Feels Like the First Time. Tawny Weber
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“No true love, Nana. I don’t have time.” Or more to the point, love didn’t have time for him. Dex had tried to fall in love, he’d really wanted to believe in the sweet myth of unconditional emotions. But love, like his childhood, had always come with a price: money, favors, connections.
Nana sniffed and stuck out her narrow chin. “Love doesn’t happen on a schedule, you know. You’d do well to find her this week, before you risk everything in this crazy scheme of yours.”
“I thought you liked gambling,” was all he said. He’d heard all the reasons his family didn’t want him to go through with his plans. Four generations of Drakes had run this hotel and it was now on his shoulders to keep it in the family. His parents would tolerate him not directly working in the building, but family tradition demanded that he help keep the business afloat in these hard economic times. Blah blah blah.
But when this vacation ended next Monday, he’d make the biggest change of his adult life. He was leaving his well-paying job at Leeton Games and putting all his resources toward starting his own company. Years of dreaming, months of planning, and it was time to make his move. A familiar mantle of nerves settled on his shoulders and Dex tried to shrug it off. After all, the money didn’t worry him much. Nor did the risk, even though it was a huge one given that the guy who’d drawn up his business plan and who was supposed to sign on as his manager had backed out, citing worries over having to start a company without being able to use Dex’s main claim to fame. His pseudonym.
But Dex had an agreement with Leeton Games. When he’d started there, the pseudonym had been his idea, but the notoriety it had built over the years had garnered the company a lot of accolades. In return for relinquishing all claims to the name and keeping silent for three years, they’d pay him enough money to give him a healthy cushion for a year to get his business going.
Dex had enough faith in his skills, his talents, to know that the computer-graphics company would take off.
But it was a damned shame his alter ego, Gandalf, had to be thrown on to the sacrificial pyre in the name of insurance.
D“ID YOU FIND Gandalf yet?” Meghan asked over the speaker-phone. Her words were impatient, her tone the equivalent of an irritated shove in the small of Zoe’s back.
Zoe paused in the act of unpacking to shake her head at the phone. “I’ve been here an hour, Meg. It’s not like the guy is going to be wearing a sign or anything. The biggest companies in video gaming have tried to find his identity for years now and failed. But you think all I have to do is saunter into the hotel and poof, there he’ll be? I’m good, but not quite that good.”
“If anyone can do it, you can,” Meghan insisted. “But you have to talk to people. You know that, right? Did you ask around or did you register then beeline to your room to hide?”
“I talked, I asked. I’m trying, okay?” Zoe’s irritated tone was in strong contrast to the underlying panic in her sister-in-law’s voice. Zoe sucked in a breath and tried for calm. “Don’t stress so much, okay? If the guy is here, I’ll find out.” Zoe recalled the twin’s assertion about Teresa Roberts, but dismissed the idea. Gandalf had to be a guy.
“What’s your first step? What’re you doing tonight?”
Zoe winced. She’d been hoping Meghan wouldn’t ask that. She hated I-told-you-so moments. Hoping to avoid this one, she talked fast. “I figured I’d hang out in my room tonight. You know, do a little online research, touch base with a few people in the industry and see if they have any leads. And I still need to figure out how to convince this guy to work for Zach once we find him. I’ve got a few ideas, but I need to polish them before I run them by Zach since it’s his company and money.”
“No,” Meghan broke in. “Wait to talk to Zach until you’ve found Gandalf.”
Zoe snickered. “Hiding this little venture, are we?”
Meghan’s huff blew through the phone, making Zoe laugh out loud. “Why aren’t you attending the reunion’s costume party tonight?” Meghan asked. That shut up Zoe’s laughter.
“You were right,” she admitted with a sigh. “Costumes are mandatory to attend the event. Dressing up in a costume that represents your career is part of the whole reunion game plan. They’ve created all these events during the week to force people to get to know each other again.” Zoe kept her As if I care to to herself, figuring Meghan would launch into her lecture again.
“You need to go.”
“No, I don’t,” Zoe argued, figuring Meghan would pitch the idea of her going in her pajamas if she left even the tiniest opening for argument.
“You do. You have to. This is the perfect way to eliminate the reunion members from your search. Just check out their costumes, right? So you have to go. And to make sure you do, I took care of everything,” Meghan said in a bossy yet begging sort of tone that pushed all Zoe’s guilt buttons. “I ordered you a costume. It should be delivered any time.”
With a sigh, Zoe expressed her reluctant gratitude as she unpacked her laptop and powered it up. Two clicks and she’d pulled up her e-mail.
“Awesome,” she exclaimed, all visions of stupid costumes fleeing from her mind.
“What? Your costume is there?” Meghan exclaimed.
Zoe grinned, pleasure surging through her as she plopped cross-legged on the bed and pulled her computer close.
“No. Even better. Dex is here.”
“What’s a Dex?”
“My lifeline to sanity,” Zoe said, leaning back onto the cushy pile of pillows as memories washed over her. “We used to hang out. He was as much of a geek as I was, totally obsessed with Dungeons and Dragons, role-playing, that kind of thing. His parents own this hotel.”
She scanned his note again and told Meghan, “I guess he’s here this week to help out. That’s how he got my e-mail addy, from the registration.”
“So what’re you going to do? Get some sexy times in? Don’t you have enough on your plate already without dishing up distractions, too?”
An image of the hottie in the lobby flashed through Zoe’s mind. That guy was all about sexy times. But Dex? She snickered. He’d been three inches shorter than her, shy to the point of stuttering and given his obsession with playing dress-up with other men, quite possibly gay. Do Dex? Hardly.
“Nah, Dex and I are just friends,” she told Meghan, avoiding the sexual distraction rebuke. After all, she was quite capable of juggling two things at once. Especially if one of them had shoulders like the guy in the lobby.
“Dex rocks,” she told Meghan. “I was bummed when we lost touch after I left school. It’ll be great to catch up with him, see what he’s been up to.”
She scanned the e-mail again, noting that he said he was visiting. That meant he’d left town, too. They’d have a lot of show-and-tell to share.
“Just don’t lose sight of why you’re there,” Meghan chided. Then she started reiterating suggestions on how to find Gandalf. Zoe listened with half an ear as she did a Web search, trying to find out what Dex had been up to the past ten years.
A knock sounded. She set the laptop aside and told Meghan to hold on as she went to answer the door. The bellboy handed her a large box with a wicked grin. Zoe glanced at the label, Dressed to Thrill and rolled her eyes.
“Costume party,” she told the snickering deliveryman.
“Uh-huh,” he said as he pocketed his tip and sauntered away.
Zoe wrinkled her nose at his retreating back, wanting to point out that if she was in the market for thrills, they’d hardly show up in a brown cardboard box. Before she could, though, she heard Meghan’s shout over the phone.
“Is it there? Is that the costume?”
Looking