Vegas, Baby

* * *

“What did you do?” Rick screamed when she came back to the Nora Benton theater about an hour later. He was on the phone, but that didn’t stop him from catching Sunny up in a bear hug. “Sunny’s here. I’ve got to go, but I’ll see you for tonight’s show. Six p.m. sharp,” he yelled into the phone to whoever he had been speaking to.

When he hung up he looked at Sunny as if she were made of magic. “Cole Benton’s secretary called a few minutes ago. She said the show was back on for at least another three months. How did you do it?”

Sunny shook her head, feeling sick to her stomach. “It’s a long story,” she said. “And you’ve probably got a lot of calls to make if you want to make the six o’clock call time. Maybe I can help you with that?”

“Oh, sweetie, would you?” Rick said, handing her the second sheet of the dancers’ contact info list. “You truly are an angel. One of my best dancers and you got Benton to put the show back on. I still can’t believe it.”

“Actually, only one of those things are true now,” Sunny said with a grimace. “I can’t be one of your dancers anymore.”

“What!” Rick responded to her announcement. His voice could probably be heard all the way on the pit floor, which only made Sunny more reluctant to go on. This was going to be way harder than quitting her cocktail waitress job, but she stuck to the script Cole had given her, even if it made her feel guilty as hell for outright lying to her stage dad.

“Well, Mr. Benton—ah, I mean Cole—said that he’d bring the show back, but he’d need someone to help him with his grandmother, Nora, and he offered me the job.”

“So you’re going to be Nora Benton’s caretaker now?” Rick asked.

“No, not exactly. Technically, I’ll be her assistant. I’ll be accompanying her to the show every month, helping her plan her August charity ball. Stuff like that.”

“Why does Nora Benton suddenly need an assistant?” Rick asked. “She has more connections in Vegas than pretty much anybody else on the planet, and she’s a total control freak. She’s never needed any assistance before. What’s changed...”

Rick’s voice trailed off, then his eyes widened. “But The Benton Group doesn’t allow its employees to date. Cole Benton wants into your pants! That’s why he agreed to put the show back on, but made you take a job as his grandmother’s assistant. He’s into you!”

Sunny felt her cheeks warm for the third time in as many hours. Seriously, she was beginning to long for the days when the most embarrassing thing she did was wear a rhinestone bikini every night on stage. “I’m sure that’s not it,” she said, trying to keep her voice as demure as possible, despite knowing that was exactly what Cole Benton wanted people to believe, and that Rick was already playing right into his made-up story of a whirlwind romance.

“And I’m sure it is,” Rick said. “But I’m not going to complain. You got the show back on, so I’m happy. Good job, Sunny!”

“Um...thank you, I guess,” Sunny said, trying to decide whether she should be offended that Rick was more than willing to pimp her out to what he believed to be a predatory new boss if it kept The Revue going.

Rick soon redeemed himself with a sad look. “But baby girl, I have no idea how I’m going to replace you. I mean who’s going calm the dancers down enough to go onstage after I finish screaming at them?”

Sunny threw him a surprised look. “You knew I was doing that?”

“Of course I did,” Rick said. “I’m like God, I know everything that goes on in my backstage. But seriously, I’m going to need a name. I’ve got a doozy of a rant I’ve been writing out in my head for weeks, and I’m pretty sure there’s going to be tears from some of the newbies. Do you think Pru can handle backstage mama duties?”

Sunny laughed. “I think she’s ready, I really do.”

“She better be!”

Sunny had to give her incorrigible boss a warm hug then. “I’m going to miss you so much, Rick,” she said, meaning it.

“Me, too, sweetheart.” Then he leaned back, and held his finger up. “Go take one for the team with Cole Benton, but be careful with that one. He’s good lookin’, but he’s a shark. Don’t let your heart get involved or he’ll eat you alive.”

A chill ran down Sunny’s spine. She had the feeling she should be taking Rick’s warning seriously, even though she was the one who’d agreed to help out Cole.

Chapter 6

On Tuesday morning Sunny had two jobs. By Tuesday afternoon, she only had one...and no idea what to do with herself. Her new job was pretty much fake, a cover story to get around The Benton Group’s nonfraternization policy, which would hopefully help sell their whirlwind romance. Though Cole Benton didn’t exactly strike her as a whirlwind-romance type of guy. Their first date wasn’t scheduled until Sunday night, some business dinner, which she didn’t even have to shop for, because Cole’s secretary had emailed that she’d be sending over a dress for the event. So she had a lot of time on her hands. A lot of time.

The first few days, she spent deep cleaning her entire apartment and setting up a bunch of traps for the rat who’d stolen her meal replacement bar. There were no signs of him in the cabinets, thank goodness, but she doubted she’d seen the last of him. Quite frankly her apartment was a dump, chosen shortly after she and Pru had given up their lease due to Pru’s parents dying in a car accident and her having to take over as her high-school-aged brother’s only guardian. Sunny’s apartment was cramped and in a questionable neighborhood, but it was also cheap and right on a major bus route, so she never had any trouble getting to work. The good had outweighed the bad—until her furry roommate had showed up.

After that it hadn’t been worth the amount of sleep she’d lost, because she kept jerking awake, thinking she heard the quick movement of tiny feet inside her walls.

By the time Saturday night rolled around, Sunny was a wreck, still tired, and bored on top of it. But for the first Saturday night in her working life, she had no boss to report to, no dances to perform or drinks to serve, no friends to go out with since they all were Benton Girls performers—nothing to do but twiddle her thumbs.

She’d already read every book in her apartment, and choreographing a whole new routine for her Sunday girls’ dance class at the Balzar Community Center had only occupied her time for a few hours. By five, she was nearly out of her mind with boredom, and thinking she should use some of her hard saved money to buy a TV. Something she’d never bothered with before, because she was usually too exhausted to do much more than fall into bed when she got home from either of her jobs.

People call New York the city that never sleeps, but really it was Vegas that never shut down, not even for national holidays, not for one single neon weekend. There was always work to do in Vegas. But here she was now with nothing to do.

Just then her doorbell rang, and she was more than a little surprised to see who was standing on the other side of the door when she opened it.

Before she could even work up a pleasant hello, Cole Benton held up a manila envelope. “Your confidentiality agreement,” he said. He looked very, very annoyed. Even though he was the one who had shown up at her front door unannounced.

“You want me to sign a contract?” she asked, blinking as she tried to catch up.

“Yes,” he answered, then he pushed past her, barging into her apartment without invitation.

“Please come right on in,” she said, closing the door behind him.

He either didn’t pick up on her sarcasm or didn’t care. He looked around the apartment for a few seconds, then he pulled the contract out of the envelope. “Sign there and there. It’s pretty standard. You won’t say anything about any of this to anyone, including Nora.”

Sunny wondered if she’d ever get used to hearing him call his grandmother by her first name. She knew her own grandma wouldn’t have put up with that even for a second. But she had the feeling The Third—she meant, Cole—probably got away with a lot of behavior most people couldn’t.

She signed on the line above her printed name, “You couldn’t have just mailed this to me?” she asked. “I thought we weren’t supposed to start pretending to date until tomorrow night...”

She trailed off when she saw that Cole wasn’t listening, instead his phone was to his ear.

“What time do you think you can have the moving truck meet us here?”

“Wait, why is a moving truck coming here?” she demanded.

Cole kept talking as though she hadn’t said anything. “Couple of hours? Great.” He then frowned at something the person on the other side of the phone had said. “I don’t know. I’ll ask her.”

He lowered the phone and glanced at Sunny. “Do you want the movers to pack you up? Or do you want to do that yourself?”

Sunny screwed up her face. “What? When did I agree to move?”

Cole put the phone back up to his ear. “She’s not sure. Just tell whoever you get to be ready for an either-or situation. I’ll touch base later. Thanks.”

As soon as he hung, she informed him, “I’m not moving to...” She realized she had no idea where he was trying to make her go, and finished with a tepid, “Wherever you’re trying to make me move.”

Cole picked up the signed contract and flipped through it before turning the found page around and pointing to a paragraph. Sunny read it. Something about her agreeing not to do or say anything that would cast him in the bad light.

“How is living in my own apartment casting you in a bad light?” she asked.

He shook his head. “No man of my standing would ever let his girlfriend live in a dump like this.”

“It’s not that bad,” Sunny argued, her voice sounding a little weak even to her own ears, as she tried to keep her eyes from straying over to the water stains on the walls.

“It’s a dump,” he repeated. “And judging from the deal I saw going down in the nearby stairwell, probably not at all safe. You move in with me until my assistant can set you up in a decent apartment.”

Sunny’s first thought was to argue with him. No one told her what to do or where to live.

But then the image of the rat with her protein bar in its mouth floated across her mind. She could still hear distinctly the high-pitched click-suck of its teeth.

“Exactly where would this apartment be?” she asked. “It would have to be something I could afford on my own.”

“That’s something you can discuss with Agnes when the time comes,” he said, sounding brusque and bored with this whole line of conversation.

Sunny tried not to bristle. She supposed she should just be grateful he hadn’t decided to make a big deal of her easy acquiescence. “I... Um. Don’t really need a moving truck,” she mumbled. “Everything I have fits easily into two suitcases. I’ve been getting rid of a bunch of things before I go to New York.”

He brought out his phone and started texting. “All right, I’ll have Agnes call off the moving truck. Pack up and I’ll drive you back to my place.”

“You don’t have to drive me—”

He cut her off with another disapproving stare. “If your car is anything like your apartment, I think I do.”

She thought of the bus, which had served her well over the year she’d been living there. “The bus gets the job done,” she said, feeling the need to defend Las Vegas’s transit system.

Cole didn’t even look up from his smartphone. “I’m telling Agnes to pull out one of the cars from my garage. You can probably handle the Mercedes.”

“Really, you don’t have to—”

Cole crossed his arms across his chest. “So is the plan to keep me waiting instead of packing your bags quickly?”

Sunny pursed her lips. Cole was acting as if everything he was commanding was the most logical thing ever, but she wasn’t a doormat.

“You know you’ve got me thinking...” she said.

His eyes narrowed, but he remained quiet, waiting for her to go on. He seemed to have two modes of communicating, Sunny noted to himself. Either issuing commands or using silence in a way that felt as though he were carefully wielding a weapon.

She continued on, anyway, even further convinced by his weaponized silence that she should try to gain some sort of upper hand. “You’re trying to sell us as a couple, and that’s why you want me in an apartment I probably couldn’t afford on my own and driving a nicer car than I would buy if I had one. Obviously, you’re used to dating a certain type, and I’m not it.”

“No, you’re not my usual type,” he agreed. However, a heat sprung up in his eyes when he added, “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever dated. But I don’t think I’m going to have any problems convincing others that I’d be more than willing to take you on as a lover.”

His clipped words actually felt like a compliment. A rather sexy one, but Sunny forced herself to stay on her original course. “That’s great,” she said. “But the problem is you’re not my type, either. The people in my circle—including Nora—might find it hard to believe I’m really with you. Like not just a fling, but seriously into you with the possibility of getting married.”

The heat drained out of his gaze. “What exactly is your type, Sunny?” he asked and she felt a chill go up her back.

“Well, my last serious boyfriend ran a homeless shelter. We met while he was asking people to sign up to volunteer there, outside of Trader Joe’s.”

Cole crooked his head, like the whole idea of actually doing good in the world was a completely foreign concept to him.

Maybe it was, Sunny thought unkindly, wondering, not for the first time how she’d ever gotten herself into this mess.

“You’re saying you’d prefer that I’d be more charitable,” Cole concluded. “Fine. Tell me what charity you like, and I’ll have Agnes make a donation.”

She gave him a leveled look. “I was actually thinking more charitable, like doing. Like if people saw us doing charitable things together, maybe they wouldn’t have such a hard time buying my story.”

Cole crinkled his forehead. “So you want us to spend time together, helping people. Fine, I can do that? Tell me how.”

“I guess you could come with me to my community dance class tomorrow. It’s all girls, and we’re always looking for guys to help us with lifts.”

“What time?”

“Seven—I know that’s early. But a lot of my girls are Catholic, and have to be done in time for second Mass at St. Peter’s.”

Cole brought his phone back out and started typing. “It’s not early for me. I’ll have Agnes clear my schedule.”

Now it was her turn to shake her head. “You work on Sunday mornings, too?”

“Of course I do,” he answered, like she was the odd one because she didn’t.