Six

“How is he?” Mel asked the nurse who came into Stuart Stinson’s room while she stood awkwardly by his bed, not knowing what to say or do for a man she had only known briefly.

“Resting comfortably for now. He was awake early this morning and he didn’t appear to have any permanent injuries,” the nurse said. “They are keeping him a bit longer for observation but he should be free to go soon. Are you family?”

“No,” Mel said. Relief that Stuart was going to be fine almost made her buckle at the knees; she hadn’t realized how worried she had been. “I’m just a business associate, but I was there yesterday when he and Mr. Jensen were caught in the fire.”

The nurse nodded. “Mr. Stinson was lucky he didn’t get burned. Mr. Jensen, well, it’s been touch and go.”

“They wouldn’t let me in to see him,” Mel said. Her throat felt tight and she drew in a shaky breath. “Can you tell me anything?”

The nurse reached over and squeezed Mel’s forearm. “It doesn’t look good, I’m afraid. I’m sorry.”

“Thank you.” Mel nodded.

She turned and saw Tate standing at the nurses’ station. He was undoubtedly getting the same report she had gotten. When he turned around, his wavy brown hair looked mussed as if he’d been running his fingers through it. Angie came up beside him and looped her hand through his arm. Tate leaned over and kissed the top of her head. It was a gesture of comfort and affection.

Again, Mel was pierced with a sense of aloneness that was so acute, it actually hurt. Was this how it would always be then, her two friends comforting each other while she stood on the outside looking in?

She shook her head. She was being a selfish brat while Scott Jensen was fighting for his life. She had no right to feel sorry for herself. She was fine, absolutely fine.

“You ready?” Tate asked as Mel approached. She nodded. They all knew the situation; talking about it only made it worse.

Mel grumbled all the way to Holly’s house, which turned out to be well off the Strip. Even though it gave her an excellent excuse to zip through town in the silver bullet, as she had dubbed the Mercedes, she still felt grumpy. She didn’t particularly like change and it sure felt like it was coming hard and fast with no break.

On the one hand, she knew that it was her protectiveness of the bakery that was making her so franchise resistant, but on the other hand, she knew Tate was right that expanding was key to their survival.

She wondered if Holly had shown up yesterday looking a little pudgy with short-cropped hair and no makeup whether she would have felt more kindred with her. The answer would only validate Angie’s observation that Mel had a pretty girl bias, but yeah, in Mel’s head when they had talked about franchising, she had pictured someone, well, more like her.

Personal maintenance fell by the wayside when you had to be up at the crack of dawn to bake every day. Elaborate hairdos didn’t go so well under the old chef toque or hairnet, makeup melted when confronted with a 350-degree oven, and when you spent all day using your hands to mold fondant and had to wash them a million times to keep the germs off the product, manicures seemed pointless. So yeah, Mel had expected someone a little more kitchen goddess and less bedroom siren.

That being said, Holly did seem nice. She had a quick response time in a crisis, and really, how could Mel dislike anyone with a fake hiney? It was so ridiculous, it actually bought Holly some points with Mel.

Tate navigated using the directional app on his phone. When they started rolling toward the McMansions on the west side of Vegas, Mel had to wonder how much being a showgirl paid if Holly could afford one of these places.

“Huh.” Angie grunted from the backseat. “I think I may need to look into how much a girl gets for high kicking.”

“I don’t think she makes enough to live here,” Tate said. “Do we have the right address?”

“Let’s double-check at the gatehouse,” Mel said.

She pulled up to the small brick building with a uniformed guard stationed in the doorway.

“Good morning, how can I help you?” the guard asked. He was middle-aged and a little pudgy, which was unfortunately accentuated by his emerald green uniform. He had a righteous handlebar mustache that was trimmed to perfection, framing his mouth and accentuating his pouty lower lip.

“Hi, we’re guests of Holly Hartzmark,” Mel said.

“Just for the day?” he asked.

“Yes,” she said.

The guard ducked back inside his little house.

“‘Who rang that bell?’” Tate squawked from the passenger seat. “‘Who rang that bell?’”

Angie burst out laughing but Mel refused to react, fearing the guard would hear them.

“Stop it,” she hissed at Tate.

“Oh, come on, you were thinking it, too. He’s a dead ringer for him.” Mel was silent so Tate cajoled, “You know what movie I’m talking about. ‘Who rang that bell?’”

“The Wizard of Oz, now shut it.” Mel identified the movie just to hush him up. “Behave.”

The guard popped back out of his house, handed Mel a dated pass to hang on her rearview mirror, and gestured for her to go forward.

“You’re all set, ma’am, have a nice day.”

“You, too,” Mel said. She moved the car forward and a massive wrought iron gate slowly glided open to the right to let them through.

Angie leaned forward and said, “Well, the joke is on them.”

“How do you figure?” Tate asked.

“Because I’m pretty sure these exclusionary gates were designed specifically to keep our sort out,” Angie said with a snort.

Mel laughed and Tate turned around and planted a kiss on Angie’s lips. “That’s my girl. Don’t ever change.”

“All right, you two, no making out while I’m driving, or I’ll need a carsick bag,” Mel said. “Tate, where do I go now?”

“Head straight for half a mile and then take your first right. Basically, head straight for the big red rocks up ahead. We’re looking for number 6844.”

“Got it,” Mel said.

The massive houses surrounding them were gorgeous; there was everything from fancy Tudor-style homes to starkly modern palaces. It was definitely a mishmash of styles with the only thing they all had in common being their ostentatious show of wealth.

Mel was happy to admire them from afar, but she knew she would hate living in a house where she needed GPS tracking to get from the bedroom to the kitchen. And what if she had children? You could lose a child in one of these colossal casas, quite possibly for days. It reminded her of what her dad always used to say about conspicuous consumption—just because you can doesn’t mean you should.

Mel drove down the wide street, slowing to read the numbers in front of the mansions. Each one was again gated, because the uniformed guard at the front station clearly wasn’t enough security to keep the riffraff out.

Finally, they stopped in front of a mansion with the matching number. A cobblestone driveway led from the street through another huge wrought iron gate to an enormous mansion beyond. Mel pulled into the drive and stopped in front of the gate. There was a buzzer mounted on a stone pedestal to her left and she pressed the button.

“Oh, you’re here!” Holly’s voice greeted them. “Come on up to the house.”

The spiky gate opened as if by an invisible hand. Perfectly manicured lawns hugged both sides of the drive while a line of tall palm trees led the way to the house.

“Okay, I am definitely working on my high kick,” Angie said. “This is unfreakingbelievable.”

A three-story gray stone building that was all sharp corners and jutting angles, with walls of sheer glass on the upper stories framed by burnished steel, loomed ahead. Mel parked in front, feeling as if her silly Mercedes wasn’t good enough even to be parked in front of such opulence.

As they climbed the stairs to the front door, Mel caught her breath. The doors were two huge steel half circles that met on their inner edge to make one large circle.

“I feel like I’m going into a superhero’s lair,” Tate said. “At least, I hope it’s a superhero’s. If it’s a villain, I am so out of here.”

One of the half circles opened and a young woman wearing baggy shorts and a Hawkeyes football jersey with her dark brown hair in a high ponytail poked her head out.

“Hi, guys,” she said.

Mel blinked three or four times. She glanced at Tate and Angie. They looked equally perplexed.

“Holly?” Angie finally asked.

“The undone version,” Holly said and she held her arms wide.

“I didn’t even recognize you,” Tate said. “You look so . . . normal.”

Holly laughed. “I’ll take that as a compliment, I think. Come on in.”

Tate and Angie filed into the house while Mel brought up the rear. She took a second to study Holly. Tate was right. She was unrecognizable and in the best possible way.

Mel grinned at her. “So, all of that . . .” She waved her hands around Holly’s face and body before she added, “Really was just makeup and filler.”

“And attitude,” Holly said. “Don’t ever underestimate the attitude component.”

“Clearly, that’s what I’ve been lacking all these years,” Mel said. She put her palm to her forehead as if she’d suddenly seen the light.

“Truthfully, filler is the perfect word,” Holly said. “Being a showgirl, you learn how to work with what you’ve got and make it bigger. This is Vegas, after all.”

“Well, it’s incredible,” Mel said. “You were right. If I passed you on the street, I wouldn’t have recognized you as the same woman I met yesterday. I never would have believed it if I hadn’t seen the transformation or more accurately the un-transformation myself.”

“I like to think of it as the equivalent of taking flour, eggs, sugar, and butter and whipping them into something much more lovely and yummy than they are by themselves,” Holly said.

“I like that metaphor,” Tate said. “See? She even thinks like a baker.”

Mel was spared having to answer when a little girl, who looked to be about five, came tearing into the foyer of the house wearing a chef’s hat and an apron, both of which were entirely too big for her.

“Mom, Mom, Mom, the buzzer’s going off!” she shrieked.