I dropped onto the bed to consider what this meant. Alain Remie had arrived at Nick and my room after we called the police. It might be standard procedure for the hotel management to be notified, especially here. If one phone call to the front desk could elicit the hotel service I’d experienced an hour ago, then sure. And I’d seen Ocean’s Eleven. There was always someone watching in a Las Vegas hotel.
Alain Remie had known about Lydia’s body lying outside on the sidewalk before the police had arrived. He’d taken photos and financially benefitted from them. Surely there was a conflict of interest in there somewhere? If it got out that the manager of a hotel of this magnitude was selling photos of guests, The Left Bank would be ruined.
I closed my eyes and thought back to the image of Lydia’s body. I’d known almost immediately that it was her from her hair, her T-shirt, and her wedding veil. But the photo in the papers had been taken from a different angle, one that caught the #GetCheeky slogan on her panties. It was as if the photographer—Mr. Remie, I now knew—had it in mind to include it in the frame. And as I considered who would benefit from such a photo, one clear person came to mind: Joey Cheeks. Right now, he was the person with the most to gain from Lydia’s death to the tune of free publicity across the news. But that meant the position of her body hadn’t been accidental—which was a whole other level of creepy.
More and more, Lydia’s death was looking relevant to her line of work. Good thing I had two more days to work the Intimate Mode show for Tradava. Tomorrow, I’d rearrange my schedule for maximum sleuthing time.
I was between my second and third room service orders of mac and cheese (lobster vs. truffle) when the keycard clicked in the door. I jumped to my feet and raced to open it, eager to share with Nick everything I’d found out. But Nick’s greeting was halted by his appearance—shirt open at the collar, necktie loosened, jacket in hand—and scent, which was decidedly not the Creed Bois du Portugal cologne I bought him for his recent birthday. It was more like Eau du Public Transportation.
“I’m sorry,” he said.
“For what?” I shut the door behind him. “I’m the one who should apologize. I didn’t know how long you would be, so I ordered room service.”
“You don’t need to apologize for ordering room service. Trust me when I say I need to apologize and you don’t.”
“Why? We’re both here to work. I figured your day went longer than you expected. Trade shows can be overwhelming, and sometimes you have to do things you didn’t think you’d have to do to get the job done.” I weighed the pros and cons of admitting I’d revealed my bang bang on stage. Maybe there was a different way to describe my day.
Nick put his hands on my shoulders, his arms straight out in front of him. “I need to take a shower, and then we need to talk. Because I’m having serious second thoughts about, well, about everything. What happened today was a little more than I signed up for, and I don’t know if I can do this.”
I felt like I’d been punched in the gut. Amanda must have told him. She lied about keeping my participation in the panty raid a secret, and now I was going to have to explain to Nick that I’d been mostly naked in a public venue today. Worse, it had been fun. How to explain that?
Nick had accepted an awful lot of unusual behavior from me in the past, but this must have crossed a line. The biggest gamble of my life was betting on a future with him, and our engagement was about to crap out over my perfectly innocent participation in a lingerie exhibition.
“Hey,” he said. “Why are you crying?”
“I’m a good gamble,” I said. I tried to blink back the second wave of tears that formed, but they spilled onto my recently applied makeup and cut tracks down my cheeks.
“Kidd, I never said you weren’t. You’re the most full-of-life person I’ve ever met. That’s why I keep thinking about what you would think, or what you would like or what you would do. Your brain works in unexpected ways, and I love that about you.”
“So why do you want to break off our engagement?”
Surprise and confusion clouded Nick’s face. “I don’t. But when I tell you why I was late coming back, you might.”
I cradled his face in my hands. “No matter what you did today, I probably did worse.” I thought about the three orders of mac and cheese I’d eaten on my own. “Way worse.”
“Not possible.”
Inhale. Exhale. Look Nick straight in his root-beer-barrel-colored eyes. “Earlier today, I had a Naughty Nightie cop costume torn off to reveal my underwear. While I was on stage. In front of the attendees of Intimate Mode. And then I hid under the stage for hours until Amanda found me. I’m pretty sure whatever you did can’t beat that.”
Nick cleared his throat. I braced myself for “when will you learn?” or “you are insane,” or “you were right, I can’t do this.”
“Kidd, for the past four hours I’ve been in a holding cell at the Las Vegas police station on suspicion of solicitation.”