Love's Gamble. Theodora Taylor

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      * * *

      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.

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