Royal Flush by Stephanie Caffrey

the weekend.
    For once, no one was looking at me, so I found Carlos and tried to stay within about twenty feet of him. It would be easy to lose track of each other in a place like this. From what I could tell, he was slowly sidling himself up to the group around Jojia, who was beginning to gyrate like just about everyone else in the room. Her friends, mostly girls and a couple guys, had gotten even more into it, losing themselves to the rhythm and grinding against each other with no apparent pattern. I watched them all dancing, if that's what you called it, in the detached but fascinated way a zoologist might study a rare species of baboon in the wild. All I needed were a Jeep and some field glasses. And maybe some kind of stun gun.
    A strong two-finger tap on my shoulder snapped me out of it.
    "Raven, I thought we'd lost you." It was Charles.
    He'd startled me, and I was a little embarrassed to be busted as the wallflower I was. "Hi, Charles," was the best I could blurt out.
    He smiled then wordlessly led me out to the dance floor. I let him.
    I was used to gyrating to loud music, but apparently my garb was a little racy even for a nightclub full of drunk twenty-somethings. More than a few people—guys and women alike—were looking at me with big eyes. One guy pointed. Charles seemed to be enjoying it, but within a few minutes he moved himself closer so that we were touching.
    "I have to tell you something," he said in a loud whisper.
    "Ok."
    He leaned in to my ear and whispered as loudly as a man can whisper. "Your breast is showing."
    I pulled back and looked down. I figured maybe the V on my dress had gone a little too far south, but that wasn't the problem at all. Instead, my entire left breast had fallen out and had been gyrating to the music, on full display to anyone in the vicinity. I grimaced and pulled my dress up.
    "How long has it been like that?" I asked, mortified.
    "Couple minutes," he said.
    I felt like slapping him. Here I was, uncomfortable enough already, and now I'd made a complete fool of myself. All while trying to stay in the background. And instead of telling me right away, he just sat back and enjoyed the show.
    "No offense, Charles, but I'm going to go stand over there now."
    He shrugged, still grinning stupidly. I stormed away, more mad at myself than anything else. I should probably have gone home earlier to get something decent to wear rather than relying on a dress that was probably designed to fall off. I got myself a twenty-six-dollar gin martini while I pouted on the sidelines.
    Carlos found me about twenty minutes later. He was smiling, which automatically made me nervous.
    "What?" I asked.
    "She's nice . Real nice."
    "Ok. Spare me the details now. I just want to get out of here."
    Carlos spread his hands apart and bowed his head slightly. "You're the boss. Let's go."

 
CHAPTER TEN
     
    I was still red in the face while we waited to pick up Carlos's car from the valet.
    "What's with you?" he asked.
    "Never mind. Tell me about Jojia." There was no reason to give Carlos another reason to poke fun at me, so I kept mum about the fact that I'd given half the crowd a free peep show.
    He shrugged. "Well, for starters, all her friends are high."
    "Not surprising. Do you know what they were taking?"
    "No. She wasn't really excited to talk about it," he said.
    "So what makes you think she's so nice?"
    Carlos' car pulled up, and we climbed in. Carlos gave the engine an unnecessary rev before we pulled out.
    "She's just a good dancer, that's all," he said.
    I coughed at his silliness. "So she let you dance close to her, is that it?"
    He smiled. We nosed the car through a bunch of tourists in front of the MGM and turned north onto the Strip.
    I hated to admit it, but Carlos looked damned good even in the goofy golf shirt we'd bought him. If he said Jojia took a liking to him, I had no reason to doubt it.
    "Was Jojia high herself?" I asked.
    "Couldn't tell. Possibly. But not as bad as her friends. They