24. Twenty-Four
24
TWENTY-FOUR
“W hat do you think?” I stood back from where I’d just hung my new piece of art in my new suite and gave Ruby a knowing look.
She was on the couch, Stone Group financial documents spread around her, and she barely looked up. When she did, she almost jolted out of her skin. “What the hell?”
“Olivia took it the night of the engagement party,” I replied, smiling at the portrait. It was us dancing when we hadn’t realized we were being watched. We only had eyes for each other in the black-and-white photo.
“That is so freaking weird.”
I frowned. “I think it’s cool. It was the start of us. Like … the exact moment. How many couples can say they have photos of that?”
“I’m looking at you as if you’re the last porterhouse in the world.”
“That’s why I like it.”
“You’re not looking at me the same way.”
I made a face. “Look again, Ruby.”
She stared hard at the portrait, then sighed. “I guess you’re kind of looking at me like I’m yummy. If I’m looking at you like you’re the porterhouse in that photo, though, you’re looking at me like I’m fish and chips.”
“I happen to love fish and chips.” I threw myself onto the couch next to her and glanced over the folders she had strewn everywhere. “Babycakes, what are you doing?”
“Stop calling me babycakes.”
“Fine, sugar flake.”
“What the hell is a sugar flake?”
I shrugged. “I’m coming up with a nickname for you, and you’re going to like it.”
“Yeah, you could just call me Ruby.”
“I’ll call you Ruby most of the time. I need something for when I’m feeling especially mushy. Since Rexanne will be here in six weeks, I foresee a lot of mush happening.”
“Unbelievable,” she muttered under her breath. “Also, I know you’re trying to wear me down, but Rexanne is not happening. She’ll be made fun of if her name is Rexanne.”
“Please. She’s going to be the first Stone grandchild, and her father is a security stud. Nobody is making fun of our kid.”
“Pick another name,” I gritted out.
“Henrexia?”
“I’m going to cry. Is that what you want? I’m just going to cry until I can’t cry any longer.”
“Fine.” The name game was only fun when she wasn’t stressed about something else. “What’s your current favorite name?”
“Rose.”
I was thrown. “You want to name her after a flower?”
She shrugged. “You get me roses all the time.”
“Is that why you like the name?” I was surprisingly touched. “We could call her Rosie. That would be cute on a little girl. Rosie Carter.” I paused. “Although … are you going to let her have my last name?”
Now Ruby was the one who was surprised. “Isn’t that the norm?”
I shrugged. “Yes, but we’re not married and Stone is the last name with more power in this town.”
“I don’t care about that.” She waved me off. “I want her to have your last name.”
“Because you believe you’ll end up with the same last name at some point?” I was being playful, but part of me wanted a real answer.
She gave me a dark glare. “How far do you want to push me today?”
“Fine.” I grabbed one of the files and picked it up. “What are you looking for here? You’ve been digging through financial files for two days, ever since that meeting with your family. You have to be looking for something specific.”
“I am,” she confirmed. “I’m looking for hints about what my father is up to.”
“Shouldn’t you be looking in a strip club then?”
She snorted. “That’s fair. He’s definitely up to something, though. He keeps circling back to this amphitheater idea.”
“You know, down the road, I don’t think an amphitheater is the worst idea in the world. If we had a regular residency, it would bring in a lot of money. The thing is, we need more than a few months of planning. It’s not just the theater itself—although we have no room for it right now—but it’s also parking, added workers, and pinning down talent.”
“Dad says he wants to get Taylor Swift.”
“That’s not even reasonable. She’s too big. Vegas residencies involve artists on their way down. Or icons,” I added as an afterthought. “I mean … Cher is always on top. She’s not a modern day draw for the kids, though. She brings in the parents.”
She snapped her eyes in my direction. “Cher is definitely an icon. I will want to see Cher perform every year until she decides she can’t perform any longer. She’s just that good.”
“The kids don’t want to see her, though,” I pointed out. “They want to see Beyoncé, or Chappell Roan.”
“How do you even know who Chappell Roan is?”
“I know things.”
She laughed. “Sure. When I look at you, I see a Chappell Roan fan. It’s obvious.”
“I’m just saying that the sort of artist we could get for a residency is not going to be a current headliner. It’s someone like Christina Aguilera, Shania Twain, Lionel Richie, or Janet Jackson. It’s not people who pack stadiums at present.”
“So … you think my father is trying to do something underhanded with a former top dog musical artist?” The way Ruby screwed up her face in concentration suggested that she was having trouble wrapping her head around that possibility. “I don’t think that’s it,” she said after several seconds. “Whatever he’s up to, it’s more basic than that.”
“Well, what would that look like?” She wasn’t going to let it go. It was better to help her than stand in her way. “Let’s break it down. What would be the first thing to happen if he got the votes for his amphitheater?”
“Well, you said it yourself, we don’t have the room. He would need space.”
“And what are we surrounded by?” I gave it some thought. “There’s that strip of restaurants. That doesn’t strike me as big enough for an amphitheater, though.”
“No, but behind us, there’s a parking garage and the Chiffon Hotel.”
I was already nodding before she finished it out. The Chiffon was a rundown hotel for people who wanted to be close to the Strip but didn’t want to spend great gobs of money on accommodations so they could blow more on gambling. There was no casino associated with the property. It was dilapidated. The owner was Chet Haskins. He’d been a mainstay in the Vegas mob scene thirty years ago. Then, as the Strip went more mainstream—no more all you can eat buffets and shady backdoor card games—he’d been left behind. He’d been bitter about it ever since.
“That would be a big enough space to build an amphitheater,” I agreed.
“People have been trying to get Haskins to sell that spot for years, though,” Ruby pointed out. “A lot of money has been thrown at him, and he’s refused. We’re talking the sort of money he could retire on comfortably.”
“So, why did he hold onto the property?”
She hunched her shoulders as she considered it, then automatically reached up to rub her neck. “That’s a very good question.”
“Come here.” I prodded her to shift so she was in front of me, and I immediately started rubbing her shoulders when she rested her back against me. We fit together. I was a foot taller than her, but we still fit. Perfectly. It was as if we’d been designed to be together from the very beginning. “Better?” I asked when she let loose a little moan.
“So much better,” she agreed in a wispy voice that did strange things to Little Rex.
“You can’t moan like that,” I teased her. “You make me think things I shouldn’t be thinking.”
“Who says you shouldn’t be thinking them?”
My heart skipped a beat, then I calmed myself. I didn’t want to fall into bed before she was ready. No, I wanted to do this right. I’d done everything wrong in the beginning. If there was an incorrect decision to make, I’d made it. If I wanted this to work out—and there was nothing I wanted more, I realized that now—I had to be patient.
“You said I shouldn’t be thinking them,” I reminded her. “The night of our first date, we agreed that we should do this the right way.”
“I know but … it’s been going well.” She chewed on her bottom lip and looked over her shoulder. “It’s something we might be able to talk about.”
I had to refrain from laughing. “Are you feeling horny?”
“Excuse me?” she sputtered.
“You said you were feeling horny the day we went shopping with Livvie. If you want to know the truth, that’s the day that I started allowing my mind to wander about where we—meaning you and me and this relationship—is concerned. It was as if you flipped a switch in my head.”
“What sort of switch?”
“Well, before that moment, I didn’t realize you could be mine.”
She frowned. “I don’t know what that means.”
“It never occurred to me that I could have you, Ruby. I thought … well, I’m not entirely certain what I thought. I guess it’s fair to say that I believed you were out of my reach, though.”
“Why would you think that?”
“It was just something that was ingrained in me. I always found you attractive. Being with you, though, was not something I believed could happen.”
“And what happened in that moment?”
“Well, for starters, I wanted to be the one to handle your horniness.”
“Geez.”
“It was more than that, though. I wanted to be the one to cuddle you at night too, and the one to have dinner with you and talk about my day. I wanted to hear how your day went, and what your dreams for the future were. It was just hearing that you were horny that sent me on my way.”
“I don’t even know what to say to that. Was it because I said I didn’t remember the orgasms?”
“No, that just made me angry. Those were good orgasms.”
She laughed. “Your ego is unbelievable sometimes.”
“It is.”
“Just so I’m clear, though, you don’t want to have sex with me? It’s because I’m fat, isn’t it?”
“You’re not fat and I’m going to spank you if you say that again. As for the sex, I want it like you wouldn’t believe. I’m not doing it until you’re sure about us, though.”
She frowned. “What if it takes me a year to be sure about us?”
“Then I guess I have a rough year ahead of me.”
Her expression was hard to read. “I need to think about this,” she said finally. “Your refusal to have sex with me just makes me want to have it more.”
I snickered. “Well, I’m going to stonewall you until your heart catches up with your girl parts.” I tapped the folder to get her to focus on it. We both needed a distraction. Even though I was convinced I was doing the right thing, I wasn’t certain that turning her down was in my wheelhouse. I wasn’t good at saying no to her as it was, and that was something she had likely already figured out herself. “What’s your father’s relationship with Chet Haskins? Does he even have one?”
“He does. I don’t know if I would call them friends, but I do know that he used to participate in a weekly card game with Chet and a few other hotel owners in the area. They smoked cigars, drank until they passed out, and there were rumors that they had prostitutes there for these events.”
“Really?” I rubbed Ruby’s shoulders as I thought about it. “I’ve heard stories about those card games. Supposedly—and this is just a rumor, I have no proof of it—Chet used the prostitutes to get a leg up on various casino and hotel owners so he could blackmail them.”
“Like … he brought in the prostitutes to trap them?”
“Yes.” Rex bobbed his head. “Why would your father bother with a prostitute when he had any number of women throwing themselves at him because of who he was, though?”
“Because prostitutes keep things on the down-low naturally. Why put in the effort to wine and dine a mistress when he could get sex—and of the professional variety—from someone he didn’t have to bother with after the fact?”
“That does sound like something your father would do.”
“Oh, it totally does,” she agreed. “How does it all come together, though? Like … if Haskins was blackmailing Dad—and I can totally see that happening—why is he pushing for the amphitheater so hard now?”
Things were already coming together for me. “Because the rumor is that Haskins was being paid off by seven or eight people. He kept his place on the Strip because it allowed him to remain in power, even though nobody looked at his place and thought ‘power player.’
“A couple of the guys who were rumored to be paying Haskins have died,” I continued, rattling off a few names. “They’re gone. That means his payouts have likely been dwindling.”
“And my father doesn’t have the money to pay him off now,” Ruby guessed.
“Right.” I bobbed my head. “Your father doesn’t have the money, but Haskins still has leverage over him.”
“If my father were to have a sex tape released, that would kill any chance he has of returning to power,” Ruby mused. “He doesn’t have a chance anyway, but he hasn’t accepted that yet. He knows that would be the final nail in his coffin, though.”
“So … he comes up with a plan.” We were rolling right along now. “He wants to work out a deal with Haskins to buy that property and somehow cut Haskins in on the future profits. Like … maybe make him a silent partner.”
“Would that be enough to feed Haskins’s ego though? He held onto his place a lot longer than anybody else would have simply because he wanted to be able to say he was a player on the Strip.”
“Maybe your father intends to bring Haskins in as a shareholder under the radar.”
“How would he do that?”
“I don’t know, but I’m betting it’s something convoluted that involves whatever construction company he has in mind.”
“Oh.” Ruby bobbed her head. “I get it. It would be a silent partnership between them all. The money earmarked for construction would go to the lowest bidder, but the paperwork would say the bid was higher than it was. Then the construction company would use shoddy equipment and the entire amphitheater would fall during a big concert.”
I gave her a sidelong look. “That’s a little too Lifetime movie for me, but I don’t think you’re far off.”
“How does he plan on pushing this through, though?” Ruby sounded frustrated. “That’s the part I don’t get. I mean … how is he going to get everybody to agree to this amphitheater, and then put him in charge at the same time?”
“He’s not thinking that far ahead. He’s desperate to keep whatever dirt Haskins has on him from coming out. He’s glommed on to this plan, and he’s going to try to force it through.”
“How, though?”
“I don’t know. We need to figure it out.” I dug my fingers into the tender spots between her shoulder blades and cringed when she moaned. “Babycakes, for the love of God, have pity on me. I can’t take the moans.”
“Then stop rubbing me.”
“I can’t. It’s like an addiction now. I have to do it.”
She laughed as if I’d said the funniest thing in the world. “You’re hilarious.”
“I am.” I kissed her cheek, then rested my chin on top of her head. “We need to get your siblings and mother in on this.”
“We don’t have proof.”
“We don’t need it. As soon as we tell them our theory, they’re going to agree that we have to get ahead of this. It’s the only thing that makes sense. The Stone Group has already taken a hit. We can’t let it take another one.”
“Maybe that’s how Dad thinks he’s going to push it through,” Ruby mused. “He probably believes we’ll do whatever we can to protect his reputation.”
“Do you think your mother would do that? I mean … it would be embarrassing for her to have the prostitute story come out.”
“Everybody who is anybody in this town already knows that my father wasn’t faithful. I’m not sure it would even faze her.”
“We need to let her make that decision. You should text and get them all up here.”
Ruby sighed. “Okay, but I want ten more minutes of your finger magic.”
I burst out laughing.
“Not that finger magic.” She shot me a dark look. “We should probably have some food delivered too. I think we have a long night in front of us.”
“Yeah. It’s better to get ahead of this, though, Ruby.”
“I don’t disagree. It’s just … every time I think my father can’t get any lower, he proves me wrong.”
“If this was old Vegas, he would already be a lump in the desert.”
She made a face. “What is it with you and my brother talking about lumps in the desert?”
I shrugged. “We were obsessed with those old Vegas stories when we were younger. I guess we both let our imaginations run wild.”
“That’s probably what’s happening with my father, too.”
“Yeah. Let’s see if we can use that to our advantage, shall we?”