“Wow. Why?”
“Come in the kitchen. Have a beer. I’ll tell you all about it.” She pulled on his hand again and that time he went with her.
In the breakfast nook, in front of the bow window that looked out on her postage stamp of a patio and the cinder-block wall enclosing it, she pushed him down into a chair. “Bud?”
“Sounds good.”
So she got him his beer, serving it up straight from the bottle, the way he liked it. She explained about Fletcher as she went to work on the salad. “Fletcher Bravo wants me to open a KinderWay at Impresario for the children of selected employees—and more specifically for his soon-to-be five-year-old daughter.”
Danny took a long pull off his beer. “You never mentioned anything about Fletcher Bravo before….”
She sent him a look as she grabbed a big knife suitable for chopping lettuce. “Okay. I confess. I’ve been in denial.”
“Denial about …?”
She steadied the head of lettuce on the cutting board and hacked at it with her knife. “Three times I’ve met with Fletcher’s underlings. Each time I’ve told them, politely but firmly, that I’m not interested.” She set the knife aside and scooped up the lettuce she’d chopped, sparing another glance at Danny as she dropped the greens in the salad bowl. “Fletcher wouldn’t believe me. I guess that’s not especially surprising. He didn’t get where he is by giving up without a fight. Finally he asked to meet with me personally. So I met with him. Today.” She grabbed a smaller knife and went to work on the radishes, cutting the ends off, slicing them into the bowl on top of the lettuce.
“Wait a minute. You turned him down today—and so he sent you jewelry?”
She paused in midslice, glancing his way, shaking her head. “Doesn’t make a lot of sense, does it? To tell you the truth, I still don’t think he believes that when I said no, I meant it.”
“Cleo?”
“What?” She looked toward him again.
He was picking at the label on his bottle of beer. “I gotta say. If one of the Bravos came to me with an offer to expand, I’d jump at it. The Bravos are big-time. The real deal. Maybe you ought to think twice. This could be a good move for you.”
“But I told you. I don’t want to do it. I don’t like the idea of putting a KinderWay in a casino.”
“He wants it in the casino? Wouldn’t that be illegal or something?”
“All right,” she amended, “it would be off the hotel, but still, it’s not the kind of location I had in mind.” His expression said he wasn’t buying. She set down her paring knife. “Okay. Say it.”
“Well, it’s only … this is Vegas, you know? Most of the people who live here work for the resorts and casinos. Those folks have kids, too. And their kids need preschools. And I think, because of how you grew up, you sometimes want to pretend that this is a different town than it really is.”
What could she say? He was absolutely right. “Okay. You’ve got a point….”
He said it again. “This town is what it is.”
She kidded him, “Go ahead. Make me face reality.”
His sweet smile lit up his face again. “You’re welcome.”
She flicked on the faucet long enough to rinse her hands, then grabbed a towel and turned to lean against the counter. “This whole thing does get to me. I mean, just because a guy is some big shot around town doesn’t mean he’s always going to have things his way. If I’m not ready to expand, I’m not ready. Period.”
“But this would be on the Bravo Group’s nickel, right? You’d get a new facility and they would pay for it?”
“Yeah. So?”
“Well, that sounds like a hell of deal to me.”
“How many ways can I say I’m not ready yet?”
Danny took another pull off his beer and set it down with care. “Okay. What’s going on?”
She put a lot of attention into thoroughly drying her hands. “What do you mean?”
“You seem really … jazzed about this. Really nerved up. And angry, too.”
“Well, I am angry. I’ve told that man no four times now, including today. And what does he do? He sends me jewelry.”
Danny’s honest brown eyes held hers. “He’s after you.”
“Didn’t we already establish that?”
“I’m not talking about KinderWay right now,” Danny said. “I mean you.” Cleo had no idea what to say then, so she kept her mouth shut. Danny added, “Come on. What guy in his right mind wouldn’t be after you?”
She let out a hard breath. “Oh, Danny …”
“And why else would he be sending you jewelry?”
She couldn’t hold his gaze and found herself looking down, studying the rounded toes of her ballet flats. “It doesn’t matter. I’ll just send it back.”
“You want me to talk to this guy?”
“No.”
“You sure?”
She lifted her head and straightened her shoulders. “Yeah. I’m sure.”
“You want to … go out with him?”
“Of course not.”
Danny smiled. Slowly. “Well, then. We got no problem here, do we?”
She could never resist that smile of Danny’s. She felt the corners of her own mouth lifting in response. “You know what? You’re right. We’ve got no problem at all.” She turned, hung the towel on the rack and went back to cutting up the salad.
Danny finished his beer and helped himself to a second one. A few minutes later they sat down to eat.
After the meal, they cleaned up the kitchen, working smoothly together, two parts of a well-oiled machine. Then Cleo made popcorn and they adjourned to the living room to catch a movie on pay-per-view.
Cleo shucked off her flats and cuddled up close to Danny, enjoying the strength in his muscular arm when he draped it across her shoulders, thinking that this was a great guy and she’d been lucky—so lucky—to find someone like him.
Someone so sweet and kind, someone who understood her and was always gentle with her and who never, ever tried to boss her around. Someone true and steady and down-to-earth.
Someone totally unlike some people she could mention …
When the movie ended, as the
