Lucky Ride (The Lucky O'Toole Vegas Adventure Series Book 8) Read online

  LUCKY RIDE

  Lucky O’Toole Vegas Adventure

  Book Eight

  DEBORAH COONTS

  TABLE OF CONTENTS

  CHAPTER ONE

  CHAPTER TWO

  CHAPTER THREE

  CHAPTER FOUR

  CHAPTER FIVE

  CHAPTER SIX

  CHAPTER SEVEN

  CHAPTER EIGHT

  CHAPTER NINE

  CHAPTER TEN

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  CHAPTER THIRTEEN

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  CHAPTER NINETEEN

  CHAPTER TWENTY

  CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

  NOVELS IN THE LUCKY O’TOOLE SERIES

  LUCKY O’TOOLE NOVELLAS

  OTHER BOOKS BY DEBORAH COONTS

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  COPYRIGHT

  CHAPTER ONE

  “ARE you my mother?”

  The girl standing in front of my desk could’ve been me—half a lifetime ago. Fresh-faced, a bit pale, and scared, she was tall to the point her shoulders stooped in teenage mortification. Her jeans had that designer distressed look, but without the designer price—a hard life, hard-earned. I pegged her at fifteen or a young sixteen. The raw scrape on her forehead overlying a blooming bruise made her look older.

  With trouble written all over her, she needed a hug, but I didn’t think that was what she was looking for, although I’d willingly comply. Something about tired children wandering into my office in the deepest, darkest part of the night hit every raw nerve of righteous indignation I had.

  With that opening line and her straight-man delivery, I was sure she was kidding, so I kept my tone light. “You could do far better than me.” I thought maybe I’d get a hint of a smile, or something. I was wrong. Dead serious stared back at me. “Okay, I’ll play it straight, but that’s not a question I’m used to getting in the middle of the night. Well, not ever. First time, really. But as an opener, it’s a killer.” I refocused on my preparations to leave—after a very long day, home called. Actually, a bed and a hot French chef called and I had no strength left to resist.

  “Not a question I use on everybody,” the girl monotoned it, her expression serious to the point of pinched pain.

  The idea was ludicrous, so I gave serious its due. “Your mother? Me?” Each word laden with sarcasm, I hoped she got my point—she wasn’t so much barking up the wrong tree as in the wrong forest altogether.

  Heck, I wasn’t even close to abandoning my childish ways. And that whole maternal thing…not even a tick-tock of the biological clock. No one who knew me would use parental as an adjective to describe me unless they were going for a cheap laugh.

  Thankfully, I kept those shortcomings to myself. Running on fumes, with a short fuse and a penchant for semi-mixing metaphors when tired, I considered my silence an epic win.

  The girl looked hungry and scared.

  Been there myself; I knew the signs.

  If she wanted a meal and a soft bed, all she had to do was give me a hint. To her, asking for it would be impossible. I knew that, too.

  Her strong voice and the tilt to her chin were straight out of my playbook under the chapter “Offense is the Best Defense,” which made me feel a kinship. Though had she asked, I could’ve told her it was rarely the best approach—except when dealing with my mother, Mona.

  Mona was the exception to every rule.

  I weighed how to handle the young woman in front of me. She seemed determined to make me work for what she wanted. Not the way to my soft underbelly. But her waifish act was clanging every rescuer bell I had.

  Which always got me into trouble.

  What can I say? I’m my mother’s daughter—but don’t ever expect me to admit it, like out loud or anything. When I’d finally admitted it to myself, I’d felt like leaping from a tall building. If I had to admit it to someone else, I’d take a running start.

  With a sigh, I leaned back in my desk chair and gave her my full attention. “I would’ve remembered had I had a child. I’m sorry.”

  She absorbed that without a flinch. “Doesn’t mean you wouldn’t lie about it.” She tilted her chin higher.

  That rankled—it shouldn’t, she didn’t know me. Clearly, this wasn’t about me; it was about her. But her insinuation felt personal. I squeezed my eyes shut, reaching for perspective and my ever-elusive self-control. I opened my eyes—she hadn’t disappeared. “A decent person wouldn’t lie about a thing like that.”

  She gave a snort. “Right. Don’t know any of those decent types.” She looked me over. “You one?”

  “Most days, or I’d like to think so at least.” Decency was a dying art, along with civility. I owed her both. My name is Lucky O’Toole, and as the Vice President of Customer Relations for the Babylon Group, the holding company for a couple of major Vegas Strip properties as well as satellite properties as close as downtown Vegas and as far away as Macau, solving problems was not only the beating heart of my being but also of my job. The girl clearly had a problem.

  “But perhaps I’m a bit delusional and decency eludes me. Anyway, you came here for a reason. Want to tell me about it?” Curiosity had a bad rap. But I wasn’t a cat, so it probably wouldn’t be lethal. Yes, she had me at the “mother” line; I admit it. “You do know I’m not your mother, right?” Why did I need her to believe me? There was something about her… “You want to tell me why you’re here?”

  She met my eyes for a moment then stared at the ground as if wishing a hole would open and swallow her. A hint of pink rose in her cheeks. “No.” She shifted as if moving the load that rested on her shoulders. “I mean, yes, I want to tell you about it; but no, I know you’re not my mother. Sometimes you just want something so bad…” As her voice hitched, she looked at me through too-big eyes. Then she shook her head as if shaking away a dream.

  I knew all about that, too.

  She dropped the combative posture but retained the attitude—a teenager to the core. “Maybe you’re not my mother, but you know her.”

  A different tack; a broader gene pool. “I know a lot of people.” Even some who would abandon a kid—not something that gave me a warm fuzzy. They say you are the average of the five people you hang out with the most. That didn’t give me a warm fuzzy either.

  Vegas was full of folks who would do the less-than-honorable things for honorable reasons...or less than honorable reasons…and the trick was figuring out who would do which. My job description included rubbing shoulders with both types all day, every day. This being Vegas, where the game was paramount and winning essential, I probably handled more of the less-than-honorable types than the other, although I didn’t keep score. Some of their situational ethics were bound to rub off and damage my delicate psyche. Would that be a workplace injury?

  As I pondered the limits of Worker’s Comp, I motioned to a chair in front of the desk. “Why don’t you sit?”

  She ignored me.

  A kid. Alone. In need of a good meal…or several…and desperate enough to play the mother card. She was so not what I needed. Not now. Not today—a very young New Year’s Day, but growing older by the second.

  Jet-lagged and over-amped from chasing a couple of killers in China. Still reeling from too much birthday. A hotel, my own for once, so new, and a punch list so long. All of it made me feel like moving and not leaving a forwarding address, so I wasn’t in the market for another problem, another dose of the downside of life.
r />   But she was what I got. “What’s your mother’s name?”

  The kid pulled her shoulders back and stood tall. “I don’t know.”

  “You don’t know.” Of course she didn’t. At an impasse, I stared at her, cataloging our situation. Well, actually, my situation. Of all the places she could’ve gone to for help, she wandered far to find me.

  Why me?

  And, here in my new office, I wasn’t easy to find. The space still looked Spartan—I’d yet to put my personal stamp on it. What was that about?

  Truth be told, while I reveled in having my own hotel, Cielo, I missed my old office in the Babylon. I missed my staff—my chosen family. Hell, I even missed my foul-mouthed bird, Newton. Well, okay, the bird, not so much.

  Such is change: something lost for something gained. Sometimes I wondered if it was worth the price.

  Nervousness roiled my stomach as my question lingered: Why me?

  “I think you know more than you’re telling me; otherwise, why would you work so hard to find me?” She looked so heartbroken I took the sting out of my tone. “Stories and dreams are dangerous things. Once you let them out, they aren’t yours alone anymore,” I said, apropos of everything. “I get that. But you’ve got to give me something if you want me to help you.”

  My words jarred something loose inside her. Her face cleared as she pulled out one fist that had been stuffed in a pocket. In her hand, she clutched a scrap of paper, which she thrust at me. “I’m telling you the truth. I don’t know my mother’s name, but here’s a picture of her. She looks like you but…smaller.” The girl colored at the not-so-subtle slight.

  At a fully fleshed-out six feet, I didn’t think I needed to point out that everyone was smaller than me.

  Finally, she lowered herself to perch on the edge of the chair in front of my desk.

  I wanted to help her. Hell, I wanted to help everybody. Like limp flesh, my personality hung on the steel framework of a hero complex. Give me a problem, someone in need, and I’d dive in without looking. The results were consistently spectacular if not always successful.

  What was that definition of stupidity? Doing the same thing but expecting a different result?

  I was living proof…although right now, dead on my feet, the living part was in question.

  As I took the photo from her outstretched hand, I didn’t look at it. I kept my eyes on the girl’s face and tried to shake a nervous feeling.

  Why me?

  Still afraid to meet my eye—disappointment was a devastating fear—she stuffed her hand back in her pocket and glared over my shoulder with the teenage I-don’t-give-a-fuck-but-actually-I-do-but-I-don’t-want-you-to-know-it look. Of course, most days I lived in the same headspace, so I got it, although lack of character, not age, was my excuse.

  I took a deep breath and stepped off the ledge.

  The photo had been torn in half. The tear looked old, the edges yellowed. Only one person showed. A young woman, short shorts and a halter top, hands on tiny hips, legs a mile long, and sunglasses that I’d bet hid a come-hither look.

  I knew that look.

  “Wow.” The word escaped on all the breath I had.

  You know her.

  No shit.

  Mona.

  My mother.

  CHAPTER TWO

  “YOU do know her.” Disappointment fled from the girl’s face, replaced by hope…and fear.

  The hope of a dream, the fear of it shattering—I knew that, too.

  Genetic bonding could explain the whole sympatica thing. Stars whirled in front of my eyes. I felt a little woozy.

  Mona.

  I struggled to find enough air to inflate words. “Know her?” At this moment, that struck me as odd. Did I know her? All of her or just the part I’d experienced? I would’ve carried that thought further, asking myself if we could ever really know someone, but that sounded like a lame excuse Judge Judy would eviscerate. Was she still on TV belittling those who came to her for help? I didn’t know, so I let it lie.

  Give it a dose of panic and my brain does weird things.

  The girl’s posture had gone rigid—paralyzed with too many emotions to catalog or counter.

  Memories blindsided me as I stared at the younger version of my mother. She’d been fifteen when she’d had me. Was the photo before or after? Hard to tell, but my first memory of her mirrored the version in the photo.

  “Who is she?” The girl’s voice wavered. “You know her, I can tell.”

  I snorted at the incongruity of all of it—my day, my life, this moment…all of it. “Yeah, I know her. Most days I want to kill her.” Today was one of them, but I left that part out. I put the photo on the desk between us and pushed it back across toward her with a forefinger, as far away from me as I could get it.

  She vibrated with need like a puppy. “Who—”

  I cut her off. “My turn.” She started to argue. “If you want my help, I get to ask the questions.” I sounded in control, proving once again that bullshit artist should be the top skill listed on my résumé. Emotions surged. Logical thought shattered. Yet, my voice remained calm, surprising the hell out of me.

  Her shoulders came up around her ears. She lowered her chin. But that was all the fight I got. Good thing because I was loaded for bear. If she was playing me, attacking my family…

  Since my brain had gone offline, flooded with all kinds of neurotransmitters all shouting for flight rather than fight, I started with the obvious. “Where did you get this picture?” Photos of my mother as a kid weren’t easy to come by. Mona was really picky about that. I’d never understood why. Oh, she had her limitations, but vanity wasn’t one of them. A fault, yes. A limitation? Not so much.

  The girl shifted, leaning all the way back in the chair, which almost swallowed her. Her chin rested on her chest. “I’ve had it forever.”

  “Define forever.”

  “Long as I can remember.”

  “Who gave it to you?”

  “My grandmother.” She softened a bit when she mentioned her grandmother.

  “She raised you?”

  The girl nodded.

  “What did she tell you?”

  “That the girl in the photo was my mother.”

  “Curiously, I got that. I’ll admit to foolish, but not stupid.” Snark threatened to override civility—for me a constant struggle. “Anything else?”

  The girl looked as out to sea as I felt. “Only to look for her in Vegas and that she wouldn’t be as bad as she seemed.”

  I had to chuckle at that. “Oh, I think your grandmother was a tad optimistic.” But she’d pegged Mona all right. Maybe she really had known my mother. And, if so, maybe she could shed some light. “Does your grandmother know where you are?”

  “She…died.” Sadness tugged at the corners of her mouth, turning them down.

  “When?”

  “Two weeks? I’m not sure.” Her eyes glistened when she looked at me—a quick look, just enough to see the hurt there. “Life’s been...”

  Her pain sucker-punched me, taking my breath. I didn’t have much family but the ones I had were all still here, although the Big Boss wasn’t recovering from the gunshot as quickly as we all had expected. A shadow of worry drifted across my heart. Loss scared me. To lose the Big Boss… I cleared my throat, constricted by emotion. “Do you have anyone else?”

  “Only the lady in the photograph, if you tell me who she is.” The girl clung to the frayed end of a short rope.

  At least she held on. My rope shredded, dropping me into an emotional free fall.

  The girl looked tired and worried, a bit angry, and a lot lonely, but she also radiated scared. I couldn’t shake that. She was afraid of something. I knew it like I knew so much else about the road she’d walked. Everything about her pulled me back to a place in time where I walked in her shoes and I didn’t like having to relive the whole uncertainty of it all.

  For a young woman alone, danger lurked in every shadow. I knew exactly whe
re she was coming from—I didn’t like that either. Too bad the past was the only immutable in life—I’d love to rewrite mine…and hers. But aren’t we the product of our pasts, tempered and molded through experience?

  Damn.

  Maybe, just maybe, the girl was afraid of being alone and I was reading too much into all of this. She’d said two weeks since her grandmother had passed. Perhaps all this was as straightforward as it seemed and she was reeling rather than calculating.

  “I need to know whether you’re telling the truth or not. Look at it from my point of view. It wouldn’t be too hard for someone to get hold of a photo and come waltzing in here with a grand story.” A bit of an overstatement since it was Mona we were talking about, but the girl didn’t know that. I moved from behind the desk to sit in the chair next to her. As I did so, I caught my reflection in a mirror someone had hung on the wall despite my best intentions to avoid decorating. Limp brown hair, wan skin taut with worry, high cheekbones—as Mona said, my only real asset—and blue eyes bloodshot and saucered with emotion. Curiously, I looked normal…at least for me.

  I probably should worry about that, but, right now, larger worries demanded my attention.

  Had Mona really walked away from this girl…her daughter?

  Why? What would make a mother do that?

  Actually, I knew the answer to that.

  Mona had abandoned me when I’d become a burden. How she’d bungled it had left deep scars, but this wasn’t about me. And at least I had answers about my past if not complete understanding.

  But what about this one?

  So many questions—paths in a forest that led nowhere.

  Reaching across, I squeezed the girl’s arm. “I know you’re scared and a bit out of your element. I get that. Been there myself. Curiously, at about your age.”

  “Not like this.” The myopia of youth. Each one convinced they were the only ones ever to experience the pain of their existence.

  “I’ll help you, but you’ve got to be straight with me. If you don’t tell me all that you know, this whole thing is going to be hard to piece together.”