Chapter 22
MADDIE
“So how’s it going with Rio in Las Vegas?” Janie says through my earbuds. She’s caught me as I walk Snorty through the hotel’s fancy shopping arcade.
“Tolerable,” I say, not willing to tell Janie anything until we’re side by side in Manhattan. “Las Vegas is over the top. Right now I’m taking Snorty for a tour of the Paws Day Care Center. Can you believe that?”
We chat and gossip for a few more minutes. But somewhere in the middle of a story about Janie’s hot new coworker, I suddenly feel like I’m being followed.
I glance over my shoulder and see a man dressed entirely in black trailing a few yards behind me.
The moment he realizes I’ve spotted him, he ducks behind a vendor’s kiosk.
Why?
“Look, Janie, I have to call you back,” I say quickly, ending the call.
I’m creeped out but keep walking.
I pass the same high-end strip club Antoine and I walked by yesterday.
The one with the glamorous marble facade that looks more like the entrance to an upscale restaurant than anything seedy.
The only way someone would realize it's not a restaurant the club's enormous exterior window.
It gives people passing by a full view of the scene inside: gorgeous women dancing on the bar while businessmen in expensive suits watch them, mesmerized.
Like most restaurants and clubs in Las Vegas, it operates on a 24 hours a day schedule.
I glance toward the spectacle, ready to keep moving, when I freeze.
One clean-cut face at the bar makes my stomach drop.
He’s immaculate. Like a packaged Ken doll.
That can only be one person.
But Joseph? In Vegas?
Then I remember what Janie said at the fitness center. That he’d be coming here for a company conference.
I scurry away, but Joseph catches up to me.
"Maddie!" he calls after me, his voice cutting through the arcade noise. "Hold up! It’s not what you think…”
"How do you know what I think?” I say, spinning around to face him.
“And why would I care if you’re at a strip club at ten-thirty in the morning? You left me at the altar two months ago."
"I want to explain myself. I want you to keep your high opinion of me."
"High opinion? Really? Why would my seeing you drinking at a strip club before noon change the already low opinion, I have of you?"
"Do I look drunk to you? I’m here for a financial conference. My plane got in early, so I figured I’d take the opportunity to see what Vegas was all about."
I bite my lip.
Back when we were together, he did admit that Las Vegas was his fantasy. He yearned to buy a table at a club like the “big guys” and slap some dancer’s ass.
We stand awkwardly staring at each other while tourists stream around us.
"I saw in the paper you’re tying the knot with that famous rockstar, Rio. Good going, Mads."
I open my mouth to tell him it’s all fake, but something stops me.
Maybe it’s the way he’s looking at me. Like I’ve finally done something impressive by landing a famous man.
"Thank you. We’re very happy."
Without warning, Joseph wraps his arms around me in a bear hug, his clean-shaven face pressed into my hair.
His cologne is exactly the same as when we dated again, last year, after the long years since junior high.
At the time, I liked that expensive-smelling scent. I liked the "new Joseph" that had materialized after the geeky seventh-grade math-wizard nerd.
Now it just makes my stomach turn.
I push away from him, my skin crawling.
"Why are you hugging me?"
"Just to offer congratulations.”
His eyes scan me from head to toe.
"You’re looking good, Mads. I like what you’ve done with your hair. When I first heard the news, I didn’t know what someone like Rio would see in you."
My jaw clenches as I glare.
"Don’t look at me like that. You must have noticed that in comparison to a lot of other women, you’re a little on the plain side. Not exactly rockstar material.”
He pauses to look me over again.
But today, with your hair all long and flowing like that, I can better imagine what he might possibly see in you."
Plain?
I think of Rio last night. The way his eyes darkened when I dropped my robe. The way he looked at me like I was the only water in the desert.
Rio didn’t see plain. He saw passion. He saw me.
"Right. Have a good conference," I say, turning and storming away.
Snorty’s Vuitton carrier slams against my hip with every step.
The nerve of that jerk.
Two months after leaving me at the altar, and he thinks he can just hug me and insult me in the same breath?
Well, I’m not going to let Joseph W. King ruin my Las Vegas weekend.
No way in hell.