Chapter 10 Leo
Leo
She stopped responding to my texts.
Damn.
Women never pulled away from me. Usually, they were the ones trying to extend conversations, angling for another date, or another chance.
I’d always been the one to end things—gently, kindly, but definitively.
My problem wasn’t rejection. It was that no woman held my interest once I figured her out.
And a girl in her twenties shouldn’t fascinate me. I’d never been one for age-inappropriate relationships. But Tashi acted and thought more maturely than her physical age. And I’d been lying in bed at night obsessing over her lush curves and her soft skin. I had it bad for this woman.
I would find out what was bothering her.
But now, as I stood outside her room, she wasn’t answering the door.
And I was growing concerned. Tashi attracted accidents like other people collected gambling debts.
I pulled out my master key card and stared at it.
I was a corporate officer, and Tashi was in my employ, so I had every right to check on her.
That was a lie. She deserved her privacy.
And yet, I had to find out what had upset her so profoundly that she stopped talking to me.
The door clicked shut behind me. It was loud enough that Tashi should have heard it.
I found her in her bedroom with a suitcase open on the bed, clothes flying in with jerky precision, which meant the brain had stopped taking votes and the body was moving on sheer momentum.
I drew a sharp breath before I spoke.
“Tashi,” I said softly.
She didn’t look at me. A blouse missed the suitcase by a foot and slid to the floor. She swiped at her cheeks like the tears were a nuisance, not a symptom.
She scoffed. “Of course you’d show up,” she said without glancing at me, her voice tight. “You can’t let me pack in peace.”
“This looks like war, not peace,” I said evenly.
“Don’t, Leo. Please. I can’t—”
“Can’t do what?”
“Pretend that I belong here at the Olympus Royale.”
Another armful of clothes, none of them folded, fell into the suitcase.
“Orion spent an entire meeting pretending I was a spreadsheet error.” She shoved the suitcase zipper an inch, and it snagged.
“I don’t need a degree in psychology to read the room.
I’m either the arsonist who almost burned down your hotel or the slut who’s sleeping with her bosses.
Either way, it’s a great story for everyone but me. ”
I crossed the room, resisting the urge to fix the zipper, or pick up the blouse on the floor, or fix her entire day. “Whoa, who’s saying you’re a slut?”
She glared at me. “Nobody yet. But it will happen.”
“None of that is true,” I said. “You’re the reason our story doesn’t end in bankruptcy filings and stale buffet coupons.”
That earned me the smallest of snorts. “Flattering. Doesn’t fix this mess.”
“No,” I said. “Food does. Come with me.”
“I’m not hungry.”
“Have you eaten this morning?”
“No.”
“Your dropping blood sugar is doing the talking for you.” I held out my hand. “One hour. If you still want to leave, I’ll help you pack, personally wrap every silk thing in tissue, and drive you to the airport myself.”
“I’ve never seen you drive. Do you even have a driver’s license?”
I had to restrain a sigh. “Tashi,” I said.
She hesitated, and I watched the moment the wiry anger gave way to the exhausted human beneath it. She slid her hand into mine like it weighed a hundred pounds.
“Fine,” she said. “One hour.”
The private conference room on our floor was designed to make nervous investors forget to be nervous—creamy walls, soft light, and a city skyline framed like art.
I called Chef and asked him to send up a spread that would make a monk question his vows of poverty.
Bowls of jewel-bright berries, sections of pink grapefruit and blood oranges, and a board of aged cheeses and paper-thin charcuterie arrived.
The chef had paired them with a small mountain of macarons, chocolate-dipped strawberries, and figs split to show their secret hearts, along with champagne and sparkling water.
She snorted when she saw the champagne. “Are you trying to get me drunk?”
“No. Relaxed,” I said. “Sit.”
She eased into a chair, as if her body expected the chair to vanish. I took the seat beside her instead of across from her.
She eyed me. “Across is for debate. Beside is for alliance.”
“Here’s the deal,” I said, lifting a berry, rinsed and chilled and dusted with sugar. “I’m going to make a case. You can disagree. You can roll your eyes. You can even throw a raspberry at my head if it helps. But you have to let me finish.”
“Is this part of the psychology thing?”
“This is part of the Leo thing.” I held out the berry. “Open.”
Her gaze flicked to my hand. “You’re serious.”
“Tragically.”
She shook her head, but her mouth opened. I placed the berry on her tongue. Her lashes fluttered once. The muscles in her shoulders loosened a fraction.
“I’ll tell you something personal if you promise not to use it against us.” I picked up a slice of blood orange and held it to her mouth.
“What? Am I some sort of femme fatale now?” Tashi spoke with skepticism.
“Orion isn’t regretting the decision to hire you.
He’s just not used to letting our private personas bleed into public spaces.
It’s a defense mechanism. When you’ve been raised like we were, our parents dying when we were in our twenties, leaving us with a ton of money in our pockets, we became targets for predators.
We learned to keep to ourselves and not let the outside in.
Your Heroes campaign set off his early warning signals. ”
“That’s a very telling bit about you guys,” she said.
“Eat,” I said.
I fed her citrus and watched the shock of tartness put color back in her cheeks. “He’s trying to protect us.”
“That doesn’t excuse—”
“It doesn’t. It explains.” I reached for a truffle chèvre, spread it on a wafer, and topped it with a sliver of pear. “And before you walked in this morning, we were arguing about certain complications that have impacted the business. It wasn’t about you at all.”
Her breath caught around the bite. “It’s not good to keep information from me. I can’t help you if I don’t know the true landscape.”
“Some things we can’t tell you yet.”
She raised an eyebrow.
“I’m not lying to you. If I were, I’d do it with better cheese.” I smiled.
She laughed. The sound landed somewhere under my ribs and did psychic damage.
She toyed with a macaron but didn’t eat it. “I’m tired of trying to navigate this hotel with a glitchy key card. I don’t know where I’ll get stuck.”
“You’re right. And Ares is working on that,” I said in a serious tone. “He brought in a security system analyst he knows. Until we know what happened, you call one of us if a light flickers.”
I picked up a chocolate-dipped strawberry and held it, not quite touching her lips. “Go ahead. This activity is a trust exercise.”
She rolled her eyes, but she leaned forward. I didn’t move. She closed the last inch herself, teeth catching the chocolate. A strand of red stained her lower lip. I wiped it with my thumb before I could stop myself.
“Unfair,” she murmured.
“What is?”
“That you’re good at this.”
“I’m motivated.” I reached for a fig, halved and sugared, and set it on her tongue. The room grew still. The city outside pretended it wasn’t listening.
Her shoulders dropped another inch. The jerky edges relaxed.
“Here’s my pitch,” I said, lowering the timbre of my voice by an octave.
“There’s more?”
“Yes. You’re not the arsonist. You’re not the rumor.
You’re the woman who walked into a bleeding company and said, ‘This is how you stop the hemorrhage.’ You’re the person who made me believe we could be good guys out loud, not just in private.
And you’re the first woman in a very long time who made me want to be a better man before dessert. ”
“That is a line.”
“It’s the truth. Lines are shorter.”
Her eyes shone, not with tears this time, but with attention. She reached for a cube of aged Manchego and bit it, studying me like I was a new product she might consider launching. “I’m afraid I complicated things with Orion.”
“I can’t see how. He’s just like this when business matters come up.”
“Leo, I need to tell you something.”
“No, you don’t,” I said.
“Are you sure? Because Orion—”
“I love my brother, but I will not let him hide behind our last name and call it caution.”
She sucked on her lip, which was amazingly distracting. “And Ares?”
“Ares is already on your side. He just wears it like a tailored suit—no wrinkles.”
She laughed again. It came easier now. She leaned back into the chair, the curve of her body settling, a woman allowing herself to rest in a room designed to make people forget the word crisis.
I slid closer by an inch, then another, until my knee touched hers.
“Leo,” she said softly. “What are you doing?”
“Showing you what you already know.”
“You’re not driving me to the airport?”
“I’m not and never was.” I took her hand. “Because you haven’t touched a single thing in that suitcase the way a woman touches clothes she intends to wear. You tossed them in like you were throwing a tantrum for a version of yourself you don’t want to be anymore.”
She eyed me. “You were a psych minor?”
“And marketing major.” I squeezed her fingers. “Stay. We need you. We all do.”
She looked down at our hands. When she looked up, the decision was already there, but she made me wait for words. So I had to sit there, because as any salesman knows, speaking now would ditch the deal.
She exhaled and her eyes met mine. “I’ll stay,” she said. “On conditions.”
“Name them.”
“No more cold shoulders disguised as professionalism.” A beat. “From anyone.”
“That’s reasonable.”
Her eyes narrowed. “And you’ll all listen to the Heroes Scavenger Hunt proposal. No staring at phones.”
“Agreed,” I said easily. I’d say anything to keep her here.
“And one more thing,” she said, tipping her chin toward the table between us, now scattered with small destructions—crumbs, bitten fruit, and a smear of chocolate. “I’m not going to dance around you guys when it comes to me. Whatever you have to work out, do it among yourselves.”
Something hot and bright moved through my chest.
“Good,” I said. “I don’t want a secret. I want you.”
Her breath hitched exactly once. Then she stood.
For a second, I thought she was going for the suitcase. Instead, she came to my side of the table, caught my tie in her fist, and pulled me to my feet.
“Oh,” I said.
“Shut up, Leo.”
“Yes, ma’am.”
“You’re dangerous,” she said.
“So I’ve been told.”
“Not like that.” She shook her head. “You make it easy to say yes.”
“That’s because I’m offering yes to you, not for you.” I kissed her knuckles and went for confirmation of the sale. “You’ll stay?”
“I will.” She hesitated. “Don’t make me regret it.”
“I won’t.”
I steadied her, set her gently on her feet, and smoothed the rumple out of her dress with hands that refused to shake. “I’ll make sure that you’ll beg to stay.”
“Beg?” she said.
“Maybe I’ll do some begging too.”
She smiled slowly, like a sunrise you earn by staying up all night. “Deal.”
I walked her back to her suite, not because she needed an escort up one floor on the elevator and down one corridor, but because I needed the walk to remind my body that we still had a casino to run and a saboteur to catch. At her door, she scanned her key. The panel blinked green.
“Good sign,” I said.
“Don’t get cocky.”
“Never.” I lifted a hand to the doorjamb instead of to her face because restraint would earn me her trust. “Text me if you need anything. If you think you might need anything, let me know.”
“I will.” She took a breath. “Leo?”
“Yeah.”
“Thank you.”
“You’re welcome,” I said. “Now unpack your suitcase.”
She laughed and slipped inside.
I stood there a second longer. It was on me to make the Olympus Royale Hotel and Casino worthy of her staying.
I pulled out my phone and dialed Orion, and then merged in Ares.
“We need to talk.”