Love's Gamble (8 page)

Gus Martinez stood at the bottom of the lodge’s main staircase, with one hand wrapped around a suitcase Max recognized from New Orleans, partly because its owner was close by. Pru, dressed in a green polo top and hot pants, smiled up at Gus as they talked near the stairs.

Max clenched his back teeth. Apparently his wife had returned from Vegas, and Gus had taken it upon himself to welcome her back to the Sinclair Lodge.

Chapter 10

T
here was a very handsome man standing outside the Sinclair Lodge doors when Pru pulled up in Max’s yellow Ferrari. He had a gloomy look on his face and what looked like a lollipop lodged into the side of his mouth.

She immediately recognized him as Gustavo Martinez, Cole’s new VP hire, but of course, she wasn’t supposed to know that. So when she got out of the car, she just gave him a friendly wave before heading toward the back of the Ferrari to retrieve her bag.

He, however, seemed to have no such qualms about revealing that he already knew who she was. “Prudence Washington,” he called around the lollipop as he jogged over.

Then he lifted her bag out of the trunk before she could and said, “How’s it going?”

Despite the lollipop, he was outrageously good-looking, she noted with the distant assessment of an investigator doing her job. He also had a very charming Southern accent. So down-home, it made her feel as if they already knew each other.

“I’m great...um...” She trailed off, so that he’d supply his name and she wouldn’t have to keep on pretending she didn’t know it.

“Gustavo Martinez, but everybody calls me Gus.” He shifted her suitcase to his left hand, so that he could extend his right one for a shake.

“Former smoker?” she asked him as they made their way toward the lodge’s front doors.

“How did you know?” he asked, his head tilting with surprise.

She pointed to his lollipop. “A few of the girls on the line used lollipops to tide them over until their next cigarette.”

Gus removed the lollipop and chucked it in the trash can to the right of the doors. “Well, I’ve quit for good. Mostly I just use them for when I want to smoke but can’t.”

Pru grimaced with empathy. “First meeting that bad?”

He answered with a wry laugh. “And long. It was also my first time presenting—I started at the Benton right after you retired.”

“But you know who I am,” Pru said.

“You’re kind of famous, since you’re still in all the hotel’s print campaigns for the Benton Revue. There are even a few with Sunny floating around, and she’s been off the line for nearly two years.”

“Well, we haven’t exactly been replaced yet,” Pru observed. She kept her words circumspect, but she had a feeling that Gus, being one of the few Latinos in upper management, would understand her meaning.

Sunny and Pru had been the only two black dancers on the line. Now that they were both gone, there were exactly zero black women dancing on it. But like most hotels that attracted a diverse clientele, the Benton wasn’t exactly out to advertise that it didn’t currently have any African-American dancers on its revue line. So Sunny and Pru had remained in many of the print-ad campaigns.

“No you haven’t, but I’m sure Sunny’s gonna make sure that’s no longer an issue when she takes over as lead choreographer in the fall.
Then
we’ll shoot some new ad campaigns.” He winked at her. “That’s a promise, Miss Washington—though I guess I should call you Mrs. Benton now, right? Saw that crazy wedding video of yours online yesterday.”

Pru stumbled to catch up. “Yes, I suppose you could call me Mrs. Benton,” she answered, though she had no intention of taking Max’s name, considering they’d be filing for divorce by the following Monday. “Or you could just call me Pru like everybody else.”

“Okay, if you want me to call you Pru, that’s what I’m gonna call you.” He threw her a smile that probably had slayed many a woman’s heart in Louisiana, and held the lodge door open for her.

Inside there were several other executives she recognized from the short dossiers she’d compiled on them with Cole’s help the night before. The smell of hot food lingered in the air, and the majority of them were either standing in line or loading up their plates, which meant they must have just broken for lunch.

She scanned the common room and didn’t see Max in line or at any of the long tables that had been set up for dining. Nor did she see Cole. Maybe they’d decided to go out for lunch.

“I see you went and got yourself a haircut, Pru,” Gus said, falling back in step beside her as they headed for the stairs.

Pru raised her hands to her now extension-free locks. She’d gotten them taken out this morning and was now sporting a short kinky-coiled pixie cut. The shorter length already felt like a great relief after years of wearing long extensions, and she quickly found she didn’t miss having long hair at all.

She patted her new do and said, “Yeah, I thought it was time for a change.”

“Change looks good on you,” he told her as they headed over to the stairs together. “Very good. Makes me wonder how Max Benton got so lucky.”

Pru waved off the compliment. “I’m sure most people who saw that wedding video are wondering how I got so lucky.”

Gus stopped at the bottom of the stairs.

“Well, I’m not most people, Pru, and I like to call things like I see them.” His eyes twinkled as he looked down at her. “In this case, I’d say, Max is definitely the lucky one.”

“Yes, I am,” Max said, suddenly appearing at her side. He slipped what felt to Pru like one very possessive arm around her shoulders, and then used the other one to pull her around so that she was now facing him instead of Gus.

“You’re back,” he said to her. And that was all the warning she got before he laid a kiss on her. One so bone melting that she momentarily forgot about Gus, or any of the other businesspeople currently occupying the lodge’s nearby common area.

The kiss might have gone on forever, if Max hadn’t eventually lifted his head and murmured, “I missed you.”

“I missed you, too,” she said softly, the words tumbling out of her mouth without conscious thought.

A slow and ridiculously smug smile spread across his face as he said, “Good.”

Then he took her bag from a wide-eyed Gus and all but hauled Pru up the stairs and back to their room.

* * *

“What was that?” Pru demanded as soon as they were back in the room.

“Me saving you from a guy with crap taste in DJs,” Max answered, closing the door behind them. As soon as it shut, he reinserted himself into her personal space, getting way closer than he needed to, to say, “You’re welcome.”

Pru took a step back. “I didn’t need saving.”

Max took a step forward. “I think you did. This morning I found out that Gus is the kind of guy who likes stealing what isn’t his. For the good of the plan—you know
the original job
you’re getting paid for—you’ll want to stay away from him.”

Then in what felt to Pru like a total non sequitur, he said, “So I’m pretty sure Wedding Night Pru put in a cameo during that kiss. Can you let her out again? Because we have some unfinished business.”

He leaned down, and Pru had to put her hands on his chest to stop him from advancing. “There’s only
me
here. And for the good of the
case
I’m also working on in order to maintain our original story, if Gustavo Martinez is the kind of guy you say he is, I probably don’t want to stay away from him. In fact, since he seems to enjoy flirting with me, I should probably use that as an in to get closer to him.”

An angry scowl flashed across Max’s face. “Closer how?” he asked, pressing against her hands as he moved in even closer.

She could feel him now, against her stomach, his arousal long and hard and obvious. Pru swallowed. Apparently she’d accidentally hit Max’s competition button.

Even more reason she should make solving this case her number-one priority, she decided. The sooner she did, the sooner she could reasonably get out of here and back to her life in Vegas, far away from her fake husband.

Once again feeling flustered by the Benton heir no one was supposed to take seriously, she retreated several steps back, only to run into a wall.

Max closed in, placing a hand on each side of her head.

“Let me assure you, Detective Pru,” he said, running his nose along her neck, “whatever you want from Gus, I can give you. Let Wedding Night Pru come out to play and I’ll give her whatever she needs.”

It was just the tip of his nose touching her now, no other part of his body, but the small action sent a shiver of sexual tension through her entire frame.

“His wallet,” she somehow managed to rush out. “What I really need is Gus’s wallet, so that I can access his personal information. And his phone, too. So if you really want to give me what I need, help me get them.”

Max paused and she could see the muscles in his shoulders bunch as if he had to hold himself back from just taking what he wanted. But eventually he pulled away, his face tight with what she could only guess was frustration. Max, she knew, wasn’t a man used to not getting exactly what he wanted, exactly when he wanted it.

But all of a sudden, he frowned and said, “You got rid of your extensions.”

Pru looked from side to side, her face scrunching up with confusion over the sudden topic change. Also because she wasn’t used to men directly referencing her weave.

“Yeah,” she answered carefully. “I got rid of them.”

A hard look came over his face then. One so harsh, it made her wonder how he’d ever managed to garner a reputation as a happy-go-lucky guy in the first place. “You got rid of them, because you were trying to get rid of her. Trying to make yourself under, so I’d be less attracted to you.”

Well, she wouldn’t have called it a “makeunder” per se. She loved the way she looked with short hair and thought the tight little pixie fro would really complement her mostly vintage wardrobe. But other than that...yeah, that was exactly why she’d made sure to toss her extensions before coming back to the Sinclair Lodge.

“I’ve got work to do here, and all that extra hair was getting in the way.”

This time it was Max who took a step back, the look on his face so lethal, he put her more in mind of a hit man than a brand ambassador for luxurious sports and leisure.

“One hour,” he said, his voice low.

“What do you mean ‘one hour’?” Pru asked, once again flummoxed by the sudden change of subject.

“You want Gus’s wallet and phone. I want an hour with Pru. Not Detective Pru. Wedding Night Pru.”

Pru shook her head. “Are you saying you want me to get drunk again?”

“No, I don’t want you to get drunk. I want you to get real.” Max crooked his head to the side. “In my experience, and I have a lot of it, people either become someone totally different when they’re drunk or they show their true colors.”

“And you think it’s the second one when it comes to me?”

“Sweetheart...” The hot up-and-down look Max gave her made Pru feel as if she was slowly being stripped bare. “I know it is.”

Then before she could argue with him any further, he turned and left the room. Leaving Pru to wonder if he’d really get Gus’s wallet and bring it back, or if Max was just toying with her.

* * *

Pru was pissing Max off. First of all, hot pants? Seriously? He wouldn’t have minded the modern-day version favored by adult movie stars and strippers alike. He’d seen so many of those throughout the years, they seemed ubiquitous now, and he barely noticed when women wore them anymore.

But the high-waisted orange ones Pru had chosen to wear today ought to be against the law. The sophisticated cut and the low back hem made them tasteful enough to wear outside a nightclub. Nonetheless, the hem was still high enough to show off her long, shapely legs to perfection. And though they didn’t mold her skin like spandex, they framed her assets enough for any red-blooded man to know there was something juicy underneath. Know and want to take a bite.

Judging from that kiss they had shared at the bottom of the stairs and the sexual tension that had been thrumming between them when they argued earlier, she wanted to take a bite of him, too. They were two adults. Why not enjoy their time stuck in Utah together?

Yet she resisted him at every turn. Acted as if he’d made up the fun, passionate woman he’d met on their wedding night. Well, he was done playing that game—at least the one she wanted to play with him. Red-hot fury flowed through him as he pulled out his phone and charged down the steps. He pressed his brother’s name and typed in two words to the text box.
Play along.

A few hours later, Max charged back into the room to find Pru at the desk, reading something on her laptop.

As he got closer he could see it was an article. One with a picture of a younger Gus standing in a suit with his arm resting against a banister in the familiar pose of a student so overachieving, the school just has to write a feature article about him. It was the kind of article no one would bother to read unless they were digging deep into a person’s life.

Research and guts. Max thought back to their earlier conversation with Cole, and knew for sure that Pru had just spent the past few hours researching another man the way she’d researched him before tracking him down in New Orleans.

Jealousy ran through his bloodstream like an unstoppable river. Max felt hot with anger and also like an idiot, because he understood that this was what Cole had basically asked her to do.

It also didn’t help when Pru not only did not look up from her computer when he came into the room, but also asked, “Hey, did you know your grandfather handpicked Gus out of Cornell’s hotel administration program to start out as a manager at the Benton’s New Orleans location?”

Max hadn’t known, but he wasn’t surprised. Cole had graduated from the program before moving on to another Ivy League school to get his MBA, and his family had long been charitable supporters of Cornell’s esteemed hotel administration program.

But Max hadn’t come up here to talk about Gus. “Pru, turn around.”

Pru’s shoulders stiffened, and she very carefully kept scrolling down the screen. “I need to finish reading this article, and then I have a few more leads I want to investigate—”

Max reached around her and very deliberately closed the laptop on Gus’s overachieving college face.

Ignoring Pru’s gasp of indignation, he repeated, “Turn around.”

She did, probably only because she wanted to give him a piece of her mind. Which made it even more satisfying for Max when she froze in shock, her mouth dropping completely open at the sight of what he was holding in his hands.