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wasn’t even in the top twenty hotel destinations in Vegas. Now it was well regarded enough for the food only to be listed in the top ten best of ratings consistently.
    “Yes, I do try.”
    “Exactly, so start showing me a vegan fusion. Bring me your first sample dish tonight, and we’ll see what we can do to really rehab this place.”
    Kelly swallowed hard. She wanted to demand that Monique repeat herself. Not that she hadn’t already heard the other woman loudly and clearly, but rehab her ass. Kelly had put this place on the map. Monique had to be kidding.
    However, since she still needed a job to avoid living in a box under an overpass, she kept a strained smile planted on her face. She could scream into a pillow later tonight back at her apartment.
    “I can work on that. I just…let me go get the ingredients.”
    ***
    Kelly was absolutely shocked as she made her way through the labyrinthine halls of the casino floor and passed the bar. It was only eleven, but the floor never closed. A casino that wasn’t open was a casino not maximizing their profits. Besides, no natural light was ever allowed in. There were no windows where the games and slot machines were. That was a trick to keep people gambling that was as old as the city itself. It also meant booze flowed freely at all hours. After all, the only thing better—and more prone to making mistakes—than an exhausted gambler was a drunk , exhausted gambler.
    Just like Asam Hassem who she’d been happy not to see for nearly nine months, ever since the Ramadan festival when she’d visited at the palace.
    Kelly had hoped she wouldn’t be seeing him for several more months or even decades. Decades was good.
    “Are you kidding me?”
    Asam winked back at her.
    She tried to ignore how attractive he was. The sheikh was over six feet tall with dark, bronzed skin and hazel eyes that had more flecks of gold in them than one would think possible. His beard was longer than she’d have preferred, but it felt wonderful and enticing when they’d made out at his brother Dharr’s bachelor party. His build was that of a runner, lean but muscular. He had dark, silky hair too. Something she also knew thanks to the bachelor party was how much fun it was to stroke her through those curls.
    Not that she’d let him know.
    Asam was also a rat bastard who ran off with the first shiny thing he saw. Someone who had gone from being so friendly with her and truly seemed to care about their conversation to just running off with a stripper when Kelly had gone to get a drink. He’d tried apologizing since, but she didn’t understand his motives. Just because her best friend and his brother were married didn’t mean anything. They were both godparents to Gabriel, but that didn’t require them to be lovers. It didn’t even mean they had to be friends. All they had to do was not actively fight on the rare occasions both of them were in front of Gabriel together. Since that happened once in a blue moon, it shouldn’t be too hard.
    Except Asam, sex god incarnate, was sitting before her nursing a Scotch. He smelled like a brewery already. He must have had a long night and, by extension, an even longer morning.
    “Seriously, what in God’s name are you doing here?”
    “A guy can’t get a drink?”
    “A guy can’t stalk me.”
    “I’m not, that would imply a concerted effort, and I’m not famous for those,” he said.
    “Then there are hundreds of cocktail lounges in Vegas, and you don’t need to be on my turf,” she said, crossing her arms over her chest. She was only 5-foot-4 and unlikely to be intimidate him, but a girl could dream. She was already having an very shitty day, and it wasn’t even noon yet.
    “I was just around, mon amie ,” he said.
    “I thought you were setting up that hotel and shopping complex back in Al-Marasae?”
    He flashed a grin at her. “So you do care. You must have asked after me with Alana.”
    “Sometimes things come up in conversation. I