I shrugged, grinning. “You mentioned it once when you were watering Frank,” I said.
She stopped on the steps. “And you remembered?”
“I pay attention.”
She set a hand on my arm. “You do.”
Two simple words. But they sent a charge through me as she wrapped her fingers around my forearm. The combo did me in, and a new wave of desire rushed through me. I locked eyes with her, and for a few seconds, she seemed to lean in, to inch closer.
Were we on the cusp of another almost kiss?
Maybe it would be more than almost this time.
It felt like that with the way she stared, how her breath seemed to ghost across her lips.
Shoes clicked on the steps.
“We’re closing in thirty minutes,” the ticket taker at the entrance said in a monotone, breaking the mood.
And that was that. No kiss, almost or otherwise.
“We’ll be speedy,” I said, and we walked inside the stone building and strolled first through exhibits on famous “made men,” both in the mob and popular culture, perusing photos of some of the most notorious Mafiosi over the last one hundred years, like John Gotti. Next, we checked out an installation of movie posters.
“Is there anything better than a mob movie?” I asked, and Elle nodded in perfect agreement.
“Love them. Casino. Epic. The Departed. Fantastic. Road to Perdition. Chilling.”
“Eight Men Out. Proof that the mob had its hands in everything. Even fixing the World Series,” I said.
“Everything,” she said, enunciating each syllable as she echoed my sentiment. We stopped at a huge framed poster of Ray Liotta, Robert De Niro, and Joe Pesci. She pointed. “Goodfellas. Best mob movie ever.”
“Best closing lines ever too,” I added, and we turned to each other, speaking in unison. “I’m an average nobody. I get to live the rest of my life like a schnook.”
I raised my hand, and we knocked fists. That sent a charge through me, knocking me back to the lust zone. Hell, maybe this hanging out as friends would be tougher than I thought it’d be.
But maybe not for Elle.
“Isn’t it amazing,” she said, “how being a regular joe was Ray Liotta’s worst nightmare? He dreaded not being a gangster, and somehow you felt for him when it happened. You sympathized with his plight as a regular schnook,” she said, her voice rising in excitement.
I gestured to the poster for The Godfather. “I don’t even know what it is about the mob. They do horrible things and live a life of crime, and yet sometimes we root for them in movies. It makes no logical sense.”
“Look!”
She grabbed my arm and tugged me to a series of sepia-tinted photographs of Vegas through the years, highlighting famous moments in the city’s history and the role of the mob in each milestone. What would she look like in one of those old-time flapper dresses?
Or out of it . . .
Okay, fine. That was on me.
I could not let my dirty thoughts wander every time she touched me the slightest bit.
Focus, Colin, focus.
“It’s just crazy to think how much of this town was built on crime,” she said in awe as we stared at a photo of the Flamingo Hotel when it opened in 1946. “‘Operated by noted mobster Bugsy Siegel,’” she said, reading the plaque.
I tapped the wall next to an image of the Sands Casino in the ’60s, a home base for Frank Sinatra and his Rat Pack that was owned by a New York mob man. “And it spread far and wide. Some of the biggest hotels in the city were owned and operated by this wild combination of Mormon businessmen and the mob, so they could have a legitimate appearance on the outside, and money laundering and street muscle on the inside.”
“The whole notion that there is this underbelly of crime everywhere, all around us, blows my mind,” she said, pressing her fingertips to her forehead and miming an explosion.
I nodded in agreement. “Handouts, corrupt cops, men on the take, informants, and guys in suits circulating around town every day, weaving in and out of casinos. Looking like me, or like one of my brothers, or just anybody.”
She arched an eyebrow. “Is this your way of telling me you’re in the mob?”
I affected a wise-guy smirk. “Dollface, it’s time you knew the truth. You want to know who I really am?” I pointed to an interactive screen on the far wall that read Mob Nickname Generator.
“Ooh, I’m finally gonna learn my gentleman friend’s real name.” She rubbed her palms together as we reached the screen.
I tapped it, and we chuckled at the rubric the screen asked us to fill in: name your racket, with options like money laundering, casino skimming, and blackmail; what’s your role, such as capo, soldier, business associate, or corrupt judge; and what is your mob era, with choices like Prohibition, the Swinging ’60s, and the modern era.
Elle went first, entering her picks, then reading her status report. “Ooh, I’m a mob girlfriend. Men buy me things, and who am I to turn them down? They parade me around town and take me to dinner, and my name is Elle ‘Moneybags’ Mariano.” She snorted. “Ha. I wish.”
“My turn,” I said, and together we decided I’d be a corrupt politician, and I read the results aloud. “I just take what’s offered to me, okay? Nothin’ wrong with that. The mob slips me a few things now and then—some cash, a free meal, a bottle of my favorite bootleg whiskey. What’s the big deal? I’m Colin ‘Scotty’ Sloan.”
She tapped my chest, and I braced myself. “Colin Scotty Sloan, you are one handsome fella,” she said in an over-the-top floozy accent. Her proximity made an instant impression on certain parts of my anatomy.
Maybe I was a bad friend.
But I had to be a good one, because the woman wasn’t ready, so all we had was this—playing, flirting in some small fashion.
“I’m gonna take you out for that fancy meal you deserve, Moneybags,” I said with a wink. “Show you off as mine.”
And a wish.
How I would love to show her off as mine.
“Oh, I like that, Scotty Sloan. I like it very much.”
But that wasn’t in the cards tonight, and I had to wonder if it ever would be.
Or what it would take to get her there.
When we left, I walked her to her car. “I had a really great time,” she said, and her voice was soft, sweet.
But with a hint of resignation.
As if a great time was all she’d ever allow herself.
“Good. You deserve it, you know?” I said, but it was a question, because I wanted her to know. She hadn’t told me everything. She hadn’t told me much at all about how her son’s father died, but I knew he’d battled addiction too. Battled and lost. Part of me wondered if that was in the back of her mind with me.
“I don’t know if anyone deserves anything,” she said, a little sad now, wistful. “Well, of course you don’t deserve to have lost your dad.”
“And you don’t deserve to have gone through some crazy shit either. Like with your ex.”
“But I chose him,” she said, her voice tight, strained. “I chose Sam.”
“Elle,” I said softly. “Don’t beat yourself up.”
Her voice was tight with rebuke. Self-rebuke. “I made the wrong choice.”