TWO

But he was here again. 

He was a little late than the usual hour. I was disappointed. Shit, I shouldn’t. 

So what if he went and had hot wild sex with that woman the whole night last night? What if I felt that she should have been me? 

Maybe she was dead now, stuffed in a tub, melting in hydrofluoric acid.

Too morbid. 

Gah. Stop thinking, Gia!

Good thing I was assigned to a different set of tables tonight. I didn’t need to talk to him. I tried to not even look towards the direction of his table again. 

It was hot and I was sweating. I needed a cool glass of water. 

I was going to get it when someone tapped me on the back.

“Gia?”

I turned to Lucy and wondered at the heat of excitement bubbling in her eyes.

“Bain, our guy over there? He’s requesting that you serve him at his table—just you. I already reported to the manager. He doubled his tip last night just because you sat with him. Now, Langdon hopes you’ll sit with him again.”

I looked over at Bain’s table in surprise. 

He was looking my way, and he nodded a little in acknowledgment.

I looked back at Lucy.

“Well, don’t look at me like that. It’s okay. I think it’s about a job.”

“A job?”

Lucy nodded several times. “Yes.”

“Well… he talked with some other girl last night. I–”

“Her? Didn’t think she got it.”

I looked at where she was pointing a finger at and saw the young woman last night in another table now, eating dinner with some other girls. 

I realized I had seen her companions before. They were working temp jobs in a place not far from here. I knew because I’d done some work there in the past before I got admitted here.

I felt stupid for feeling relieved that she wasn’t dead and being liquified in a steaming tub in a basement somewhere.

“So you were looking out for him, too, huh?’ Lucy said, smiling wickedly at me when I turned back to her.

“I… don’t know why he’s always coming back.” 

“Who cares?!” she whispered, giggling. “He’s exciting and he makes our nights livelier here. Go! I’ll serve Mr. Hotness without pay if he asks me to—job or no job!”

I couldn’t help but smile at the lecherous grin on the older woman’s face. Lucy is sweet and always out to play cupid on anybody she cares about. 

“Okay. If Mr. Langdon thinks it’s okay, I’ll do it. I’ll just finish this one.”

Lucy nods vigorously. “I’ll tell him.”

I went over to Bain when I did get finished. He only had a drink and nothing else on his table. 

“Hi, Bain. Good evening to you! “ I chirped the usual greeting. “I’m sorry, should have come to you sooner. What do you want to eat?”

He smiled. “Sit down, Gia. I’ve ordered dinner. I just told them to serve it when you’re here.”

I was surprised, of course. But I didn’t say anything. 

I was supposed to just sit here. 

“Okay.”

“Please take off your apron.” He politely indicated the chair on the opposite side of his booth. Even though he was smiling, he seemed serious. “This must feel… unorthodox to you. But I need to talk to you. There’s a business proposition I have to make.”

I sat down. The meal came at once and it was for two people. Lucy was serving as she beamed at me. 

“Bain?” I asked when she’d left.

“I can’t eat and talk with you while you’re not eating. And I’m famished. It’s been a long day.” And he smiled again, a real smile this time and not the polite one he dispensed as if with caution. 

But I could see the weariness in his eyes. I still didn’t speak.

He sighed. “Look, I noticed I was making you uncomfortable last night and you don’t know me at all.” 

He took out a tablet from the inner pocket of his casual, but expensive, dinner jacket. 

“Look me up. Bain Durham. I’m authentic.” His eyes looked at me, directly again, like that one time I felt he was looking straight through to my soul. “And I think you’re the one I’ve been looking for.”

About ten minutes later, and I felt weird. 

Well, that was unexpected.

I had nothing in my hands. I had let go of the tablet. I felt dazed as the bar started to get jam-packed very quickly. 

It was a Friday and a college night. Students from the universities would be along the strip for a night of bar hopping, dancing and hooking up. I usually served them. 

What am I doing here in his table again? 

“You want me to pose as… a girlfriend? Is that it?” I kept my voice very low. But even so, my cheeks flamed at the thought of someone hearing, because I was pretty sure I made a mistake.

“You can still do whatever you do. It will just be on special events that I will need your presence beside me.”

I gulped. He made it very clear it was for business purposes only. “And this for… for how much?”

“For how much your mother needs in her treatments and what you would need for school for a whole year plus a hundred thousand dollars cash in your bank account. Of course, all expenses on the job are on me, too.”

I stared at him a longer time more because he was f*cking playing with my head. 

But I did look him up, and he was very rich—and engaged to be married in a month. 

The noise in the bar became white noise as he started to tell me about his fiancée. It was going to be an open relationship and their marriage was for a business merger. 

But he did not want to marry her anymore. 

“You can’t just tell her that you want to break it up? What’s stopping you?”

“The chains I worked hard to put up in Las Vegas is what’s stopping me,” he replied.

“Excuse me, I’m not a businesswoman so I wouldn’t know. But are you not young? Will it be impossible to put up new ones?” 

“Not there. If I’m the one who breaks it up, his father will not let me start anything again.”

“What’s his father there?”

“Another businessman.”

I tried not to roll my eyes. “More, please.”

“A mogul who’d been running casinos for the last three decades,” he consented. “And he’s got beefy men, too… though much larger than your Mr. Beefy there.”

I whistled before I could stop myself, then blushed at his look. “I don’t understand,” I pointed out. “Isn’t your family wealthy, too?”

“My family lives in Texas.” 

“What happens if you don’t go through it and she breaks up with you? 

“It’s not going to be a big guarantee, but I may be able to keep my businesses.”

“I’m not convinced. How can someone blackmail you into marrying her when you don’t want to these days?”

He looked at me. 

Those eyes again, jeez. 

He smiled as if he saw and accurately read the reaction. 

“She shouldn’t. I was stupid. I wanted that strip in Las Vegas and when the opportunity to get an opening for a partnership through Brooke came, I took it. She was having an affair with a married man during the time, and I pretended to be in a relationship with her to get her out of trouble. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the first time I had to. It’s not without a price. Every time I had to rescue her…”

“Let me guess… results in another partnership?”

He nodded. “Another company.”

“Pardon me for asking… but it never occurred to you you’re slowly getting yourself into a conundrum?”

“I know I was but I thought I was handling it well. I thought at first she was going to get herself married eventually and then she’d stop. She’d be out of my hands. But then…”

“Then?”

“She got into a more complicated… problem. Unfortunately, the complication involved my businesses. It’s only going to stop if we get engaged. She promised it will be for the last time. But… the mothers demanded… a wedding date.” 

“Her mother and your mother?”

“Yes.”

“And how is having me as your girlfriend going to solve your problem?”

“She said it will be easy for us to extricate ourselves from the mess if it will turn out we’re in love with other people. I’ll find mine, she’ll find hers.” 

I couldn’t catch the smile that stretched my lips.

He smiled, too. “It does sound ridiculous, doesn’t it?”

“Very,” I said, wincing. How could wealthy people get into stupid messes like this one? I just couldn’t believe it.

“I am not banking for Brooke to do what she promised to do. I added to my chains because of her blunders so I’m kind of grateful about those. But I knew she will screw up again and again. But… there’s one other person who can get me out of this mess if I can convince her I am truly in love with another woman.”

“Who?”

He hesitated. 

Did he just blush? “Who is it?” I insisted.

“My mother.”

Oh. 

Yes, he was blushing.