GLASS_ A Standalone Novel - Arianne Richmonde Page 0,50
him on his cell, have you tried that?” It seemed like a really obvious thing to say, but my father often bypassed the obvious. Practical was not a word in Dad’s personal dictionary.
“He’s switched off his cell,” he said, his tone hopeless . . . helpless.
“Well I’m coming out.”
This time, he didn’t protest.
Just as I was stuffing the last things I needed into an overnight case, my cell buzzed again. Daniel. Normally, I would have lost all concentration with what I was doing and morphed into a panting Daniel Glass groupie, but right now I had no time for him, or his movie.
“I’m running really late, Daniel,” I snipped, sitting on my suitcase and zipping it up. “I’ll call you later.”
“Wait! Janie?”
I hung up. It was rude, but I could not be distracted by Daniel Glass, right this minute, not with Will roaming around casinos, with no clocks on the walls. If he’d been missing since five a.m. that meant he’d won money, which meant he’d play until his luck ran out. Where had he even learned to play cards or roulette in the first place? Online? It didn’t bear thinking about. He didn’t own a credit card; if he had, he probably would have totaled up a grand debt by now. Hence his fascination with Vegas. How dumb could my dad be?
Very dumb, as it happened. You would have never known he had letters to his name and was a bona fide professor. Okay, he was a professor of music, so perhaps that did lend a clue as to how on the ball he could be in the real world. But still.
Jake and Star offered to drive me to the airport, but I knew how busy they were, so I convinced them to let me drive myself, since Star had so generously given me carte blanche with her car. Apart from a bruise on my right arm where the IV had been, I felt fine. I raced out the door and went flying headfirst into . . .
Daniel.
“What the heck?”
“Janie, I was outside the door when I called you.”
“How did you even know where I was?” Was he stalking me?
“Good guess. Where are you going?”
I told him the whole saga as I rushed toward the car. He grabbed my case from me and simultaneously pulled me into an embrace. Or was it an embrace?
“You’re not driving,” he ordered.
“Just try and stop me,” I foolishly protested, trapped close against his hard chest.
“I am stopping you.”
“Let me go, Daniel, I have to catch my plane!”
“I’m coming with you, or rather, you’re coming with me.” He entwined his arm around my waist as I shuffled along beside him, trying as I was, to break free. “Don’t be silly, Janie, we’ll go to Vegas together and we’ll take my jet.”
“What is it with you and your private jets lately?”
“You are not getting on a commercial plane on your own when you’ve just come out of the hospital. Someone will start sneezing all over you.” Just like Daniel. A veritable Howard Hughes when it came to hygiene. “You’re coming with me, and I won’t hear one more word to the contrary.”
He bundled me into his black Mercedes and drove off, both of us traveling in silence, the atmosphere a wall between us. Boy, he annoyed me. Who did he think he was, calling the shots? I didn’t have the strength to argue, though, so I slumped into my car seat and gazed out of the window.
It seemed like we arrived seconds later because, apparently, I had dozed off for the entire car ride.
“You see? You were tired,” he remarked, as we pulled up to the airport.
I opened one eye and saw a vision of beauty before me. All in black, his hair flopping over one side off his face, a blue eye—turquoise even, speckled with flecks of black—was sizing me up with approval. He parked the car, his wrist casual on the steering wheel, sporting a beautiful, Patek Phillipe watch. Even when Daniel was dressed down, he looked elegant. Never sneakers, but hand-made, Italian, leather shoes. Daniel Glass had my heart pounding again. Was I really about to take a private jet with him to Las Vegas?
“Where are your brother and father staying?” he asked.
“At the Aria. Why?”
“Just wondered if they were at one of mine.”
“One of your what?”
“One of my hotels.”
“You own hotels now, too?”
His mouth lifted into an easy smile. “Part of my inheritance. My father had fingers in many pies.”