“Wait, you want me to be your fake fiancé? Uh, no way in hell.”
“Why not?” she asked, her head doing that cute little tilt it always did when she was curious about something. “If you’re worried about San Francisco, I think a month is more than enough time to convince people I’m a changed woman.”
Why wasn’t it a good idea for them to pretend to be engaged? he mused. Maybe because their friendship had become a game to see how long he could be in her presence without throwing her down on the nearest surface and fucking her until they both couldn’t remember their own names? Yeah, maybe that was why.
“I just don’t think I’ll have time. There’s a lot to do before the move.”
She looked slightly crestfallen, but a fake engagement was just too much to ask of him.
“You could stop dating for a while,” he suggested. “You’d get the same result.”
“Maybe,” she agreed. “But it will take longer.”
“Yeah, but that’s a good thing, right?” he reasoned. “You don’t want your uncle to sell the casinos right away. In the meantime, maybe you’ll think of a way to change his mind.”
The possibility seemed to at least distract her. “I’m too wired to talk about this now. Let’s get out of here.”
He nodded and followed her out of the office, relieved that he’d put an end to the fake fiancé thing.
They stepped out of the elevator onto the ground floor and the crush of the Friday night crowd was instant sensory overload. The electronic whirring of machines, the tinny clink of coins and the underlying bass beat of rumbling conversation was enough to drive a decent person to recklessness. The anonymity was liberating.
When they finally stepped outside into the bright lights of Vegas, he could tell that Alexa needed to blow off some steam and wasn’t surprised when she grabbed his arm.
“Come on,” she urged, pulling him across the street to Elysium. “Let’s gamble and make bad decisions.”
“So much for reinventing yourself,” he pointed out.
“Tomorrow,” she promised with a wink, shoving open the front doors to the towering casino.
AS SHE’D KNOWN he would, Carter waited for her while she played several hands of blackjack even though he hated gambling. She won her last hand with twenty-one and turned around to celebrate with Carter, but he wasn’t there.
She collected her winnings and left the table, roaming around until she finally found him in the grand lobby talking on his cell. As he spoke, a deep crease formed between his eyebrows and he ran an agitated hand through his already mussed hair. He was completely oblivious to the women around him doing everything but stripping to try to get his attention.
She waded through the crowds, intending to apologize for ignoring him, but when she reached him he didn’t notice her, either.
It was positively demoralizing, as she was literally right in front of his face. Both of them were married to their jobs, but he could at least acknowledge her existence. She put an arm around his waist just to see if she could get his attention away from work, but he barely glanced at her. Instead walked out of her arms as he barked at someone about profit margins.
Flustered, Alexa watched him walk away before turning her attention to the rest of the lobby.
Her gaze stuck on the glass art installation. It was an explosion of color and light and fanned out over most of the lobby’s ceiling, the flower pinwheels stunning in their intensity. Customers’ phones all pointed up to capture the joyful riot of bold-colored flowers. But the pictures people took wouldn’t capture the significance of the glass sculpture, the subtle striations of color in the individual pieces, or the delicate and thoughtful way the flowers had been arranged and hung to maximize the light. So much of it would be lost in translation.
Her parents had taken her to see it as a teenager when the casino first opened. It was one of the last things they had all done as a family before her parents died.
She glanced back at Carter, but he was still on the phone.
Skirting the perimeter of the display, she found the piece she wanted. The bright magenta flower with a dark red center that fanned out to the palest of pink on the ruffled edges had been her mother’s favorite. She’d been Alexa’s best friend. She’d told her mom everything, from getting her period, to her first crush, Perry Knightly, who now sat on the Las Vegas City Council, and all the little inconsequential things that made up her life. But since her parents died, she’d had trouble opening up to people, because having to wade through the abyss of that kind of grief to get to happiness again felt insurmountable.
She blew out a frustrated breath and gave the flower a final look. It was still beautiful, but rather than grounding Alexa as it usually did, the memory of her parents made her anxious. She would never stop missing them, but she loved her life and was thankful for everything she still had. Her uncle had made her work her ass off doing every job in the casino, including scrubbing toilets, which wasn’t a pretty picture in a casino that gave alcohol away for free. She’d worked hard and was making her mark on Vegas. Life was good.
However, now Carter was leaving town, quite possibly her uncle if he was serious about retiring, and even Halcyon might be out of her life if she didn’t get her shit together. Where did that leave her? Alone in Las Vegas without her best friend and only living family? That sounded awful.
A man in faded, ripped jeans and two full sleeves of tattoos comprising vivid Mexican sugar skulls and raging flames stopped next to her to study the sculpture. His tight black T-shirt hugged imposing biceps and pecs that practically begged to be touched. Just the kind of guy she liked to have a good time with.
“Impressive, isn’t it?” she asked him, following his gaze upward.
He glanced over at her, and she felt him take her in from bare legs to ample cleavage. His deep brown eyes met hers with an appreciative twinkle.
“I’ll say,” he drawled, his voice gruff and a little rough around the edges, like his outfit.
She smiled up at him, loving the chance to flirt with someone. It was so easy. Men were so easy.
“Do you ride?” she asked, nodding to the chain on his pants and the scuffed black motorcycle boots.
He nodded. “You?”
Head tilted, she gave him a coy smile. “Of course. But not usually on the first date.”
“Set you up for that one, didn’t I?” He grinned, taking a step into her space.
The smell of leather and oil tickled her nose as she breathed him in, vaguely thinking that she preferred Carter’s fresh and spicy scent. It reminded her of laundry and money. Not that biker guy didn’t have his own appeal based on sheer muscle mass alone.
“You did,” she agreed, glancing up at him. “So are you here to gamble or just look at the art?”
His head tilted. “Would you believe me if I said just to look at the art?”
It was her turn to give him a once-over then, which he visibly enjoyed, the corners of his eyes crinkling with amusement. “I’d say there’s a fifty-fifty chance,” she concluded.
“I’m a tattoo artist. Sometimes I come look at this to get inspired.” He lifted up the front of his shirt to reveal a massive tattoo covering his washboard abs, the bombs of color similar to the flowers above them.
She reached out a hand and traced one of the blue shapes with a finger. “That’s...unexpected,” she