Rarities Unlimited 02 - Running Scared

Halloween tart in black velvet and neon orange. The most photogenic of the Strip’s gambling glitterati milled around the champagne fountain and dipped black crystal glasses into the fizzy orange wine. Gail Silverado, sole owner of Wildest Dream Inc., was famous for her yearly Halloween bash. It started loud and just got better. By 3:00 a.m. the party had developed a really shrill edge that would just get worse every half hour until dawn, when the bubbly fountain would finally run dry.
    But that was several hours away. With a smile brighter than the shimmering faux pearl beads that outlined her figure in loving detail, Gail held her tenth glass of champagne—one sip from each, no more, no less—and looked at her watch without appearing to. She still had a few more minutes before she would be called away on business.
    Even if a meeting hadn’t been arranged, she would have wanted to get away. The high, sexy heels she was wearing had been designed for a younger woman, one who hadn’t spent too many of her fifty-odd years strutting her well-kept butt in front of whichever man could afford it. Her feet were screaming.
    Her smile never wavered beneath the exotic, pearlescent feathers that framed her face like loving fingers. There was too much young ass in Las Vegas for a woman over thirty ever to let down her guard. But even if she had been playing against a field of dogs, Gail would have gone through the same arduous workout and surgical schedule that she did now. She needed to look fifteen years younger than she was. Twenty would be better.
    “Shane!” she called. Her smile tipped into the megawatt category. “I was afraid you wouldn’t come.”
    With a wave, Shane slipped through a costumed throng of devils, some Hell’s Angels—who may or may not have been in costume—more “showgirls” than had ever pranced down the Lido’s runway, and some truly reptilian aliens with heads that would have made Medusa turn and run.
    “I should have Carl throw you out,” Gail said to Shane when he came to stand beside her, but her approving look said otherwise.
    “Why sic your head of security on me?” Shane wasn’t quite shouting, but it was a near thing. The volume of the party had reached frenetic. A lot of people relished it. He wasn’t one of them. He was here for business, not pleasure, and all that noise got in the way. Almost shouting just to have a conversation wasn’t his idea of fun.
    “Because, honeylove,” Gail said, hands on her narrow waist, “you’re not in costume.”
    Shane looked down as though surprised to find himself in the same leather jacket, open-collar cream shirt, and black slacks he had worn to the meeting at Rarities. “I’m in costume.”
    “As what?”
    “Normal twenty-first-century male of the species Homo sapiens sapiens .”
    Gail laughed. “Point to you. The last thing anyone would accuse you of being is normal.”
    He looked over the crowd with a practiced eye. No matter how unlikely their costumes, he easily spotted the security guards. They were the only ones not drinking. It was the same upstairs, on the catwalks hidden behind ceiling grilles and one-way mirrors surrounding light fixtures. Security people walked overhead and manned each Eye in the Sky while the cameras worked. At the Wildest Dream, as at other big casinos, every bit of the action was captured and put into digital storage. Though the records were accessed as bytes on minidrives more often than on videotape, everyone still referred to the records as “tapes.”
    “Great crowd. Who’s on God duty tonight?” Shane asked idly, referring to the security people upstairs.
    “Whoever lost the toss.”
    Gail must have signaled a server, because one left a hole in the crowd getting to Shane to offer him whatever his heart desired. He waved off the leggy girl whose breasts bobbed like waterlogged coconuts above her low-cut neckline. Other than an eyeful, Shane couldn’t decide what her costume was supposed to represent. Chartreuse and silver kitty-cat, maybe.
    And maybe not.
    “You’re not going to stay long enough to eat or drink anything, is that it?” Gail asked when he waved off the server.
    “I just got in from L.A. I’m way too tired for your crowd.”
    She didn’t believe it for a second. She knew just how much energy and stamina the man had. What she wanted to know was how to get him back in her bed again. It had been too many years.
    At first she had thought it was the age difference that