Chapter THIRTY-ONE
Britton pulled the tape off the box and flattened it against her chest.
“Done!” She called.
“Finally!” A voice answered from the other room.
It had been three months since her move to Washington, and she had finally unpacked her last box. She stepped out into the living room and glared at her little sister.
“And you were such a big help, Rebecca.” She sarcastically commented.
“I told you I had to write a paper. At least I’m keeping you company.” She smiled back at Britton. They had the same smile.
Rebecca had been spending most days with Britton. Neither of them dared to ask for any time to themselves; they were too happy to have a family again.
Rebecca looked up from her computer. “Do you want me to call Dom? See how things are going?” She was cautious.
“No, I don’t want to know until the end.”
It was the day of Jagger’s trial. Hank would be taking the stand and admitting to a jury everything he had witnessed. It was surely enough to put Jagger behind bars for quite some time. Britton couldn’t bear to think about it. David had called her after she had settled into her new apartment on the east coast, and asked if she’d be able to come out and testify. Britton told him she didn’t see any cause for her testimony. Jagger hadn’t admitted anything to her while she was undercover. It was a blatant lie, but she already blamed herself for Jagger’s current sentence; there was no way she would hold the guilt for any extra time he spent in a small cell.
Even with everything against her, every day she found more and more reason to hope. There was always a chance that he’d be able to come back to her. Maybe it wouldn’t be tomorrow, but despite the plea in his letter, she was determined to wait for him. She didn’t want anyone besides him. How could she ever love again when she had already had the love of Jagger Stromm?
A knock at the door startled her out of her daydream.
“I’ll get it.” Rebecca called.
“Expecting someone?”
“Pizza. Perfect paper writing food.”
She flew to the door and swung it open. “Dom? What? Hi!” Rebecca threw her arms around her brother.
“Becky! Don’t you look gorgeous? College life suits you well.” Her brother flattered her.
Britton stood up, completely shocked at her brother’s visit. Matty ran in, followed by Cindy.
“Sorry, it was a long flight. Hi Britton.” Cindy smiled, catching her son.
Britton moved to the door to greet her guests. “What are you guys doing here? What about…” She froze. Jagger stood in the hallway, leaning against the wall. “Oh my God.” Britton forgot all manners and ran into the hallway, jumping on Jagger. He caught her, using the wall to catch his own weight.
“Hi Britton.” He whispered into her ear.
She couldn’t speak. Her laughter was mixed with tears of joy. Jagger managed to set her on her feet, and everyone walked into the apartment. The greeting of hugs came full circle, and Rebecca finally solicited the question her and Britton were dying to ask.
“How are you here right now?”
“They dropped the case.” Dominic beamed.
“But…”
Jagger stepped in. “There was no physical evidence, and for some reason, Hank realized he had forgotten everything he knew about me.” Britton cocked her head to Jagger, knowing full well what that meant. Jagger shrugged, unapologetically. “Old habits die hard.”
Everyone laughed, even Matty, although he had no idea what was so funny.
“So what does this mean?” Rebecca asked, gesturing to the new group.
Dominic smiled. “Las Vegas was getting a little too hot. We figured we’d try our hands at the east coast.” He turned to his wife and stole a kiss.
Britton was glowing, unable to hold in her emotions. Jagger replied with a sly smile and flash of his dimples. He moved to Britton, wanting only to touch her, ensuring she was real. A single step away, he dropped his voice. “Is there a David?” He questioned. She knew what he meant.
“No. No David. There could never be a David.”
He scooped her up in his arms and made his way down the hall, not even glancing over his shoulder. “Sorry guys, we’re going to be a bit.”
He found her bedroom and closed the door behind him. “Wow I’ve missed you.”
Britton said nothing, only grabbed a hold of his face and kissed him. They sunk to the bed together, both refusing to let go of each other’s lips.
“So this is it?” Britton asked, not believing how her day had changed so quickly.
“This is it. I'm on the straight and narrow, no more crime. Just you and me…and everyone out there in your living room.” They laughed, unable to break eye contact.
“You gave it all up for me. I never…” She didn’t know how to finish that sentence. She was still in shock. “What will you do?”
Jagger thought about it, not having considered any options. “I’m really good with motorcycles.”
He smiled, knowing everything would be alright as long as he was with her. He wrapped his arms around her, crushing her body to his. This time, he promised, he would never let her go.
It only took ten years.
THE END
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The following is an excerpt from my next book in the Vegas Titans Series:
Breaking Beauty (Devil's Aces MC)
Coming Soon!
Though he’d made this trip a hundred times, it never seemed to get old. To begin with, all the world would be flat in front of him, the highways lonely and dark. The horizon would seem nonexistent until suddenly, as he rounded the tight corner just beyond the jutting lip of the Hoover Dam—there she’d be: a glittering, blinking metropolis, flashing her blinding grin his way. Las. Vegas. The city on the edge of forever.
He’d accelerate on his way into city limits, letting the thrum of the speeding engine begin to outpace his heartbeat. It was always like mounting a rollercoaster, this odd mixture of dread and glee which filled his blood whenever he drifted through this funky town. Perhaps because he was usually on the run from something (or someone…) when he took shelter here. Perhaps because the neon lights made such a stark contrast to the silent prairie plains of his youth. But in the way that say, the stilted bungalows of Northern California or the waterfront clapboards of Seattle were designed with certain sorts of folk in mind, Vegas was a town for the runaway, the man of mystery. It was a town made for him, and in this way...it was home.
ONE
Romy was tired. Well, correction: she was always tired; today she was exhausted. First, she’d been up till four in the morning proofing a friend’s biology thesis. She’d gone on to spend her waking work day shuffling between Professor Hinegart’s office hours and the library. Now—having had barely enough time to secret a granola bar from the common room vending machine on her way to the car—Romy found herself bopping from foot to foot under angry casino lights. She’d hastily changed from her college-girl gear (five year old Sofi pants, old boyfriend tee) into the glorified bustier and black leather knee-length “business skirt” which made up—of all things—her work uniform. She shuffled two letter-thin stacks of plastic KEM cards between her aching joints, sneaking the subtlest peak possible at her watch: 10pm. A mere hour into her shift.
“Look alive, Blondie,” muttered Paulette, sauntering by on yet another of her stealthy strolls about the pit. Paulette Nagle (“Used to be Nagle-Brownstein, but whaddya gonna do?”) was Romy’s immediate supervisor and closest alliance here at The Windsor—a.k.a. the ninth most popular casino on the Sunset Strip. Two years ago, fresh off the boat from a small college in Arizona, Romy had put all of her belongings into a guitar case, put the guitar case in an ex-boyfriend’s third-hand Thunderbird, and high-tailed it to Vegas; hoping to make a brand new name for herself at the research university there. Neither the boyfriend nor the dream had lasted the year, but today a much wiser Romy Adelaide was a mere two credits away from a Masters in Statistics, paid for in part by dozens of weekends spent shuffling KEM cards at the ninth-swankiest spot in all of Vegas. She was a blackjack dealer.
“I’m serious, Ro. They’ve been watching us like hawks lately,” Paulette said. She made a meaningful face at an innocuous spot in the ceiling which, everyone agreed, was the site of the pit’s largest security camera. “So I’ll let you back at it.” Paulette wiggled away, flashing a toothy smile at the motley crew of mid-level-rollers who’d been waiting all this while for their cards.
Romy took a deep breath. Seven hours, plus breaks. She could do this.
“Are you full up?” came a voice from by her elbow. Romy lifted her eyes from the deck and stopped short.
Typically, handsome clientele at The Windsor fell into the ‘Silver Fox’ category—they tended to be older gentlemen, vacationing from the East or West coasts. The SF’s were dapper, old-school—their suits were cut from Savile Row, their chips were stacked in perfect, guarded rows. They were well-groomed and appointed. They didn’t grab ass the way plenty of the local-yokels or bachelor parties liked to do; they were polite, reserved, sensitive. They’d render you smitten with a George Clooney grin or a Sean Connery cocked-eyebrow before offering to buy your shift drink. You’d hear them talk a little nonsense about the NASDAQ and feel like a respected adult. But as compelling as these gentlemen could be, the Silver Fox seduction ended the same way any other seduction seemed to in this town: buck naked, sharing a cigarette in a “Basic Luxury Package” room upstairs, the TV on low and the shower running. There was something endlessly grimy about sleeping with customers, and Romy’d made sure to fall for even the top-shelf stuff only once. Because odds were, the lady lost face.
But this face was different. The man in front of her now was cut like a sculpture. The fabric of his black button-down shirt was working impressively hard to contain his straining muscles. There was a swatch of curling chest hair—not too much, just enough—leaking out from the space at his throat where his two top buttons lazed open. A series of interlocking tribal designs rendered in the thick black paint of Serious Tattoos crept up the man’s neck, framing a perfectly symmetrical face bearing an indolent expression. Though he was wearing a nice suit (if not Savile Row, something comparable), Romy knew immediately that this man wasn’t a Fox. He wore his blazer like someone who’d have preferred to be naked than confined, which was to say he seemed slightly on edge. He kept squinting about the room, shaking his arms to and fro. God, and now she couldn’t not think about him naked...it took a heft of professional willpower to keep her eyes from dancing down to the stranger’s crotch.
His eyes were the kind of eyes she’d only heard about from Paulette’s weekly soap opera recaps: these eyes were so impressively penetrating, so impressively blue, that she simply could not hold his gaze for long. A dusting of artful stubble camped along his jaw line (which was Herculean…). His hair was what her foster mother might have called “shoeshine black,” and it was thick as a horse’s mane. His nose was aquiline, nearly Roman, but looked to have been broken at some point in the owner’s history. Something about this fact excited her.
“Are you full up?” he asked again, granting Romy a glimpse of two improbable rows of white teeth. While the newcomer seemed patient, even playful, her assembled table of gambling grumps were starting to fuss.
“LADY!” yelled a fat man in a checked suit, his tone the twangy drawl of a Long Islander, “Get the ball moving, why don’tcha?”
“Have a seat, sir,” Romy said, scrambling to regain her composure. She motioned to the last open seat at the game. The man leaned into it, like a wind.
Romy began shuffling again. “Bets, bets, bets,” she muttered, eyes still locked on the late arrival. There was something about him. The way he wiggled his arms reminded her of...someone.
The men around the table lodged their bets; most numbers drifted just inside of a hundred dollars. When she landed her panorama on the stranger, he forced her to meet his gaze before moving ten green $25 chips neatly on to bettor's circle in front of him. Then, the man winked.
A high-roller with neck tattoos? Well, Vegas was a city of surprises. It was also a city of fools—at the bottom of her heart, Romy had a certain disdain for people who could throw money around like it was nothing. All her life, these mens’ “chips” had been the grinding necessity of her toil, the source of all struggle, the tenuous mark of her independence. Dealing at The Windsor furnished her with just enough to stay afloat: she paid for school, she lived alone, and could just barely afford monthly insurance payments on the decrepit Thunderbird she’d inherited from her last relationship. And here came an admittedly roguish, classically handsome biker type throwing caution to the wind simply because he felt like it. Puffing out the span of her chest as far as the bustier would allow, Romy dealt the first hand.
The Long Islander squealed early; his tell was something terrible. “Blackjack, motherf*cker!” he whooped, moving two bejeweled hands towards his chips. Romy sighed. This was one of her least favorite parts of the job.
“Please don't touch the chips, sir, or the cards.” she said, tapping the back of his knuckles with a handy cue. “Would you like Even Money?”
The man looked confused, then upset. “What the f*ck is Even Money? I thought if I got 21 on the first deal I won automatically, 3:2 odds, one-and-a-half times my bet?”
Romy sighed. “No sir, not if the dealer also has blackjack on the first deal, then you'd push, unless you wish to take even money 2:1 odds instead. Or you can gamble that I don't have blackjack, and if I don't you'll get the 3:2 payout, otherwise you'll push and get nothing.”
The Long Islander seemed bemused, then flustered, then angry. How was it possible that people managed to get this far into the casino without knowing how to play the games? Some days, Romy couldn’t wait to have a degree and be a high school math teacher. She’d lead whole lessons on How Not To Look Like An Idiot in Vegas.
“He’s not from around here, I guess,” mumbled the stranger beside her. He had a sly grin on that could just about melt. Fiercely, unbidden, Romy pictured the stranger clearing the chips from the table in one elegant swish of his hand before scooping her up and setting her down on the green felt. She pictured his hot breath on her neck. She pictured her shaking fingers rooting through his chest hair, then plunging downward, picking their path through walls of muscle towards the elastic of his expensive boxer shorts…
“Are you from around here?” the mysterious man asked her now, the edge of a laugh in his voice.
“Me? I’m from Reno. Why do you ask?” Romy said.
“Because you’re a complete f*cking space cadet,” muttered the wounded Long Islander. “Like I don’t know how to play blackjack? Nobody can take a joke?”
“I’m from Reno, too.” said the handsome man.
“What?”
“Yeah, I’m from Reno.” The man leaned back in his chair, and seemed to size Romy up with a different set of (equally imperturbable) eyes. “Hey, what high school did you go to?”
“What is this, f*cking Love Boat? I wanna play the game!” chirped the thinnest man at the table, a gaunt fellow with a clip-on tie and a ghoulish complexion. A few of the others nodded in unison.
The Long Islander frowned down at his slice of the action, “I don't want Even Money, I don't think you have a ten under that Ace.”
“Would anyone like insurance?” Romy asked the men.
“Sucker bet.” said the thin man.
No one took insurance. The game ended fast after Romy checked her hole card and flipped over a Queen, that made 21. From the ways they did and didn’t keep their cool, Romy determined that there were few men at the table tonight with much experience playing cards. She pegged them for ambitious vacationers all, the kind of men who jumped at business trips to anywhere, the kind of men who slid off their weddings rings at the first sign of willing flesh-for-sale. People who pretended to be other people when out of town. And something about the typical grumble-gamblers’ affect drew only more attention to how effortlessly cool, how frank the mystery stranger was. Though he might be loose with cash, and he might be wearing the hell out of a borrowed suit...something in his manner told her that he wasn’t really pretending to be anyone he wasn’t. They’d still barely exchanged hellos and she remained convinced that she knew him in some way. Had they maybe met before?
After the next deal—as a new crop of lower executives rotated on to the table—the stranger got blackjack. Collecting his reward, he flipped Romy a green chip with a deft move of his wrist. It was then that she got a glimpse of his palms, which were not the padded manicure jobs of any typical high-roller. His hands were rugged, beset with calluses. She wondered what he actually did for a living.
“This is really a lot,” she whispered under her breath in the stranger’s direction. “You don’t have to—”
The man just pressed a finger to his lips and smiled the melting smile again. When he looked at her, Romy felt it in her base. Her belly seemed to seize up, and she felt the inside of her thighs turn slick. Her face grew hot...she was in trouble and she knew it.
Two more games passed at the table the same way: the man stayed pinned to his corner, betting two hundred fifty a hand, and he nearly always came up winning. It would have been statistically suspicious were it not for the choice crop of goonheads playing tonight—besides, Romy was in no position to shirk the now tidy pile of twenty-five dollar chips in her dealer’s corner. When Paulette came by on one of her rounds, she waggled her eyebrows above the handsome man’s head, nodding assent. Paulette was pretty intent on fixing Romy up with a high-roller, having made her young, blonde friend into something of a test-daughter over the past two years.
It crept towards dawn. The handsome man kept winning, kept winking, and Romy remained unable to place him. At one point he rose from the table “for a walking break,” and Romy watched him (and his high, tight ass) saunter towards one of the side tables. He placed the whole of his night’s winnings down on some lark.
Paulette appeared at her elbow then: “I want you to take that young man home and do absolutely everything you can think of to him. If you need help coming up with ideas, I’ve prepared a stand-by list.”
“Paulette, I’m working. Like you said.”
“Oh, shut it, Princess.” Paulette turned to address Romy’s table: “MAMA TAKES A union BREAK. Table adjourned for five minutes, till we get a sub in here.” When the men groaned, Paulette became a full-on mother hen. “Go on. SCOOT,” she said. She walked Romy over to the unofficial employee break table on the floor, where a few other dealers were attempting to stretch inside of their leather bodysuits and bitching about the players over cocktails.
“Oooh, Romy, I saw you with that tall drink of water,” said Kali, a beautiful Hawaiian woman who held the informal “Best Ass” title among the pit crew. “Look at you. Got yourself a high-roller.”
“Mmm-hmm. He’s worth staying awake for, darling,” said Annisette, another motherly supervisor with an expensive red weave and a temper to match. “I see you drooling.”
Romy took the affectionate ribbing in stride. They were entitled to a bit of gossip about her personal life. While the rest of the lady dealers and cocktail waitresses were an aggressive division of chatty Kathy’s by nature, Romy had always been notoriously quiet about her personal life at the casino. There’d been the single one night stand, the six months’ worth of breaking up with Lewis, her ex...and that basically brought everyone up to date on her “sexy Vegas back story.” Romy was private, she was wary, and maybe most of all, she was busy—it wasn’t as if she had time to primp and fret over a boy when there were sixty page labs due for her math and science courses every week. Her co-workers’ concern brought the fatigue back: nothing was going to happen with her handsome stranger. And why? Because this was Earth, not Heaven. This was Vegas, where fortunes and the privilege of other people’s beds were gambled, gained and lost in the quick roll of a die. Better to shake it off and stay professional. Stop thinking about the mystery man. Get a grip, Adelaide, she told herself. Get a grip.
She saw him approaching from the corner of her eye before the other women did. A small hush rippled through the party as he planted himself before her. His arms still jittered, though perhaps his evening’s winnings had gifted him the confidence to sit a little easier in his expensive suit. “Romy Adelaide. Silver Spring High School, class of 2006. I know you,” he said. She was speechless, until:
“Bryson. Vaughn. I knew you looked familiar!” The name appeared in her mind’s eye like something from a dream, and was attended by a flood of memory.
“I knew you knew I looked familiar,” Bryson said. He leaned towards her, slipping what she could feel to be a fat hundred-dollar chip into her sweaty palm with a measure of coyness. “Listen, I just won five grand. So that’s yours to keep. Now I’ve got to run, but Romy—” and here he drew back and looked her full in the face, his blue eyes dizzying as they seemed to suck her in: “—how about you don’t forget about me again.” He winked once more, before making for the exit.
The other women had already begun to fan themselves like schoolgirls, but Romy watched Bryson’s retreat as far as her eyes could follow. She saw him peel off his sport coat and flex his powerful body just outside the casino lobby. She watched him don a pair of black aviator sunglasses, despite the morning hour. She watched him pop an unlit cigarette into his mouth and toss the coat over a shoulder, before striding away into the bright night.