The Keepers (The Alchemy Series) (3 page)

“Hi
, Jonny, I need a Bombay martini straight up with olives.”

“Hi
, Darling, what are you doing here?” Jonny gave me the smile he used on the girls he was working for tips, or other more personal pursuits as Lacey had informed me. He did always seem to be preoccupied, that was for sure.

“Lacey asked me to cover. She had a date tonight.” I’d been there for only two weeks, and I’d already filled in for Lacey three times.

“How come you don’t?” he asked shifting into full gear.

“Jonny, I don’t have time to date. I told you that.”

“I could take you to that nice steak house that just opened up in the Bellagio.”

I didn’t want to hurt his feelings, but it was hard not to laugh at his persistence. It was starting to become a routine with us. He asked. I declined. Rinse and repeat.

“Jonny, aren’t you getting tired of asking?”

“Ti
red of asking what?” Vicky laid her tray down on the bar as she came and stood next to me. “To go out with you, again? Don’t look at me all shocked. Everyone knows he’s been sniffing around you nonstop for weeks.”

“Why are you standing over here? Didn’t you see the boss come in?” Jonny struck back at her.

“Where?” Vicky, too interested in Cormac’s possible arrival, didn’t even blink an eye at the dig, but instead scanned the casino floor like a hawk trying to spot her prey. “Where? I don’t see him.”

“You need glasses. You’re as blind as a bat. He’s at table seven,” Jonny replied with barely concealed dislike.

I couldn’t help myself, and turned to look as well. I inwardly cringed when I realized he was sitting in my area, talking to the high roller who was betting fifty thousand a hand at black jack for the last hour. Knots instantly formed in my stomach and reached all the way up to my throat. I had seen him coming and going since the night in his penthouse but always at a distance. I’d caught him watching me a handful of times, but he’d never approached me.

From what I had noticed, other than Lacey and I, most of the women here flocked to him. The very danger that made me steer clear of him
, seemed to have the opposite effect, and pulled them in like magnets.

“Can I take your table? I’l
l give you table three. The guy’s been giving me a ten every round. Please!”

She whined for a moment while
I hesitated, not wanting anyone to know that I was actually relieved to relinquish the table. “Okay, but you owe me.” She was gone before I’d finished speaking.

“Now
, back to dinner.”

“Jonny, you’re a nice guy, but I’m not interested. Doesn’t matter who you are or how great you are, I don’t date.” I added the last part to try to smooth his ego. Truth was
, I couldn’t date. Even if I had the time and wanted to date him, which I didn’t, I’d never be able to explain the weird things that happened around me. Sometimes I got tired of being alone, but that didn’t change anything. I had tried dating before. Sooner or later it would get serious, and they would want to stay the night. I knew from my childhood, I couldn’t risk having anyone around when I slept. That’s when it got the strangest, but I couldn’t think about that right now.

As I got back to checking on my section, I tried to keep my distance from
table seven as much as I could. That was hard since that table sat in the middle of my area. Luckily, Vicky offered a distraction and draped herself over Cormac like a cheap suit anytime I was near. I had the distinct feeling it was because he kept watching my movements, and I wasn’t the only one who had noticed. After about an hour, I started to get a little high-strung about being under constant surveillance. But, just when I’d about had it with being visually stalked, he was gone.

I was grateful, I wanted to keep this job. I’d finally been able to watch a couple of movies and have some downtime. I’d been sleeping more and even baked cookies with Mrs. Harvey. I felt like a human being again.

By time the night was done, my feet ached and I couldn’t wait to get my shoes off. I hated heels and couldn’t wait to get my sneakers on. Tomorrow morning, I would go for a run, another thing I had time for lately. I hadn’t put on weight. I was curvy but thin. Running was simply my release from the world.

When I looked up at the bar, I saw Cormac Hawking had reappeared and was now sitting at the far end w
ith the high roller. They looked like they were having a disagreement of sorts, and they didn’t even notice me. I let out a sigh of relief that I was done for the night, and could go hide in obscurity.

“Hey
, Jonny, this should be all of it,” I said, as I handed him the change from the last round and a pile of singles he was going to change in for larger bills. I’d done amazingly well tonight. I’d made almost enough for half a month’s rent.

When the high roller that Mr. Hawking had been sitting with approached me, I pretended to be preoccupied. The guy had been hitting on everything with legs, and I didn’t feel like being the
next.

“All done?” he asked

He definitely wasn’t the type to take a subtle hint. I turned to see him.

“Yes,” I said in a slightly clipped voice and went back to what I was doing. That was my second level rejection. In my experience, that only had a fifty percent success rate, so I wasn’t surprised when he continued.

“Can I buy you a drink?”

“I don’t drink.” I did, but it was none of his business. He wasn’t a bad looking guy, a few inches taller than my five feet four inches and solid looking with longish light brown hair. He clearly had money as well, the way he was betting, but even if I could date, and I wasn’t a frea
k, something about him reminded me of nails on a chalk board.

“How
’bout a coffee?”

Ugh, the guy just wouldn’t take the hint, or maybe you could call it a sledge hammer in this case. “I’m not interested.” I could smell alcohol and a recent smoke on his breath as he moved in closer.

“I don’t think you know who I am. You’d be lucky to date me.”

“Right now, I’d feel lucky if you would back off
, because you smell like a burned out brewery.” I took a deep breath, knowing I was about to really step over the line with a customer, but the guy was starting to really piss me off. I looked up wondering where the hell Jonny had gone. I wanted to get my tips so I could get out of there, and he was nowhere to be found.

The guy reached out and grabbed my upper arm in a tight, but not painful, grip. He pulled me closer and leaned in my face, “You better ask around and learn your place quick.”

Something in me snapped. I knew how I looked to people because I went out of my way to perpetrate the image. Everyone assumed a pretty little thing like me was innocent, that without a man, I was helpless. But, that was only to those who weren’t looking closely enough, which luckily for me, were most. I’d spent enough time taking care of myself to handle a jerk like this.

I he
ld his stare. “I don’t know who you are, and I’m certainly not going to ask around.” I leaned in as close as I could stand and whispered in a voice so low only he could hear. “And you know why? Because I don’t give a shit. Now get your hand off of me, or you’re going to be crawling out of here.”

His grip tightened just enough to be uncomfortable. “What do you think you’re going to do?” he asked.

I knew what I wanted to do, but I couldn’t do that here without people knowing something wasn’t right with me, but I’d learned how to get around that over the years. I’d couch what I wanted to do for something that would be almost as effective.

Kneeing a guy in between the legs works much le
ss often than people think. Men aren’t stupid about that area. It’s the first place they block, so as I jerked my knee up, I knew I wasn’t going to get a clean shot, but I also knew I wouldn’t need one. I just had to connect to his body in that ultra sensitive area to shoot a little pain his way. No one would ever guess that anything abnormal was happening. They’d simply think I’d managed to connect better than I had.

He had no idea it was coming. O
ne second he was leaning over me as the aggressor, and the next he was crying at my feet like a baby.

I took a step away from him
, looking for Jonny, knowing it was time to flee the scene before the guy made it to his feet. When I looked around, I found quite a few people, including Jonny, had witnessed the scene.

“Thanks for the help,” I said sarcastically to Jonny. I knew
the next time he offered to walk me out, I’d laugh in his face.

“Didn’t look like you needed any,” a deep voice from behind me answered for him. With my back still to him, I grimaced slightly, then turned around, and wa
ited to see if I was going to be fired.

I looked into Cormac’s chiseled face and had no idea what he was thinking. His eyes were intense as he looked at me, and I
had a fleeting thought that maybe it wouldn’t be a bad thing if he fired me. Just his presence affected me more than any other man I’d ever met. “Am I fired?”

“Why would you be fired?”

Without a hint of emotion shown, I wasn’t sure if he was baiting me or being obtuse. I doubted he was obtuse but I stated the obvious anyway, “Because I attacked your customer?” It was a bit awkward while the man was still lying on the ground, practically at my feet, and still occasionally moaned.

“Yes, I saw.
Looked like he had it coming.” He waved over a couple of men whom I hadn’t noticed. “Help Tracker to his car,” he told them, and they each grabbed him under the arm. “Where did you learn to take care of yourself like that?”

He was eyeing me intensely, and even though he couldn’t know that there was something wrong with me, I felt like he did. I don’t know how, but he knew I wasn’t who I pretended to be.

“I took some self-defense classes.” I’d never taken a self-defense class in my life.

He didn’t say anything, just nodded his head. He
knew I’d lied… again. I’d done my fair share of lying because of my secrets. I knew the tells people gave and I knew I didn’t do them. I was a good liar. I was pretty confident I’d even pass a lie detector test if I had to. How did he know?

We stood there for a moment appraising each other. I waited, on the inside I was sweating bullets, waiting for him to call me a liar or ask where I’d taken a c
lass, but on the outside I was completely poised. I stood my ground like his equal. He was the owner of the hottest casino on the strip. I’d heard whispers of him having holdings in half of the other casinos in Vegas, which was stunning for a man in his thirties. Me, on the other hand, I worried how I’d pay my rent for a trailer that looked like it’s best years had come, gone, and then been forgotten. But, I didn’t care.

I’d watched people tip toe around him for the last three weeks. If that was the type of employee he needed, better
to fire me now. I bowed to no one.

He slowly looked me up and down. He was testing my mettle, trying to get me to shrink back, to break the silence first or bend in some telling way that would prove my inferiority. I wouldn’t. What would normally be an insignificant amount of time dragged by, second after second, until he raised his eyebrows and tilted his head toward me in a silent acknowledgment. I’d passed. I didn’t know exactly what I’d passed, but I’d passed. It wasn’t surprising to me that I wasn’t fully cued in on what had gone down. This was the second time I’d had real interaction with him. Whatever rules he lived by
, I decided, were not the run-of-the-mill existence.

“I’ll have someone walk you out.”

“I don’t need an escort.”

“Buzz, walk Jo
out.”

I didn’t ask how he knew my name
, let alone my nickname. I worked for him, along with hundreds, likely thousands of others. Maybe he made it his business to know everyone. I wasn’t going to make a big deal over it. I’d let his guy walk me out if he wanted to. I wasn’t going to be greedy with my victories.

“I’m fine.”

“I know.” And as quickly as that, I was dismissed, he walked off in his own direction while his big blond brute followed me in mine.

I left Buzz at the bus stop on the strip, but I didn’t feel alone until I was in my trailer
, hours later.

The church was deathly quiet when I walked in the next afternoon. I’d started looking for my parents the day I had turned eighteen. No one had been willing to talk to me before then. I never understood that. It was my history, I had a right to know. Turned out, there wasn’t much to tell. The only thing I had found out was that a priest had dropped me off at the hospital, but no one had bothered to write his name down at the time, or perhaps t
hey had simply lost the record.

This was th
e thirtieth church I’d visited. My steps echoed off the high ceilings as I walked down the aisle. I was running out of churches to go to in the area. I’d have to expand my search radius again, soon.

“Can I help you?” I turned to find a middle-aged nun behind me.

“Is your priest in? Or do you know where I could find him?”