“So things are back on track now?” I asked, trying to ask without asking if that meant that she would be back to Utah soon. But I guessed that Ian wouldn’t have brought me here to Vegas if he thought that Bailey would be seeing me soon anyway.
Bailey shook her head. “I mean, yes and no. Everyone seems a little worried that Ian is going to go back to making a bunch of changes the minute my back is turned, so I’m still working here. And they’ve asked me to stay here for another month, like I told you on the phone, but I have a feeling that when that month is almost over, they’re going to ask me for another month. They just don’t trust Ian at the moment.”
Her lips twisted, and she looked out over the restaurant, as though it was difficult to meet my eyes. “Don’t get me wrong, I’m glad that Ian came out to Utah to pick you up today. But at the same time, it just proves to some of the others that he can’t totally be trusted to focus on what’s best for the company. He should have been there today. Or he should have at least, I don’t know, called in sick or something.”
I grimaced. I knew that she didn’t mean to make it sound like it was my fault that she was going to have to possibly stay out here longer. But I couldn’t help feeling like she was saying that if it wasn’t for me, then the board of directors wouldn’t have lost even more confidence in Ian that day. Even though I knew that, yeah, Ian should have done the responsible thing and either come to get me on one of his days off or else just called me or something.
Not that I would have picked up the call if he had tried. Yet another thing to feel guilty about. Ian had just been trying to do a nice thing for me, to basically show that he did support Bailey and I, and this time I had been the one being a dick in response.
“So you still don’t know how long you’re going to be here?” I asked Bailey, trying not to sound too upset over that.
Bailey sighed. “Honestly? No. And I really wish that I could tell you.” She paused and then slowly reached across the table and caught my hand. “But I really did miss you, Adam.” There was a raw honesty in her voice and in her gaze that took my breath away.
I had to smile gently in response. “Well, I’m glad that I can be here, then.” I cleared my throat, trying not to let things get too mushy. “So are you busy this weekend?”
Bailey grinned. “I think I can take a little time to show you around,” she said. “Have you ever been to Vegas before?”
I shook my head. “Never,” I admitted.
“We’re going to have fun,” Bailey promised me, and I could tell from the way that she said it that she didn’t just mean that we would have fun taking in the sights. She frowned. “Where are you staying, anyway? And is Ethan with you?”
“Nah, Ethan’s staying with his grandfather this weekend,” I said. “He probably would have loved to come, but…” I trailed off, not sure how to explain that I didn’t really want the boy getting too close to her before I knew whether or not Bailey was truly coming back to Park City. And I was starting to wonder if I would believe it until I knew that she had booked a return flight.
Bailey grinned at me again, though. “So I’ve got you all to myself this weekend,” she practically purred.
I laughed. “Guess so,” I said. “And Ian gave me a place to stay. At one of your casinos.” I pulled the key out of my pocket. I had tried to pay him back for the flight down, but he had refused. Accepting the room key, though, knowing that they weren’t losing anything on it, was easier.
Bailey peered at the key and then grinned. “Oh, nice,” she said, her eyes glinting. “Maybe we should go check it out after this. Just to make sure that it’s going to, you know, work for you this weekend.”
I could tell that wasn’t what she meant at all, and I smirked at her. “Now Bailey, I might start thinking that the only reason you want me here is so that you can sleep with me,” I teased.
She shrugged unrepentantly but her thumb brushed across my knuckles. “I missed you,” she said again, the words given even more weight this time.
I squeezed her hand lightly, hoping she realized just how much I felt the same.
54
Bailey
Dinner with Adam was just so easy. We didn’t talk about anything too deep. We didn’t put labels on our relationship, and he was careful not to ask me to define when, exactly, I’d be headed back to Utah. But for all of that, it felt like something had really shifted between us in the short time that he’d been there in Vegas.
It was enough that he had even come there to Vegas. That he had dropped everything in Utah and flown out here for the weekend. Sure, that might have been at Ian’s prompting, but I knew Adam well enough to know that he wouldn’t be there if he didn’t want to be. And I didn’t think he was just there because he didn’t want to work at the resort for the weekend.
No, he was here because he wanted to see me. Because he had missed me just as much as I had missed him. And that said more than any conversation with him could have.
We finished up our burgers and I drove him to the hotel that Ian had put him up in. It was one of our nicest places, and when Adam told me the room number, I had to grin. Not only was it one of the nicer casino hotels in town, but Ian had put Adam up in one of the nicest suites. One of the suites generally reserved for honeymooners, in fact.
I needed to remember to thank Ian for all of this. Oh, I still planned on having words with him about the fact that he had just taken off for the day without telling anyone. He had been highly irresponsible. But I was starting to realize just why he had done it.
He had brought Adam here for me. I didn’t need any further proof that Ian was, if not happy, then at least okay with the relationship that I was building with Adam. And to be honest, if Ian had told me that he was going to fly out to Utah to bring Adam out here for a weekend, I probably would have told him no.
Not that I didn’t want Adam here. But I knew full-well that I had heaped enough on Adam’s plate recently, and I didn’t want him to feel the stress of taking off two days when he could be working, or spending time with his son, just to see me here in Vegas. If anything, I should have been the one taking a weekend to fly back to Utah to see Adam.
Besides, I would have been worried. I wouldn’t have been sure if Adam would say yes, and I would have been too afraid even to open myself up to the chance that he might say no. I would have told Ian that there were a dozen things that Adam and I needed to talk about before we could discuss him coming out here to Vegas just to visit me for a couple days.
But now, here he was. He seemed happy to be here, happy to see me, and I couldn’t deny how glad I was that he was there. Damn the consequences.
We headed up to his suite, and I couldn’t help shooting him looks as we got onto the elevator. I wished that we were the only two people in there. I wanted nothing more than for him to push me back against the wall. I wanted him to kiss me until I was breathless, until I totally forgot where we were, until we had missed our floor without even realizing it because we were just so tangled up in one another.
Instead, there were three other people in there with us; a couple and another woman there on her own. But Adam did step close to me, putting an arm around me, his thumb stroking lightly across my hip. He grinned down at me when I looked up at him, and I could see the promise in his eyes. If I could only be patient.
We finally made it to his room for the weekend, and he unlocked the door with a flourish. I followed him inside and barely had time to toe off my shoes before he backed me up against the wall, his lips hot against mine. He pressed his firm body against me, and I could feel the heat of passion radiating off of him.
I giggled and turned my head to the side. “Don’t you even want to see what this place looks like?” I asked.
“I’d like to fuck you right here in the middle of the hall,” Adam said honestly. “I’ll see the bed sooner or later, I’m sure.”
I wanted to laugh, but instead I moaned wordlessly as his lips found the sensitive skin at the side of my ne
ck, sucking and nipping at it until I was practically shivering in desire. True to his word, he started to strip me down right there, like he wanted to take me there in the middle of the hallway. Like he couldn’t manage to keep his hands off me for long enough to move anywhere else.
But suddenly, I had an idea. I pulled away from him, catching his hands before he could protest and leading him away down the hall towards the doors that opened out onto the balcony. He raised an eyebrow at me but didn’t ask what I was doing. As for me, I couldn’t help thinking about the first dream that I had had about the two of us, back in Utah, not long after I had bought Brooks Mountain Resort.
I led him out to the hot tub out on the balcony and slowly started stripping off my clothes. He groaned and hurriedly stripped down as well, joining me after a moment in the hot tub. I pulled him close against me, kissing him until my body temperature felt hotter than even the temperature of the water.
Adam’s hands slipped lazily across my slick skin as he hungrily pulled me against him again. One hand came up to cup one of my breasts while his other hand slipped in between my legs. I groaned and rocked down onto his fingers, letting them slip inside of me. He fingered me for a long time, his lips still pressed against mine, his tongue twisting with mine.
I pushed him back so that he was sitting on one of the bench seats in the hot tub and then straddled him, guiding his hard dick to nudge against my entrance. He pressed up inside of me, and I gasped, grabbing at the edge of the hot tub for leverage so that I could push myself down onto his length. It hadn’t even been that long since the last time we had had sex, but it still felt so new and amazing to have him fully sheathed inside of me. I worked my body against his, drawing him ever deeper into me even as the walls of my pussy tightened with each new pulse of lust that shot through my body. I knew it was only a matter of time before I came, but I didn’t pull back, didn’t try to slow things down. Instead, the higher my lust spiked, the quicker I moved my body against his, until my hips were snapping down against his quickly enough that I couldn’t even catch my breath anymore.
Adam brought his hand up to cup my cheek, the gentle move incongruous in comparison with everything else that I’d experienced thus far, but still somehow perfect. I gasped as each new thrust drove the air out of my lungs, my body quivering as my pleasure crept higher and higher.
Adam’s lips found the side of my neck again, and he nipped at the skin there, biting and sucking until I was sure that there would be a mark. A mark that would probably be impossible for me to hide from Ian and all of the other people who worked there at the casino. But I couldn’t be bothered to care. I wanted this, more than I could ever put into words.
And Adam, for his part, seemed to know exactly what I needed. He continued to give it to me, varying the rhythm to leave me breathless and wanting and then speeding up to get me to moan out his name. Until suddenly, my body couldn’t handle the strength of my lust anymore. I came, clinging to him, sighing out his name into the evening’s cool air.
I could feel Adam spill as well, his release shooting into me as I gave two final thrusts against his hot and heavy cock. He wrapped his arms around my lower back, holding me close, his lips finding the mark that he had left on my neck before and giving it the gentlest of kisses.
I leaned into him for a long moment, never wanting this to end. But finally I pulled back away. Adam grinned at me. “Hi,” he said, nuzzling his nose against mine. And I had to giggle.
I didn’t know how to put my feelings into words. I had already told him that I had missed him while I was here and he was back in Park City. But this was more than that. Being right here, in his arms, was where I had wanted to be ever since I had left. It was just what I hadn’t been able to stop thinking about.
Oh, I had responsibilities here. Things that I couldn’t forget about. But the whole time that I’d been here, I’d been remembering the feeling of Adam’s arms around me. And that had worried me, to a certain extent. I had thought that maybe I was making too much of what we had. That he just wanted it to be a seasonal thing. That he wanted to forget about me. But now that I was back here, I knew that I had been right.
This was right. And there was nothing that would make me believe otherwise.
I grinned at Adam and shrugged a little, and he laughed. “Do you want to go inside, before we turn into prunes?” he asked.
“Probably,” I sighed, but I lay against him for another few beats. And his arms only tightened around me.
55
Adam
I woke up early on Saturday morning, just like I would have if I was going in to work on the mountain. But as soon as I opened my eyes to the suite in Las Vegas, I remembered that I wasn’t in Park City at the moment and wouldn’t be headed in to work at Brooks Mountain again until Monday.
I rolled to the side and found Bailey still sleeping next to me, her face looking sweet and innocent in slumber. There was a faint smile on her lips, and I wondered what she was dreaming about. Or if she was dreaming at all. Maybe the smile was just her body’s response to the sex that we’d had the previous night, out in the hot tub, before tumbling into bed together. As for me, I definitely felt languid, loose, and sated.
I stretched a little, unable to tear my eyes away from Bailey. There was a part of me that had almost expected her to sneak out the night before, while I’d still been sleeping. I didn’t know why I had thought that, when the previous times we had slept together, I had been the one who needed to leave. I had needed to get back to Ethan.
But this time, I could take all the time in the world just to laze there in bed watching her, curling my body around her. Well, maybe not all the time in the world. But we had two days together.
I had to remember to thank Ian for that.
I should have thanked him the day before, at the airport. But I’d still been so surprised about it all. And nervous. What if Bailey didn’t want to see me here? What if she had already found someone new that she was interested in? And why was Ian really doing this? Was it really because he thought that he owed Bailey something, or did he know something that I didn’t?
I had sat there in the airport waiting for Bailey to arrive, sure that I had made a mistake. That I should just get on the next flight back to Salt Lake City and forget about the whole thing. In fact, I had even looked up when the next flight out would be. I could get on one that night. It would cost me a lot of money, money that I didn’t really want to spend, but it was feasible.
This was worth it, though. Being here, next to Bailey. I pressed my body close against hers, careful not to disturb her as she continued to sleep. She was warm against me, her bare skin soft against mine, and I smiled as I brushed my lips tenderly against her shoulder.
I loved her. I realized it then, with a clarity that startled me. It wasn’t just that I liked her, and it definitely wasn’t just that I was attracted to her. No, I loved her, in a way that I hadn’t loved anyone in a very long time.
There was a reason that she made me so nervous. A reason that it was so hard to even contemplate the idea of her not coming back to Park City eventually. I knew that she was doing what she needed to do right now, here in Vegas. And I knew just how difficult it would be to leave behind everything that I had ever known, my home. I knew I would never want to uproot Ethan, and especially not to take him to a place where there was barely any skiing at all.
But I also knew that if that was what I had to do, then I would do it. I didn’t have a choice, really. I loved Bailey.
Bailey shifted against me, blinking open her eyes. For the briefest of moments, I wished that I was there inside her head. Maybe last night, she had just been caught up in the moment. Surprised to see me. Maybe she didn’t actually want me there in Vegas with her. I knew that she already felt like Ian was too controlling, trying too hard to insert himself into her life. Maybe I represented everything that she hated about that.
But when Bailey saw me there, curled up against her, she smiled and snuggled against
me. “Good morning,” she murmured.
I kissed her forehead. “Good morning,” I said in response, unable to help the way my arms tightened around her. “You hungry?”
“Starving,” Bailey said. But she curled closer to me. “I don’t want to get out of bed, though.”
“We don’t have to,” I said, grinning at her. I rolled slightly away so that I could grab the binder off the bedside table. “Ian mentioned something about room service?”
Bailey groaned in appreciation, pushing herself up against the pillows. “That sounds perfect,” she said, peering over my shoulder at the menu. I picked up the phone to put in our order and then put the binder back on the nightstand. Then, I rolled on top of Bailey and made out with her as we waited for the food to arrive. She had just slipped her hand down below the sheets when there was a knock on the door. I pulled away with a muffled groan, but I couldn’t help grinning when I saw the decadent spread that was wheeled in for us.
“So what do you want to do today?” Bailey asked as we dug in to our feast.
I shrugged as I chewed a mouthful of pancakes. “I don’t know, what do I want to do today?” I asked her. “I’ve never been to Vegas before. I wouldn’t even know where to start.”
“Hmm,” Bailey said, looking thoughtful. “How long do I have to show you everything?”
“Just today and tomorrow morning,” I admitted, already feeling regretful. I knew that I needed to get back to Utah, to the resort and to Ethan. But I already hated the thought of leaving Bailey again. Even if we got a chance to talk while I was here, and took some of the uncertainty out of our relationship.
Or maybe, especially if we got the chance to talk while I was here. Knowing that we were in a relationship, that we both felt the same way about one another and were just waiting for her return to Utah? That was going to make leaving all the more difficult. If we could close that chapter now, it would be easier.
One Shot At Love: A Billionaire Single Father Romance Page 31