‘Do you know Darryl?’ she asked Trudi.
‘What? Darryl? No, who is he?’ Trudi asked, giving up her squirming.
‘You only dealt with Carlos?’ Ivy asked. ‘Did Carlos ever mention anyone else?’
‘No, I didn’t ask questions. You don’t question Carlos, you follow his orders, and that’s it. Girls who question him don’t last very long.’
‘So how did you get away? You’re not working for him anymore,’ Ivy said.
‘He sold me off to his cousin when they started this venture. Carlos still gets a cut because he ponied up a heap of cash to get it moving.’
‘Yeah,’ Ivy said, bending to get into Trudi’s face. ‘Money he got for setting me up.’
‘Seemed to work out pretty well for you from where I’m standing.’
Except it could have so easily gone the other way. Making eye contact with Dax, she was reminded of how lucky she was to have him. If it hadn’t been for his love, then she would be living in the Stark mansion right now, married to Trystan and living her version of hell.
‘You’re useless to me,’ Ivy said, backing off. ‘This is quite the life you have for yourself, Trud. Did you ever think about having a bit of self-respect?’
‘Oh, yeah, ‘cause it’s just so easy,’ Trudi said. ‘You always thought that you were better than the other girls on our block. Always saying you wouldn’t make a living on your back.’
‘Like you said, it worked out for me, didn’t it?’
Trudi’s eyes slid in their sockets in Dax’s direction. ‘Looks to me like that’s exactly what you’re doing. How many times did you open your legs for him before he gave you access to his bank accounts?’
Dax’s grip shifted so that one of his arms came around Trudi’s throat, he yanked her head back to whisper in her ear. ‘Ivy’s my jackpot, a cheap ‘ho like you doesn’t measure up.’
Funny that Ivy had once thought about Dax being her jackpot, and now he was making the same comparison about her. She went to the door and unlocked it, then opened it an inch.
‘You can get out of here now. If your little buddy downstairs wants to discuss any issues, Dax will be happy to talk to him in private.’
Ivy opened the door fully, and Dax stood up to lug Trudi across the room, then he threw her out into the hall. Trudi rubbed her throat and carried on down the corridor without looking back. She didn’t run, but her quickstep wasn’t far from a jog.
Slamming the door, Ivy exhaled, Trudi didn’t have the information that she wanted, which meant that she would have to approach Carlos, and doing that was her nightmare come to life.
‘I make ten grand in the ring on a poor night,’ Dax said. ‘You’ve got me beating on women in hotel rooms.’
‘I’m sorry,’ Ivy said, going to sit on the bed. Doubling over, she retrieved her purse from the bedside unit. ‘You could’ve stayed in the bathroom, you didn’t have to come out and—‘
‘The couple who threatens together, stays together, I guess,’ he said.
Pulling a black diary from her purse, she began to flick through the pages. Dax came over, grabbed the book, tossed it onto the bed, then he hauled her onto her feet.
‘What’s going on?’ he asked.
Planning her next step would have to wait. ‘I just… I was going to take care of all of this myself. I meant to take off for a couple of days and be back before you noticed that I was gone.’
‘I noticed,’ he said. ‘And I came here to take you back.’
‘Not yet,’ she said, shaking her head. ‘Please, we still have time before Mauri’s party. If you want to go back and work with Serg, I understand, but… I have to do this. I don’t know if I’ll get the time to do it again.’
‘Like fuck I’ll leave you here alone, you’ve got exes sniffing around and gangsters waiting in the lobby.’
‘I don’t think Trudi really had a minder here. She just said that to scare us.’
‘You think?’ he said. ‘You were planning to face that girl alone, and she could have come armed.’
Storming across the room, he pulled her luggage out of the closet and opened drawers to stuff her clothes into it.
‘What are you doing?’ Ivy beseeched, running over to try and wrench the bag from him.
‘You’re not staying here alone,’ Dax said. Unmoved by her actions, he carried on around the room throwing in the rest of her things before he went into the bathroom.
‘You can’t just issue a command and expect me to follow it! I am not going back to California, not yet.’ Being with a man whose boiling point was as low as Dax’s led to dynamite sex and regular outbursts. ‘This is not about us! I am not leaving you. You can go back to LA, and I’ll follow when I’m done in Vegas. I will always come to you!’
‘What did I say about division?’ Dax asked. Coming out of the bathroom, he zipped up the bag and tossed it onto the bed. ‘We should not be divided, not now, with everything that’s going on.’
Traversing the room, he hovered in front of her. His superior bulk blocked out the light from the window, he’d managed to manoeuvre her around so that her back was to the bed.
‘I have something that I need to take care of,’ she said, fingering the hem of his tee-shirt. ‘It should only take two days, three tops.’
‘You think I’m going to leave you alone here for three days? I don’t think so, Minx. What do you need to take care of?’
The trouble with asking for complete honesty was that you had to give it back. So with a deep breath she prepared to tell the truth. ‘It’s something I can only do here.’
‘Tell me what you need so badly. What’s here?’
‘My life before Dax Harrow,’ she said. ‘I left everything here and I have some… ends I need to tie up.’
‘I’d wager it’s nothing too important because you didn’t come back here after you left my apartment and went on your seven-week adventure without me.’
‘Because I knew that Vegas would be the first place that the Starks would look for me. It’s no big deal, I… we have time, don’t we? Mauri doesn’t need us at the mansion until the party. I’ll be back in time for that.’
‘Yeah,’ he said, pulling her hand away from his abs. ‘You will be.’
He went to the bed and snatched up her black diary, but instead of reading it, he stuffed it into her purse. Gathering up both her purse and the sports bag he’d filled with her possessions, he came back over to her.
‘What are you doing?’ she asked.
‘Come on,’ he said, seizing her wrist he began to pull her toward the door, but she dropped her weight down, trying to pull herself out of his grip.
‘Please, Dax, no, I don’t want to leave. We can’t leave Nevada until—‘
He stopped yanking and turned, but he didn’t release her. ‘I have a room upstairs, a better one,’ he said, glancing around at her budget room. ‘Trudi and your buddy Saul know where we are now. I’m not getting naked with you until we’re sure no one is going to show up and start causing shit.’
‘Are you worried about fighting?’ He raised an eyebrow, so she smiled. ‘I can do this alone. You can go back to the Starks. I didn’t want you involved in any of this. It’s not your mess.’
‘If there’s a mess, I’m going to fix it,’ he said. ‘You can fill me in upstairs.’
Letting him take her up to the room that he’d reserved would give her time to think about how to approach telling Dax her story. He loved her and would accept any skeletons that she might have in her closet, except Ivy hadn’t done any terrible thing that could shock him. Showing him weakness was what she feared.
Having him think that she was weak or sentimental embarrassed her. She could stand up to any bully and had enough integrity to fill a football stadium. But showing her husband a softer, some would say weaker, side of herself had the potential to bring her out in hives.