Keir O'connell's Mistress

“Good, ’cause the big man’s serious when he tells that to employees. If you have a legitimate beef with some SOB, you take it to O’Connell and let him handle it.”

Inez was right. That was Keir’s policy, and wasn’t that amazing because if you wanted to talk about rude, crude sons of bitches, he was your man.

And why did she keep thinking about him this morning? She wasn’t going to do it again, except maybe to consider that as bad as the guy up to his wrists in silver was, Keir was worse.

“Okay,” Cassie said, with the stretch-the-lips smile she’d learned putting in six nights a week strutting across a stage with the Eiffel Tower on her head. “I’m going home.”

“You do that. Just leave Mr. Big Tipper to me.” Inez fluttered her lashes. “I’ll be so sweet when I talk to him that he’ll pass out from a sugar overdose.”

Cassie laughed and gave the other woman a quick hug. “Good night.”

“You mean, good morning.”

“Whatever. Have a good one.”

“Yeah. You, too.”

Cassie thought about taking the stairs to the basement locker room but she was just too tired and her feet really were killing her. Maybe it was these shoes. They were new, and the straps cut into her flesh.

She pressed the call button for one of the employee elevators. Sighing, she slipped one foot from her shoe and rubbed her cramped toes against the carpet.

Wearing three inch heels wasn’t fun, especially if you’d spent most of your life torturing your tootsies.

Rule Number Three of Cassandra Bercovic’s Survival Guide, Cassie thought, grimacing as she pressed the call button again. If you started doing pliés at seven and high kicks at seventeen, forget about high heels because your feet would be a hundred years older than the rest of you by the time you hit twenty-nine.

The problem was, Rule Number Three was pitched into the dust by Rule Number Four.

The Higher The Heels, The Better The Tips.

It was the truest rule of all, and she needed every penny she could come by if she wanted to hold out for the right management job. She didn’t know where she’d find it or when. Her only criteria was that the place had to be small and pretty, and light-years from Las Vegas.

Then she could trade in these torturous stilettos for a nice comfy pair of orthopedics.

The thought made her smile.

Sighing, she slid her shoe back on, stepped out of the other one and flexed her toes.

Except for the one jerk, she’d had a pretty good shift. Two shifts. Most people had been pleasant, the tips had been decent, and the only guy who’d tried to hit on her was so decrepit that she’d almost felt sorry for him.

Cassie glanced up at the unblinking lights on the panel over the cars. What was taking so long? That hot shower and soft bed were calling to her…well, maybe she’d wait on the bed part. She’d sign on to her computer, see if, by some miracle, her grade was waiting in her e-mail in-box. And there was something she wanted to check on, a question she was pretty sure she’d gotten right on the exam but she wanted to look it up and be sure.

Tired or not, she preferred going online early in the day, while things were still relatively quiet in her apartment complex. It had been tough, getting into the habit of hitting the books after you’d been out of school for almost a dozen years, especially when you’d been such a miserable failure while you’d been there the first time.

Maybe that was why she hadn’t told anyone she was taking the course. This way, if she flunked out, nobody would know except her. She might have told Dawn, who was her best friend, but she’d sensed that Dawn had enough trouble of her own without having to worry about offering encouragement to a terrified student.

And then Dawn had fallen head over heels in love and she’d plunged into planning a beautiful wedding at Gray’s uncle’s ranch in Tex—

Cassie stiffened.

Uh uh. She wasn’t going there again. Forget Texas. She’d wasted enough time the past month, going over what had happened, what she’d said, what Keir had said, trying to figure out how she’d ended up in that garden, letting him make a fool of her.

Actually, it wasn’t was all that difficult to understand. The romantic setting would have softened even the most dedicated cynic. Add buckets of champagne, dreamy music, the no-way-out-of-it amount of time the maid of honor was expected to spend with the best man…

The best man. What a joke. The worst man was more like it, and where was that damned elevator?

Cassie banged on the call button.

She missed Dawn. All those late-night chats at the kitchen table, the two of them pigging out on pizza or takeout Chinese. If Dawn were still here, she’d not only have told her about the restaurant management course, she’d have told her about Keir O’Connell, too, how he’d gone slumming, how amazed he’d been when she’d stopped him from making love to her…

…how relieved.

Cassie’s mouth thinned.

Oh, his face when she’d told him to stop. All she’d meant was that things were moving too fast but Keir had blanched under that all-year tan. He’d let go of her so quickly that she’d almost fallen.

“Cassie,” he’d said, his voice hoarse. “Cassie, I’m so sorry…”

What he’d meant was, What the hell was I doing?

She knew, because she’d seen that look on men’s faces before, when she was a showgirl. You met someone, you hit it off, things were fine until the guy asked what you did for a living.

“I dance,” she’d say.

“Where?” he’d say.

From there on, it was all downhill.

By the time she’d been desperate enough to strip, she’d known better than to talk about it.

She wasn’t either a showgirl or a stripper anymore but it didn’t matter. She was still Cassie Berk and some things never changed…and where was that miserable elevator?

To hell with it. History was history. With a little luck she’d be out of Vegas soon enough. No more hearing the ping of the slots, even in her sleep. No more guys thinking she was smiling just for them. No more turning her feet into aching, leaden weights.

Best of all, no more seeing Keir.

He was away. On vacation, everybody said, as if it were a miracle the great man would do such a thing.

She’d already known he was going away.

“I’m taking some time off,” he’d told her as they sat alone at one of the little umbrella tables, smiling at each other because smiling had seemed a good thing to do right then.

He’d said her he was going to New York and then he’d hesitated as if he were going to tell her something else, and just for a minute, for the tiniest bit of eternity, she’d thought maybe, oh maybe he was going to say, “Cassie, come with me…”

The light panel blinked to life; the elevator doors slid open. Cassie was trying to jam her foot back into her shoe when the doors began to slide shut.

“Hey!”

She lunged forward, hobbled into the car and stepped on some plywood sheets one of the maintenance guys must have left on the floor. One heel sank into the wood.