Death in an accident that took his weasel friend out with him sounded almost tempting, but Antonio slowed down. He’d left her a note, she’d understand. He told the clerk to say there was an emergency that required him to leave right away, please wait and he would be back before morning. What was wrong with that?
Besides, if he could win the money he needed at this slam-dunk private poker game then he wouldn’t have to sell his car, or debase himself in front of Joan’s future brother in law. Winning the money now was the smartest move he could make and there was no other option but to go with Vince while the action was still hot. Besides, unlike himself, Vince had a thousand dollars in seed money. Antonio was shocked, Vince rarely held on to ten dollars without gambling it away. It was so shocking that Antonio refused to let him into his car or agree to go to this poker game until Vince handed over all the money, so Antonio could hold onto it for safe keeping.
As they drove up the last leg of the windy road that Vince claimed would have them at the house in a matter of moments, Antonio felt the familiar rush of adrenaline, hope, anticipation, and dreaming that came just before he entered a casino or walked into an establishment where some gambling was taking place. This is why he loved to gamble. His body hummed with excitement. He felt alive, and he knew he was going to win big.
JOAN TOLD THE DRIVER the address for the Torres house but changed her mind as they drove through Ciutat Vella, which was humming with activity even though it was almost one in the morning. She recognized the Grand Hotel and thought again about the famous bar downstairs, where so many movie scenes had been filmed. She had a sudden urge to see it. “Stop here. Halt,” she said. She paid the driver with her credit card since she had no cash and went into the old hotel.
The bar was dark, but there were no barriers to get into the room. She looked one way and then another, the slipped through a hallway that led to the bar. She had to watch where she stepped because it there was so little light, but she located the opening to the back of the bar. There was a half-height door blocking access.
Her heart raced as she pressed it, to see if it was locked. It was.
“Bummer,” she muttered, eyes narrowing in concentration. It was only as high as her upper thigh. She could do this. Her heart raced and she felt like a school girl, a naughty school girl, as she lifted her leg over the short door and then heaved her body onto the other side.
She was giggling, scared and excited. She ducked down, not wanting to be seen.
She’d broken into a closed bar in the middle of the night.
Now what?
“Let’s have a drink,” she suggested to herself.
She deserved a drink, after a day like today. She was already back on the road to self-destruction, so why shouldn’t she cap off the day with some serious drinking?
She’d allowed herself to be screwed by a man that had screwed her and left her before. She thought of her mother, and that motivated her even more. She’d suffered so much after learning of her mother’s demise because their last words to each other had been so harsh and she’d cut her mother out of her life. The guilt that she’d suffered for rejecting her mother’s overtures in the months before she’d been presumably killed had taken her down a dark, dark hole. All that guilt had been for naught because her mother hadn’t been dead. She’d just been playing some game again, trying to make herself famous, trying to avoid responsibility when Joan had needed her most.
Decision made, she rubbed her hands together and her mouth watered in anticipation as she stood up to reach for the bottle of Glenlevit sitting on an upper shelf. The glass was cold, the shape of the bottle familiar. Her fingers gripped the side as she slowly slid it off the shelf. It was full and heavy, and she almost dropped it. “Whoops,” she said with a nervous giggle.
The sounds of voices murmuring out in the lobby made her hurry back into a kneeling position. She was breathing hard, clutching her precious bottle to her bosom as she waited for the voices and footsteps to fade away.
When the coast was clear, she placed the bottle carefully onto the floor and, using the counter for support, heaved herself back up but kept her head and shoulder’s ducked down in a crouch. If she was going to start drinking again, she wanted to do it right.
Her eyes had adjusted to the dark so she selected a high-ball glass, found the ice and scooped out enough to fill half of her glass. The noise set her teeth on edge and she paused to make sure no one had noticed before continuing. Walking on hands and knees she moved over to the drink nozzle bank. It was too dark to read what each one was for, so she tested them, squirting a little liquid onto her fingers and tasting it. She tasted a cola beverage, a ginger ale, club soda, and finally what she was looking for. Tonic.
She added tonic to her glass, leaving plenty of room for the gin, and sat back on the floor cross-legged with the Bombay Sapphire between her legs.
“Here goes nothing,” she said as she unscrewed the cap, and tipped over the heavy bottle.
Her arms shook, and some of the gin splashed onto her legs. She didn’t care. She took a deep breath and tried again, this time filling her glass to the rim. Fumes of alcohol blossomed into the air, filling her senses. Joan breathed in the familiar, welcoming scent, the mixture of fine gin and tonic. Gin and tonic – it had always her favorite. She could drink them all night long, one after the other.
All she had to do was lift it to her lips.
A voice in the back of her head tried to tell her, that it wasn’t too late – Put it down, step away from the drink. Don’t do it – but the voice was weak and she ignored it.
Still, there was something stopping her from taking that first sip.
“Lime!” she said, as she put her glass down and scrambled to her hands and knees again to search out the final ingredient. She found the refrigerator, and a bowl full of cut limes and brought them back to her place on the floor.
This time, with her limes, easy access to the ice and the bottle in front of her, she had nothing else that would slow her down. The voice of reason came back, shrill and desperate in the back of her mind, one last plea for salvation.
Another voice was filling her head, drowning it out. Her mother’s voice. The last time she’d spoken with her mother, the big fight that had caused the rift between them.
She had already sensed her addiction issues were getting out of hand, and she wanted to leave the land of temptation – the decadent, partying world of fashion. She’d tried to tell her mother that she wanted to quit modeling, that she wanted to do something else with her life, she just wasn’t sure what. Her mother had been dead set against it.
“I hope you don’t take offense, but darling you’re not smart enough to do anything else. Your asset is your beauty. Stay in modeling for the fame and money, darling, and use it to land a rich husband. Then you won’t need another career. Trust me, it’s your best path to happiness.”
Joan lifted her glass into the air, toasting Annabelle Edwards. “You were wrong about that mother,” she said bitterly. “Modeling and marrying rich men have nothing on the pure pleasures of getting drunk.”
She took the first drink, savoring the comforting heat that spread from her stomach to her chest and through every cell in her body. She finished that and made another, and then another, and soon, each successive drink numbing the pain a little more until she’d forgotten that she was in pain.
She was home.
Chapter Seven
ANTONIO WAS IN HIS element. Vince had been right; these people were loaded but they knew nothing about how to play the game. By the end of the night, he’d not only made the ten-thousand he needed to pay off the mob come Monday, he’d also earned another thirty thousand on top of that. Enough to give Vince his cut and still have thousands to spare.
It was four in the morning and, despite his lack of sleep, Antonio was on top of the world when he drove his Maserati back to into the city towards hi
s hotel. He imagined how his luck would continue – Joan Edwards would be there, waiting for him. He’d wake her up with his cock, giving her what she craved, thick and slow until he couldn’t hold back the thunder.
After he came inside her he’d go down on her, his head nestled hungrily between her brown legs. He’d take his time, worshiping her pussy and her whole body with his lips, his tongue, his fingers. He’d pay homage to her clit, swelling it into a hot, vibrating nub, tonguing it and sucking on it, until screamed his name in her ecstasy.
After that, they’d shower together before he took her out for breakfast and got her back to the Torres house in time for her to start work. While she worked, he’d plan a fabulous night – the perfect dinner, perhaps a trip to a jewelry store. He’d drape her beautiful neck with a trinket that sparkled, that showed her how much she meant to him.
Antonio arrived at the hotel and drove into the underground parking garage, conscious that his vehicle could be on the watch list for the Barcelona police. He took the elevator to his floor and walked down the hallway towards his room, carrying the duffle bag stuffed with his winnings.
It occurred to him, only in that moment, that Joan might not be too happy with him for running off the way he did. How would she react when she learned that his big ‘emergency’ involved racing off to a private high-stakes poker game?
He let himself in as quietly as he could, hoping to hide the bag before waking her up, perhaps in the closet. Joan wasn’t in the unmade bed, but the door to the bathroom was partially closed and it sounded like there might be water running, so he decided to use the opportunity to stash the bag in a spot she was less likely to discover.
He got on his knees and quickly shoved the bag full of cash under the bed, then pushed it farther, so it couldn’t be seen with a casual glance.
He fixed the bedspread so it covered the bottom of the bed, then brushed himself off.
“Joan?” he said, in a sexy voice as he approached the bathroom.