Street Smart

Las Vegas was filled with beautiful women. They could be found—and had—anywhere, anytime, at any age, for anything a guy wanted.

“Let’s take a picnic out to the desert,” Melissa Thomas suggested when Luke picked her up early Saturday evening.

He’d met the social worker while coaching basketball at the local crisis center and quickly found that she was unlike any woman he knew. Ambitious, driven, and motivated completely by her compassion for the underprivileged children she worked twelve-hour days serving.

“Sounds great,” he told her, rounding the car to open her door. He’d missed his jump again that morning, and a sojourn with nature sounded almost as good as the time alone with Melissa. “I’ve got a blanket in the trunk and we can run by the deli for the rest of it.”

“Including a bottle of Italian wine?”

It was a taste he’d introduced her to, compliments of the tutelage he’d received growing up at the knee of Amadeo. A little-known sparkling wine from the region of Campania, rather than the more famous wines from Tuscany and Napoli. The deli wouldn’t have his favorite, but there’d be a decent choice.

“You got it.” Luke took her hand as he backed his Jaguar out of her driveway. She was giving him an evening of freedom, an evening away from bustling restaurants with waiters and managers whose friendliness was professional. Impersonal. Away from glittering people and traffic and city noise. There was very little he wouldn’t give her in return.

Melissa had been married once. In college. All Luke knew about it was that her young husband had been unfaithful and the marriage had ended abruptly. She’d been living alone for almost ten years. Owned a small home in one of Las Vegas’s gated communities.

Luke had been dating her for six months. They didn’t see each other all that often. They both worked a lot. And he had his ever-increasing responsibilities at home—responsibilities about which Melissa knew nothing. Still, they’d fallen into a state of being comfortably exclusive.

He checked his cell phone while she was at the deli counter making her choices, relaxing when there were no calls. The Allens, old friends of his parents who lived in the same gated community as Luke and his mother, had invited Carol over for dinner and a movie. They’d been planning to pick her up fifteen minutes ago, but there was always the chance she’d refused to go with them. Which often meant the onset of an episode that required Luke’s attention. The Allens could handle it, of course. But Luke didn’t like to accept their help for his own leisure purposes. He needed to be able to call upon them when he was at work and just couldn’t get home.

“All set.” Melissa joined him, carrying several containers. Pocketing his phone, Luke took them from her and got in line to pay.

“Work?” she asked with a disappointed frown. Carol, work—it was all one and the same as far as Melissa knew.

“Nope,” he told her with an easy smile. He was looking forward to the hours ahead.

“Well, thank goodness.” Luke loved the way she cuddled up to his side, both her arms wrapped around one of his. “Not that I ever like it when we have to cut a date short, but it would be particularly hard tonight.”

He grinned down at her. “Why’s that?” Was she feeling the same anticipation—and need—that he was? They hadn’t made love in a couple of weeks, and while ordinarily he’d take that in stride, since he’d started seeing Melissa, he had sex on his mind a lot.

She was an incredible lover. Wild without being too wild, tender, wanton. She made the most incredible noises when she came. And she was funny. Luke had never associated sex with laughter before. Would’ve thought the one would detract from the other. It didn’t.

“Because I have something I want to talk to you about.”

Huh? “Okay, good,” Luke said, briefly wondering what he’d missed. He felt her arms wrapped around his middle, her palms under his T-shirt, against the bare skin of his belly. Funny how such a casual touch could be so erotic.

Yes, he was looking forward to the evening. And to her.

He was a lucky man.

Sheila Miller was going to get lucky tonight. A waitress friend of hers in the high-stakes room at the Bonaparte had assured her that Arnold Jackson would be off at nine.

“Could you take Spring Mountain Road, please?” She tried to ease back on the authoritative tone that came so naturally and had lost her more than one relationship as she addressed the cabbie. “There’s less traffic there this time of night.”

The man, who apparently had little mastery of the English language, nodded wordlessly. She hoped he’d understood her.

On the freeway, with cars traveling much faster than the speed limit, they were in the slowest lane. Sheila wanted to scream. To take over. She sat forward, peeling her bare back from the vinyl upholstery in the back seat of the ten-year-old sedan. And chewed on the end of her tongue to keep it silent.

It wasn’t the guy’s fault that she was nervous, had to pee and should’ve driven her own car. But then she would’ve had to drive herself home in order to get to work in the morning.

Home. Where, on her table, lay the envelope she’d received in the mail that afternoon, threatening fore-closure and worse….

“Tell me, fella, you think—” Sheila started and then shut up. She couldn’t believe she’d almost asked the cabbie if he thought she was overdressed. She really was losing it. Anyway, if the black, kneelength halter dress was too much, it was too late to do anything about it. And she looked damned good in it. Especially for a fifty-five-year-old woman. The thirty-five pounds she’d lost had left behind a waist that accentuated her breasts; unlike most of her friends, hers hadn’t drooped after menopause.

Arnold had to notice. She couldn’t get the man off her mind. For the first time in thirty years, she’d fallen for a guy. Hard. And she was also running out of time. If she didn’t find out who was behind the streak of wins that was causing such a ruckus up and down the Strip, she could very well end up in jail for misrepresentation. When extra building costs on her dream home kept popping up—to the tune of thousands each time—she’d promised her condo to a loan shark as collateral on a twenty-five-percent-interest loan. With her salary eaten up by daily expenses, she was about to miss her first payment. And the condo was already mortgaged to the hilt. To two different banks.

Word on the street said the scam was an inside job. That meant Arnold was going to find out about it. In a business where employer trust was paramount, he protected his integrity above all else. She recognized that because she’d always been just like him.

And like him, she was determined to find out what was going on. Pronto.

But unlike him, it wasn’t to protect her integrity. Not this time. She valued honesty above all else—except her freedom. She could go to jail for misrepresentation because she’d put her condo up for collateral twice. The only chance she had was to get in on the Strip scam before it was over. As soon as the perpetrators got wind that the other side was close, they’d shut down. They always did.

Her biggest fear was that the scam would be history before she could cash in. She had absolutely no idea what she’d do then.

5

By the time Carl took his break shortly after ten on Saturday night, Francesca had already reached her margarita limit.

A third night without sleeping pills. She had to get to bed before the buzz wore off.

“You aren’t leaving, are you?” he asked Francesca. She stood just after Rebecca, the young woman who’d been waiting tables all evening, had gone behind the bar to relieve him.

As had happened the night before, and the night before that, the place had been filled with young people earlier, mostly young women calling greetings to others who came in the door. But slowly the crowd had thinned to some guys shooting pool and throwing darts at one end of the room, with people at a few scattered tables here and there. For the past half hour, the door had only opened as someone left.

Autumn wasn’t coming.

“Yeah, I should get back.” It was light before six in the morning these days. She had an appointment with a phone booth.

Hands in the pockets of his jeans, Carl nodded. “You can’t spare another fifteen minutes to sit with me?” His dark eyes were warm, welcoming.

She’d refused the night before. But three shots of tequila weren’t going to wear off in fifteen minutes. And her room at the Lucky Seven was so…empty. “I guess I can.”

What am I doing? There was no place in her schedule for friends. And no life in her heart.

Still, when he asked if she’d like to share his tomato-and-basil pizza, she didn’t say no.

She shouldn’t have stayed. Sitting alone with Carl at a table in the comfortable back corner of his bar was very different from sharing casual hit-and-miss conversation as he worked. More intimate.

He wanted to know too much.

She’d almost prefer talking to her mother.

The information she offered him—that she was from Sacramento, that she was a photojournalist taking some time off, even that she was half Italian—wasn’t enough to satisfy him. He wanted to know why she wasn’t married, but that wasn’t up for discussion.

“Who’s your artist?” she asked, pointing to the wall across from them instead of answering his question. She’d noticed the watercolors the night before—various depictions of wine bottles with muted purple flower backgrounds. She’d described them to her mother when she’d called to tell Kay about the fairly positive identification of Autumn at Guido’s. She’d had a hard time convincing her to stay in Sacramento and let Francesca find out what they needed to know. Only the threat that Autumn was more likely to run again if she found out Kay was in town had ultimately worked. Francesca had hated using it.

“I don’t know the artist. Are you currently involved with anyone?”

He’d pushed the last piece of uneaten pizza aside, his forearms resting on the table as he peered at her.