Let It Ride (3 page)

“It’s just dinner,” he said after a few moments of silence.

She hesitated. He heard the catch in her breath. She was going to say no.

“Okay. I’ll be down in a few minutes,” she said.

“Good.”

He disconnected and headed for the lobby. Again his trip through the casino was slow. He entered the lobby and paused. Kylie was waiting for him by the fountain. But she hardly resembled the woman he’d originally seen in the security camera.

Her hair fell in soft waves to her shoulders, her sundress delineated the curves of her body, and her long legs were bare. A wave of lust hit him hard. And he knew himself well enough to know that waiting for her, seducing her slowly, was going to be hell.

Kylie had changed her mind and her clothes about fifty times in the hour since she’d left the lobby and Deacon Prescott. If it wasn’t for Deacon’s phone call, she’d be sitting in her room, eating a room-service cheeseburger and reading
The Scarlet Pimpernel.
But instead, she was in the lobby waiting for a man who made her heart beat double time and who had awakened her senses with his touch.

That didn’t gibe with the sensible administrative assistant she was in her normal life. She’d thought about having a reality check. Calling her mom and listening to all the reasons that sane, sensible Kylie shouldn’t be in Vegas. But she was tired of being sane and sensible.

She’d checked in with her girlfriends before leaving for the evening. And they were prowling the casinos tonight with some guys they’d met earlier. They’d all made plans to meet in the lobby bar just after midnight.

She glanced at her watch and then around the lobby. Her breath caught in her throat. Deacon walked toward her with the self-assured stride of a successful man. His suit jacket was buttoned and his silk tie perfectly knotted. He stopped to exchange pleasantries with a few people on his way to her.

Their eyes met and held for a moment. It seemed as if only she and Deacon existed in the lobby. His gaze skimmed down her body, stirring all her senses to life and making her blood flow heavier.

He moved very close to her. His scent surrounded her and she breathed it in deeply. She wished she was more like Deacon just then, who could reach out and touch someone he was attracted to whenever he wanted. Her fingers tingled with the need to touch him.

“You look lovely,” he said, sliding an arm around her shoulders and brushing her cheek with a kiss.

His words threw her because she was the “nice” sister. Not the pretty one. Not the smart one.
Just the nice ordinary one.
She knew she wasn’t any man’s definition of lovely. Even with his intense gray eyes shining with sincerity.

She stepped back, not knowing how to take him. No man had ever made her feel what he did. A million and one different things at once. And she wanted to believe. Believe that this was the one man who’d see her and she’d be lovely in his eyes, but she doubted it.

“That was a compliment,” he said, slipping his hand under her elbow and leading her out of the hotel. “You’re supposed to say thank-you.”

“Sorry to disappoint you,” she said.

“You didn’t. But there was something in your eyes that said you may not believe me.”

“That’s because my dad’s Irish and I heard my share of blarney growing up.”

“I can’t be the first man to compliment you.”

She tugged her arm from his grip and pulled her purse strap higher on her shoulder. She didn’t want to have this conversation.

“Can we talk about something else?” she asked. She was tempted to believe him. The way she’d believed Jeff’s lies. But she wasn’t an eighteen-year-old girl anymore, and the woman she was at twenty-eight was a lot smarter. Yeah, right, she thought.

He deliberately took her arm again and continued leading her through the lobby. They reached the bell stand and the valet led them to a Jaguar convertible out front. “Your car, Mr. Prescott.”

“Thank you, Scott,” Deacon said, slipping the man a folded bill.

“Mr. Prescott, a moment?” said another man from the hotel entrance.

“Do you mind, Kylie?”

“Not at all,” she said.

Kylie suspected that Deacon was more than a guest at the Golden Dream casino. He held the door for her and she slid into the leather passenger seat, then watched while Deacon went to talk to the man. He returned in less than five minutes. And they headed away from the lights of the Vegas strip and out of the city.

The radio was tuned to a jazz station playing Ella Fitzgerald singing “Blue Skies.” The sun was setting in the west and her hair was blowing around her shoulders. She closed her eyes and tipped her head back. The warm wind caressed her skin, and for once she didn’t think about being the nice ordinary sister.

“You’re not just a guest at the casino, right?” she asked.

“I own the Golden Dream,” he said.

She tilted her head and glanced at him. He wore a pair of aviator-style sunglasses and he held the wheel easily in his strong hands. His profile was chiseled and raw. There was something very masculine about him that called to everything feminine in her. The tension and pressure she’d felt while waiting for him in the lobby was slowly unwinding.

At this moment in the car with him, with the sun setting and the wind in her hair, she knew she belonged here. She’d never had such a sense anywhere before but in the small garden of her equally small house.

“How does one train to own a casino? Is there a casino school?” she asked.

“There might be. I learned the ropes working at other places on the strip.”

“You must have been employee of the month,” she said.

“Not quite,” he said with a wry grin.

A few more miles passed and she realized they’d left Vegas well behind and there didn’t appear to be any restaurants on the highway unless you counted the small barbecue joint on the side of the road. But he didn’t slow as they approached it.

“Where are we going to dinner?” she asked.

“Somewhere private.”

“Oh,” she said. Excitement tingled in her veins and she laced her fingers together to keep from nervously tucking her hair behind her ear.

“Don’t sound so scared. I’m not the big bad wolf.”

But when he smiled at her with all those teeth in that sexy face, she wished that he was the big bad wolf and that she was on the menu.

Deacon pulled off the highway and followed a road that led to a deserted stretch of land. He brought the car to a stop. The sun had set and the moon was rising over the horizon. When he was younger, the desert had always been a place to get away from the pressures of life in the city and to hide out. He still left the strip behind for the quiet nothingness of the land when things got too crazy.

Tonight his motives were simple. He wanted a chance to get to know Kylie without the pressure of knowing that any public place they went they’d be on camera. And knowing Mac as well as Deacon did, he knew he’d get some sort of critique of his behavior with Kylie.

“Is this the spot?” she asked, nervously finger-combing her hair.

It fell in soft waves around her shoulders. The wind from riding in the convertible had added to the fullness of the long dark curls. He reached out and touched one of them, then wrapped a smooth strand around his finger. God, she was worlds too soft for him.

He had no business taking this sweet young woman to the desert. Out here he always felt as if he could strip away the sophisticated layer he had to add in Vegas. Once he shed that layer, there was nothing left but the tough guy who was raised on the streets and conned his way up to the top.

This woman, with her innocent questions about casino school, had revealed more than she’d ever know with that one query.

“Deacon?”

“Yes.”

“Are we getting out here? Are we going to have a picnic?” she asked. A hint of nervousness permeated her words.

“Yes to both.”

“Can I help?”

“No. Tonight is just for you,” he said as he climbed out of the car. “Why don’t you flip through the CDs and find one you like, while I take care of everything.”

He removed the cashmere blanket from the trunk and quickly set up their picnic dinner. He opened the bottle of wine to let it breathe and then put out the china plates.

The dinner the chef had provided was still warm from the bags it had been packed in. He heard the throaty sounds of Louis Armstrong come from the car and then Kylie appeared at his side.

He got her seated on the blanket and served her dinner. She sat nervously next to him picking at her food. “Relax,” he said at last.

“I’m trying. This just isn’t my scene,” she said, gesturing to the picnic items.

“Not the outdoorsy type?” he asked. Truth be told, he wasn’t much of a outdoorsy guy. He could survive, because where he’d come from, you learned to do that early on. But he preferred the city. That jungle was his life’s blood.

It was a clear night, and the sky was filled with stars. She set her plate on the blanket next to her, then leaned back and looked up at the sky.

He realized that when she wouldn’t look at him was when she revealed the most about herself.

“Not that, so much as the whole date thing,” she said at last.

“Why not?”

“My mother says it’s because of my divorce.”

She was divorced. He hadn’t planned on his potential wife having been down the aisle once before. He needed to find out more about this. “Is your mother right?”

She shrugged, took a sip of wine and stared at the openness around them. He realized she wasn’t going to say any more. But he had big plans for her. And the bit of cleavage revealed by the neckline of her dress made it damned hard to concentrate on getting information about her past from her.

There was a sadness in her eyes that made him want to cradle her in his arms and promise that she’d never feel sad again. Of course, he knew that was a promise he couldn’t keep, but still she made him want to take vows that would keep her safe. “What happened to end your marriage?”

“You don’t want to hear about that.”

“But I do. I’m very interested in everything that made you into the woman you are today.”

“You don’t have to try so hard.”

He set his wineglass down, not sure he liked where this was going. He wasn’t really trying hard to do anything except keep himself from touching her body and finding out if she really was as soft as he imagined. And from kissing her full lips to ascertain if they were as luscious as they looked.

“Try so hard at what?”

“Hitting on me,” she said.

“Angel, you’re not even close.”

“I’ve heard that before.” She crossed her arms over and gave a look so prim it took all his willpower not to kiss it off.

He took a deep swallow of his wine and wished it was a double Scotch, instead. “No wonder you don’t date.”

“What do you mean?” she asked defensively.

“Exactly what you think it means. You’re a pain in the ass.”

“That’s more like it,” she said.

“What is?”

“Honesty. I know I’ve got more barriers than Nellis Air Force Base, but you have to understand that smooth talking is not going to turn my head.”

“Why’s that?”

“Because my ex-husband taught me a lesson about truth and men I’ll never forget.”

He didn’t really want to hear about the other men in Kylie’s life. Though he suspected there hadn’t been many. She’d confessed to not dating, and there was a look about her that warned men away. He waited for her to go on.

She sighed and said, “Men are looking for something different than woman are.”

“What is that?” he asked. He’d often wondered what women thought men were looking for. He also wondered about Kylie’s ex-husband and what a fool the man must have been.

“A combination of Martha Stewart, Cindy Crawford and Madeline Albright,” she said.

“And what do women want?”

“A woman wants to be loved for who she is. Not because of who a man wants her to be,” she said quietly. She abruptly stood up and looked out at the vast landscape, and he knew she wasn’t seeing the present but the past, and the woman she was and the man who couldn’t love her. He vowed not to make the same mistake her ex-husband had.

Three

D
eacon wasn’t sure what kind of man her ex had been, but he knew he’d left Kylie with some pretty powerful delusions of what men wanted. Deacon was straightforward in his desires. The right lover made any woman feel like a supermodel. He made a mental note to prove to Kylie her desirability.

Love was a different matter. He’d learned early on that deep affection was an illusion. Every day he saw couples getting married in Vegas, couples swearing eternal devotion. A devotion that he suspected lasted only as long as they were in the make-believe land of casinos and nightclubs. A world apart from reality. He’d vowed at twenty-eight that he was through with love and he hadn’t once gone back on his word. He didn’t intend to.

“I’m not looking for any of those women you named, Kylie. Then again, I was raised around showgirls.”

She tilted her head to the side and watched him. She was so shy sometimes and then at other times too bold. He had the feeling she was way out of her element here with him. He didn’t know if that was a good thing or not.

“Was your mom a showgirl?” she asked.

He didn’t want to talk about his past, but he also didn’t want to lose Kylie because she thought he was like every other guy she’d ever met. If he knew one thing, he was nothing like those other men. Unless she’d frequented prisons. Only luck and determination had kept him from incarceration.

“You’ve always lived in Vegas?”

“Yes, I have.” Honestly, he didn’t think he could live anywhere else. It was in his blood. The twenty-four-hour world. New York and Los Angeles were okay to visit but too crowded for his tastes. The strip was busy, certainly, but it had a different sort of energy. The people in Vegas rejuvenated him.

Her eyes had lost that wounded look and for once he felt pretty good about himself. All this talking had helped her. “Where are you from?”

“Everywhere—my dad was career military. Growing up, we never lived in one place longer than three years.”