His face was lined with disgust, and she waited for him to inform the room that one of their newest hires had just been fired, but instead he said the last words she’d ever expect to come out of his mouth.
“It’s with a heavy heart that I have to inform you that The Benton Girls Revue has just been cut from The Benton’s line-up of shows.”
Stunned silence met his announcement until Pru stuttered out, “You—you mean tonight’s show has been cut? Just tonight’s show, right?”
Rick shook his head. “I’m sorry, Pru, honey. I wish I could say it was just for tonight, or that management was just cutting back the number of shows we put on. I suggested all of that and even offered to take a pay cut. But Mr. Benton’s assistant wasn’t hearing any of it. She said The Revue is cancelled. No more shows—not even a farewell one. Order came from The Third himself.”
Cole Benton III or “The Third” as some of the longer-time employees called him. Sunny had never met the CEO of The Benton Group herself, but according to Nora, he wasn’t anything like his grandmother, all work and no play with little to no sense of humor. Still, Sunny wouldn’t have expected this from The Third. His grandmother had started out a showgirl and surely he knew how much Nora treasured The Revue. Not only was the theater they performed in named after her, but she also came to see the show the second Tuesday of every month, and she’d even had the Benton Girls perform at her annual Christmas event to raise money for Lung Cancer awareness, which had taken the lives of both Sunny’s grandmother and Nora’s husband.
As if reading Sunny’s mind, Rick said, “Sunny, aren’t you besties with Nora Benton?”
“Not exactly,” Sunny answered. “She and my grandmother were very close friends.”
“Sunny’s grandmother was our first African-American showgirl here at The Benton, and then she went on to become one of our most prized seamstresses behind the scenes,” Rick informed the group, his voice somber and reverent. He held his hand out palm up toward Sunny and said to the rest of the dancers, “So you see, Sunny has both a personal and a historical stake in making sure our show goes on, and we can continue the story her grandmother began.”
Well, she wouldn’t quite put it that way. Though Sunny was proud of her grandmother for integrating The Benton Girls, that didn’t mean that she herself wanted to stay with the show forever like her grandmother had.
“Sure, I can give Nora a call,” she offered. “Though I’m not sure how much she can do.”
Rick waved his hand in front of his chest. “No, no, no. Not Nora. If she had any power in this organization, I’m sure we wouldn’t even be having this conversation.”
True, Sunny thought. Nora loved The Revue. If she had anything to say about it, The Benton Girls would have kept going forever.
“No, we need you to go to the top dog himself,” Rick told her. “In person, so he can’t just deflect your call. How about it, Sunny? Will you go plead our case with The Third? Figure out a way to keep one of the last revues in Vegas going, so we’re not all out of a job?”
Sunny wanted to say no. She wasn’t exactly a master negotiator.
However, everyone in the dressing room was looking at her now with beseeching eyes, including Pru, her best friend, who really needed this job and the benefits it provided to support both herself and her little brother.
“Okay,” Sunny found herself saying against her better instincts. “I’ll go talk to Mr. Benton. I’ll go talk to him right now.”
The Benton Group currently had holdings all over the United States, but Cole Benton had maintained the flagship executive offices near the top of the hotel’s original forty-story building. So Sunny didn’t have to go far to confront The Third. After getting back into her street clothes and borrowing a cardigan from Pru to wear over her tank top, it was only a matter of simply walking on over to The Benton’s main bank of elevators.
However, when she got inside the first elevator car that opened up for her and pushed the button for the 35th floor, her head began to fill with righteous steam. Seriously, how dare Cole Benton just cut their show without even a little bit of warning? What a prick, she she thought, as she walked past the empty receptionist desk, rehearsing the polite but passionate plea Rick had all but written down for her.
Sunny came to an abrupt pause in the doorway of the outer office. Then she checked the nameplate on the door. The wood-and-glass sign declared this to be the office of Cole Benton, the CEO of The Benton Group of Hotels and Casinos. However, his outer office was not only sparse, with just a simple black desk and a black leather couch to appoint it, but it was also empty, the chair behind the secretary’s desk currently without an occupant.
Sunny hesitated, all revved up with nowhere to go. What should she do? Wait for the secretary on the couch? Hope that she’d be back sometime soon? Or...
Her eyes went to the closed door, which was painted black, as if Mr. Benton truly wanted a soul to think twice before entering his inner sanctum. And it worked. Sunny’s stomach churned at the thought of actually going in there.
But she ignored the butterflies writhing around in her belly and concentrated on taking one step, then another, then a few more after that, until she could take no more. She was right at his office door now. She had no choice but to run away or to knock.
Her main instinct was to run away. She hadn’t even worked up the nerve to tell Rick she was moving to New York. Did she really think she had what it took to confront Cole Benton face-to-face?
But she had to do this, she decided in the end. For Rick, and her coworkers, most of whom she considered friends. She took a deep breath and raised her hand for what she hoped would be a polite but firm knock on Mr. Benton’s door.
Before her knuckles could touch the dark wood, the door swung open, and suddenly her field of vision was filled with a dark tie and a well-cut suit, covering what looked like a lean, well-muscled chest.
Her gaze traveled up. The man staring down at her had dark brown hair, a square chin and a set of green eyes so intense, they put her in mind of a hawk. She’d noticed his official corporate photo a few times downstairs in the lobby, him unsmiling with the hotel’s famous choreographed water fountain in the background. Just looking at him standing there in front of shooting jets of water had made her feel cold, as if looking at a picture of a snow-peaked mountain.
But now standing in front of him, his eyes were just as icy as they’d been in the photo. However, this time his gaze didn’t make Sunny feel cold. In fact, it burned into her, rooting her to the spot with electric attraction.
And maybe he was just as stunned by her appearance, because he also went still, as if someone had hit the pause button on his brain. But only for a moment, and then his crystal green gaze began a slow descent down her body...and all the words she had prepared suddenly flew out of her head.
They stared at each other like this for moments on end, him the hawk, her as scared and speechless as a mouse.
“Yes, what do you want?” he finally said, with only the slightest uplift on “want” to let her know this was actually a question. His voice was dark, precise—like a gun shooting bullets.
Sunny cleared her throat. “Hi....um, I’m—”
“I know who you are.”
“Really?” The words came out as a squeak. She tried again. “Really?”
“Yes, really.” He crooked his head as if he were trying to decode her, even though as far as Sunny knew, there was nothing to decipher. “My grandmother speaks very highly of you for some reason.”
“Oh, Nora, of course,” Sunny said, relaxing a bit at the sound of