Gluttony (13 page)

They strode up to the hotel check-in desk hand in hand, identical love-struck smiles painted on their faces. “This is a bad idea,” Adam muttered out of the side of his mouth, trying not to let the happy expression falter.

“It’s our best shot,” Harper countered, through gritted teeth. “Just act happy.”

“I’m not that good an actor.”

Estie hadn’t been able to help them with the concert tickets, but she had offered them a lead: The hotel that was hosting the concert often reserved a few free event passes for especially cute honeymooners.

So here they were, glowing with fake love and walking on artificial sunshine. A chipper brunette named Margie—at least, according to her
I’M MARGIE, TELL ME HOW I CAN HELP
name tag—greeted them at the desk.

“Yes?” she asked.

They’d agreed it would be best not to come right out and ask for the tickets, at least not at first. Better to be so insufferably adorable that Margie had no choice but to reward them.

“We just wanted to thank y’all for letting us stay in your lovely hotel on our special weekend,” Harper said, the Southern accent pouring out before she realized what she was doing. “Sweetie pie here is just loving every minute of it.” She nuzzled her face into Adam’s neck—pausing for a moment to enjoy the familiar scent, woodsy and clean. It had been so long since they’d …

No. This was no time for sappy love-struck nostalgia: It was a time for romance.

“I could just take you back to the room right now,” she murmured, then turned back to Margie, confiding, “We’ve barely left the room all weekend. You know how it is.”

The look on Margie’s face said no, she didn’t know how it was, nor did she want to. “Glad you’re enjoying your stay with us,” she said tentatively. “So this is a special weekend for you?”

“Me and the wife just got hitched!” Adam said, lifting Harper up and whirling her around. “She’s my wife! Woo!”

Harper resisted the urge to smack him. She’d said act cute, adorable—not wasted. He was acting like he was at a tailgate party. Though she had to admit, it was indeed pretty damn cute.

“So, newly weds,” Margie said, sounding less than enthused. “Congratulations.”

Harper gave Adam a quick kiss on the cheek. “I wanted a simple church wedding, back home, but my man here, he’s just obsessed.”

“Obsessed?” Adam and Margie asked together.

“With Elvis. So of course we just had to come to Vegas and get hitched at the Hunka Hunka Chapel of Love, and you”—she dug her finger gently into Adam’s chest—“looked so handsome in your white jumpsuit and those sexy sunglasses.”

“Well, uh”—Adam gave her his best Elvis lip-curl—“thank you, thank you very much.” Beneath the counter, Adam gave Harper a quick pinch just above the hip, and she bit her lip to keep from squealing. He knew that was where she was most ticklish; he was
trying
to make her laugh. It wasn’t going to work. “I’m just sorry about last night,” he said.

“Uh, last night?”

“You know.” He lowered his voice to a stage whisper. “When we were in bed and … I called you
Priscilla
.”

Now Harper nearly did laugh. But, instead, she gave him a light slap across the face. “You’re going to bring that up in front of a stranger?” she cried. “You
know
I’ll never be able to measure up to her. I try and I try, I got the implants and the new hairdo and—”

“Give it a rest, guys,” Margie snapped, the help-me-help-you grin gone from her face.

“What?” Harper asked, trying to look innocent.

“You heard about the free tickets for newlyweds, right? You think you’re the first couple to try this?” She rolled her eyes. “You’re just the worst.”

Harper glanced at Adam, briefly considered trying to bluff it out, then shrugged in defeat. “So much for my acting career.” She hoped she sounded sufficiently breezy. It wouldn’t do to let either of them know how much she’d been counting on these tickets—how she’d decided that one grand gesture for Miranda would, just maybe, erase everything Harper had done to her this year, and let them start fresh. And more than that—chasing down the tickets had helped distract her from thing things that actually mattered. But that was over now.

She tugged at Adam’s shirt. “Come on, let’s get out of here.”

He shook her off and planted his hands on the fake wooden desk. “Isn’t there anything you can do?”

Margie blew out an exasperated sigh. “I don’t have time for this. Come on, listen to your girlfriend—give up.”

And for a moment, Adam looked like he was considering it. Then his jaw tightened—it was so imperceptible that someone else might not have noticed. But Harper knew what to watch for. And she was always watching.

“I know you’re busy,” Adam said. “I know you don’t have time for a couple of high school kids trying to score free tickets. But just listen to me. We need this.
She
needs this.” Harper froze, but he didn’t try to touch her, or even look at her. “And it’s none of your business why, so you’re just going to have to trust me. She has gone through way more shit this year than anyone should ever have to, and I’m not saying she can’t take it, because she can, and she
has
, and she doesn’t complain, and she never asks for help and—” He paused, and took a deep breath, then another, and when he spoke again, his voice had lost some of its volume, but none of its intensity. “And now she’s asking for this one thing,” he said slowly. “And I wish I could give it to her. I really wish—” Harper was staring at the ground, but she could feel him watching her. “But I can’t.
You
can. Please.”

Margie tore herself away from Adam’s face and looked over at Harper, who forced herself to meet her gaze.
Do not cry,
she commanded herself. She refused to be pitied, not by some random hotel clerk, not by Adam, not by anyone.
Just breathe
.

Finally. Margie’s expression softened and she nodded. “I’m not supposed to do this, but …”

Adam snatched the tickets out of her hand and passed them to Harper, who stayed still and silent, just focusing on keeping her composure.

Adam pulled her away, and they walked through the lobby in silence. Finally, outside the hotel, Harper stopped. “Adam, I …” She chewed on the inside of her cheek, trying to figure out how to say what she wanted to say—how to thank him for helping her, despite the way she’d treated him, despite what she’d done to him, despite everything. She glanced down at the tickets, still unable to believe that they’d actually, finally succeeded. “Adam, I just want to say—holy shit!”

“What?”

Without a word, she handed him one of the tickets. He looked down, then back up at her, his mouth a perfect O of horror.

Margie had scored them second-row seats to a one night only, sold-out concert:

The Ninth Annual Viva Las Vegas International Elvis Extravaganza.

Thank you, Margie. Thank you very much.

If there had been papers, they would have been signed, sealed, and delivered. But this was a handshake business, and hands had been shook. As Kane led Jackson through the Camelot’s lobby in search of the pool—in search of Miranda, who’d been only too happy to agree to meet him and his “friend”—Kane couldn’t help but feel extremely pleased with himself. Even more than usual.

He’d suckered Jackson into agreeing to the deal, for the sole concession of introducing him to a hot redhead—an introduction, and nothing more. After that, they were on their own. So it wasn’t like he was selling out Miranda, he told himself. More like he was using her as bait—bait that was in no danger of even a nibble, since obviously once Jackson saw her, the whole sordid business would be over with. Not that Miranda was some kind of guy repellant. But Jackson wasn’t going to waste his Vegas weekend on a mousy, bookish stringbean, no matter how entertaining, and Kane doubted whether Miranda would last more than ten minutes with the smooth-talking, peace-loving, hemp-weaving Jackson before getting up and out.

No harm, no foul, and plenty of money soon to be rolling in. All in all, Kane decided, a good day’s work.

“So how do I get in good with this chick?” Jackson asked, as they stepped onto the pool deck.

Calling her
chick
would surely be a great place to start, Kane thought in amusement. This could be more fun than he’d thought.

The pool area was mostly empty. A few kids were playing Marco Polo in the shallow end, splashing and screaming. Kane caught one kid cheating—climbing out of the pool and running to the other end before diving back in, just as he was about to get tagged. Underhanded—and brilliant. It brought back fond memories.

“I don’t see her,” he said, wondering if it had taken her longer to get back from the spa than she’d expected. His gaze skimmed across a row of women lying in the shade: old lady with her knitting, desperate housewife with curves several sizes bigger than her suit, skinny twelve-year-old trying to look like Britney, and … whoa. Kane nodded appreciatively and drank in a pair of perfect, delicate feet, each toe painted a deep shade of red, slim, pale legs, lime green bikini board shorts, a flat, taut midriff and barely there bikini top and—

Their eyes met, and she propped herself up and waved.

“Tell me that’s your redhead,” Jackson said in a hushed voice.

Kane could hardly believe it, but … “Yeah. That’s Miranda.”

Jackson slapped him on the back. “Nice, dude. I knew I had a good feeling about you. Let’s do this.”

Kane led Jackson over and they sat down on an adjacent chair. He couldn’t stop staring: Everything about her looked the same as always. She was still just Miranda—but looking at her from across the pool, as if she were a stranger, it had been … deeply weird. He tried to shake it off. Bikini or not, pedicure or not, sexy half smile or not, this was still Miranda.
Just
Miranda.

“Stevens, I’d like you to meet a good friend of mine,” he said as she set down her book and extended a hand.

“
You
can call me Miranda,” she told the drug dealer, touching her face self-consciously. Her skin looked almost like it was glowing.

“Jackson,” he said, shaking her hand. The dealer checked out her book. “
Anna Karenina
?” he asked, raising his eyebrows. “Not quite beach reading.”

Miranda waved her hand toward the giant waterslide and the plastic palm trees. “Not quite the beach,” she pointed out.

“It’s one of my favorites,” Jackson told her. “I love the way Tolstoy uses the theme of the moving train to propel us through the book.”

“Really?” Miranda asked, her eyes widening in surprise.

“Really?” Kane echoed. What was going on here?

Jackson began explaining his take on Tolstoy and why he preferred him to Dostoyevsky (“
Crime and Punishment
is thought-provoking, to be sure, but
War and Peace
changed my life….”) but liked Chekhov best of all, especially on his “dark days.” Miranda listened in rapt amazement.

Kane couldn’t bring himself to listen at all. Nor did he pay much attention when Miranda offered her own criticisms of the novel and then shifted from fiction to current events, analyzing the latest move by the Russian president, while Jackson jumped in with a comparison to nineteenth-century geopolitics. Instead, Kane watched. He watched Miranda nervously play with her hands, picking at her cuticles with sudden, sneaky plucks as if no one could see. He noticed her smoothing down her hair and grazing her fingers across her lips, and he noted that when Jackson made her laugh, he briefly rested his hand on her skin—first on her arm, then on her thigh. Kane spotted her blushing, and caught Jackson sneaking more than one glance at the low neckline of the bikini, always darting his eyes back up to Miranda’s before she picked up on his distraction.

And finally, he couldn’t take it anymore.

“Jackson, can I talk to you for a minute?” he asked.

“Kinda busy here,” Jackson said, without turning his gaze from Miranda.

“It’s important.” Kane stood up and waited for Jackson to follow. “We’ll be back in one minute, Stevens. Promise.” He pulled Jackson across the deck to the other side of the pool, where the Marco Polo game had morphed into netless water volleyball. “What are you doing?” he hissed.

“Reeling in the catch of the day,” Jackson leered. “You were right, she’s as spicy as they come.”

Kane winced. This had to be handled delicately—but it had to be handled. “But all that stuff about Tolstoy, politics—where did you …?”

“You gotta play to the audience,” Jackson explained. “Let them think you’re on the same wavelength, and then—” He shook his head. “You think all this hippie crap is my idea? My girlfriend’s all peace, love, happiness, bullshit—but if it keeps her happy to dress me like granola boy, well, you do what you gotta do, am I right?”

“Your … girlfriend?” Kane wondered why his brain was moving so much more slowly than usual.

“Yeah, she’s getting in on Monday. But till then, I figure I can have a little fun, and Miranda’s perfect—or she will be, once she loosens up a little.”

“Look, Jackson, I know I said she was your type, but I really don’t think—”

“I owe you one,” Jackson said, clapping Kane on the back. “But now, how about you get out of here and leave us to it.”