One Night in Vegas (Entangled Lovestruck) (Gambling Hearts) (6 page)

Chapter Eight

The morning sunlight on his face was much brighter than it should have been. Chris shifted to throw an arm over his eyes to try to block it out. As he moved, there was a soft sound beside him and he felt another body shift closer to his. His eyes opened as the night came back to him. Dinner with Eliza. Making out with Eliza. Fucking in the back of his truck with Eliza. He’d only intended to lie with her for a few minutes after they made love the final time, but they both fell asleep and slept through the ent
ire night.

He moved his arm and rolled onto his side so he could look at her. With her hair all tousled and her face relaxed in sleep he thought she looked even more stunning than the night before. His hand gently stroked her cheek. Everything had happened so fast but had felt perfectly right. He’d worried he was letting wishful thinking drive him when he’d slipped condoms into his wallet before they left for the fireworks. Instead, she’d been as desperately hungry for him as he was for her. Just thinking about it and feeling her bare body curled against his side was enough to get him hard again.

He sighed and looked around at the bright winter morning. What had seemed private enough in the night was now laughably exposed. With no trees or dense bushes to block the view, things in desert daylight could be seen from miles away. Tempting as it was, staying and having sex again would be too stupid to risk.

“Eliza.” He gave her a gentle nudge.

“Hmm?” She shifted and opened her eyes, then gasped softly and closed them again. “Oh God. It’s sunny.”

“Yeah, it is.” He chuckled and moved to find where he’d left his phone to check the time. “It’s just a little past eight. We should probably get back to my house before somebody finds us.”

She sat up reluctantly to pull on her sweater. She didn’t bother with her bra, he noticed. He rather liked that.

“Do you really think anyone is going to be out here this morning?” she asked.

“New Year’s resolution to hike more?”

“Ugh, okay. Fine.”

They dressed quickly and rolled up the sleeping bags so they wouldn’t blow away on the drive back, then climbed into the cab. After he started up the truck and got them onto the dirt road to his house, she reached over to touch his hand lightly. He intertwined his fingers with hers, finding himself smiling at that little bit of contact.

“Are you still interested in going for a ride this morning?” he asked.

“What kind of ride?”

He shot her a look and saw she was grinning. He chuckled, shaking his head. “The horses, but I’d enjoy the other kind if you prefer.”

“Why don’t we see about the horses and then plan the rest of the day from there?”

“Sounds perfect.”

Back at his house they freshened up a little. He was pleased to see she’d had the foresight to put a toothbrush in her bag, too. Once he had stolen a minty fresh kiss, he led her out to the barn.

In daylight, the modest size of his property was obvious. It was huge for a city lot, but still wasn’t even quite half an acre. At the bottom of the small hill his property was on were dozens of even smaller lots, most of them without any living space on them. Instead they were divided up and crammed together to make as much space for horse stabling as possible, while the owners lived elsewhere. Those little properties formed a ring around a dirt road beyond them, which circled a large arena. Smaller arenas and several round pens were also within sight, all tucked in together.

“I know we came out here for the rodeo a couple times, but it still looks completely confusing to me,” Eliza remarked.

He stopped outside the barn door. “It is a bit. Most of these are private properties, but that stuff in the middle belongs to the Boulder City Horsemen’s Association. We pay fees and then have access to the arenas and round pens, so we don’t need as much property as individuals. It’s like…horse communism.”

Her laugh pleased him and for a moment he thought about kissing her again instead of riding. The sound of one of the horses snorting and stomping inside drew him away from that temptation. They needed his attention more than he needed to kiss her, frustrating as that could be.

He opened up the barn doors, then led her to the stalls. Both horses shared a turnout and only one had come inside to greet them. She was a sturdy looking dun mustang who came up to see if he had any food to offer her.

“Eliza, this is Molly. Molly, Eliza. I’m too tall to ride her, so you’ll be on her today.”

“It’s nice to meet you, Molly.” Eliza reached out a hand to let Molly sniff her palm, then gave the horse pats and strokes along her neck. “How did you end up with a horse you can’t ride?”

“I like mustangs, but they tend to be not especially large horses.” He continued speaking as he opened up the stall to get a lead line on the horse. She put up little fuss over it, to his relief. Putting Eliza on her if the mustang was in a mood wouldn’t be wise after not riding for so many years. “I fell in love with Molly the first time I saw her and knew I had to adopt her. I’m really proud of all the progress I’ve made with her, even if we’re not a good fit for riding. There’s a kid who comes out to take her riding once a week and helps with her training that way, but it’s probably not as often as she needs.”

Eliza was quiet for a moment, just watching him with the horse. As he was leading Molly out to tack her up, she spoke again. “I could ride her more often than that while I’m here.”

Her words filled him with a confusing rush of emotions. Any excuse to spend more time with her should have been welcome, yet it came with a painful reminder that everything in his life had been temporary. Eliza was no exception. Worse, she was his best friend’s little sister. Someone he’d grown up with. Someone who knew him far too well for his own comfort. Someone he’d known he cared deeply for long before she’d kissed him when they were teenagers. The sparks between them were undeniable, and they had a better connection than he’d shared with any other woman he’d dated. That was what made him so worried. How could he let her go without it being pure agony?

He’d fucked up the situation royally the moment he’d kissed her.

“Yeah, you could do that,” he said with a purposefully vague tone.

By the time he had Molly ready, his gelding had come in from the turnout to investigate what was happening. He was a muscular cremello thoroughbred—his coat was nearly white, as were his mane and tail—and the sight of him filled Chris with a touch of pride every time he brought the horse out for people to see. Chris called him over to get a lead line on him, too, though there was more defiance over this than there was with Molly.

Eliza stared at him in shock. “You fell in love at first sight with Molly when you have a beast like that?”

Chris looked from the thoroughbred to the mustang, struggling to find words to express his thoughts. “I know she looks a little plain compared to him, but there’s more to a horse than being pretty. He was bred for his looks and it shows, but mustangs are bred by nature for survival.”

“That’s not really much of an issue here in your barn,” Eliza said.

“No, but it breeds a very different kind of horse. She’s a unique personality all her own. It’s hard to explain.” He shrugged. “Why do we love anybody?”

Eliza bit her lip. “I really don’t know. What’s his name?”

Chris couldn’t help but smile. “Keifer.”

She mouthed that to herself with a quietly baffled look on her face, then shook her head. “Molly and Keifer. That’s not what I was expecting.”

“I didn’t name him, but I did name Molly. Since he responded to it, I never got around to calling him anything else.”

Though it had been years since she’d been riding, Eliza came over to help him with Keifer. Had she been too unsure of herself to offer with Molly, or did she just need to see it all over again for the skills to come back? Even if she hadn’t remembered a thing, he would have enjoyed her help for how close it brought her to him. The warmth of her body and memories of the night seared him through his clothing.

All too soon, they were done. He led Keifer out so he could open up the back gate of his property, which backed up to a narrow dirt road winding around the other properties lining the corrals.

“They have hay to munch on all night, but we’re just going to take a short ride today so I can cool them down and give them grain after.” And in the process, maybe he’d cool down as well.

“That’s fine.” She grinned as she walked alongside him with Molly. “My butt might not be able to take a long ride after all this time.”

His eyes automatically flicked back toward her ass, so perfectly flattered by her jeans. Damn.
Let’s hope we don’t do any damage to it then.

Chapter Nine

Eliza felt her skin warm and pr
ickle in response to Chris’s nearness, despite the distance between them. How many times had he left her flustered and unsure of what to say? His vagueness about her riding Molly in the future left her feeling especially lost. Was he trying to brush her off? She’d never slept with someone on the first date—if their New Year’s Eve together counted as a date—and couldn’t figure out how she was supposed to act now.

“This really is a great setup you’ve got here.” She looked out toward the center arena as it came into view. She could remember sitting in the stands to watch Chris run barrels. Jackson lacked their shared interest in horses and had been bored out of his mind, but she’d been glued to the spot. “You’ve got access to all this whenever you want it? I had no idea that’s how it worked.”

“Mostly. There are schedules for events and when something is going on I can’t use the main arena. Usually I can get into one of the smaller arenas or the round pens if I need to. If not right away, then within a few minutes.”

She patted Molly on the neck and sighed. “You make me wish I was working out of a park service office down here.”

Chris didn’t respond, but she caught sight of him out of the corner of her eye. There was a faintly pained expression on his face as he looked down at the ground, brow furrowed with some inner turmoil. Something was on his mind, but he wasn’t hinting at what it was.

At the end of the dusty road they paused to get onto their saddles. So many years had passed, Eliza briefly wondered if she’d even remember how. Avoiding looking at Chris so as not to embarrass herself, she took a couple of deep breaths before slipping her foot into the stirrup. Pushing her weight onto that foot, she used it to pull herself up off the ground and then swing her other leg over the body of the mustang. “Hey, I didn’t fall on my face!”

“You were always good in the saddle. I didn’t expect that to change.”

She smiled. “Yeah, well, the day’s young. I might disappoint you yet.”

Chris led the way onto the desert trail and she followed behind, happy to let him take the lead for the moment. Once the trail widened out enough that she could ride alongside him she urged Molly to stay abreast with Keifer. The little mustang settled into a surprisingly smooth gait, but even so, she could feel the steady jarring of her tailbone that she’d nearly forgotten in the intervening years.

The desert stretched out as if it went on forever. Eliza squinted up into the sky to watch a hawk circling up above. “See, this is what I miss about Nevada.”

“You make that sound like you haven’t been out in a desert since your parents moved you to Missouri.”

She shrugged. “I haven’t. Everything since then has kept me pretty well stuck in the middle of the country, and I’ve been sharing a car with Jackson during this vacation. I haven’t had much of a chance to get out and enjoy myself.”

A muscle in his jaw flexed, and he avoided her gaze. She watched, wishing like hell he’d make eye contact or smile or
something
so she could figure out what was bothering him. All she could think of was that he regretted their night together, which was such a painful thought she actually felt a stab of uncomfortable emotion straight through her heart.

And here she’d always thought heartbreak was just a metaphor.

Turning away from him, she breathed in deeply to ease the tension in her diaphragm. Whatever was going on inside of his head, she couldn’t control it. All she could do was enjoy what time they had left. “Which way do you usually go when you ride out here?”

There was a faint tightness to his voice. “Here, I’ll show you.”

He gave Keifer a nudge to speed up, which Molly automatically mirrored to keep them moving together. At a fork in the trail, Chris led them down to the right. Soon they were climbing into low hills, moving farther and farther from town. Keifer seemed a bit less certain about the uneven ground, but Molly picked her way through confidently. Eliza marveled at what a good little horse the mustang was turning out to be, even if she wasn’t as visually striking as the thoroughbred. It was easy to see why Chris had fallen in love with her.

“This up here is either where bootleggers used to hide out or else a shanty town from the Depression,” Chris said, pointing to a little cave set in one of the hills.

“Really?” Eliza frowned and urged Molly forward so she could get a better look.

There were bits of rusted corrugated metal that must have been used for roofs at one time and she saw the broken remains of large brown glass jugs. Bleach bottles from the 1930s, if she remembered correctly, but they had also frequently been repurposed. Sometimes to hold water and sometimes to hold liquor. She couldn’t imagine being so desperate as to use a bleach bottle to drink out of, but there was a lot about those days she couldn’t fathom. Her heart began to race at the thought of this being some new discovery.

“Does anybody else know about this?”

He shrugged. “I don’t think so.”

“I’d hate to ruin your riding trail, but I should probably let the park service know. Just in case there’s anything of historical value that needs to be preserved.”

“It wouldn’t ruin anything, but if it becomes a national monument, I hope you’ll name it after me.”

There was a hint of humor in his tone. Relieved, Eliza chuckled. “Unlikely. There’s another little settlement like this just over the pass on the Nevada State College campus. All they did was set it aside so people could do surveys and learn what they could.”

“Then I’ll consider that my good deed for the day. Preserving valuable knowledge about desert moonshiners.”

A thousand different possibilities raced through her mind as she considered that. Nevada hadn’t felt much like home during the past few days while barely seeing her brother and being too nervous to call old friends, but that feeling of belonging had sneaked back on her over the course of the night while in Chris’s arms. Eliza could picture herself transferring to the local park service unit, working by day to preserve the site and then unwinding with Chris and his horses and whatever adventure he’d just cooked up.

If only he were interested.

As if he could hear her thoughts, their eyes met and the hint of warm humor in his eyes melted her. The need to touch him and hold him, to figure out what it all meant between them, was suddenly overwhelming. She leaned toward him and heard the creak in his saddle from him leaning in to meet her, but before she reached him Keifer shifted and took a few steps forward and to the side. A flash of annoyance passed over Chris’s face as he straightened. “Let’s keep going. This trail I use wraps around here before meeting up with the other one again and taking us to the corrals.”

She followed along at a more sedate pace than before, drinking in the hills and the sky and the brush that her horse occasionally tested for edibility. After a few minutes, she heard the chirp of a text message in the pocket of her jacket. She shifted the reins out of her right hand so she could pull it out and check.

“Jackson says he managed to get a little bit of sleep. He’d like to have breakfast with us if we’re still together,” she called over to Chris.

With his back to her, all she could see of his response was his head bobbing in a nod. “You’re still here, so I guess we’re still together.”

“That sounds like a rousing endorsement.” She awkwardly typed out her response as Molly continued down the trail.

A few feet farther down the trail Chris spoke again. “He say where he wants to have breakfast?”

“No. Should I text him again?”

Chris shrugged and straightened in the saddle. The urge to scream at him and demand some sort of real response was overwhelming. She had found him occasionally confusing the night before, but it was nothing compared to the constant cycling through extremes of the morning. He seemed capable of only two moods: he was either ready to ravish her then and there, or he virtually ignored her.

She stayed quiet and stewed in frustration the rest of the way back. At the barn, she silently untacked Molly and checked the horse’s hooves. All the old habits of horse care were coming back to her, for which she was grateful. Something to focus on that didn’t require speaking to him was more than welcome at the moment. They got the horses their grain and Chris checked their water.

Chris shut the barn door, his back to her. “Do you want to take a shower before Jackson gets here?”

She braced her fists on her hips. “No, I want you to talk to me.”