KING: Las Vegas Bad Boys(29)
Wincing playfully, I add, “It was holiday, I’d gotten drunk on eggnog. I was barely legal. She pounced. She was the original cougar.”
Claire rolls her eyes. “What else should I know? Because I know you’re a player in Vegas ... but, Landon, were you really that wild here, too?”
“Honestly? I was probably worse.”
“Did you intentionally omit these details when you offered me the job?”
“What, you don’t think you can do it?”
“I can do it.” She silences her phone and shoves it back in her bag. “I can do anything for a week.”
I take her hand in mind, resting them on leather seat of the town car. The diamond gleams between us like a million bucks. Scratch that—like two million bucks. Because that was what it bloody cost. However, using a perk of being the owner’s son, I borrowed it from the Vegas branch of The King’s Diamond ... since I don’t actually have that sort of cash yet.
Soon enough I will. Soon it will be my store. My company.
“It’s so beautiful,” Claire says, sighing as she looks out the window. It’s late—after dinner—and the sky is heavy with the colors of a setting sun. “Did you go to school here?”
“Primary school, yes. Then I went to boarding school in Edinburgh and uni at Cambridge. Where did you go to school?”
Claire licks her lips. “We should probably make up my whole back story, don’t you think? Falling for a cocktail waitress is not going to win the family over.”
“I suppose. It’s kind of bollocks though, isn’t it?” I run my hand over my jaw, confused as to why I feel protective of Claire and her feelings.
I don’t want to offend her with the truth of the people I come from. They would judge the hell out of her if they know she serves rum and Cokes for a living, while wearing a corset and fishnets. How the fuck do I know this? Because they have been judging me for the past decade for doing nothing with my life as well.
Not that Claire isn’t doing something with her life—she seems happy-ish—but she isn’t exactly riddled with life-passion or motivation, is she?
Okay. I’ve got to stop this. I don’t want to become an entirely different sort of ass the moment I land in the Heathrow airport. An ass like Geoffrey. I can live with being a womanizing prick, but a judgmental one? Not at all.
“I know that my job is usually a stepping stone for most people—but, Landon, I’m not most people. I don’t even know what sort of job I’d want if I weren’t a waitress. The money is decent. And the hours are great.”
“Are they really?” I can’t help but ask. “Because it’s actually something I’ve always wondered. Why do you work the crappiest shifts at the Spades? Surely Ace would give you a leg up? Let you work weekend nights and make more in tips?”
Claire shifts uncomfortably in her seat, her soft wool coat covering so many inches of her, the inches I want to run my hands over.
“I don’t want to talk about it, Landon,” she says briskly. “I like my job, and the shifts I have are the ones I want.”
“Duly noted.”
“But, honestly, we need a backstory. How we met. What I’m doing in Vegas. Hell, what you’re doing in Vegas. We need to know why they should give the company to you.”
“We really should have discussed this before we were fifteen minutes from my parents house.”
“Fifteen? Fuck, Landon.” She covers her mouth. “Shit. I can’t say fuck around them. They’re proper, right? Like rich, and have tea and a maid? Tell me, is it going to be like an episode of Downton Abbey?”
“First of all, Downton takes place, like, one hundred years ago. You do realize that? But yes ... they have a staff. And afternoon tea.”
“I’m so over my head.” She takes deep breaths in and out, closes her eyes. Grips my hand tight in hers.
“Are you going to have another panic attack?” I ask. “Because, really, this is not at all what I envisioned. I need put-together Claire. Claire who’s always, you know, responsible.”
“But, Landon, you’re the one who needs to be cool, calm, put together. You’re the one who needs to win them over, not me. I’m an accessory.”
“Fuck.” I match her breathing pattern, realizing she’s absolutely right. I brought her along to prove how reliable I am. To show my parents that I’m able to commit.
The truth is, their eyes will still be on me. I have Claire here, hoping she’ll solve my problems. But she can’t. She can only hold my hand and smile. I’m the one who needs the fake identity.