Any Man Of Mine (9 page)

“Are you a dancer?”

She was almost insulted, but this
was
Vegas. “Like a stripper?”

“Yeah.”

“No. Are you?”

He laughed. A low rumbling next to her throat. “No, but if I were, I’d give you a free lap dance.”

“Bummer. I’ve never had a lap dance.” She had a feeling he couldn’t say the same.

“I’ve never given one, but for you I’d be willing to give it a try.”

As she pulled back to look up into his face, his lips slipped across her cheek and brushed the corner of her mouth. She sucked in a hard breath, and her chest got tight.

“But not here,” he said. “Come with me.”

She didn’t know him. Didn’t even know his name, but she wanted to. She wanted to know all of him. She wanted to go anywhere he wanted to take her.

She should run.

This time she listened. She took a step back, and his hands fell to his sides. He raised one brow, and before she lost her mind completely, she turned. He reached for her. She felt his hand on her arm, but she kept on going. One foot in front of the other, all the way up to the sixth floor. She shut herself inside her room and locked the door. Him out or her in, she wasn’t sure.

This sort of thing did not happen to her. She didn’t dance like that with guys she didn’t know. She didn’t stare at their lips and wonder what it would be like to kiss them.

Her mother had been right. Las Vegas was a decadent, morally dangerous place, and she should have heeded the warning. Nothing was real there. Not the canal at the Venetian, the volcano at the Mirage, or the people at Pure. Handsome men did not look at Autumn Haven as if she were the only woman in a bar filled with beautiful women. And she, Autumn Haven, did not contemplate sex with complete strangers. Not even strangers who looked like the guy in the bar.

She packed her bags, but when she woke the next morning, her head cleared, and she decided she’d overreacted. She’d had too much to drink and blown everything out of proportion. Her memory of the night before was a bit hazy, and she was fairly sure she hadn’t really contemplated hooking up with some random guy. The touch of his hands on her waist hadn’t been as hot, and he wasn’t as impossibly good-looking as she recalled through her tequila goggles. But even if it was all true, the chances of its happening again were as about as likely as running into that same guy in a town crammed with hundreds of thousands of guys.

She spent most of the morning in her room getting over the slight headache she had earned the night before. After lunch, she put on a black bikini with gold hearts she’d splurged on at the Fashion Show Mall the day before. She slathered herself with sun screen, dumped it along with several magazines in her beach bag, and headed down to the pool.

From the hotel’s brochure, she knew that the pool was called Garden of the Gods Pool Oasis. Which pretty much described the elaborate pools, massive columns and urns, rows of palm trees and winged lions. In the brochure, she thought Caesars should have added
decadent
to the description. The Garden of the Gods Pool and Decadent Oasis

By the time she made it to the pools, it was a little before one in the afternoon and inching toward a hundred degrees. The sun toasted the top of her head, and she took a big floppy hat out of her bag and found a white lounge chair in one corner beneath a cluster of palms. Being a natural redhead didn’t mix with the hot sun. She either burned or freckled. Neither was an attractive option.

A cabana boy took her drink order, and she relaxed with a tall glass of tea. Not the Long Island kind. At least not right then. With her hat dipping over her left eye, she sat back with a
Cosmo
magazine and settled into an article about the most intense erogenous zones on a man. According to the article, it was just beneath the head of the penis called the frenulum. Autumn had never heard of it and brought the magazine closer for a better look at the diagram.

“There you are, Cinderella.”

She slapped her
Cosmo
closed and raised the brim of her straw hat. She looked way up into a pair of black Oakley’s covering eyes she knew were a beautiful blue. He was even bigger and better-looking in the sunlight. He wore a pair of gray Quicksilver board shorts and a white tank with large armholes around his massive shoulders.

“What are you reading?”

“Makeup tips.” She tried to act cool as she shoved the
Cosmo
into her bag. Like she wasn’t reading about penises and like outrageously good-looking men talked to her every day. “Have you been following me?”

He chuckled and sat on the chaise next to her. “Keeping my eyes open for you.”

“Why?”

He dug in his back pocket, then handed her the pink bead bracelet she’d worn the night before. “You lost this.”

This was Vegas. Nothing was real in Vegas. Certainly not good-looking men tracking her down to return a cheap bracelet. She opened her palm, and he dropped it in her hand, the beads still warm from his body. “Thank you.”

“I was fairly drunk last night.” His brows lowered, and he looked around. “So is there anything I need to apologize for?”

“No.”

“Damn. I was kinda hoping we got into trouble.” He returned his gaze to hers. “Why are you hiding way back here in the corner?”

“I’m not hiding. I’m just avoiding the sun.”

“Hungover?”

She shook her head. “I burn.”

He gave her that slow easy smile she’d seen the night before. The one she’d thought her tequila buzz had made up. “I could put sunscreen on your back.”

She lowered her hand from the brim of her hat and tilted her head to look at him. There was only one sensible option. Run away again before she got herself into trouble.

He held up his hands as if he were completely harmless. She wasn’t fooled. “I won’t touch you anyplace you don’t want to be touched.”

But she didn’t want to run. She was on vacation. Nothing counted on vacation. And certainly nothing counted in Vegas. Wasn’t that their motto? What happened in Vegas stayed in Vegas? “Sorry. I already put some on.”

“That makes one of us.” He looked up at the broiling sun and cringed. “I can practically hear my skin sizzle.”

She pointed up at the palm trees. “In the shade?”

“I’m sensitive.”

“Uh-huh.” She reached into her beach bag and pulled out a tube of sunscreen. “It’s SPF 40 and—” He whipped off his shirt, and she about fell out of her chair. Holy crap! He had big pecs and shoulders and a six-pack of killer abs. She’d never seen anything like him. Not in person, anyway. Not close enough to lick. Would probably never see anything like him again. Where had he come from? What did he do for a living? Lift small buildings? “What’s your name?”

“Sam.”

He looked like a Sam. “Autumn,” she said, and swung her legs over the side of her chaise. “Autumn Haven.”

He chuckled. “And that’s your real name? You’re not just shitting me?”

“Not shitting you.” She’d always hated her name. “I know. It sounds like a retirement home. Like Meadow Lakes or Summer Village.” She kept her eyes on his face in a desperate bid not to rudely stare at his chest and drool. Although really, staring at his face was no hardship. “Here you go.” She shoved the sunscreen toward him.

Instead of taking it, he lay back in his chair. “Your name doesn’t sound like a retirement home. More like one of those paradise destinations.”

A thin golden happy trail ran down the middle of his six-pack, circled his navel, and disappearing beneath the waist of his shorts, pointing the way to
his
paradise destination. God help her. She wanted to say something clever. Something smart and sexy, but she couldn’t think of anything. Not when the blood was draining from her head.

“The all-inclusive kind,” he added. “The kind that promises endless pleasure and an all-you-can-eat buffet.”

Autumn had a choice. Run like hell. Again. Run and save herself from endless pleasure and the all-she-could-eat buffet laid out in front of her like a smorgasbord of sin.

She rose from the lounge chair, looked down at all that yummy temptation, and popped the top of her Coppertone.

Fits into My Life

S
am left his truck running and groaned a little as he hoisted Conner to his shoulder. Beneath the neoprene ice pack wrapped around his waist, the muscles in the small of his back tightened, still in protest over the hit Modano had put on him in the third frame. He leaned a bit to his left and carried his son up the concrete, the soles of his leather loafers a thump on the concrete. He was getting old. His body couldn’t take the same punishment at thirty-five that it had at twenty-five.

The weak porch light shone down on his head as he rang the doorbell. The cool night air seeped through the tight weave of his thin gray sweater and white T-shirt beneath. He’d had Natalie call Autumn to tell her that Conner was staying after the game to meet some of the guys. He wondered if she’d mentioned that Sam would bring him home.

The door swung open, and Autumn stood within the soft glow of the entry. She wore a yellow T-shirt with a white wiener dog on it, yellow-and-white flannel pants, and white wiener-dog slippers. Her deep auburn hair shone like fire beneath a brass chandelier, but she didn’t look all fired up to see him. Not like last time.

“He passed out about ten minutes ago.”

Autumn opened the door wider and let him in. He followed her up a set of stairs and down a hall lined with framed photos. The house smelled of homey things. Like cooked meals, wood polish, and old carpet. It wasn’t the kind of house he expected her to live in with his son. It wasn’t a bad house. Not all that much different from what he’d lived in as a kid, but she could afford newer.

They moved into a bedroom painted with cartoon characters, and his muscles protested as he laid his son on a bed covered with a Barney quilt. Conner hated Barney. Didn’t he?

Sam straightened, and Autumn took over. She unzipped Conner’s jacket, and his eyes fluttered open. “I got a foam finger,” he said.

Her hands moved over him, and she helped him sit up as she pulled at his jacket. “Did you have a good time, little nugget?”

He nodded and yawned. “Yes.”

Sam moved to the doorway and watched Autumn carefully pull Conner’s arms through his Chinooks’ T-shirt. It had been a couple of years since he’d seen mother and son together. He didn’t think he’d ever seen Autumn so… soft.

“Dad told me a joke.”

Her head whipped around. Her eyes huge.

Sam put up his hands. “A knock-knock joke.”

“It was funny.” Conner laughed, sleepy and silly. “Knock knock.”

Autumn returned her attention to undressing Conner. “Who’s there?”

Conner waited until the shirt was pulled over his head before he answered, “Goat.”

“Goat who?”

“Goat is at… Goat ask…” He lay down, and Autumn moved to the end of the bed and untied his shoe. “I forgot.”

“Goat to the door and find out,” Sam provided.

Autumn turned her face and looked at him as she untied his laces. A smile worked one corner of her lips, and she rolled her green eyes as if she went through this sort of thing a hundred times a day. “You’re right. That is funny.” She took his shoes and socks off his feet and dropped them on the floor. “Peee–yew!” She waved a hand in front of her face. “Those are the stinkiest feet in the whole world.”

“You always say that, Mom.”

Conner and Autumn had a whole ritual, a whole life that he knew nothing about and that had nothing to do with him. He’d always known it, of course, but actually seeing it made him a little uncomfortable, and he really couldn’t say why.

He took a step backward into the hall. “I’ll go get the foam finger.”

“And my puck, Dad.”

Sam looked into Conner’s sleepy eyes and nodded. “Okay.” He moved back down the hall, past the walls lined with photos of Conner and Autumn and Conner with Vince the idiot. The small of his back hurt like hell as he moved down the steps and out into the chilly night air. When he got home, he’d shove a bag of peas against his back. He preferred peas over anything else. They fitted better to his back or knee or shoulder, and when they were hard, they kind of massaged his muscles like cold beads.

The Ford F–250 was still running, and he thought about turning it off, but he figured he wouldn’t be much longer and left it on. A guy didn’t buy an F–250 because he worried about gas consumption. He drove it because of the payload and because it hauled serious ass. Although he never hauled anything heavier than his sports bag, it was good to know it had the power if he ever decided to tow twenty four thousand pounds.

He moved to the passenger side and found Conner’s foam finger and the puck Johan had given him while he and Nat had sat in the lounge waiting for Sam to finish with reporters and getting his back iced in the locker room. You’d have thought the puck was made of gold, the way Conner had acted about it. Shit, if he’d known his kid would get so excited about a puck, he would have given him one years ago.

He shut the truck door and headed toward the house.
You should know. You’re his father,
his guilty conscience reminded him. His conscience seemed to be more active lately, a fact that bothered him as much as his guilt. He didn’t like to feel guilty about anything. Seeing Autumn again had triggered something inside him, and seeing that his son lived in an old split-level in Kirkland while he lived in a five-million-dollar loft in the middle of Seattle didn’t sit very well with him either.

The front door to the older house squeaked as he opened it. She could afford better. He paid her enough in child support to make sure his child lived well. He paid enough that he shouldn’t feel guilty about anything anymore.

He moved up the stairs and looked around the living room. At the oak furniture and sofa and love seat that were made out of durable microfiber. The house was crammed with little homemade knickknacks and art projects. Pictures of Conner at every age and stage of his life were all over the place. He had photos of Conner, too, but nothing like this.