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The small wafts of tepid air don’t help.
He’s your boss. He’s a grump. You assaulted him. You have to work with him.
The problem is, aside from the steamy hot scenes my overworked and over-romance-novel-filled imagination is conjuring, even in the sober light of day I’ve started to think of the dreaded Thomas Moore as a kindred spirit. And Mrs Moore, Emily as she insisted I call her tonight, made sure to keep bringing him up whenever she and I talked.
I continue down the hallway, hand sliding along the wall as I go, until I reach what I think is my hotel room door. It takes a minute of squinting at the numbers until I confirm it’s the two-bedroom suite I’m sharing with Liz, who is still out on the town with Leslie.
Pulling out my key card, I continue thinking about the privileged enigma known as Thomas. Not Tom or Tommy. Not even to his family – although Bell and Chase do like to try.
Besides myself, I don’t think anyone else needed Vegas as much as Thomas Moore, on that Emily and I agreed. It would do him good to relax. Have a little fun.
Emily stressed that she thought it was high time Thomas find a woman to settle down with.
Another image, this one PG, but one I find more disturbing, flits through my brain.
Thomas, sitting in a club as Leslie had, drawing in all the women around him while he and Chase laugh.
My plastic key card cuts into my palm, the pain drawing me out of that disconcerting, wide-awake nightmare.
I laugh it off. The only time since the shots started that my laugh sounds forced.
With a beep, I unlock the door, attempt to pull down the heavy handle and push. It’s a combination move that takes me more than one try and a lot more beeps until I’ve finally opened the door.
I’m sweating by the time I stumble inside, nearly landing in a heap in front of Thomas Moore.
Talk about your buzz kill.
9
THOMAS
I swirl the half-inch of amber liquid in the crystal glass, my good eye focused on the apparition that just heaved herself into my sister’s hotel suite.
I thought I was already as far down the rabbit hole as I could get. But as Vegas has proven time and time again during this short trip, there always seems to be another tunnel to tumble down. Or maybe Alice has tumbled into mine.
Whatever it is – whiskey, pills, Vegas voodoo – I’m pretty sure it’s the reason why I’m dreaming about my dildo-wielding marketing employee. Although why my subconscious decided to include innate details like her opening the hotel room’s door with a grunt, then throwing herself inside, very ungracefully I might add, to land on the suite’s foyer floor, I don’t know.
Dream Alice giggles.
That solidifies it. This must be a dream. Alice doesn’t laugh in front of me. In fact, she rarely smiles.
But she’s doing both after stumbling into Liz’s suite where I’ve been sitting for hours while drinking Old Pappy since, apparently, there were no more available suites for the night.
Something that would never have happened in New York, and also something I find highly suspect. However, after my last suite caught fire, I decided not to argue with the hotel staff. Instead, I have been lying in wait for my sister. If I can just get some answers as to where she’s been since father was arrested, maybe I won’t feel so… adrift.
I down the remaining whiskey in my highball glass before lowering my forearm on the armrest, my glass dangling from my fingertips.
One of those rare smiles curls up the sides of Alice’s face. ‘Hi, Thomas.’
‘Hi, dream Alice.’
She tilts her head, her once wavy, but now poker-straight dark hair sliding off her shoulder. ‘Is this a dream?’
‘Must be.’ The shorter pieces of her ill-advised bangs cling to the perspiration on her heart-shaped face.
‘Why?’
I blink my blurred vision back into focus. Are dreams usually this inquisitive? ‘Because I thought of you and you appeared.’ I had been thinking of her. Even if those thoughts were centered around how not to think of her. Isn’t that what they call a catch-22?
