Elle starts in without prelude as soon as my call goes through. “No thank you’s are needed. I only ask you to acknowledge that I did this because I love you.”
The tension automatically creeps into my shoulders. What the fuck did she do now? “Enough with the drama. What’s going on?”
“You told me you wanted to see Cruz, so I talked to him for you. He said he’d be at the QE2 tonight at eight if you want to meet him.”
My teeth grind together. Figures. It’s just like Cruz to make it so he’s calling the shots. He shows up in my city. He decides on the meeting place and time. Luckily my schedule is mostly free tonight.
“Fine,” I snap.
A pause, then, “You know what? I take it back. A thank you would be nice.”
“I need to meet with him alone, Elle.”
“And I’ll leave you two alone, I swear,” she says quickly. “Monday nights are always pretty dead. I’ll be helping with inventory and stuff like that in the back.” She hesitates again before adding, “He treated me to the nicest dinner last night, Connor. He said he’s looking forward to seeing you again, and I want you to believe that.”
Right. Extortion money can buy lots of nice dinners. And I bet he is looking forward to it. I have a few guesses as to what Cruz wants with me, but I’ll leave judgment for when I actually see him.
“So I’ll see you then? And you promise to be on your best behavior?”
It’s condescending as hell, and I have zero patience for this coddling shit. “I’ll be there. I gotta go, okay?”
I end the call, my hand curling around my phone in a fist. I’d already made up my mind to meet him, and now I just have to get it done and over with. And then I can move on from this. Again.
The elevator opens, and I step inside, feeling the old resentment and anger rise up. I need a recharge of positive energy, and I hope I can get my shit together before I have to go back and pick up Maya.
I think I know exactly where to get that recharge.
I stop by my car to drop off my jacket and Sig and walk across the street to the casino where Alex is staying. She might be done swimming by now, but I’m hoping I can catch her.
I try not to think about why I’m going out of my way to do this, but I can’t help it. Despite our rocky start, Alex is cool, pure and simple. The way I’ve seen her take things as they come. Alex is positive, and that’s what I need right now.
And let’s face it. I liked seeing her all dressed up the other night, and I liked it even more watching her at the pool when she was wearing almost nothing at all. Alex looked fucking hot in that black bikini, and I’d be kidding myself if I told myself that’s not part of it.
If I’m going to meet Cruz tonight, I need this one little indulgence before having to endure that.
I was hoping for the path of least resistance, but I recognize the woman checking keycards at the pool. She’s named DaNae or maybe it’s Denean. I can’t remember, but we hooked up a while back. A few months ago? A year? I remember she was working with some of the hospitality team back then. I don’t feel like making conversation with her and hope she doesn’t remember me.
I flash my staff pass to get into the pool. It’s one I got from someone who works security at the hotel. I shouldn’t even have it, but it sometimes comes in handy.
“Omigod. Connor.”
Shit. So much for path of least resistance. She leans onto the counter, brushing a strand of long blonde hair away from her cleavage while I check her out. Fake boobs. Fake smile. Had I really gone for her before?
She looks at me through her eyelashes. “Haven’t seen you in forever. Here for a swim?”
“That’s the plan.”
“Fu-un.” She says it in an annoying sing-song voice and turns around to grab me a towel, even though I don’t need it because I don’t actually plan on swimming. When she hands it to me, she eyes me like I’m on the menu for lunch. “I’m on break in fifteen. Mind if I come and join you?”
“Maybe another time.” Or not. I’m definitely off my game today. And I don’t care.
Her face falls but then she gives me a hospitality-worthy smile. “Oh. You’re here to meet someone, huh?”
“Yeah. I am.” I look around, already feeling distracted. And damn, but I’m looking forward to the rest of that distraction.
I walk out onto the deck, my sights zeroed in on the lap pool. I can already see Alex in the distance, and my internal temperature cranks up a notch. She’s wearing a purple bikini today and looks like she just got out of the pool. Her body is still dripping wet, all tall curves, and she’s standing by one of the chairs with her phone in hand. Part of me wants to slow my pace to enjoy the view, but I pick it up instead in case she’s taking off.
She suddenly looks up from her phone and sees me coming. Her hair is loose, and she raises a hand to push a strand back behind her ear.
“Hey.” She doesn’t look surprised to see me.
“Hey. What did you do with your mom?”
It’s a joke on my part, but she frowns and hits something on her phone before sticking it into her bag.
“She got up to come swimming but went back to bed. Said she had another headache.” She shrugs, but I can see the worry in her expression. “I was just texting to check on her.”
“Sorry to hear that,” I say, and I realize I mean it.
She tilts her head to the side a little, her eyes examining me and missing nothing. She picked up on the fact yesterday that I’m observant, and I think she’s the same.
“I didn’t think you were coming today,” she says.
I rake my hand through my hair. “Yeah, I’m sorry…” Second time in thirty seconds I’d said sorry and meant it. Not something I usually have an easy time doing. “I actually had work, but things got pushed back for an hour.”
“So you came to find me? Cool.”
I stare at her, and she stares back, a smile playing on her lips. It’s like she’s slowly breaking down my walls with her words, her smile, her openness, and I don’t know what to say.
She starts to walk back to the pool, and I watch her move, the way she places one foot almost directly in front of the other, the sensual sway to her hips, her very sexy ass…
She throws a glance at me over her shoulder. “You swimming, or what?”
I shake my head. “I didn’t bring swim trunks.”
She shoots a smile in my direction. “Swim in your underwear then. Who’s gonna care?”
Probably everyone. But the grin breaks out on my face anyway. How does she manage to do that?
“What if I’m not wearing any?”
She laughs out loud and turns so she’s walking backward away from me. “Then they might care.”
I smirk, looking around. Besides the lifeguard, there’s us plus two other people doing laps and a few people sunning-slash-sleeping on one of the lounge chairs. Alex is standing by the edge of the pool, a hand on her hip, and it’s like her stance and entire attitude is challenging me. I don’t miss the brief flick of her gaze down my body, like she’s trying to figure out if I’m really walking around commando. For some reason, that does it for me.
Fuck it. I pull my shirt over my head and throw it on the nearest chair. Aware of her eyes on me the entire time, I strip down to my underwear and walk to the pool.
I’ve been with plenty of women over the past two years. Maybe too many. And I think that’s why I expect Alex to react to me like the rest of them do. Or maybe I’m being a cocky bastard to think that she’ll check me out as I’m walking toward her in nothing but my boxer briefs and the start of an erection.
But she looks me in the eye, giving me one of her sweet smiles before she turns away. “I’ll race ya.”
She dives into the pool and I follow, getting into the water as fast as I can. Not sure how the hell I’m going to swim with a hard-on, but I don’t really have a choice.
But hitting the water calms me down, soothes my nerves. When Cruz and I were eight or nine, we
started escaping the house in the summers by going to the community pool. It was pretty ghetto, hundreds of kids there every day, dirty as hell, but it was still somewhere for us to go, and it’s when I first became like a fish in the water. I obviously added more things to my physical training regimen as I got older and decided to go for the SEALs, but swimming has always acted like a stress reliever for me.
I’m still pissed off about the way Elle went about things today, how she called to inform me about the plans made on my behalf. But I can almost feel my anger melt away with each stroke through the water.
Alex had a huge head start, but I can see her standing at the end of the lane instead of coming back. I break through the surface next to her, and she’s suddenly giving me that look again, the one that strips down my defenses. Just like how she stripped down the rest of me to get me into the pool, and the thought of it makes me smile.
She bobs down in the water, tipping her head back to wet her hair. “What’s so funny?”
“I thought you didn’t need company when you swam.”
“I don’t need company. But I don’t mind that you’re here.”
Damn, I like how she’s so straightforward, how she speaks her mind like that. She raises her arms over her head to smooth some of her hair away from her face, and I feel this kind of raw need rise in my gut. The water feels warm, small currents eddying around us like they’re urging me to get closer to her. I resist the temptation to close the distance between us, to tuck that stray strand of hair behind her ear.
“So are you staying at this casino too, then? Because you need a key card to get in here.” Her question is direct, her gaze equally so.
“I’m not staying here,” I admit. “But I have a security pass that I can use to get in here, even after hours if I want. For work.”
“Yeah?” She tilts her head. “So what’s work?”
I drift away from her in the water. “Another full lap, and I’ll tell you.”
I hear her laugh at that, but I’m already taking off down the lane. I’m surprised that she doesn’t know what I do for a living, that her mother hadn’t told her. But maybe I was wrong about Grace trying to set me up with her daughter. Fine with me. I hate having expectations laid out on me like that. I always hated that about Laura’s mother, that she hadn’t approved of me. But that was seven, eight years ago. None of that matters anymore.
I get to the wall first and wait for Alex to surface. She makes it and pushes her hair back, blinking water away from her eyes as she waits for my answer.
I give it to her. “Private security for high rollers. Didn’t your mother tell you?”
“You’re kidding.” She looks at me with this incredulous expression, and I feel myself grow defensive. So now I’m going to have to explain myself because she doesn’t believe me. But then she laughs, and that hard edge in me softens.
“My mom didn’t mention it. But okay, so that makes sense now,” she tacks on thoughtfully. “Is that what you were doing in the high roller room? Security for that woman you were with?”
“Yeah.” I don’t feel comfortable saying anything about Maya, can’t say anything else because my clients are in my confidence. But there’s that whole observant thing about Alex again.
“So what, did my mom hire you to protect me?” She sounds suspicious now, like she wouldn’t put it past her mom to do something like that.
“No. I only protect assets and the people carrying them.” I’m glad about it, too. Neil has horror stories about VIP’s twenty-something daughters trying to get into his pants when I first brought him in as a partner. He and I came up a contractual clause about our level of interaction with spouses and children of clients. We do not interact one-on-one with them, period. “Do you honestly think your mother would hire someone like me to protect you?” I challenge.
“Actually, no.” Her smile widens. “Definitely not someone like you.”
“You and your mother seem pretty tight. You and your father, too.” The statement comes out as a simple observation, but it hits me hard as soon as I hear myself say it. It’s not anything I can relate to.
She doesn’t answer right away. Maybe I expected her to say yeah, they are. But then her eyes lock with mine, and I detect something stirring deeper in there.
“I guess we are close. Me being close to my mom and close to my dad. Not with each other as much.” Her hand trails through the ends of her hair, twisting a few wet strands around her fingers. “You ever notice how a lot of people wind up married even though they’re not good for each other?”
I look past her. I guess I know but I don’t, not really. My parents hadn’t stayed married, and I have no idea if they were good for each other or not. All indications pointed to no, but I never knew the whole story of why my mother left us.
When Alex catches my gaze again, she’s looking at me curiously.
“Your parents. Are they not together anymore?”
“No. My father’s a drug addict. My mother walked out on him when my brother and I were eight.”
I don’t know exactly why I answer, but there’s something about her straightforwardness that’s contagious. I also don’t know how I expect her to react. Maybe with shock or sympathy. Not with the completely serious nod that she winds up giving me, like she’s seen it all before.
“That sucks. Sorry, dude.”
I shrug, and I have the strangest urge to smile. She’s talking to me like I noticed she talks to Elle, which is kind of funny. Or maybe that’s how she is with everyone.
“It’s cool. You asked, I told you.”
She nods again, and I can’t tear my eyes from her mouth. She has a pretty mouth, perfectly curved and slightly pouty. I can only imagine what that mouth is capable of doing. Fuck. I knew Alex would help to distract me, but at this rate, I’m never going to be able to get out of this pool, not unless the water becomes a hell of a lot colder.
“What you said about marriage. You speaking hypothetically or from your own experience?” I ask, suddenly wary. She’s not wearing a ring, not that this necessarily means anything. Divorced is fine, but if she’s attached, I’m walking away.
“What?” Her eyebrows draw together in confusion for about two seconds, and then she bursts out into laughter. “Omigod,” she chokes out. “I’m not married. You think I’m married?”
I shrug, still smiling at her. “Or given the nature of your comment, divorced. Why not?”
She sinks down in the water, her hair floating out around her shoulders. “Uh, because I just turned twenty-one? And because I’m going to school, working, and don’t have time for that sort of thing?”
“Oh, right,” I say with the same level of sarcasm. “Because I would have known that.”
She laughs again and starts to float away. I catch myself wishing she’d come closer, not move away.
“Okay, after the next lap it’s your turn,” she says.
I stare at her, not comprehending. “My turn to do what?”
“Your turn to ask me something about me. Something personal.”
I cock an eyebrow. “I thought I just asked you if you were married.”
“Nah. That was part of the same question. Ask me something different.”
She kicks off the bottom and floats on her back, her eyes closed. Her navel is pierced with a small jeweled barbell that flashes in the high morning sun. It’s sexy as hell, and that slow-burning fire stirs in me again. We’re separated by the floating dividers between our lanes, and I suddenly wish they weren’t there.
I take the lap a lot slower this time, follow Alex’s lead as she does the backstroke to the other end of the pool. No clue what my question is going to be when I get to the wall, but it surprises me that I’m even trying to think of one. I actually do want to know more about her. And the anticipation of asking her something personal is making my nerves fire up like they’re super-charged.
This isn’t how I operate. Conversations with women are always just a means to an end. It’s onl
y ever about the sex, a one-time mutual physical gratification, an in-and-out operation. Nothing beyond that.
At least that’s how it’s been since I moved to Vegas. I don’t let myself think about how I was back in Albuquerque.
When I get to the end of the lane, Alex is waiting. She’s breathing a little hard because of the exertion, and I try not to stare as she adjusts the straps to her bikini.
“Okay. A new question.” I throw it out there. “How long have you known Elle?”
Those cocoa brown eyes of hers appraise me, probe me, as if searching for meaning behind the question, but I don’t give her anything else to go on. I want to hear her answer without any prompts on my part.
“I met her a couple of summers ago. We hung out all last summer when I was out here.”
I nod. I don’t ask why I haven’t met her before this summer. I was out of the picture for most of last year. Out of Elle’s life when I shouldn’t have been.
“And you gave her the only all-access pass last night?”
Confusion flashes across her expression, but she doesn’t shrug off the question. “Yeah. Because she really admires Alysa Trane, you know?”
“I know,” I say. Tell her thank you. How different she is from the VIP brats that you’ve met. How you really want to fucking kiss her right now.
I put my hand on the divider between us. “I have one more question.”
She quirks an eyebrow. “Shoot.”
I lift up the divider and slide underneath. She stands still, but not in a tense way or anything. More like she’s just waiting for my move. My gaze locks with hers, and the water around us makes those eddies again, this time like the currents are magnifying the attraction between us.
I move forward until I’m only inches away from her and she has to tilt up her head up to look at my face. Her lips part, her cheeks reddening. It’s stupid, but I feel a sort of twisted sense of pride that I made the cool girl blush.
“I’m gonna kiss you, okay?”
“That’s not even a legitimate question,” she breathes.
“I know,” I say.
She drifts over to me, her leg brushing against mine, and the way she’s looking at me is like an open invitation. I move my hand through the water and find her, run my hand across her hip. Damn, her skin is so soft, her curves so sexy. I keep my touch light but really want to grab her and pull her over to me.
Losing Enough Page 11