The sunlight pouring in the window seemed way too cheerful for such a day. It pissed her off, so she jerked the blinds shut. “Why didn’t you tell me? Let me help you before it came to this?”
His sobs subsided into an occasional sniffle. She knew he hurt badly. His partner meant everything to him. The two men had been together for four years—they’d met at the launch of Fantabulous, Jeremy and Kate’s high-energy salon located on the outskirts of Las Vegas. Jeremy and Victor had hit it off immediately, acting like an old married couple almost from the beginning. They were the happiest couple she knew.
“I couldn’t. Victor is so private and didn’t want anyone to know. He was adamant about it. You’re my friend, but he’s my partner. I promised, and until now, I kept the promise.”
His eyes were plaintive. He could offer no other explanation and Kate couldn’t blame him. She’d felt much the same way her whole life. Private. Elusive. Never one to offer up a motive.
“I don’t expect you to forgive me, Kate, but there was nowhere else I could go for the money. I even called my parents.” Jeremy’s long fingers spread in a plea.
“They wouldn’t help you,” she said, shifting the colorful glass paperweight her friend had given her for Christmas. She wanted to yell at this particular friend, get it through his gel-spiked head, that somehow she would have helped, but it was too late.
“No. Didn’t even return my call.”
“So what are we going to do? Can’t we stop this? Put the IRS off somehow?” Kate knew she sounded desperate. She felt frantic, sick. Vomit perched in the back of her throat. Although Vegas had taken a huge hit economically, they’d been making it, but money wasn’t flowing the way it had when they’d first opened.
“I talked to my friend Wendell. He’s a bankruptcy lawyer. He said if we could scratch up ten thousand, we might hold them off then see where we stand. He also said we might cut a deal with the IRS and pay a lesser amount on the back taxes.”
“Ten thousand?” she echoed. She only had about three thousand in savings and she’d been dipping in to cover extra expenses for the past few months. She didn’t own anything she could use for collateral, and they’d put a second mortgage on the salon for an expansion right before the economy tanked. She looked down at the three-hundred-dollar boots she’d bought before the holidays and thought she might be ill on them. She felt stupid. Dumb. She should have been better at saving her money.
Jeremy dropped his head into his hands.
“That feels like a fortune. I don’t have it right now. No one does in this economy. The banks won’t give us free suckers anymore, much less a loan,” Kate said.
“I don’t have the cash, either,” he said. “I mean, obviously.”
She pushed her hands through her hair and looked at the IRS letter. It ridiculed her with its tyrannical words. She wanted to rip it up, pretend it was a silly nightmare. Lose her business? Ha. Ha. Joke’s on you, Kate, baby.
But no laughter came. Only the heavy silence of defeat.
Like a bolt of lightning, desperation struck. Once again she was a girl lying in the small bed inside her grandmother’s tinfoil trailer, praying she’d have enough to make the payment on her class ring. Praying she’d have enough to buy a secondhand prom dress. Praying no one would find out exactly how poor Katie Newman was.
Her unfortunate beginning had made her hungry, determined to never feel so insignificant again.
She had to get out of the salon.
She snatched her Prada handbag from the desk drawer.
“Where you going?” Jeremy’s head popped up. He swiveled to watch her stalk out of the small office.
“Anywhere but here,” she said, trying to keep the panic from her voice. She felt as if someone had her around the throat, closing off her oxygen. She could hardly take in the temperate air that hit her when she flung open the back door.
“Kate! Wait! We have to tell Wendell something.”
“Tell him to go to hell. I’ll rot before they take the salon,” Kate managed to say through clenched teeth. And she meant it. She didn’t care what Jeremy had done. She wasn’t going to lose her business. She’d go Scarlett O’Hara on them if she had to. The image of her clutching a fistful of deposit slips in the bank lobby crying out, “As God is my witness, I shall never go hungry again!” popped into her mind. She saw herself sinking onto the bank’s cheap Oriental rug, tears streaming down her face.
She yanked open the door of her cute-as-a-button powder-blue VW Bug, plopped her purse on the seat and slid her sunglasses into place. “Screw ’em. I ain’t giving in. Even if I have to sew a dress from my stupid-ass curtains, I’ll get that money.”
She wasn’t making sense. She didn’t care that she wasn’t making sense. She needed money. She needed it fast.
And there was only one way for her to make money fast in Vegas.
Blackjack.
THREE HOURS LATER, KATE SLID onto a leather stool in the casino lounge. For all the clanging and clinking going on outside the bar, it was eerily quiet in here. Curved lamps threw soft light on the polished dark walnut tables scattered around the room. Kate had chosen the nearly empty bar over a cozy table. She needed to be close to the liquor.
Blackjack had not been her friend. In fact, blackjack had taken her last hundred dollars and bitch slapped her.
“What’ll it be?” said the bartender. He wore an old-fashioned white apron that suited the Old World ambience of the place. Soft music piping from the speakers settled over the few patrons.
Kate pursed her lips. “Grey Goose, twist of lime, three cubes of ice.”
“Nice. I like a woman who drinks like a man.” The voice came from her left. She glanced over at the guy.
“I wasn’t aware vodka was a man’s drink,” she responded with a lift of one eyebrow, a move she’d perfected in junior high school.
“Touché,” he said, sliding a predatory smile her way. He looked good. Toothy grin, disheveled brown hair, five o’clock stubble designed to make him doubly irresistible. Any other time and Kate might bite.
But not tonight.
She gave him a flashbulb smile and turned ever so slightly to her right. Stay away, buddy.
But he was like any other man—couldn’t read a woman’s body language.
She felt him scoot closer.
The bartender set the glass in front of her. Without hesitating, she picked it up and downed the vodka in one swallow. It felt good sliding down her throat, burning a path to her stomach.
“And you drink like a man, too,” her unwanted companion said.
Kate turned toward him, not bothering to toss him a smile this time. “How do you know I’m not a man? We’re in Vegas.”
His eyes raked her body. “I can see you’re not a man.”
Kate narrowed her eyes. “Good vision, huh? Well, don’t trust your eyes. Don’t trust anybody, for that matter.”
She didn’t say anything else, just turned from him and studied the way the light illuminated the bottles lining the mirrored bar. It made their contents glow, made them seductive.
Bars of “Sweet Caroline” erupted from her purse and she rifled through it until she found her cell phone. A quick glance at the screen and she knew her friend Billie had finally got around to returning her earlier call. Finally. She could seriously use a sympathetic shoulder. And not of the rumpled, sexy, “can I buy you a drink” variety.
She punched the answer button on her iPhone. “Where the hell have you been?”