Breaking Beauty (Devils Aces MC): Vegas Titans Series (15 page)

“Here we are,” Lefty pronounced when they’d reached the tip
of the Needle. He swept his hands wide and looked majestic—like he was showing
his young charge the Grand Canyon, or something.
Someday, all this will be
yours, sonny boy.
Kellan suppressed a snort.

His eyes danced over the floor. He considered the Needle
from card-mode, seeking out it’s structural weaknesses, it’s assets. The
glittery windows surrounding all the tables gave players facing them an
advantage: there’d be no glare on their hand, and a slim possibility of
discerning opponents’ suits in the reflected glass. They could also wear
sunglasses and not look extra douchey. Kellan began to amble towards a far
table, looking to work his way around the space...but again, Lefty intruded.

“Not so fast, Rock Star. There’s someone I’d like you to
meet.
ADELAIDE
!” The sound of the man’s rocky voice curled about her
beautiful name made Kellan experience a brief burst of rage. But as swiftly as
this instinct arrived, another took its place.

Lefty was guiding her toward him, presenting her like a
trophy. At first, he didn’t see it: this woman was blonde, thin, pretty—the
equal of many other “dealers” roving around the space. But then he did.

To begin with, her eyes were different than the others’; they
were deep, wide, and extremely intelligent. In her gaze Kellan read fear, an
opposing confidence, and a resting sense of humor.

Her body was different. Trim and compact, while warm and
curvy in all the right places. It was easy to see how Lefty had chosen her to
work here, among the elite. She was a beautiful, beautiful woman. But all that
irrational conviction that had been growing inside him over the past few days,
that certainty that the Romy he’d forgotten from high school was in fact
someone worth remembering, perhaps even
the one who got away...
the
measure of that was plain, too.

She was as radiant, as spirited, as curious as the woman
he’d elevated to impossible heights in the past few days. The coursing
realization of this fact nearly took Kellan’s breath away. That song he’d
written? For a dream girl? This was her, standing in front of him. The
certainty was sweeping over him. Only he couldn’t tell her how he
felt—couldn’t, in fact, say anything to her besides the only appropriate thing
to say to an utter stranger: “Hello...Adelaide, was it?”

“This is Romy,” Lefty oozed. “And she’s one of our finest.
Spin around, doll.” His ribbing was command. Though he couldn’t meet her gaze
as she followed this humiliating instruction, Kellan couldn’t prevent his eyes
from glancing at her comely behind...
Jesus Christ.

For her part, Romy hadn’t contained surprise so well. Lefty
didn’t seem to have picked up on her shaking hands and startled look; probably
because all the new girls acted like this for their first few shifts atop the
Needle. But where Kellan had expected to find a smirk of recognition, even a
bit of relief as she recognized her second savior, there was only shock. He
tried to communicate something to her silently, with the pressure of his gaze.
The contact reminded him—wildly, immediately—of high school. It was like they
were sitting side by side on his childhood bed all over again.

“Looks like I know how to pick ’em, huh?” Lefty breathed,
with the leery quality of a voyeur. “We’ll get you set up at Ms. Adelaide’s
table. And if you’re any good—you just may get lucky.” He cackled then, and
made to circle the room.

But before Lefty was quite out of the triangle, a man in
sunglasses appeared out of the darkness and wrapped his arms around Romy’s
middle. She nearly shrieked at the contact—Kellan could see this in her
face—but in a moment, they both recognized the figure for Bryson.

“Hey, babe,” his brother was saying. He kissed Romy on the
cheek. Lefty turned back to the group, looking intrigued.

“I’m working right now, honey,” Romy managed. She shook like
a leaf. So this was a measure of the plan they hadn’t gone over...Romy and
Bryson were feigning to be a real couple. Or perhaps they
were
a real
couple. Perhaps they’d already made promises and exchanged sweet nothings,
perhaps it had all escalated way past his brother’s infatuation. Though he’d
been plagued by images of just these scenarios all week, Kellan felt his
stomach lurch when confronted with the pair of them: brother and adored. He
tried again—in vain—to communicate with Romy in silence, but her eyes had
seemed to seal up. While she was likely still afraid, she’d made a decision to
show this fear to no one.

“Splendid!” Lefty said, after a few seconds’ pause. “I love
nothing more than a little client-to-kept socializing. Just so you know,
though, sir...Mr…”

“Weller,” Bryson said swiftly. “Tyler Weller.”

“...Mr. Weller. Just so you know—your lady friend here is
held to the constraints of her contract. Which include our tournament rules.”

“Oh, I’m familiar,” Bryson said, making a valiant attempt to
keep the fury from his voice. He forced a chuckle. “It’d be greedy to keep this
princess all to myself, too. Wouldn’t it, baby?”

Romy’s lips were set thin, but she also managed to play
along. “Yes, Mr. Weller.”

“Excellent,” Lefty said by way of conclusion. As he turned,
he patted Romy fondly on her ass. Like he’d ruffle the fur of a retriever.

The trio had maybe a second and a half to check in with the
plan, and they couldn’t use words. Romy cast a shocked, hurt glance at Bryson;
Bryson—by way of a double apology—looked to his brother and shrugged. Kellan
frowned a little at the pair of them, then scooted towards the far corner of
the room. As always, he could read everyone better from the corners.

So things were off to a rocky start.
Still
, Kellan
thought, swiping a cocktail from a passing tray which a waitress buoyed through
the Needle,
let the games begin.
There was more on tonight’s table than
there
ever
had been before.

As soon as she had a moment to spare, Romy ducked into the
Needle’s only slightly “private” area: a small, wretched corner of the main
bar’s liquor closet. She ducked low, so Zaida wouldn’t see her shudders
of—rage? Anxiety? She didn’t know what to feel, trapped in this orbiting hell
with a lover, countless predators, spies, and...an ex-lover? It seemed a
preposterous thing to call Kellan Vaughn, whom she’d “loved” with the timid
desperation of a lonely teenage girl.

As she had so many other times throughout this week of training,
Romy felt suddenly and unabashedly foolish.
Of course
Bryson had been
cagey about his partner;
of course
the partner was Kellan. And it was a
credit to her frenzied, spliced mind that it hadn’t even occurred to her that
these two brothers had carried on being brothers long past high school—while
Romy had so inconveniently forgotten most of them both.

She had a matter of seconds left before her departure from
the floor became comment-worthy—so, Romy pretended to futz about with a few of
the shiny-blue bottles of top-shelf tequila and vodka.
Think
, Adelaide,
she urged herself.
Use that giant, masters-degree brain of yours.

But no particular plan seemed to materialize. There were
only a few seconds left now—and how was she to proceed? What would the new,
unexpected face at the table mean for the plan?

Taking a calming breath, Romy reached into her mind and
pulled out...a memory. It pushed across her powerfully, bearing with it an
urgent kind of clarity…

“It’s a Fender Strat that I’m dreaming of. Only, they’re
the most expensive. By lots.”

“One day.”

“Yeah, one day.” The tall, thin boy with the mop of
endearing spirals raked around his face smirked down at the girl—his way of
smiling. With a paring knife, he expertly sloughed away the first layer of skin
from the curious-looking fruit in his right hand.

“Pomegranate?”

“Never tried them before.”

“They’re really good! Here—hold out your hand.”

The girl had. He’d neatly placed five or six gem-like
seeds into her palm. Then he’d laughed at the expression she made, swallowing
the strangeness down.

Today was one of dozens of possible, identical days spent
keeping one another company in the court-yard. Though Reno’s weather didn’t
much vary, she could see it all in hindsight unfolding like a movie montage of
the seasons changing—only this story was Kellan in flannel, Kellan in another
flannel, Kellan in a light coat, Kellan in flannel. Kellan’s long, spindly,
musicians fingers—how they appeared crooked in certain lights. The dashing
flick of that persistent paring knife, scraping away apple and orange peels,
pears, slicing away pieces so it was easier to share.

She remembered the sweet, perpetual furrow in his little
artist’s brow: the way he was never quite satisfied with anything. How he spoke
about his parents fondly, but with the firm assurance that he’d never be like
them. How he listened to Romy speak about her miserable foster life—something
she scarcely liked to do. In fact, hadn’t this courtyard been the scene of
certain confessions? Secrets from her past that no one else—not Bryson, not
Paulette—could ever know? What about this boyish rocker had been so enticing?

“Are you doing anything after school today, Ro?”

“Studying. The usual, blah, blah, blah.”
“I have a present for you, lady. You should roll by Casa Diablo.”

She recalled her heart shifting in her chest, like some
object tumbling in a purse. “I should check with my…”

“It won’t take long. And it’s nothing creepy, I promise.”
Kellan’s face had flinched then—he had that endearing habit of showing his own
gaffs on his face, often before anyone else had noticed them. “I mean—not
creepy. Why would it be creepy? Just please...say you’ll come.”

And what had she thought then? Flustered, frantic
teenaged Romy? Sex had been on her mind the way it was on everyone’s mind in
high school, but hadn’t she thought of this lanky boy as more of a beautiful
person? Even akin to a girl, someone to envy over adore? Still, the picture of
him was rending her mind. Somehow.

And of course she’d followed him to the affectionately-dubbed
Casa Diablo that night. This was before poor Kelly had even received his
motorcycle license, so Romy had driven them both in her foster mother’s beat-up
two-tone pick-up truck. They’d listened to Nirvana on the drive over, banging
their heads with the simultaneous glee that only seems to occur when two
misfits find one another. He’d told her jokes; she’d laughed.

“It’s in your room?” she’d demanded, at the entrance to
his house. There was a grandmotherly quality to Casa Diablo. His mother had
been singing over the stove. Much of the furniture was covered in plastic.
There was the rich, hearty smell of stale cigar in the air. The way he’d nodded
at her hadn’t been scary. She’d been wary of everyone’s intentions since birth,
practically—but she’d trusted Kellan Vaughn just then, in his foyer.

When he picked up the guitar—not the Fender, not the
wannabe fender, but the rickety twelve-string acoustic he claimed to have
bartered a Crow Indian man for—Romy had felt another unusual trill of feeling.
His bedroom had been Spartan. No posters on the walls or photos in frames,
everything just so. The only thing that gave the circumstance away was the
pervading odor of teenage boy. A smell that bothered plenty of girls
(corn-chip-y, composed of all the wrong deodorants…) but one that Romy had
loved. Still loved, to this day.

Kellan had played his song with little fanfare. He hadn’t
introduced it. He hadn’t even looked into her eyes, really; had preferred to
mumble his chorus to the floor. But at the spastic end—when he’d looked up
through his greasy hair to gauge her interest, a face full of hope—she’d been
so compelled that she’d leaned forward on the bed and told him straight, “I
love you.”

And for a split second, that had hung in the air: the you
dangling, dangerous. Romy realized her mistake in the split second, and tried
to repair the damage: “It. I love it. I mean I love it, Kellan, that song—I
love it so much.”

If he was crestfallen, if her words had broken him—a
Vaughn man wouldn’t show it. Instead, he’d set his guitar aside, and planted an
earnest, sloppy teenage boy’s kiss somewhere to the right of her mouth. He’d
been Romy’s first. Sure, she’d kissed plenty since that day—the Pomegranate and
Song day—but she could still recall the inviting, spongy feel of his warm
mouth. The thirst behind it. The youth...

“What in HELL is going down here?” called Zaida, in her
limping English. Romy was so startled that a sleek bottle of Skyy began to slip
through her fingers. With cat-like reflex, her mentor seized the glass before
it shattered on the floor.

“Your table is needing you! What in HELL…”

Romy stood quickly, and re-composed her features with haste.
Looking up, she saw that the Needle floor had rearranged itself into top
tournament form. All the window tables were taken up by sprawling games.
Millionaires and B-Listers, hotshots of all colors...they were ready to gamble
their money, hoping to make something from nothing.

She cast about for Kellan and Bryson, who were doing a good
job pretending to be strangers. Kellan was nursing a tall pour of
what-looked-like-whiskey, while Bryson was glad-handing a bartender. Yet they
were zeroing in on their allotted spaces, feigning casual.

Zaida gave Romy a sharp flick at the base of her neck, and a
last withering glance. So, she straightened her spine. Made for the table which
would determine her fate.

But suddenly, Romy felt another hand on her body—and this
grip was somehow even less pleasant than the bony rattle of her supervisor. The
pressure behind this hand was harsh, insinuating a large man. She could feel
slightly sticky fingers through the patches in her leotard.

“Remember me, sweet-cheeks?” appealed a voice by her ear
with hot, rank breath.
The. Dap.

“No need to say anything to a supervisor. Won’t be but a
minute.”

Romy tried to wriggle away from what was quickly becoming a
firm grip on the skin of her waist, but to no avail. She tried to hold
perfectly still. Perhaps Zaida would turn around and make mention of this foul
conduct.

“Just wanted you to know that you’ve got a fine luxury
coming to you this eventide. Because I’m going to tear that fine ass to
shreds.” There was so much malice in his ugly words that Romy fought the urge
to spit on him—do anything to make him recoil. On seeing her face, The Dap
merely broke into a dark chuckle.

“Oh, and don’t worry. Your boyfriend won’t be able to do a
goddamn thing about it, princess.” With a final squeeze and a conspicuous wink,
he released her and made his own ambling way towards the game table.

Freshly terrified, Romy considered the room again. From a
far corner, Zaida seemed to be grinning her way. So much for supervisor's
protection. Bryson, locked by the same corner of the bar, seemed to have his
lady love in peripheral mind; his body was agitating towards her. Nearest the
table now, Kellan was landing his sloshing tumbler square onto the green felt.

“LET THE TOURNIE BEGIN!” The Dap bellowed, sparking a cry
around the room which made Romy think of gladiator games.

So there was a way in which she was alone here. A way in
which she’d need to scrape her own self out of this heaping, God-awful
disaster.

She set her chin. Nothing that hadn’t been done before.