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Quiet, sensual music washed over me.
I was looking at a large, circular room. Everything I could see was dark paneled wood, leather, or satin. It felt like a porn set for vampires.
The space was choked with people. The dress code took about a millisecond to figure out. The women wore as little as they could—from strategically placed dental floss to nearly transparent dresses sans underwear. The men wore suits—thank God.
I spotted Landon sitting at the bar. Behind him, hundreds of bottles of liquor were lit with scarlet light. It had the effect of outlining his broad shoulders in a kind of red glow that I found quite appropriate—considering he was literally the devil.
I walked right up to him and tapped his shoulder. He only showed me how shocked he was to see me for a split second before smoothing his features.
“Wow,” he said. He was sitting casually in a bar stool beside a glass of ice water.
What kind of guy sits at the bar and drinks water?
I did a little shrug. “I know. I look fantastic.”
“No. I was going to say, if this is your idea of dressing to fit in…”
I resisted the urge to tug at my collar, which felt like it was trying to choke the life out of me. “This is my idea of making sure nobody mistakes me as part of this,” I said, gesturing to my left and nearly judo chopping a bare boob. I quickly locked my gaze on Landon’s so I didn’t have to make eye contact with the practically nude woman to my side.
“It’s a breast,” he said calmly. “I can ask her to let you take a closer look, if you’re curious.”
“The only thing I’m curious about is what the hell this is doing beneath my Grandpa Willy’s hotel. And how it could be here for my whole life and nobody ever told me. And why—”
“The breast, or the club?” he asked.
“The club, smartass.”
“Maybe your grandfather wasn’t as honest and open as you thought. Maybe there were a few skeletons in his closet.” Landon looked up with a surprising amount of fire in his eyes. “I wonder if you’re the kind of person who would rather dig them up or bury them to preserve his precious memory?”
I wasn’t sure why, but I sensed that the question wasn’t just a casual one—as if Landon was going to make some sort of decision based on how I responded. “I’m the type of person who is interested in the truth, no matter how much it stings.”
“I wonder if you mean that,” Landon said.
“What about you?” I asked. “If my grandfather is going to give my inheritance to a man I know nothing about, I’d at least like to know why. Why you? Who were you to him?”
Landon looked at his glass of water and drew his eyebrows together. “That would be the inconvenient truth—the one I’m not sure you’re ready for. I’ll just say this—the club should’ve been left to me. I’m the one who worked my ass off to make it what it is. The hotel? Fine. If he wanted to give it to you and your sisters, I wouldn’t have cared.”
“What are you saying?”
“Complete his list, and you can have your share of the hotel. But the club is mine.”
I considered what he’d said, licking my lips. “And if I don’t complete the list?”
“Then I keep it all.”
I clenched my teeth. The red light from the bar washed his face, making him seem even more sinister. He could’ve been talking about keeping a quarter he found on the road for all he seemed to care.
“Why?” I asked. “You said it yourself. All you’d need to do is spin a story for the lawyers. So the list is completely irrelevant. My grandfather went to the trouble of making that video, creating all these crazy stipulations, but in the end, all you have to do is lie.”
“Maybe. But let me ask you this. What would happen if I gave you your share of the hotel, no questions asked?”
“We could both get out of each other’s lives as fast as possible.”
Landon leaned in. “And what if that’s not what I want?”
My breath caught. Part of me was flattered that he wasn’t ready to see me walk away. The other part of me was pissed off.
Then again, I wasn’t going to lie. I was so curious it hurt. The writer in me was drawn to mysteries, and Landon was a big, sexy mystery of the highest order. It was the kind of brain food writers dreamed about. Worse, even if I hadn’t begun to understand why, this was something Grandpa Willy had asked me to do. It was the last thing he’d asked me to do, and the only way I’d ever figure out why was if I faced it.
