Levitating Las Vegas(28)
Author: Jennifer Echols

“Mmm, mmm, mmm.” Diana shook her head. “I wish I could get men to fight like that over me.”

Holly looked down into her cle**age. “I think it’s the bikini top. I didn’t get a chance to go home and change after work.”

“Girl,” said Cher, “if I had real tits like that, I’d be wearing my bikini top to Walmart.”

“These old things?” Holly hooked a finger in the center of her top, pulled it taut, and peered curiously inside.

Diana guffawed. “I’d wear my bikini top with my candy striper apron down at the hospital as a service to the community. Give everybody the will to live.” She batted Holly’s hand away from her top. “Stop that and come on inside before you get us all arrested. As long as you’re standing between the two of us, you might get thrown in the wrong tank. Come on.”

The three of them linked arms, with Holly in the middle. She felt out of place more because she was shorter by eight inches than because she was the only genuine girl. But when they reached the front door, they stopped. Rob glared through the glass at them with a scowl on his face and his hands on his hips.

Cher stamped her platform shoe. “Why didn’t Marilyn kick that ass**le out?”

“I told her not to,” Diana said. “He’s a cop. I don’t want to make a cop mad. Half the people in here have a pocket full of ecstasy.” She looked down at Holly. “I will kick him out, for you.”

Wouldn’t that be nice! But Rob really might cause problems for Glitterati—he was that petty, Holly was learning—and she didn’t want anyone to get in trouble on her account.

“Thanks, but no thanks.” She patted Diana’s arm. “I have to face the music sooner or later.” She pulled the door open.

“We’re right here behind you if you need us, girl,” Cher called, and Holly was glad Cher had said this within Rob’s hearing. Rob loomed in front of her, blocking her way into the party.

And he wobbled a bit. She thought this was an optical illusion of the pink light strobing across his face—but no, he alternately swayed on his feet, then pulled himself up straighter to look more imperious, then swayed again. She’d thought she smelled liquor on him last night. Tonight he’d outdone himself.

She should have told him off rather than running away last night. Now she needed to handle him like the diva she was not. She picked up her feet and put on a pout as she approached him. “I’m here with Kaylee,” she shouted above the music. “Not you.”

“I didn’t see you with Kaylee,” he yelled back, too loud, too close to her ear. “I saw Dangermouse ramming his tongue down your throat.”

“It’s none of your business,” Holly said. “I don’t want to go out with you anymore. Stop hanging around my apartment. Don’t follow me. And don’t take this out on Elijah when you get home. You have no reason to be mad at him, or at me either.” She tried to step around Rob.

As she passed, he grabbed her forearm. “Why don’t we call it a night?” he growled, wilting her curls with a cloud of alcoholic breath. “You can make it up to me.”

“Ask Marilyn to call you a taxi.” Holly nodded toward the superstar at the door, who winked at her. “I didn’t come with you, Rob, and I’m not leaving.” She flounced away, half expecting him to grab her again.

But he didn’t. Miraculously she made it all the way into the center of the throbbing melee, where Kaylee was doing the Cupid Shuffle with a Celine Dion the size of a linebacker. Holly nearly hopped up and down on her high heels with glee at the prospect of dancing the night away with Kaylee. Every night onstage at the casino, she twirled and circled and presented. She toned her muscles with exercises in ballet and yoga classes. She didn’t do enough dancing.

First things first, though. She boogied up to Kaylee and stepped to the left with her, then to the right. “Where were you?” she shouted. “Rob tried to kill Elijah!”

“I wouldn’t have let you get in any trouble,” Kaylee yelled back calmly.

Holly knew this was true. Kaylee had her reasons for doing what she did. As Holly had surmised earlier, Kaylee’s phone call must have been official casino business.

Holly danced, concerned about nothing but her own body. Rob hung around, lurking at the edge of the crowd, but he never tried to approach her. He watched them dance from the periphery of their circling arms and legs.

Late that night, the crowd still hadn’t thinned. Kaylee took a turn in the rest room, and Holly was left doing the electric slide with a group of ladies from a librarians’ convention who were way too old for this club. As the whole double line of them leaned to the front and turned to the right, facing the corridor where Holly’s encounter with Elijah had taken place, she noticed Rob staggering toward the back door.

She leaped out of line, glancing around for Kaylee’s white-blond head or any transvestite bouncer to help her. All she saw was the tangle of dancers in shifting colors. Rob might have shoved his keys into the ignition of his sheriff’s car by now. Angry as she was at him, she couldn’t let him drive drunk. He might cause a wreck and kill someone, all because he’d tied one on, upset over her.

She skittered out the back door and into the parking lot. The brake lights of his car glowed already. She dashed the last twenty yards across the asphalt and knocked on the trunk to keep him from backing over her. Rounding the car, she conjured up her lecture. It should be persuasive but not patronizing, which would only make him madder. She opened the passenger door.

He looked up at her with too-bright eyes, watery at the edges, and turned off the engine. Good.

And then he yanked her into the car.

The passenger door sagged behind her but didn’t shut completely. She poised to spring right back out of the car again. But he held her with a hard grip on her forearm.

“Rob!” she roared.

“I couldn’t get close to you all night,” he complained. “I wanted to ask you to go with me to meet my brothers.”

He’d told her during their week of acquaintance that he and his brothers spent a lot of time together out in his sheriff’s jurisdiction, near Hoover Dam. At the time, she’d puzzled over why he didn’t live with his brothers, which would be more convenient for getting to work than living inside the city limits with Elijah and Shane. Now she wondered why a meeting with his brothers, of all things, was his proposed second date. He was really drunk.