The Heiress's 2-Week Affair

“Ring?” Natalie repeated, stunned. She remembered what Clive had said about her father’s distress because the ring was missing. Candace was dead. Didn’t that trump a missing ring? Didn’t he care? “Is that what you’re concerned about?” she cried, struggling to keep her temper under control. “The damn ring?”

He grew more upset in the face of her reaction. “Natalie, please understand, of course I’m devastated about Candace, but that ring…that ring can mean the difference between our family’s financial collapse and success.”

How could he even think about money at a time like this? “What are you talking about?”

Harold nervously ran his tongue along his dry lips. “I made some shaky investments,” he confessed. “I’m spread rather thin right now, and I had to borrow some money from—” He paused for a moment before finally blurting out a name. “The Schaffer family.”

He’d been desperate at the time; there was no other explanation for his doing what he’d done. He didn’t have his father’s flair for making money, so he’d turned to a family known to have underworld connections. Men who broke legs as easily as matchsticks and with less thought. He wouldn’t put it past Matt Schaffer to try to ruin him.

His eyes grew bright. “Matt Schaffer’s the one who has the ring. I’d bet my life on it,” he concluded heatedly.

She hadn’t thought she’d ever hear that name again. “Matt Schaffer’s in California,” she heard herself saying hoarsely.

And then her father blew her world apart by saying, “No, he’s not. He’s right here in Vegas. Working for Luke Montgomery. Or at least that’s the story he gives out.”

Matt Schaffer.

Here. In Vegas.

Natalie suddenly felt as if the ground beneath her feet had turned to quicksand.

Chapter 3

Harold continued to talk, but Natalie could no longer make out the words.

Her father’s voice became a buzzing sound in the background as she grappled with the information he’d just carelessly flung out at her. Coming on the heels of Candace’s murder, learning that Matt Schaffer was now living back in Vegas was almost too much for her to process. Or bear.

But she had to, Natalie told herself fiercely. What choice did she have? There was no one around to run interference for her, no one to try to smooth out the choppy waters so she could navigate them without going under and drowning.

All that was on her shoulders. But then, she’d more or less been on her own for the last eight years.

Natalie raised her chin proudly. Okay, she’d deal with Matt being here in Vegas. Deal with having to see him.

But despite the way things had ended between them, she knew Matt Schaffer would never kill anyone. If he had the ring in his possession, then he’d gotten a hold of it while Candace was still alive. She’d make book on it.

You also thought he’d never leave you, remember? Called that one wrong, didn’t you? her annoying little voice taunted.

Still, just because the man didn’t have the guts to commit and lacked the backbone to tell her so face-to-face didn’t mean he would kill someone over a ring no matter how valuable it was. He wasn’t a killer or a thief, if she discounted his stealing her heart.

“Matt wouldn’t kill Candace,” she told her father firmly.

Her father looked like a cornered man desperately fighting to survive. He vacillated, not sure of anything anymore.

“Maybe not, but someone in his family would.” Everyone knew that the Schaffers had underworld ties, connections to people who did things that could not bear scrutiny. He grasped her hand as if that would make her understand better. “I owe them, Natalie. I owe them.” Harold struggled to keep his voice from cracking. “The Schaffers know people. And those people,” he insisted, “have killed for pocket change.”

She glared at him. “Then why would you have knowingly gotten mixed up with them?” she demanded.

It made no sense to her. There were lending institutions. Yes, money was hard to come by, but Harold Rothchild was a reputable businessman with a great deal of collateral. Going to a loan shark, if that was indeed what he’d done, was like agreeing to play Russian roulette with not one but half the chambers loaded with bullets.

“Because…” He began to explain, then stopped abruptly. “Oh, it doesn’t matter why. I did, and now Candace is dead and the ring’s gone.”

Her father seemed to have forgotten one very important element in this horrible tale. So typical of him, she thought.

“Your nephews are fine, thanks for asking,” she told him sarcastically. She’d checked on the boys on her way over here. She’d stopped by the nanny’s sister’s home and asked Amelia to tell her in her own words what she’d seen. She had to wait until the young woman stopped throwing up. The details were sketchy, the nanny’s reaction honest. She’d asked the young woman to watch the boys until she got back to her.

“The boys.” Harold stared at her for a moment, a lost look in his eyes. And then he seemed to come to. “Where are they?”

“I left them with their nanny.” She rattled off the address. It was far off the beaten path of both the casinos and the better residential areas, but it was still a decentenough neighborhood, thanks to a renovation effort on the part of the city.

“I’ll send a car for them,” Harold said, thinking out loud.

“Good idea.”

She didn’t mean that to sound as caustic as it did. But she was on edge. The toughest part of her day was still ahead of her. She was going to have to go and interface with the one man she didn’t want to ever see again.

Some days it just didn’t pay to get up out of bed, Natalie thought wearily.

About to say goodbye, something in her father’s expression stopped her. She knew it would drive her crazy for the rest of the day if she didn’t ask. “Is there something else?” she wanted to know. “You look like you want to tell me something.”

“No.” Denial was always his first choice, but then Harold thought better of it just as his daughter began to leave. “There was a note.”

Natalie turned around. What was he talking about? And why hadn’t he said anything when she’d first come in? “A note?”

He nodded his head. “I didn’t understand what it meant until you told me that Candace was dead.” He sounded breathless as he said, “We’re all in danger. The curse is real.”

Natalie looked at her father as if he’d lost his mind. It took considerable effort to remain patient. “You’re talking in riddles, Dad. Start at the beginning. What note?”

Rather than continue trying to explain, Harold took a folded piece of paper out of the pocket of his robe and handed it to her. She noticed that his hand shook a little.

“This was in the mailbox this morning. Clive found it when he went to put in the outgoing mail.”

Using her handkerchief, Natalie took the note from him and carefully unfolded it. She didn’t want to get any more fingerprints on it than there already were.

There was a single line typed in the middle of the page: One down, many to go.

The words had been typed by a laser printer, and she was willing to bet a year’s salary that once the LVPD lab tech finished analyzing it, he would find nothing remarkable about the paper or the printer that had been used.

“We’re all in danger, Natalie,” her father repeated insistently.

She folded the note. Leaving it within the folds of her handkerchief, she placed it in her purse. She didn’t have time to hold her father’s hand—she had a murderer to track down.

“Try to think positive for once, Dad,” she advised crisply. “I’ll get back to you when I have more information,” she said by way of parting.

She left him the way she found him, sitting on the terrace, staring off into space.

Though she did her best to talk herself out of it, Natalie could feel the adrenaline rush through her veins as she left the Rothchild grounds and made her way to The Janus.

It was coming in waves, she realized, a little like when she knew there was going to be a showdown. One that might leave her wounded.

There were few things in her life that Natalie had believed to be a certainty, but one of them was that she’d thought she would never see Matt Schaffer again. Eight years ago he’d vanished out of her life, leaving behind a one-line note tucked under a pillow that had grown cold. All the note had said was: I’m sorry, but this just isn’t going to work.

That was it. No explanation, no real indication of remorse, no mention of the possibility that whatever it was that was taking him away from her could, in time, be resolved. The note had been as clinical, as removed and compassionless as an eviction notice, which, in effect, it was, she thought as she navigated through the morning traffic. Matt had written the note to evict her from his life.

She’d spent the next two weeks crying, breaking down without warning as she walked down the street, talked on the phone or sat, staring at a meal she couldn’t bring herself to eat.

Candace, she remembered with a bittersweet pang, had tried to get her to go clubbing in order to get her to forget about Matt.

She’d turned her twin down, but she did get her act together. If Matt didn’t think enough of their relationship to try to get in contact with her, to try to make her understand why he’d changed so radically from lover to stranger, then the hell with him. He was dead to her, she resolved. And he’d remained that way.

Until twenty minutes ago.

The adrenaline in her veins kept mounting.

Natalie focused on her driving. Vegas in the daylight wasn’t nearly as alluring as it was after dark. Like an aging woman best seen in soft lighting, Vegas’s imperfections were all visible in the daylight. Natalie supposed that was why people like her sister didn’t like to get up until well past noon. They lived for the night.

Except that Candace could no longer do that.

The thought brought a fresh, sharp ache with it.

“Damn it, Candy, what a waste,” Natalie murmured under her breath, calling her sister by the nickname she hadn’t used in years. “What an awful, awful waste.”

Reaching her destination, she pulled up before The Janus. As she did so, Natalie saw one of the three valets currently on duty make a beeline for her vehicle.

The lanky young man was quick to hide the frown that had begun to curl his lips.

He was undoubtedly used to parking a higher class of vehicle, Natalie thought. Unlike her twin, she was determined not to touch any of the family fortune or the trust fund that her grandfather had set aside for them on the day they were born. Instead, she lived on and spent only what she earned. Perforce, that limited her lifestyle. The salary of an LVPD detective didn’t stretch very far, restricting her to the basic necessities of life. Consequently, her automobile was a six-year-old Honda Accord, but it proved to be more reliable than most of the people she knew.

“Welcome to The Janus,” the young attendant said cheerfully as he opened the driver’s side door for her with a flourish.

“We’ll see,” she replied solemnly.

As he pulled away with her car, Natalie looked up at the casino’s logo. Janus was the Roman god with two faces, one pointed toward the past, the other facing the future. It struck her as rather ironic, given what she was doing here, seeking out someone from her past in order to get answers so that the future could be settled.

The moment she entered the casino, the Vegas phenomena took hold.

It was like stepping into a world where time did not matter or even make an appearance. Though there were cameras everywhere, capturing and time-stamping every movement that was made by the casino’s guests, there were no clocks displayed throughout the actual casino, no measurement of time passing in any form. All there was was a sense of “now.”

The feeling of immortality was created out of this sort of fabric, Natalie thought.

Because, in her experience, she’d discovered that bartenders knew the inner workings of any establishment they worked for better than anyone else, Natalie made her way to the first bar she came across.

The bartender in attendance was a gregarious man who looked to be in his early forties. He had premature gray hair and a quick, sexy smile, which was probably one of the main reasons he’d been hired. That, and his dexterity when it came to mixing drinks. She noted that he had fast hands.

His name tag identified him as Kevin.

Moving to her end of the bar, Kevin asked, “What’ll it be, pretty lady?”

Slipping her hand between the bottom of the glass and the bar, Natalie stopped him from placing it down. “Information.” She saw a dubious look cross his brow. To counter that, she took out her badge. Granted she wasn’t here in an official capacity, but “Kevin” didn’t need to know that. “Were you on duty last night?”

Because there was no one else at the bar seeking his services, Kevin began to wipe the gleaming black surface, massaging it slowly. “You mean during the gala?”

“Yes.”

The smile gracing his lips was a satisfied one. Last night had obviously been profitable for him, she figured. “I caught an extra shift.”

She took out Candace’s photograph and carefully placed it on the bar, turning it around so that he could look at it head-on. “Did you happen to see this woman there?”

The bartender glanced at the picture. Mild interest turned to recognition. “You mean Candace Rothchild? Yeah, she was here, loud and brassy as always. But not for long,” he added, looking rather disappointed. There was always a circus when Candace was around, Natalie thought. People came along for the entertainment. “The boss and she had at it, and then he had Schaffer ‘escort’ her out.”

She latched on to the first part of his statement. “They argued?”

“Yeah.”

“About?”

He shook his head. “Couldn’t tell you. Too far away for anything but body language,” he confessed.

“And Schaffer?” she repeated.

“He got her to leave.”

She leaned in over the bar. “Tell me about him.”

“Don’t know much,” the bartender admitted. “Just that his name’s Matt Schaffer, and he’s Montgomery’s head of security for the casino. Boss flew him in from L.A., where he’s head of security for Montgomery Enterprises.”

There was no avoiding it, she thought darkly. She was going to have to talk to Matt. The thought left her cold. “Do you know where I can find him right now?”

Kevin glanced at his watch. “He should be in his office.”

She rarely frequented casinos, and when she did, they weren’t ones that belonged to her father’s rivals. Luke Montgomery had made no secret that he wanted to be the King of Vegas, a position that her father had once aspired to.

“And his office would be—?” She waited for the bartender to enlighten her.

“On the second floor, toward the rear.” He pointed her in the right direction.

Taking out a twenty, she placed it on the bar. “Thanks for your help.”

In a practiced, fluid motion, Kevin slipped the bill into his vest pocket. “Any time, lovely lady,” he called after her. “Any time.”

She debated going up the stairs, then decided on the elevator. The car that took her up to the second floor was empty. Natalie stepped out of the elevator, looked around to get her bearings and then walked toward the rear of the floor.

The office where the monitors and the people who watched them were housed was encased in dark, tinted glass walls. It gave her an opportunity to scan the room and its occupants before she entered.

None of them were Matt. But then, as head of security, he’d probably have his own area, she thought, most likely removed from the others.

Into the Valley of Death rode the six hundred, she silently recited, digging deep for a line from a poem by Tennyson. Wrapping her hand around the brass handle, she opened one of the glass doors and walked in.

The woman whose desk was closest to the door looked up and then began to cross to her. “I’m sorry, but you can’t come in here. This is a restricted area.”

Natalie already had her ID in her hand and held it up. “I’m looking for Matt Schaffer,” she told the woman.

God, even saying his name made her mouth go dry. She was supposed to be over him, had moved on with her life. What happened?

The woman began to answer her. “He’s—”

“Right here.”

The deep voice came from behind her. Natalie felt every single nerve ending go on tactical alert at the same moment that all the hairs at the back of her neck stood up.

Despite the fact that it had been eight years, she would have recognized his voice anywhere.

“What can I…do for you?” The break in the question came because she turned around in the middle of his inquiry.

Natalie.

For a fraction of a heartbeat, Matt Schaffer stopped breathing. He’d known that, most likely, it would be just a matter of time before their paths crossed. Knew when he had reluctantly agreed to Luke Montgomery’s proposition that he transfer to Vegas to oversee security at The Janus because there’d been a problem with the last man who’d been in charge. His only condition had been that the transfer be temporary, lasting only until someone reliable could be found to fill the slot.

If luck had been with him, he might have been able to avoid this.

But deep down in his bones, he’d known all along that this was destined to happen. Maybe even unconsciously he’d actually wished that it would. Now that it had, that same old feeling he’d always had around Natalie slipped over him.

If anything, Natalie had gotten more beautiful, not less. Her straight brown hair was still lustrous, still silky, and her eyes were that incredible shade of blue that could pull him in without warning. Maturity sat well on her, like a rosebud that had bloomed into a breathtaking flower. He felt that old magic, that crackle of chemistry humming between them.

The reasons he had walked away from her all those years ago were still valid, still in play. Leaving hadn’t been a mistake. He’d done it for her, but God, he’d missed her all these years. So much so that it almost hurt to look at her. To look at her and realize all that he had missed. All that he would continue to miss, because nothing had changed.

“Natalie.” He said her name warmly.

She raised her chin in that way he’d always found both endearing and amusing. More than once he’d wanted to give in to impulse and just nibble on it. He’d refrained, knowing the action would have earned him an indignant right cross because when she raised her chin like that, she wanted to be taken seriously. It was her tell, he thought, a sign that gamblers looked for in other gamblers because it was used to clue them in on what was to come next.

“Hello, Matt.” Her voice was formal, devoid of any emotion, her body almost rigid. He could remember how fluid she felt in his arms. It made him ache. “It’s been a long time.”

And he’d been acutely aware of every moment of that passage of time without her. More than once he had thought about the way things could have been, if he had only been able to go back and change things, be someone different…

But he’d always come to the same conclusion—that it was useless to waste time wishing. Things were the way they were and that was that.

“Yes, it has,” he agreed quietly. “What can I do for you?”

She made it cut and dried. All she wanted was to get this over with. “You can answer some questions and give me access to all of last night’s surveillance tapes.”

Whatever he was expecting, it wasn’t this. “I don’t understand—”

It was then that Natalie took out her badge again and held it up for him to look at. When they’d last been together, she’d just graduated college. Being a policewoman hadn’t even entered her mind. All she wanted to do was spend her days and nights loving Matt. Just showed how naive and stupid the very young could be, she thought cynically.

“Candace Rothchild was here last night,” she told him crisply.

“Yes, she was.” Was this about his making her sister leave?

“She was also found dead in her condo early this morning. Time of death was sometime last night.”

He stared at her, trying to process what she was telling him. “Your sister’s dead?” he asked incredulously.

“Yes.” The answer came out in a hiss between her teeth. Their paths hardly ever intersected anymore, but it was hard imagining a world without Candace in it. There’d be no more promises to make in fleeting moments of remorse only to break again the very next day. No more publicity-fraught attempts at trying to be a better mother to Mick and David. All that was gone now.

“I’m sorry for your loss, Natalie.”

“Thanks.” The single word was said without any emotion.

She saw the look of concern that came over his face. He’d become an accomplished actor since she’d last seen him, she thought cynically. One would have even thought he cared—except that she knew better. The only one Matt cared about was himself.

“Let’s go to my office,” he said in a low voice, turning on his heel to lead the way.

She had no choice but to follow.

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