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It might as well have been a million, she thought, looking over her shoulder where the automatic doors slid open and closed to accommodate the constant stream of strangers. The angle showcased a handful of hotels down the strip, the peculiar golden sun of Nevada making them appear like a mirage, a fantasy that would dissolve into sand at the first strong wind.
“Welcome to the King’s Court Hotel and Casino!”
Nadia flinched and turned back to Reception to find a woman in a red and navy jester’s outfit with big silver bells tinkling on the tips of her crazy hat.
“Pray tell, what can I do you for, today?” When Nadia didn’t answer, the receptionist waggled her fingers at the passport and papers in Nadia’s hand. “Checking in?”
Nadia nodded, and handed over her work papers, unable to take her eyes from the bells. Tinkle tinkle.
“Oh, wonderful!” said the receptionist. Tinkle tinkle. “You’re with the new show! I wish I could dance—two left feet though. Though I guess there’s dance and there’s what you lot do. I poked my head in on rehearsal the other day and...wow! You are so lucky, to have the ability to back up what you want to do with your life.”
The woman’s hat tinkled some more as the automatic doors again opened behind Nadia, bringing with them a gust of dry desert air that lifted the hairs on the back of her neck. When, after a pause, the receptionist’s smile began to waver, Nadia realised she was still gripping her papers with one hand.
Because as if the blast of air had dumped a flurry of pixie dust from one of the magic shows down the strip onto Nadia’s head, her mind emptied till it was left with the receptionist’s perky voice saying, You are so lucky, to have the ability to back up what you want to do with your life.
She absolutely had the ability to back up what she wanted to do with her life, and she always had, because she hadn’t made the same mistake her mother had.
Her mother had fallen pregnant to a man she didn’t love. If she’d loved him she’d have stayed. She’d have fought. Kent women were fighters after all. No, Claudia must have had to make a choice, probably on her own, and she’d chosen to sacrifice her career at its pinnacle. To keep Nadia.
Nadia didn’t even realise she was halfway back across the lobby until the woman on Reception called out her name. But she wasn’t stopping for anything. Because Nadia wasn’t in the same unimaginable position as her mother at all.
She didn’t have to make a choice.
She wanted to.
And what she wanted was Ryder.
Sky High had been her saviour. The place she’d found her feet, found freedom. But that was then. Before she’d grown up. Before she’d gone home. And now she’d take her cramped little apartment, crazy-making Tiny Tots, the occasional ass-grab from salsa-dancing widowers, even occasional mind-bending conversations with her misfortunate mother if it meant she had him.
Eyes darting across the way, she spotted an empty cab and leapt right on in, only to find it was the same one she’d just left.
The taxi driver looked up, surprised to find himself actually surprised. “Forget something, missy?”
Nadia shook her head, adrenalin pouring through her at such pace she could barely sit still. “Remembered something, actually. The airport, please.”
“Well, then,” he said, revving the engine and turning the cab into the arc of the driveway that took them back to The Strip, “ten minutes in Vegas and you’re all done with the place. That’s an honest to goodness first for me.”
And even while Nadia’s heart fair thundered against her ribs, the space that had been pressing so hard since the moment she’d left Australian shores no longer hurt. It settled, warmed...
And waited.
* * *
Ryder squinted against the sharp sunlight filtering through the clouds above. The car at his back quiet, its engine cool, its doors unlocked, its presence forgotten.
The large brown building before him sunned itself in the morning’s warmth like an old alley cat—worn, neglected, clearly in its twilight years. And yet Ryder’s gaze was fixated higher—on the row of arched windows reflecting the sun like mirrors on the top floor.
And he silently cursed his sister.
A week earlier he’d handed over all the work on his desk to his shocked employees and left the office. Then, he had boarded the first plane to Vegas, intending to knock on each and every one of the million hotel-room doors in the big, vibrant, elusive city, until he found Nadia.
Sam, still honeymooning, had met him at the airport and looked at him as if he’d gone off the rails. She’d turned out to be right.
Sam had looked up on Google the casino in which Sky High would be performing later in the year. He’d called. No Nadia Kent was booked in. And hell if he knew her grandmother’s name, the name she’d once told him she’d danced under. Meaning she could be anywhere, no doubt becoming more and more ensconced within that dazzling, decadent place with every second that passed.
