Runaway Vegas Bride / Vegas Two-Step: Runaway Vegas Bride / Vegas Two-Step

It sounded cold and maybe a little as if he was taking advantage, but truly, he wasn’t. People needed that time to let their emotions rage, he’d discovered. It wasn’t pretty, but it was all about processing those bad, messy feelings that came from the breakup of most relationships. And without that processing time, people simply couldn’t move on.

He gave them that time, at an outrageous sum per hour, as most attorneys did, and then when he felt they were ready, he got them to agree to the actual divorce.

Wyatt liked to think he provided a much-needed service to the miserably married public, that he gave his clients a nice balance of hand-holding, emotional venting opportunities and, in the end, closure. For that, he was incredibly well paid and had learned how to talk almost anyone into anything. A skill that he never imagined he’d need in such abundance in looking after his beloved but troublesome elderly uncle in the man’s waning years.

Problem was, certain things about uncle Leo showed no signs of waning. Most distressingly, his interest in women.

When they’d come to Remington Park, Wyatt had been at his most charming, most reassuring, pushing to seal the deal without ever seeming like he was pushing, seeming like a man with no troubles at all, when he convinced Ms. Steele to take uncle Leo.

“Kicked out of three retirement homes already!” Ms. Steele commented.

It wasn’t a question. She knew it was true. Damn. “Look, he just went a little…you know—”

“No, I don’t,” Ms. Steele said. “The man’s eighty-six, not sixteen!”

“He and my aunt Millicent were together for eleven years,” Wyatt explained.

Ms. Steele didn’t seem impressed at all with the number.

Wyatt frowned. “No one in my family’s ever stayed married that long. This was the marathon of marriages for the Gray family men—a record likely to stand for the ages if history is any guide—and uncle Leo was faithful to her the entire time. He swears it. But then, when she was gone…I mean, he was devastated. Truly, he was. But he also felt like…”

“He was running out of time?” she suggested.

Wyatt nodded. “I suppose.”

“Had to get everything while he still could?”

That sounded more selfish than he’d ever considered Leo to be, but still, Wyatt conceded, “It’s possible.”

“A little like a kid in a candy store, given the fact that there are so many more women than men at his age? Or even in the age group ten or twenty years younger than he is? So many lonely women with no one to talk to? No one to flatter them? Flirt with them? Hold them? Convince them to let him take care of certain physical needs they might have forgotten, that he can bring back to life, like magic?”

“Okay, yes. He likes women,” Wyatt admitted. “Always has. And they like him.”

“Don’t expect me to see this as some sort of public service he’s offering. Servicing—if you will—lonely women,” she said, looking every bit as dour and imposing as the last administrator who’d kicked uncle Leo out of her facility. “Because I certainly don’t see it that way.”

“And how do you see it?” Wyatt asked, thinking if he knew where she was coming from, surely he could fix this.

“Like he has caused women who’ve lived together happily, some of them for years in the same cottage, to now be at each other’s throats! Like they were in high school, fighting over a boy! I won’t have it. I can’t—”

“Look, he’s a flirt—”

She frowned down her upturned nose, holding a file folder in front of her. “He’s doing more than flirting.”

Damn, Wyatt thought. Leo’s still got it. At eighty-six! A part of him couldn’t help but feel a sense of admiration and reassurance about his own twilight years.

Eighty-six and still going.

On the other hand, he could really go for Leo moderately drugged and confined to a deliberately sabotaged wheelchair in an all-male home right now.

Did they have those? All-male homes? Wyatt would have to look into it, if he couldn’t salvage this situation.

“Look, these women…He swears he doesn’t make them any promises. No commitments. I told him he had to make that clear up front, so no one would get hurt.” He’d thought about actually drafting a release, spelling it out in writing. No expectations of any permanent arrangement. And getting them all to sign before Leo got too close. “I mean, surely women still aren’t looking for a long-term commitment in their eighties? Please tell me they’re not?”

Ms. Steele looked aghast.

“He can’t help it if women like him,” Wyatt said.

“The women here got along just fine with each other until he came,” Ms. Steele reiterated. “So I don’t think the women are the problem. He is. And if he causes any more of an uproar here, he’s gone. I mean it. And you’ll have to take him out of state to find him a new home. I won’t have him doing the same thing to anyone I know in this business.”

Okay, so…it wasn’t that bad yet? They still had a chance. What a relief!

“He’ll be great,” Wyatt vowed. “Quiet, kind—without being too kind. Friendly without being too friendly. A model resident. I promise.”

Bigger lies had seldom fallen from Wyatt’s lips, he feared.

He wrapped up his meeting with Ms. Steele and went to find his uncle.

Remington Park was actually a series of small cottages, each housing eight to ten residents who had their own bedrooms and shared a common kitchen, living room and dining room. Those cottages were set around larger, more traditional assisted living apartments and a nursing home facility for people who needed a higher level of care. Once they could no longer live in the cottages comfortably, they could move next door to assisted living or the nursing home, without leaving all the friends they’d made within the community.

The whole complex also had extensive walking trails, gardens, a few small shops, a pool, a rehab center and cafeteria, and boasted of the fitness and activity level of its residents.

Wyatt thought it seemed homey, those little cottages—kind of like old-fashioned boarding houses. Plus there were the more traditional care options. He hadn’t thought, as he clearly should have, that with the place being this big, there were bound to be tons of women.

As he walked down the path that led to Leo’s cottage, he saw them. Some of them frail-looking and hunched over, some of them glossy, white-haired, beauties-in-their-day women, bare arms pumping with each step, wearing walking shorts, their toned, tanned legs moving at a pace that might even leave Wyatt breathless as they went about their exercise.

As Leo liked to say, eighty was the new sixty.

Wyatt just shook his head and thought he had to get to the gym more. He could take out some of his frustrations over Leo there, and he wanted to be in good shape, still able to chase women if he wanted to when he was in his eighties.

He got to Leo’s cottage, then to Leo’s room, but seeing it was empty, went to the kitchen and asked the young woman in the cheery yellow polo shirt the staff wore where his uncle was. But she wasn’t sure.

“He doesn’t spend much time in his room,” she said, looking like she was trying to be diplomatic and maybe was a little scared.

Wyatt wondered if she was the one who had squealed on Leo to the dragon-lady administrator. Poor girl. She didn’t look like she was much past twenty and certainly no match for Leo at his most charming or most manipulative.

“Do you have any idea where he spends most of his time, if not in his room?” Wyatt tried.

“Well, he has a new lady friend,” she admitted. “I mean…at least one new one that I know of. It’s hard to keep up, you know?”

“I know,” Wyatt admitted.

“There’s a bench on a little hill in the formal gardens overlooking the outdoor pool. You know where the outdoor pool is?”

Wyatt nodded, remembering from the tour.

“I’ve heard him say how much he likes that spot.” She leaned in closer, whispering. “The view…of the ladies at the pool, sunbathing…You know what I mean?”

“Oh, yes.”