The woman wearing a strapless red velvet dress took a step closer. Her brown hair had been pulled into curls on top of her head. Her green eyes were sultry, seductive. “Are you going inside?”
He smiled at her. “As a matter of fact, I am.”
“Maybe I should ditch my friends and join you?”
If he hadn’t been there on business, he probably would have taken her up on her offer for a few hours of drinking and gambling. Just some fun. That might have morphed into a night of romance, but that was it. Not because he didn’t believe in relationships. He’d seen them work. His cousins Mitch and Alonzo had married beautiful women and were as happy as two guys could be.
But some men weren’t built for that kind of life. Riccardo had tried it and had had his heart ripped out of his chest and stomped on—publicly—when his fiancée left him two days before their wedding to reunite with her ex. Gowns had been bought. Tuxes had hung in closets. White-linen-covered tables had lined the rolling lawn of Northern Spain’s Ochoa Vineyards, and she’d walked out without a backward glance.
Humiliation had caused him to swear off relationships, but over the next few years, he’d grown to appreciate the benefits of being single. Not to mention rich. When a man had money, the world was at his fingertips. Though it was his cousin Mitch who had started their company, Ochoa Online, Riccardo took the income Mitch’s websites generated, invested it and made them millionaires, on the fast track to become billionaires. He more than earned his keep.
Which was why he was in Vegas. With the creative genius behind Ochoa Online away on an extended honeymoon, and one of Mitch’s best customers having trouble with his daughter, Riccardo had to shift from moneyman to client problem solver.
“Sorry.” He took the hand of the woman in red velvet and caught her gaze before kissing her knuckles. “I’m here on business.”
She swallowed. “Maybe when your business is done?”
“I’m picking somebody up and driving us both back to the airport.” Morgan Monroe, daughter of Colonel Monroe, owner of Monroe Wines, had run from her wedding. The Colonel wanted her home not just to explain, but for damage control. “I’ll be here two hours, tops.” He released her hand. “Maybe we’ll be lucky enough to meet on my next trip.”
“Maybe.”
He nodded at her and her friends. “Goodbye, ladies.”
The little group said, “Goodbye,” and he walked toward the hotel door, which opened automatically. The sleek, modern lobby welcomed him.
He stopped at the concierge. “I’m looking for Morgan Monroe.” Unlike his ex, Cicely, who’d at least given him two days’ warning, Morgan Monroe had walked halfway down the aisle before she’d turned and run. Her dad had asked his staff to monitor her credit cards and the next day this hotel had popped up. “I’m told she’s a guest here.”
The fiftysomething gentleman didn’t even glance at his computer. “I’m sorry, sir. We don’t give away guest information.”
“I’m only asking because her father, Colonel Monroe,” Riccardo said, deliberately dropping the name of her famous father, “sent me.”
The man’s face whitened. “Her dad is Colonel Monroe?”
Riccardo unobtrusively slid his hand into his trouser pocket to get a one-hundred-dollar bill. “The same.”
“I love his wine.”
“Everybody loves his wine.” He eased the bill across the polished counter. “He just wants me to make sure she’s okay.” And bring her home. But the concierge didn’t need to know that.
The man casually took the bill off the counter and stuffed it into his pocket. “It’s against policy to give you her room number, but friend to friend,” he said, motioning for Riccardo to lean closer, “I can tell you I saw her going into the casino about an hour ago. I also happen to know she plays penny slots and loves margaritas. She’s been in the same spot in the far right-hand corner every afternoon since she got here.”
Though Riccardo groaned internally at the thought of getting a drunk woman into his car and onto a plane, he smiled appreciatively at the concierge. “Thank you.”
He turned away from the serene lobby and faced the casino. Twenty steps took him down a ramp, out of the quiet and into a cacophony of noise. Bells and whistles from slots mixed with cheering at the gaming tables and blended with keno numbers. He inhaled deeply. He loved a good casino.
But he didn’t even pause at the rows of slot machines or the game tables, where an elderly gentleman appeared to be hot at blackjack. He made his way through the jumble of people and paraphernalia to the penny slots in the far right-hand corner.
No one was there.
He looked to the left, then the right. He’d walked so far back the noise of the casino was only a dull hum behind him. The vacant slots around him were also silent.
Confusion rumbled through him. Though Monday afternoons typically weren’t as busy as weekend afternoons, the entire corner was weirdly quiet.
“I’m telling you. When you have as little money as you guys have, you can’t play the stock market.”
Riccardo’s head snapped up.
“But my cousin Arnie netted a bundle playing the market!”
“Because of a lucky guess.” The woman talking sighed heavily. “Look, your primary goal should be to make money without losing any of your initial investment.”
Curious, Riccardo followed the sounds of the conversation. He walked down the row and turned right, then stopped. Two cocktail waitresses, an old guy in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, a young guy in a hoodie and two women leaned against the corner machine as a slim blonde in jeans and gray canvas tennis shoes counseled them.
“You can’t guarantee you’ll keep your initial investment buying individual stocks. Mutual funds mitigate the risk.”
One of the waitresses saw Riccardo and nudged her head in his direction. The woman doling out investment advice turned, and Riccardo’s mouth fell open.
He knew it was stupid to think Morgan Monroe would still be in the wedding gown she’d had on when she bolted from St. Genevieve church on Saturday, but he also hadn’t expected to see Colonel Monroe’s high-society daughter in blue jeans and canvas tennis shoes. Her long blond hair hung past her shoulders in tangled disarray. Her enormous blue eyes speared him from behind the lenses of oversize tortoiseshell glasses.
“Get lost, buddy.”
He also hadn’t expected her to snipe at him. Oh, he’d been sure there’d be a little resistance to his putting her on a plane and taking her back to Lake Justice, home of her father’s enormous wine empire. But everything he’d read about Morgan portrayed her as a demure, sweet woman who loved charity work and took in stray cats.
Either the press had absolutely got her wrong, her dad had a really good PR machine, or Morgan Monroe had snapped.
Considering she’d gotten halfway down the aisle at her eight-hundred-person wedding and then turned and run, he was guessing she’d snapped.
He suddenly wondered if that’s what had happened with Cicely. If she’d snapped when she’d called off their wedding—
His heart chugged to a stop. He hadn’t thought about Cicely in years and today he couldn’t stop thinking about her, comparing his situation to Morgan Monroe’s. He didn’t like remembering the humiliation any more than he liked being reminded that it was his own damn fault. Arrogance had made him believe he could make her love him, though she’d told him time and again that she had an ex she couldn’t forget. And pride sure as hell went before his fall.
So,