One Night in Vegas (Entangled Lovestruck) (Gambling Hearts) (2 page)

“Are you hurt?” he asked.

Chapter Two

The little white car had barely registered in Chris’s mind until it hit him. He didn’t even notice what
kind of car
it was when he got out of his truck. The brunette standing beside it, who looked to be on the verge of a panic attack, was of far greater importance. His truck was big enough to take the impact, but the car was tiny in comparison. Regardless of who was at fault for the accident, people came before vehicles.

“Are you hurt?” he asked again.

She blinked at him. “What?”

He hoped that came from not expecting the question instead of actual confusion. “Did you get hurt? How’s your neck feel?”

She looked away for a moment, her face a mask of shock. “Fine, I think.”

When she looked at him again, he noticed how her green eyes were sparkling with unshed tears, looking like polished jade. Her heart-shaped face was a touch wide through her cheekbones and narrowed down to a delicate little chin, and she had faint freckles across the bridge of her nose. The wind whipped her chocolate brown curls back and forth with the rhythm of the traffic, giving him the urge to take hold of them and stop the chaos. He let his eyes scan downward, telling himself he was just looking at her body for any sign of injuries. There weren’t any. She had just the sort of full, curvy body he found dangerously distracting, and now was no exception.

Before he acted like a complete ass, he forced his eyes back up to her face, hoping his sunglasses kept her from noticing the ogling. Damn, but her light olive-toned skin was beautiful. “Okay, good. Do you have anywhere you need to be soon? We can exchange insurance information.”

“No, I don’t have anywhere to be. And it’s not my car.” She sounded so anguished as she said it. Maybe she was just trying to play on his sympathy, but he doubted it. She seemed genuinely upset.

“Well, I’ve got dinner reservations I can’t miss.” He circled around his truck to look at the damage and sighed. It wasn’t that bad, to be honest. Would it be worth it to deal with insurance when he could probably fix it himself? He pulled off his sunglasses and ran his fingers along the scrapes. “It won’t take any body work, at least. How bad is yours?”

He faced her again and she gasped. Unsure if he should be insulted by that or not, he raised a brow slightly. “Something wrong?”

She stared at him for a moment, then shook her head slowly. “No, I just…Chris?”

“Yeah. Do we know each other?” As soon as the words were out of his mouth he remembered the new used car Jackson had bought. He’d been driving that shitty Honda Civic for so long it was difficult to associate him with any other vehicle, but he’d finally broken down and bought an Impala that had actually been built in the twenty-first century. He’d only seen the Impala a few times because of how busy Jackson always was. His eyes moved from the car to her face. It couldn’t be. It couldn’t possibly be. And yet… “Eliza?”

She pressed her lips together tightly, nodding.

He let his breath out raggedly and hooked his sunglasses on the collar of his shirt. “You’ve changed. I’m sorry. I didn’t recognize you at all.”

He saw the hint of a tentative smile on her face. “You’ve changed, too.”

“I mean, you haven’t gotten much taller and you look like you’ve got all the same body parts, but there’s been a general trend toward change.”

The remaining threat of panic on her face evaporated with a broad smile. “It’s called getting older, Chris.”

“Well, come here.” He closed the distance between them in three quick strides and wrapped his arms around her waist to pull her off her feet. Her startled squeak made him laugh, but the way her arms went around his neck reassured him that she didn’t object.

It also pressed her generous breasts against his throat, sending his mind straight back to the last time he’d embraced her. Her body hadn’t felt quite so lush then, and the air had smelled of pine instead of car exhaust, but her scent hadn’t changed. Some light rose perfume, layered over her own unique essence. The first time he’d noticed that sweet, tempting scent on the girl he’d grown up with was the first time he knew he was in trouble. That trouble hadn’t stopped in the intervening years, either. His body didn’t care that he wasn’t eighteen anymore. He released her and backed up before nostalgia could make his jeans any tighter.

“Listen, don’t worry about the accident. This is no big deal. I’d rather just fix it myself than give you or Jackson any trouble.”

“Are you sure? I’m so sorry, Chris. I was distracted, and it’s been way too long since I drove through here.”

“I’m sure.” He laid his hands on her shoulders. God, how she’d grown up. He’d always thought she was cute, but had only begun seeing a real hint of her true beauty that last year before he’d left for college. Those round hips so lovingly outlined by her jeans alone would be enough to keep him distracted for the rest of the night. “Come on, why don’t we just drop off Jackson’s car at the hospital and you and I will stick with my truck for the night?”

Her eyes went from his truck to his face. She looked doubtful and started to open her mouth to say something, then closed it. When she spoke again, her voice was guarded. “I’m not really dressed for going out.”

“You look beautiful to me.” The words were out before he’d had time to think about them. Was that appropriate to say to Jackson’s little sister after all this time? She certainly looked startled by the compliment, which made him think it might have been best left unsaid. “I mean, you don’t have to do anything else if you don’t want to. If you’d feel more comfortable changing, we can head over after we drop off the car.”

She bit her bottom lip, giving him the perverse urge to replace her teeth with his own and feel that luscious flesh.

“Okay.”

He took a deep breath, hoping the cool air could cut off the overheated thoughts going through his head. “Great. Let’s go. Just stay behind me and I’ll make sure you don’t get lost.”

…

True to his word, Chris kept her from getting lost. After he’d confirmed with her that Jackson had the other set of keys for the car, he texted his friend to let him know where the Impala was parked. The odds of Jackson being able to take a call in the midst of the chaos of the emergency room seemed dim.

Back at Jackson’s condo, he did his best to keep himself entertained while he waited for Eliza to finish getting ready. The condo was a modest split level like a lot of older condos in the area, with the two bedrooms on the lower level. It was probably more than enough for Jackson since he was rarely home. It seemed like it could get a bit tight with anyone staying longer than just a brief vacation, though.

“Have you been keeping in touch with Donna Schleuniger?” Eliza asked through the bathroom door.

That name hit him like a bucket of cold water over the head. A few heartbeats passed as he tried to recover from unwelcome memories. “Uh, no. Why do you ask?”

“She sent me a friend request online a couple of months ago. I guess she’s married and settled in Salt Lake City now.”

His teeth were in danger of cracking from grinding them together. Of all the people to bring up, it had to be Donna. “I didn’t know that.” His voice was flat, and he had to hope his tone alone would make it clear this wasn’t a conversation he wanted to have. “I’m not good at keeping up with people long-distance.”

The fact that Donna—his only girlfriend in high school—cheated on him the summer before their senior year hadn’t helped. She’d been out of town to visit relatives in Oregon, where she began seeing some other guy. When he found out he kept his cool and broke up with her without making a scene, but the lesson that started with his father’s philandering had been well and truly learned by Donna’s indiscretion. Out of sight meant out of trust.

His stomach soured at the reminder.

He cleared his throat. “So Jackson said you were working for the park service now,” he called, to be heard through the bathroom door. “A conservationist or something like that?”

“My degree’s in environmental anthropology,” she called back. “My actual job is trying to juggle the competing interests of human use versus preserving the land.”

“I can’t imagine how demanding that has to be.”

“It’s tough. And with the water crisis getting worse, there’s more demand for this kind of work out west. I’d been considering getting a transfer, but Vegas doesn’t really feel like home anymore.”

An unexpected pang of disappointment echoed through his chest. “Is that why you came out here from Missouri? To test the waters about moving?”

In his pocket, his phone vibrated. He pulled it out and read Jackson’s text.

You’re with her? Weird. I thought she wanted to cancel.

Well, that stung.

“It was something I was considering,” Eliza said. “Getting to see Jackson was the biggest factor, though.”

He pocketed his phone and picked up a photograph Jackson had on a little table in the hallway. It was the three of them as kids, on the boat his mother had claimed in the divorce. His sunburn looked brutal, but his smile remained broad. Beside him, Eliza rested her head on his shoulder, while Jackson squeezed into the frame on the other side.

The sourness in his stomach turned to lead, and for a moment dinner stopped sounding so great. They looked close in the picture, but it hadn’t lasted, had it? Like he’d known would happen, she left and things changed.

“Only Jackson?”

She was silent on the other side of the door.

“Sorry. I’m teasing.”

Another few heartbeats passed before she spoke again. “Right. I guess I was a little scared of coming back here. I worried how much things changed and if it’d ruin all my memories of growing up here.”

“Has it?”

The door opened behind him, and he turned to watch her step out. Her hair was twisted up in a loose bun, with a few deep brown curls free to caress her cheeks. He trusted she was wearing more makeup than she’d worn earlier, but he honestly couldn’t tell the difference. For all he knew, women were born with eyeliner and sculpted eyebrows. In either case, she looked lovely to his eyes. The jeans and sweater she’d been wearing had been replaced with a silky, cream-colored top and a narrow black skirt that showed a tempting expanse of thigh. The neckline plunged into a deep
V
, which made it hard to keep his eyes off the rise and fall of her soft breasts within their cloth frame.

“It’s been difficult,” she said. “The memories, I mean.”

He managed to tear his gaze away from her temptingly curvy body. “Maybe we could try to live up to those old memories instead?”

“What do you mean?” Eliza’s tongue swiped across her bottom lip in a nervous gesture he remembered well, drawing his attention to the contrast between the pinkness of her tongue and the darker red of her lipstick. He wanted to taste both of them.

“You look gorgeous,” he told her quickly, “but why don’t you bring a change of clothes? Your jeans would be good. Do you have boots? I thought since we’ll probably be out all night we might go for a sunrise trail ride.”

“Oh geez. I haven’t been riding since…” She trailed off, her olive-toned complexion blanching a shade. “Since you and Jackson graduated.”

Which was right about when she stopped speaking to him.

That final trail ride together had been sweet agony. Looking at his best friend’s baby sister the way he had that last year of high school was dangerous enough, and he’d fought to not take advantage of the privacy. Acting on his feelings the same summer he was leaving for college was out of the question. Too bad he hadn’t thought to tell her that. She’d kissed him and, for a brief moment, sanity prevailed. He was going to tell her it was a bad idea. He was going to walk away. Instead he’d pinned her to a tree and got lost in her full, soft lips for far too long. When he gathered enough sense to stop, all he could think of to explain himself was their age difference. After he dropped her off at home, she disappeared entirely from his life. It hurt, but he’d been unable to dwell on it in all the commotion before leaving for college. He’d gone off to Reno for school and her parents moved not long after that. Only when his mind drifted back to those days did the pain come back. He’d assured himself that it was long ago and they’d both moved on, but if she hadn’t gone riding since…

He swallowed, as if that would keep the unexpected surge of hope in check. “We don’t have to if you don’t want to. I just thought it’d be fun.”

She shook her head, sending the rich brown ringlets framing her face bouncing. “No, it will be. I do have some boots for tromping around the desert. I’ll get a bag for those and a change of clothes.”

When she had her things together, he held out a hand to take her bag. She gave it to him with a grateful smile.

“So Jackson never told me where we were going tonight. Where did he get reservations?”

“The Golden Steer.” He got the front door for her as well and held it open to let her walk through first. “Since you’ve never been there.”

Her pale green eyes widened. “Jackson actually remembered that?”

He couldn’t help but grin. “No, I did. He said you hadn’t been back since the move, and I knew you’d never been to the Steer before that.”

“Oh.” She didn’t look as excited about this news as he’d expected. Instead, once the surprise on her face cleared, it was replaced with confusion. “That should be fun.”

“It should be.”
I hope
. They walked through the parking lot to where his truck was parked. “I’ve always had a good time when I’ve gone. It’s where we went for my sixteenth birthday.”

“I remember.”

At the time, she’d just been his friend’s little sister, and he hadn’t invited her because he’d wanted to have a very grown-up party. Or at least as grown-up as a sixteen-year-old being taken out to dinner by his father and his father’s most recent barely legal girlfriend could be. It hadn’t been long after that when he started to see Eliza as more than Jackson’s little sister, but he’d kicked himself for excluding her before.

He held the truck door open so she could climb in. Her murmured “thank you” made his heart kick up a beat, and he cursed himself. Opening his own door, he asked, “You still like steak, right?”