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No one called me Bree. And until this moment, I hadn’t realized how badly I missed it. I wanted to lock that experience in a fireproof box and put it somewhere no one else could ever touch or tarnish it.
“You’re crying again. I made you cry again.” Regret laced his tone.
I reached up to feel my cheeks, and sure enough, a single tear had escaped without my notice or permission. I left it there and shrugged. “You did, but maybe not in the way you think.”
“What—”
It was my turn to cut him off. “I don’t think I’m ready to go home. I’ve caught a second wind, and I’d really like to go with you to find Liem and finish out his birthday on a strong note. Does he like sweets? I know how we can get our hands on some chocolate mousse domes or crème brûlées.”
I met and held his gaze, willing him to see the truth of my words.
He conceded with a small nod. “Okay, Bree. Let me think.”
Butterflies. An entire kaleidoscope of them.
To my delight, he started thinking out loud, sending his beautiful baritone voice down the tunnel where the lowest registers rebounded back to us, creating a glorious surround-sound effect. “He’s a bottomless pit, so he probably had a similar thought. Food is one of many things that could have distracted him from meeting us here.” His tone was matter-of-fact, and he had started pacing like a detective trying to solve a complex case.
“Well, most of them stay open well past midnight on Saturdays and even later on special event nights.” I supplied, trying to help his thought process, but instead, it distracted him enough that he stopped pacing.
“That’s what tonight was? You don’t do that every Saturday?”
I lifted a shoulder and rubbed my cheek against the material of the borrowed jacket. “They’d like for me to make an official Lady Luck appearance every weekend and an additional four nights per week during the summer, but I’ve held off on signing a contract. Much to their annoyance,” I answered with a surprising amount of honesty. Even Cody didn’t know about how hard the upper management had been pushing me for a contract.
The Fortuna executives desperately wanted to add an extra layer of branding to the casino. I’d even seen mockups for a new casino logo that read “Fortuna Casino & Resort” in a bold serif font with “Home of Lady Luck” written in elegant script beneath. It’d been something AJ was working on with Big Daddy, who’d been promoted from host to entertainment manager a couple of years back.
And another reason I’d been surprised that he’d left the way he did.
“How did you start doing that? Playing Lady Luck?”
The question brought me back to the present.
“That’s a whole other story for another time.” I smiled to soften the brush-off. “I think I’m tired of this bridge, Vinh. And I’d bet it’s tired of us. Ready to find your brother?” I gestured down to the bridge entrance as I spoke.
Without even a hint of disappointment in his tone, he replied, “Yes, ma’am. Where to?” He was back to the cool, unbothered Vinh.
“Let’s follow our first thought. What’s Liem’s favorite restaurant here?”
He ran his hand through his hair, and I tracked the flex of his forearm tattoo, which was maybe a tree?
“The diner. By far, the diner.”
Snapping my gaze away, I started toward the bridge exit, smiling as I replied, “Awwww, Dawn’s? Perfect. That’s one of my favorites too. And I can stop by the locker room and change into normal clothes. We’ll pass it on the way.”
“Do you think that will help you go incognito?” he asked, closing the distance between us easily. “I’ve gotta tell you, it may be futile with those freckles.”
Was that… flirting?
And why didn’t I know for sure?
I’d been flirted with and flirted with others before, hadn’t I?
He cleared his throat lightly, jogging me enough to realize I’d been quietly staring for longer than was socially appropriate, so I hurriedly replied, “No, and you’re right. I would never be able to go undercover, and I’d make a terrible secret agent. No concealer on earth would be up to the task.” I offered him a small smile, but then the coarse fabric of my skirt rustled against my legs, and I bristled. “I just really want my regular clothes. I have a thing about comfortable clothes and certain textures. The jacket is the only thing that is making this whole getup tolerable right now.”
He nodded. “Makes sense.” He scanned our surroundings, his face an unreadable mask. “Is there anyone we should be looking out for?”
A valid question. At minimum, Big Daddy would be looking for me so he could get my account of what happened at the Big Wheel, unless he already talked to AJ, which…. Yeah, he probably already did that, and there was no way he wouldn’t take his protege's word as the full truth. Even with security footage from the casino floor, it would be easy to spin what happened to suit his narrative.
Then there was Grandmother.
