Love's Gamble. Theodora Taylor

her suitcase forward. “Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ll be heading back to Las Vegas to pick up my check. I’m done here.”

      He inclined his head to the side and squinted in a way that reminded her of his brother. Though the two men didn’t share anything in common but the color of their eyes.

      “You sure about that?” he asked her with a smile so lazy, it looked as if he was on the verge of falling asleep. “Because this doesn’t feel done, and judging from that kiss, we could have a good time if you fake married me. A real good time, as they say here in New Orleans.”

      Pru swallowed, her body stirring with the memory of how it had felt to have his mouth claim hers, and the reality starlet’s words rang in her ears for the second time that night. Once you go Max, you never go back.

      Okay, time to go, she thought. She turned and walked away from Max Benton as fast as her stiletto heels would allow her.

      She had responsibilities to see to back home, she reminded herself. Such as her little brother, whom she’d had to leave alone this weekend in order to fulfill this assignment, and a licensing exam to study for.

      “If you change your mind, you know where to find me,” Max called behind her. “Just ask for Sorley Greer.”

      Pru didn’t allow herself to stop walking, not until she got to the bank of elevators at the end of the hallway. But as she pushed the down button, she couldn’t help looking back to where Max had been standing outside his hotel room door.

      He was still there. Watching her with squinted eyes. Watching her as a wolf watches its prey right before it attacks.

       Chapter 5

      Three weeks later Pru was still shaken by Max’s proposal. Not to mention that kiss! So much so that she could barely concentrate on studying for her PI exam. It didn’t help that her morning internet scour for everything related to Max Benton had turned up the exact same thing it had every other time she’d searched for news about Max.

      Absolutely nothing.

      No club spottings from gossip blogs. No wedding announcements either, even though his thirty-fifth birthday was the Friday after next.

      Was he really going to give up all that money? If so, how would he continue to fund his lavish lifestyle? Or make his hotel dream come true?

      She thought of her recent phone call with her friend who worked at NevadaStar, the Benton Group’s official credit union. In a weird continuation of her compulsion to keep looking into Max Benton, she’d decided to follow his money after the fact.

      She hadn’t during her first instinctual investigation because she knew it was the first thing most detectives did. If none of the other detectives had been able to find him using a money trail, she figured she wouldn’t be able to either. But the fact remained that following the money was still one of the best ways to find what someone was up to. And for whatever reason, she could not stop digging into Max Benton’s life even though she was no longer getting paid to do so.

      Max still hadn’t announced a marriage to fulfill Cole’s demands to release his trust money. So maybe, she’d speculated, he had found another source of funding for his hotel. He was friends with, if not the richest men in the world, many of their sons and daughters. Including Sorley Greer, whom Pru had also looked into as a possible financier for Max’s hotel.

      However, according to her research, Sorley wouldn’t go for a project this small. He tended toward big investments based on predictions only he seemed to be able to make. To the point that quite a few other big-time investors had accused him of insider trading, only to have to back down from their claims when Sorley’s lawyers sent them strongly worded letters that made generous use of words such as defamation and libel. In any case, as good as Max’s hotel idea was, it didn’t exactly fit in with the rest of Sorley’s portfolio.

      But that didn’t mean that Max hadn’t found another way to get the money, which was why she’d asked her friend at NevadaStar to look into his account. The nice thing about having been involved in a stage show that aged most of its pretty participants out at thirty was that she now had contacts working in post–Benton Revue jobs in nearly every institution in Las Vegas. Very lucky for her, since the truth was that having contacts in the right places was critical to working cases as a private investigator.

      But this particular lead didn’t pan out. According to her friend, Max hadn’t received a single noninterest cent since Cole cut him off. From the Benton Group or anyone else. And the interest on his account was seriously measured in cents now, since he currently had only a three-figure number left in it.

      “I guess stunting like he used to ain’t cheap,” her friend observed with a whistle over the youngest Benton heir’s low amount of available funds. “Either he’s going to have to get in back good with his family, or get a real job.”

      Try as she might, Pru just didn’t see Max getting a regular job. Building a splashy new hotel with his trust money? Yes. That was the type of big gamble that a guy like Max would go for. Actually using his marketing degree from the Boston Institute of Technology in order to earn a paycheck that wasn’t a thinly disguised version of his original allowance? She doubted it.

      But maybe he’d just been blustering about starting his own line of boutique hotels, she thought after finding nary a mention of Max during her latest internet search. She’d met guys like Max before back when she’d been into the Vegas lifestyle. Guys who’d been all talk and no play. Guys who thought they had what it took to make a big vision come to life but crapped out before even rolling their dice.

      Pru frowned, wishing her fingers weren’t itching to call up her friend at NevadaStar and ask her to go even deeper with her search. Maybe send over his year-to-date transactions report. Her friend had said most of the money in his account had gone toward paying credit-card bills. But maybe there was something she’d missed, something she hadn’t seen.

      “Pru?” a voice said behind her.

      She turned from the list of Nevada’s revised statutes and limitations that she was supposed to be studying to see her brother, Jakey, standing in the doorway to her room. He’d had yet another growth spurt over the summer and now stood a good five inches taller than her. He’d also been working out in an effort to relieve the summer boredom, so he’d also gotten wider over the past two months. The front of the T-shirt he wore seemed to be crying out for mercy as it strained against his newly formed muscles, and his old jogging pants might as well have issued their own flood warning, they were in such high-water territory.

      She screwed up her mouth. “We’re going to have to hit the mall before you leave for your camp next week. Get you some new clothes.”

      More money that would have to be spent now that she’d retired from the Benton Revue and was living off her savings. Luckily, the money Cole had paid her for hunting Max down had nicely cushioned her account. She had enough to not only tide her through until October but also to pay for Jakey’s books when he started at UNLV in the fall on a full scholarship.

      Buying Jake some more clothes for camp and also a fall wardrobe for college shouldn’t be a problem. But still, she worried. She and Jake had been forced to live frugally in the years since their parents’ deaths in order to pay rent on an apartment in one of Nevada’s best school districts and make ends meet. After Jake got his full scholarship, Pru had thought long and hard before quitting the line in order to pursue what she’d begun to think of as a calling. But she couldn’t be sure how soon she’d be able to acquire more work after she got her license. Cases like the one Cole had thrown her didn’t come along every day. Plus there would be the costs of renting an office and advertising her services around town.

      She needed to watch every penny, she thought. But not at her brother’s expense. It wasn’t his fault that he kept growing and growing, or that his new health kick upped their weekly grocery bill, or that his going to college came with extra expenses