Love's Gamble

“Pru?” a voice said behind her.

She turned from the list of Nevada’s revised statutes and limitations that she was supposed to be studying to see her brother, Jakey, standing in the doorway to her room. He’d had yet another growth spurt over the summer and now stood a good five inches taller than her. He’d also been working out in an effort to relieve the summer boredom, so he’d also gotten wider over the past two months. The front of the T-shirt he wore seemed to be crying out for mercy as it strained against his newly formed muscles, and his old jogging pants might as well have issued their own flood warning, they were in such high-water territory.

She screwed up her mouth. “We’re going to have to hit the mall before you leave for your camp next week. Get you some new clothes.”

More money that would have to be spent now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue and was living off her savings. Luckily, the money Cole had paid her for hunting Max down had nicely cushioned her account. She had enough to not only tide her through until October but also to pay for Jakey’s books when he started at UNLV in the fall on a full scholarship.

Buying Jake some more clothes for camp and also a fall wardrobe for college shouldn’t be a problem. But still, she worried. She and Jake had been forced to live frugally in the years since their parents’ deaths in order to pay rent on an apartment in one of Nevada’s best school districts and make ends meet. After Jake got his full scholarship, Pru had thought long and hard before quitting the line in order to pursue what she’d begun to think of as a calling. But she couldn’t be sure how soon she’d be able to acquire more work after she got her license. Cases like the one Cole had thrown her didn’t come along every day. Plus there would be the costs of renting an office and advertising her services around town.

She needed to watch every penny, she thought. But not at her brother’s expense. It wasn’t his fault that he kept growing and growing, or that his new health kick upped their weekly grocery bill, or that his going to college came with extra expenses that even having Jakey continue to live at home wouldn’t alleviate.

“You know what, let’s go to the mall now,” she said, glancing at the clock on her bedroom wall. “Maybe we can get some lunch while we’re out.”

She grabbed her wallet and phone off the desk, slipped them into the back pockets of her bell-bottom jeans and was all set to go. Back in the day before she became Jakey’s guardian, she wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the apartment she used to share with her best friend, Sunny, in anything less than full makeup. Back then, even her most casual looks were chosen more to accentuate her assets than for comfort.

But now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue, she’d pretty much stuck to a wardrobe of her mother’s old seventies-era clothing throughout the summer. Her mother had been a seamstress along with Sunny’s grandmother for the Revue, and she’d taken excellent care of even her most casual clothes. True, seventies and early eighties vintage wasn’t the most glamorous look, but wearing these clothes made Pru feel closer to her mother, even though she was no longer here.

“Actually,” said Jake with an apologetic wince, “I was hoping maybe we could go down to the storage unit and do some upkeep on Dad’s car.”

“Oh...sure,” Pru said, quickly resetting.

About twenty minutes later, they were pulling the cover off their dad’s black ’55 Thunderbird.

Back when they’d been forced to downsize in order to keep Jakey in his school district, Pru had paid for storage space and an additional garage unit for their dad’s Thunderbird. He’d inherited the car from his own father, and Pru had grown to highly value it. Not just because it was a much sought-after collectible, but also because it was Jakey’s unspoken inheritance. Their happy and healthy parents hadn’t been prescient enough to take out a life insurance policy, but her father had left this car behind. And that was why Pru had remained diligent about its upkeep all these years. She made sure that she and Jakey did the necessary work to guarantee the car would stay in good enough shape for Jakey to drive it someday.

However, this particular trip wasn’t really about their father’s Thunderbird. Asking her if they could go down to the garage unit to do some upkeep on their dad’s car was Jakey’s way of telling her he needed to talk. Over the years she’d been his guardian, she’d guided him through first dates, first breakups, major disappointments and lost friendships over the hood of that car.

“So what’s up?” she asked Jakey as he lifted up the Thunderbird’s hood.

“I dunno,” Jakey mumbled. He fiddled with the oil cap for a few seconds, then he said, “It’s stupid.”

“Okay, maybe,” Pru answered. “Tell me anyway.”

More fiddling. “I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up. It’s not going to happen. I know it’s not going to happen.”

Despite her increasing curiosity, Pru casually walked over to get the motor oil from a nearby shelf. “You know I don’t believe in ‘not going to happen.’ Not when it comes to you. I’m your big sis, remember?” She handed the motor oil to him. “Whatever you need, just tell me, and I’ll figure it out. I always do.”

“Yeah, I know you do, but...” He trailed off. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s just finish this and go to the mall.”

He reached to take the motor oil from her, but she held on to it, refusing to let it go.

“No, tell me, Jakey,” she insisted, dropping all pretense of feeling casual about this conversation. “Are you in trouble?” she asked, real alarm flaring up inside her. “Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out, I promise you. Just tell me.”

“No, I’m not in trouble!” he said, rushing to reassure her. “It’s more a good thing...I guess. An opportunity. I...um...got off the wait list to BIT.”

Pru’s eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline, her first thoughts going to Max, who’d received and wasted a degree in marketing from BIT. “BIT? You mean like the Boston Institute of Technology? That BIT?”

“Yeah, that BIT,” Jakey answered with a sheepish smile.

“Oh, my gosh, Jakey! That’s wonderful!” She put aside the motor oil and hugged him. “I didn’t even know you applied there! That wasn’t on the list you showed me!”

“Yeah, I didn’t want you to waste your money,” he said. “So I used some of the money Aunt Sunny gave me for Christmas to pay the application fee, and I got wait-listed. But I guess they must have decided to take me off the wait list because I got an email that I was in two weeks ago.”

“Two weeks ago?” Pru repeated, her mouth dropping open. “And you’re just now telling me?”

Jakey shrugged. “It’s not like I can go. They gave me a financial-aid package, but it’s not a full deal like UNLV. It also doesn’t cover room and board or books or the flight out there. There’s no way you could afford it. It was stupid of me to even apply. It’s just... Dad used to talk about me going there, and I already know I want to become an engineer. I thought I should at least try to get in. For him.”

Pru completely understood. Her parents had both come from poor backgrounds and her father had used education as a means to break through to the middle class, earning his degree and becoming a high school math teacher. He’d carried big hopes and dreams for Jakey not just following in his footsteps but going even further than he did. He would have considered Jakey getting into a big math-and-science school such as BIT a dream come true.

“Dad would have been so proud of you,” she told him, her eyes going soft with fond memories of their father. “You’re going to BIT.”

He shook his head. “It’s too much money.”

“How much?”

“Too much?”

“Just tell me how much, Jakey.”

So he did, and the number made Pru a little breathless. That was over five times what she currently had tucked away in savings for Jakey’s continued education.

But still she said, “You’re going to BIT.”

Jakey shook his head again. “There’s no way you can get that much money together before the school year starts. I was thinking maybe we could ask Aunt Sunny, but Dad was always saying...”

“...remember what ‘make ends meet’ really means,” she finished for him.

Their father had grown up in Vegas and seen too many friends from his old neighborhood succumb to both credit and gambling debts. He hadn’t believed in buying anything on credit, not even cars. Back in the day, Pru hadn’t dared ask her father for money—even when she’d blown through her entire paycheck with more than a week to go until she got paid again. It just wasn’t worth receiving one of their father’s long “neither a beggar nor a borrower be” lectures.

Jakey was right. Besides, there was no way she could pay Sunny that amount back, even if she was willing to borrow as opposed to work for money. She’d have to find another way to get the money. One that wouldn’t involve a huge debt load on her part. But how?

The answer hit her with a sickening thud, crashing all the way down to the bottom of her stomach.

Never say never. That’s what I always say when it comes to money. You never know when you’re going to get hit with a rainy day.

“Pru? Pru?” her brother said.

Pru blinked.

“Are you okay? You just went real quiet.”

“Yeah, sure. Better than okay.” She pasted on a smile for her brother’s sake. “I’m just wondering if they’ll be selling winter coats at the mall yet. You’ll need one for Boston.”

Jakey’s whole face lit up with a goofy smile. “Probably not. We should probably just concentrate on getting a few things for camp and order the coat online.”

“That’s a great idea. Do you...um, mind if I go make a phone call while you finish this up? I’ve got a possible client I need to touch base with. Then we’ll go to the mall.”

“And maybe we can call Aunt Sunny up to celebrate me getting into BIT tonight?” he suggested. “Maybe Cole, too.”

Thanks to their mutual interest in cars, Cole and Jakey had become buddies since the CEO had been with Sunny.

“Sunny’s still teaching her summer class in New York,” Pru answered apologetically. “And Sunny says Cole’s been clocking extra hours, training some new vice president, so that he’ll be good to go before he goes on paternity leave in the fall.”

Thank goodness, she silently added to herself. Even if Sunny and Cole weren’t otherwise occupied, she doubted she could have looked either of them in the eye—not considering what she was about to agree to.

“But we’ll go wherever you want tonight,” she told Jakey. “Just name the place.”

She took out her phone and waved as she walked away from him, as if everything was terrific. Because things were terrific. Her brother would be going to his dream college in Boston. And she’d make it happen, because it was no less than what he’d deserved. He’d lost his parents at a tender age, and he deserved to be happy. He deserved to get everything he’d ever dreamed of, and she would make sure he got it.

Even if she had to make a deal with the devil in order to do so.

* * *

“Looks like there is an amount of money that would get you to fake marry me,” was the first thing Max said after she told him what it would take for her to agree to marry him.

Despite his words, he didn’t seem surprised at all, not when he answered the phone, not even when she’d answered his greeting with a five-figure dollar amount. A chill ran down Pru’s back. It had been easy to get Max on the phone. Easier than she’d thought it would be. The front desk at the Lyon had put her right through as soon as she gave them her name, and Max had picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been expecting her call.

“What changed?” he asked, his voice laced with lazy amusement.

“My brother got into BIT,” Pru answered through gritted teeth.

Max whistled. “My alma mater! Nice! I think I remember maybe going to one or two classes while I was there.”

Yet, he had graduated with a degree, Which he never even bothered to use, Pru thought, shaking her head. Apparently, if your family donated enough money to your college, it was enough to earn even the most shiftless student the degree of his choice.

“Do we have a deal or what?” Pru asked.

It occurred to her then that Max could simply be toying with her from the other side of the phone now. He might have no intention of honoring his brother’s terms. Or even more likely, he could have found someone way more appropriate to fulfill them.

Pru’s shoulders tightened at the thought of Max rescinding his original offer.

“Look, if you’ve already found someone else, just let me know now,” she told Max. “This might be fun and games for you. But it’s my brother’s future we’re talking about, so if you’re not serious—”

“Oh, I’m serious, Prudence,” he said, his voice suddenly a lot darker on the other side of the phone. “You have no idea.”

Another chill ran down Prudence’s back. Again, she got the sense that there was more to Max than what he was showing the world. Something lurking inside him. Something that would come up and bite her if she weren’t careful.

But she had to do this. For her brother. She’d do whatever it took to make his dreams come true.

So she pressed forward and pretended to be much braver than she actually felt. “If you’re really serious, stop toying with me. Do we have a deal or what?”

A long moment of silence passed. “Yes, Pru, we have a deal.”

She swallowed, barely able to believe that he was still open to marrying her, or that she was really going to go along with his scheme. “Okay, then, I guess I should ask when and where and how long?”

She could practically feel Max smiling through the phone. Smiling like a wolf.

Chapter 6

When? Pretty soon as it turned out. Saturday to be exact, just six days before Max Benton’s thirty-fifth birthday. Apparently that was how long Max’s non-Benton family lawyers needed to produce the kind of prenup they were going to need for such an unorthodox arrangement. One that allowed them both to get a quickie divorce under already-agreed-upon terms as soon as his trust fund check cleared the bank.

Pru was initially happy for the short reprieve. But the days seemed to fly by in a haze of dread that didn’t allow her to get in much quality study time. Before she was nearly ready, the day of her wedding had arrived, casting an ominous shadow over everything she did from the moment she woke up.

At least she didn’t have to figure out what to do with Jakey while she was dealing with Max. The morning before their wedding, Pru drove her brother to Henderson for the Focus Leadership Camp. Jakey had been attending the two-week program dedicated to teaching underprivileged youth leadership skills since the age of thirteen, and he’d been looking forward to volunteering as a counselor all summer.

However, as they drove to Henderson, he fiddled with the passenger-door lock on Pru’s tiny hatchback. “Maybe I should stay in Vegas,” he said. “Try to get a job.”

“No,” Pru answered before the sentence was fully out of his mouth. Even if Jakey hadn’t been looking forward to this all summer, she didn’t want him anywhere near Vegas tonight.

After a bunch of back-and-forth, Pru shut down all of Jakey’s arguments by simply dropping him off at his destination. She got his duffel out of the back and just about tossed it at him, then gave him a quick hug and sped off before he could protest any further.

She got home in record time, ate lunch and tried to use the hours before her wedding event to study. But she gave up on that around dinnertime.

How was she supposed to think about anything else, other than the fact that she would soon be marrying Max Benton? Tonight. For money.

Her stomach churned and Pru decided against warming up the takeout she and Jake had ordered the previous night. The only thing worse than marrying Max Benton would be throwing up in the middle of the ceremony.

A knock sounded on the door about an hour before she’d planned to leave to meet up with Max at the Benton.

She frowned. The complex was gated and no one was supposed to be able to get in unless she buzzed them through.

But sure enough, there was a large Latino man in her doorway. One she recognized as Cole’s driver.

“Tomas?” she said, opening the door. “What are you doing here?”

He gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry to bother you. Mr. Max must not have told you I was coming.”

Actually, she hadn’t heard from Mr. Max, other than an email informing her they’d be getting married at the Benton at the rather late hour of 10:00 p.m. The lack of communication had been just one of the reasons she’d been so jumpy over the past few days, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d be a no-show since she couldn’t be sure if he was even in town.

This could all be some kind of elaborate joke on his part, she’d thought a few times over the course of the past few gloomy days. An act of revenge for playing him for a fool when she’d delivered his brother’s envelope. Pru had sent her brother to school with rich kids long enough to know they could be cruel, especially to those who didn’t have the resources to defend themselves.

But if Tomas was any indication, Max was not only in town, but availing himself of Cole’s driver.

“He shouldn’t have bothered you,” Pru said, embarrassed to have someone she knew and liked entangled in all of this. “I could have driven myself.”

“No bother at all,” Tomas answered. “Besides, he wanted to make sure you got your wedding outfit in time to change before we got to the Benton.”

He held up a dress bag.

And Pru’s heart sank, knowing on instinct that the wedding dress Max had chosen for her was probably nothing like the simple white crochet dress she’d been planning to wear for their farce of a wedding.

Fifteen minutes later, she stared at herself in the mirror, completely aghast. Apparently, Max liked vintage, too. In fact, he had sent over one of the Benton Revue’s original showgirl costumes, a scoop-neck top and bottom, covered in silver trim, all held together by a netted stocking.

It came with a huge white feather headdress and matching white bustle, which thankfully fanned over and completely covered her backside. And the rhinestones and silver trimming shone so bright, the costume might well have been mistaken for white. But other than that, it looked nothing remotely like a wedding dress.

After a full moment of staring at her image in horror, she decided to just throw a long cardigan over the ostentatious number and leave before she could think too hard about what she was doing. She comforted herself with the fact that the old-timey costumes didn’t expose nearly as much skin as the current crop of Benton Revue getups.

She and Sunny had never been among the girls who danced topless, but their barely there bikinis, dripping with fake jewels, hadn’t been designed to leave much to the tourists’ imaginations.

Still, there was a difference between dancing in a revue with two dozen other girls and walking across the lobby of the Benton in an old showgirl costume beside Tomas. The driver’s large body blocked out a lot of the stares, but not nearly all of them, and Pru’s cheeks burned as they made their way through the Benton.

She was a little surprised when Tomas passed by the bank of elevators in the main lobby. Since Benton Girls got a steep discount, she’d been to quite a few ceremonies at the Benton and knew that most of their wedding salons were upstairs.

But Tomas kept on going, past more staring tourists and hotel employees. So she guessed that meant they would be getting married in the Benton ballroom, which she supposed wasn’t that big of a surprise since that was where Sunny and Cole had gotten married. Still, the thought of getting married in the same place as her best friend felt a bit like sacrilege. Sunny and Cole had married for love, whereas she and Max were doing this for much, much different reasons. She whispered a silent apology to her best friend, hoping Sunny wouldn’t hold this against her after it was all said and done.

But when Tomas finally stopped walking, it was in front of the towering double doors to the Benton’s main nightclub. This particular nightclub was known as one of Vegas’s premiere hotspots. It was the place to go Thursday through Saturday night if you wanted to play a game of Spot the Celebrity. And like many clubs in Vegas, it had a one-word title. In this case, one meant to convey a sense of decadent luxury and wicked-good times.

MAX was written in huge red letters across the top of the doors.

Pru’s heart sank. She used to come here all the time before her parents died, but not once after she’d taken over as Jakey’s guardian. She remembered now the other showgirls talking about how the club had been closed for a much-needed update and then reopened under a brand-new name.

Apparently, that brand-new name had been Max. Pru let go an irritated sigh. Of course this was where Max had decided to hold their wedding ceremony.

“Son of a...” Pru said, covering her heavily made-up eyes with one hand.

When she uncovered them, she found Tomas looking down at her sympathetically. “You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked her.

No, she wasn’t. She definitely, definitely wasn’t ready for any of this.

But she took off her cardigan and handed it to Tomas anyway.

* * *

The next morning Pru woke inside a cloud of white. Everything was white and soft, and for a moment she thought she might have gone to heaven.

But then she lifted her head and realized that though nearly everything in the room was white, this was not heaven. No, definitely not heaven, she thought squinting against the too-bright sun streaming through two wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. After her eyes adjusted, she realized she was in a hotel room, one she vaguely recognized from pictures she’d seen in brochures as one of the Benton’s panoramic corner suites.

Her head was throbbing, her mouth dry to the bone from lack of hydration. And, she noticed the bed wasn’t all white. There was brown and black makeup all over her pillow. She’d slept in her makeup? That was so bad for your skin. Like most showgirls, she never did that. She sat up in bed, wondering what the heck had happened to her last night only to realize that she wasn’t wearing anything.

That’s when memories from the previous night came bursting back through all the cotton wool inside her head.

Her entering the nightclub to the loud, raucous cheers of what had to be at least a thousand of Max’s “closest friends.”

The flash of paparazzi taking pictures as she made her way over to Max, who was standing on top of the stage normally reserved for DJs and wearing a skinny white tuxedo. Him pulling her up to join him with a devilish grin.

Max handing her a shot glass with some kind of blue liquid inside as he whispered in her ear, “This is how Max Benton would get married, so play along, Prudence.”

Her taking the shot, actually grateful for it, because she knew she would need to be severely altered to go through with this.

The images flashed by quicker after that. Her and Max signing the official prenup in front of the cheering crowd. Her and Max taking a shot for every vow exchanged.

There had been dancing after that. A lot of it, with Max in the middle of the throbbing throng. She remembered laughing with him, and feeling free. Freer than she had in a very long time.

But what had happened after that? She sat up and frantically looked around, trying to figure out how she’d gone from dancing with Max Benton to waking up in one of the bridal suites.

“I see you’re finally awake.”

She turned to see Max walking into the room, looking fresh as a daisy, his freshly washed black hair in a stubby knot on top of his head. Wearing nothing but a towel...and a titanium wedding ring on his left hand.

Despite the circumstances, Pru couldn’t help but stare. Max Benton, as it turned out, didn’t spend all his time in the club. He must have also been clocking some serious hours at the gym, too, because he was cut from head to toe with lean muscles. The sight of his nearly naked body was so impressive that Pru couldn’t take her eyes off it for a long entranced second before it occurred to her why he was staring back with an equally impressed look on his face.