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“Sure. I just need to change clothes.”
When Buddy offered to retrieve her suitcase from Raine’s car and bring it to her room, Heavenly tossed him the fob with a quiet thanks. An hour later, she sat at the outdoor café attached to the Paris Hotel, her wide eyes twinkling with awe and curiosity. Vegas was always interesting, but today the city was in fine form.
Almost immediately, someone stumbled up to the entrance of the casino, drink in hand, and promptly puked on the carpet just over the threshold. The maintenance staff merely shooed away the drunk bastard, then cleaned up with a wet vac and some pungent industrial-strength cleanser.
Heavenly blinked. “You two don’t look shocked. You’ve seen that before?”
It was cute that she hadn’t. “So often that it’s barely worth noting.”
The big PI waved the episode away. “Pfft. You should have seen the shit that happened in the back of my squad car.”
Soon, a woman in last night’s black satin dress with smeared makeup and matted hair tiptoed out of the hotel, shoes in hand, squinting against the bright desert sunlight as she headed down the Strip.
Heavenly leaned in and dropped her voice. “She’s walking awfully funny.”
Beck busted out laughing. “Why do you think that is?”
“She probably had a one-night stand. I’m not totally naive.”
A big smile stretched across Seth’s face. “I doubt she was complaining last night.”
The waitress refilled their coffee and took their order. They’d barely finished when Vegas proved it was the gift that kept on giving.
A party of perky twentysomethings sporting tiaras, tight dresses, and thoroughly impractical heels limped down the sidewalk, singing an off-key rendition of Katy Perry’s tune about “Last Friday Night.” One carried a half-empty champagne bottle, another a neon penis sizable enough to satisfy a female Godzilla. The woman holding it sent Beck an embarrassed grimace. He shook his head. No, he didn’t want to know.
“Whew, I hope I’m sober enough to get married in”—she glanced at her watch—“four hours. Shit!”
“Just focus on the fact you’re getting boned tonight by that fine piece of man, Mrs. Carson.”
“I love your optimism. That’s why you’re my maid of honor.”
When the women staggered away, Beck turned to find Heavenly watching with a giggle. “I hope I wasn’t that drunk last night. Did Gloria say I blurted anything embarrassing?”
Beck sent her an indulgent grin. “She wouldn’t have told me even if you had. She’s good at keeping secrets.”
Heavenly looked relieved. “I guess in her profession, she has to be.”
When the waitress set piping-hot plates in front of them a minute later, Heavenly took a bite of her bananas Foster waffles and groaned. “Oh, I’m having a foodgasm.”
When she made sounds like that, Beck felt beyond ready to give her a different sort of gasm.
Instead, he dug into his food, reaching down to adjust himself under the pretense of settling his napkin. He watched her close her eyes, sigh, and lick her lips like a woman in the throes as she devoured half her plate.
Seth leaned in, looking somewhere between amused and strained. “Is she trying to torture us?”
The amazing thing was, she seemed to have no clue. And no self-consciousness. She simply closed her lips around the fork, shifted in her chair, and groaned out in gustatory ecstasy again.
She stopped abruptly when the next pedestrian meandered down the sidewalk in front of them. “Am I really seeing that?”
The visual was best described as the love child of Willie Nelson and a fairy godmother, complete with long, graying braids, a wiry beard, a bikini top, a beer belly, and a pink tulle tutu.
“Yep.” Seth just shook his head.
Beck shrugged. “It’s Vegas. What happens here…”
“Needs to stay here,” the other man quipped before turning his attention back to his plate. Beck did the same.
Heavenly merely sat, breakfast forgotten, and watched the characters parading up and down Las Vegas Boulevard.
