I returned her smile and shook my head. “Not yet.”

xxxxxxxxxxxx

I sipped my coffee as I waited for Brom’s guy. The café was fully open to the casino and had the odd combination of enabling two people to have a private conversation while enveloping everyone in a background “wall of noise” from the buzz of the casino crowd and dance music being pumped in.  I scanned the hordes of people making their way past the intersection of walking paths that cut through the casino area from various angles.   The coffee here was pretty good, too, and the food met the high standards of the Paris-based chef the café was named after.

I’d elected to sit in the bar-like row of seats fronting a curving counter that bordered the perimeter of the café that was set up on one side of the casino floor, nearest one of the entrances to the guest rooms of the casino-resort. This way, Brom’s guy would be able to spot me quickly amongst the crowd of people in the cafe.

Although I thought I’d been alert in scanning the people walking near where I sat, Brom’s guy had managed to walk up right next to me and took a seat quickly, without my noticing he’d done so.

“You’re Aerin, right?” he asked, leaning closer to me as he did so.

I drew back in surprise at his question when I whipped my head around to look at who’d spoken to me.

He gave me a friendly grin and offered his hand. “I’m Jack. We met before, but you may not remember. I direct security arrangements for Bette and her family. We met you and Chris when I’d dropped by their place and…”

It only took a second, and I remembered who he was immediately. I shook his hand enthusiastically. “Of course! Jack! You have a son, right?” I replied. “How is he?”

“He’s great, thanks for asking,” Jack answered. “He still uses that airwheel you and Chris gave him, by the way.”

During a party one weekend in Bette’s and Tina’s place, Jack had dropped by to discuss something with Bette, and his son Nate had been with him. I’d been playing with an airwheel, using it to glide all over the open-space of the first floor of the Porter-Kennard duplex.