Chapter 8 Orion
Orion
I stood in the lobby, watching Tashi exiting the elevator in that red dress, and every carefully constructed argument I’d prepared about professionalism evaporated.
She moved with purpose despite the heels. The dress hugged curves that had been haunting me since that accidental photo, and her hair fell in waves around her shoulders as it caught the casino’s warm light.
She’d exceeded expectations. Again.
“You clean up nice,” I said when she reached me, keeping my voice neutral even though my pulse was doing things pulses shouldn’t do in professional contexts.
“You said I’d need it.” She gave me a look that was equal parts curious and wary. “Where are we going?”
“Somewhere that reminds you why Vegas exists.” I offered my arm, immediately second-guessing the gesture. Too formal and date-like. “Come on.”
She hesitated for a fraction of a second—long enough that I wondered if she’d refuse—then slipped her hand into the crook of my elbow. The touch sent heat through my suit jacket.
We walked through the lobby, past the casino floor where Leo was probably watching from the security nest. But I sidestepped his watching eyes and pulled Tashi into an elevator and used my key card, then pressed R.
“R?” said Tashi.
“For roof,” I said without embellishment.
“Why? Are you going to toss me off the roof?”
I laughed. “That’s more an Ares thing? We don’t let him handle problems that way.”
Tashi opened her mouth and then closed it, not sure if it was a joke. But then the door opened to reveal our company helicopter sitting on the helipad. She stared at it in fascination.
“Your chariot awaits.”
She said nothing as we climbed into the helicopter. I helped her with her restraints, gave her a set of headphones, and then gave our pilot the thumbs-up. The copter’s blades whirled, and then we were airborne.
“Orion,” Tashi said. “What’s going on?”
“You had a rough day. Kurt Wilder ambushed you, and you’re processing threats from your ex-fiancé’s father while trying to prove yourself professionally.
” I kept my eyes on the cityscape below, not on Tashi.
Safer that way. “I thought you could use a reminder that Vegas isn’t all fires and corrupt regulators. ”
“So, this is a field trip?”
“Call it marketing research. You should see what makes this city special.”
She studied me for a long moment, and I could feel her gaze roam my body, cataloging, analyzing as if trying to figure out if our meeting was business or personal or something I hadn’t figured out myself yet.
“Where are we going?” she asked.
“Henderson Executive Airport.”
I observed her as she processed this information, and I saw understanding dawn on her face. “We’re taking the jet,” I said.
“The jet.”
“I want to show you the Grand Canyon at sunset. It’s available for luxury experiences for high rollers, that sort of thing. You mentioned untapped revenue streams during the tour.”
The lie came smoothly. Too smoothly. We both knew it was a lie.
“Orion—”
“Also,” I interrupted before she could call me on it, “I wanted to get you away from the hotel. Away from Kurt Wilder and Henri’s hostility and whatever’s happening with—” I stopped myself. “Just…somewhere else for a few hours.”
The honesty surprised me as much as it seemed to surprise her.
“Somewhere else,” she repeated softly.
“If that’s something you want.”
She bit her lip, and I had to look away before I did something stupid like lean across the space between us and taste that lip myself.
“Yes,” she said finally. “That’s something I want.”
The Gulfstream G650 waited on the tarmac, sleek and expensive and exactly the kind of thing that impressed people who needed impressing.
“Holy shit,” Tashi breathed when she saw it.
“Language,” I teased, grateful for the excuse to fall back into familiar banter.
“You own a private jet and you’re worried about my language?”
“The hotel owns it. Business asset. Tax write-off. Very boring financial reasons.”
“That you’re using to take me to the Grand Canyon.”
“Research,” I reminded her. “Marketing opportunity assessment. Very professional.”
She laughed, and the sound did something to my chest that felt dangerous.
We boarded, and I watched Tashi take in the interior—cream leather seats, polished wood accents, and enough space to work or sleep or do things I absolutely should not be thinking about right now.
“This is insane,” she said, running her hand over a seat back. “I’ve never been on a private jet.”
“First time for everything.” I gestured for her to sit, then took the seat across from her instead of next to her. Distance. Control. “We’ve got about forty minutes of flight time. Buckle up.”
She chose the window seat, and I watched her fingers work the buckle. She tucked her hair behind her ear, and I observed her like a man who’d forgotten how to look away.
The pilot came through for pre-flight checks, and we were airborne within minutes. Vegas fell away beneath us—the Strip glittering in early evening light, the desert stretching endlessly beyond our carefully constructed oasis of neon and excess.
“Would you like some champagne?”
She raised her eyebrows. “Not on duty,” she said.
She pressed her face to the window like a kid, and something in me softened. Then tightened. Then did complicated things I didn’t have names for.
“Tell me about Daniel,” I said, needing words to fill the space between us before I did something irreversible.
She turned from the window. “Why?”
“Because his father just threatened you in my hotel. Because you showed me a photo that makes me want to find Daniel and explain proper behavior with my fists. Because I need to understand what we’re dealing with.”
“We,” she repeated, like she was testing the word.
“You work for Olympus Royale. That makes your problems our problems.”
“Is that the only reason?”
No. “Does it matter?”
She studied me for a long moment, and I let her look. Let her see whatever she needed to see.
“We met in college,” she said finally. “NYU. He was in finance, and I studied marketing. We started dating senior year and got engaged two years later. Everything seemed fine. Good, even. His mother’s family had money and connections.
His mother liked me well enough. His father tolerated me, but then he didn’t live with Daniel’s mother anymore. ”
“But?”
“But about six months before the wedding, things changed. He started working late. Being distant. Making remarks about my weight, my clothes, and my career choices. Little cuts that added up.” She looked out the window again. “I told myself it was wedding stress. That it would get better.”
“It didn’t.”
“I told you. Three weeks before the wedding, he wanted to postpone—again.” Her voice went flat. “When I told him we needed a break to sort through our options, he said I was overreacting. That I should be grateful he still wanted to marry me despite my flaws.”
My hands clenched in my lap. I made myself breathe through it.
“I took the job you offered,” she continued.
“And left everything behind. I couldn’t face all the wedding vendors.
I’m on the hook for a lot of money, because everything is nonrefundable three weeks before the wedding.
Daniel didn’t take it well. And that’s when he sent me the photo.
That was his way of saying I’d made a mistake.
That I was throwing away my chance at security and respectability for pride. ”
I thought of the image I couldn’t forget—Daniel between another woman’s thighs, deliberately cruel—and felt rage so pure it was almost calming in its clarity.
“And his father?” I asked.
“Kurt always believed I wasn’t good enough for Daniel.
Wrong background, wrong connections, wrong everything.
Understand, Daniel’s parents are divorced, but Daniel always supported his shiftless father.
When I left, Daniel apparently told him I was unstable.
Vindictive. He must have told him that I’d fabricated the cheating allegations to hide my own inappropriate behavior.
” She laughed, bitter and sharp. “Kurt believed him. Of course he did. I’m nobody. Daniel’s his son.”
“You’re not nobody.”
“To Kurt Wilder, I am.”
“Then Kurt Wilder is an idiot.” I leaned forward, needing her to hear this even though every word felt like exposing something I should keep hidden.
“You’re brilliant. Strategic. You see things other people miss.
You turned a disaster into a triumph in less than a week.
You’re exactly the kind of person we need at Olympus Royale. ”
“Orion—”
“And Daniel?” I continued before she could deflect. “He’s a fool who threw away something valuable because he was too stupid to recognize what he had.”
Her eyes went bright with unshed tears. I wanted to reach across the space between us, pull her into my lap, and tell her every way Daniel had been wrong about her.
I stayed in my seat.
“Don’t cry,” I said. “You’ll ruin your makeup.”
She laughed, watery but real. “That’s what you’re worried about? My makeup?”
“I’m worried about many things.” I was being more honest than I had intended to be. “Your makeup seems manageable.”
“What else are you worried about?”
“Everything. Kurt Wilder retaliating. Daniel escalating. Henri’s strange reaction to you.
” I didn’t speak all my thoughts about how someone had tried to kill her three days ago, and we still didn’t know who.
That I was sitting in a private jet with an employee who pretended our conversation was about marketing research, even though we both knew it wasn’t.
The silence stretched between us, heavy with things neither of us were saying.
“You shouldn’t worry about me,” she said quietly.
I looked at her—really looked at her—and felt seventeen years of careful control slip another notch.
“It may seem this is about you,” I said. “But it isn’t. You know we’ve had our problems with the hotel.”
“Yes,” she said.