Heating Up the Holidays 3-Story Bundle(12)

I press my hand to my stomach. “I’m a suspect?”

“Everyone’s a suspect in an incident this large. Some are simply classified as more high risk than others.”

“Do I have to agree to this?”

“You’re getting paid hourly. Why wouldn’t you agree?”

Because it’s insulting? Because it feels really bad? I grab my purse and my briefcase. “Let’s go.”

He gives me a nod and turns, expecting me to follow, and I do. We ride to the penthouse level in silence and he motions me out into the hallway, on my heels as he directs me to my left. At the door to the room, he faces me. “I need your phone, and all access outside the hotel is restricted. You can keep your computer, but Internet connections are blocked.”

I swallow the bile rising in my throat. I was wrong. Vegas is not where I’m supposed to be. This is not where I’m supposed to be. I dig out my cell and hand it to him, and I hate that my hand shakes as I do. “If you need me, call the security desk. If you need food or anything else, call the front desk.”

“Yes. Okay. Thanks.”

He swipes the key to the room and holds the door for me to enter. Once I’m inside, it shuts behind me and I lean against the hard surface, staring at what is before me. I am in the glitz and glamour of luxury, complete with a grand piano, and all I see is a prison. And all I can think is, What just happened?





Part Five


Business or pleasure?


The silence is deafening. Three hours into my confinement in the luxury suite, and I have not heard from Terrance or Damion Ward, nor have my attempts to contact them through the hotel reception yielded any results. I begin to question all my reasons for coming to Vegas, not to mention the insanity of trying a new career path. There is no way the entire casino staff is locked down in rooms like this, and I can’t help but read into the silence. I’m worried; I can’t help it. I don’t even get parking tickets, and this is unnerving enough to have me pacing the room in my stocking feet, willing the phone to ring.

By the time I’ve been tormented by my scenario for a full four hours, I know I have to do what I swore I never would again. I attempt to call Texas for help, not sure if I prefer the pain of talking to my * father, the attorney, or my * ex, the attorney. I just need to find out if I can walk out of here without getting into legal trouble. Turns out that I don’t have to choose between hometown *s: I’m forbidden any calls outside the casino even from the hotel phone they can easily monitor.

Three more hours pass and I’ve exercised my in-casino calling privileges at least half a dozen times. I’ve even threatened to leave the room, only to be quickly assured that the floor is on lockdown, including elevators and stairwells. On another call, some employee named Derek instructs me to watch a movie On Demand as a comp from the casino. Right—comp unless they call me a thief. And no movie is going to make this wait bearable. Nor will a clearance from the crime save my job. Enough people know I’m on lockdown that my reputation will be in tatters. If Natalie was telling the truth about why she was fired, I’ll probably be fired, anyway.

And on that note, I decide to work out my frustrations by opening my computer and outlining research questions for an explosion piece on the Vantage properties and their CEO. Things happen for a reason, and maybe this is all about me getting my big story. I manage a full two pages of ideas and notes. I stare at them. I say I crave honesty and I have to start with myself. The words on the page are objective, but I am not. Despite how upset I am right now, I do not want Damion Ward to be worthy of me writing this story. I shut the computer with a finality I hope proves to be true.

By seven o’clock, I am standing at the hotel window, watching the sun descend into the jagged line of high-rise hotels and mountains, when there is a knock on the door. I whirl and charge across the room, not knowing or caring whom it might be. It’s someone living and breathing who can set me free.

I open the door and all but gasp at the unexpected sight of my soon to be ex-boss, looking intensely male and completely unaffected and perfect as ever. “We need to talk,” he says, as if this is a casual event requiring nothing more than a chat, as if I’m not being treated like a felon.

“Talk?” I demand, all the emotions of hours of confinement rising up in me to near bursting. “We needed to talk seven hours ago. Now? Now we don’t need to talk.”

He steps forward, crowding me, forcing me to give him space or let him become a part of mine. I have a rare violent urge to shove him, but I retreat into the room instead. He steps closer and kicks the door shut behind him, and damn him, that delicious scent of him tickles my nose, and the teasing eruption of sensations in my body only serves to make me more angry. I don’t want to feel the way he makes me feel. I don’t want him to be the one man who sparks something in me that no one else does.

“I couldn’t call,” he has the audacity to say. “Just like I couldn’t tell you I knew we had a security breach when you told me what the computer was doing in my office.”

“So you knew what was happening and didn’t tell me?”

“There’s a procedure to—”

“I don’t give a damn about procedures, Mr. CEO, especially from the one who sets the rules I’ve suffered with.” The edginess in me results in me poking my finger at his chest, heat dashing up my arm. “Just tell me one thing. Am I free to leave?”