Love′s Gamble
Love's Gamble
Theodora Taylor
The stakes have never been higher… When aspiring private investigator Prudence Washington delivers legal documents to Max Benton, she receives an unexpected marriage proposal. Notorious playboy Max needs a fake wife in order to receive his hefty inheritance. Agreeing to the plan will help Pru's bank balance…and vacationing with the sexy billionaire is doing wonders for her libido.Max spends more time in the tabloids than in the boardroom, but he's got huge plans for a new chain of hotels. He'll happily prove he's turned over a new leaf by sharing a room–and unforgettable nights–with his gorgeous new "wife." Working together to expose a saboteur only increases their combustive attraction. But can he convince the woman he drew into a lie that he'll do anything to make this connection last?
The stakes have never been higher…
When aspiring private investigator Prudence Washington delivers legal documents to Max Benton, she receives an unexpected marriage proposal. Notorious playboy Max needs a fake wife in order to receive his hefty inheritance. Agreeing to the plan will help Pru’s bank balance…and vacationing with the sexy billionaire is doing wonders for her libido.
Max spends more time in the tabloids than in the boardroom, but he’s got huge plans for a new chain of hotels. He’ll happily prove he’s turned over a new leaf by sharing a room—and unforgettable nights—with his gorgeous new “wife.” Working together to expose a saboteur only increases their combustive attraction. But can he convince the woman he drew into a lie that he’ll do anything to make this connection last?
Max let a few seconds tick by before asking once again, “Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” she answered immediately, welcoming the change of subject from Max’s “plans” for her. Now wishing she hadn’t asked about that in the first place.
“You should have picked truth,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to change your mind?”
He still hadn’t touched her, but the sexual tension was back. Buzzing between them like an electric magnet.
Pru’s legs began to feel a little weak, but she shook her head in answer to his question. The old Pru wouldn’t have backed down.
There came a moment of silence so suspended, it made Pru feel as if she were at the top of a roller coaster. Then he said, “Dance with me.”
He reached into the basket and pulled out his phone. A few seconds later, it played a fairly new club anthem that Pru recognized from the night of their nightclub wedding.
Dear Reader (#ulink_bcdabc8f-7380-5ffa-8c92-fd8b72f162f7),
As my longtime readers know, I don’t write heroes—I turn villains into heroes, in the hottest ways possible. Max Benton, the playboy brother of Cole Benton from Vegas Baby, happens to be one of my favorite turns, because he’s a bad boy to the core. Disreputable, dishonorable, distressingly hot—and totally unapologetic about it.
I hope you enjoy watching Max get exactly what he deserves in Pru, a righteous and bodacious heroine, who’s about to turn his self-serving world inside out.
Love,
Theodora
Love’s Gamble
Theodora Taylor
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
THEODORA TAYLOR writes hot books with heart. When not reading, reviewing or writing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. Visit her at theodorataylor.com (http://theodorataylor.com) and at facebook.com/theodorataylorauthor (http://facebook.com/theodorataylorauthor).
To everyone who asked me about Max and Pru.
Here you go!
Contents
Cover (#u34934669-03cd-584f-8c8e-abbe873b357f)
Back Cover Text (#uf501e0bf-5787-5c80-8af2-0218fa61bac9)
Introduction (#u0c78cab9-0ba5-57e4-a5ec-fd7952077139)
Dear Reader (#ud1d5b240-9da7-5910-90bf-ae85211f60f4)
Title Page (#u4d2016ad-c173-5291-b020-972687b895a4)
About the Author (#ucbd84628-b1e7-52b1-b17d-bc8443fec04a)
Dedication (#u54f74d8b-aaab-5b40-a909-b4a9ecf2587c)
Chapter 1 (#ua140d396-3654-5251-8bee-fc096f411f70)
Chapter 2 (#u888938aa-798c-56b8-9e92-7625963babe8)
Chapter 3 (#ucb3ddf65-84a5-5a30-b4ee-eedb5baaab58)
Chapter 4 (#u49849e15-144c-5caa-91a7-9517c3c9f297)
Chapter 5 (#u77d9df71-5904-5ba2-a2a1-70beec2eeb25)
Chapter 6 (#u65c15c9b-4fa0-59e6-945f-aea1fd1f22b4)
Chapter 7 (#u24ed7b63-a337-5ce9-8c77-6ce32006a5c2)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_12a012e5-65ef-5672-9b80-be1079268273)
Tracking down Max Benton would involve walking straight into a den of temptation. Of course it would.
Pru could practically feel the bass from the nightclub’s music entering her body through her feet and rocking its way up to her hips. The music came courtesy of Mike Benz, an up-and-coming half Dutch, half Cameroonian DJ who was enjoying his first stateside residency at Sin, one of New Orleans’s premier nightclubs. His beats were fantastically good. So good, they awakened a long-dormant urge within Pru to get out on the crowded dance floor.
Back in the day it hadn’t taken more than a glass of champagne and the right song to get Pru on the floor. And she’d often stayed there all night, enjoying bottle service courtesy of her latest boyfriend or admirer, dancing with her fellow showgirls until she couldn’t dance anymore. Back in the day, her number-one goal in life had been to squeeze as much fun as she possibly could into her twenties, and to prove to everyone she came in contact with that Prudence Washington was the exact opposite of her boring name.
She was no longer a showgirl or hell-bent on proving that there was nothing prudent about her. Nonetheless, she was currently dressed to party well, in a little gold minidress pulled the day before from her mother’s vintage collection of seventies-era cocktail attire. She considered it a uniform, the uniform she needed to get her job done. Her current job being Max Benton. And she was all about her job, which was why instead of hopping on the dance floor, she headed straight for VIP.
The hulking security guard standing at the bottom of the roped-off stairs that led up to the VIP area gave her an approving once-over as she approached. She must have had a little of the old Pru magic leftover, she thought.
She’d made the right choice. In the background, she heard the DJ announce that he was taking a break but would be back on the turntables before the night was through. Then his excellent beats were replaced by canned Top 40 music playing at even higher decibels.
“You on the list, baby?” the security guard asked, lifting up his clipboard.
She threw him a flirty look. “Not quite,” she admitted. “The guy I’m here to see is trying to stay under the radar these days, but if you tell Max Benton that Prudence Washington is down here looking for him, I’m sure he’ll appreciate you letting him know. Really appreciate it.”
The security guard didn’t respond quite as hoped to her insinuation that there would be a nice tip involved if he passed along her message to Maxwell Benton, the younger, not nearly as responsible, Benton hotels heir. Not only did his face harden, he moved to stand between her and the black velvet rope.
“No Maxwell Benton here,” he said, his voice completely monotone.
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “Because I know he’ll be upset if he hears I was asking for him and you didn’t let me up.”
She hoped.
The truth was, she was banking an awful lot on the fact that Max Benton had stepped to her twice. The first time had been at his brother Cole’s wedding to her best friend, Sunny Johnson, about a year ago. The second time had been a couple of months ago, right before Pru’s retirement from the Benton Revue, at Cole and Sunny’s baby shower.
Shortly after the shower, Cole had cut his younger brother off, refusing to keep issuing checks for the brand-ambassador job he’d been assigned. Back when the Benton had been one luxury hotel, having an international playboy as the brand ambassador had been a good idea. Max had been all too happy to gallivant around the world, living the kind of life that perfectly encapsulated the particular decadent brand of luxury the Benton was trying to sell to its affluent guests and gamblers.
But then their grandfather had died, and Cole had taken over the Benton Group. He’d expanded the Benton from one hotel into a nationwide outfit of luxury casino resorts, which served to draw even more attention to Max’s international escapades. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except then Cole started making plans for the Benton Inns, a new chain of midrange hotels that would cater to nongambling clientele whose pockets weren’t deep enough to afford a stay at one of the Benton Group’s luxury properties. This new market expansion meant that Max’s infamous reputation was no longer compatible with the Benton brand.
According to Cole, Max had stormed out of Vegas soon after Cole gave him the news about being fired. He sold all his stock in the Benton Group to some investment-fund manager before Cole could buy him out and then disappeared from the public eye. The only contact he’d had from Max since his departure from Vegas was a CC: on a short email, sent to their family’s lawyers, informing them that he would like his trust paid out in full on his thirty-fifth birthday.
After receiving Max’s email, Cole had hired a number of private investigators to track him down. To his surprise, they’d failed, finding neither hide nor hair of the playboy who’d apparently decided to step out of the spotlight as soon as he was fired. The weeks until Max’s birthday were ticking down now, which was why Cole had decided to let Pru, who was currently studying to take the private-investigator exam in the fall, have a shot at it. A long shot on his part, but a possibly huge opportunity for Pru. One she was taking seriously, since it was just the kind of case she needed to kick off her post-showgirl career.
After a week of trying to track down Max Benton from the one-bedroom apartment she shared with her brother, she’d decided to use her own limited funds to follow a hunch. Max, who had often been photographed with DJ Mike Benz in European nightclubs, would surely put in an appearance at his friend’s very first stateside gig.
However, showing up here had been only a hunch, and she knew that there was a good chance the security guard wasn’t lying about Max not being up in the VIP area. But then again, why would the guy have gone so cold on her if Max Benton weren’t up there?
No, she thought, she’d definitely come to the right place. She could feel it in her gut. But how was she going to convince the mountain standing in front of her to let her through?
The mountain, who was currently saying, “Time for you to move along, ma’am.”
Wow. Now he was calling her “ma’am”? That was past cold.
“Look,” she said, leveling with him, “I know you have your orders, but—”
“Hallo, who are you?” someone interrupted before she could finish.
Mike Benz appeared beside her in a ratty purple hoodie and a T-shirt with a panda on it. His clothes, paired with his tall, thin frame, made him look even younger than Jakey, her eighteen-year-old brother. But Pru knew from her research that despite his youthful appearance, he was the same age as her, twenty-nine.
So at least she didn’t feel like a shameless cradle robber when she turned on her old showgirl smile at full beam and said, “Hi! I’m Pru. I love your music.”
She limited herself to those three sentences and held her breath. She’d hoped that the simple act of introducing herself with a big smile and an emphatic compliment would have the same effect it did back when she actually made a game out of getting into VIP.
It did.
Mike Benz smiled back at her and said, “Would you like to come up?”
“Sure!” she said, her smile becoming even brighter.
He offered her his arm, and with a sheepish look, the mountain unlatched the velvet rope before stepping aside to let them pass.
Just like that she was in! Pru’s heart beat in her throat as they came to the top of the stairs. Hoping hard that her gut had been right and that Max Benton really was there tonight.
“M.B.!” a voice boomed across the area.
Mike Benz threw his arms in the air and yelled back “M.B.!” like a kid playing a game of Marco Polo.
Pru had to work hard to keep a triumphant smile from breaking out across her face. She had bet right. Max Benton approached them, dressed in a white linen suit with a V-neck T-shirt underneath. His on-trend look, paired with intentionally scruffy black hair and at least three days’ worth of beard growth, somehow managed to make him look as if he’d rolled out of bed and a high-fashion ad at the same time. It was easy for Pru to understand in that moment why women around the world had fallen at Max Benton’s feet. Why, according to the nauseating amount of research she’d done on the Benton heir, he’d been dubbed the Ruiner in certain feminine circles.
One reality starlet had claimed she wasn’t able to date anyone for a year after spending a few weeks with Max. Pru remembered her tale with an inner grimace. Once you go Max, you never go back.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Mike Benz said to Max as they clasped hands and exchanged a one-armed hug. “Why didn’t you text me?”
Max threw him a lazy smile, his pale green eyes shining with their usual wicked gleam. “Figured you’d get up here sooner or later,” he answered.
Pru watched the exchange from her position on Mike Benz’s arm. Max was so insanely good-looking, even more so in real life than in the many pictures of him floating around the internet. If not for the jagged imperfection of his nose, which had been broken a couple of times without proper resets, Max might have been too pretty. But as it was, the crooked nose on top of so much symmetry only made it that much harder for Pru not to stare at him, even though she was trying to play it cool.
Max, however, didn’t seem to have any problems keeping his eyes off her. He barely spared her a look while he and Mike Benz exchanged small talk about how Mike liked New Orleans. Pru was actually beginning to think that Max didn’t remember her and she’d have to awkwardly reintroduce herself, when he said to Mike, “So you know Pru, too?”
He still hadn’t looked directly at her, Pru noticed.
“Ya, man, we met outside VIP,” Mike Benz answered.
Pru quickly rushed in then with her cover story. “One of the girls I used to dance with back in Vegas moved out to Miami and decided to have her bachelorette weekend here in New Orleans.” This much was true—even if that bachelorette night had happened years ago, not tonight as Pru had insinuated.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure you were up here in the VIP area even though the guy downstairs kept saying you weren’t.” She squinched her face to further sell the story. “Trina’s bachelorette weekend was wild, so I almost believed him. Like maybe I’d just been crazy, thinking it was you up here and not some other guy that maybe looked like you.”
She held her breath, hoping Max didn’t see straight through her technically-true-but-not-really story.
Max pegged her with a look, his eyes shrewd, as if he was deciding whether or not to believe her. But then he said, “No, it was me you saw, and I’m glad you decided to bring the party up here.”
“Me, too.” She turned to give Mike Benz another one of her showgirl smiles. “Thanks, Mike!”
Mike grinned down at her. “No problem. Any friend of the other M.B. is most definitely a friend of mine.”
“Oh, goody,” she said, doing her best imitation of the coquette she used to be. “I love making new friends.”
She could sense Max watching her closely as she and Mike made flirty exchanges. This was another huge gamble. Openly flirting with someone else in order to get his attention. But from what she’d read, Max had a competitive streak a mile wide. In his twenties he’d drag raced on every continent except Antarctica. In his thirties, he’d been spotted at high-roller games with million-dollar stakes. And just a few weeks before Cole had cut him off, a story had surfaced about Max wagering the Benton New Orleans in a bet with another hotel heir about who could swim one hundred meters faster. Luckily he’d won that bet, considering he didn’t have the authority to make that kind of wager in the first place.
But in any case, Pru sensed the easiest way to engage Max was to play to his sense of competition. And apparently she was right.
Max looped an arm around Pru’s shoulders and said, “I’ve got a couple of bottles back at my table. Let’s catch up, Pru.”
Then he nodded toward Mike Benz and said, “You can join us if you want.”
* * *
An hour later, Pru wasn’t so sure who was scheming on whom. The three of them were sitting on a plush white couch, arced around a small table with a silver bucket full of ice and champagne bottles at its center. Max had his hand on her knee as he once again filled her glass with champagne. He’d yet to let her glass get more than half-empty. But as attentive as he’d been, he’d spent most of the night talking with Mike Benz about a hotel he was planning to build in New Orleans.
He’d explained the boutique hotel would sit somewhere between its luxury and lower-tier counterparts. With an Old World Parisian aesthetic outside, and a modern European design inside, the planned hotel would also have a hot nightclub that would attract and cater to the many singletons and unmarried couples who flooded into New Orleans every weekend, looking to have fun. Apparently, Max wasn’t as disconnected from the experience of the non-VIP nightclubber as she would have thought, because he painted a picture of a trendy and sophisticated hotel with prices within reach of people in their twenties who hadn’t been born with silver spoons in their mouths.
Pru could actually imagine herself going out of her way to stay at a place like that back when she’d been in her early twenties. It was also a very intriguing idea, coming from Max, since his hotel would probably be competing with both the Benton New Orleans and the planned Benton Inn New Orleans, which would be opening its doors in the fall.
She didn’t have to fake her interest in the conversation. In fact, she had to keep reminding herself to surreptitiously pour out half flutes of champagne whenever both men weren’t looking (with a silent apology to whomever was in charge of cleaning the club’s carpets at night’s end). And by the time Max was done telling Mike Benz about his plans, both she and the DJ were leaning all the way forward.
Max eventually asked Mike about his plans after his residency was through, and Mike confessed he didn’t have any. By the time Mike’s break was over, the two had all but made a formal deal for Mike Benz to be the first resident DJ at the hotel Max would be opening.
Pru observed Max as he watched Mike Benz leave. Though he’d made it seem as if he was the one doing Mike a favor, he now wore a self-satisfied smile. And Pru began to suspect then that Max hadn’t invited her over to his VIP table to just one-up Mike Benz. Rather, he’d been using her to achieve his ultimate goal. Getting Mike Benz to agree to a handshake deal.
This gave Pru pause, because if she was reading the situation right, Max wasn’t quite the useless ne’er-do-well he’d come off as in the online gossip blogs. In fact, she’d bet money Cole had no idea what his younger brother was up to.
Her suspicions were confirmed when Max’s easygoing smile disappeared as soon as Mike was out of earshot. “Planning to go squealing to my brother about this?” he asked Pru.
Pru answered more frankly than she might have under normal circumstances. “I’m Sunny’s best friend, not Cole’s. I barely see him, and when I do, we’re usually not talking hotel business.”
“That’s not an answer,” he pointed out.
Pru lifted her eyebrows. Max was also quite a bit shrewder than she’d originally given him credit for. “Okay...” She set her glass of champagne down and turned toward him on the couch. “Are you saying you don’t want me to tell your brother about your plans?”
Max also set aside his glass. “What if I were saying that to you?” he asked.
“Then I’d say if you don’t want me to tell him about your hotel, you can just ask me not to, instead of accusing me of being a tattletale.”
After giving her an incredulous look, Max said, “Fine, can you not tell Cole about this?”
“No problem,” Pru answered, somehow managing to keep her voice light despite the raging headache she could feel coming on. Reacting in an outwardly negative fashion to the club’s loud music wasn’t exactly in line with the free-spirit party-girl persona she was trying to affect with Max.
“Hey,” she said, turning her showgirl smile back on, despite the fact that her head was throbbing. “Want to get out of here?”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_9f1e765c-1f26-5f6f-ab72-1a4688d86a86)
Max didn’t want to say he was shocked to be leaving the club with Prudence Washington, but he couldn’t exactly say he was not surprised either. He’d already come on to her twice, and he’d been shut down so thoroughly, he hadn’t thought he had much of a chance with her.
The first time, she’d listened to his proposal to keep the time-honored tradition of the best man and maid of honor hookup going with a humorless expression on her beautiful face. “No. Just no,” she’d answered before walking away from him.
The second time, at Cole and Sunny’s shower, he’d decided to try a new tactic, wining and dining Pru before suggesting a sexy rendezvous. But when she saw him approaching, she’d actually turned and walked away before he even had a chance to open his mouth.
However, this time it was Pru who seemed to be coming on to him.
“Do you mind walking?” she asked him with direct eye contact. “My hotel’s right down the street.”
“Which one?” he asked, testing to see if she was serious about her invitation.
She named a cheap but serviceable hotel brand that he’d heard of in passing but had never stayed at himself.
Her quick reply sent Max’s mind into a spin, trying to figure out what had brought on this complete one-eighty. She didn’t seem drunk, or even slightly buzzed, despite the amount of alcohol she’d consumed in the hour since she’d shown up in Sin’s VIP area. He stepped forward and gave the air between them a surreptitious sniff. She smelled fresh. Simple. Soap, a spritz of perfume and nothing more. Just as she had at Sunny’s wedding.
However, Maid of Honor Pru had treated him like a joke—a bad one that she didn’t find remotely charming or funny—while this Pru was all sexy invitation.
Tonight, she was dressed in a gold metallic number that he would have bet money was an actual Halston creation. It accented her flawless brown skin in a way that, along with her long, curly extensions, made her look as if she’d time-traveled right out of Studio 54. It was a look he couldn’t help but appreciate, especially since the dress’s short length showcased her long legs. That was one thing he knew he had in common with his brother. He’d always been a sucker for a nice pair of legs.
And Pru’s legs were a match for Sunny’s, who had also started out as a Benton showgirl. No surprise there, since all of the women hired to dance for the Benton Revue were required to not only be attractive, but also a minimum height of five foot eight.
In a pair of ruby-red stiletto heels so tall they brought her nearly in line with his height of six feet three inches, Pru looked as if she’d fallen out of an ad for the most idealized version of Las Vegas: beautiful, wild and glossy. Like the kind of girl who could rock your world, and happily keep it a secret.
“What changed?” he asked her straight up. He was good at reading people, and as happy as he was to finally close on this long-withheld deal with Sunny’s best friend, he wasn’t sure he trusted the terms yet. “You wouldn’t give me the time of day in Vegas. And now you’re inviting me back to your hotel?”
Pru let his question hang in the air between them for a few seconds, then she stepped forward and whispered low in his ear. “We’re not in Las Vegas anymore.”
He supposed Pru’s comment did explain a few things. For once, there was no one else present looking on. No Sunny or Cole. Not the kid he vaguely remembered Sunny introducing to him as Pru’s younger brother. No one to judge her if she decided to finally take Max up on his original offer to show her a good time.
Good Girl in Las Vegas. Bad Girl in New Orleans. If that was Pru’s deal, he thought, he’d definitely take it.
He was already imagining himself taking her out of the little Halston dress. “In that case, let’s go back to the hotel where I’m staying. The rooms are bigger.”
* * *
They ended up having to stop by Pru’s hotel on route to his anyway. She had a 5:00 a.m. flight back to Las Vegas and said she needed to grab her bag, so that she could take a taxi from his hotel to the Louis Armstrong once they were done with what she called “our business.”
Our business, he thought as he watched her disappear into the hotel. He could already tell that finally sealing the deal on his conquest was going to be fun. A lot of fun.
She emerged from the hotel with a rolling suitcase less than five minutes after going in.
“That was fast.”
“I’d already packed,” she confessed with a self-deprecating smile. “I thought I’d be at the club longer.”
Less than ten minutes later, he was pouring her a glass of wine from a bottle he’d decanted before going out to the Mike Benz gig.
“I’m surprised you’re staying at a Lyon Inn,” she said. “Isn’t there a Benton right up the street?”
She went to stand in front of a watercolor that depicted a historical jazz scene from New Orleans’s famous French Quarter. Max joined her there with the two glasses of wine.
He ignored the painting and handed Pru one of the glasses. “I’m not Cole. I don’t exclusively stay at Bentons just because they’ve got my family’s name plastered across them.”
She took the glass of wine, but her eyes stayed on the watercolor. “But maybe you don’t necessarily want people to know you’re staying at non-Benton hotels either. Is that why you’re staying here under a fake name?”
The front desk staff had greeted him as “Mr. Greer” when he’d entered. Apparently she’d been paying attention.
“One of the reasons,” he answered. “My old college roommate, Sorley, is kind of a big deal—in investment circles at least. His investment group owns a stake in this hotel’s parent company. But he’s kind of a recluse, so sometimes I borrow his name. You know, take it for a spin, so his name won’t be too sad about the glamorous life it could be living if it didn’t belong to a total bore.”
“Also, free hotel room,” she said with an amused note in her voice. “Those come in handy when you’re used to a certain kind of lifestyle, but no longer have the money to fund it.”
He looked over at her. “So you heard about Cole’s decision to part ways with the Max Benton brand?”
“Let’s just say, the Benton Las Vegas isn’t exactly a gossip-free workplace, and I was still working there when you two...uh...parted ways.”
“Hmm, no it’s not,” Max answered. He shrugged. “In any case, it’s good to have boring friends in high places.”
“I bet,” she answered. Her eyes were still on the watercolor. And she still hadn’t taken so much as a sip of her wine.
“So tell me about what you’ve been up to since I saw you last,” Max said, trying to draw her attention from the derivative painting and back to him. “Sunny mentioned you’d decided to retire from the line.”
Now it was her turn to shrug. “I’m twenty-nine now. Close to retirement age anyway.”
There was no official retirement age for Revue girls—mostly because it would have opened the hotel to discrimination lawsuits. But there weren’t many showgirls in the line over the age of thirty. “Still, your best friend is married to the Benton CEO. I think you would have got a pass.”
“Maybe,” Pru answered, her tone vague and distant.
“Tell the truth. You quit because you didn’t want to be on the line when Sunny takes over as head choreographer.”
From what he’d heard, Sunny was all unicorns and rainbows until you entered one of her dance classes. Then she became a total harridan, on par with a drill sergeant.
That accusation finally drew Pru’s brown eyes to him. “That actually is one of the reasons I decided to quit,” she admitted with a laugh. “Staying on the line under Sunny probably would have ruined our friendship.”
She was pretty when she laughed. More than pretty. It made her sparkle.
Max took the glass out of her hand and set it down along with his on the table underneath the watercolor. “Anything else you want to tell me about yourself, before we move on to ‘our business’?”
She raised her eyes to his and said, “No, actually I’m ready to get on with ‘our business.’”
Max felt a wolfish smile break out across his face...only to disappear when she pushed away from him and headed not toward the bedroom, but over to the rolling black suitcase she’d left by the door.
She unzipped her bag and pulled out a thick brown legal envelope. “This is for you.”
That’s when Max realized what this really was. Pru hadn’t suddenly changed her mind. It had been a setup from the very beginning.
At first his jaw hardened with knowledge that she’d used his attraction to her to get him exactly where she wanted.But then he decided to school his face into a look of boredom and take the envelope from her.
“What’s this?” he asked, undoing the tie closure.
“Not sure,” she answered. “Cole didn’t go into detail. Just said he wanted it given to you in private.”
That explained why she’d accepted the invitation to his room, Max thought with a fresh burst of ire. His brother was nothing if not discreet.
He should have known Cole was behind this. His brother had been trying to get a hold of him ever since Max sent him an email about wanting his trust money paid out in full. He opened the envelope and found a stack of what looked like legal documents, topped off with an eight-by-ten typewritten letter.
Max—
I received your request to have the amount of your trust fund transferred into your bank account, soon after I terminated your payments for serving as the Benton’s brand ambassador. While it’s true that you’re eligible to receive these monies when you turn thirty-five, it’s also true that the trust’s executor has to sign off on releasing said monies. As you may or may not have realized, now that our grandmother has signed power of attorney over to me, I now serve as your trust’s executor. As such, I’ve decided it’s not in your best interest to be given such a large sum of money until you meet the terms we’ve previously discussed on more than one occasion. Until such time, I will continue to grow your trust with modest investments.
Enclosed, please find a copy of Grandfather’s will, along with the terms of your trust.
—Coleridge Benton III
Max immediately balled up the letter and threw it with an angry swing across the room. “That patronizing son of a...” Max let out a violent stream of cuss words. Cole had been nagging him to settle down for years, and now he was using Max’s trust to get his way.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3ce1979b-32d8-5d47-8791-03939daf8ce1)
Pru watched with raised eyebrows as Max threw the balled-up letter across the room and swore. The charming playboy who’d brought her to his suite had totally disappeared. What the heck had been in that letter? she wondered, as she watched him pitch it before turning back to her with rage now in his formerly wicked eyes.
Max, she suddenly recalled from her research, hadn’t been all fun and games during his years of partying all over the world. He’d actually been arrested a few times for getting in fights. Mostly in other countries, and the Benton lawyers had always gotten the charges dropped. But the fact remained, even though Max Benton officially had a clean record, he’d racked up quite a few charges for engaging in physical violence.
Plus, noses didn’t lie, and Max’s was crooked with breaks. She took a step back, wondering if she could balance on her ridiculously high heels if it came down to her having to turn tail and run.
“Did you know about this?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
“Know about what?” she asked honestly, curious about what would have put him in such a state.
“My brother deciding to play God with my trust fund. His saying I can’t have the money from my trust unless I meet his terms.”
Well, that sounded like Cole for sure. Controlling was one of the first words that came up when making a list of his qualities. And if he had any idea that Max was planning to build his own competing hotel in New Orleans, Pru wasn’t at all surprised that he’d decided to play hardball. But another part of Pru, who had goals of her own, felt a twinge of guilt. Max most certainly would need his trust money to fulfill his hope of opening his own hotel, and she hated that her assignment had turned out to be of the dream-killing variety.
“What exactly are his terms?” she asked him, licking her lips nervously. “I know you and Cole have some weird history, but maybe you could just meet them,” she suggested.
Heaven knew she’d had to do a few pride-killing things when it came to meeting her brother’s needs. Like joining the PTA. However, Max didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who liked to work too hard to get the money he needed to make things happen. From what she’d read, he’d never actually worked hard for anything in his entire irresponsible life. Why would he start now?
She waited for him to respond with something ridiculous, such as how he was a Benton and therefore deserved to just have money handed to him with no strings attached. In her experience, most trust-fund babies had a sense of entitlement the size of Jupiter, and she doubted Max would be any different.
But instead of answering her, Max went completely still, his head inclining as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him.
Then to Pru’s surprise, his arm snaked out, pulling her forward, so that her body was flush with his and fully locked into his unexpected embrace.
Pru froze—well, at least the outside of her froze. Another part of her, one that she didn’t realize was still in working order after years of celibacy, stirred. Waking up, and to her great embarrassment, actually warming to the sensation of having Max’s entire body, including what felt like a rather large erection, pressed against hers.
“So this is what you do now that you’ve retired from the Revue?” he asked. “Run Cole’s blackmail errands.”
“No, this was a one-off,” she answered, breathless and completely flummoxed. “I’m actually studying to become a PI, and he threw me this case because none of the other people he’d hired to find you had come through. I guess I was sort of his Hail Mary.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “Cole sent others, but only you were able to find me,” he said. “Why is that?”
Pru shrugged. “I...um...kind of guessed.”
“You ‘kind of guessed’ that I was staying in New Orleans under a pseudonym?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “That’s kind of my MO. Someone brings me a case to solve, I gather all the information I can, then I just...guess.”
“And you guessed I’d be here in New Orleans, using Sorley Greer’s name?” he asked.
“No, not exactly. I didn’t even know who Sorley Greer was until you mentioned him tonight. But I’d read enough about you to know that you and Mike Benz were friends, and he happened to be doing his first stateside gig tonight. So I flew out here on a hunch.”
To her surprise, Max began to chuckle, his chest rumbling against hers. “You flew to New Orleans on a hunch,” he repeated. “Because you thought I might be in Sin’s VIP.”
“And I was right. My method worked,” she felt compelled to point out.
Max looked down at her, his expression now verging on slightly bemused. “That you were. But I think you might have missed something important in your information-gathering stage, when you came up with your plan to fly out here and trick me into inviting you into my private sanctum.”
His observation pulsed in the air between them, filling Pru’s chest with a weird combination of dread and anticipation as she asked, “What?”
“You didn’t notice in all those stories going around about me that no one’s ever said, ‘I played Max Benton for a fool, and I totally got away with it.’”
Pru swallowed. He was right. Max did not have a reputation for taking insults lightly.
Her sudden unease at his implied threat must have read on her face.
“Hmm, now you’re getting it,” he said, his voice almost soft with menace.
Before she could ask what exactly she was supposed to be getting, his mouth found hers in a lazy kiss.
Well...lazy on his part at least. To Pru, it felt like having her insides hollowed out as a pit of long-dormant lust opened up inside her stomach. Max Benton might have been a lot of things—a ne’er-do-well, a brawler, a playboy—but a bad kisser wasn’t one of them.
His mouth was confident on top of hers, practically guaranteeing a favorable conclusion for her if she let him keep going.
But she couldn’t let that happen. She was a professional. At least she would be after she got her PI license. Professional PIs didn’t let themselves get seduced by the people they tracked down.
Just as she was about to rally her mind and body to push him away, he cut off the kiss. So abruptly, that her legs felt a little shaky when he unexpectedly let her go.
Now he was the one who took a step back from her. “You really aren’t my brother’s flunky?” he asked, his eyes sharp with suspicion.
She bristled, flustered that her body now felt a little bereft, and insulted at the insinuation that she was completely at Cole’s beck and call, like one of his servants.
“It’s just a case,” she answered. “One I was happy to get before I officially become a licensed PI this fall.”
He studied her intently, as if he was trying to detect a lie.
She met his gaze straight on, because she wasn’t lying, not even by omission this time.
“In that case,” Max said, a rather feral smile spreading across his obscenely handsome face, “let’s get married.”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_58fd5fe6-1b80-5d4d-8a52-6a31ad648d02)
Let’s get married.
Pru stood there, shocked into silence for what might have been a good minute. Then she said, “What?”
Max folded his arms and leaned against the back of the suite’s couch. “You heard me. I said let’s get married.”
“What?” Pru said again. “No! What the...? Why would you even ask me that? What is wrong with you?”
She didn’t wait for his answer, just turned and rezipped her suitcase, grabbing it by the handle as she beat a hasty retreat for the door. Obviously, she had missed something in all her research. Something such as Max Benton being a psycho, one she needed to get away from as soon as possible.
“C’mon,” he said, following her out of his suite—or in this case, Sorley Greer’s suite. “You’re the one who told me to meet my brother’s terms, and me getting married—those are his terms.”
That announcement surprised her enough to make her stop and turn to face him. “Come again?” she asked.
“Cole wants to put me on a leash and bring me to heel before the Benton Group opens up their first Benton Inn in the fall. This new hotel needs to appeal to regular families, so he’s trying to get me to settle down. Like him. That’s the real reason he fired me. The real reason I had to sell my shares in the Benton Group to Sorley, so that he wouldn’t come after them.”
Max shrugged and shook his head as if none of what he was saying was a huge deal. But the fists he’d unconsciously balled at his sides belied his nonchalance. As did his lethal tone.
Pru arched an eyebrow at this latest bit of information about the Benton brothers’ relationship. She wasn’t one to dispense business advice, especially to someone like Cole Benton, who’d been groomed to be a hotel magnate from a very young age. But despite Max’s reputation as a reckless playboy who lived only for fun and clubbing, just an hour with him had revealed to her what her research hadn’t.
Max Benton wasn’t as devil-may-care as he appeared on paper. No, he was way darker than that. She could practically feel the wolf lurking underneath his surface.
And you couldn’t put a wolf on a leash.
If Cole had asked her—he never would have, but if he had—she would have told him to abandon his plan to reel Max in. She didn’t have any real evidence to back it up, but she was almost certain that Cole was playing with fire where Max was concerned. Trying to force him into marriage wasn’t even a remotely good idea.
“Okay, well that’s between you and your brother,” she told Max. “I don’t want anything to do with that.”
He ignored her refusal, regarding her with those pale green eyes of his. “How much is he paying you?”
She shook her head. Funnily enough, when she’d seen the amount Cole was willing to pay someone simply to find Max and deliver a large envelope to him, she’d thought it had been outrageously generous for the service provided. But standing in the hall with Max, she was beginning to think it might not have been enough.
“I’ll double it,” he said. Then before she could refuse him again, he said, “Tell you what, name your price. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
She shook her head again, wondering how she’d found herself in such a crazy scenario. “Max,” she answered, her voice hard and frank, “there is no amount of money that would convince me to fake marry you.”
“Never say never. That’s what I always say when it comes to money. You never know when you’re going to get hit with a rainy day.”
Pru would have thought Max was talking about his own currently diminished circumstances, but his eyes were gleaming at a ten on the wicked-bastard scale. “Don’t worry,” she answered drily. “I’ve got a savings account.”
If he was insulted by her refusal, it didn’t show. He just smirked. “I’d think you’d at least agree to think about it. After doing all that research on me, aren’t you a little bit curious?”
“About what?” she asked him. “About how you run through money like water? About how you’ve been arrested on every continent but Antarctica? About how you got the nickname ‘The Ruiner’?” Pru shook her head with her lips turned down. “I’m curious about a lot of things—that comes with being a detective. But not about any of that.”
She tilted her suitcase forward. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back to Las Vegas to pick up my check. I’m done here.”
He inclined his head to the side and squinted in a way that reminded her of his brother. Though the two men didn’t share anything in common but the color of their eyes.
“You sure about that?” he asked her with a smile so lazy, it looked as if he was on the verge of falling asleep. “Because this doesn’t feel done, and judging from that kiss, we could have a good time if you fake married me. A real good time, as they say here in New Orleans.”
Pru swallowed, her body stirring with the memory of how it had felt to have his mouth claim hers, and the reality starlet’s words rang in her ears for the second time that night. Once you go Max, you never go back.
Okay, time to go, she thought. She turned and walked away from Max Benton as fast as her stiletto heels would allow her.
She had responsibilities to see to back home, she reminded herself. Such as her little brother, whom she’d had to leave alone this weekend in order to fulfill this assignment, and a licensing exam to study for.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” Max called behind her. “Just ask for Sorley Greer.”
Pru didn’t allow herself to stop walking, not until she got to the bank of elevators at the end of the hallway. But as she pushed the down button, she couldn’t help looking back to where Max had been standing outside his hotel room door.
He was still there. Watching her with squinted eyes. Watching her as a wolf watches its prey right before it attacks.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_5ad5f94b-a9d9-5cb4-a558-24111917d047)
Three weeks later Pru was still shaken by Max’s proposal. Not to mention that kiss! So much so that she could barely concentrate on studying for her PI exam. It didn’t help that her morning internet scour for everything related to Max Benton had turned up the exact same thing it had every other time she’d searched for news about Max.
Absolutely nothing.
No club spottings from gossip blogs. No wedding announcements either, even though his thirty-fifth birthday was the Friday after next.
Was he really going to give up all that money? If so, how would he continue to fund his lavish lifestyle? Or make his hotel dream come true?
She thought of her recent phone call with her friend who worked at NevadaStar, the Benton Group’s official credit union. In a weird continuation of her compulsion to keep looking into Max Benton, she’d decided to follow his money after the fact.
She hadn’t during her first instinctual investigation because she knew it was the first thing most detectives did. If none of the other detectives had been able to find him using a money trail, she figured she wouldn’t be able to either. But the fact remained that following the money was still one of the best ways to find what someone was up to. And for whatever reason, she could not stop digging into Max Benton’s life even though she was no longer getting paid to do so.
Max still hadn’t announced a marriage to fulfill Cole’s demands to release his trust money. So maybe, she’d speculated, he had found another source of funding for his hotel. He was friends with, if not the richest men in the world, many of their sons and daughters. Including Sorley Greer, whom Pru had also looked into as a possible financier for Max’s hotel.
However, according to her research, Sorley wouldn’t go for a project this small. He tended toward big investments based on predictions only he seemed to be able to make. To the point that quite a few other big-time investors had accused him of insider trading, only to have to back down from their claims when Sorley’s lawyers sent them strongly worded letters that made generous use of words such as defamation and libel. In any case, as good as Max’s hotel idea was, it didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of Sorley’s portfolio.
But that didn’t mean that Max hadn’t found another way to get the money, which was why she’d asked her friend at NevadaStar to look into his account. The nice thing about having been involved in a stage show that aged most of its pretty participants out at thirty was that she now had contacts working in post–Benton Revue jobs in nearly every institution in Las Vegas. Very lucky for her, since the truth was that having contacts in the right places was critical to working cases as a private investigator.
But this particular lead didn’t pan out. According to her friend, Max hadn’t received a single noninterest cent since Cole cut him off. From the Benton Group or anyone else. And the interest on his account was seriously measured in cents now, since he currently had only a three-figure number left in it.
“I guess stunting like he used to ain’t cheap,” her friend observed with a whistle over the youngest Benton heir’s low amount of available funds. “Either he’s going to have to get in back good with his family, or get a real job.”
Try as she might, Pru just didn’t see Max getting a regular job. Building a splashy new hotel with his trust money? Yes. That was the type of big gamble that a guy like Max would go for. Actually using his marketing degree from the Boston Institute of Technology in order to earn a paycheck that wasn’t a thinly disguised version of his original allowance? She doubted it.
But maybe he’d just been blustering about starting his own line of boutique hotels, she thought after finding nary a mention of Max during her latest internet search. She’d met guys like Max before back when she’d been into the Vegas lifestyle. Guys who’d been all talk and no play. Guys who thought they had what it took to make a big vision come to life but crapped out before even rolling their dice.
Pru frowned, wishing her fingers weren’t itching to call up her friend at NevadaStar and ask her to go even deeper with her search. Maybe send over his year-to-date transactions report. Her friend had said most of the money in his account had gone toward paying credit-card bills. But maybe there was something she’d missed, something she hadn’t seen.
“Pru?” a voice said behind her.
She turned from the list of Nevada’s revised statutes and limitations that she was supposed to be studying to see her brother, Jakey, standing in the doorway to her room. He’d had yet another growth spurt over the summer and now stood a good five inches taller than her. He’d also been working out in an effort to relieve the summer boredom, so he’d also gotten wider over the past two months. The front of the T-shirt he wore seemed to be crying out for mercy as it strained against his newly formed muscles, and his old jogging pants might as well have issued their own flood warning, they were in such high-water territory.
She screwed up her mouth. “We’re going to have to hit the mall before you leave for your camp next week. Get you some new clothes.”
More money that would have to be spent now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue and was living off her savings. Luckily, the money Cole had paid her for hunting Max down had nicely cushioned her account. She had enough to not only tide her through until October but also to pay for Jakey’s books when he started at UNLV in the fall on a full scholarship.
Buying Jake some more clothes for camp and also a fall wardrobe for college shouldn’t be a problem. But still, she worried. She and Jake had been forced to live frugally in the years since their parents’ deaths in order to pay rent on an apartment in one of Nevada’s best school districts and make ends meet. After Jake got his full scholarship, Pru had thought long and hard before quitting the line in order to pursue what she’d begun to think of as a calling. But she couldn’t be sure how soon she’d be able to acquire more work after she got her license. Cases like the one Cole had thrown her didn’t come along every day. Plus there would be the costs of renting an office and advertising her services around town.
She needed to watch every penny, she thought. But not at her brother’s expense. It wasn’t his fault that he kept growing and growing, or that his new health kick upped their weekly grocery bill, or that his going to college came with extra expenses that even having Jakey continue to live at home wouldn’t alleviate.
“You know what, let’s go to the mall now,” she said, glancing at the clock on her bedroom wall. “Maybe we can get some lunch while we’re out.”
She grabbed her wallet and phone off the desk, slipped them into the back pockets of her bell-bottom jeans and was all set to go. Back in the day before she became Jakey’s guardian, she wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the apartment she used to share with her best friend, Sunny, in anything less than full makeup. Back then, even her most casual looks were chosen more to accentuate her assets than for comfort.
But now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue, she’d pretty much stuck to a wardrobe of her mother’s old seventies-era clothing throughout the summer. Her mother had been a seamstress along with Sunny’s grandmother for the Revue, and she’d taken excellent care of even her most casual clothes. True, seventies and early eighties vintage wasn’t the most glamorous look, but wearing these clothes made Pru feel closer to her mother, even though she was no longer here.
“Actually,” said Jake with an apologetic wince, “I was hoping maybe we could go down to the storage unit and do some upkeep on Dad’s car.”
“Oh...sure,” Pru said, quickly resetting.
About twenty minutes later, they were pulling the cover off their dad’s black ’55 Thunderbird.
Back when they’d been forced to downsize in order to keep Jakey in his school district, Pru had paid for storage space and an additional garage unit for their dad’s Thunderbird. He’d inherited the car from his own father, and Pru had grown to highly value it. Not just because it was a much sought-after collectible, but also because it was Jakey’s unspoken inheritance. Their happy and healthy parents hadn’t been prescient enough to take out a life insurance policy, but her father had left this car behind. And that was why Pru had remained diligent about its upkeep all these years. She made sure that she and Jakey did the necessary work to guarantee the car would stay in good enough shape for Jakey to drive it someday.
However, this particular trip wasn’t really about their father’s Thunderbird. Asking her if they could go down to the garage unit to do some upkeep on their dad’s car was Jakey’s way of telling her he needed to talk. Over the years she’d been his guardian, she’d guided him through first dates, first breakups, major disappointments and lost friendships over the hood of that car.
“So what’s up?” she asked Jakey as he lifted up the Thunderbird’s hood.
“I dunno,” Jakey mumbled. He fiddled with the oil cap for a few seconds, then he said, “It’s stupid.”
“Okay, maybe,” Pru answered. “Tell me anyway.”
More fiddling. “I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up. It’s not going to happen. I know it’s not going to happen.”
Despite her increasing curiosity, Pru casually walked over to get the motor oil from a nearby shelf. “You know I don’t believe in ‘not going to happen.’ Not when it comes to you. I’m your big sis, remember?” She handed the motor oil to him. “Whatever you need, just tell me, and I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
“Yeah, I know you do, but...” He trailed off. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s just finish this and go to the mall.”
He reached to take the motor oil from her, but she held on to it, refusing to let it go.
“No, tell me, Jakey,” she insisted, dropping all pretense of feeling casual about this conversation. “Are you in trouble?” she asked, real alarm flaring up inside her. “Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out, I promise you. Just tell me.”
“No, I’m not in trouble!” he said, rushing to reassure her. “It’s more a good thing...I guess. An opportunity. I...um...got off the wait list to BIT.”
Pru’s eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline, her first thoughts going to Max, who’d received and wasted a degree in marketing from BIT. “BIT? You mean like the Boston Institute of Technology? That BIT?”
“Yeah, that BIT,” Jakey answered with a sheepish smile.
“Oh, my gosh, Jakey! That’s wonderful!” She put aside the motor oil and hugged him. “I didn’t even know you applied there! That wasn’t on the list you showed me!”
“Yeah, I didn’t want you to waste your money,” he said. “So I used some of the money Aunt Sunny gave me for Christmas to pay the application fee, and I got wait-listed. But I guess they must have decided to take me off the wait list because I got an email that I was in two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago?” Pru repeated, her mouth dropping open. “And you’re just now telling me?”
Jakey shrugged. “It’s not like I can go. They gave me a financial-aid package, but it’s not a full deal like UNLV. It also doesn’t cover room and board or books or the flight out there. There’s no way you could afford it. It was stupid of me to even apply. It’s just... Dad used to talk about me going there, and I already know I want to become an engineer. I thought I should at least try to get in. For him.”
Pru completely understood. Her parents had both come from poor backgrounds and her father had used education as a means to break through to the middle class, earning his degree and becoming a high school math teacher. He’d carried big hopes and dreams for Jakey not just following in his footsteps but going even further than he did. He would have considered Jakey getting into a big math-and-science school such as BIT a dream come true.
“Dad would have been so proud of you,” she told him, her eyes going soft with fond memories of their father. “You’re going to BIT.”
He shook his head. “It’s too much money.”
“How much?”
“Too much?”
“Just tell me how much, Jakey.”
So he did, and the number made Pru a little breathless. That was over five times what she currently had tucked away in savings for Jakey’s continued education.
But still she said, “You’re going to BIT.”
Jakey shook his head again. “There’s no way you can get that much money together before the school year starts. I was thinking maybe we could ask Aunt Sunny, but Dad was always saying...”
“...remember what ‘make ends meet’ really means,” she finished for him.
Their father had grown up in Vegas and seen too many friends from his old neighborhood succumb to both credit and gambling debts. He hadn’t believed in buying anything on credit, not even cars. Back in the day, Pru hadn’t dared ask her father for money—even when she’d blown through her entire paycheck with more than a week to go until she got paid again. It just wasn’t worth receiving one of their father’s long “neither a beggar nor a borrower be” lectures.
Jakey was right. Besides, there was no way she could pay Sunny that amount back, even if she was willing to borrow as opposed to work for money. She’d have to find another way to get the money. One that wouldn’t involve a huge debt load on her part. But how?
The answer hit her with a sickening thud, crashing all the way down to the bottom of her stomach.
Never say never. That’s what I always say when it comes to money. You never know when you’re going to get hit with a rainy day.
“Pru? Pru?” her brother said.
Pru blinked.
“Are you okay? You just went real quiet.”
“Yeah, sure. Better than okay.” She pasted on a smile for her brother’s sake. “I’m just wondering if they’ll be selling winter coats at the mall yet. You’ll need one for Boston.”
Jakey’s whole face lit up with a goofy smile. “Probably not. We should probably just concentrate on getting a few things for camp and order the coat online.”
“That’s a great idea. Do you...um, mind if I go make a phone call while you finish this up? I’ve got a possible client I need to touch base with. Then we’ll go to the mall.”
“And maybe we can call Aunt Sunny up to celebrate me getting into BIT tonight?” he suggested. “Maybe Cole, too.”
Thanks to their mutual interest in cars, Cole and Jakey had become buddies since the CEO had been with Sunny.
“Sunny’s still teaching her summer class in New York,” Pru answered apologetically. “And Sunny says Cole’s been clocking extra hours, training some new vice president, so that he’ll be good to go before he goes on paternity leave in the fall.”
Thank goodness, she silently added to herself. Even if Sunny and Cole weren’t otherwise occupied, she doubted she could have looked either of them in the eye—not considering what she was about to agree to.
“But we’ll go wherever you want tonight,” she told Jakey. “Just name the place.”
She took out her phone and waved as she walked away from him, as if everything was terrific. Because things were terrific. Her brother would be going to his dream college in Boston. And she’d make it happen, because it was no less than what he’d deserved. He’d lost his parents at a tender age, and he deserved to be happy. He deserved to get everything he’d ever dreamed of, and she would make sure he got it.
Even if she had to make a deal with the devil in order to do so.
* * *
“Looks like there is an amount of money that would get you to fake marry me,” was the first thing Max said after she told him what it would take for her to agree to marry him.
Despite his words, he didn’t seem surprised at all, not when he answered the phone, not even when she’d answered his greeting with a five-figure dollar amount. A chill ran down Pru’s back. It had been easy to get Max on the phone. Easier than she’d thought it would be. The front desk at the Lyon had put her right through as soon as she gave them her name, and Max had picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been expecting her call.
“What changed?” he asked, his voice laced with lazy amusement.
“My brother got into BIT,” Pru answered through gritted teeth.
Max whistled. “My alma mater! Nice! I think I remember maybe going to one or two classes while I was there.”
Yet, he had graduated with a degree, Which he never even bothered to use, Pru thought, shaking her head. Apparently, if your family donated enough money to your college, it was enough to earn even the most shiftless student the degree of his choice.
“Do we have a deal or what?” Pru asked.
It occurred to her then that Max could simply be toying with her from the other side of the phone now. He might have no intention of honoring his brother’s terms. Or even more likely, he could have found someone way more appropriate to fulfill them.
Pru’s shoulders tightened at the thought of Max rescinding his original offer.
“Look, if you’ve already found someone else, just let me know now,” she told Max. “This might be fun and games for you. But it’s my brother’s future we’re talking about, so if you’re not serious—”
“Oh, I’m serious, Prudence,” he said, his voice suddenly a lot darker on the other side of the phone. “You have no idea.”
Another chill ran down Prudence’s back. Again, she got the sense that there was more to Max than what he was showing the world. Something lurking inside him. Something that would come up and bite her if she weren’t careful.
But she had to do this. For her brother. She’d do whatever it took to make his dreams come true.
So she pressed forward and pretended to be much braver than she actually felt. “If you’re really serious, stop toying with me. Do we have a deal or what?”
A long moment of silence passed. “Yes, Pru, we have a deal.”
She swallowed, barely able to believe that he was still open to marrying her, or that she was really going to go along with his scheme. “Okay, then, I guess I should ask when and where and how long?”
She could practically feel Max smiling through the phone. Smiling like a wolf.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_c9d18ac8-ae5e-5dc4-ae1a-e2e90d48cfaa)
When? Pretty soon as it turned out. Saturday to be exact, just six days before Max Benton’s thirty-fifth birthday. Apparently that was how long Max’s non-Benton family lawyers needed to produce the kind of prenup they were going to need for such an unorthodox arrangement. One that allowed them both to get a quickie divorce under already-agreed-upon terms as soon as his trust fund check cleared the bank.
Pru was initially happy for the short reprieve. But the days seemed to fly by in a haze of dread that didn’t allow her to get in much quality study time. Before she was nearly ready, the day of her wedding had arrived, casting an ominous shadow over everything she did from the moment she woke up.
At least she didn’t have to figure out what to do with Jakey while she was dealing with Max. The morning before their wedding, Pru drove her brother to Henderson for the Focus Leadership Camp. Jakey had been attending the two-week program dedicated to teaching underprivileged youth leadership skills since the age of thirteen, and he’d been looking forward to volunteering as a counselor all summer.
However, as they drove to Henderson, he fiddled with the passenger-door lock on Pru’s tiny hatchback. “Maybe I should stay in Vegas,” he said. “Try to get a job.”
“No,” Pru answered before the sentence was fully out of his mouth. Even if Jakey hadn’t been looking forward to this all summer, she didn’t want him anywhere near Vegas tonight.
After a bunch of back-and-forth, Pru shut down all of Jakey’s arguments by simply dropping him off at his destination. She got his duffel out of the back and just about tossed it at him, then gave him a quick hug and sped off before he could protest any further.
She got home in record time, ate lunch and tried to use the hours before her wedding event to study. But she gave up on that around dinnertime.
How was she supposed to think about anything else, other than the fact that she would soon be marrying Max Benton? Tonight. For money.
Her stomach churned and Pru decided against warming up the takeout she and Jake had ordered the previous night. The only thing worse than marrying Max Benton would be throwing up in the middle of the ceremony.
A knock sounded on the door about an hour before she’d planned to leave to meet up with Max at the Benton.
She frowned. The complex was gated and no one was supposed to be able to get in unless she buzzed them through.
But sure enough, there was a large Latino man in her doorway. One she recognized as Cole’s driver.
“Tomas?” she said, opening the door. “What are you doing here?”
He gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry to bother you. Mr. Max must not have told you I was coming.”
Actually, she hadn’t heard from Mr. Max, other than an email informing her they’d be getting married at the Benton at the rather late hour of 10:00 p.m. The lack of communication had been just one of the reasons she’d been so jumpy over the past few days, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d be a no-show since she couldn’t be sure if he was even in town.
This could all be some kind of elaborate joke on his part, she’d thought a few times over the course of the past few gloomy days. An act of revenge for playing him for a fool when she’d delivered his brother’s envelope. Pru had sent her brother to school with rich kids long enough to know they could be cruel, especially to those who didn’t have the resources to defend themselves.
But if Tomas was any indication, Max was not only in town, but availing himself of Cole’s driver.
“He shouldn’t have bothered you,” Pru said, embarrassed to have someone she knew and liked entangled in all of this. “I could have driven myself.”
“No bother at all,” Tomas answered. “Besides, he wanted to make sure you got your wedding outfit in time to change before we got to the Benton.”
He held up a dress bag.
And Pru’s heart sank, knowing on instinct that the wedding dress Max had chosen for her was probably nothing like the simple white crochet dress she’d been planning to wear for their farce of a wedding.
Fifteen minutes later, she stared at herself in the mirror, completely aghast. Apparently, Max liked vintage, too. In fact, he had sent over one of the Benton Revue’s original showgirl costumes, a scoop-neck top and bottom, covered in silver trim, all held together by a netted stocking.
It came with a huge white feather headdress and matching white bustle, which thankfully fanned over and completely covered her backside. And the rhinestones and silver trimming shone so bright, the costume might well have been mistaken for white. But other than that, it looked nothing remotely like a wedding dress.
After a full moment of staring at her image in horror, she decided to just throw a long cardigan over the ostentatious number and leave before she could think too hard about what she was doing. She comforted herself with the fact that the old-timey costumes didn’t expose nearly as much skin as the current crop of Benton Revue getups.
She and Sunny had never been among the girls who danced topless, but their barely there bikinis, dripping with fake jewels, hadn’t been designed to leave much to the tourists’ imaginations.
Still, there was a difference between dancing in a revue with two dozen other girls and walking across the lobby of the Benton in an old showgirl costume beside Tomas. The driver’s large body blocked out a lot of the stares, but not nearly all of them, and Pru’s cheeks burned as they made their way through the Benton.
She was a little surprised when Tomas passed by the bank of elevators in the main lobby. Since Benton Girls got a steep discount, she’d been to quite a few ceremonies at the Benton and knew that most of their wedding salons were upstairs.
But Tomas kept on going, past more staring tourists and hotel employees. So she guessed that meant they would be getting married in the Benton ballroom, which she supposed wasn’t that big of a surprise since that was where Sunny and Cole had gotten married. Still, the thought of getting married in the same place as her best friend felt a bit like sacrilege. Sunny and Cole had married for love, whereas she and Max were doing this for much, much different reasons. She whispered a silent apology to her best friend, hoping Sunny wouldn’t hold this against her after it was all said and done.
But when Tomas finally stopped walking, it was in front of the towering double doors to the Benton’s main nightclub. This particular nightclub was known as one of Vegas’s premiere hotspots. It was the place to go Thursday through Saturday night if you wanted to play a game of Spot the Celebrity. And like many clubs in Vegas, it had a one-word title. In this case, one meant to convey a sense of decadent luxury and wicked-good times.
MAX was written in huge red letters across the top of the doors.
Pru’s heart sank. She used to come here all the time before her parents died, but not once after she’d taken over as Jakey’s guardian. She remembered now the other showgirls talking about how the club had been closed for a much-needed update and then reopened under a brand-new name.
Apparently, that brand-new name had been Max. Pru let go an irritated sigh. Of course this was where Max had decided to hold their wedding ceremony.
“Son of a...” Pru said, covering her heavily made-up eyes with one hand.
When she uncovered them, she found Tomas looking down at her sympathetically. “You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked her.
No, she wasn’t. She definitely, definitely wasn’t ready for any of this.
But she took off her cardigan and handed it to Tomas anyway.
* * *
The next morning Pru woke inside a cloud of white. Everything was white and soft, and for a moment she thought she might have gone to heaven.
But then she lifted her head and realized that though nearly everything in the room was white, this was not heaven. No, definitely not heaven, she thought squinting against the too-bright sun streaming through two wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. After her eyes adjusted, she realized she was in a hotel room, one she vaguely recognized from pictures she’d seen in brochures as one of the Benton’s panoramic corner suites.
Her head was throbbing, her mouth dry to the bone from lack of hydration. And, she noticed the bed wasn’t all white. There was brown and black makeup all over her pillow. She’d slept in her makeup? That was so bad for your skin. Like most showgirls, she never did that. She sat up in bed, wondering what the heck had happened to her last night only to realize that she wasn’t wearing anything.
That’s when memories from the previous night came bursting back through all the cotton wool inside her head.
Her entering the nightclub to the loud, raucous cheers of what had to be at least a thousand of Max’s “closest friends.”
The flash of paparazzi taking pictures as she made her way over to Max, who was standing on top of the stage normally reserved for DJs and wearing a skinny white tuxedo. Him pulling her up to join him with a devilish grin.
Max handing her a shot glass with some kind of blue liquid inside as he whispered in her ear, “This is how Max Benton would get married, so play along, Prudence.”
Her taking the shot, actually grateful for it, because she knew she would need to be severely altered to go through with this.
The images flashed by quicker after that. Her and Max signing the official prenup in front of the cheering crowd. Her and Max taking a shot for every vow exchanged.
There had been dancing after that. A lot of it, with Max in the middle of the throbbing throng. She remembered laughing with him, and feeling free. Freer than she had in a very long time.
But what had happened after that? She sat up and frantically looked around, trying to figure out how she’d gone from dancing with Max Benton to waking up in one of the bridal suites.
“I see you’re finally awake.”
She turned to see Max walking into the room, looking fresh as a daisy, his freshly washed black hair in a stubby knot on top of his head. Wearing nothing but a towel...and a titanium wedding ring on his left hand.
Despite the circumstances, Pru couldn’t help but stare. Max Benton, as it turned out, didn’t spend all his time in the club. He must have also been clocking some serious hours at the gym, too, because he was cut from head to toe with lean muscles. The sight of his nearly naked body was so impressive that Pru couldn’t take her eyes off it for a long entranced second before it occurred to her why he was staring back with an equally impressed look on his face.
Then she remembered she was sitting there still naked as the day she’d been born.
With a gasp, she grabbed the white duvet, bringing it up to cover her chest before demanding, “What happened last night? Tell me. Now.”
Chapter 7 (#ulink_10471175-f167-56a8-a70e-91f92674855b)
Prudence had warned Max she’d no longer be there when they woke up.
“Wanna do me?” she’d asked him when she’d crawled onto the bed in her showgirl costume. “I’m only here for one night.”
Max, who had a rule about sleeping with a completely wasted woman, had answered, “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”
Then he’d come over to the bed, undid her feather bustle and started the surprisingly complicated process of getting her showgirl costume unzipped, unhooked and off her body. The idea had been to get her out of the costume and tucked into bed, but Pru didn’t make it easy for him. She was little to no help, forcing him to turn her body every which way in order to get her undressed.
And then there’d been the big reveal of her fully naked body. As it turned out, Pru had a body built for loving: soft wide hips, a heart-shaped backside and a set of breasts so glorious, they made his mouth water at the thought of tasting their black-cherry centers.
“You sure you don’t want to keep the party going?” she’d asked, arching her back and extending her long legs in a classic pinup-girl pose.
Max had gritted his teeth before reaching for the duvet and yanking it, so that she came tumbling out of her sexy pose.
By the time she recovered, he was holding up the duvet, letting her know that he was ready for her to stop tempting him and lie down. He needed to cover the sight of her nearly irresistible body with the blanket.
Pru obediently lay down, but she continued to argue with him. “C’mon, Max, don’t be like that. I had so much fun tonight.” She pouted. “Just do me, okay? One time. That’s all I’m asking.”
It was a hard argument to resist. Especially with Pru running her hands over her body, making it blatantly obvious that she would rather have him on top of her than the blanket he was holding.
But Max, who prided himself on not living by the rules, followed this particular rule of consent for good reason.
He averted his eyes from her delectable body and reminded himself why. It’s a good way to get taken to court, he told himself. Do you really want to be that douche bag who gets a girl drunk in order to get her into bed? he’d asked himself.
No, he didn’t want to be that guy, but he did want Pru. There was that unfinished business in New Orleans that they had. The kiss that had continued to haunt him in the weeks before she’d called to accept his offer. And he still owed her for using her womanly wiles to basically serve him with his brother’s stupid demands.
But he didn’t want Pru like this. Not in some drunken lay, meant to cap off a night of partying it up. No, he decided, when he took Pru, he wanted her completely sober. He wanted her to give in to him, not because she was drunk, but because she wanted him, wanted the things he could and would do to her body.
Determined to do this his way, he moved in with the blanket. But at the last moment, she grabbed one of his hands with two of hers, bringing it down to rest on one perfect globe.
“Max Benton, do you know how hot you are?” she asked him.
Max went still. He could feel her heavily beaded nipple against his palm, and Max’s cock jumped inside his white tuxedo pants in response.
Perhaps sensing that Max was at the edge of his restraint, Pru let out a sexy moan before asking, “Do you have any idea how hot you made me when we were dancing together? I want you so bad right now, Max. Please.”
For a moment, Max was paralyzed with lust, locked in a battle with himself to throw his number-one rule straight out the window.
Pru totally took advantage of that. Her hand snaked around the back of his neck and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss so hot, it made his entire body pound with need. His instincts howled to take what she was offering.
But he somehow managed to pull back. He tore his lips away from hers and said, “Pru, I want to. You have no idea how much I want you. But not like this, okay? Not when you’ve had too much to drink.”
He cursed himself now for letting that happen. When he started offering her shots, he’d thought she’d do the same thing she’d obviously done in New Orleans—pour them out when he wasn’t looking.
He’d used a trick one of the old Benton magicians had taught him back in the day for making drinks disappear in front of a large audience, while Pru knocked back every shot during the vows and then grabbed a bottle of champagne for all the photo ops Max had prearranged for after their stunt ceremony.
At first, Max had thought Pru was just playing her part to the tee. Pretending to be an anything-goes party girl like in New Orleans. But when the photos were done and they were free to do their own thing, instead of running to Tomas so that he could drive her home, she’d pulled Max out onto the dance floor.
Some showgirls he’d met, even the ones with dance degrees, weren’t particularly great dancers when it came to getting out on the floor at a nightclub. Sometimes they were stiff when they didn’t have choreographed moves to follow, or more interested in how they looked while dancing than actually having fun.
Pru wasn’t one of those girls. She’d dragged Max away from the cameras into the middle of the crowd because according to her that was the absolute best place to be. Then she’d danced with him. Really danced. Abandoning herself to the music and using him as an instrument of her appreciation, until eventually it felt as if they were one body, writhing together on the dance floor, held in thrall to the music’s sway. They danced like this for what felt like hours, him reveling in the feel of holding her close as they moved in time with the fast music.
When Max had sent Tomas home and arranged for the hotel room, his intentions had been honorable—sort of. Let Pru sleep off the night’s excesses, then continue the party in the morning.
After the night they’d had, he’d doubted Pru would have much more energy than what it would take to climb into bed. He hadn’t counted on her propositioning him, or making it so hard for him to turn her down.
But he did it. He ended the kiss before it got out of control.
“Not tonight,” he told her, bringing his hand up from her breast and using it to cup her face instead. She was still beautiful, he couldn’t help but notice, even with her eye makeup all smudged and her long curly hair looking less than perfect.
“Tomorrow, I’ll make you feel good, give you everything you want, I promise. Just wait until morning, sweetheart. We’ll spend the whole day in bed.”
She smiled at him, her eyes hooded with desire. “That sounds really nice,” she said. “I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?” he asked. “Whatever you’ve got planned, cancel it. We’ll keep the party going, just like you said.”
“I wish we could keep the party going forever,” she whispered. Then her smile turned sad. “But we can’t. I won’t be here tomorrow morning. If you want me, this is your last chance, your only chance.”
Max had frowned the night before, not understanding. But instead of answering his follow-up questions, Prudence had turned over and fallen asleep without any further discussion. Leaving Max to sleep on the couch because he didn’t trust himself to occupy the same bed as Pru or her naked, nubile body.
He’d taken a cold shower before going to sleep. Then another one after waking up from an erotic dream involving him stripping Pru out of a real wedding dress and taking her from behind before the dress had even hit the floor.
He’d taken the second shower in the hopes of calming himself down a bit before he woke Pru up to fulfill the promise he’d made her the previous night. He didn’t want their first time together to be over in a few blazing minutes.
But when he came out of the shower, it hadn’t been necessary to rouse his sleeping bride, because she was already awake. With her long hair in a tangle of curls, and naked, she looked every bit as enticing as she had the night before.
She stared at him in his towel, her dark brown eyes lighting with appreciation, which had given him momentary hope that what Pru had said last night hadn’t been a case of drunken gibberish.
But then a look of horror had overtaken her face as she covered her breasts with the duvet and demanded to know what had happened last night. Her face accusing, as if he hadn’t used every weapon in his willpower arsenal to keep his hands off her.
That was when he understood exactly what Pru had meant the night before. Wedding Night Pru, the woman who’d met every challenge he’d put to her, the woman who had posed and laughed and talked and danced with him all night, the woman who had kissed him as he’d never been kissed before—she was gone.
Gone and replaced with the tight-faced would-be detective currently clutching the duvet as if he’d done something indefensible to her.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. If we had hooked up last night, you’d have no doubt about what had happened, because you would be feeling it this morning. All over your body.”
His words hit their mark, and even though Pru’s face was too dark to show a blush, he got to enjoy the show of her looking away from him, obviously flustered.
But his enjoyment was brought up short when she said, “I have to go. I have to get home.”
“Why?” he asked. “Your brother’s at camp. What else do you have to do today?”
She turned on him, her eyes sharp. “How did you know my brother was at camp?” she asked.
He gave her a lazy shrug and took a seat on the suite’s dark gray couch. “I guess the same way you knew to look for me at the club in New Orleans. Research.”
She wrinkled her nose, obviously not liking the idea of someone prying into her life as she’d pried into his. “So yeah, I need to go. Like right now.”
She got out of bed, taking the covers with her, but stopped short when she saw the showgirl outfit on the ground. “You left vintage clothing lying around on the floor?” she nearly shrieked, as if this, and not waking up in his bed, was the most horrific thing she’d experienced that morning.
Supposing he should be grateful to have waking up in his bed pushed into second place, he watched her perform the rather impressive task of keeping the heavy duvet in place as she picked up the old costume. She draped it across her two arms and carried it like a wounded animal over to the suite’s large walk-in closet.
“You should ask whoever pulled this for you to come up and get it,” she said as she disappeared into the closet. “Make sure it gets properly cleaned and put back wherever you found it...”
She suddenly popped her head out of the closet and asked, “Where exactly did you find it?”
Max didn’t reply, knowing she probably wouldn’t like the answer.
But his refusal must have been clue enough, because she groaned. “Tell me—please tell me—you did not pull a costume from Nora Benton’s special collection.”
“My grandmother loves weddings, and if she’d been here to ask, she would have been happy to loan it to you.”
That was true. His Irish grandmother had been a Benton Revue girl herself. She would have been thrilled to see one of her costumes make an appearance at her grandson’s wedding—crazy but true, she was that kind of grandmother.
However, it was also true that he’d have hell to pay from his redheaded grandmother when she got back from her European vacation at the end of the summer. It was one thing to get married without inviting her or Cole. It was another to do so with this particular bride. A girl she liked so much, that she’d actually cheered when Pru turned him down at his brother’s wedding, with a “Thatta girl, Pru” before telling her own grandson, “She’s too good for the likes of you.”
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Theodora Taylor
The stakes have never been higher… When aspiring private investigator Prudence Washington delivers legal documents to Max Benton, she receives an unexpected marriage proposal. Notorious playboy Max needs a fake wife in order to receive his hefty inheritance. Agreeing to the plan will help Pru's bank balance…and vacationing with the sexy billionaire is doing wonders for her libido.Max spends more time in the tabloids than in the boardroom, but he's got huge plans for a new chain of hotels. He'll happily prove he's turned over a new leaf by sharing a room–and unforgettable nights–with his gorgeous new "wife." Working together to expose a saboteur only increases their combustive attraction. But can he convince the woman he drew into a lie that he'll do anything to make this connection last?
The stakes have never been higher…
When aspiring private investigator Prudence Washington delivers legal documents to Max Benton, she receives an unexpected marriage proposal. Notorious playboy Max needs a fake wife in order to receive his hefty inheritance. Agreeing to the plan will help Pru’s bank balance…and vacationing with the sexy billionaire is doing wonders for her libido.
Max spends more time in the tabloids than in the boardroom, but he’s got huge plans for a new chain of hotels. He’ll happily prove he’s turned over a new leaf by sharing a room—and unforgettable nights—with his gorgeous new “wife.” Working together to expose a saboteur only increases their combustive attraction. But can he convince the woman he drew into a lie that he’ll do anything to make this connection last?
Max let a few seconds tick by before asking once again, “Truth or dare.”
“Dare,” she answered immediately, welcoming the change of subject from Max’s “plans” for her. Now wishing she hadn’t asked about that in the first place.
“You should have picked truth,” he said. “Sure you don’t want to change your mind?”
He still hadn’t touched her, but the sexual tension was back. Buzzing between them like an electric magnet.
Pru’s legs began to feel a little weak, but she shook her head in answer to his question. The old Pru wouldn’t have backed down.
There came a moment of silence so suspended, it made Pru feel as if she were at the top of a roller coaster. Then he said, “Dance with me.”
He reached into the basket and pulled out his phone. A few seconds later, it played a fairly new club anthem that Pru recognized from the night of their nightclub wedding.
Dear Reader (#ulink_bcdabc8f-7380-5ffa-8c92-fd8b72f162f7),
As my longtime readers know, I don’t write heroes—I turn villains into heroes, in the hottest ways possible. Max Benton, the playboy brother of Cole Benton from Vegas Baby, happens to be one of my favorite turns, because he’s a bad boy to the core. Disreputable, dishonorable, distressingly hot—and totally unapologetic about it.
I hope you enjoy watching Max get exactly what he deserves in Pru, a righteous and bodacious heroine, who’s about to turn his self-serving world inside out.
Love,
Theodora
Love’s Gamble
Theodora Taylor
www.millsandboon.co.uk (http://www.millsandboon.co.uk)
THEODORA TAYLOR writes hot books with heart. When not reading, reviewing or writing, she enjoys spending time with her amazing family, going on date nights with her wonderful husband, and attending parties thrown by others. Visit her at theodorataylor.com (http://theodorataylor.com) and at facebook.com/theodorataylorauthor (http://facebook.com/theodorataylorauthor).
To everyone who asked me about Max and Pru.
Here you go!
Contents
Cover (#u34934669-03cd-584f-8c8e-abbe873b357f)
Back Cover Text (#uf501e0bf-5787-5c80-8af2-0218fa61bac9)
Introduction (#u0c78cab9-0ba5-57e4-a5ec-fd7952077139)
Dear Reader (#ud1d5b240-9da7-5910-90bf-ae85211f60f4)
Title Page (#u4d2016ad-c173-5291-b020-972687b895a4)
About the Author (#ucbd84628-b1e7-52b1-b17d-bc8443fec04a)
Dedication (#u54f74d8b-aaab-5b40-a909-b4a9ecf2587c)
Chapter 1 (#ua140d396-3654-5251-8bee-fc096f411f70)
Chapter 2 (#u888938aa-798c-56b8-9e92-7625963babe8)
Chapter 3 (#ucb3ddf65-84a5-5a30-b4ee-eedb5baaab58)
Chapter 4 (#u49849e15-144c-5caa-91a7-9517c3c9f297)
Chapter 5 (#u77d9df71-5904-5ba2-a2a1-70beec2eeb25)
Chapter 6 (#u65c15c9b-4fa0-59e6-945f-aea1fd1f22b4)
Chapter 7 (#u24ed7b63-a337-5ce9-8c77-6ce32006a5c2)
Chapter 8 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 9 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 10 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 11 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 12 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 13 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 14 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 15 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 16 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 17 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 18 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 19 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 20 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 21 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 22 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 23 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 24 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 25 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 26 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 27 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 28 (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 29 (#litres_trial_promo)
Epilogue (#litres_trial_promo)
Copyright (#litres_trial_promo)
Chapter 1 (#ulink_12a012e5-65ef-5672-9b80-be1079268273)
Tracking down Max Benton would involve walking straight into a den of temptation. Of course it would.
Pru could practically feel the bass from the nightclub’s music entering her body through her feet and rocking its way up to her hips. The music came courtesy of Mike Benz, an up-and-coming half Dutch, half Cameroonian DJ who was enjoying his first stateside residency at Sin, one of New Orleans’s premier nightclubs. His beats were fantastically good. So good, they awakened a long-dormant urge within Pru to get out on the crowded dance floor.
Back in the day it hadn’t taken more than a glass of champagne and the right song to get Pru on the floor. And she’d often stayed there all night, enjoying bottle service courtesy of her latest boyfriend or admirer, dancing with her fellow showgirls until she couldn’t dance anymore. Back in the day, her number-one goal in life had been to squeeze as much fun as she possibly could into her twenties, and to prove to everyone she came in contact with that Prudence Washington was the exact opposite of her boring name.
She was no longer a showgirl or hell-bent on proving that there was nothing prudent about her. Nonetheless, she was currently dressed to party well, in a little gold minidress pulled the day before from her mother’s vintage collection of seventies-era cocktail attire. She considered it a uniform, the uniform she needed to get her job done. Her current job being Max Benton. And she was all about her job, which was why instead of hopping on the dance floor, she headed straight for VIP.
The hulking security guard standing at the bottom of the roped-off stairs that led up to the VIP area gave her an approving once-over as she approached. She must have had a little of the old Pru magic leftover, she thought.
She’d made the right choice. In the background, she heard the DJ announce that he was taking a break but would be back on the turntables before the night was through. Then his excellent beats were replaced by canned Top 40 music playing at even higher decibels.
“You on the list, baby?” the security guard asked, lifting up his clipboard.
She threw him a flirty look. “Not quite,” she admitted. “The guy I’m here to see is trying to stay under the radar these days, but if you tell Max Benton that Prudence Washington is down here looking for him, I’m sure he’ll appreciate you letting him know. Really appreciate it.”
The security guard didn’t respond quite as hoped to her insinuation that there would be a nice tip involved if he passed along her message to Maxwell Benton, the younger, not nearly as responsible, Benton hotels heir. Not only did his face harden, he moved to stand between her and the black velvet rope.
“No Maxwell Benton here,” he said, his voice completely monotone.
“Are you sure about that?” she asked. “Because I know he’ll be upset if he hears I was asking for him and you didn’t let me up.”
She hoped.
The truth was, she was banking an awful lot on the fact that Max Benton had stepped to her twice. The first time had been at his brother Cole’s wedding to her best friend, Sunny Johnson, about a year ago. The second time had been a couple of months ago, right before Pru’s retirement from the Benton Revue, at Cole and Sunny’s baby shower.
Shortly after the shower, Cole had cut his younger brother off, refusing to keep issuing checks for the brand-ambassador job he’d been assigned. Back when the Benton had been one luxury hotel, having an international playboy as the brand ambassador had been a good idea. Max had been all too happy to gallivant around the world, living the kind of life that perfectly encapsulated the particular decadent brand of luxury the Benton was trying to sell to its affluent guests and gamblers.
But then their grandfather had died, and Cole had taken over the Benton Group. He’d expanded the Benton from one hotel into a nationwide outfit of luxury casino resorts, which served to draw even more attention to Max’s international escapades. Which wouldn’t have been a problem, except then Cole started making plans for the Benton Inns, a new chain of midrange hotels that would cater to nongambling clientele whose pockets weren’t deep enough to afford a stay at one of the Benton Group’s luxury properties. This new market expansion meant that Max’s infamous reputation was no longer compatible with the Benton brand.
According to Cole, Max had stormed out of Vegas soon after Cole gave him the news about being fired. He sold all his stock in the Benton Group to some investment-fund manager before Cole could buy him out and then disappeared from the public eye. The only contact he’d had from Max since his departure from Vegas was a CC: on a short email, sent to their family’s lawyers, informing them that he would like his trust paid out in full on his thirty-fifth birthday.
After receiving Max’s email, Cole had hired a number of private investigators to track him down. To his surprise, they’d failed, finding neither hide nor hair of the playboy who’d apparently decided to step out of the spotlight as soon as he was fired. The weeks until Max’s birthday were ticking down now, which was why Cole had decided to let Pru, who was currently studying to take the private-investigator exam in the fall, have a shot at it. A long shot on his part, but a possibly huge opportunity for Pru. One she was taking seriously, since it was just the kind of case she needed to kick off her post-showgirl career.
After a week of trying to track down Max Benton from the one-bedroom apartment she shared with her brother, she’d decided to use her own limited funds to follow a hunch. Max, who had often been photographed with DJ Mike Benz in European nightclubs, would surely put in an appearance at his friend’s very first stateside gig.
However, showing up here had been only a hunch, and she knew that there was a good chance the security guard wasn’t lying about Max not being up in the VIP area. But then again, why would the guy have gone so cold on her if Max Benton weren’t up there?
No, she thought, she’d definitely come to the right place. She could feel it in her gut. But how was she going to convince the mountain standing in front of her to let her through?
The mountain, who was currently saying, “Time for you to move along, ma’am.”
Wow. Now he was calling her “ma’am”? That was past cold.
“Look,” she said, leveling with him, “I know you have your orders, but—”
“Hallo, who are you?” someone interrupted before she could finish.
Mike Benz appeared beside her in a ratty purple hoodie and a T-shirt with a panda on it. His clothes, paired with his tall, thin frame, made him look even younger than Jakey, her eighteen-year-old brother. But Pru knew from her research that despite his youthful appearance, he was the same age as her, twenty-nine.
So at least she didn’t feel like a shameless cradle robber when she turned on her old showgirl smile at full beam and said, “Hi! I’m Pru. I love your music.”
She limited herself to those three sentences and held her breath. She’d hoped that the simple act of introducing herself with a big smile and an emphatic compliment would have the same effect it did back when she actually made a game out of getting into VIP.
It did.
Mike Benz smiled back at her and said, “Would you like to come up?”
“Sure!” she said, her smile becoming even brighter.
He offered her his arm, and with a sheepish look, the mountain unlatched the velvet rope before stepping aside to let them pass.
Just like that she was in! Pru’s heart beat in her throat as they came to the top of the stairs. Hoping hard that her gut had been right and that Max Benton really was there tonight.
“M.B.!” a voice boomed across the area.
Mike Benz threw his arms in the air and yelled back “M.B.!” like a kid playing a game of Marco Polo.
Pru had to work hard to keep a triumphant smile from breaking out across her face. She had bet right. Max Benton approached them, dressed in a white linen suit with a V-neck T-shirt underneath. His on-trend look, paired with intentionally scruffy black hair and at least three days’ worth of beard growth, somehow managed to make him look as if he’d rolled out of bed and a high-fashion ad at the same time. It was easy for Pru to understand in that moment why women around the world had fallen at Max Benton’s feet. Why, according to the nauseating amount of research she’d done on the Benton heir, he’d been dubbed the Ruiner in certain feminine circles.
One reality starlet had claimed she wasn’t able to date anyone for a year after spending a few weeks with Max. Pru remembered her tale with an inner grimace. Once you go Max, you never go back.
“I didn’t know you were here,” Mike Benz said to Max as they clasped hands and exchanged a one-armed hug. “Why didn’t you text me?”
Max threw him a lazy smile, his pale green eyes shining with their usual wicked gleam. “Figured you’d get up here sooner or later,” he answered.
Pru watched the exchange from her position on Mike Benz’s arm. Max was so insanely good-looking, even more so in real life than in the many pictures of him floating around the internet. If not for the jagged imperfection of his nose, which had been broken a couple of times without proper resets, Max might have been too pretty. But as it was, the crooked nose on top of so much symmetry only made it that much harder for Pru not to stare at him, even though she was trying to play it cool.
Max, however, didn’t seem to have any problems keeping his eyes off her. He barely spared her a look while he and Mike Benz exchanged small talk about how Mike liked New Orleans. Pru was actually beginning to think that Max didn’t remember her and she’d have to awkwardly reintroduce herself, when he said to Mike, “So you know Pru, too?”
He still hadn’t looked directly at her, Pru noticed.
“Ya, man, we met outside VIP,” Mike Benz answered.
Pru quickly rushed in then with her cover story. “One of the girls I used to dance with back in Vegas moved out to Miami and decided to have her bachelorette weekend here in New Orleans.” This much was true—even if that bachelorette night had happened years ago, not tonight as Pru had insinuated.
“Anyway, I was pretty sure you were up here in the VIP area even though the guy downstairs kept saying you weren’t.” She squinched her face to further sell the story. “Trina’s bachelorette weekend was wild, so I almost believed him. Like maybe I’d just been crazy, thinking it was you up here and not some other guy that maybe looked like you.”
She held her breath, hoping Max didn’t see straight through her technically-true-but-not-really story.
Max pegged her with a look, his eyes shrewd, as if he was deciding whether or not to believe her. But then he said, “No, it was me you saw, and I’m glad you decided to bring the party up here.”
“Me, too.” She turned to give Mike Benz another one of her showgirl smiles. “Thanks, Mike!”
Mike grinned down at her. “No problem. Any friend of the other M.B. is most definitely a friend of mine.”
“Oh, goody,” she said, doing her best imitation of the coquette she used to be. “I love making new friends.”
She could sense Max watching her closely as she and Mike made flirty exchanges. This was another huge gamble. Openly flirting with someone else in order to get his attention. But from what she’d read, Max had a competitive streak a mile wide. In his twenties he’d drag raced on every continent except Antarctica. In his thirties, he’d been spotted at high-roller games with million-dollar stakes. And just a few weeks before Cole had cut him off, a story had surfaced about Max wagering the Benton New Orleans in a bet with another hotel heir about who could swim one hundred meters faster. Luckily he’d won that bet, considering he didn’t have the authority to make that kind of wager in the first place.
But in any case, Pru sensed the easiest way to engage Max was to play to his sense of competition. And apparently she was right.
Max looped an arm around Pru’s shoulders and said, “I’ve got a couple of bottles back at my table. Let’s catch up, Pru.”
Then he nodded toward Mike Benz and said, “You can join us if you want.”
* * *
An hour later, Pru wasn’t so sure who was scheming on whom. The three of them were sitting on a plush white couch, arced around a small table with a silver bucket full of ice and champagne bottles at its center. Max had his hand on her knee as he once again filled her glass with champagne. He’d yet to let her glass get more than half-empty. But as attentive as he’d been, he’d spent most of the night talking with Mike Benz about a hotel he was planning to build in New Orleans.
He’d explained the boutique hotel would sit somewhere between its luxury and lower-tier counterparts. With an Old World Parisian aesthetic outside, and a modern European design inside, the planned hotel would also have a hot nightclub that would attract and cater to the many singletons and unmarried couples who flooded into New Orleans every weekend, looking to have fun. Apparently, Max wasn’t as disconnected from the experience of the non-VIP nightclubber as she would have thought, because he painted a picture of a trendy and sophisticated hotel with prices within reach of people in their twenties who hadn’t been born with silver spoons in their mouths.
Pru could actually imagine herself going out of her way to stay at a place like that back when she’d been in her early twenties. It was also a very intriguing idea, coming from Max, since his hotel would probably be competing with both the Benton New Orleans and the planned Benton Inn New Orleans, which would be opening its doors in the fall.
She didn’t have to fake her interest in the conversation. In fact, she had to keep reminding herself to surreptitiously pour out half flutes of champagne whenever both men weren’t looking (with a silent apology to whomever was in charge of cleaning the club’s carpets at night’s end). And by the time Max was done telling Mike Benz about his plans, both she and the DJ were leaning all the way forward.
Max eventually asked Mike about his plans after his residency was through, and Mike confessed he didn’t have any. By the time Mike’s break was over, the two had all but made a formal deal for Mike Benz to be the first resident DJ at the hotel Max would be opening.
Pru observed Max as he watched Mike Benz leave. Though he’d made it seem as if he was the one doing Mike a favor, he now wore a self-satisfied smile. And Pru began to suspect then that Max hadn’t invited her over to his VIP table to just one-up Mike Benz. Rather, he’d been using her to achieve his ultimate goal. Getting Mike Benz to agree to a handshake deal.
This gave Pru pause, because if she was reading the situation right, Max wasn’t quite the useless ne’er-do-well he’d come off as in the online gossip blogs. In fact, she’d bet money Cole had no idea what his younger brother was up to.
Her suspicions were confirmed when Max’s easygoing smile disappeared as soon as Mike was out of earshot. “Planning to go squealing to my brother about this?” he asked Pru.
Pru answered more frankly than she might have under normal circumstances. “I’m Sunny’s best friend, not Cole’s. I barely see him, and when I do, we’re usually not talking hotel business.”
“That’s not an answer,” he pointed out.
Pru lifted her eyebrows. Max was also quite a bit shrewder than she’d originally given him credit for. “Okay...” She set her glass of champagne down and turned toward him on the couch. “Are you saying you don’t want me to tell your brother about your plans?”
Max also set aside his glass. “What if I were saying that to you?” he asked.
“Then I’d say if you don’t want me to tell him about your hotel, you can just ask me not to, instead of accusing me of being a tattletale.”
After giving her an incredulous look, Max said, “Fine, can you not tell Cole about this?”
“No problem,” Pru answered, somehow managing to keep her voice light despite the raging headache she could feel coming on. Reacting in an outwardly negative fashion to the club’s loud music wasn’t exactly in line with the free-spirit party-girl persona she was trying to affect with Max.
“Hey,” she said, turning her showgirl smile back on, despite the fact that her head was throbbing. “Want to get out of here?”
Chapter 2 (#ulink_9f1e765c-1f26-5f6f-ab72-1a4688d86a86)
Max didn’t want to say he was shocked to be leaving the club with Prudence Washington, but he couldn’t exactly say he was not surprised either. He’d already come on to her twice, and he’d been shut down so thoroughly, he hadn’t thought he had much of a chance with her.
The first time, she’d listened to his proposal to keep the time-honored tradition of the best man and maid of honor hookup going with a humorless expression on her beautiful face. “No. Just no,” she’d answered before walking away from him.
The second time, at Cole and Sunny’s shower, he’d decided to try a new tactic, wining and dining Pru before suggesting a sexy rendezvous. But when she saw him approaching, she’d actually turned and walked away before he even had a chance to open his mouth.
However, this time it was Pru who seemed to be coming on to him.
“Do you mind walking?” she asked him with direct eye contact. “My hotel’s right down the street.”
“Which one?” he asked, testing to see if she was serious about her invitation.
She named a cheap but serviceable hotel brand that he’d heard of in passing but had never stayed at himself.
Her quick reply sent Max’s mind into a spin, trying to figure out what had brought on this complete one-eighty. She didn’t seem drunk, or even slightly buzzed, despite the amount of alcohol she’d consumed in the hour since she’d shown up in Sin’s VIP area. He stepped forward and gave the air between them a surreptitious sniff. She smelled fresh. Simple. Soap, a spritz of perfume and nothing more. Just as she had at Sunny’s wedding.
However, Maid of Honor Pru had treated him like a joke—a bad one that she didn’t find remotely charming or funny—while this Pru was all sexy invitation.
Tonight, she was dressed in a gold metallic number that he would have bet money was an actual Halston creation. It accented her flawless brown skin in a way that, along with her long, curly extensions, made her look as if she’d time-traveled right out of Studio 54. It was a look he couldn’t help but appreciate, especially since the dress’s short length showcased her long legs. That was one thing he knew he had in common with his brother. He’d always been a sucker for a nice pair of legs.
And Pru’s legs were a match for Sunny’s, who had also started out as a Benton showgirl. No surprise there, since all of the women hired to dance for the Benton Revue were required to not only be attractive, but also a minimum height of five foot eight.
In a pair of ruby-red stiletto heels so tall they brought her nearly in line with his height of six feet three inches, Pru looked as if she’d fallen out of an ad for the most idealized version of Las Vegas: beautiful, wild and glossy. Like the kind of girl who could rock your world, and happily keep it a secret.
“What changed?” he asked her straight up. He was good at reading people, and as happy as he was to finally close on this long-withheld deal with Sunny’s best friend, he wasn’t sure he trusted the terms yet. “You wouldn’t give me the time of day in Vegas. And now you’re inviting me back to your hotel?”
Pru let his question hang in the air between them for a few seconds, then she stepped forward and whispered low in his ear. “We’re not in Las Vegas anymore.”
He supposed Pru’s comment did explain a few things. For once, there was no one else present looking on. No Sunny or Cole. Not the kid he vaguely remembered Sunny introducing to him as Pru’s younger brother. No one to judge her if she decided to finally take Max up on his original offer to show her a good time.
Good Girl in Las Vegas. Bad Girl in New Orleans. If that was Pru’s deal, he thought, he’d definitely take it.
He was already imagining himself taking her out of the little Halston dress. “In that case, let’s go back to the hotel where I’m staying. The rooms are bigger.”
* * *
They ended up having to stop by Pru’s hotel on route to his anyway. She had a 5:00 a.m. flight back to Las Vegas and said she needed to grab her bag, so that she could take a taxi from his hotel to the Louis Armstrong once they were done with what she called “our business.”
Our business, he thought as he watched her disappear into the hotel. He could already tell that finally sealing the deal on his conquest was going to be fun. A lot of fun.
She emerged from the hotel with a rolling suitcase less than five minutes after going in.
“That was fast.”
“I’d already packed,” she confessed with a self-deprecating smile. “I thought I’d be at the club longer.”
Less than ten minutes later, he was pouring her a glass of wine from a bottle he’d decanted before going out to the Mike Benz gig.
“I’m surprised you’re staying at a Lyon Inn,” she said. “Isn’t there a Benton right up the street?”
She went to stand in front of a watercolor that depicted a historical jazz scene from New Orleans’s famous French Quarter. Max joined her there with the two glasses of wine.
He ignored the painting and handed Pru one of the glasses. “I’m not Cole. I don’t exclusively stay at Bentons just because they’ve got my family’s name plastered across them.”
She took the glass of wine, but her eyes stayed on the watercolor. “But maybe you don’t necessarily want people to know you’re staying at non-Benton hotels either. Is that why you’re staying here under a fake name?”
The front desk staff had greeted him as “Mr. Greer” when he’d entered. Apparently she’d been paying attention.
“One of the reasons,” he answered. “My old college roommate, Sorley, is kind of a big deal—in investment circles at least. His investment group owns a stake in this hotel’s parent company. But he’s kind of a recluse, so sometimes I borrow his name. You know, take it for a spin, so his name won’t be too sad about the glamorous life it could be living if it didn’t belong to a total bore.”
“Also, free hotel room,” she said with an amused note in her voice. “Those come in handy when you’re used to a certain kind of lifestyle, but no longer have the money to fund it.”
He looked over at her. “So you heard about Cole’s decision to part ways with the Max Benton brand?”
“Let’s just say, the Benton Las Vegas isn’t exactly a gossip-free workplace, and I was still working there when you two...uh...parted ways.”
“Hmm, no it’s not,” Max answered. He shrugged. “In any case, it’s good to have boring friends in high places.”
“I bet,” she answered. Her eyes were still on the watercolor. And she still hadn’t taken so much as a sip of her wine.
“So tell me about what you’ve been up to since I saw you last,” Max said, trying to draw her attention from the derivative painting and back to him. “Sunny mentioned you’d decided to retire from the line.”
Now it was her turn to shrug. “I’m twenty-nine now. Close to retirement age anyway.”
There was no official retirement age for Revue girls—mostly because it would have opened the hotel to discrimination lawsuits. But there weren’t many showgirls in the line over the age of thirty. “Still, your best friend is married to the Benton CEO. I think you would have got a pass.”
“Maybe,” Pru answered, her tone vague and distant.
“Tell the truth. You quit because you didn’t want to be on the line when Sunny takes over as head choreographer.”
From what he’d heard, Sunny was all unicorns and rainbows until you entered one of her dance classes. Then she became a total harridan, on par with a drill sergeant.
That accusation finally drew Pru’s brown eyes to him. “That actually is one of the reasons I decided to quit,” she admitted with a laugh. “Staying on the line under Sunny probably would have ruined our friendship.”
She was pretty when she laughed. More than pretty. It made her sparkle.
Max took the glass out of her hand and set it down along with his on the table underneath the watercolor. “Anything else you want to tell me about yourself, before we move on to ‘our business’?”
She raised her eyes to his and said, “No, actually I’m ready to get on with ‘our business.’”
Max felt a wolfish smile break out across his face...only to disappear when she pushed away from him and headed not toward the bedroom, but over to the rolling black suitcase she’d left by the door.
She unzipped her bag and pulled out a thick brown legal envelope. “This is for you.”
That’s when Max realized what this really was. Pru hadn’t suddenly changed her mind. It had been a setup from the very beginning.
At first his jaw hardened with knowledge that she’d used his attraction to her to get him exactly where she wanted.But then he decided to school his face into a look of boredom and take the envelope from her.
“What’s this?” he asked, undoing the tie closure.
“Not sure,” she answered. “Cole didn’t go into detail. Just said he wanted it given to you in private.”
That explained why she’d accepted the invitation to his room, Max thought with a fresh burst of ire. His brother was nothing if not discreet.
He should have known Cole was behind this. His brother had been trying to get a hold of him ever since Max sent him an email about wanting his trust money paid out in full. He opened the envelope and found a stack of what looked like legal documents, topped off with an eight-by-ten typewritten letter.
Max—
I received your request to have the amount of your trust fund transferred into your bank account, soon after I terminated your payments for serving as the Benton’s brand ambassador. While it’s true that you’re eligible to receive these monies when you turn thirty-five, it’s also true that the trust’s executor has to sign off on releasing said monies. As you may or may not have realized, now that our grandmother has signed power of attorney over to me, I now serve as your trust’s executor. As such, I’ve decided it’s not in your best interest to be given such a large sum of money until you meet the terms we’ve previously discussed on more than one occasion. Until such time, I will continue to grow your trust with modest investments.
Enclosed, please find a copy of Grandfather’s will, along with the terms of your trust.
—Coleridge Benton III
Max immediately balled up the letter and threw it with an angry swing across the room. “That patronizing son of a...” Max let out a violent stream of cuss words. Cole had been nagging him to settle down for years, and now he was using Max’s trust to get his way.
Chapter 3 (#ulink_3ce1979b-32d8-5d47-8791-03939daf8ce1)
Pru watched with raised eyebrows as Max threw the balled-up letter across the room and swore. The charming playboy who’d brought her to his suite had totally disappeared. What the heck had been in that letter? she wondered, as she watched him pitch it before turning back to her with rage now in his formerly wicked eyes.
Max, she suddenly recalled from her research, hadn’t been all fun and games during his years of partying all over the world. He’d actually been arrested a few times for getting in fights. Mostly in other countries, and the Benton lawyers had always gotten the charges dropped. But the fact remained, even though Max Benton officially had a clean record, he’d racked up quite a few charges for engaging in physical violence.
Plus, noses didn’t lie, and Max’s was crooked with breaks. She took a step back, wondering if she could balance on her ridiculously high heels if it came down to her having to turn tail and run.
“Did you know about this?” he asked, his voice low and dangerous.
“Know about what?” she asked honestly, curious about what would have put him in such a state.
“My brother deciding to play God with my trust fund. His saying I can’t have the money from my trust unless I meet his terms.”
Well, that sounded like Cole for sure. Controlling was one of the first words that came up when making a list of his qualities. And if he had any idea that Max was planning to build his own competing hotel in New Orleans, Pru wasn’t at all surprised that he’d decided to play hardball. But another part of Pru, who had goals of her own, felt a twinge of guilt. Max most certainly would need his trust money to fulfill his hope of opening his own hotel, and she hated that her assignment had turned out to be of the dream-killing variety.
“What exactly are his terms?” she asked him, licking her lips nervously. “I know you and Cole have some weird history, but maybe you could just meet them,” she suggested.
Heaven knew she’d had to do a few pride-killing things when it came to meeting her brother’s needs. Like joining the PTA. However, Max didn’t strike her as the kind of guy who liked to work too hard to get the money he needed to make things happen. From what she’d read, he’d never actually worked hard for anything in his entire irresponsible life. Why would he start now?
She waited for him to respond with something ridiculous, such as how he was a Benton and therefore deserved to just have money handed to him with no strings attached. In her experience, most trust-fund babies had a sense of entitlement the size of Jupiter, and she doubted Max would be any different.
But instead of answering her, Max went completely still, his head inclining as if an idea had suddenly occurred to him.
Then to Pru’s surprise, his arm snaked out, pulling her forward, so that her body was flush with his and fully locked into his unexpected embrace.
Pru froze—well, at least the outside of her froze. Another part of her, one that she didn’t realize was still in working order after years of celibacy, stirred. Waking up, and to her great embarrassment, actually warming to the sensation of having Max’s entire body, including what felt like a rather large erection, pressed against hers.
“So this is what you do now that you’ve retired from the Revue?” he asked. “Run Cole’s blackmail errands.”
“No, this was a one-off,” she answered, breathless and completely flummoxed. “I’m actually studying to become a PI, and he threw me this case because none of the other people he’d hired to find you had come through. I guess I was sort of his Hail Mary.”
Max’s eyes narrowed. “Cole sent others, but only you were able to find me,” he said. “Why is that?”
Pru shrugged. “I...um...kind of guessed.”
“You ‘kind of guessed’ that I was staying in New Orleans under a pseudonym?”
“Yeah,” she answered. “That’s kind of my MO. Someone brings me a case to solve, I gather all the information I can, then I just...guess.”
“And you guessed I’d be here in New Orleans, using Sorley Greer’s name?” he asked.
“No, not exactly. I didn’t even know who Sorley Greer was until you mentioned him tonight. But I’d read enough about you to know that you and Mike Benz were friends, and he happened to be doing his first stateside gig tonight. So I flew out here on a hunch.”
To her surprise, Max began to chuckle, his chest rumbling against hers. “You flew to New Orleans on a hunch,” he repeated. “Because you thought I might be in Sin’s VIP.”
“And I was right. My method worked,” she felt compelled to point out.
Max looked down at her, his expression now verging on slightly bemused. “That you were. But I think you might have missed something important in your information-gathering stage, when you came up with your plan to fly out here and trick me into inviting you into my private sanctum.”
His observation pulsed in the air between them, filling Pru’s chest with a weird combination of dread and anticipation as she asked, “What?”
“You didn’t notice in all those stories going around about me that no one’s ever said, ‘I played Max Benton for a fool, and I totally got away with it.’”
Pru swallowed. He was right. Max did not have a reputation for taking insults lightly.
Her sudden unease at his implied threat must have read on her face.
“Hmm, now you’re getting it,” he said, his voice almost soft with menace.
Before she could ask what exactly she was supposed to be getting, his mouth found hers in a lazy kiss.
Well...lazy on his part at least. To Pru, it felt like having her insides hollowed out as a pit of long-dormant lust opened up inside her stomach. Max Benton might have been a lot of things—a ne’er-do-well, a brawler, a playboy—but a bad kisser wasn’t one of them.
His mouth was confident on top of hers, practically guaranteeing a favorable conclusion for her if she let him keep going.
But she couldn’t let that happen. She was a professional. At least she would be after she got her PI license. Professional PIs didn’t let themselves get seduced by the people they tracked down.
Just as she was about to rally her mind and body to push him away, he cut off the kiss. So abruptly, that her legs felt a little shaky when he unexpectedly let her go.
Now he was the one who took a step back from her. “You really aren’t my brother’s flunky?” he asked, his eyes sharp with suspicion.
She bristled, flustered that her body now felt a little bereft, and insulted at the insinuation that she was completely at Cole’s beck and call, like one of his servants.
“It’s just a case,” she answered. “One I was happy to get before I officially become a licensed PI this fall.”
He studied her intently, as if he was trying to detect a lie.
She met his gaze straight on, because she wasn’t lying, not even by omission this time.
“In that case,” Max said, a rather feral smile spreading across his obscenely handsome face, “let’s get married.”
Chapter 4 (#ulink_58fd5fe6-1b80-5d4d-8a52-6a31ad648d02)
Let’s get married.
Pru stood there, shocked into silence for what might have been a good minute. Then she said, “What?”
Max folded his arms and leaned against the back of the suite’s couch. “You heard me. I said let’s get married.”
“What?” Pru said again. “No! What the...? Why would you even ask me that? What is wrong with you?”
She didn’t wait for his answer, just turned and rezipped her suitcase, grabbing it by the handle as she beat a hasty retreat for the door. Obviously, she had missed something in all her research. Something such as Max Benton being a psycho, one she needed to get away from as soon as possible.
“C’mon,” he said, following her out of his suite—or in this case, Sorley Greer’s suite. “You’re the one who told me to meet my brother’s terms, and me getting married—those are his terms.”
That announcement surprised her enough to make her stop and turn to face him. “Come again?” she asked.
“Cole wants to put me on a leash and bring me to heel before the Benton Group opens up their first Benton Inn in the fall. This new hotel needs to appeal to regular families, so he’s trying to get me to settle down. Like him. That’s the real reason he fired me. The real reason I had to sell my shares in the Benton Group to Sorley, so that he wouldn’t come after them.”
Max shrugged and shook his head as if none of what he was saying was a huge deal. But the fists he’d unconsciously balled at his sides belied his nonchalance. As did his lethal tone.
Pru arched an eyebrow at this latest bit of information about the Benton brothers’ relationship. She wasn’t one to dispense business advice, especially to someone like Cole Benton, who’d been groomed to be a hotel magnate from a very young age. But despite Max’s reputation as a reckless playboy who lived only for fun and clubbing, just an hour with him had revealed to her what her research hadn’t.
Max Benton wasn’t as devil-may-care as he appeared on paper. No, he was way darker than that. She could practically feel the wolf lurking underneath his surface.
And you couldn’t put a wolf on a leash.
If Cole had asked her—he never would have, but if he had—she would have told him to abandon his plan to reel Max in. She didn’t have any real evidence to back it up, but she was almost certain that Cole was playing with fire where Max was concerned. Trying to force him into marriage wasn’t even a remotely good idea.
“Okay, well that’s between you and your brother,” she told Max. “I don’t want anything to do with that.”
He ignored her refusal, regarding her with those pale green eyes of his. “How much is he paying you?”
She shook her head. Funnily enough, when she’d seen the amount Cole was willing to pay someone simply to find Max and deliver a large envelope to him, she’d thought it had been outrageously generous for the service provided. But standing in the hall with Max, she was beginning to think it might not have been enough.
“I’ll double it,” he said. Then before she could refuse him again, he said, “Tell you what, name your price. Whatever it is, I’ll pay it.”
She shook her head again, wondering how she’d found herself in such a crazy scenario. “Max,” she answered, her voice hard and frank, “there is no amount of money that would convince me to fake marry you.”
“Never say never. That’s what I always say when it comes to money. You never know when you’re going to get hit with a rainy day.”
Pru would have thought Max was talking about his own currently diminished circumstances, but his eyes were gleaming at a ten on the wicked-bastard scale. “Don’t worry,” she answered drily. “I’ve got a savings account.”
If he was insulted by her refusal, it didn’t show. He just smirked. “I’d think you’d at least agree to think about it. After doing all that research on me, aren’t you a little bit curious?”
“About what?” she asked him. “About how you run through money like water? About how you’ve been arrested on every continent but Antarctica? About how you got the nickname ‘The Ruiner’?” Pru shook her head with her lips turned down. “I’m curious about a lot of things—that comes with being a detective. But not about any of that.”
She tilted her suitcase forward. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back to Las Vegas to pick up my check. I’m done here.”
He inclined his head to the side and squinted in a way that reminded her of his brother. Though the two men didn’t share anything in common but the color of their eyes.
“You sure about that?” he asked her with a smile so lazy, it looked as if he was on the verge of falling asleep. “Because this doesn’t feel done, and judging from that kiss, we could have a good time if you fake married me. A real good time, as they say here in New Orleans.”
Pru swallowed, her body stirring with the memory of how it had felt to have his mouth claim hers, and the reality starlet’s words rang in her ears for the second time that night. Once you go Max, you never go back.
Okay, time to go, she thought. She turned and walked away from Max Benton as fast as her stiletto heels would allow her.
She had responsibilities to see to back home, she reminded herself. Such as her little brother, whom she’d had to leave alone this weekend in order to fulfill this assignment, and a licensing exam to study for.
“If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” Max called behind her. “Just ask for Sorley Greer.”
Pru didn’t allow herself to stop walking, not until she got to the bank of elevators at the end of the hallway. But as she pushed the down button, she couldn’t help looking back to where Max had been standing outside his hotel room door.
He was still there. Watching her with squinted eyes. Watching her as a wolf watches its prey right before it attacks.
Chapter 5 (#ulink_5ad5f94b-a9d9-5cb4-a558-24111917d047)
Three weeks later Pru was still shaken by Max’s proposal. Not to mention that kiss! So much so that she could barely concentrate on studying for her PI exam. It didn’t help that her morning internet scour for everything related to Max Benton had turned up the exact same thing it had every other time she’d searched for news about Max.
Absolutely nothing.
No club spottings from gossip blogs. No wedding announcements either, even though his thirty-fifth birthday was the Friday after next.
Was he really going to give up all that money? If so, how would he continue to fund his lavish lifestyle? Or make his hotel dream come true?
She thought of her recent phone call with her friend who worked at NevadaStar, the Benton Group’s official credit union. In a weird continuation of her compulsion to keep looking into Max Benton, she’d decided to follow his money after the fact.
She hadn’t during her first instinctual investigation because she knew it was the first thing most detectives did. If none of the other detectives had been able to find him using a money trail, she figured she wouldn’t be able to either. But the fact remained that following the money was still one of the best ways to find what someone was up to. And for whatever reason, she could not stop digging into Max Benton’s life even though she was no longer getting paid to do so.
Max still hadn’t announced a marriage to fulfill Cole’s demands to release his trust money. So maybe, she’d speculated, he had found another source of funding for his hotel. He was friends with, if not the richest men in the world, many of their sons and daughters. Including Sorley Greer, whom Pru had also looked into as a possible financier for Max’s hotel.
However, according to her research, Sorley wouldn’t go for a project this small. He tended toward big investments based on predictions only he seemed to be able to make. To the point that quite a few other big-time investors had accused him of insider trading, only to have to back down from their claims when Sorley’s lawyers sent them strongly worded letters that made generous use of words such as defamation and libel. In any case, as good as Max’s hotel idea was, it didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of Sorley’s portfolio.
But that didn’t mean that Max hadn’t found another way to get the money, which was why she’d asked her friend at NevadaStar to look into his account. The nice thing about having been involved in a stage show that aged most of its pretty participants out at thirty was that she now had contacts working in post–Benton Revue jobs in nearly every institution in Las Vegas. Very lucky for her, since the truth was that having contacts in the right places was critical to working cases as a private investigator.
But this particular lead didn’t pan out. According to her friend, Max hadn’t received a single noninterest cent since Cole cut him off. From the Benton Group or anyone else. And the interest on his account was seriously measured in cents now, since he currently had only a three-figure number left in it.
“I guess stunting like he used to ain’t cheap,” her friend observed with a whistle over the youngest Benton heir’s low amount of available funds. “Either he’s going to have to get in back good with his family, or get a real job.”
Try as she might, Pru just didn’t see Max getting a regular job. Building a splashy new hotel with his trust money? Yes. That was the type of big gamble that a guy like Max would go for. Actually using his marketing degree from the Boston Institute of Technology in order to earn a paycheck that wasn’t a thinly disguised version of his original allowance? She doubted it.
But maybe he’d just been blustering about starting his own line of boutique hotels, she thought after finding nary a mention of Max during her latest internet search. She’d met guys like Max before back when she’d been into the Vegas lifestyle. Guys who’d been all talk and no play. Guys who thought they had what it took to make a big vision come to life but crapped out before even rolling their dice.
Pru frowned, wishing her fingers weren’t itching to call up her friend at NevadaStar and ask her to go even deeper with her search. Maybe send over his year-to-date transactions report. Her friend had said most of the money in his account had gone toward paying credit-card bills. But maybe there was something she’d missed, something she hadn’t seen.
“Pru?” a voice said behind her.
She turned from the list of Nevada’s revised statutes and limitations that she was supposed to be studying to see her brother, Jakey, standing in the doorway to her room. He’d had yet another growth spurt over the summer and now stood a good five inches taller than her. He’d also been working out in an effort to relieve the summer boredom, so he’d also gotten wider over the past two months. The front of the T-shirt he wore seemed to be crying out for mercy as it strained against his newly formed muscles, and his old jogging pants might as well have issued their own flood warning, they were in such high-water territory.
She screwed up her mouth. “We’re going to have to hit the mall before you leave for your camp next week. Get you some new clothes.”
More money that would have to be spent now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue and was living off her savings. Luckily, the money Cole had paid her for hunting Max down had nicely cushioned her account. She had enough to not only tide her through until October but also to pay for Jakey’s books when he started at UNLV in the fall on a full scholarship.
Buying Jake some more clothes for camp and also a fall wardrobe for college shouldn’t be a problem. But still, she worried. She and Jake had been forced to live frugally in the years since their parents’ deaths in order to pay rent on an apartment in one of Nevada’s best school districts and make ends meet. After Jake got his full scholarship, Pru had thought long and hard before quitting the line in order to pursue what she’d begun to think of as a calling. But she couldn’t be sure how soon she’d be able to acquire more work after she got her license. Cases like the one Cole had thrown her didn’t come along every day. Plus there would be the costs of renting an office and advertising her services around town.
She needed to watch every penny, she thought. But not at her brother’s expense. It wasn’t his fault that he kept growing and growing, or that his new health kick upped their weekly grocery bill, or that his going to college came with extra expenses that even having Jakey continue to live at home wouldn’t alleviate.
“You know what, let’s go to the mall now,” she said, glancing at the clock on her bedroom wall. “Maybe we can get some lunch while we’re out.”
She grabbed her wallet and phone off the desk, slipped them into the back pockets of her bell-bottom jeans and was all set to go. Back in the day before she became Jakey’s guardian, she wouldn’t have dreamed of leaving the apartment she used to share with her best friend, Sunny, in anything less than full makeup. Back then, even her most casual looks were chosen more to accentuate her assets than for comfort.
But now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue, she’d pretty much stuck to a wardrobe of her mother’s old seventies-era clothing throughout the summer. Her mother had been a seamstress along with Sunny’s grandmother for the Revue, and she’d taken excellent care of even her most casual clothes. True, seventies and early eighties vintage wasn’t the most glamorous look, but wearing these clothes made Pru feel closer to her mother, even though she was no longer here.
“Actually,” said Jake with an apologetic wince, “I was hoping maybe we could go down to the storage unit and do some upkeep on Dad’s car.”
“Oh...sure,” Pru said, quickly resetting.
About twenty minutes later, they were pulling the cover off their dad’s black ’55 Thunderbird.
Back when they’d been forced to downsize in order to keep Jakey in his school district, Pru had paid for storage space and an additional garage unit for their dad’s Thunderbird. He’d inherited the car from his own father, and Pru had grown to highly value it. Not just because it was a much sought-after collectible, but also because it was Jakey’s unspoken inheritance. Their happy and healthy parents hadn’t been prescient enough to take out a life insurance policy, but her father had left this car behind. And that was why Pru had remained diligent about its upkeep all these years. She made sure that she and Jakey did the necessary work to guarantee the car would stay in good enough shape for Jakey to drive it someday.
However, this particular trip wasn’t really about their father’s Thunderbird. Asking her if they could go down to the garage unit to do some upkeep on their dad’s car was Jakey’s way of telling her he needed to talk. Over the years she’d been his guardian, she’d guided him through first dates, first breakups, major disappointments and lost friendships over the hood of that car.
“So what’s up?” she asked Jakey as he lifted up the Thunderbird’s hood.
“I dunno,” Jakey mumbled. He fiddled with the oil cap for a few seconds, then he said, “It’s stupid.”
“Okay, maybe,” Pru answered. “Tell me anyway.”
More fiddling. “I don’t even know why I’m bringing it up. It’s not going to happen. I know it’s not going to happen.”
Despite her increasing curiosity, Pru casually walked over to get the motor oil from a nearby shelf. “You know I don’t believe in ‘not going to happen.’ Not when it comes to you. I’m your big sis, remember?” She handed the motor oil to him. “Whatever you need, just tell me, and I’ll figure it out. I always do.”
“Yeah, I know you do, but...” He trailed off. “You know what? Never mind. Let’s just finish this and go to the mall.”
He reached to take the motor oil from her, but she held on to it, refusing to let it go.
“No, tell me, Jakey,” she insisted, dropping all pretense of feeling casual about this conversation. “Are you in trouble?” she asked, real alarm flaring up inside her. “Whatever it is, I’ll figure it out, I promise you. Just tell me.”
“No, I’m not in trouble!” he said, rushing to reassure her. “It’s more a good thing...I guess. An opportunity. I...um...got off the wait list to BIT.”
Pru’s eyebrows rose nearly to her hairline, her first thoughts going to Max, who’d received and wasted a degree in marketing from BIT. “BIT? You mean like the Boston Institute of Technology? That BIT?”
“Yeah, that BIT,” Jakey answered with a sheepish smile.
“Oh, my gosh, Jakey! That’s wonderful!” She put aside the motor oil and hugged him. “I didn’t even know you applied there! That wasn’t on the list you showed me!”
“Yeah, I didn’t want you to waste your money,” he said. “So I used some of the money Aunt Sunny gave me for Christmas to pay the application fee, and I got wait-listed. But I guess they must have decided to take me off the wait list because I got an email that I was in two weeks ago.”
“Two weeks ago?” Pru repeated, her mouth dropping open. “And you’re just now telling me?”
Jakey shrugged. “It’s not like I can go. They gave me a financial-aid package, but it’s not a full deal like UNLV. It also doesn’t cover room and board or books or the flight out there. There’s no way you could afford it. It was stupid of me to even apply. It’s just... Dad used to talk about me going there, and I already know I want to become an engineer. I thought I should at least try to get in. For him.”
Pru completely understood. Her parents had both come from poor backgrounds and her father had used education as a means to break through to the middle class, earning his degree and becoming a high school math teacher. He’d carried big hopes and dreams for Jakey not just following in his footsteps but going even further than he did. He would have considered Jakey getting into a big math-and-science school such as BIT a dream come true.
“Dad would have been so proud of you,” she told him, her eyes going soft with fond memories of their father. “You’re going to BIT.”
He shook his head. “It’s too much money.”
“How much?”
“Too much?”
“Just tell me how much, Jakey.”
So he did, and the number made Pru a little breathless. That was over five times what she currently had tucked away in savings for Jakey’s continued education.
But still she said, “You’re going to BIT.”
Jakey shook his head again. “There’s no way you can get that much money together before the school year starts. I was thinking maybe we could ask Aunt Sunny, but Dad was always saying...”
“...remember what ‘make ends meet’ really means,” she finished for him.
Their father had grown up in Vegas and seen too many friends from his old neighborhood succumb to both credit and gambling debts. He hadn’t believed in buying anything on credit, not even cars. Back in the day, Pru hadn’t dared ask her father for money—even when she’d blown through her entire paycheck with more than a week to go until she got paid again. It just wasn’t worth receiving one of their father’s long “neither a beggar nor a borrower be” lectures.
Jakey was right. Besides, there was no way she could pay Sunny that amount back, even if she was willing to borrow as opposed to work for money. She’d have to find another way to get the money. One that wouldn’t involve a huge debt load on her part. But how?
The answer hit her with a sickening thud, crashing all the way down to the bottom of her stomach.
Never say never. That’s what I always say when it comes to money. You never know when you’re going to get hit with a rainy day.
“Pru? Pru?” her brother said.
Pru blinked.
“Are you okay? You just went real quiet.”
“Yeah, sure. Better than okay.” She pasted on a smile for her brother’s sake. “I’m just wondering if they’ll be selling winter coats at the mall yet. You’ll need one for Boston.”
Jakey’s whole face lit up with a goofy smile. “Probably not. We should probably just concentrate on getting a few things for camp and order the coat online.”
“That’s a great idea. Do you...um, mind if I go make a phone call while you finish this up? I’ve got a possible client I need to touch base with. Then we’ll go to the mall.”
“And maybe we can call Aunt Sunny up to celebrate me getting into BIT tonight?” he suggested. “Maybe Cole, too.”
Thanks to their mutual interest in cars, Cole and Jakey had become buddies since the CEO had been with Sunny.
“Sunny’s still teaching her summer class in New York,” Pru answered apologetically. “And Sunny says Cole’s been clocking extra hours, training some new vice president, so that he’ll be good to go before he goes on paternity leave in the fall.”
Thank goodness, she silently added to herself. Even if Sunny and Cole weren’t otherwise occupied, she doubted she could have looked either of them in the eye—not considering what she was about to agree to.
“But we’ll go wherever you want tonight,” she told Jakey. “Just name the place.”
She took out her phone and waved as she walked away from him, as if everything was terrific. Because things were terrific. Her brother would be going to his dream college in Boston. And she’d make it happen, because it was no less than what he’d deserved. He’d lost his parents at a tender age, and he deserved to be happy. He deserved to get everything he’d ever dreamed of, and she would make sure he got it.
Even if she had to make a deal with the devil in order to do so.
* * *
“Looks like there is an amount of money that would get you to fake marry me,” was the first thing Max said after she told him what it would take for her to agree to marry him.
Despite his words, he didn’t seem surprised at all, not when he answered the phone, not even when she’d answered his greeting with a five-figure dollar amount. A chill ran down Pru’s back. It had been easy to get Max on the phone. Easier than she’d thought it would be. The front desk at the Lyon had put her right through as soon as she gave them her name, and Max had picked up on the first ring, as if he’d been expecting her call.
“What changed?” he asked, his voice laced with lazy amusement.
“My brother got into BIT,” Pru answered through gritted teeth.
Max whistled. “My alma mater! Nice! I think I remember maybe going to one or two classes while I was there.”
Yet, he had graduated with a degree, Which he never even bothered to use, Pru thought, shaking her head. Apparently, if your family donated enough money to your college, it was enough to earn even the most shiftless student the degree of his choice.
“Do we have a deal or what?” Pru asked.
It occurred to her then that Max could simply be toying with her from the other side of the phone now. He might have no intention of honoring his brother’s terms. Or even more likely, he could have found someone way more appropriate to fulfill them.
Pru’s shoulders tightened at the thought of Max rescinding his original offer.
“Look, if you’ve already found someone else, just let me know now,” she told Max. “This might be fun and games for you. But it’s my brother’s future we’re talking about, so if you’re not serious—”
“Oh, I’m serious, Prudence,” he said, his voice suddenly a lot darker on the other side of the phone. “You have no idea.”
Another chill ran down Prudence’s back. Again, she got the sense that there was more to Max than what he was showing the world. Something lurking inside him. Something that would come up and bite her if she weren’t careful.
But she had to do this. For her brother. She’d do whatever it took to make his dreams come true.
So she pressed forward and pretended to be much braver than she actually felt. “If you’re really serious, stop toying with me. Do we have a deal or what?”
A long moment of silence passed. “Yes, Pru, we have a deal.”
She swallowed, barely able to believe that he was still open to marrying her, or that she was really going to go along with his scheme. “Okay, then, I guess I should ask when and where and how long?”
She could practically feel Max smiling through the phone. Smiling like a wolf.
Chapter 6 (#ulink_c9d18ac8-ae5e-5dc4-ae1a-e2e90d48cfaa)
When? Pretty soon as it turned out. Saturday to be exact, just six days before Max Benton’s thirty-fifth birthday. Apparently that was how long Max’s non-Benton family lawyers needed to produce the kind of prenup they were going to need for such an unorthodox arrangement. One that allowed them both to get a quickie divorce under already-agreed-upon terms as soon as his trust fund check cleared the bank.
Pru was initially happy for the short reprieve. But the days seemed to fly by in a haze of dread that didn’t allow her to get in much quality study time. Before she was nearly ready, the day of her wedding had arrived, casting an ominous shadow over everything she did from the moment she woke up.
At least she didn’t have to figure out what to do with Jakey while she was dealing with Max. The morning before their wedding, Pru drove her brother to Henderson for the Focus Leadership Camp. Jakey had been attending the two-week program dedicated to teaching underprivileged youth leadership skills since the age of thirteen, and he’d been looking forward to volunteering as a counselor all summer.
However, as they drove to Henderson, he fiddled with the passenger-door lock on Pru’s tiny hatchback. “Maybe I should stay in Vegas,” he said. “Try to get a job.”
“No,” Pru answered before the sentence was fully out of his mouth. Even if Jakey hadn’t been looking forward to this all summer, she didn’t want him anywhere near Vegas tonight.
After a bunch of back-and-forth, Pru shut down all of Jakey’s arguments by simply dropping him off at his destination. She got his duffel out of the back and just about tossed it at him, then gave him a quick hug and sped off before he could protest any further.
She got home in record time, ate lunch and tried to use the hours before her wedding event to study. But she gave up on that around dinnertime.
How was she supposed to think about anything else, other than the fact that she would soon be marrying Max Benton? Tonight. For money.
Her stomach churned and Pru decided against warming up the takeout she and Jake had ordered the previous night. The only thing worse than marrying Max Benton would be throwing up in the middle of the ceremony.
A knock sounded on the door about an hour before she’d planned to leave to meet up with Max at the Benton.
She frowned. The complex was gated and no one was supposed to be able to get in unless she buzzed them through.
But sure enough, there was a large Latino man in her doorway. One she recognized as Cole’s driver.
“Tomas?” she said, opening the door. “What are you doing here?”
He gave her an apologetic smile. “Sorry to bother you. Mr. Max must not have told you I was coming.”
Actually, she hadn’t heard from Mr. Max, other than an email informing her they’d be getting married at the Benton at the rather late hour of 10:00 p.m. The lack of communication had been just one of the reasons she’d been so jumpy over the past few days, and she was beginning to wonder if he’d be a no-show since she couldn’t be sure if he was even in town.
This could all be some kind of elaborate joke on his part, she’d thought a few times over the course of the past few gloomy days. An act of revenge for playing him for a fool when she’d delivered his brother’s envelope. Pru had sent her brother to school with rich kids long enough to know they could be cruel, especially to those who didn’t have the resources to defend themselves.
But if Tomas was any indication, Max was not only in town, but availing himself of Cole’s driver.
“He shouldn’t have bothered you,” Pru said, embarrassed to have someone she knew and liked entangled in all of this. “I could have driven myself.”
“No bother at all,” Tomas answered. “Besides, he wanted to make sure you got your wedding outfit in time to change before we got to the Benton.”
He held up a dress bag.
And Pru’s heart sank, knowing on instinct that the wedding dress Max had chosen for her was probably nothing like the simple white crochet dress she’d been planning to wear for their farce of a wedding.
Fifteen minutes later, she stared at herself in the mirror, completely aghast. Apparently, Max liked vintage, too. In fact, he had sent over one of the Benton Revue’s original showgirl costumes, a scoop-neck top and bottom, covered in silver trim, all held together by a netted stocking.
It came with a huge white feather headdress and matching white bustle, which thankfully fanned over and completely covered her backside. And the rhinestones and silver trimming shone so bright, the costume might well have been mistaken for white. But other than that, it looked nothing remotely like a wedding dress.
After a full moment of staring at her image in horror, she decided to just throw a long cardigan over the ostentatious number and leave before she could think too hard about what she was doing. She comforted herself with the fact that the old-timey costumes didn’t expose nearly as much skin as the current crop of Benton Revue getups.
She and Sunny had never been among the girls who danced topless, but their barely there bikinis, dripping with fake jewels, hadn’t been designed to leave much to the tourists’ imaginations.
Still, there was a difference between dancing in a revue with two dozen other girls and walking across the lobby of the Benton in an old showgirl costume beside Tomas. The driver’s large body blocked out a lot of the stares, but not nearly all of them, and Pru’s cheeks burned as they made their way through the Benton.
She was a little surprised when Tomas passed by the bank of elevators in the main lobby. Since Benton Girls got a steep discount, she’d been to quite a few ceremonies at the Benton and knew that most of their wedding salons were upstairs.
But Tomas kept on going, past more staring tourists and hotel employees. So she guessed that meant they would be getting married in the Benton ballroom, which she supposed wasn’t that big of a surprise since that was where Sunny and Cole had gotten married. Still, the thought of getting married in the same place as her best friend felt a bit like sacrilege. Sunny and Cole had married for love, whereas she and Max were doing this for much, much different reasons. She whispered a silent apology to her best friend, hoping Sunny wouldn’t hold this against her after it was all said and done.
But when Tomas finally stopped walking, it was in front of the towering double doors to the Benton’s main nightclub. This particular nightclub was known as one of Vegas’s premiere hotspots. It was the place to go Thursday through Saturday night if you wanted to play a game of Spot the Celebrity. And like many clubs in Vegas, it had a one-word title. In this case, one meant to convey a sense of decadent luxury and wicked-good times.
MAX was written in huge red letters across the top of the doors.
Pru’s heart sank. She used to come here all the time before her parents died, but not once after she’d taken over as Jakey’s guardian. She remembered now the other showgirls talking about how the club had been closed for a much-needed update and then reopened under a brand-new name.
Apparently, that brand-new name had been Max. Pru let go an irritated sigh. Of course this was where Max had decided to hold their wedding ceremony.
“Son of a...” Pru said, covering her heavily made-up eyes with one hand.
When she uncovered them, she found Tomas looking down at her sympathetically. “You sure you’re ready for this?” he asked her.
No, she wasn’t. She definitely, definitely wasn’t ready for any of this.
But she took off her cardigan and handed it to Tomas anyway.
* * *
The next morning Pru woke inside a cloud of white. Everything was white and soft, and for a moment she thought she might have gone to heaven.
But then she lifted her head and realized that though nearly everything in the room was white, this was not heaven. No, definitely not heaven, she thought squinting against the too-bright sun streaming through two wall-to-wall, floor-to-ceiling windows. After her eyes adjusted, she realized she was in a hotel room, one she vaguely recognized from pictures she’d seen in brochures as one of the Benton’s panoramic corner suites.
Her head was throbbing, her mouth dry to the bone from lack of hydration. And, she noticed the bed wasn’t all white. There was brown and black makeup all over her pillow. She’d slept in her makeup? That was so bad for your skin. Like most showgirls, she never did that. She sat up in bed, wondering what the heck had happened to her last night only to realize that she wasn’t wearing anything.
That’s when memories from the previous night came bursting back through all the cotton wool inside her head.
Her entering the nightclub to the loud, raucous cheers of what had to be at least a thousand of Max’s “closest friends.”
The flash of paparazzi taking pictures as she made her way over to Max, who was standing on top of the stage normally reserved for DJs and wearing a skinny white tuxedo. Him pulling her up to join him with a devilish grin.
Max handing her a shot glass with some kind of blue liquid inside as he whispered in her ear, “This is how Max Benton would get married, so play along, Prudence.”
Her taking the shot, actually grateful for it, because she knew she would need to be severely altered to go through with this.
The images flashed by quicker after that. Her and Max signing the official prenup in front of the cheering crowd. Her and Max taking a shot for every vow exchanged.
There had been dancing after that. A lot of it, with Max in the middle of the throbbing throng. She remembered laughing with him, and feeling free. Freer than she had in a very long time.
But what had happened after that? She sat up and frantically looked around, trying to figure out how she’d gone from dancing with Max Benton to waking up in one of the bridal suites.
“I see you’re finally awake.”
She turned to see Max walking into the room, looking fresh as a daisy, his freshly washed black hair in a stubby knot on top of his head. Wearing nothing but a towel...and a titanium wedding ring on his left hand.
Despite the circumstances, Pru couldn’t help but stare. Max Benton, as it turned out, didn’t spend all his time in the club. He must have also been clocking some serious hours at the gym, too, because he was cut from head to toe with lean muscles. The sight of his nearly naked body was so impressive that Pru couldn’t take her eyes off it for a long entranced second before it occurred to her why he was staring back with an equally impressed look on his face.
Then she remembered she was sitting there still naked as the day she’d been born.
With a gasp, she grabbed the white duvet, bringing it up to cover her chest before demanding, “What happened last night? Tell me. Now.”
Chapter 7 (#ulink_10471175-f167-56a8-a70e-91f92674855b)
Prudence had warned Max she’d no longer be there when they woke up.
“Wanna do me?” she’d asked him when she’d crawled onto the bed in her showgirl costume. “I’m only here for one night.”
Max, who had a rule about sleeping with a completely wasted woman, had answered, “I don’t think so, sweetheart.”
Then he’d come over to the bed, undid her feather bustle and started the surprisingly complicated process of getting her showgirl costume unzipped, unhooked and off her body. The idea had been to get her out of the costume and tucked into bed, but Pru didn’t make it easy for him. She was little to no help, forcing him to turn her body every which way in order to get her undressed.
And then there’d been the big reveal of her fully naked body. As it turned out, Pru had a body built for loving: soft wide hips, a heart-shaped backside and a set of breasts so glorious, they made his mouth water at the thought of tasting their black-cherry centers.
“You sure you don’t want to keep the party going?” she’d asked, arching her back and extending her long legs in a classic pinup-girl pose.
Max had gritted his teeth before reaching for the duvet and yanking it, so that she came tumbling out of her sexy pose.
By the time she recovered, he was holding up the duvet, letting her know that he was ready for her to stop tempting him and lie down. He needed to cover the sight of her nearly irresistible body with the blanket.
Pru obediently lay down, but she continued to argue with him. “C’mon, Max, don’t be like that. I had so much fun tonight.” She pouted. “Just do me, okay? One time. That’s all I’m asking.”
It was a hard argument to resist. Especially with Pru running her hands over her body, making it blatantly obvious that she would rather have him on top of her than the blanket he was holding.
But Max, who prided himself on not living by the rules, followed this particular rule of consent for good reason.
He averted his eyes from her delectable body and reminded himself why. It’s a good way to get taken to court, he told himself. Do you really want to be that douche bag who gets a girl drunk in order to get her into bed? he’d asked himself.
No, he didn’t want to be that guy, but he did want Pru. There was that unfinished business in New Orleans that they had. The kiss that had continued to haunt him in the weeks before she’d called to accept his offer. And he still owed her for using her womanly wiles to basically serve him with his brother’s stupid demands.
But he didn’t want Pru like this. Not in some drunken lay, meant to cap off a night of partying it up. No, he decided, when he took Pru, he wanted her completely sober. He wanted her to give in to him, not because she was drunk, but because she wanted him, wanted the things he could and would do to her body.
Determined to do this his way, he moved in with the blanket. But at the last moment, she grabbed one of his hands with two of hers, bringing it down to rest on one perfect globe.
“Max Benton, do you know how hot you are?” she asked him.
Max went still. He could feel her heavily beaded nipple against his palm, and Max’s cock jumped inside his white tuxedo pants in response.
Perhaps sensing that Max was at the edge of his restraint, Pru let out a sexy moan before asking, “Do you have any idea how hot you made me when we were dancing together? I want you so bad right now, Max. Please.”
For a moment, Max was paralyzed with lust, locked in a battle with himself to throw his number-one rule straight out the window.
Pru totally took advantage of that. Her hand snaked around the back of his neck and pulled his head down to hers for a kiss so hot, it made his entire body pound with need. His instincts howled to take what she was offering.
But he somehow managed to pull back. He tore his lips away from hers and said, “Pru, I want to. You have no idea how much I want you. But not like this, okay? Not when you’ve had too much to drink.”
He cursed himself now for letting that happen. When he started offering her shots, he’d thought she’d do the same thing she’d obviously done in New Orleans—pour them out when he wasn’t looking.
He’d used a trick one of the old Benton magicians had taught him back in the day for making drinks disappear in front of a large audience, while Pru knocked back every shot during the vows and then grabbed a bottle of champagne for all the photo ops Max had prearranged for after their stunt ceremony.
At first, Max had thought Pru was just playing her part to the tee. Pretending to be an anything-goes party girl like in New Orleans. But when the photos were done and they were free to do their own thing, instead of running to Tomas so that he could drive her home, she’d pulled Max out onto the dance floor.
Some showgirls he’d met, even the ones with dance degrees, weren’t particularly great dancers when it came to getting out on the floor at a nightclub. Sometimes they were stiff when they didn’t have choreographed moves to follow, or more interested in how they looked while dancing than actually having fun.
Pru wasn’t one of those girls. She’d dragged Max away from the cameras into the middle of the crowd because according to her that was the absolute best place to be. Then she’d danced with him. Really danced. Abandoning herself to the music and using him as an instrument of her appreciation, until eventually it felt as if they were one body, writhing together on the dance floor, held in thrall to the music’s sway. They danced like this for what felt like hours, him reveling in the feel of holding her close as they moved in time with the fast music.
When Max had sent Tomas home and arranged for the hotel room, his intentions had been honorable—sort of. Let Pru sleep off the night’s excesses, then continue the party in the morning.
After the night they’d had, he’d doubted Pru would have much more energy than what it would take to climb into bed. He hadn’t counted on her propositioning him, or making it so hard for him to turn her down.
But he did it. He ended the kiss before it got out of control.
“Not tonight,” he told her, bringing his hand up from her breast and using it to cup her face instead. She was still beautiful, he couldn’t help but notice, even with her eye makeup all smudged and her long curly hair looking less than perfect.
“Tomorrow, I’ll make you feel good, give you everything you want, I promise. Just wait until morning, sweetheart. We’ll spend the whole day in bed.”
She smiled at him, her eyes hooded with desire. “That sounds really nice,” she said. “I wish I could.”
“Why can’t you?” he asked. “Whatever you’ve got planned, cancel it. We’ll keep the party going, just like you said.”
“I wish we could keep the party going forever,” she whispered. Then her smile turned sad. “But we can’t. I won’t be here tomorrow morning. If you want me, this is your last chance, your only chance.”
Max had frowned the night before, not understanding. But instead of answering his follow-up questions, Prudence had turned over and fallen asleep without any further discussion. Leaving Max to sleep on the couch because he didn’t trust himself to occupy the same bed as Pru or her naked, nubile body.
He’d taken a cold shower before going to sleep. Then another one after waking up from an erotic dream involving him stripping Pru out of a real wedding dress and taking her from behind before the dress had even hit the floor.
He’d taken the second shower in the hopes of calming himself down a bit before he woke Pru up to fulfill the promise he’d made her the previous night. He didn’t want their first time together to be over in a few blazing minutes.
But when he came out of the shower, it hadn’t been necessary to rouse his sleeping bride, because she was already awake. With her long hair in a tangle of curls, and naked, she looked every bit as enticing as she had the night before.
She stared at him in his towel, her dark brown eyes lighting with appreciation, which had given him momentary hope that what Pru had said last night hadn’t been a case of drunken gibberish.
But then a look of horror had overtaken her face as she covered her breasts with the duvet and demanded to know what had happened last night. Her face accusing, as if he hadn’t used every weapon in his willpower arsenal to keep his hands off her.
That was when he understood exactly what Pru had meant the night before. Wedding Night Pru, the woman who’d met every challenge he’d put to her, the woman who had posed and laughed and talked and danced with him all night, the woman who had kissed him as he’d never been kissed before—she was gone.
Gone and replaced with the tight-faced would-be detective currently clutching the duvet as if he’d done something indefensible to her.
“Don’t worry, sweetheart. If we had hooked up last night, you’d have no doubt about what had happened, because you would be feeling it this morning. All over your body.”
His words hit their mark, and even though Pru’s face was too dark to show a blush, he got to enjoy the show of her looking away from him, obviously flustered.
But his enjoyment was brought up short when she said, “I have to go. I have to get home.”
“Why?” he asked. “Your brother’s at camp. What else do you have to do today?”
She turned on him, her eyes sharp. “How did you know my brother was at camp?” she asked.
He gave her a lazy shrug and took a seat on the suite’s dark gray couch. “I guess the same way you knew to look for me at the club in New Orleans. Research.”
She wrinkled her nose, obviously not liking the idea of someone prying into her life as she’d pried into his. “So yeah, I need to go. Like right now.”
She got out of bed, taking the covers with her, but stopped short when she saw the showgirl outfit on the ground. “You left vintage clothing lying around on the floor?” she nearly shrieked, as if this, and not waking up in his bed, was the most horrific thing she’d experienced that morning.
Supposing he should be grateful to have waking up in his bed pushed into second place, he watched her perform the rather impressive task of keeping the heavy duvet in place as she picked up the old costume. She draped it across her two arms and carried it like a wounded animal over to the suite’s large walk-in closet.
“You should ask whoever pulled this for you to come up and get it,” she said as she disappeared into the closet. “Make sure it gets properly cleaned and put back wherever you found it...”
She suddenly popped her head out of the closet and asked, “Where exactly did you find it?”
Max didn’t reply, knowing she probably wouldn’t like the answer.
But his refusal must have been clue enough, because she groaned. “Tell me—please tell me—you did not pull a costume from Nora Benton’s special collection.”
“My grandmother loves weddings, and if she’d been here to ask, she would have been happy to loan it to you.”
That was true. His Irish grandmother had been a Benton Revue girl herself. She would have been thrilled to see one of her costumes make an appearance at her grandson’s wedding—crazy but true, she was that kind of grandmother.
However, it was also true that he’d have hell to pay from his redheaded grandmother when she got back from her European vacation at the end of the summer. It was one thing to get married without inviting her or Cole. It was another to do so with this particular bride. A girl she liked so much, that she’d actually cheered when Pru turned him down at his brother’s wedding, with a “Thatta girl, Pru” before telling her own grandson, “She’s too good for the likes of you.”
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Theodora Taylor
Тип: электронная книга
Жанр: Современные любовные романы
Язык: на английском языке
Издательство: HarperCollins
Дата публикации: 16.04.2024
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О книге: The stakes have never been higher… When aspiring private investigator Prudence Washington delivers legal documents to Max Benton, she receives an unexpected marriage proposal. Notorious playboy Max needs a fake wife in order to receive his hefty inheritance. Agreeing to the plan will help Pru′s bank balance…and vacationing with the sexy billionaire is doing wonders for her libido.Max spends more time in the tabloids than in the boardroom, but he′s got huge plans for a new chain of hotels. He′ll happily prove he′s turned over a new leaf by sharing a room–and unforgettable nights–with his gorgeous new «wife.» Working together to expose a saboteur only increases their combustive attraction. But can he convince the woman he drew into a lie that he′ll do anything to make this connection last?