Lucky In Love (11 page)

“This is like voting for president,” I whispered in Teddie’s ear. “May the least awful win.”

Trey Gold cut to his going-to-commercial patter, thanking everybody and telling everyone to vote. During the break he talked to the couples, joking, trying to loosen them up. As a pro, he knew the energy was lacking, and the show would lay an egg if something didn’t happen.

“Who’re you voting for?” I asked Teddie, my celebrity judge.

“I don’t want to vote for any of them.”

“The rules state you should pick the best couple. So, pick the best couple.” He looked at me like I’d started drinking early. Which, all things considered, wouldn’t have been a bad idea.

“I don’t understand you.”

I just smiled—that statement opened a whole can of worms.

Ox, my ass.

* * *

T
he
crowd milled around while the votes were tabulated. Open bars dotted the circumference of the dolphin enclosure, and most people took advantage, grabbing the libation of their choice. In short order, the mood elevated, fueled by a steady supply of eighty proof. People chatted animatedly as they made their way back to their seats.

Teddie and I once again settled in. Ella had disappeared, which didn’t bother me. I scanned the crowd for my parents, spying them in the back, next to one of the bars. Behind the hedges near the exit, smoke rose in a plume—hamburgers sizzling on the grill, nearing perfection. I could picture Jean-Charles, spatula in hand as he worked in concert with Rocco and Gail, smiles of contentment competing with frowns of concentration. Off to the side, Miss P nuzzled Jeremy, who held her close with an arm around her shoulders.

Trey Gold bounded back on stage and the crowd quieted. The stools had been removed and the three couples stood in a semi-circle behind Trey. With various expressions on each of their faces, the one universal emotion evident seemed to be relief.

Drums rolled, commanding everyone’s attention.

My heart beat faster, I had no idea why. Perhaps it was the terror of knowing there would be losers once a winner was chosen. Nobody should be branded a loser, unless they deserved it, of course. And none of these people did. Oh, they’d made interesting choices, for curious reasons. But hadn’t we all?

Trey waited for the crowd’s absolute attention, then milked it a few beats more, ratcheting up the suspense. Finally, he presented the envelope and worked a finger under the flap. He pulled out the card and scanned it. A stunned look. I know I saw it, but it was quickly concealed as his professional mask fell back into place.

“Now this is interesting, folks. Very interesting. Not quite what any of us was expecting.” He looked at the crowd, then focused on the camera. “And the winners are . . .”

The crowd didn’t move. I didn’t think anyone even breathed. The soft calls of the animals in the Secret Garden and the muted rumble of traffic from the 15 were the only sounds—besides the pounding of my heart in my ears, but I didn’t think anyone else could hear that.

Trey licked his lips and smiled as he gave a slight shrug. “The winners are Vera and . . .”

Guy Handy clutched his chest. I’m sure visions of a polygamy reality show danced in his head. Some in the crowd cheered. Some laughed. Some tossed out a
boo
or two.

Trey held up his hand. “Wait.”

The crowd quieted.

“The winners are Vera and... Walker.”

A moment of stunned silence, then the crowd erupted. I couldn’t help myself as I laughed along with them. Surprise hit Vera and Walker as they looked at each other with disbelieving smiles. Then Vera leapt into Walker’s arms, her legs wrapping around his waist, her arms circling his neck. Their kiss lasted a very long time... much to the delight of the crowd.

Teddie whirled to me. “Vera and Walker? How’d that happen?”

I studied the man I called the love of my life, then let my gaze drift to the gentle wafts of smoke curling upward into the dazzling lights of Vegas. Life could take the most surprising twists. Who knew where mine would lead?

“Teddie, my love. Don’t you know by now that love always finds a way?”

THE END

Thank you for coming along on Lucky’s wild ride through Vegas. Please drop me a line at
[email protected]
and let me know what you think. And, please leave a review at the outlet of your choice.

Also by Deborah Coonts

Read a short excerpt below

L
ove
and lust—two four-letter words men often confuse.

More specifically, a certain man . . . the man standing in my doorway.

Teddie.

My heart tripped, then steadied.

Thinner than I remembered, he still had that tight ass, those broad shoulders, spiky blond hair, soulful baby-blues, and a sippin’-whiskey-smooth voice that could warm me to the core, despite my best efforts to douse the fire.

Teddie.

Despite serious reservations about turning a platonic friendship into something . . . not platonic . . . I had let him lead me into the deep, dark waters of love. And being an all-or-nothing kind of gal, I’d done a half gainer off the high dive and things had not gone swimmingly.

He left.

And now he was back.

As I looked at him and tried to compose myself—it just wouldn’t do to let him see the splash his return made—I wondered how I’d ever get my heart back. The empty hole in my chest echoed with longing, leaving me winded.

My office phone jangled, giving me an excuse to avoid Teddie for a few moments longer. I grabbed the receiver. “Customer relations, Lucky O’Toole speaking. How may I help you?”

“We have a problem.” Detective Romeo with the Las Vegas Metropolitan Police Department started in without preliminaries—not a good sign.

“What’s this
we
shit, Kemosabe?” I tried to make light. Apparently I failed miserably.

Romeo’s tone hardened. “Dead body. Back lot. Somebody wrapped her head in plastic and killed her with a smoking gun. You’re going to want to see this one.”

“Dang.” I rubbed a hand over my face. “I never want to see that kind of thing. You know that.” I looked up and locked eyes with Teddie, who stared at me, his eyes dark and troubled.

“Trust me on this one.” He took an audible breath, then let it out slowly.

“Okay. Give me fifteen minutes. I’ve got to take Christophe Bouclet back to his father.”

“I’ll meet you there. This one’s bad.”

As if they all aren’t bad. “Meet me where?” My only answer was the hollow echo of a disconnected line. Romeo had hung up—he knew how much I hated that little bit of rudeness.

Men.

I narrowed my eyes at the prime example of the Y chromosome set standing in front of me.

Teddie knew me well enough to take a step back. “Romeo?” he asked with a forced lilt to his voice.

I set the receiver back in its cradle, but refused to let Romeo and Teddie get me all worked up. Problems, I could handle—as the vice president of Customer Relations at the Babylon, Las Vegas’s most over-the-top Strip property, problems were my job. And, if I can say anything about myself, I’m good at my job.

Now, to the most immediate problem. “Teddie, why are you here?”

Ignoring my glower, he continued, sounding like an old friend stopping by to reminisce. “Your office door was open,” he began in a casual tone, as if the earth still rotated on the same axis. “I expected to find you in your old office. What are you doing back here in this construction zone? Not VP digs. Congrats. By the way.” Teddie paused when his eyes came to rest on the young boy in my lap who clutched a crayon and concentrated on the drawing in front of him. I saw questions lurking in Teddie’s eyes. Thankfully, he didn’t voice them, choosing instead to give me a tentative grin.

A dagger to the heart.

A frown was the only response I could muster as my pulse pounded in my ears and I struggled to remain outwardly calm.

“This early in the morning I expected to see your staff out front,” he continued, ignoring the fact that this whole situation was fraught with possibilities of homicide. “But the desks were empty. Since you and I are . . . friends . . . I didn’t think you’d mind me wandering back here to find you.”

What was I going to say? “Get the hell out” seemed a bit extreme. And “no, we’re not friends” would have been too hard to admit. Offering to shoot him the next time he wandered in unannounced also seemed a bit aggressive. Maybe. I opted to duck-and-weave. “If I minded, would it matter?”

Teddie’s smile dimmed and he jammed his hands in his pockets as he shifted from one foot to the other, his shoulders hunched around his ears.

I took a deep breath and blew at a strand of hair that tickled my forehead. “To be honest, you were the last person I expected to darken my doorway this morning. Weren’t you just in Prague or Moscow or someplace half a world away?”

“I quit the tour and jumped a plane.”

Taking a step inside the doorway, he was brought up short by the look on my face. His arms wide, pleading, he said, “I had to see you.”

I wasn’t buying it. He always was a bit of a drama queen which, now that I thought about it, went with the whole female impersonator gig—I’d just never noticed it before—or it had never bothered me before.

Ever the performer, he adopted just the right tone—pleading without the whine. “You won’t take my calls. You won’t answer the messages I send you. You haven’t even acknowledged the song. What did you expect me to do?” He let his arms fall to his sides.

“Expect?” My voice was flat, hard, pounded thin by the hammer of his insensitivity. And the song he mentioned? Every time I heard the thing, he bludgeoned me anew. Didn’t he understand that? “Teddie, I expected you to stay gone.”

Hurt flashed across his face as we stared at each other and time slowed to a crawl. He looked like he wanted to explore the subject further, but wisely altered course. “Got a new friend, I see.” He nodded toward the boy.

Christophe squirmed under Teddie’s scrutiny, then leaned back and looked up at me. While I counted to ten and prayed for self-control and a noninflammatory response, I bent down and gave the boy a kiss on the head. He smelled like baby soap, and with good reason—last night we’d used a gallon of the stuff.

That was before I’d spent the night with his father.

“Christophe Bouclet.” My eyes found Teddie’s, then skittered away and back again. Knowing me, I had “guilty as sin” written all over my face. But, Teddie’d been the one to leave. So why did I feel guilty?

Life had just gotten way more than complicated.

I had absolutely no idea where to start or what to do. To be honest, I wasn’t 100 percent sure that, once started, I wouldn’t finish by grabbing Teddie by the neck and squeezing the life out of him. As it turned out, I needn’t have worried. My cell phone sang out at my hip, saving me from a long future making license plates at the invitation of the great state of Nevada. Actually it was Teddie doing the singing. In a weak, masochistic moment, I’d installed as my ringtone a snippet of a song he’d written not only for me, but about me as well. Yes,
that
song . . . the one he’d mentioned and I’d avoided. He’d titled it “Lucky for Me.”

Apparently he loved irony.

At the first few notes, Teddie’s eyebrows shot up. I hastily reached for the device and silenced it with a stroke of my thumb. I gave him a steely stare, challenging the surprise that widened his eyes. Never wavering, I pressed the phone to my ear. “O’Toole,” I barked.

“How do you make a thousand turkeys disappear?”

“What?” I held the phone in front of me and squinted at the display, trying to bring into focus not only the tiny digits, but life as well. The number belonged to Jerry, the voice belonged to Jerry, but the question came out of left field—even from the Babylon’s head of Security. “Jerry, this really isn’t a good time.”

“Tell me about it.” He chuckled. “I got turkeys down here—the real things. A thousand of them.” Chaos in the background filtered through the connection. “You know anything about them?”