She took another small sip of bubbly—and told him a little more of what he wanted to know. “My mother knew a lot of men. She preferred the rich and powerful. High rollers, preferably whales.” A whale, in casino terms, was a gambler who could afford to lose millions. She went on, “Wheeler-dealers. She liked a player who was playing with a nice fat bankroll. A lot of her men were already taken, if you know what I mean.”
“Married.”
“That’s right.”
“You make her sound like a heartless home wrecker.”
“Do I?” Cleo frowned. “Well, as I said, there were a lot of men. But heartless? Uh-uh. She was … passionate and glamorous and she loved living large. She was always falling in love and then getting her heart broken. She just couldn’t seem to stop herself from hooking up with the wrong kind of guy.”
“But you’re not like that.” Was he being sarcastic?
She couldn’t tell—and, she reminded herself, his attitude didn’t matter to her in the least. “That’s right. I’m not like my mother. When I look down, I see two feet firmly planted on the ground.”
“Did you ever try to find your father?”
“Not exactly.”
“Now what does that mean?”
She smoothed the napkin she’d already laid in her lap. “I don’t think I’m going to answer that one. Which is fine, right? Leaves you no worse off than before you asked the question.”
He leaned a little closer, those pale eyes seeming to see right down to the center of her. “You found him,” he said at last with an absolute certainty that sent another shiver running down her spine—this one not nearly so warm as the shivers before it. “Your father is Matthew Flint.” Matthew Flint was a Las Vegas legend. He’d been building supercasinos in the eighties, back when the biggest place around was the MGM Grand. And yes, he was Cleo’s father.
She demanded, “Why are you asking me when you already know?”
“I’d like to hear it from you, that’s all.” She probably shouldn’t have told him. It didn’t concern him in the least. But still she found herself explaining, “My father found me. In my mother’s hospital room the day before she died. He’d heard she had pancreatic cancer. By then, she’d been through both chemo and radiation. The tumor hadn’t shrunk much and cancer was all through her body. She was wasted down to nothing and she’d lost all her beautiful blond hair. She hated that the most. She was always so proud of her hair….”
He prompted softly, “And your father?”
“The word got out she wouldn’t make it. My father knew it was his last chance to see her. So he paid her a final visit. I was there at her bedside when he showed up.”
“And you’ve kept in touch with him since then.”
“As you know, he already has a family. A wife. Two sons. I try to keep it low-key, you know? But now and then we get together.”
“I understood that he backed you when you started out.”
“Yes. He’s the main reason I was able to open my own preschool at the age of twenty-five.” She found herself thinking that she ought to turn the tables on him and ask a few questions about his absentee father, Blake Bravo. Like almost everyone else in Las Vegas, Cleo had read the articles about the fabulous Bravo brothers and their swift rise to prominence. Always there was mention of their father, the notorious sociopath who had faked his own death at the age of twenty-six and then gone on to romance an endless number of gullible women—with the classic result: Blake had left illegitimate children all over the good old U.S. of A.
Fletcher said much too softly, “We have a lot in common.”
And before she could argue, let alone get him talking about his father, a waiter appeared and set their green-bean-and-crayfish salads in front of them.
Fletcher gave the waiter an approving nod. “This looks wonderful, Armand.”
“Enjoy, Mr. Bravo.” The waiter beamed them a big, bright smile.
“Armand is a single father.” Fletcher sent Cleo a meaningful glance. “He has a three-year-old son, a little boy named Alain who is very much in need of a quality preschool.”
Armand nodded, a quick dip of his dark head. “My Alain is a bright child. He needs a challenge. Day care isn’t giving it to him.”
“But then,” Fletcher chimed in right on cue, “a good preschool can be so expensive—not to mention that there’s often a waiting list. Plus, there’s the difficulty of getting the kids to and from where they need to be. If we could provide a preschool here, on-site, at a significantly reduced rate to our employees, it could make a lot of difference to a number of hardworking, concerned parents like Armand.”
“Ah,” said Cleo as if she hadn’t heard all this in their previous meeting a week before. The waiter nodded again and left them. She looked at the man across from her. So brilliant. So dynamic. “So sneaky,” she said.
He picked up his fork. “It’s true. When I want something, I pull out all the stops to make sure I get it.” His look said that KinderWay wasn’t all he wanted.
She felt that sexy, shimmery sensation beneath her skin—and willfully ignored it. “How many more employees with needy preschool-age children will I be meeting this afternoon?”
“A few,” he replied with an easy shrug. He tipped his head toward her plate. “Eat your salad. It’s excellent. More champagne?”
“One glass is my limit—especially around a world-class operator like you.”
After lunch they went through the glittering casino at the heart of Impresario, a casino housed in a giant red windmill several stories high. From outside, the massive vanes of the windmill turned, crisscrossed with thousands of bright golden lights. Inside, visitors looked up at a wide dome painted the color of night and studded with a thick blanket of gleaming artificial stars.
As they crossed the busy casino floor, Fletcher stopped now and then to introduce her to certain employees: a dealer, a security staffer, a cocktail waitress. Not the least surprisingly, they all had young children. And they all worked long hours. They really needed a service like the one she could provide….
They left the casino and emerged onto a fully enclosed, cobbled imitation-Parisian street. As they strolled along between the bright-colored, shuttered facades of fake buildings, she told him, “You are shameless.”
He answered without the slightest hesitation. “You bet I am.”
Cleo had suspected she would be impressed with the facility he’d managed to have built in such an impossibly short period of time. But impressed, as it turned out, was too mild a word.
The play yard surrounded the classrooms, so any children who went to school there would look out on a garden—a garden landscaped in succulents and other plants that would thrive in an arid climate. There were just enough patches of grass to make it inviting. Bougainvillea climbed the high stucco fence, softening it, and there was a large playground, complete with jungle gym, slides and a giant-size sandbox. He’d even included several drought-resistant trees: magnolias, sweet gums, red maples.
The Olympic-size pool—dug, but not poured yet—had its own fence, for safety. Fletcher showed her where the separate boys’ and girls’ cabanas, each with showers and restrooms and grooming areas, would go.
He led her inside the main building, from one classroom to the next. Each was just as they’d discussed that day in his office, with large central areas, generous supply closets and accessible learning stations. The many chalkboards and expanses of cork walls for pinning up displays weren’t installed yet, but they would be up tomorrow, he said. Each class had