“Hey, Blake,” I said as I got into the dark SUV idling at the curb in front of Bev’s house.
“Hey, girl,” Blake said, smiling at me in the rearview mirror. She was Bianca’s longtime bodyguard/driver/friend.
“How come you didn’t come into girls’ night this time?” Danika asked as she slid in beside me.
Blake was usually a participant. She went where Bianca went, with few exceptions.
“I had to make some phone calls for work, so I stayed out here.”
“Hey,” Bianca said to Blake, patting her on the shoulder as she got in last. Another security guard, a male I wasn’t familiar with, closed the door behind her, then climbed into the front passenger’s seat.
“Hey,” Blake said back. “How was the therapy session?”
Danika shot me a teasing smile. “Pretty awesome. You missed out with this one. Lourdes had some bombshells to impart.”
I found myself blushing as I thought of all the things I’d let slip out of my mouth with just a few glasses of wine as lubricant. “She’s exaggerating. You didn’t miss anything important.”
“You might as well just tell me,” Blake said as she put the car into drive. “Bianca will spill the beans later, if you don’t. We all know it.”
I waved my hand in the air. “That works for me. Let her tell you. I can’t seem to open my big mouth without oversharing. Some details no one needs to know.”
Blake laughed. “Oh no. Will someone at least clue me into what kind of details she’s talking about?”
Without a word, Danika met her eyes in the rearview mirror and held her hands out with a good ten-inch gap between them.
We all started giggling.
“Well, hell,” Blake said when she caught a breath. “I missed a doozy, huh?”
I glanced at the one male in the car, but he was sitting in the passenger’s seat, eyes aimed forward, acting like he couldn’t hear us. I appreciated that.
“Where’s James?” I asked Bianca. I just assumed he was out of town, because when he wasn’t, he usually showed up in person to pick her up, sometimes even coming early to sit in on girls’ night.
He was famously possessive of her time and person.
“New York. It was only a two-day trip, and I’d have missed girls’ night, so I stayed in Vegas.”
Danika snorted. “I bet he loved that.”
Bianca bit her lip, but it didn’t hide her smile. “He did not. I’m expecting him home anytime now, though he’s scheduled to come back in the morning. You know how he is.”
“I can confirm that Mr. Cavendish boarded a flight about four hours ago, Mrs. Cavendish,” the man in the front seat said.
Bianca grinned. “See. I know my man.”
Danika nodded that she did. “Whenever I catch myself thinking that Tristan is a possessive nut-job, I just remember that he’s mellow compared to James.”
“Just keep telling yourself that,” Blake muttered, eyes on the road.
That got another round of laughs.
Going anywhere with Bianca Cavendish was an experience.
The two, yes two, bodyguards we had with us that night were what they considered a light detail. There was no current known threat to the soft-spoken woman, but due to past dangers to her person, and how high profile she was, (She and her husband were in the tabloids on a weekly basis. Just a few days ago, I’d seen media coverage of her shopping for shoes. Seriously.) she required at least two bodyguards when she went out in public.
I’d once asked her why two, and James had answered for her with, “One to cover her, the other to shoot back.”
In this instance, since we were in her husband’s resort, and at her best friend’s bar, it was fairly effortless to set up. A section was roped off for us, the male bodyguard manning the ropes, with Blake sticking close to Bianca.
We sat on low, cushy sofas in the swanky bar and got beyond the normal VIP service. Both owners greeted us with the drinks they knew we wanted before we could even order, and sat down for several minutes to chat with us.
I took a sip of the spectacular cabernet Stephan had handed to me and waved at my son, who was manning the bar.
He grinned and waved back.
Rafael had a great personality for bartending. He liked people, liked to chat them up, liked to listen to their stories, enjoyed bantering with the tipsy and the outright drunk.
Currently, he was deep in discussion with one of the customers, a middle-aged man that looked three sheets to the wind.
Raf was good at humoring drunk people, though, and looked genuinely interested in whatever the other man was saying.
I decided to leave him be until he was unoccupied, because even though I was friends with the owners, this was a job for Raf, and I’d taught him from a young age that all jobs should be taken seriously, even the fun, part-time ones.
“James is on his way here now from the airport,” Stephan told Bianca as he pulled back from kissing her cheek.
Danika snorted inelegantly. “That didn’t take long.”
“Psh,” Stephan returned, his eyes twinkling at Danika. “You’re one to talk. Tristan will be on his way here the second his show finishes, I guarantee it.”
“He doesn’t even know I’m here,” she pointed out.