Licking his lips, Saul spoke in a dull tone. ‘Let me get this right,’ he said. ‘You were staying with your sister?’
‘Yes.’
‘She took off with a creep, and you followed her here to Vegas?’
‘Yes.’
‘But you can’t go to a hotel because there’s a bounty on your head?’
‘That’s right,’ Ivy said.
‘Hmm,’ he said and pushed up to his feet. ‘I’m going back to bed.’
‘What? No!’
‘This is obviously a dream or I’ve slipped into a coma or something.’
‘No!’ Ivy said. Leaping past the breakfast bar to grab his arm, she pulled him around to face her. Just then a tiny brunette wearing a man’s tee-shirt entered.
‘Oh,’ the brunette said. ‘Who’s she?’
‘This is Ivy,’ Saul said, pushing Ivy’s hand away from his arm. Realising that touching him didn’t look good, Ivy let go and moved away. ‘Ivy, this is…’
No need to worry about breaking up his deep and meaningful relationship if he couldn’t even remember the girl’s name. ‘Brittany,’ the brunette said.
‘Right,’ Saul said. ‘This is Brittany, Ivy, Brittany.’
‘Nice to meet you,’ Ivy said, reaching over to shake the girl’s hand. ‘I’m sorry to interrupt your morning, but I… Saul and I are old friends.’
‘Whatever, I’m going to shower,’ the brunette said wearing a scowl, then she spun around and disappeared back the way she’d come.
‘She’s cute,’ Ivy said.
‘I have great taste in women,’ Saul said.
Ivy laughed. ‘Yeah, I suppose that you do.’
‘Look, Ive, I’m sorry that you’re mixed up in some shit, but Harrow will kill me dead if he finds you here.’
‘I imagine that he’s already on his way,’ Ivy said. She hadn’t checked her messages, but had read Dax’s name twice on her phone screen, so he’d certainly texted her. Ivy hadn’t gone so far as to open the texts because she was sure they weren’t just random, “thinking of you” messages.
‘Exactly my point,’ Saul said and tried to walk away, but Ivy put herself in front of him.
‘He’ll be grateful,’ she said, and he glowered at her. ‘No, really, Dax knows about the bounty, he’s been trying to figure it out. I can’t go to a hotel because it’s not safe, but if you kick me out, then that’s where I’ll have to go. If Dax finds out that you’ve sent me into danger, how happy do you think he’ll be?’
Saul thought about this for a second then lifted his hand and growled out loud. ‘Ok, fine, damn you, stay if you want… Let me go and talk to Brittany.’
‘Ok. I’ll get his mom.’
She turned, but Saul snatched her shoulder to pull her back. ‘Whose mom?’
‘Dax’s,’ she said. ‘It’s a long story and not important right now.’
‘You want to move in here with your mother-in-law?’
‘I’m not moving in, don’t be dramatic. We just need somewhere to freshen up and make phone calls. It would be great to sleep for a couple of hours too. But the sooner I find out where Rosie is, the sooner we can get out of here.’
‘The sooner, the better,’ he said. ‘And don’t accuse me of being dramatic, you’re a fucking wanted woman, I’m one step away from harbouring a fugitive.’
‘Don’t be stupid, the cops aren’t looking for me.’
Saul folded his arms. ‘Yeah? So this bounty, someone wants you dead, right?’
‘Yeah.’
‘Is it a big bounty?’
‘Half a mill.’
Saul whistled. ‘So every gangster and his bitch are going to be looking for you… I’d rather hide you from the cops.’
‘They won’t look here. I’m wanted in LA.’
‘Yeah, ‘cause that’s a million miles away.’
‘Go and talk to your woman and then call the GoldSpring for me, find out if they have a reservation for Stark.’
‘I’m playing secretary again?’ he asked.
‘Not so much fun when someone else is calling the shots, is it?’ she asked and spun around to get Carina from the car.
Saul was being nice, and he didn’t have to be. He could’ve kicked them out, though what she had said about Dax was true. If she got hurt in an unsafe place because Saul hadn’t offered a sanctuary, then Dax would visit his wrath on the nearest person and her husband was just looking for an excuse to beat on Saul anyway.
After retrieving Carina from the car, Ivy took her into the spare bedroom and set her up in the adjoining shower room. While Carina was busy freshening up, Ivy sat on the bed and opened the first message on her phone.
I’m thinking about collecting the bounty myself. Are you fucking insane? Where are you?
Someone had to have told Dax that the cars had left the beach house. Either he was told by phone while he was investigating in LA, or he showed up at the beach house and got the skinny when he discovered that the place was empty.
Much as Ivy knew he’d be mad no matter how he found out, she hoped he’d been called in LA. If he’d gotten all the way to the beach house before he was told it would be worse for everyone involved. He would already be tired and hoping to slip into bed with his willing wife, so finding out that everyone had fled would have riled him.
She was holding her breath when she opened the second text.
Vegas. Again? On my way.
So what she had said to Saul had been right on the money: Dax was on his way, and he was pissed. She fired off a quick message to tell Dax where she was; he’d been to Saul’s before so he knew the route to get here. Holding her phone, Ivy waited for it to ring, Dax wouldn’t be happy that she was hanging out with an ex-boyfriend.
The timestamp on Dax’s second message was two hours ago, meaning he was probably still a couple of hours away if he was driving. Through the wall, Ivy could hear the muffled voices of Saul and Brittany. Ivy decided that if her cell phone hadn’t rung, she’d give the couple another two minutes then she would go through and apologise to Brittany, hopefully distracting her for long enough to let Saul make the phone call that Ivy needed him to make.
If Saul confirmed that Trystan and Rosie were at the GoldSpring then Ivy could ride over there and persuade her sister to come back with her, meaning that by the time Dax arrived the problem would be resolved, and they could all go back to LA as one happy family.
As Ivy predicted, her cell phone began to buzz in her hand, and she widened her smile before she picked up.
‘Hey, sexy man, how are you?’ Squeezing her eyes shut, Ivy braced herself for his reaction.
‘You know I could do a lot with half a million dollars,’ Dax said. ‘Maybe I’ll kill you myself and pick up the bounty, then I could find myself a nice easy woman who’d be happy to stay chained to my radiator for the rest of her life.’
‘You’re a true romantic at heart, Dax,’ she said.
‘I can’t fucking believe that you did this. I told you that you wouldn’t be safe in Vegas.’
‘We don’t know that. I came to Saul’s because no one will look for me here. We’ve figured out that whoever put up the bounty knows me through you, through the fighting circuit, so there’s no way that they’ll know anything about Saul.’
‘He’s an ex, all they have to do is ask a few questions and—‘
‘We had to come. I couldn’t leave Rosie here with Trystan, you know what he’s like…’ Ivy got up and wandered to the bedroom window, which looked out on Saul’s pool and shed. ‘Who told you we’d left?’
‘I was at Mauri’s when he got a call that security at the beach house had been left stranded. Someone had to go pick them up because someone else stole their car. That was when they said Trystan had come to the beach house and taken off with one of the women.’
‘You know what he’s like, Rosie was already drunk, and now he’s brought her here to Vegas. If he asks her to take drugs… I don’t want her to get mixed up in that again, he’ll drop her as soon as he’s bored.’ Ivy lowered her voice. ‘Rosie only came here, only met Trystan because of us. God only knows what he’ll do to her, she’ll have sex with him, Dax, and he’s never struck me as the missionary position type.’