One Night in Vegas (Entangled Lovestruck) (Gambling Hearts) (4 page)

“I’m thinking of something a little more exciting.”

Chapter Four

Eliza stared wide-eyed at the big see-through bubble in front of them. “A complete lunatic came up with this thing.”

Chris chuckled. “That’s not really fair to us lunatics,” he countered. “Do you regret the idea? Should we back out?”

She took a deep breath that made her breasts rise up temptingly. Once again, he was happy sh
e’d worn the V-neck top, but his resolve to keep some sort of distance between them was turning into a distant memory. He’d been practically drooling over her during dinner.

“No, let’s do this.”

Ahead of them in line, the attendants started ushering people onto the next passenger car of the observation wheel. The man directly in front of Chris was weaving a bit and had a large drink in his hand. He must have overheard Eliza and took her statement as a call-to-arms.

“Yeah! Let’s do this bitch!” the drunk declared, raising his drink to toast the air.

Chris did a quick headcount of those ahead of them, then checked over Eliza’s shoulder to verify there wasn’t anyone anxiously waiting behind them.

“We’ll wait for the next car,” he told the attendant, offering her a polite smile.

She moved on to ensure the party ahead of them was settled before their car began slowly rotating up out of the passenger platform area.

“I can’t imagine why you didn’t want to share a car with him,” Eliza murmured.

Chris snorted. “The ride takes half an hour. I’m pretty sure ten minutes into the High Roller that drink would be spilled on three people.”

“Oh, that’s not true.” Eliza gave him a little smile and stepped closer to him. Her voice lowered, as if she were afraid of the attendants listening to them. “He’d probably just chug it and puke on them instead.”

He grinned and couldn’t resist. His arm snaked out to wrap around her waist and pull her a little closer. To his gratification, she came eagerly and leaned into him. One of her hands rested on his chest and he felt it burning through his shirt. Their faces were only a few inches apart. A thousand different possibilities raced through his mind before all falling to the wayside, because there was only one thing he wanted to do in that moment. He leaned in and her eyes automatically fluttered shut, her face tipping up toward his in invitation.

“The next car is ready for you,” the attendant said.

Frustration wound up in him like a cornered rattler as he drew away. Eliza’s eyes opened again and he thought he saw regret in them. He hoped he did, at least, since he’d hate to be the only one dying from the tension between them.

“Come on.” His arm slid free from her waist to grasp her hand instead. He tugged her gently into the car with him, which had a wall of screens on one side, with the other side formed of a see-through bubble to give a 180 degree view. There were seats and tables, making it look more like a little cafe than a Ferris wheel car.

“Have you ever been on this before?” she asked.

He looked out toward the loading platform, verifying that his gambit had played to his benefit. No one else was going on their car with them, providing them a rare and spectacular chance for privacy over the Las Vegas skyline.

“No.” With their hands still joined he tugged her over a little closer to him and slid his free hand to the small of her back. She melted against him, molding her body to his like they were made to fit each other. He was vaguely aware that the car was moving, but it wasn’t enough to draw his attention away from her.

She swore in a soft exhalation of breath. “I was hoping you had and could tell me there’s nothing to be afraid of.”

“I can still tell you there’s nothing to be afraid of.” He grinned down at her and gently nudged her to turn around to watch the view as the car continued in its upward arc.

“It’s called the High Roller and it’s currently the world record holder for the tallest Ferris wheel,” he murmured into her ear. He could feel her shiver and lean back a bit more into his body, sparking a sudden surge of aroused awareness in him. Briefly, he wondered if there were security cameras in the cars. There had to be, but surely whoever was watching them saw worse things than this.

“I haven’t been on a Ferris wheel in years, and none of them were anything like this.”

She sounded almost as if she were on the verge of hyperventilating. He tightened his arm around her, hoping it might offer a little bit of comfort. “Are you really afraid?”

“I…yeah. Yeah, I think I am.” She gave him an embarrassed look. “I’m sorry.”

“Shit, no. You don’t have to be sorry. I just wish you’d told me how bad it was sooner.”

There was no way to stop the wheel now that they were on it, but there had to be some way to keep it from being a half an hour of agony for her. He brought a hand up to stroke her hair, not much differently than he might soothe a startled filly. He knew better than to draw that comparison out loud to her, though.

“Okay, if you were going to live anywhere in the world that you haven’t ever lived before, where would it be?”

She arched one brow. “That sounds like you stole it off a bad dating site.”

“Humor me. Where would it be?”

Eliza sighed and glanced away from his face. Out toward the front window of the car, he noticed. Brave of her.

“I don’t know. Maybe somewhere in Montana.”

He slowly combed through her loose curls, twisting locks of them around his fingers. The bun she’d pulled the back of her hair into looked nice, but he far preferred the wild bits she’d left loose. “Really? Why’s that?”

“It’s really beautiful. I went there on a camping trip with some friends in college and it was just…nice. Is that a bad answer?”

“No, there’s no such thing as a bad answer in this game.” He could feel the tension evaporating from her body and he gave her an encouraging little squeeze around the waist. “If I could live anywhere, it’d probably be in Yosemite.”

“What? Actually in the park?”

“Sure. I didn’t say your answer needed to be somewhere at all realistic.”

She laughed and shook her head, then leaned back to look up at him. Her eyelids were heavy-lidded, lips curved into a smile. No saint could possibly resist such temptation. He ducked to brush her lips with his. The first bit of contact made her gasp and his heart skipped a beat before her lips began to stroke his. She turned in his arms slowly, twisting around to make the kiss easier. Her hands came up to bury themselves in his hair, drawing him into the kiss, though he needed no encouragement.

His hands settled at the small of her back, just above the tempting curve of her ass. The observation car played music with displays on the panels behind him and he was sure the view out the front was spectacular, but a team of wild horses couldn’t have pulled him away from that kiss. His lips opened against hers, his tongue lightly teasing at the seam of her mouth. When she parted her lips with a soft sigh he plunged past them to claim her. He explored and tasted, gratified when her tongue met his and wrestled with him for control of the kiss.

The kiss drew him further and further from his senses until his hands slid down to grip her ass and pull her closer. He leaned against the back of the car, absently thinking that the last time he’d kissed her, it had been her back pressed up against something instead of his. He could almost smell the pine again as ancient history came tumbling back to life. Women he’d slept with haunted him less than this. Maybe it was just the unfinished business of it—he wasn’t really sure—but he knew one kiss every ten years would never satisfy him. She was different. Older, more experienced, full of curves that had just begun blossoming back then, but for a few heartbeats, he could almost believe time had stood still.

“Chris.” His name was little more than a gasp on her breath.

He opened his eyes and gave her a gentle nudge. “Look,” he murmured, nuzzling her cheek.

She did as he said and made a quiet sound of appreciation at the view. There was no fearful tension in her body this time. He loosened his arms to let her fully face the window while he cradled her back against his chest. Spread out below them was the Las Vegas Strip, stretching across the valley floor. Lights sparkled in the cool winter night like the largest Christmas tree imaginable. Gambling, corruption, exploitation, and all of the other trademarks of Sin City disappeared in that magical view.

“It reminds me of being a little kid,” Eliza said after a moment of awed silence. “When we’d drive back into town after going on a trip, we’d come over the hills and see it all laid out like that.”

“Yeah, I remember those days. I’d usually fall asleep on the drive but my mom would wake me up to see it.”

“It’s stunning.” With her hair coming loose and her skin slightly flushed, he was sure he’d never seen anything more beautiful. Her hand came up to cup his cheek and he automatically closed his eyes, leaning into the touch. “Thank you.”

“You’re welcome.”

“I don’t know if I should have kissed you, though.” She said it softly, confusion clear in her voice, and he opened his eyes to look at her.

“What’s wrong with a kiss?”

Embarrassment flashed across her face and she looked away. “We have so much history.”

His heart sank, but he nodded. History that had made her avoid him for over a decade and nearly cancel their dinner plans. It wasn’t like he was looking for a relationship with someone who lived out of state anyway, he reminded himself. There was little reason to be disappointed.

“It’s fine. It’s just one night on vacation, right?”

When she looked at him again, he thought he saw hurt in her sparkling green eyes, but she nodded. “Yeah. Just one night.”

Chapter Five

Eliza settled into her seat in Chris’s truck and leaned across to lay a hand on his knee to get his attention. Just that little touch was enough to send a thrill tingling through her body, leaving nerves eager for more. It would have made her feel silly under any other circumstances, but she was still riding too high on the night.

“That really was a fantastic idea.”

He gave h
er one of those grins that just about caught her panties on fire before he turned the key in the ignition. “I’m glad you liked it in the end. I never would have expected you to be freaked out by heights.”

“I guess I’ve gotten a little more easily spooked in my old age,” she joked.

He shot her a narrow-eyed look. “Please. You’re always gonna be two years younger than me, no matter how old you get.”

“Yeah, so that makes you really old.”

“If you don’t watch that smart mouth of yours real quick, I’m pulling this truck over and putting you across my knee.”

She’d been enjoying teasing him, but that sent her mind in directions that had nothing to do with humor. Her mind’s eye could picture it far too easily. Her bent over his lap with her skirt flipped up and one of his big, callused hands on her backside. Heat throbbed between her thighs as she felt her body tighten in response to the thought. After that kiss on the Ferris wheel, could she be blamed for being just a little lust-addled?

“That’s not…I wasn’t…”

He chuckled and the low, masculine sound of it didn’t do much for the state she was in. God, she really was hopeless when it came to Christian Yerrick.

“Okay, but seriously.” The playfulness in his face was washed away by something more sober, perhaps just a touch concerned. “You didn’t used to be so easily spooked. What happened?”

All the warm feelings that had been growing inside her were instantly dashed as if she’d been dunked in cold water. A serious question deserved a serious answer, but it wasn’t the sort of thing that went well with the night.

“I guess I just learned that things aren’t always as nice as I want them to be.” Finding the right words—or words she wanted to use in front of Chris—was like pulling her own teeth. Painful, slow, and the last thing she wanted to do. He’d asked, though. “There’s danger, and people can disappoint us. If I can’t even trust the close people in my life, how can I trust strangers to keep a big ride like that safe?”

He shot her a sidelong look before refocusing on the road ahead of them. “I know you accused me of being too crazy, but sometimes we have to take calculated risks in life, Eliza.”

She faced the window, watching the lights of the Strip as they came out of the parking garage. “I’ve taken risks tonight.”

“Yeah, but they aren’t risks nearly as big as you seem to think they are.”

“Can we change the subject?”

A few moments of silence stretched between them until he broke it by turning on music. Quiet enough to speak over, but enough background noise to perhaps keep things from feeling too awkward. At least that was what she assumed he was aiming for. It did little to ease her own discomfort.

When it became clear that he wasn’t going to speak up first, there was only one thing left for her to do. “So where are we going now?”

“My house. I’ve got some champagne and fireworks left over from the Fourth of July. Unless you’d prefer to do something else?”

They’d be alone in his house, she thought. They’d been alone on the Ferris wheel, too, but they’d also been suspended over the city and surely under surveillance for their own safety. His house was different. For her own dignity and self-control, somewhere more public might be better to ring in the New Year, yet she couldn’t bring herself to say that.

“No, that’s fine.”

They drove in silence for several minutes while the classic country music he’d put on twanged away. Despite the awkwardness, she had to smile a bit. He’d been the only teenage boy she’d known who listened to Hank Williams and apparently, he never grew out of it.

As they continued east away from the heart of Vegas, she glanced at him. “Where do you live?”

“Boulder City, adjacent to Corral Road. It was the cheapest option for horse property around here and I get plenty of calls out there anyway, so it was a smart choice.”

“I was wondering how you were able to afford to keep horses in the Valley. Do you like living out there?”

“Yeah, it’s nice. I’d like a little more land than I have on my lot, but otherwise I can’t really complain.”

“Even if it’s not as good as Yosemite?” His laugh made the tension that had settled over her ebb away, and the knot forming between her shoulder blades unwound. Even if there were limits on what they were going to share, the night was still full of possibilities.

“Yeah. Maybe someday.”

The drive took half an hour, helped along by the fact that little traffic was heading east. Most people were either where they planned to be for the night or else were driving toward the Strip. Leaving the crowds behind wasn’t how she’d imagined her night going, but now it seemed like the perfect choice.

A large expanse of undeveloped land separated the little community of Boulder City from the Vegas suburbs when she was a kid, but now the valley sprawled out until it was difficult to see a sharp divide between city and small town. Only as they followed the road out to Chris’s property did it start looking more open. The desert backed up to the houses they drove past, swallowing everything up in the dark night. She wondered what the view would be like come morning.

His house was a small ranch-style on a slight hill. He pulled up into the driveway and killed the engine. She grabbed her bag to follow him out of the truck. The second she shut her door she heard a shrill scream from off in the distance.

“What the hell was that?”

“Peacock,” he said. “A lot of people keep them on their land around here.”

“I think I’d prefer listening to roosters.”

“Oh, there are plenty of those, too.” He shot her a grin that made screaming birds slightly less obnoxious, if only for making him look at her that way.

She followed him up the front walk, hoping there wouldn’t be any further blood-curdling shrieks while she was there. He flipped on the lights to reveal a clean but somewhat bland living room. The walls were painted in neutral colors and there weren’t any pictures to break things up. Everything about the room felt temporary.

“Did you just move in?”

“Not really. I just haven’t put any effort into decorating.” He looked around the room, as if seeing it for the first time. “I suppose you can tell I live alone.”

His words at dinner came back to her.
This way I’m not too attached to it. Just walk away whenever I like.
“It’s a little obvious.” She walked past him to consider the couch, which was a mottled gray with an elderly cat sleeping on it. The cushions were well-rumpled, as though Chris lay on it often. It also looked to be around twenty years old.

“I went straight from work to pick you up, so I haven’t been in to check on the horses since this morning. Why don’t you change while I do that?”

Eliza raised an eyebrow. “I thought we were riding in the morning.”

“We are, but I was thinking we could take our fireworks out into the desert and find a hilltop where we can watch the New Year’s lights from the Strip.”

“The best of both worlds.” She smiled a little at the thought. “I’d like that.”

He stared at her for a long moment, his expression unreadable, then closed the distance between them and laid his hand on the small of her back. Whether it was meant as just a casual, friendly touch or not didn’t matter when it reignited that need she’d been doing her best to tamp down since the High Roller. Each of his fingers might as well have been made of fire the way they burned through her blouse. Despite the warmth of his house and touch, her nipples contracted into hard points, and a shiver ran down her spine. She wet her lips nervously and his eyes zeroed in on her mouth.

Outside, another one of those damned peacocks screamed.

Chris’s hand dropped from the small of her back. “I’ll be back in a minute.” His voice had a husky edge to it that made her think of filthy promises whispered in the dark.

Left alone in the house, she bit her un-kissed bottom lip. She definitely hated the birds.

It was a little disappointing to change into the practical clothes after she’d felt so sexy all evening long. He probably wouldn’t be gawking at her nearly as much while she wore a sweater and jeans. She unpinned her chignon and pulled her hair back in a ponytail, remembering how brutal the wind in the desert could get. No good would come of it, but she stared at herself in the bathroom mirror all the same.
Frumpy as ever
, she thought with a sigh. Rather than wallowing in those thoughts, she refreshed her makeup, refusing to let a bout of insecurity ruin her night.

When she was done, she stepped out into the hall. “Chris?” She waited, but there was no answer.

She walked down the hall to peek her head into the other doorways, finding three bedrooms in all, and another bathroom off the master bedroom. His bedroom had a bit more personality than the living room, at least. There still wasn’t anything on the walls, but there were little knickknacks and mementos tucked on top of his bookcase and dresser. There were track and rodeo trophies from when he was in school, a few polished stones, and seashells. The books were more indicative of his passions. Books on horses, desert plants, and natural history. An entire shelf was full of westerns and science fiction novels.
Nerdy cowboy
, she thought with a smile.

“Snooping around?” Chris asked from behind her.