Zack watched his business manager. ‘Fine.’ He took a swallow of his own beer, let the chilled amber liquid ease down his throat and forced his shoulders to relax. ‘Point taken.’
Jill Hawthorne’s resignation wasn’t worth getting worked up about. He expected one hundred and ten per cent from his staff and paid them the salaries to match. Jill hadn’t been up to the job since the day he’d hired her. It was just bad timing she’d picked today to walk off in a snit. He could have done without the aggravation.
Monty straightened in his chair and leaned forward, resting his forearms on the table. ‘What were you doing in the office anyhow? I thought you were taking a couple of days off before you headed out to Cally?’
That had been the original plan, thought Zack, aggravated all over again. Until a certain Kate Denton had walked out on him bright and early this morning. After that, he hadn’t been in the mood to hang out in his penthouse. Every place he looked brought back memories of her lush, sexy body and the incredible things they’d been doing to each other most of the night.
‘Plans change,’he said dismissively. He wasn’t about to get into a blow by blow of what an idiot he’d been with Monty. He still wasn’t sure how he’d let Kate get under his skin the way she had. ‘I should let you get home to Stella,’ he added reluctantly, mentioning Monty’s wife. ‘She’ll give me the look next time I see her if I keep you out drinking on your first night back.’
Monty had returned to Vegas late that afternoon after a week of meetings with Harold Westchester, the owner of the hotel Zack was buying out in California. It had been Zack’s idea to meet up in the loud, lively and informal surroundings of the Sports Bar. He and Monty had spent the last half an hour going over the details of the negotiations together before Monty had dropped his bombshell about Zack’s PA.
‘No worries,’ said Monty. ‘Stel understands you wanted the low-down on how things went with Westchester.’
Truth be told, the meeting could have waited till tomorrow, but Zack hadn’t been in any great hurry to go back to his bed alone tonight. And Monty was always good company. They’d been best buddies ever since their early teens, when Monty had tried to pull a short con on Zack one rainy afternoon on London’s Oxford Street.
‘I guess we’ve covered everything for today,’ Zack said. ‘Why don’t you go on home? Tell Stella I said hi,’ he finished, not quite sure where the ripple of envy came from as he said it. Sure, Monty had a beautiful wife in Stella and a real little pistol of a kid in Joey, but that kind of wedded bliss had never been what Zack was looking for in life.
‘I’m good for another round, yet,’ Monty said, glancing at his watch. ‘Look, Zack, there is one other thing I wanted to sound you out on with The Grange buyout.’
‘What?’ Zack asked.
‘Why don’t you tell Westchester who you really are?’
Zack slapped his beer bottle back on the table with more force than was strictly necessary. ‘I told you before. No way.’
‘We could get a better deal out of him. I’m sure of it.’
‘Don’t count on it.’ Zack had been after The Grange for two solid years—the fact that Westchester had no knowledge about their prior connection had been paramount to the old guy agreeing to the deal in the first place, Zack was sure of it. ‘Westchester and my old man didn’t exactly hit it off together. I’m not risking the deal on—’
‘How do you know he blames you for what JP did?’ Monty butted in.
‘Drop it, Mont.’ Just thinking about telling Westchester made Zack feel edgy.
‘Fine, I tried.’ Monty threw up his hands. ‘It’s your choice.’
‘That’s right. It is. Now, do you want another beer or not?’
‘Just one. Then I better shoot off.’
Zack picked up a handful of mini-pretzels from the bowl of bar snacks, glad to have at least one thing settled. He turned to signal their waitress when something caught his eye across the darkened bar. He stared in the half-light.
Another waitress was dishing out drinks to a group of guys over by the pool tables, her blonde hair shone white in the harsh neon light. He squinted, trying to focus. It couldn’t be, could it?
She walked back towards the wait-station, her empty tray dangling from one hand. Her voluptuous figure looked ready to spill right out of the uniform all the female bar staff wore.
‘I don’t believe it,’ he murmured.
He’d recognise the soft, seductive sway of those hips anywhere.
Kate was floating. At least, that was what she tried to tell herself as she pushed through the crowd of people at the bar, her head throbbing in time to the electric guitar whining from the sound system and her heels and toes burning in the shoes she’d borrowed for the evening. She’d gone past exhausted about an hour ago, entering an alternative reality where her many aches and pains were buffered by a sea of numbness—sort of.
She dumped her tray on the wait-station and shouted out her latest order to Matt, the barman. Matt waved, not even attempting to be heard above the din, and went off to fill it.
Pushing an annoying tendril of hair behind her ear, Kate swayed slightly. She gripped the bar, steadied herself, forcing her knees to lock, and took another glimpse at the clock above the bar. The stupid thing had to be broken—the hands had barely moved since the last time she looked. Still over an hour to go till her shift ended.
She groaned, the next couple of weeks spreading out before her in a never-ending kaleidoscope of spilled drinks, overeager hands, dirty toilets and unmade beds.
Kate forced back the depression settling over her like an impenetrable fog. It could only be tiredness. So the next few weeks were going to be murder while she held down the two jobs she’d talked her way into. She’d worked this hard before. When she’d been seventeen, and newly free of her father’s influence, she’d held down three jobs to keep afloat. She could do it again. All she needed was a decent night’s sleep.
Thanks to the night flight two days ago, the bedroom Olympics she’d indulged in with the very creative Zack Boudreaux last night, a day spent changing sheets and cleaning toilets and the last four hours spent tottering around on heels that were two sizes too small, Kate reckoned she’d managed about four hours sleep in the last fortyeight.
She glared at the clock again, willing the hands to move faster.
Extreme fatigue was the only reason the picture of Zack and his insatiable body kept popping back into her brain. She didn’t regret her decision to turn down his insulting offer one bit. She would never be any man’s kept woman, no matter how gorgeous he looked or how fantastic he might be in bed. Her mother had done that and look what had happened to her.
She let go of the bar. When she stayed upright, she pulled a long fortifying breath into her lungs. Only an hour to go, then she could collapse into bed. She vowed she wouldn’t so much as twitch her little finger until ten minutes before her housekeeping shift started at six tomorrow morning.
‘Katie, Katie.’ Marcy, Kate’s fellow waitress, elbowed her way towards Kate on ice-pick heels, her chocolate-brown eyes beaming. How did she walk in those shoes, Kate wondered, without dislodging a kidney?
‘Honey, you hit the jackpot.’ Marcy slapped her tray down on the bar and snapped the gum she was chewing.
‘Oh really?’ Kate said, trying to muster some enthusiasm. She liked Marcy. She was so perky she made Mary Poppins look like a killjoy. But right at the moment Kate could barely string a coherent sentence together, let alone have a conversation with someone as full-on as Marcy.
‘Oh, yes, really,’ Marcy said, mimicking Kate’s accent, her smile so bright it was practically