Blush

by Lauren Jameson

  His shirtsleeves were rolled up, his tie loosened. It was like getting a look at the more casual side of him, the one who had let that controlling persona, the one with the answers, slip just a bit.

  He nodded at her solemnly, the whisper of a smile around his lips. Flustered, Maddy looked back at the chips that she had clutched in her suddenly sweaty palms. Moments later, she narrowed her eyes back up at the alluring man. Alex appeared to wink, just the tiniest movement, before his face returned to normal, as if they had just shared a joke that no one else knew.

  “Do you know who that is?” Maddy hated to draw the man at the table, who had leaned in closer than she would have liked, into conversation, but at the moment she found she needed answers. She gestured with her head toward the balcony. She had hoped he would be subtle, but her seat-side companion turned and stared, unabashed.

  Maddy could feel herself blushing furiously, well aware that Alex Fraser must have known that she’d asked about him.

  The man beside her leaned back in, far too close. Maddy could smell scotch on his breath, one with extra peat, as well as the stench of cigarette smoke and sweat.

  “That’s Alex Fraser. Bloody Irishman. Owns the place.”

  Her mouth fell open as the enormity of the statement hit her. He owned the casino? Alex Fraser owned the whole entire casino?

  The health club man chose that moment to place his hand over hers. It was clammy and pulled at her skin. She barely hid a shudder.

  “I can take care of you just as well as that fucker.”

  Maddy was repulsed by the man’s choice of language and couldn’t help reeling a bit at the knowledge that Alex owned the casino. No wonder he could afford to buy a seventy-year-old bottle of wine. Hell, he could probably afford to buy the entire vineyard.

  “Thanks. I’m going to go freshen up.” Maddy extracted her hand from beneath the other man’s and knew that the first thing she would do in the ladies’ room was scour the flesh that he touched with soap and hot water. She gathered her chips, the little stack a satisfying weight in her hand. As she stepped away from the table, she dared to take another look up at the balcony, to see if Alex was still there.

  He was there all right, and he was scowling at her. No, not scowling, glowering. After a faltering step—what had she done?—she realized that he wasn’t glaring at her at all, but at the man whose sweat felt like it still stained her palm.

  Surely . . . Could he be . . . ? He wasn’t mad that the man had touched her . . . ? She shook the thought out of her head as soon as it made itself known.

  She didn’t really know Alex Fraser at all, nor did he know her. She still didn’t know why he had introduced himself to her in the casino bar, and she probably wouldn’t ever know. But she did know that he couldn’t possibly have cared who touched her.

  As she scurried across the casino floor to the door marked Ladies, Maddy reflected that even if he did care, he really didn’t have anything to worry about.

  She hadn’t been touched, not in that way, for a very long time.

  She thought of the wink as she walked, and it hit her out of nowhere. Had he arranged for her to win?

  The suspicion made her angry, furiously so. How dare he? He might have been thinking that he was doing her a favor, but he had just undermined her entire experience. She didn’t feel as if she could cross this item off of her bucket list anymore—it wasn’t real.

  Maddy wanted to go up there and yell, which was strange, because she never yelled. No, she swallowed her feelings, burying them inside.

  She looked over her shoulder, one more glance at the balcony before she entered the ladies’ room. She wondered if she could signal somehow that she needed to talk to him, that what he had just done had upset her. Not that he’d care, but Maddy felt driven to do so anyway.

  Also, she wanted just one more look at him, the sexy male who had aroused lust that she hadn’t even known she was capable of.

  She caught sight of the back of him, walking away from the balcony. She also saw a wisp of golden hair, shades paler than her own, vanishing from the balcony in front of him. Someone else was up in that balcony with him, someone she couldn’t see. He followed that person back inside.

  Then he was gone, and she would never see him again.

  To shake off the overwhelming disappointment that hit her when she thought of never seeing such an alluring man again, she patted herself on the back for her blackjack win.

  She’d moved to Paradise, Nevada, a year ago. She’d started seeing a new therapist a year ago, too—a clean break from her old therapist, who, while perfectly adequate, was a tie to her old life. Dr. Gill, her new doc, had taken great interest in her reluctance to try new things, and together they’d constructed a list of activities that scared her, ones that she nevertheless wanted to conquer her irrational fear of.

  This had been number one, urging herself to enter a casino. Urging herself to have the courage to walk up to a table and play a game. Since she knew how to play blackjack, this had been the game that she’d put on her list.

  For the woman who would drive ten extra miles on empty simply to go to the same gas station, it was a huge step.

  She was thankful she hadn’t spilled her secrets to Alex when he had pressed her.

  She didn’t need to explain it to Alex. She didn’t need to explain it to anyone, and she certainly didn’t need the distraction of a gorgeous, enigmatic billionaire casino owner. Doing things that pushed her out of her comfort zone was small steps that added together would give her some measure of control over her life back.

  • • •

  “Alex, Massimo Santorini is on the phone.” Alex’s indispensable personal assistant, Kylie Anderson, stuck her head into the inner sanctum of his office without asking. It wasn’t an uncommon practice for her, so she took a full step back when she noted the expression on his face.

  “Whoa. What’s got your panties in such a knot?”

  Alex simply glowered in response, and Kylie raised an eyebrow at him. Though the curls of her red hair were wild, and the pink silk of her floaty gypsy skirt gave her the look of someone who was laid-back and ready to kick off her sandals at any moment, he knew that she was anything but.

  “Don’t you have something better to do?” The scowl that intimidated the heads of international corporations had long ago ceased to even register with the scarily efficient Kylie. “Surely it’s been at least half an hour since you drove Declan crazy?”

  Kylie raised an eyebrow archly; then, twisting her hair back, she secured it with the pencil she’d had in her hand.

  “As a matter of fact.” Tapping away on her iPad, she made a note of something, then looked straight at Alex. “But seriously. A, what should I tell Santorini? Are we still trying to sweeten the deal? And B, do I dare hope that it’s a female who has finally gotten underneath your skin?”

  Alex growled. It should have bothered her—it was a sound that scared every one of his employees besides Kylie and Declan and the sound that warned every submissive he’d ever been with that they were pushing him a bit too far.

  Kylie leaned against the open door, tapping her bright blue nails on the screen of her iPad. She gave no reaction to his intimidations.

  Feeling a headache coming on, one induced by relentless thoughts of Maddy Stone and that delicate pink blush, he frowned in the direction of the sparkly nail polish.

  If Kylie weren’t so good at her job, he’d have insisted she make her appearance a little more professional. Instead, he’d found that her bohemian style was useful at disarming the business tycoons, distracting them while he went in and made the kill.

  Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work on the phone.

  “Put him through.” Alex pressed his lips together tightly. When Massimo had first approached him about purchasing A Casino in Paradise—the day that he’d met Maddy, in fact—something had seemed off about the man. But when he’d done his due diligence, he’d uncovered nothing incriminating.

  Santo
rini liked to gamble, particularly in high-stakes horse games, and had made some poor choices starting a few years earlier, around the time his wife had died. He owed a lot of money to some bad people, and that was why he was quickly trying to liquidate one of his businesses. But everything on the casino had checked out clean, though Alex knew that he could get a better price, which was why he was trying to draw things out with the man, to make him anxious for the sale to conclude.

  He had nothing but a gut sense that the man wasn’t telling him everything. Still, it strengthened his need to stall, both to make sure he’d examined every nook and cranny of the deal, as well as to put the squeeze on the seller.

  He hadn’t become as rich as he was, as successful, by being a nice man. It was just another reason that he was all wrong for Maddy Stone.

  “Hey, boss?” Unlike Declan, Alex had an almost never-ending supply of patience when it came to Kylie. But when she stuck that red head of hair back into his office one last time, he couldn’t hold back the snarl.

  Thinking about Maddy—specifically, thinking about how he should stay far, far away from her—had put him on edge.

  “I’ve never seen you worked up over a woman. That alone makes me like her. I’m just saying.” Her expression was serious, and she held his gaze for a second before she was off and running again, a whirlwind of movement. “Transferring the call in two!”

  Alex’s hand hovered over the phone, waiting for Kylie to put the call from Santorini through. He wasn’t good at denying himself what he wanted, and Kylie’s words had just given him a push.

  The report he’d had Declan prepare on the woman the day after he’d met her, while the memory of her heady fragrance still lingered in his nostrils, had told him that Miss Maddy lived in Paradise, Nevada, which was where Santorini’s casino was located.

  Perhaps just seeing her again would help purge her from his system. Perhaps she wasn’t nearly as alluring as he’d remembered.

  Yes. Certainly that was it.

  The phone beneath his fingers rang, and Alex made up his mind. After he concluded his call with Santorini, he would take a drive to Paradise, Nevada, where he could check out A Casino in Paradise personally.

  And maybe he’d stop for breakfast at Joe’s Diner on the way, in hopes that a certain sweet little waitress would be working.

  • • •

  “Maddy, can you take this to table twelve for me?” Susannah Phillips, the closest thing Maddy had to a friend in Paradise, had beaten Maddy to work the next morning, a rarity for her. As Maddy looked the other woman over, she noted that she was having a crazy bad hair day, and her face was devoid of makeup. But the other woman’s cheeks were rosy and her eyes sparkled.

  Somebody had had a good night, and that somebody was not Maddy.

  “Sure.” Methodically, Maddy turned to the warmer and retrieved the plate. Her eyebrows rose slightly at what the plain white ceramic dish held—whole-wheat pancakes with fruit and cottage cheese, no syrup, no whipped cream, no ice cream. Not a common order for Joe’s Diner, a greasy spoon in Paradise, Nevada, aka her place of employment.

  She’d been back at work for a week and had obsessed over Alex Fraser for every one of those seven days. She should have been congratulating herself on crossing an item off of her bucket list, but the thrill had been lost in her angst-ridden desire.

  “Table twelve is smokin’.” Susannah winked at Maddy as she scurried past her with two glasses full of fizzing soda. Maddy rolled her eyes in return. Her shift started a half hour after Susannah’s did, and from the look on the other woman’s face, Maddy had very nearly missed the best thing since sliced bread.

  “You think everyone is smokin’.” Maddy whispered this back before hefting the plate and a coffeepot. She felt a lock of hair fall into her eyes as soon as her hands were full and flipped it back with the ease of long practice.

  There wasn’t much that she couldn’t handle there, in comfortable surroundings.

  “By the way, someone called for you this morning. Ned maybe—or Nathan? Anyway, he said he’d try your cell later.” Susannah scurried away with her drinks, leaving Maddy glued to the floor, conflicting feelings rioting around inside of her.

  It wasn’t unusual for her brother-in-law to call. It wasn’t even unusual for her to feel sickness and guilt every time that he did, though she knew he’d die before deliberately making her feel that way.

  It wasn’t his fault that she didn’t want him to call. She’d pushed him out of her life for a reason.

  Back home, everything had reminded her of Erin, especially Nathan. Maddy’s grief clung to him like a shroud, and she couldn’t function when it, and he, were around.

  Grimacing, Maddy took a second to force her way through the painful sensations. Gradually, her surroundings filtered back in, and as they did, her muscles began to warm, a hot bath of familiarity.

  Her name was Maddy Stone. She was twenty-eight years old. She lived alone in Paradise, Nevada. She was a waitress at Joe’s Diner.

  She had survived the worst thing that could ever have happened to her.

  She was okay.

  Inhaling deeply, Maddy swallowed her feelings down deep. She was at work. She needed to do her job, and to do that, she couldn’t stand there and ruminate on her past—she needed to move on, just as she had struggled to do for the last year.

  She could almost—almost—convince herself that she had.

  Eyes carefully trained on the plate and pot in her hands, she arrived at table twelve. It was a man; that much she could tell without a good look and with hair in her eyes.

  “Here you go. Careful—the plate is hot.” Maddy leaned over the table to place the plate in front of the customer. His potency hit her before she raised her eyes to that wicked face—expensive cologne, musky soap, and pure man.

  She straightened back up and brushed her hair out of her eyes. Smoky blue eyes regarded her with amusement from a face that was too beautiful to be real. “Hello again, Miss Stone.”

  Maddy couldn’t force any words out of her mouth, she was so stunned. What on earth was Alex Fraser, casino owner, doing in Paradise, Nevada, let alone in Joe’s Diner?

  “Mr. Fraser. I—uh—enjoy your breakfast.” Like an idiot—a shell-shocked idiot—Maddy spun on her heel and all but ran back to the kitchen, where she could at least put a counter between Alex Fraser and herself.

  Behind the counter, she leaned over the ice bin, trying to cool her flushed cheeks. What was he doing there? Part of her screamed that he couldn’t possibly have been there to see her, and the other part was equally as certain that it wasn’t a coincidence that he was in her place of work, in her little city, which was close enough to Vegas but still a bit of a drive.

  Why was he there, in her safe zone? Hell, she wasn’t stupid—she knew why. She’d felt that connection between them, a palpable thing in the air, drawing them together.

  Still . . . this was her bubble, the place where things were always the same. If she stepped out and forced herself to do something uncomfortable, well, that was her prerogative—but she chose the place; she chose the time.

  This wasn’t her choice, at all. And following on the heels of the news that she should be expecting a call from Nathan, she felt nauseous.

  “Are you okay?” Joe was the owner of the diner. He was tall and lanky, with reddish gold hair that was scraggly and the barest hint of a matching beard. His eyes were startlingly green and full of concern as he spoke to her.

  “I’m . . . I’m fine.” Maddy struggled for the words, though she was unable to muster up an accompanying smile. How did Alex Fraser have such an effect on her? For the entire year that she’d lived in Paradise, she had been indifferent to the opposite sex. Changing that was something she might consider putting on her bucket list at some point . . . just not yet. She wasn’t ready.

  Could a woman ever really be ready for Alex Fraser?

  “You don’t look fine.”

  Maddy liked Joe. She really did. But right
at that moment she wanted him to leave her the hell alone. Mustering the shreds of her composure—and again marveling at Alex Fraser’s ability to turn her into a witless idiot—she straightened and smiled at Joe.

  “I’m good, Joe. Just warm.”

  “Take care.” Joe reached out for a strand of her hair before jerking his hand back. Maddy studied the hand hovering awkwardly in the air, puzzled.

  “Right.” With that, Joe retreated hastily into the kitchen, leaving her staring after him.

  She couldn’t even contemplate his gesture at that moment, not with Alex Fraser eating whole-wheat pancakes that weren’t even on the menu across the room. Joe did the majority of the cooking at the diner, and he specialized in grease. It was no surprise that Susannah had likely fallen all over herself to assure Alex that his special order would be taken care of, but she must have had to bat her eyelashes extra hard to convince Joe to follow through.

  She’d have to think about Joe’s strange actions later, when her mind had space for it. Right now she had her hands full with worry and excitement over Alex, who took priority because Joe’s near touch didn’t bring butterflies and nerves and want and need all rolled into one tangled ball in her stomach the way Alex’s did.

  Maddy looked across the room to where he was sitting. He was watching her intently, his coffee cup hiding his lips, but she got the impression that he was amused.

  Right. She wasn’t the first woman to work herself into a state over him, of that she was quite certain.

  Ducking back out of sight, Maddy considered her options. She could hide in the kitchen until he left, begging Susannah to take his table. Or she could be an adult and warm up his coffee, make small talk, and present him his bill.

  In her heart she knew that the latter was the only option that she would really consider. No matter that she’d embarrassed herself in front of him with her awkwardness, as with the first time they’d met, she felt the strange connection between them pulling tight, drawing her to him like a moth to the light.

  She wanted to be around him, wanted to spend time with him, whatever she had to do.