Silence. Then a grudging, ‘What?’
‘A coward.’
After they’d hung up she’d resisted breaking something. But, then, while she’d hoped for a little more support, she hadn’t counted on it. Parker’s baby was inside her yet she didn’t know its father at all.
Robert sent up a call, bringing her back to the here and now. They arranged to meet downstairs and the prospect filled her with nervy excitement, the kind she’d felt back at school; the kind that made it difficult to eat.
He was waiting for her in the foyer, handsome in a suit.
‘Want to spend some money?’ he smiled.
‘I don’t gamble,’ she said coyly.
‘Everybody gambles in Vegas. It’s the rules.’
She smiled. ‘In that case, I guess you’d better show me how it’s done.’
Lana had never hit a Vegas casino before. She found it disorientating, the bright lights and the high-strung buzz, the way glamour and sleaze operated side by side. It worked to a rhythm that got to your blood, chronic and unremitting.
‘Does this ever stop?’ she asked as they moved among the tables. Robert stopped to glad-hand a couple of high rollers, important-looking men with pink-hung cheeks and runny eyes.
He turned to her and grinned. ‘Not on my watch.’
Lana noticed the effect Robert had on his staff. News of the boss’s presence spread like a virus through the casino, with everyone working to a hundred and ten per cent. They wanted to do a good job for him because they liked him, she realised–but they were also a tiny bit afraid of him. It was respect. Something Cole had spent his life trying to master but he had perfected only intimidation.
At the roulette wheel Robert slipped into a game and told her to pick a number.
‘Er … I don’t know what to do.’
‘Black or red?’
‘Red!’
The ball dropped in. ‘No more bets!’
They got lucky. Lana went in again, then a third time. People were watching but she didn’t care. She was laughing, getting into the swing of it, happy with Robert at her side.
He put a hand on her arm. ‘Time out,’ he said, giving the dealer a wink as they departed the table. ‘Fortunes change.’
Afterwards they took a seat in the bar. It was innovatively themed, its side tables embroidered with a trompe l’oeil poker hand and each chair stamped with a suit. Lana was reminded of Alice in Wonderland. She might well have disappeared down the rabbit hole for how it all felt.
Robert ordered them drinks.
‘I’m glad you came,’ he told her, sitting back and looking at her. His gaze burned.
‘It was fun. Never knew I had a gambler in me.’
‘I mean that you came at all. Here.’
Lana looked away nervously. Outside was the Orient’s Dragon Garden, its verdant lawns and stone fountains glinting in the sun.
‘I didn’t think I’d see you again,’ he said quietly.
Lana nodded.
Robert took her hand. ‘I don’t want that to happen any more. I never want to not know how you are, where you are. If you’re happy. Do you understand?’
‘Robert—’
‘I mean it,’ he said firmly. ‘No more running. You’re too important to me.’
She drew her hand away.
‘I shouldn’t have said that.’
Lana shook her head. ‘I’m glad you did.’ She paused. ‘I want us to be friends.’
His voice was hollow. ‘Of course.’
‘Rita called this morning.’ She sipped from her glass.
‘And?’
‘Conversations are happening. Cole’s got a great lawyer on board but Rita doesn’t seem worried.’
‘She’s a remarkable woman.’
‘She is.’
Lana put down her drink. ‘It’s safe for me to go back. I’ll leave at the weekend.’
He nodded, had been expecting it. ‘How do you feel?’
‘Scared. But I have to do it. I have to face the consequences of what I’ve done.’
There was an awkward pause.
‘I don’t want you to go,’ he said. It was a statement, entirely unsentimental.
Lana was honest. ‘Neither do I.’
‘Then don’t.’
She searched his eyes. ‘I don’t understand.’
‘Stay here.’
‘Why?’
His gaze was serious, the look she had loved so long. ‘Because I want you to.’
In that instant, the world changed.
‘Lana, there’s something I have to say.’ He watched her solemnly. ‘I don’t want to marry Elisabeth. I thought I did, but I don’t. I convinced myself it was the right thing but it’s not. Please, don’t interrupt, let me just do this.’ He leaned forward. ‘All I can think about is you. Only you, always you. Since you walked away from us, not a day, not an hour, not a single minute has gone past when I haven’t thought about you.’ A beat. ‘I’m yours. You have me, you always did and you always will.’
‘Robert …’
‘I haven’t finished. I love Elisabeth. I do. But not in the way I love you. The way I love you is different, I can’t explain it, like it’s a different part of me I’m loving you with, and that part can’t ever belong to somebody else.’ His voice shook. ‘I don’t care how long I have to wait, how much I have to face, what it means for any of this’–he gestured around him–’but I’m not getting over you again.’ He bowed his head. A frown furrowed his brow. ‘I can’t marry her.’
Lana’s heart was thumping. ‘Did you just say all that?’ she whispered.
‘I’ll say it again.’
The fire that had been dead in her caught light. ‘You don’t need to,’ she said. ‘I can remember it.’
He took her hand again, not caring who saw. ‘Say it could work.’
‘We’d hurt people.’
‘Not in the long term.’
‘It’s impossible.’
He laughed, looked about him, then at her. ‘Anything’s possible. Wouldn’t you say?’
She laughed with him. ‘It’s crazy.’
‘The only things worth it are.’
Lana shook her head, squeezed his hand. ‘Robbie Lewis, what have you done to me?’
He smiled. ‘Not nearly enough.’
She smiled back.
Los Angeles