Reno and Trina: In the Shadows of Love, Book 12 (2 page)

Four Days Earlier

“Well,
well,” Shaun said with a smile.
 
“Look
who just walked into these hallowed halls.”

Monty looked
up from the receipts he had been reviewing, and looked toward the
entrance.
  
Trina Gabrini was being
escorted to a table.
 
“Yeah, so?
 
She’s a regular.”

“Since
when?”

“Since
forever.
 
Since she bought that clothing
store, Champagne’s, around the corner.
 
She
comes here a lot.”

They were in
McHale’s restaurant, a quaint joint with a mainly business clientele, sitting
at the bar.
 
Shaun Connors looked Trina
Gabrini up and down as she made her way to a table across the room from where
he and Monty sat.
 
“She’s hot,” he
said.
 
“Her ass alone would be worth the
price of admission.
 
The man has taste,
I’ll give him that.
 
But is she my
taste?”
 
Shaun moved his head from side
to side, as if his opinion could go either way.
 
“She’s not my usual type, that’s for sure.
 
But I’d love to give her a try.
 
I’d love to see what the great Reno Gabrini
finds so alluring about her.”

“You saw
that magazine?” Monty asked him.
 
“Didn’t
mention me or you or none of the rest of us.
 
It was all about Reno.
 
They claim
Reno’s the most powerful man in Vegas.”

“Yeah, I
heard,” Shaun said, still staring at Trina.
 

“We’re
businessmen too,” Monty continued.
 
“What
makes him more powerful than we are?
 
I
own a piece of damn-near five casinos around this town, and I own this
restaurant when people want to get away from the noise of the Strip.
 
And you used to own a good chunk of Vegas
too, before things went south on you.
 
But they don’t even mention us.”

“Fuck’em,”
Shaun said.
 
“Who the fuck cares about
some magazine?”
 
Then he smiled.
 
“What I want to do is give that allure a
test.” His look turned hard.
 
“I want to
test it.”

Monty looked
at him.
 
“You want to test it?
 
Test what?”

“All of that
power Gabrini supposedly has.”

Monty
smiled. “That’s ridiculous.
 
How do you
test a man’s power?”

“By testing
just how much control he has over Mrs. Gabrini,” Shaun said, as he rose from
his bar seat.
 
“A man who can’t control
his own wife, and her natural lusts, is vulnerable.”

“Forget
about it, Shaunnie,” Monty warned his friend.
 
“A lady like that, you can’t come at her with some lame line.
 
You can’t come at her any kind of way.”

“I never
do,” Shaun said with a wink and a smile as he grabbed his glass of wine,
swallowed down the last gulps, then looked at himself in the mirror over the
bar.
 
He was a tall, well dressed black
man with a bald head and a well-maintained bod.
 
And great looking too, if he had to say so himself.
 
He was also younger than Gabrini by a good
decade.
 
Another advantage he intended to
exploit.
 
He straightened his tie, buttoned
his suit coat, and left the bar.
 

Trina was on
her iPhone, texting her assistant about a schedule conflict she noticed while
reviewing her daily manifest, as Shaun approached her.
 
Because Reno had drilled into her year in and
year out about always being aware of her surroundings, she saw him coming when
he first started heading her way.
 
Tall,
good looking, thinks he’s God’s gift.
 
She knew the type a mile away.
 
He
was going to hit on her.
 
Not because she
was some sensual magnet that he couldn’t bear to resist, but simply because she
was Reno’s woman.
 
For no other reason
than that.
 
He wanted to see if he could
snatch a piece of what belonged exclusively to Reno.
 
Trina was so accustomed to men trying to use
her as the prize in their pissing contest with her husband that she now found
them more amusing than annoying.

Shaun,
however, didn’t try to be amusing.
 
He
didn’t come with smiles and cute lines or any of the tricks of the trade.
 
He came with a complaint.
 
“Your staff is rude,” he said to her.

Trina hadn’t
expected him to come at her that way.
 
She was surprised, but she wasn’t unguarded.
 
This still could be a con.
 
Just a more sophisticated one.
 
“Excuse me?” she asked.

Up close,
Shaun was even more impressed with her.
 
It wasn’t just her beauty, although she had considerable beauty, but it
was her command presence.
 
There was
something special about this lady.
 
And,
to his surprise, it wasn’t just because she was Reno’s.
 
“You are Katrina Gabrini, yes?”

“That’s
correct.”

“The
Pa-Lar-gi-o
Katrina Gabrini?”

An odd way
to put it, Trina thought.
 
“My husband
owns the PaLargio Hotel and Casino, yes.”

“Then I’m
speaking to the right person.
 
Your
husband’s staff is rude.
 
I went there
with my wife, to celebrate her birthday, and that hotel staff treated us as if
we weren’t good enough to walk in their presence.
 
From the busboys to the valets to the front
desk clerks and maids.
 
Everybody was
really rude.
 
I don’t mean to disturb
your lunch, ma’am, I’m not that kind of guy, but it was an awful experience.
 
My wife left that place in tears.”

Trina was
surprised to hear this.
 
And she couldn’t
take it lightly.
 
She never took
personnel issues lightly.
 
“Did you
notify management?” she asked him.
 
“Did
you file a complaint of any kind?”

“Oh, I made
my displeasure known before we left.
 
I
spoke to some guy who claimed to be a manager or a supervisor or whatever, but
all he wanted to do was give us one night free.
 
As if that was going to do it.
 
Even he made us feel like we were running a con just by complaining.
 
As if money was the issue all along.
 
It was very demoralizing, Mrs. Gabrini.”

Trina was
floored.
 
She’d gotten a few complaints
about staff rudeness, but nothing this broad.
 
“What’s your name?” she asked him, as she pulled a small writing pad out
of her Dior handbag.

“Shaun
Connors,” Shaun said and watched Trina rummage through her handbag for a
pen.
  
And he felt as if he was on cloud
nine.
 
He felt like a computer hacker
getting his target to click on the link.
 
By looking into his allegation, she was clicking on the link.
 
And he considered himself in.
 
But he would have to handle this budding
power just right, or he would be right back out on his ass.
 
Trina Gabrini would make the perfect sugar
mama: she was young, rich, beautiful, and smart.
 
He never had a mark who checked that many
boxes before.
 
And she belonged to Reno
Gabrini too?
 
He was beyond cloud
nine!
 
He couldn’t wait to gain that
upper hand.

“Spell your
first name,” Trina said to him.
 
“Is it
S-e-a-n?” she asked him.

“S-h-a-u-n,”
he said, as she wrote down his name.

Shaun wanted
to put on the charm even as he stood there.
 
He wanted to have her in his bed, not a week or a month from now, but
tonight.
 
But he knew that wasn’t going
to happen.
 
She wasn’t going to bite that
fast.
 
This was only the first
round.
 
He couldn’t overshoot the hole on
his first swing of the club.
 
He had to
keep it all business all the time or a smart lady like her would see red flags
and bounce.
 
He was too desperate to let
that happen.
 
His old arrangement was
over.
 
He needed a new one.
 
But he had to be careful.

Trina looked
up at him. “We pride ourselves in our customer service,” she said.
 
“I’ll certainly look into it.”

“And then
what?” he asked her.

“If I can
determine what happened, I will make sure it doesn’t happen again to you or
anyone else, and I will authorize a refund to you for the entirety of your
stay.”

Shaun shook
his head.
 
“You still talk like it’s all
about money.
 
I don’t need any refund,
Mrs. Gabrini.
 
I need heads to roll.
 
I need to know that those people don’t still
have their jobs.”

Although
this man was playing the victim so well that Trina almost felt foolish for
thinking he had nefarious intentions when he first approached, she still didn’t
let her guard down.
 
It was another byproduct
of being Reno’s wife: he taught her to take no-one at face value.
 
“Heads could roll,” she assured him, “after I
speak with the staff and find out exactly what happened.”

“So you
don’t believe me?
 
A brother lodges a
complaint, and even the owner’s wife thinks it’s a con.”

Trina didn’t
appreciate his tone.
 
“I didn’t say it
was a con.
 
I said I will look into it.”

“I’m not a
fool, sister.
 
I didn’t make this stuff
up.”

“I’m not a
fool, either, brother,” Trina shot back.
 
“I’m not going to take your word for it without conferring with the
staff you’re accusing.
 
It says nothing
about whether I believe you or not.
 
It
says everything about how I handle my business.”

Shaun
inwardly smiled.
 
Strong too.
 
Which was going to make his job that much
tougher.
 
But he was up for the
challenge.
 
“I can respect that,” he
said.

And when he
said it, the waitress finally arrived to take Trina’s drink order.
 
“May I take your,” she started, and then she
stopped.

Trina looked
away from Shaun and looked at the waitress when she realized the waitress had
stopped talking midsentence.
 
And when
Trina saw who she was, she was floored too.
 
“
Amy
?” she asked.

Amy Shumer
looked as flustered as she felt, but she managed to smile.
 
“Hello, Mrs. Gabrini.”

“What are
you doing here?”

Amy looked
down at her waitress uniform. “Working,” she said with a smile, and looked back
up at Trina.
 
“Trying to earn a living.”

“How long
have you worked here?
 
I come in here all
the time.”

“I’ve only
been here for a couple weeks now.
 
I
mainly work the night shift, though.”

“Oh, I see.”

“This is
only the second time I’ve been on the daytime schedule.
 
I’m subbing for the regular.
 
And I’m still going to work my
nightshift.
 
I need the cash.”

Trina was
still surprised.
 
Amy had been Reno’s
right-hand woman for years, one of the best executive assistants in the
business, and then suddenly, a month ago, she was terminated.
 
It shocked most of the staff at the PaLargio,
including Trina.

Shaun could
tell Trina was no longer trying to pay him any attention.
 
He needed to get out while he was ahead.
 
He’d see her again.
 
“I’ll wait to hear from you, Mrs. Gabrini,”
he said as if it was not that big a deal to him either.

“I’ll look
into it,” was all Trina was going to promise him.

“I
appreciate that,” he said, and then headed back toward the bar.

Trina,
however, was more intrigued with Amy’s sudden appearance than any promise she
had made to Shaun.
 
“So you’re waiting
tables now?” she asked her.