Let it Ride

She laughed. She wasn’t half-bad-looking when she smiled. “Not this time.”

She was trying to scare me again. It wasn’t going to work. I’d faced a man with a loaded Glock and hadn’t quivered.

“This one is special.”

Special. The word echoed in my head and I shuddered. Merda, I didn’t know if getting to heaven was worth all of this. “How special?”

“You’ll see,” was all she said.

I opened the file and scanned it. The chick, Kylie Smith, was a secretary from Los Angeles. The guy, Deacon Prescott—he was my kind of guy. He’d grown up on the streets and worked as an enforcer for the Vegas mob.

“This one doesn’t look so tough,” I said to Didi.

“Good. Then you won’t have any problems.”

My body dissolved before I could retaliate. Didi liked having the last word. But that was okay. I was on the Vegas strip, standing in front of one of the newer casinos, and for the first time since I’d died, I felt like my fate wasn’t so bad.

One

Deacon Prescott leaned closer to the ten-inch security monitor and found the woman of his dreams. Her features were indistinguishable. But every other detail was perfect.

Her brown hair was caught at the back of her neck; her clothing was understated—elegant. He zoomed the camera in for a closer look.

“Perfect,” he muttered. She was everything he’d been searching for. She had classic bone structure and a sedate hairstyle, everything he’d been hoping to find in a wife and never expected to see in the lobby of his hotel/casino, the Golden Dream.

She surveyed the lobby. Damn. She was probably here with a boyfriend or husband. He adjusted the camera’s zoom lens—she wasn’t wearing a wedding ring. Her green eyes were wide-set and her features delicate. She was an ordinary woman in the real world, but out of place in the garish world that was his life.

At thirty-eight it was well past time for him to settle down and start a family. And the only thing that had been holding him up was the right woman. A woman who could be that other half of his life without engaging his emotions. If he’d learned anything from a lifetime in Vegas, it was that fortune changed on the roll of the dice. Happiness in life and forever love were only illusions.

“What are you staring at?”

Deacon glanced over his shoulder at Hayden MacKenzie—Mac to his friends. Mac owned the Chimera Casino and Resort. The Chimera was the second-most successful operation in Vegas behind the Golden Dream.

Mac was one of the few people Deacon called friend. Mac knew Deacon from his days of running in the gray area that bordered on lawlessness, and he’d used his influence to show Deacon another way to make a living. Deacon. He freely admitted that he’d learned most of what he knew about moving in the moneyed class from Mac.

“Nothing,” Deacon replied.

Mac leaned over his shoulder at the enlarged picture of the woman. Her face filled the screen. Mac snickered. “Oh, is that what we’re calling women these days?”

“Let me see her,” Angelo Mandetti said. Mandetti was from the gaming commission. He was observing Deacon’s operation as part of an annual review process. The man had been in his hotel for a week already, and Deacon respected him. He reminded him of one of the guys who used to hang around his mom when he was little. A guy who’d noticed Lorraine Prescott’s skinny kid and taken time for him.

Mac stepped back and Mandetti leaned over the monitor. He let a low wolf whistle escape.

“She’s not just a woman,” Deacon said.

“What is she, then?” Mac asked.

“Nothing…yet,” Deacon said. Mac had something Deacon had always wanted. The easy confidence that came from being raised with every privilege. Though they were the same age, Deacon often felt much older. Deacon wanted assuredness, and the woman in the security camera was the key to the life he’d always wanted.

“Meaning?” Mac asked.

“She’s going to be my wife.”

“Your wife?” Mandetti asked. “Congratulations, man.”

Mac snorted. “He’s never met her.”

“Really?” Mandetti leaned closer to the screen, observing the woman again. “She doesn’t look like your type.”

Deacon shrugged. He didn’t say it out loud, but that was precisely why he wanted her.

Deacon watched as the woman took a book from her handbag and started reading. He had a glimmer of doubt. What if she was too staid to tame the restlessness inside him? Honorable men didn’t cheat on their wives. He’d have to see if there was a spark of attraction between them before he settled on her as his wife.

“I’ll be right back.”

“This should be interesting.”

Mac and Mandetti both moved to follow him. “Stay here.”

Mandetti held his hands up and moved back from the door. Mac chuckled and sank into one of the leather chairs in the security booth. “It’s not like we can’t watch from here.”

Deacon left the state-of-the-art room without comment. Walking down the long quiet hallway that housed the office of the front-desk manager and the casino-floor supervisor, he tried to plan what he would say to her.

He straightened his designer tie and opened the door that led to another world. The world that he’d lived in since he’d been old enough to walk. A world of ostentatious lights, ringing bells and spinning roulette wheels. He paused for a moment to look at his kingdom.

Pride in what he’d accomplished filled him, and he knew, if the woman showed the least bit of promise in the realm of sexual compatibility, he’d seduce her into becoming Mrs. Deacon Prescott. The queen of his little kingdom.

His journey through the casino was anything but quick. He was stopped by regulars and by a recently hired dealer who wanted to talk about a new invention he had for dealing. Deacon rang his secretary, Martha, and had her schedule the dealer for an appointment at the end of his shift. Finally he was out of the casino and in the lobby. He glanced around for the woman.

Suddenly all the suave lines he’d cultivated over the years left him, and he couldn’t think of a thing to say. He was back on the streets for a moment, the grubby little boy looking at the glamour he could never touch.

He smoothed his hands down the sides of his pants and stood a little taller. He was Deacon Prescott, dammit. Entrepreneur magazine’s Man of the Year two years running. Certainly no ordinary woman could keep him from achieving his goal.

Kylie Smith heard someone approach. The Golden Dream was a classy hotel with Old World charm, but the men who frequented the casino weren’t as classy. She’d been approached by four different guys while waiting for her friend.

Unwanted male attention made her uncomfortable. And she knew it wasn’t because she was drop-dead gorgeous. It was only because she seemed available.

She’d pulled back her hair into a haphazard ponytail, put on her reading glasses, complete with “grandma” chain, to keep from losing them, and she held her favorite classic novel. Her outfit should have been daunting enough to deter even the most determined male. But this person didn’t go away. Maybe it was Tina. One glance over the edge of her book and she realized it wasn’t. Unless Tina had taken to wearing Italian men’s loafers, which seemed highly doubtful. She turned away from the man and tried to concentrate on The Scarlet Pimpernel.

Except the man smelled good. He had on some kind of cologne with a woodsy scent that made her want to take a deeper breath. She glanced up quickly, from her book, with the intent of averting her gaze quickly but he stopped her.

His features weren’t classically handsome but there was something arresting in those gray eyes. Something that hinted at hidden passion and inner fire—two things she’d never had. Nervously Kylie pushed her glasses farther up her nose and tried to put on a calm face.

Attractive men simply didn’t talk to her.

“Hello,” he said. His voice was deep, not a soft sophisticated sound but a gravelly one that awakened senses she’d thought had gone into a coma.

“Hi,” she said. Yes, she was the queen of scintillating conversation.