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Dominic deposits the food he’s carrying on the wooden dining table. “How much food did you get?” I ask him, eying the two bulging paper bags. “That looks like enough food for a week.”
“It really is.” He gives me a sheepish grin. “I forgot to ask you what you wanted, so I ordered an assortment of things. I would have called you from the restaurant, but I don’t know your phone number.”
“Isn’t it in the hotel system?”
He looks surprised. “Probably, but that seems like an invasion of your privacy.” He waves to the table. “Shall we eat while the food is hot?” He disappears into the kitchen and returns with plates and silverware. “Gabriella, what do you want to drink?”
“Red wine, please.”
“Of course.” He fills my glass from a decanter—clearly, Dominic takes wine more seriously than me—and hands it to me. “It’s a Cabernet Sauvignon from Medoc.”
“It’s wasted on me,” I warn him, taking a seat at the dining table. “I like red wine, but you know the people that can tell where a wine is from by sniffing it? That’s not me.”
“That’s not me either,” he assures me. “I just know what I like.” His eyes linger on me for a long second, and his gaze is appreciative. “You look lovely,” he murmurs. “Good enough to eat.” He flashes me another grin, and gestures to the food. “But since I went to Paesano’s…”
The lasagna is as delicious as promised, and the portions are massive. While we eat, Dominic asks about my work. “What exactly does being a publicist involve?”
“It varies.” I take a sip of the wine, which is, even to my untutored palette, pretty spectacular. “With Nicky Z, it involves managing her social media, arranging interviews, coaching her on what to say, that kind of thing. Before this, I managed a soccer player. For Luca, it was less about social media, and more about arranging endorsement deals.”
He looks surprised. “Those are very different skillsets, are they not?”
I looked Dominic up. He took over the casino six years ago when his father died of cancer. The Grand River was a moderately successful casino when he became the CEO, and in the six years he’s been at the helm, it’s grown steadily, increasing its revenues by five to ten percent every year. It doesn’t sound like much, until you realize that most Atlantic City casinos are struggling. Legalization of gambling in Pennsylvania has hurt the New Jersey gaming industry. Five casinos have shut down in the last decade.
“They are,” I reply. “My specialization at Karpis is endorsements, but if I want to start my own company, I won’t be able to only focus on one thing. I’ll need to handle it all. I do a lot of social media.”
“That makes sense.”
Carter pushes the breadbasket toward me. The rolls are warm and impossible to resist, and I don’t even try. “I really have to go to the gym tomorrow,” I murmur. “There’s one on my floor, Katrina said?”
Dominic looks up, startled. Carter laughs out loud. “Katrina said that, did she?” His lips twitch. “Did she give you a key to it?”
“Yes, why?”
“That’s Dominic’s gym,” he replies. He gives the other man an amused look. “Looks like I’m not the only one that picked up on the Rose Room thing.”
I lean forward. “This is the second time the Rose Room has come up. What’s going on?”
Dominic flashes Carter an irritated look, and then turns to me. “The Rose Room is generally reserved for friends and family,” he admits. “My mother stays there when she’s in town.”
My mouth falls open. “You put me in your mother’s room?”
He winces. “It sounds creepy when you put it that way. My mother’s not the only one who uses the room. My cousins stay there when they drop by. When Noah was younger, Carter lived there.” He refills my wine glass. “The rest of the floor was occupied.”
“You didn’t have to upgrade me. My previous room was perfectly fine.” I’ll be working out in Dominic’s gym. Would I run into him there? Would he be all hot and sweaty from his workout? Would we—
Get your mind out of the gutter, Gabby.
“It was the least I could do,” he replies. “Let’s talk about something else. I looked you up on the Karpis website. Your focus is soccer players, right?”
He looked me up? That’s sort of flattering. “Soccer players and musicians, actually. They tend to make up the bulk of my work.”
“When you branch off on your own, have you ever considered doing PR work for casinos?”
I give him a wary look. I don’t want him to wave his hands and make things easier for me. Yes, the Grand River probably has a large PR budget, and yes, I’m sure I could bill them for some work. But it doesn’t feel right. I don’t want Dominic to manufacture some work because he wants to sleep with me. “Dominic, I’m not going to work for your casino. We slept together once. It’s not—”
“Not my casino,” he cuts in. “Of course not. I wouldn’t hire you. I want to sleep with you; there’s no way I can be objective about your work under the circumstances. But I’ve lived in Atlantic City all my life. If you’d like, I can open some doors for you.”
He wants to sleep with me.
