Chapter Three

“Gray,” she said. She was blowing in his chest hair, and it occurred to him that she was probably still drunk. And why, dammit to hell, hadn’t he exhausted her yet? He was so sated he could barely move, and any minute now she was going to pout at him and ask for another round. She was greedy. But, he had to admit, she gave as good as she got, so he couldn’t really complain.

            “Mmm,” he said, and watched his hands comb through her adorable mop of red hair. He really adored red hair.

            “Do you know any showgirls in Vegas?”

            “Showgirls?” he repeated, in confusion. He had not expected that to be the topic of conversation.

            She traced a figure-eight through his chest hair with one ridiculously sexy fingertip. “Yeah. Showgirls. Do you know any?”

            She lifted her eyes to his. “Well, yes, I know showgirls,” he answered, and wondered if the next question was going to be about his sexual habits with showgirls. He needed the girl not to get possessive here.

            “Are their breasts bigger than mine?” she asked, frankly, propping herself familiarly on his chest.

            Oh, she had to still be a little drunk. His eyes flickered to her breasts. They were really lovely breasts. But no self-respecting showgirl would be caught with breasts even four times their size. “Yeah,” he said.

            She narrowed her eyes. Evidently that had not been the right answer. “You’re a bastard.”

            “But an honest one,” he pointed out.

            She collapsed onto his chest with a melodramatic sigh. “I always wanted to have bigger breasts.”

            “You’d look ridiculous. You’re tiny. You’re perfect.”

            “Mmm,” she said, and snuggled deeper against him, finally looking as if she were going to let him sleep.

            Relieved, he closed his eyes, felt her settle warmly against him, her breaths fluttering over him. With his arm, he hitched her in a little closer. It had been a while since he had actually slept with a woman. He had forgotten how nice it was. He was almost asleep when he jerked awake, and he could have kicked himself for not having thought of it until that moment.

            “Aubrey,” he said.

            “Mmm,” she said, so softly that he knew she was close to sleeping.

            “Aubrey, we didn’t use anything,” he said.

            “Hmm?”

            “We didn’t use anything,” he said again, wishing she’d wake up enough to have this conversation.

            “Oh.” She opened her eyes then, briefly, before closing them again. “It’s okay,” she mumbled.

            “It is?”

            “Mm-hmm.” She nodded against him.

            He relaxed again, deciding to trust her. She would know better than he would, he supposed.

            “It’s your fault, isn’t it?” she murmured.

            Uh-oh. His muscles tensed a little bit. Was she already going to start throwing  blame around for this little interlude? “What is?” he asked, cautiously.

            “The Red Sox losing. You said you were jinxing them all night. That makes it all your fault.”

            “Oh. That’s not how jinxing works,” he decided. “I might have ruined their luck, but I’m not responsible for other people’s stupidity.”

            She was silent for a second, apparently considering what he said, because she finally decided, “Okay. I absolve you of any responsibility.”

            “That’s kind of you,” he said, amused, watching his hand sweep casually down her back.

            “Thank you for staying, Gray.” She moved, throwing off the path of his hand, and she blinked at him with those enormous blue eyes. “I haven’t thought about the Red Sox in ages. If you hadn’t been here, I would have been thinking about them all night.”

            He supposed this was some sort of backhanded compliment to his skills as a lover. He smiled a bit and admitted, “That works both ways.”

            “Mmm. We’ll sleep now?”

            “I think that would be an excellent idea.”

            “Good.” She cuddled back against his chest. “I’ve been waiting for you to get tired.”

            He wanted to laugh out loud, but he thought his amusement would be lost on her. She’d been waiting for him to get tired? And he’d been praying to God to finally exhaust her. She started snoring, another thing that made him want to laugh. Light whispers of snores. He looked down at her, and felt, strangely, not really tired anymore.

 

Gray’s internal alarm woke him, as reliable as it always was. He had no idea how much sleep he’d gotten, but it clearly wasn’t enough, and still he’d awoken in time for his flight. He glanced at his watch, confirming the time, and dug the heels of his hands into his eyes. Then he looked down at Aubrey, who at some point during the night had moved completely on top of him, and was now sprawled over him, warm and feather-light. Gray looked at his watch again. Six a.m. Because his flight was leaving at seven. He wondered what time Aubrey’s flight was leaving. Probably not this early. She only had a quick jump to New York, whereas he had five hours across the country and he’d wanted to be in back in Vegas as quickly as possible.

            For a very long moment he tried to determine whether or not he should wake Aubrey. Then he decided against it. Yesterday had been a crazy, topsy-turvy, all-over-the-place day. He hadn’t acted much like himself. He doubted Aubrey had either. He didn’t want to say some awkward good-bye. He didn’t want to have to make a show over asking for her number, over promising to keep in touch, when they both knew it wasn’t going to happen. And if she wanted to be disgusted that he’d slunk out before dawn, well, he wouldn’t be around to hear it.

            Carefully, he slid out from underneath Aubrey, gingerly putting some weight on his foot. It held with a dull throb instead of the sharp, cutting pain it had had the night before. Well, look at that, he thought. A few hours of sex was all it had needed. 

He turned back to Aubrey and pulled the cover up over her to compensate for the loss of his warmth. Then, feeling unexpectedly affectionate toward this poor fellow Red Sox fan who had to go face New York City today, he tousled the wild red hair on her head fondly. “Good luck today, sweetheart,” he whispered. He leaned over and kissed behind her ear gently, which was the most accessible part of her.

            Then he found his clothing and pulled it on quickly, quirking an ironic smile at himself. When the hell was the last time he’d slunk out of a girl’s room before dawn, hoping not to wake her? Damn Red Sox did strange things to a person, he thought, and slowly clicked Aubrey’s hotel room door closed behind him.

 

Aubrey’s first thought upon waking was of the stupid, stupid Red Sox, who had so effectively managed to ruin her life. Who felt like getting out of bed? Facing all those people who didn’t understand? She decided to tell Gray about this, and that was when she abruptly realized that Gray wasn’t there. She sat up, blinking, and immediately regretted that, because the room spun around her. Hangover. Just great.

Squinting, she surveyed the room. The room wasn’t that big. Certainly no place for Gray to be hiding. He wasn’t there. She scrambled out of bed, went to the bathroom, where he also wasn’t. Then she had to thank Gray again, because instead of feeling depressed, she felt furious. He’d left? He’d left without waking her? Without saying good-bye? Bastard.

            Then she noticed the time and started in surprise. Had she really slept that late? Dammit, she had to get back to New York. Still cursing Gray, she leaped into the shower, pulled some clothing on, raced around the room doing a last-minute check to make sure she’d left nothing behind. And came across his Red Sox cap.

            Her first thought was, admittedly, vindictive. Obviously the Red Sox cap had meant something to him. And in his haste to make sure he left without waking her, he had left it behind, and now he would never get it back because they had absolutely no way of contacting each other, no knowledge of what the other did for a living, or even their last names. Served him right for sneaking away.

            Her second thought was repentant. Poor Gray. The hat had meant something to him. He would feel its loss. Feeling sorry, she decided it should at least be treasured by another Red Sox fan. So she snagged it and stuffed it into her bag.

 

She was back at the museum by one o’clock, and immediately she decided it was going to be one hell of an afternoon. “Tough break last night,” said the security guard, as she walked in. “How was Boston?” asked the clueless Ancient Civilizations curator, brightly. “Have a nice trip?” asked Karla, as Aubrey walked into the Impressionism wing.

            “Shut up,” said Aubrey, dropping her stuff on her desk. She’d come straight from the airport. She hadn’t slept much. Her one-night stand had stayed true to form and left her naked in bed without saying good-bye. She had a horrible hangover. And the Red Sox had lost.

            “Get up on the wrong side of the bed?” asked Karla, mildly, lifting her eyebrows.

            Aubrey glanced over at her. Karla was a nice person, a good friend, but definitely not a baseball person. She had the sunny side of the small, cluttered room that was known in the museum as Imps, a nickname Aubrey had always thought some sort of sly backhanded comment on the two women who worked the department. Karla was every bit as petite as Aubrey, only dark-haired and dark-eyes and a lot more even-keeled. Aubrey had given her the sunny side of the office, the side with the view, because she felt bad that the woman had to share an office with her at all. “Did you even watch the game last night?”

            “No. But I saw that they lost. I hope it was worth the money.” Karla was also unfailingly practical. She hadn’t approved of Aubrey spending an exorbitant amount of money on a last-minute ticket to Boston for a game that, after all, was taking place right in New York.

            “Of course it wasn’t worth the money,” Aubrey muttered, and swore when she got a shock leaning over to turn on her computer.

            “Paul’s been looking for you,” said Karla.

            “Naturally,” drawled Aubrey, pushing the jagged edges of her hair out of her eyes.

            “But maybe you should get in a better mood before you go looking for him,” Karla suggested.

            “I’m not going to be in a better mood for a while. And, if the Yankees win the World Series, possibly I will never be in a good mood again. Is this about the Monet show again?”

            “Yeah. He’s concerned about the order of the paintings. Something about the times of day-”

            Aubrey waved her hand as she watched her computer struggle its way to life and hoped the nausea would start to settle in her stomach. The museum really needed more money, she thought, so that it didn’t take half the day for their computers to warm up. Paul had been worried about the order of the paintings for a while. He was also worried about the time of year she’d scheduled the show for, the length of time the show was going to run, the cost of the tickets, and did they even really need a Monet show in the first place? The last thing she felt like doing was arguing about this yet again. Imps sold. She didn’t know why Paul was the only person who didn’t understand that. Certainly 14^th Century European art would have killed to generate the interest a few Monets did.

            “Aubrey! I see you’ve decided to join us back in the real world.”

            Aubrey looked up from her computer, where the hourglass was still stubbornly turning itself over and over. Paul was standing in the doorway, and he was frowning. Typical.

            “Didn’t Karla tell you I wanted to see you?”

            “I literally just walked through the door,” Aubrey replied, and gestured to her computer. “See? Not even on yet.”

            “Did you comb your hair today?” asked Paul, frown deepening.

            “No,” said Aubrey. “You’re lucky I brushed my teeth today. I’m depressed, Paul.”

            “Next you’ll be taking a leave of absence.”

            “I might need a leave of absence.”

            “I don’t want to talk about the White Sox,” said Paul.

            “The Red Sox. It’s the Red Sox, Paul.”

            He looked thoughtful. “I thought it was the White Sox.”

            “The White Sox are in Chicago. I’m from Boston. Remember?”

            “Oh, so there is a team called the White Sox? Honest mistake, Aubrey.”

            “Two years you were married to me,” she said, “and you still don’t know who I rooted for in baseball. There were reasons why our marriage fell apart.”

            “Can I talk to you about Monet for a second?”

            “What do you want to know about him?”

            “Come with me to the exhibit hall, will you?”

            Oh, hell. Aubrey wished for patience. She wished the Red Sox hadn’t lost the night before. She wished Gray had turned out to be a little more of a gentleman. And maybe not quite so good in bed. Sighing, she stood up. Karla gave her a look that Aubrey could read easily. Get in a better mood. Now. Aubrey decided she didn’t much care if Paul took the brunt of her bad mood.

            “So did you have a nice trip?” Paul asked, politely, as they walked together to the exhibit hall.

            And now he wanted to make small talk. “I had a horrible trip, Paul. A supremely horrible trip. I don’t want to talk about it.” But even as she said it, she wondered what Paul would do if she told him that she’d had sex with another man last night. Paul would blink those huge frog eyes of his and look disappointed in her. Paul, she realized, in almost shock, was a tiny man. She’d never thought of him thus. But if you put him next to Gray, she thought Gray would be able to crush him with just his bad foot. Paul was bigger than her but that wasn’t terribly hard. He just wasn’t…He just wasn’t…He didn’t make her feel as deliciously feminine as Gray had made her feel. Small and delicate and graceful and female and yet powerful all at once. Maybe another reason why her marriage to Paul had fallen apart. Maybe he hadn’t made her feel enough like a woman.

            Paul ignored what she said, which was typical for him. “The thing about this Monet exhibit is,” he said, as they pushed through the doors into the room, and then he stopped talking, as if this should be obvious.

            Which, sadly enough, it was, because he’d told her six or seven times before already. “You don’t like the way I’ve placed the paintings.”

            Paul looked pleased. “Oh, so you agree?”

            “No, I don’t agree. We’ve had this discussion before.” Aubrey paced the length of the exhibit, through the many small interlocking rooms that in a few days’ time would hold the paintings. Most of the paintings had arrived. A few had not. She would have to start supervising their hanging. But for now she had scrawled their titles on pieces of masking tape on the walls. She had been living with these paintings so long that if she closed her eyes, she could clearly see each of them lined up. It was going to be a magnificent show.

            Paul was an idiot.

            “I think all the haystacks should be together.”

            “I don’t want all the haystacks to be together,” she said. “If you put them all together, they’re just a bunch of paintings of haystacks. If you put a little space between them, you see each of them as a painting, not just an example of a series of paintings.”

            “But they are a series of paintings,” Paul pointed out.

            “I agree. And for this exhibit, we are just going to see what happens if we don’t think of them that way.”

            “The same for the water lilies, I suppose?”

            “Yes, the same for the watre lilies. Paul, do you think it’s possible that I can have this exhibit the way every other curator in this museum gets to have their exhibits?”

            Paul blinked in surprise. “What do you mean?”

            “Without you breathing over their shoulders at every turn.”

            “It’s breathing down their necks.”

            “Oh, don’t be so literal. You know what I meant.” She was spoiling for a fight, and she decided she was going to get one. “You don’t really give a damn about the placement of the paintings. You helped me get the Monets, your job is done. I’ll run this exhibit from hereon out.”

            “Due respect, Aubrey. I can’t have it look like I’m giving you special treatment.”

            She arched a sarcastic eyebrow. “You are giving me special treatment.”

            He ignored her. “It already looks suspicious that I’m giving you this enormous show. Violet hasn’t had a show in-”

            “Violet deals with nineteenth-century wallpaper, Paul. Monet sells tickets. It’s not my fault that I chose Impressionism as my field-”

            “That’s another thing. The fact that you want over my head to Louis when you knew I-”

            “I knew you wouldn’t give me the show because you’re upset with me for getting alimony. I had to go to Louis.”

            Paul’s brown eyebrows drew together at the mention of alimony, as they always did. “I have gone out of my way to be fair to you.”

            “This is what you call fair? Questioning every decision I make? How can I be expected to work this way?”

            “Speaking of recent decisions. You approved Garamond as the typeface for the programs?”

            If it had been anyone but Paul, she would have thought he was joking. But Paul was deathly serious. Paul didn’t have a sense of humor. “You have a problem with the typeface I chose?”

            “Garamond doesn’t seem French.”

            “Doesn’t seem French?” she repeated, incredulously.

            “Also, it isn’t quite elegant enough. This museum has a reputation to uphold, Aubrey.”

            “Garamond isn’t elegant enough? What, pray tell, would be elegant enough?” She put her hands on her hips and gave him her best haughty look.

            “I’ll fix the typeface issue for you,” he told her, soothingly. “Don’t worry about it, Aubrey.”

            “You’re right,” she heard herself saying. “I won’t worry about it. You’re so conerned about this show, you run it, Paul.” Then she was walking, out of the exhibit hall, back down the corridors toward her office.

            “Hey,” said Paul, sharply, behind her. “That isn’t my job, Aubrey. That’s your job.”

            She actually laughed. “Oh, not anymore. I quit.”

 

The St. Paul Bienvenue could use the trout-fishing convention, Gray. It doesn’t get much business.”

            “In St. Paul? A luxury hotel in St. Paul doesn’t get much business? This is actually amazing to me.” Diane Halliwell didn’t look like she appreciated his sarcasm. “Alright, bring the rates down for them. I’ll approve that rate. We should maybe think about selling the St. Paul Bienvenue.”

            “Won’t look good for the company if we start selling hotels, Gray,” she answered.

            “No, but-Come in!” he called to the person who’d knocked on the door of his suite. Danny poked his head around it, and Gray waved him in. “To make this hotel profitable, I think we’d have to lower rates, and if we lower rates, we dilute the Bienvenue name, right?” Gray poured himself another cup of coffee and hoped that the caffeine would start to kick in soon.

            “The St. Paul Bienvenue doesn’t need to be profitable,” said Diane, with a grin. “That’s why we have the Las Vegas Bienvenue.”

            “Go,” said Gray, with an answering smile. “I need to attend to the Las Vegas Bienvenue now.”

            “Hi, Danny,” Diane said to him on the way out.

            “Hi, Diane,” he replied.

            “I appreciate you holding off on cornering me. Diane wanted to talk to me. I thought it was important.” Gray took the folder Danny held out and sat on his couch, propping up his swollen foot.

            “What’s wrong with you?”

            “Huh?” Gray asked, blankly, glancing up from the folder.

            “You’re limping.”

            “Oh.” Gray glared down at his foot, which had not appreciated the flight, first class or no. “I…did something to my foot in Boston.”

            “Did what?”

            “Okay, I kicked a wall. Let’s not talk about it.”

“Diane have something important to say?”

“No. Trout-fishing. Whatever. The profits from the slots are up three percent again.”

            “Right.”

            Gray frowned thoughtfully at the figure. “That’s our…?”

            “Sixth straight month,” Danny supplied.

            “Oh, what the hell.” Gray pinched the bridge of his nose and forced himself to think past his exhaustion.

            “You want to wait? It could still right itself.”

            “We’re pretty consistently coming out ahead here.” Casinos didn’t operate like that. Odds didn’t suddenly change. Especially not on slots, which were set by computers to give a certain return. He’d been waiting for the odds to right themselves. They didn’t seem to want to cooperate. “Break down the slot machine returns by manufacturer.”

            “You think it’s a programming glitch?”

            “Probably.” He handed the folder back to Danny. “How’d Doug do?”

            Danny smiled brightly. “Great.”

            “Oh, God,” Gray realized. “You’re going easy because he’s my little brother.”

            “I’m going easy because you’ve got a blind spot for the kid, and I’ve worked with you long enough to know that you eventually shake yourself out of blind spots. So, you’ll come out of it in time. Until then, it’s not like the kid’s a disaster. He’s just not interested.”

            “My mother says he’s not interested because I don’t give him enough of a chance.”

            “When did your mother get her degree in psychology?”

            “I think when she had children,” Gray replied.

            “We had a guy come in and hit us up for three million at blackjack.”

            Gray whistled in appreciation. “Good for him.”

            “Right. I told Doug, and he had no reaction at all. Not, Dear God, we must keep him playing and win back the money. And not, We must get him to walk away before he loses it all back.”

            “You chose the latter, right?”

            “Of course I chose the latter.”

            “Good choice.” For the amount of money the casino raked in daily, they could afford to give three million to somebody who probably needed it. Gray had his millions in the bank. He thought others should also get the chance. “I miss anything else?”

            “There was a fight in the, uh,” Danny cleared his throat, “sports book.”

            “Don’t tell me. Red Sox-Yankee fans. I don’t want to talk about the game.”

            “Okay. Then we’re basically done here. Things running smoothly.”

            “Good. Thanks for covering for me last night, dealing with Doug.”

            “Doug was so quiet I didn’t even know he was around. You staying in here the rest of the day or going to the office?”

            “Here.” Gray gestured to his foot. “We’re resting.”

            “I see that-”

            A knock on the door cut him off, and his mother walked in familiarly, smiling at Danny. “Hello, Danny. Are we making money?”

            “Yes, Mrs. Lowenby,” Danny told her, bobbing his head with the nervous respect the employees gave his mother seemingly automatically and, notably, just did not give him. Not that it had ever seemed to affect the way he ran the company. He commanded respect. He just also, apparently, encouraged familiarity without even knowing it.

            “Good to know.” She looked at Gray. “I’ll come back later, then?”

            “No, we’re through here, Mrs. Lowenby,” said Danny, and closed the door behind him.

            “Not feeling well, darling?” she asked him, and leaned over and kissed his forehead.

            “What do you think?” he grumbled, out-of-sorts.

            “I am sorry.” She sat in the chair opposite him with a little smile. “I watched from home.”

            “It was awful. Painful. Devastating. I’m swearing off baseball.”

            His mother chuckled. “How much did you lose?”

            “I only bet a thousand.”

            “That’s good. You were strutting around here so much, I was convinced you’d bet the whole corporation on the Red Sox winning.”

            “That was the problem. I was way too overconfident. I forgot that I root for the Red Sox.”

            “You know what Hugh would say?”

            “No, what would Hugh say?” Gray sighed.

            “He would say that you don’t root for the Red Sox because you like winning, you root for them because it proves that you are a loyal person, worthy of friendship and the affection of others.”

            “You know why Hugh said that? Because he rooted for a team that never wins.”

            His mother looked amused. “My, we are in a mood today.”

            “I would take winning in a New York minute.”

            “Or a Boston minute.”

            “Unfortunate turn of phrase there.” But Gray was thinking. The mention of his stepfather had him wondering what had happened to the hat. What had he done with it?

            “Other than the game, are you feeling okay?”

            Gray looked at her in surprise, leaving aside the issue of the baseball cap for a second. “I’m fine. Why do you ask?”

            “I’ve never heard of you working out of the suite before. I stopped by your office first, and when they told me, I confess I was concerned.”

            “I’m fine. I hurt my foot.”

            “Hurt it how?” she asked, sounding a little alarmed. “Should the hotel doctor come up?”

            “No. It’s not that bad. It just didn’t like the flight. And I’m just tired today. Not much sleep.” A little too much to drink. Exhausting marathon sessions of truly fantastic sex. Red Sox loss. It had not exactly been a relaxing twenty hours.

            “That’s because you’re thirty-six,” his mother chided. “You are too old to fly from one end of the country to the other and back again in the space of a single day. You should get married and have children and shift a little of your responsibility to Doug.”

            The marriage-and-children thing Gray ignored as he always did. But he focused on the Doug thing. “About Doug.”

            “What about Doug? I thought he did a splendid job last night.” His mother fairly beamed.

            “That isn’t what Danny said.”

            His mother’s frown would have had Danny quivering in nervousness. Gray was old enough not to even notice it anymore. “What could Danny have had to complain about? I think Danny’s jealous. Danny will be getting the board to vote you out-”

            “Danny’s not going to do any such thing. I trust Danny. I trust his judgment. He says Doug’s not interested in taking a more active role in the company.”

            “You trust Danny more than you trust your mother?” She lifted her eyebrows in a gesture she’d perfected and that, when he had been a child, he’d felt like a physical slap.

            “Is Doug telling you that he wants to be more involved in the company?”

            “Of course he’s telling me that, Gray!” she exclaimed.

            “Well, why doesn’t he tell me that? If he’s so grown-up that he wants a piece of the company, he should be grown-up enough not to have his mother doing his errands.”

            “Gray. You’re being harsh. He’s frightened of you.”

            “Oh, yeah. I forgot how threatening I am.”

            “He’s frightened of you because he worships you. You’re his big brother. You don’t understand, because you don’t have a big brother.”

            “Neither do you,” Gray pointed out.

            “But I have two sons. And Doug is terrified of you because he thinks you’re the most brilliant man on earth. He’s terrified of asking you for a chance and letting you down. If you would just believe in him, Gray-”

            “I believe in him, Mom. I just also think that he’s twenty-four. He can help with the company, he can. But maybe he’s just a kid, Mom. Maybe he should just-”

            “Just sit around and do nothing like you did?”

            Gray blinked at her. “I was a Rhodes scholar,” he reminded her.

            “Yes. And I was very proud. I still am. But it wasn’t exactly useful, Gray, now was it? And Doug has it in his head that you thought his father was useless-”

            “Now why would he think that? Simon was extremely useful. He was very useful at spending any excess money we had lying around. And he turned out to be damn useful when it came to abandoning his children. Today, Mom, would not be the best day to have me pretend that your taste in husbands is brilliant.”

            “Apparently not,” she remarked, unphased, although, why should she be? She had heard it all before. Gray had adored his first stepfather but had despised his second, and he had never been shy about it. “It’s just that Doug worries you’ll transfer that opinion onto him.”

            “Because obviously I believe sons turn out just like their fathers?” Gray lifted a scathing eyebrow.

            “Not everyone is as wonderfully practical as you are, Gray.”

            His phone rang, and he looked at it where it sat on the sideboard, then looked back at his mother. “Do you think you could get that? My foot,” he explained, and gestured to it.

            Sighing, she stood and picked up the phone. “Hello? Yes, he’s here.” She held the phone out. “Mark.”

            “Oh.” Gray took it. “Hello, Detective.”

            “Hello, Chairman,” he answered. “I’m coming by at about five o’clock. You up to losing a boxing match miserably?”

            Gray looked at his foot. “No, actually.”

            “Scared?”
            “Injured. I hurt my foot.”

            “How’d you do that?”

            “Long story,” Gray said, as he waved in Lucy Montcliff, his casino host. 

            “Can you do dinner?” Mark asked. “Monica said she’d cook.”

            Gray watched Lucy make small talk with his mother. Lucy, he had to admit, was one of the only employees who was totally unphased by the grandiosity of Moira Scott Lowenby. “Dinner I can do. I’ll meet you downstairs at seven.”

            “That works,” said Mark, and hung up.

            Gray handed the phone to his mother, who’d waited for it and hung it back up for him. “I’ll talk to Doug,” he said.

            “Thank you. I just want you to give him a chance.”

            “Mom, I’ll give him a million and one chances. You know I will. He ought to know it, too. It’s just that I don’t think that this is really what he wants. I think it’s what he thinks he should want.”

            “Just make sure you’re positive with him,” she told him.

            Gray didn’t bother to suppress his sigh.

            “I’m going to leave Lucy to your wonderful mood.”

            “Thanks,” said Lucy, qurking a smile after his mother. Then she quirked that same smile at him, raising an ironic eyebrow. “Family problems?”

            “Always. What have you got for me?”

            “Just a quick head’s up. Dennis Halcourt approached me about gambling here.”

            “Dennis Halcourt approached you?” Not only was it unusual for the player and not the casino to do the wooing, Gray wasn’t anxious to start a relationship with Dennis Halcourt. He may have been one of the richest men in the country, but Gray, who had met him on several occasions, thought the money came from mostly unsavory enterprises. The fact that nothing had been pinned on him yet just credited how much money he made in the enterprises.

            “I can give him the cold shoulder,” suggested Lucy.

            Lucy would have anticipated Gray’s hesitance in this matter. Lucy had been Gray’s second employee, after Danny. “No,” he decided, on another sigh. “Give him what he wants. Within reason. I can’t go around policing the backgrounds of every major player this casino has.”

            “Okay.”

            “But I want extra reports on him.”

            “No problem. Also, Rosie stopped by looking for you. Pouted a whole hell of a lot when I said you weren’t around, because she’s going out of town to shoot for the Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Issue.”

“Rosie?” he repeated. “What could Rosie possibly want?”

“Gee, I wonder.”

“We broke up a whole month ago.”

“In your mind. In her mind, you became an idiot and needed a little time to come back to your senses.”

“Oh, damn. Women are more trouble than they’re worth, Lucy.”

“You’re just hanging out with the wrong kind. Feel better, Gray,” she said, as she breezed out of his suite.

            Oh, yeah, right. “Thanks,” he said. It hit him then. He’d left Hugh’s hat in Aubrey’s suite. Women were a lot more trouble than they were worth. Even tiny redheads who drove him wild in bed. Idiot.