“Where is Edna now?”
“She retired. She lives in the Glen Valley retirement village.”
“I have a friend whose grandmother lives there, too,” Nicholas said. “She’s part of a group that call themselves the Sexy Seniors.”
“I love it. How much fun those ladies must be. I hope I’m that cool when I’m older. I like that Edna is so close. We have dinner once a month. She sort of treats me like a daughter. I tried to keep the relationship more businesslike, but she wouldn’t allow it. She dotes on Stetson and is constantly trying to fix Molly up.”
“But not you?”
“She tried, but I’m not… I really wasn’t sure I’d be staying for the first few years. And I’ve got baggage, so… Well, that’s probably not something to bring up on a first date.”
“We all have baggage,” he reassured her.
She smiled at him, tipping her head to the side. “Molly says it’s what makes us interesting.”
“It’s what makes you who you are,” Nicholas said. He had learned that the hard way. He’d tried pretending that the lies he’d been told as a child hadn’t affected him, but they had shaped the man he was today. Thinking he was his grandparents’ biological relation and finding out later they’d adopted him and pretended he was their grandchild had shattered that.
“It is,” she said. “I like the man you are, Nicholas.”
He liked her, too. But emotion made him uncomfortable, so instead he snapped his fingers and presented a single rose to her. “Thank you.”
…
The rose was a simple trick, but he did it with panache and flair. And when he handed her the rose, she noticed the scent and that all the thorns had been removed.
“Was I getting too personal?” she asked.
“Yes. Sorry. I didn’t want to be rude, and I had the flower for you anyway,” he said.
“That’s all right. I like it. Did you use magic in school?” she asked.
She’d always thought that doing tricks was fun and harmless, until she was thirteen and someone at school had accused her of being a con. She had been hurt and upset. Her twin had gotten into a fight with the accuser, and they’d both been sent to detention. That had been the first time that magic had become tinged with something else for her, something that wasn’t otherworldly and special.
He leaned back in the chair. “Sometimes I’d hustle kids at lunch for money. I’m not proud, but I used to do the I-can-name-your-card trick pretty much every day in middle school, until a teacher caught me.”
She shook her head. “You said hustle. Did you deliberately get some of them wrong?”
“Yeah,” he said, rubbing the back of his neck, clearly not comfortable with his disreputable past. “Some of those kids couldn’t afford to lose their lunch money, so I would always flub their card. But if someone was an asshole, I took them for all I could get.”
“I don’t blame you,” she said. “I hated school. I was never happier than the day I dropped out.”
“You dropped out?”
“Yeah. I hope that’s not a big deal to you,” she said.
“Why would it be? You’re smart and funny and sexy as hell. You don’t need a degree to prove that to me,” he said.
That warm feeling started in her stomach and spread throughout her body. He seemed to accept her as she was—something she hadn’t needed for a long time, but in the past, it had been an issue. Maybe it was his connection to magic, but, as she’d noted before, he was stirring up things she hadn’t let bother her in a long time. When she was with him, magic felt closer. She was tempted to produce a coin out of thin air, just to see if it would throw him.
She wondered how he’d react if he knew that she was part of the famous Waterstone family. They had been performing magic tricks since the nineteenth century, so when tragedy had struck, people heard about it. Everyone knew the Waterstones. But today, living in Vegas under her grandmother’s maiden name, Zelda was obscure.
She’d liked that, but now, in front of Nicholas with his cut chest and easy use of magic, she wanted to do a trick. To show off and see if he’d be impressed. But she didn’t. She wasn’t going back to that life. It was only the novelty of being this close to someone of Nicholas’s caliber that was tempting her.
“I like the way you put that,” she said. “What about you?”
“I had a private education while my grandparents were alive and then public education when my guardian had control of my trust,” Nicholas said. “That’s when I hustled for lunch money.”
“I bet that was a shock,” she said. “I remember when we went from a small rural school to a high school in Boston. It was so big, and there were so many kids. I both loved and hated it.”
“Did you? What was it that made you feel that way?” he asked.
“The same thing,” she said, smiling at the memory. “It was so loud, and there were so many kids with different stories. I liked the cacophony of it, but then at times I missed the quiet. It was hard to make a solid friend with so many people around. Plus, I was…”
“Quirky.”
She cocked an eyebrow at him. “Yeah, I guess you could say that. So I irritated a few people. Who knows why? What about you? Popular?”
“Not after I was busted for hustling lunch money. I ended up in juvie. That’s where I met Dare and Casey.”
“Okay, that’s a lot of information for one sentence. How did you end up in juvie, and who are Dare and Casey? Wait, Casey Waltham and Darien Mitchell?”
“The very same. As I mentioned, I had a guardian who wasn’t interested in being a guardian, so I started hanging out on the streets, doing tricks and hustling for real money, not just pocket change. I got busted, and the judge sent me to juvie first and then I transitioned to a halfway house. Dare was there for stealing a car and taking it for a joyride, and Casey had been caught hustling. We just sort of bonded,” he said. He stopped talking, but she could see behind his eyes that he was still thinking about those men.
She sensed that his relationship with them was like hers and Molly’s. Closer than siblings, the kind of friends who had one another’s back through anything. “And now you own a casino together. How did that come about?”
“We made some blood oath back then that we’d go out and make our fortunes and come back to Vegas and open the biggest badass casino. I figured I’d have access to my trust fund by then.” He smiled and shook his head. “We were just punks, but we were determined to be more than that.”
“I love that. Then you started doing shows?” she asked.
“Yeah, I got serious about magic and was doing some street magic—legit this time. That’s when I met Leo—he works for me now. And he helped me polish my act. From there, we just kept getting bigger and better,” he said.
He told her more stories of his time building his career over coffee and dessert, and when everything was cleared away, he leaned back in his chair and looked at her with a very intent stare.
“So that’s it,” he said. “We all ended up back here. I was trying out the new finale trick for the show here in Vegas when the chest was stolen from my house.”
“And that led me to you,” Zelda said.
Chapter Nine
It had led him to her, he thought. He wasn’t certain at all how to take that. There was something about her, so honest, so forthright, that made him wonder if he was looking too hard to find fault with her. Yet at the same time, experience was screaming in his ear that he just wasn’t looking hard enough.
“Do you need to be home at a certain time?” he asked.
“No, do you?” she countered.
“Well, I can’t do shots with you tonight,” he said.
“That’s too bad. Why not?”
“Let’s just say I wasn’t at my best the next day at work,” he said with a laugh. “If I show up like that ag
ain, I’m going to have a mutiny on my hands. But I do have something I’d like to show you.”
“I’m game,” she said.
He paid the bill, waving away her offer to pay her half, and then led her out of the restaurant. They got his car, and then he drove them away from the bright lights of the city toward his home, nestled on the outskirts of town. “I’m taking you to my place. Still game?”
She reached up and pulled the pins from her hair as they turned onto the highway that led out of the city. “I am.”
He opened up the throttle, putting the pedal to the floor and flying along the highway. Her hair whipping out behind them in the wind, she tipped her head up toward the sky and started laughing.
Nicholas found himself joining her, and while he kept his speed to a respectable seventy-five miles per hour, he realized for the first time why Dare liked speed. Though his friend would probably poke fun at him for thinking that seventy-five miles per hour was fast. He slowed down as they neared the gates of his property. His car was fitted with an automatic sensor, and the gates were opening as they pulled up to them. She didn’t say anything as he drove up the winding road that lead to the top of the hill and the circle driveway.
Though he’d had his grandparents’ mansion modernized, the house was old. In fact, this was the original property that his grandparents had left him. He parked the car, turned off the engine, then turned to face Zelda. The wind had made her hair into a red halo around her head and shoulders. Her eyes were wide with that curiosity that he loved seeing in them.
“That was incredible. Thank you. It’s been a long time since I just let go,” she admitted.
“You’re welcome,” he replied. He got out of the car and went around to open her door, but she already had it open. He offered her his hand, and she got out of the car.
He had called ahead to let the couple who kept the house know that he’d be home tonight so they wouldn’t come and investigate when they saw lights on in the main house. The Shaws lived in a bungalow down the hill, but it was still on the property. They were the caretakers he’d hired once he’d finally inherited the property from his guardian. He unlocked the door and led the way into the house, stopping in the foyer to drop his keys in a bowl on the table near the door.
“I like this,” she said. “It’s very turn-of-the-century paper baron.”
He started laughing. “How did you know? My grandparents’ fortune came from paper. They left the house to me, and I kept as many of the original parts as I could. The house was built in the Craftsman style, when form and function were prized.”
“I can tell. It’s really extraordinary. Is this what you brought me up here to show me?” she asked.
“Partly,” he said. “But I have a surprise for you.”
“You do?”
“I do. Close your eyes,” he said.
“Is that really necessary?” she asked,
“Don’t you trust me?” he countered, leaning in close to her, and she canted her body toward his.
“Of course I do. It just sounded so dramatic.”
“I am a showman,” he said.
“Yes, you are,” she admitted, then closed her eyes and held out her hands. “I’m yours.”
A shaft of pure possessiveness went through him. He wished she was his. He wanted her to be his. But he wasn’t sure that was realistic. He took her hand in his, brushed his lips over the back of her knuckles, and started to lead her across the foyer to a room that he kept locked at all times. “Close your eyes.”
“I hope you know you don’t need all the drama to lead me to your bedroom,” she said. “Just take off your shirt, and I’ll follow you anywhere.”
He chuckled. “Good to know. But I’m not taking you to my bedroom.”
“Damn.”
He smiled again, leaning in to use the retinal scan he’d recently had installed and then the biometric keypad to open a panel in the wall. He led her over the threshold and into the center of the room. He stopped when he was in front of the item he wanted her to see, the very object she’d said would be a challenge to obtain for his exhibit. It was an original straitjacket and suspension post from the 1890s.
“Open your eyes,” he said. “Surprise. It’s a Waterstone straitjacket and post. I know you mentioned you hadn’t been able to find one. This is what I based my very first illusion on.”
She caught her breath and stared at the object with something more than joy in her eyes. He couldn’t define it, but she quickly looked away. “So, do you know how to use it?”
Her words were light and flirty, but for the first time, he didn’t sense the sexy lust he usually heard in her voice. There was something else there, but what?
“Of course I can. Want to help me demonstrate?” he asked.
“Will you be removing your shirt?”
“I will.”
“Then I’m definitely in.”
…
Naturally, his surprise was something that she hadn’t been prepared for. When she’d first seen the straitjacket, she’d remembered how it felt to wear it while suspended on the post. She’d never been good at escaping. When she’d first been learning, her sister had been better at the tricks. But Zelda had always been better with the crowds.
She shook off those old recollections. She had to stop this flood of memories from the past. As soon as Nicholas turned toward her, she tried to compose her face, but the truth was right there on her lips. She hadn’t told anyone her real name in almost fifteen years, and now she was tempted. But he wasn’t the right person to tell. He’d ask too many questions—questions she didn’t want to answer. The only way to get through this was to keep silent.
“Want me to be your assistant?” she asked, focusing instead on him. On those electric blue eyes and the way they made her feel. That was the only way she was getting through this.
“I’d love that,” he said.
“What do I do?” she asked. She hadn’t performed in years, but she knew that each illusionist did something different with their assistants.
“Well, for starters, you help me take off my shirt,” he said.
“Yay, just what I was hoping to do,” she said. “Is it just so you can flex your muscles and show off for the crowd?”
“Partially, but it also shows the audience that I’m not hiding anything.” He held his arms out. “Now you undo the cuffs and then the buttons.”
“I’m liking this more and more,” she said, slowly undoing the cufflinks at his wrists. They had the same sigil that he had tattooed on his wrist. “Where do I put these?”
“Put them in my pocket,” he said.
She slipped her hand into his pocket, stretching her fingers to caress his upper thigh and to reach the tip of his cock, which hardened almost instantly. She took her hand from his pocket and then did the same thing on the other side. He cleared his throat, and she looked up at him.
“Am I doing it wrong?”
“No, you’re definitely not doing it wrong,” he said. “Now undo my shirt.”
She slowly undid his tie, taking it off. “Where do you want this?”
“Just put it on the table over there,” he said.
“Not your pocket?”
“Not if you want to see this trick,” he said.
“I do,” she admitted. She did want to see him perform magic up close. It was so much a part of him that she felt like she needed to see it. Maybe then she’d be able to understand what it was she was supposed to be doing here with him.
Because this was more than lust, she thought. She undid the buttons on his shirt and caught her breath at the sight of his muscled chest. She took a step back as she finished, and he stood there for a long moment. Their eyes met, and she felt that electric current pass between them.
“Now you walk around behind me and help me out of the shirt,” he sai
d. “If this were a show, you’d take your time and do it leisurely. We’d have music, and you’d pause for effect before pulling it off of me.”
She licked her lips and moved toward him, touching his chest with her fingers. Then she caught the open edge of his shirt, unhurriedly drawing it down his arm as she walked around his body to the side, finally tugging it free from him.
He stood there with his arms outstretched. “As you can see, there isn’t anything taped to my body. My assistant will now run her hands over me to prove it.”
A jolt of feminine awareness went through her, pooling between her legs as she moved closer to him. “Do you do this in your show?”
“Not all the time, but I want to feel your hands on me,” he admitted, his eyes meeting hers.
She put her hands on his shoulders and then slowly swept them down his muscled arms, feeling his biceps flex under her touch, and then moved her hands to his waist. She drew her finger along the top of his trousers, reaching lower with her palm to brush the tip of his erection. He let out a little moan, and his hips thrust toward her, but she kept her touch moving along his body, over his hard stomach and up his abdomen and ribs. She spread her fingers wide so that she could cover the padded muscles of his pectorals.
“Turn around,” she said, her voice husky and deep, the arousal that was spreading through her evident in her tone.
He turned under her touch, and she cupped his butt, even though she knew she didn’t need to. But he had a nice ass, and she’d missed touching it, she realized. It had been too long since their night together.
She took her hands to the small of his back and then slowly caressed her way up to his shoulders again. He turned so quickly she almost lost her balance, then lifted her into his arms, pressing her body to his. He brought his mouth down on hers hard, kissing her so deeply that she forgot to breathe. He lifted his head, his nostrils flaring. Then he seemed to get control of himself again and set her on her feet.
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