Page 149 of Kiss Heaven Goodbye

‘So what are you suggesting?’ she asked playfully.

‘That we move in here together when it’s completed. What do you say?’

He slid his hand up the back of her T-shirt and pulled her closer, rubbing his crotch against hers.

‘Not here, Julian,’ she whispered, glancing around.

‘Why not here?’ He smiled, now pushing his hand up her skirt. ‘No one’s looking. Listen – silence.’

He was right. No sight of anyone, anything around them, except the looming shape of the house. And no sound, particularly no lively children’s chatter from the back seat. It was strange, but at the same time oddly liberating.

‘Grace, relax,’ he murmured into her ear. ‘Remember you’re not just a mother. You’re a woman too.’

And as he slipped his fingers inside her panties, feeling her wetness, dipping inside her, she groaned in pleasure. And she knew she had finally come home.

49

March 2005

From the twenty-fifth floor, Las Vegas lost some of its glamour. Standing at the window of the Ash Corp. Vegas office, Miles could see the whole of the Strip and much of it looked like a building site. At night, when the neon and the funfair fantasies of the castles and the pirate ships were all lit up, Las Vegas still looked like a day-glo rollercoaster of fun and sin, but in the harsh desert sunshine, you could see behind the façades and hotel fronts and it just looked dusty and a little forlorn.

‘So where are we up to with buying the Aladdin?’

He turned back to face Michael Marshall, the American attorney he had appointed to oversee Ash Corp.’s commercial property interests, including the acquisition of a Las Vegas casino. The lawyer was a serious-looking man in his thirties with a straight nose and dark eyes.

‘I’ll be frank, Miles. I don’t think it’s going to happen,’ he said.

Miles frowned. Since he had taken over his father’s company, he had become used to the marketing speak and double-talk of the business world. Everything was ‘in the pipeline’ or being ‘run up the flagpole’. They hid behind bland clichés either because they didn’t know what they were doing, or because they didn’t want to tell the boss that they couldn’t give him what he wanted.

‘That’s not what I want to hear, Michael,’ said Miles.

‘I appreciate that,’ said Marshall.‘But the facts are clear. Las Vegas is essentially a closed shop of Nevada-based investors creating a front for a number of well-connected syndicates and individuals, the biggest of which being the Mormons, who own most of the land out here. In short, the people who own Vegas don’t want you here – and you can sympathise.’

‘Sympathise?’ said Miles. ‘Whose side are you on, Marshall?’

The young lawyer gave a slight smile.‘It’s nothing personal, Miles. It’s pure economics. Why allow an international player of Ash Corp.’s size and financial muscle on to the Strip? You’re only going to take money away from them, especially given your own personal reputation for reinventing the wheel.’

Miles nodded. It was true: he was becoming a victim of his own success. His overhaul of the Ash Corp. hotel group had been a triumph. He had sold off the dead wood, then broken the remaining hotels down into groups – prestige, business and affordable – rebranded them and given all a complete refit from the bathroom tiles to the entertainment systems. It had cost the company hundreds of millions, but it had been a shrewd investment. Now people knew what they were getting from an Ash Corp. hotel: quality and value for money, even if they were staying in the James hotel chain at the budget end of the scale. At the top end of the market, the hotels were winning awards for unparalleled service and the interiors were being featured in design magazines. In the space of a year, Miles had doubled capacity and trebled the turnover. No wonder the Las Vegas establishment were reluctant to allow him free rein in their own personal playground.

‘OK, so what’s the big stumbling block?’ he asked, sitting down at his desk.

‘Two things: construction and licensing. The gaming commission are raising questions about Ash Corp.’s experience in this sector.’

‘We have gaming experience,’ said Miles. ‘Don’t they know we own The Laing?’ He knew it was a weak argument. The Laing was an old-school gentlemen’s casino in Mayfair catering to high-rolling Middle Eastern sheikhs and the Euro-aristo circuit. It was chic and discreet and it made huge profits, but it was a world away from the large-scale walk-in casinos of Las Vegas.

‘With respect, The Laing is a very different animal to say Caesars Palace, or the MGM. It’s rather like comparing Le Gavroche to Pizza Hut.’

‘So we buy in experience,’ said Miles. ‘We poach someone from Caesars or Steve Wynn’s outfit.’

Marshall nodded. ‘Already done. We have the general manager from Mandalay Bay to head up the team when we’re ready to move and he’s agreed to come on board as a consultant when we go in front of the gaming commission.’

‘Good. I don’t want to let this one slip through the net.’

The US was in the middle of a huge economic boom, but history told Miles that where there was a boom, bust wouldn’t be too far behind. But a Las Vegas casino was as close as you could get to a recession-proof business: when times got hard, people wanted to gamble.

‘How important is this to you, Miles?’ said Marshall. ‘Because it’s going to take some, uh, shall we say, fancy footwork.’

Miles liked this man. He had only met Marshall twice before: once to sign off on his appointment, once to thrash out the initial approach to the gaming commission, but it was clear he was exactly the kind of man Miles needed in his organisation. Someone entirely focused on getting the job done, overcoming the obstacles by whatever means necessary. He also liked him on another level: Marshall was good-looking and energetic. Miles briefly allowed himself to imagine a scenario, then pushed it away. Back to business, he smiled to himself as the lawyer brought out a file.