couple nights a week.
Thursday nights are pretty slow, especially since Papa refuses to do gimmicks like karaoke or wet T-shirt contests. It took a lot of convincing to get him to put a TV above the bar for the sports channels. Tonight there was a decent crowd, though, enough to have me pouring drafts and shaking drinks at a regular pace.
I’m good at tending bar. I flirt a little so the guys keep thinking and keep drinking. I make the cocktails strong enough to earn a reputation without depleting the inventory. And I’m normally a good listener, even when I’m really keeping an eye on the liquor levels for a row of customers.
But not tonight. Oh, I was getting the job done but my mind wasn’t engaged. Tonight I felt… Itchy. Like my skin was too tight and my nerves were exposed. None of my customers needed refills, so I was absentmindedly watching the NFL Pro Bowl game when I heard a voice behind me.
“I don’t suppose you’ve got a McEwan’s Ale about?” A hot shiver danced down my spine. The Scottish accent was pure just-out-of-bed Sean Connery. Hearing it, I started thinking about getting into bed. When I turned around, though, I looked straight into the face of the golden god. Stifling my sexual reaction I studied him, trying to figure out what he was doing here.
I don’t believe in coincidence and I never get this lucky when it comes to men in bars.
The guy had broad shoulders and a massive chest beneath a forest green shirt open just enough to reveal a navy T-shirt. His forearms looked as if they’d been sculpted from Carrara marble and his large, blunt-fingered hands… I was getting all kinds of ideas about his hands.
His face had wide planes and interesting angles, with heavy brows that accentuated a coldly compelling blue gaze. The only soft things about him were the slight curl of his dark-blond hair and a deliciously sensual mouth. He was watching me with the barest hint of a smirk.
His eyes hinted that he’d seen the dark side of life and had laughed in its face, that he had secrets and no intention of sharing them. He had the air of a hunter, both patient and persistent. And like any prey, I felt the thrill of danger. All the way down my body.
“Sorry, no McEwan’s. See anything else you might like?” I cocked my head and gave him a playful look.
“Aye, something’s caught my interest.”
I leaned my forearms on the bar, briefly drawing his attention to the lettering over my breasts. “Well, catching is one thing, keeping is another.”
He resolutely kept his gaze on my face. A real gentleman, this guy. “It’s a bit soon to play for keeps.”
But apparently he did want to play. So did I. If the game got out of hand, I had a borrowed car and one hell of a right hook. What I didn’t have was a date for Valentine’s, as Mom had been reminding me all evening.
“You mean it wasn’t love at first sight that made you trail me all the way from downtown?”
His mouth lifted a fraction of an inch and he nodded to admit he’d been busted, but there was no hint of apology. “Why were you taking my photo?”
“I wasn’t. You just got in the frame.” I grinned and gave him the once-over. “You’re kind of distracting.”
“As are you.” His lips curved a little more and I found myself anxiously awaiting his smile. “What was a sweet lass such as yourself doing there anyway, eh?”
“A job. Why were you there?”
“A job.” He returned my deadpan expression in kind then reached across the bar to offer his hand. “Cameron Stone.”
“I’m Steele Mezzanotte.”
“You don’t look like ‘steel.’” He smirked, as most guys do. I’ve got my Papa’s bone structure, my Mom’s curvaceous figure and, so I’m told, an innate sex appeal all my own. No matter how smart or how tough she is, nobody takes a pretty girl seriously.
“Yeah, well, looks can be deceiving.”
As his large, calloused hand closed over mine, energy— unexpected and potentially lethal—shot through my palm. It reminded me of when I was five and stuck a knife into a wall socket. Every nerve in my arm vibrated with sensory overload and I caught my breath. A little shaken, I dropped his hand and stepped back. I felt myself blush as I cleared my throat.
“What can I get you instead of the McEwan’s?”
“Surprise me, why don’t you.”
“I just might.” Letting a slow grin spread across my face, I was suddenly feeling very lucky, indeed….
However, I woke up the next morning alone in a hotel suite, unsure of which was worse, my hangover, my heartache or the trouble I had gotten into this time.
CHAPTER TWO
The Waiting Game
THE PORCH LIGHT was on. A sign of invitation, welcoming him for his efforts these past couple months. He smiled in the darkness.
He’d been careful to park around the corner, but still close enough to get a clear view down the street to her house. The sun was stealing over the mountains in the distance. He had to leave soon. Some early-bird neighbor might notice a strange car and it was almost time for her morning run.
A dog barked nearby, startling him. But he continued to watch the house, wondering which room she slept in. Wondering if she slept naked. He pictured her long dark hair fanned across the pillow, her blow job-worthy lips parted slightly as she breathed.
He shifted in the driver’s seat. The thought of her mouth always got him hard.
Letting his mind stretch further, he imagined she did sleep naked, her bare skin slick with sweat, the bed sheets twisted around her long athletic body. One hand would part her thighs while the fingers of his other tangled in her hair…
He wanted to hear her voice, if only a single word. Reaching for his cell phone, he dialed the number from memory. Anticipation had his heart racing, his body tense. He ought to speak this time—
“Huhlo?”
He closed his eyes, savoring the sleep-roughened rumble of her greeting…then disconnected the call. The time wasn’t right.
Soon.
But not yet.
CHAPTER THREE
Through a Glass Darkly
BLINKING AGAINST the late spring daylight, I checked the bedside clock. Christ, did that thing really say five-fifty? I reached for the phone to stop the damned ringing.
“Huhlo?” My voice sounded as raw as it felt. I must have been screaming in my sleep again.
Silence greeted me in return. The heavy menacing kind that made the fine hairs on my skin stand on end. I sat up, wide awake now. I couldn’t hear so much as an inhaled breath, let alone any identifiable background noise. But I knew someone was on the line. Waiting. Intimidating.
Just like the other calls.
And, again like the others, my caller ID didn’t register a number. The line disconnected abruptly, leaving me to hang up with an ineffectual bang. Shafts of early May sunlight streamed across the bed but I was shivering, the sheet twisted beneath me damp with sweat. The sun had barely risen, but going back to sleep wasn’t an option.
I swung my legs off the bed and padded down the hallway to the kitchen in nothing but my panties. Twinges of pain had me glancing down. The bruises on my ribs were as muddy as day-old coffee and the one on my face probably didn’t look much better. Both of my jobs seem to make me a regular target.
The freezer yielded a half-empty bottle of Armadale vodka. I hate taking any kind of medicine. A double shot in my orange juice would hold off the worst of the pain and wash away the aftertaste of uneasy sleep. I’d been dreaming, the kind of dark, restless nightmares that leave a metallic taste in the mouth.
A few minutes later, I had three slugs in me—one from an old bullet and the other two from the vodka. I stood there in my gradually lightening kitchen, feeling the alcohol begin to warm my blood. One of these days I needed to quit drinking. Not today.
Back in the bedroom I threw on a T-shirt and bike shorts, sunglasses and a baseball cap. I used to run track in high school. There are probably still some ribbons and trophies in my parents’ attic. I usually do between three and five miles, depending on my route. But my heart wasn’t in it—I’d barely covered a mile—so I turned around.
After a quick shower, several ounces of hair goop and a half hour with my professional-grade ionic blow dryer, I started on my face. Normally I just wear moisturizer. But I was going to need some of Mom’s stage makeup tricks to disguise the black eye I got last night.
My dad’s place is not a dive, I swear. But with the restaurant being right across from UNLV, on weekends the bar clientele includes a lot of students blowing off steam… Sometimes in my direction.
Getting dressed only took me about five minutes. I hate having to think about clothes, so for everyday I just pick from my fifty pair of jeans and a hundred T-shirts. I slipped on the one that read, Have A Nice Day Elsewhere, grabbed my backpack and helmet and headed for work.
Traffic along Las Vegas Boulevard—otherwise known as the Strip—sucked, as usual. Caught by one of the city’s many lethargic traffic signals, I braced my feet on either side of my Harley. The sun beat down on me from out of a pale blue cloudless sky, piercing the dark glasses shielding my eyes. The temperature already felt like eighty-plus degrees.
Sitting next to a diesel-belching tour bus didn’t help.
Still, as I glanced around me, a chill slipped down my spine. I’d been feeling all too exposed for the last two months. The caller, my telephone whisperer, might be in the next lane. Behind the wheel of the Nissan with the tinted windows? Or maybe he was the bald guy in the Chevy staring at me funny….
Or maybe all of these people were normal human beings just trying to get to work on time.
As I drove past the glory that is the Venetian Resort Casino, with its Doges Palace entrance and replica of the Grand Canal, my thoughts turned wistfully to the old Sands Hotel that it had replaced. The Sands was “A Place in the Sun” in the days when Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack played here. And I do mean played.
The Sands is also where my parents met. Papa tended bar while my mother hoofed across the stage in a twenty-pound headdress. Mom was a Copa Girl. They had drinks with Sinatra once. But that’s another story, one my father never gets tired of telling. And somehow I never get tired of hearing it.
My folks are still happily married, but the Sands was leveled in a controlled implosion. It was a hell of a final show. Ground broke for the Venetian less than a year later. Who knows how long that will stand before it makes way for something new?
The city is constantly demolishing and rebuilding itself bigger, better and brighter. I was born and raised here—what happens in Vegas, stays in Vegas, as the advertising goes. Depending on who you ask, this is either the most incredible or the tackiest place they’ve ever seen.
What Las Vegas really is, is glitz and glamour for its own sake. If you take it too seriously, you miss the whole damn point.
I navigated past another bus and hung a left onto Paradise Road. After circling a couple of times, I found an open parking space. I took off my helmet and scratched my fingers through my hair to mitigate the heat, adjusted my black leather backpack and casually strode across the parking lot.
You name it; this strip mall has it. There’s a bank, a travel agency, a pawnshop, an attorney and a business services franchise. Midnight Investigation Services is on the corner, the name etched in gold script letters on the window. I get a flutter of both pride and anxiety when I see the place. It’s only been mine for about six months.
Although I’d been licensed for just under a year, I’d worked as the secretary in my Aunt Gloria’s investigation agency for three years before that. Not long after my life disintegrated because of a cowardly, self-centered decision…
Gloria Diamond, a blackjack dealer turned private investigator, had divorced Uncle Vinnie years ago, but I’d still considered her family. Nobody understood me the way she had, being a hard-assed, soft-hearted Italian girl herself. When I’d dropped out of UNLV my sophomore year, Aunt Gloria had talked me into helping around the office.
I’d mostly answered phones, typed reports, made coffee and paid attention. Then her two-pack a day habit caught up with her and suddenly I was taking over the casework. Gloria taught me what she knew, cut corners where she could and sent me to community college for the rest. But I still had a lot to learn, and now I have to do it without her.
When she died last year, Aunt Gloria left me the agency. She also left me the strip mall and the associated rental income in trust. According to her philosophy, a gal needs “fuck-you” money in a man’s world. Smart woman, that Gloria. She’d believed in empowerment and independence. But she’d also believed in earning it.
As long as I keep the place running in the black for a year, I’m set. As long as no one ever finds out how far Gloria went to get me licensed… Otherwise, it all goes to my cousin Rick, who won’t hesitate to sell everything and lay the money on the nearest craps table.
Opening the front door to the agency, I gratefully stepped into the air-conditioning. The large reception area is decorated in “soothing but elegant tones of cobalt, maroon and cream.” Whatever. It gives clients a place to sit.
My secretary, Jon Chase, was typing furiously and staring at his computer screen. He’s about six feet tall with a lean build, sleepy brown eyes, thick hair and a great smile. In a word? Hot. In another word? Gay. This, of course, was a heartbreaking shame to every heterosexual woman who met him.
He looked up and raised one perfectly arched brow. Then he added a glance at his watch. “Whoa. Are you aware that it’s not even nine o’clock yet?”
“Just get me some coffee, will you.” I have to remind him on a regular basis who employs whom around here.
“Well, aren’t you just a delight this morning.” He handed me a stack of envelopes and some message slips. Then he did that tsking thing when I peeled off my sunglasses. “I hate to tell you, Steele, but black and blue is so not this season.”
Guess I needed more makeup. “Dad needed help at the restaurant last night.”
“And to think bartending doesn’t come with hazardous duty pay.”
“Were there any calls besides these?” I kept my gaze on the phone slips and made my voice as casual as possible.
“Two hang-ups on the machine and a woman who didn’t want to leave a message.”
The aborted calls shouldn’t have bothered me. But they did. “Has anybody stopped by?”
Jon looked at me, his expression curious. “Nobody outside the usual suspects—the mailman, that cute UPS guy. Why? Are you hoping for someone in particular?”
“Nobody outside the usual suspects.”
I trudged down the hallway, past the kitchen and bathroom, to my office. When we redecorated, I’d let Jon have his way with the paisley love seats, glass coffee tables, potted bamboo and Impressionist art out front, but my office was off limits.
Framed posters of exotic beaches hung between the floor-to-ceiling bookcases. The armchairs and couch were leather and my walnut partner’s desk takes up the far corner. I’d only agreed to the bright blue carpeting for the sake of Jon’s “visual continuity.”
My helmet and backpack landed on the couch with a dull thump. Pulling the window shades kept the bright daylight from drilling a hole into my brain. I visited each of the electrical outlets in the room, recharging the pieces of my portable office. Then I collapsed onto my suede desk chair. The best place for my head seemed to be in between my open palms.
But, I had work to do. I picked up the mail and sorted through it. Credit card applications went into the trash along with dating service invitations. My mother thinks I don’t know she secretly signs me up for that crap. I separated the bills from the few payment checks and thank-you notes then started a letter of my own.
The last time I was face-to-face with my oldest brother— five years almost to the day—I was only nineteen. Stupid, scared and selfish as only a nineteen-year-old can be. I’ve had to grow up since then. Vince still won’t see me or take my phone calls. I understand, and so respect his wishes.
If you keep picking at an old wound, it never heals. But I hate the idea of having no contact with him at all. I write once a week without fail and haven’t missed a week in all the time he’s been gone. It’s the very least I owe him. And, no matter what it costs, I’ve always kept my promises.
CHAPTER FOUR
Sombody’s Got to Do It
A FEW MINUTES LATER, Jon slid my favorite mug—the one that read I’m Only Here To Annoy You—across the desk.
“Coffee-coffee-coffee.” I took a sip and moaned out loud. “I made you espresso instead of latte. You look like you could use the extrastrength caffeine.” Tilting his head, he crossed his arms. “Soo, what’s the story with that eye?”
I swallowed another mouthful before answering him. “One of the customers didn’t take too kindly to her boyfriend gluing his eyes to my chest every time I delivered their drinks. When she said something, he took a poke at her. I swung on him. After that it got a little ugly.”
