Shameless

“I’m surprised he said—”

“He did. Thanks. I owe you…for what you did for Ty. And for me.”

Suddenly Westin was no longer in the mood to question the character of a man who’d helped save him. The heated exchange had left him so weak, Mercado’s dark face began to swirl. His fingers couldn’t seem to hold on to the sink. No way could he shave.

“Oh, God,” he muttered as the gray tiles rushed up to meet him.

Mercado lunged, barely catching him before he fell.

“Find that nice girl,” Mercado muttered. “Lean on my arm, old buddy, and we’ll get you back to bed.”

“Hell. I don’t go for nice girls. I like ’em hot…and shameless.”

“Maybe it’s time for a change of pace…in your old age.”

“Old age?” Stung, Phillip almost howled. The truth was, a ninety-year-old was stronger than he was. Oh, God, why was it such a damn struggle to put one foot in front of the other? When he finally made it to the bed, he was gasping for every breath. He let go of Mercado and fell backward.

His head slammed into the pillow. Even so, they both managed a weak laugh.

“Get the hell out of here, Mercado.”

“Forget shameless. Find that churchgoing girl, old man.”

Mercado waved jauntily and saluted. Then the door banged behind him and he was gone.

One

Stella Lamour grabbed her guitar and glided out of the storeroom Harry let her use as a dressing room. After all, a star had to have a dressing room. She tried to ignore the fact that the closet was stacked with cases of beer, cocktail napkins and glasses…and that the boxy, airless room gave her claustrophobia when she shut the door.

Some dressing room…. Some star….

As Stella approached the corner to make her entrance, she cocked her glossy head at an angle so that her long yellow hair rippled flirtily down her slim, bare back. At thirty-two, she was still beautiful, and she knew it. Just as she knew how to use it.

“Fake it till you make it, baby,” Johnny, her ex-manager, always said.

Fake it? For how much longer? In this business and this city, beauty was everything, at least for a woman. Every day younger, fresher girls poured into Vegas, girls with big dreams just like hers. Johnny signed them all on, too.

Hips swaying, Stella moved like a feral cat, her lush, curvy, petite body inviting men to watch, not that there were many to do so tonight. There was a broad-shouldered hunk at the bar. He gave her the once-over. Her slanting, thickly-lashed, blue eyes said, “You can look, but keep your distance, big boy—this is my territory.”

Johnny Silvers, her no-good ex-manager, who liked fast cars and faster women, had taught Stella how to move, how to walk, how to hold her head, how to look like a star—how to fake it.

Some star. The closest she’d come was to warm the crowd up before the real star came on stage.

Now she’d sunk to Harry’s.

Harry’s was a dead-end bar in downtown Vegas, a hangout for middle-aged retreads, divorcées, widowers, alcoholics, burned-out gamblers—a dimly lit refuge for the flotsam and jetsam who couldn’t quite cut it in real life and were too broke to make their play in the hectic, brightly lit casinos on the strip. They were searching for new lives and new loves. Not that they could do more in Harry’s than drown their sorrows and take a brief time-out before they resumed their panicky quests.

In a few more years, I’ll be one of them, Stella thought as she grimly shoved a chair aside on her way to the bar.

Her slinky black dress was so tight across the hips, she had to stand at her end of the bar when she finally reached it. She’d put on a pound, maybe two. Not good, not when the new girls kept getting younger and slimmer.

Mo, the bartender, nodded hello and handed her her Saturday night special—water with a juicy lime hanging on the edge of her glass. She squeezed the lime, swirled the water in the glass. Wetting her lips first, she took a long, cool sip.

Aside from Mo and a single, shadowy male figure at the other end of the bar, Harry’s was empty tonight. There wasn’t a single retread. So, the only paying customer was the wide-shouldered hunk she’d seen come in earlier. She knew men. He was no retread.

There was a big arms-dealer conference in Vegas. For some reason, she imagined he might be connected to the conference. He was hard-edged. Lean and tall and trim. He had thick brown hair. She judged he was around thirty. Something about him made her think of the way Phillip looked in his uniform. Maybe it was the man’s air of authority.

Just thinking about Phillip made her remember another bar seven years ago when she’d been a raw kid, singing her heart out, not really caring where she was as long as she could sing. She’d gotten herself in a real jam that night. Lucky for her, or maybe not so lucky as it turned out, Phillip Westin had walked in.

Just the memory of Phillip in that brawl—he’d been wonderful—made her pulse quicken again. It had been four drunks against one Marine, but a Marine whose hands were certified weapons. In the end Phillip had carried her out to his motorcycle, and they’d roared off in the dark. He’d been so tender and understanding that first night, so concerned about her. What had impressed her the most about him was that he hadn’t tried to seduce her. They’d talked all night in a motel and had only ended up in bed a couple of days later.

The sex had been so hot, they’d stayed in that motel bed for a week, making wild, passionate love every day and every night, even eating meals in bed, until finally they were so exhausted, they could only lie side by side laughing because they felt like a pair of limp noodles. When they’d come up for air, she’d said she’d never be able to walk again. And he’d said he’d never get it up again. She’d taken that as a challenge and proved him wrong. Oh, so deliciously wrong. Afterward, he’d asked her to marry him.

She’d said, “I don’t even know you.”

And he said, “Just say maybe.”

“Maybe,” she’d purred.

Maybe had been good enough for Phillip, at least for a while. He’d been living on his elderly uncle’s ranch alone and supervising the cattle operation because his uncle, who had been ill, was in a nursing home. Everything had been wonderful between Celeste and Phillip until suddenly Phillip had received a call and had gone off on a mission. Alone on the ranch, she’d gotten scared and had felt abandoned and rejected just as she had when her parents had died.

If the days had been long without Phillip, the sleepless nights had seemed even longer. She hadn’t known what to do with herself. She wasn’t good at waiting or at being alone.

Then a pair of grim-faced Marines had turned up at the door and said Phillip was missing in action. She’d been terrified he was dead—just like her parents. A few weeks later Johnny had driven into town, promising he’d make her a star, saying Larry Martin, the Larry Martin wanted to produce her. He’d convinced her to go with him to Vegas. The rest was history.

All of a sudden her throat got scratchier. She knew better than to think about the past. She swallowed, but the dry lump in her throat wouldn’t go down.

How could she sing…tonight? To a man who reminded her of Phillip.

She asked Mo for another glass of water, but the icy drink only made her throat worse.

Did it matter any more how well she sang? This was Harry’s. There was only one customer. She picked up her guitar and headed for the stage.

Just when she’d thought she couldn’t sink any lower, she’d lost her job two weeks ago and the only guy Johnny could convince to hire her was Harry, a loser buddy of his.

“I can’t work at a lowlife place like this,” she’d cried when Johnny had brought her here and a cockroach had skittered across her toe.

“You gotta take what you can get, baby. That’s life.”

“I’m Stella Lamour. I’ve done TV. You promised I’d be a star.”

“You’ve got to deliver. You’re just a one-hit wonder. Wake up and smell the roses, baby.”

She’d kicked the roach aside. “All I smell is stale beer.”

“My point exactly, baby. You gotta fake it till you make it.”

“I’m tired of faking it and not making it. You’re fired, Johnny.”