Page 83 of Sexy

“Claudio,” I croak out. “Why are you here?”

“I’ve been trying to call you for two days!” He screams it, jolting me awake. “You fucking bitch!” I look at him and realize he’s been crying.

“Claudio,” I repeat.

“No,” he says, shaking his head in that dramatic way he does. “No, Tiffy. You had me so worried. I came all the way from Nevada. Drove straight through. I asked Cole to come check on you, but he said he’d send someone from his office. And the thought that a stranger would find your body—”

“I’m fine, Claudio.”

“It doesn’t matter. I thought you…” He sniffs. “I thought you’d…”

“I didn’t.” The fact that he thinks I’d take the easy way out like my mother stings more than I care to admit. “I just don’t feel like talking to anyone.”

He comes over to the bed and lies down next to me. He pulls me into a hug that is deep, and sad, and says all the things I needed to hear in one silent gesture. “Please,” he says. “Don’t do this. Don’t give up. We’re going to be fine. OK?”

I nod into his embrace. “I know. I do. I just needed… time.”

We lie there like that. Me and my best friend. I don’t know how long, but it’s a considerable amount of time. It slips away from me these days.

“Get up now, OK?” he asks. “I’ll make you breakfast and coffee. And we can put things back together.”

“I’m not sure I want to put things back together, Claudio. Cole.”

“Oh, God,” he says. “Don’t even mention that bastard’s name.”

“Why?” I turn to him. “What’s happened?”

“You mean besides the fact that he’s got foreign investors all over the Landslide like he owns it? You need to fire him, Tiffy. Today. He needs to get his nosy ass out of your hotel. He’s out there making decisions. He fired all the dancers.”

“What?”

“He shut down the show, Tiffy. And the review on that travel site came out today. It was a five-star rating and he’s fucked it all up.”

“Why would he fire them? They were the only money-makers we had.”

“That’s the million-dollar question, right? Why would he fire them?” Claudio sucks in a deep breath through his teeth and glares at some image of Cole in his imagination.

But that bit of news gets me moving. Cole fired the dancers? It just doesn’t make sense.

I let Claudio make breakfast while I take a shower. I had no idea it had been two days since the funeral. Claudio is right. I need to pull myself together and find a way to get through this. So I pull on a robe, shuffle out to the kitchen and take a seat at my breakfast bar.

“Hungry?” Claudio asks over a griddle filled with pancakes. He flips them and then pours me a cup of coffee, adding in the cream and sugar he knows I love, and then slides it down the counter.

“Starved, actually.”

“Yes,” he says, pursing his lips and placing a spatula-holding hand on his hip. “Well, forgetting to eat for two days will do that to you.”

I sneer back at him, good-naturedly, of course, then I sigh. “It’s all so surreal, ya know?”

His sneer becomes a pout, and he walks over and hugs me. “I know, baby. But we’ll find a way to survive. We always do.”

“We’ve never really had to, Claudio. Have you ever thought of that?”

“But we’re equipped, Tiff.” He looks at me seriously. “We are. We’re smart, and innovative. I just know it.”

I have to laugh at that a little. “We might be. I guess we’ll find out.”

I get up with my coffee and wander over to the terrace to open the drapes. I spy the black attaché case from the day of the funeral on the coffee table and walk over to it. I pick it up. It’s not that heavy.