People call New York the city that never sleeps, but really it was Vegas that never shut down, not even for national holidays, not for one single neon weekend. There was always work to do in Vegas. But here she was now with nothing to do.
Just then her doorbell rang, and she was more than a little surprised to see who was standing on the other side of the door when she opened it.
Before she could even work up a pleasant hello, Cole Benton held up a manila envelope. “Your confidentiality agreement,” he said. He looked very, very annoyed. Even though he was the one who had shown up at her front door unannounced.
“You want me to sign a contract?” she asked, blinking as she tried to catch up.
“Yes,” he answered, then he pushed past her, barging into her apartment without invitation.
“Please come right on in,” she said, closing the door behind him.
He either didn’t pick up on her sarcasm or didn’t care. He looked around the apartment for a few seconds, then he pulled the contract out of the envelope. “Sign there and there. It’s pretty standard. You won’t say anything about any of this to anyone, including Nora.”
Sunny wondered if she’d ever get used to hearing him call his grandmother by her first name. She knew her own grandma wouldn’t have put up with that even for a second. But she had the feeling The Third—she meant, Cole—probably got away with a lot of behavior most people couldn’t.
She signed on the line above her printed name, “You couldn’t have just mailed this to me?” she asked. “I thought we weren’t supposed to start pretending to date until tomorrow night...”
She trailed off when she saw that Cole wasn’t listening, instead his phone was to his ear.
“What time do you think you can have the moving truck meet us here?”
“Wait, why is a moving truck coming here?” she demanded.
Cole kept talking as though she hadn’t said anything. “Couple of hours? Great.” He then frowned at something the person on the other side of the phone had said. “I don’t know. I’ll ask her.”
He lowered the phone and glanced at Sunny. “Do you want the movers to pack you up? Or do you want to do that yourself?”
Sunny screwed up her face. “What? When did I agree to move?”
Cole put the phone back up to his ear. “She’s not sure. Just tell whoever you get to be ready for an either-or situation. I’ll touch base later. Thanks.”
As soon as he hung, she informed him, “I’m not moving to...” She realized she had no idea where he was trying to make her go, and finished with a tepid, “Wherever you’re trying to make me move.”
Cole picked up the signed contract and flipped through it before turning the found page around and pointing to a paragraph. Sunny read it. Something about her agreeing not to do or say anything that would cast him in the bad light.
“How is living in my own apartment casting you in a bad light?” she asked.
He shook his head. “No man of my standing would ever let his girlfriend live in a dump like this.”
“It’s not that bad,” Sunny argued, her voice sounding a little weak even to her own ears, as she tried to keep her eyes from straying over to the water stains on the walls.
“It’s a dump,” he repeated. “And judging from the deal I saw going down in the nearby stairwell, probably not at all safe. You move in with me until my assistant can set you up in a decent apartment.”
Sunny’s first thought was to argue with him. No one told her what to do or where to live.
But then the image of the rat with her protein bar in its mouth floated across her mind. She could still hear distinctly the high-pitched click-suck of its teeth.
“Exactly where would this apartment be?” she asked. “It would have to be something I could afford on my own.”
“That’s something you can discuss with Agnes when the time comes,” he said, sounding brusque and bored with this whole line of conversation.
Sunny tried not to bristle. She supposed she should just be grateful he hadn’t decided to make a big deal of her easy acquiescence. “I... Um. Don’t really need a moving truck,” she mumbled. “Everything I have fits easily into two suitcases. I’ve been getting rid of a bunch of things before I go to New York.”
He brought out his phone and started texting. “All right, I’ll have Agnes call off the moving truck. Pack up and I’ll drive you back to my place.”
“You don’t have to drive me—”
He cut her off with another disapproving stare. “If your car is anything like your apartment, I think I do.”
She thought of the bus, which had served her well over the year she’d been living there. “The bus gets the job done,” she said, feeling the need to defend Las Vegas’s transit system.
Cole didn’t even look up from his smartphone. “I’m telling Agnes to pull out one of the cars from my garage. You can probably handle the Mercedes.”
“Really, you don’t have to—”
Cole crossed his arms across his chest. “So is the plan to keep me waiting instead of packing your bags quickly?”
Sunny pursed her lips. Cole was acting as if everything he was commanding was the most logical thing ever, but she wasn’t a doormat.
“You know you’ve got me thinking...” she said.
His eyes narrowed, but he remained quiet, waiting for her to go on. He seemed to have two modes of communicating, Sunny noted to himself. Either issuing commands or using silence in a way that felt as though he were carefully wielding a weapon.
She continued on, anyway, even further convinced by his weaponized silence that she should try to gain some sort of upper hand. “You’re trying to sell us as a couple, and that’s why you want me in an apartment I probably couldn’t afford on my own and driving a nicer car than I would buy if I had one. Obviously, you’re used to dating a certain type, and I’m not it.”
“No, you’re not my usual type,” he agreed. However, a heat sprung up in his eyes when he added, “You’re not like anyone I’ve ever dated. But I don’t think I’m going to have any problems convincing others that I’d be more than willing to take you on as a lover.”
His clipped words actually felt like a compliment. A rather sexy one, but Sunny forced herself to stay on her original course. “That’s great,” she said. “But the problem is you’re not my type, either. The people in my circle—including Nora—might find it hard to believe I’m really with you. Like not just a fling, but seriously into you with the possibility of getting married.”
The heat drained out of his gaze. “What exactly is your type, Sunny?” he asked and she felt a chill go up her back.
“Well, my last serious boyfriend ran a homeless shelter. We met while he was asking people to sign up to volunteer there, outside of Trader Joe’s.”
Cole crooked his head, like the whole idea of actually doing good in the world was a completely foreign concept to him.
Maybe it was, Sunny thought unkindly, wondering, not for the first time how she’d ever gotten herself into this mess.
“You’re saying you’d prefer that I’d be more charitable,” Cole concluded. “Fine. Tell me what charity you like, and I’ll have Agnes make a donation.”
She gave him a leveled look. “I was actually thinking more charitable, like doing. Like if people saw us doing charitable things together, maybe they wouldn’t have such a hard time buying my story.”
Cole crinkled his forehead. “So you want us to spend time together, helping people. Fine, I can do that? Tell me how.”
“I guess you could come with me to my community dance class tomorrow. It’s all girls, and we’re always looking for guys to help us with lifts.”
“What time?”
“Seven—I know that’s early. But a lot of my girls are Catholic, and have to be done
in time for second Mass at St. Peter’s.”
Cole brought his phone back out and started typing. “It’s not early for me. I’ll have Agnes clear my schedule.”
Now it was her turn to shake her head. “You work on Sunday mornings, too?”
“Of course I do,” he answered, like she was the odd one because she didn’t.
Chapter 7
Sunday morning, Cole woke up way earlier than usual, and in a foul mood. He’d tossed and turned the entire night, a certain part of his anatomy reminding him with increasing insistence that Sunny was now living in the penthouse apartment he kept at the top of The Benton. Living with him. She was right there, in the very next bedroom, her soft, curvaceous body lying underneath a couple of sheets and a thin blanket, which he’d only have to pull back to...
He’d been forced to take care of himself around 3:00 a.m. like a high school boy, and even that hadn’t been enough. Now he was wide-awake with a mind that didn’t want to shut back down.
With an aggrieved grunt, he got out of bed. His master bedroom, and the rest of his penthouse were done up like his office downstairs, with white floors and walls, and sleek black furniture. However, the chessboard feel of the place didn’t give him his usual satisfaction, because whatever was going on with Sunny, it didn’t feel like he was currently winning. Even though the house was always supposed to win, and he was the CEO of the house.
He went into his home office, which was located right across the hallway from his bedroom to get a head start on the work he’d normally be doing on a Sunday morning, if he hadn’t agreed to accompany Sunny to her silly dance class.
* * *
“Are you seriously working at five-thirty on a Sunday morning?” he heard her ask behind him a couple of hours later.
He turned around to give her a peevish answer about the difference in income levels between him and the guys who didn’t work on Sunday mornings, but the words got stuck in his mouth as he studied her appearance in his office doorway.
He was used to the type of women who slipped out of bed before he did to fix their hair and make-up. Sometimes they even spritzed on a little perfume.
But Sunny looked as if she’d just climbed out of a tumble dryer, rumpled clothes, glossy curls going every which way, including up. However, that combined with her bountiful curves, barely contained by the drawstring pants and tank top she’d worn to bed sent a lightning bolt of lust straight through him.
Instead of putting her in her place, he had to work hard to keep the physical strain out of his voice. “Did you need something?” Other than him inside of her, right now?
“Coffee,” she all but groaned. “I can’t even think about a shower until I’ve had at least one cup.”
He couldn’t remember the last time a woman had even dared to approach him for anything other than morning sex without having taken a shower first—and often not even that. No, Sunny was definitely not his usual type. Not even remotely.
Yet, he had to turn around in his swivel chair for fear of what his smaller brain would compel him to do if he had to look at her another second.
“In the kitchen. It’s an automatic pot. The housekeeper sets it up every day.”
“Thanks,” she said to his back. “Can I bring you back a cup—”
“No,” he answered, before she could even finish asking the question.
“Okay,” she said carefully. Then she mercifully walked away, giving him the time he needed to get himself back under control.
* * *
He was still in a bad mood when he followed Sunny into the Balzar Community Center, which was located in an area of Las Vegas he’d only visited how many times? Oh, wait, that would be never, because he’d never had any reason to test out the fallibility of his Lo Jack system.
“Your car will be fine,” Sunny teased, apparently reading his mind as they walked through the building’s front door.
She’d had the nerve to come out to the living room dressed in a pink leotard, tights and leg warmers. She was either better at hiding her intentions than he’d originally given her credit for, or she honestly had no idea what the sight of someone with her kind of curves dressed in an outfit like that could do to a man.
Either way, he took a moment to resent the hell out of her for making it so he could barely look at her, because he was working so hard at keeping himself from tenting his pants. It didn’t help that she looked happy and in good spirits, like she’d gotten the best sleep of her life, while he’d tossed and turned all night.
And now she was teasing him about worrying about his Bentley, which probably cost more than this entire building.
Time to teach his pawn a lesson and put himself back in control of the chessboard, he decided.
“We’re early,” he pointed out as Sunny led him down a narrow hallway with paint peeling off the walls. “Is there a reason for that?”
Sunny shook her head, “No, it just worked out that way—”
She broke off with a squeak when he took her by the waist and pressed her back into the one area of wall where the paint was still smooth. He let his body settle into hers, reveling in her softness, as he breathed in her scent. Shower gel and the apple she’d eaten for breakfast.
“What—what are you doing?” she asked him, her voice breathless with confusion...and something else.
He liked the something else part. Liked it a lot.
“We’re supposed to be making our debut as a couple tonight at the Businessperson of the Year dinner.”
“And that has what to do with you holding me against this wall?” she asked, looking incredibly uncomfortable, but also still...something else.
“We’re supposed to be in the throes of a new romance, madly in love. Now I don’t usually do PDAs. Not really my thing, but in this case, if I were really capable of falling hard for somebody in a matter of days, I think I’d be okay with it. Don’t you?”
He could distinctly see a bead of sweat on her forehead now. “Are you hot, Sunny? Already? We haven’t even begun the class. Maybe we should turn on the air conditioning,” he offered, not even trying to hide the fake tone in his suggestion.
“No, I’m fine, I—” she broke off, obviously flustered. “I just don’t understand what tonight has to do with right now. What you’re doing right now?”
“We’ve got fifteen minutes. Maybe we should practice.”
Before she could ask “practice what,” he answered the presumed question, pressing his lips to hers for what was supposed to be a teasing kiss. A light punishment for giving him a hard time about his car and work schedule.
Except it wasn’t teasing or light. In fact, when his lips met hers he felt something zap through him, and he immediately became consumed, moving his mouth over hers, wanting more. He pressed his whole body into her as he kissed her now, suddenly not caring if she knew how badly she affected him. Suddenly wanting her to know just how much he desired her, just how much he wanted in.
And apparently he wasn’t the only one affected by their kiss. Her hand came around his neck, telling him by the way she pressed herself forward into his erection that she wanted him as much as he wanted her.
“Oohhhh! Teacher’s got a boyfriend! Teacher’s got a boyfriend!”
The teasing voice brought him back to reality. And then came Sunny’s hands, abruptly pushing him away. He looked down, way down to see a young Latina girl, her hair arranged in a messy bun, pointing at them as she singsonged, “Teacher’s got a boyfriend,” over and over again.
* * *
“Lucia!” Sunny all but groaned as she slipped out from between him and the wall. What had she been thinking, letting him kiss her like that right before class? She’d obviously lost her entire mind.
No, she corrected herself, Cole had very purposefully gone out of his way to make it so t
hat she couldn’t think straight. She threw an angry sideways look at the man who had taken her by surprise, kissing her with more passion than she would have thought him capable of. Certainly more passion than her last boyfriend, who for all his altruistic attributes, had been more of a peck/no tongue kind of guy when it came to public displays of affection.
It felt as though she was both reminding herself and informing Lucia, when she said, “This is my friend Cole—”
“You mean your boyfriend! You mean your boyfriend!” Lucia sang back.
Cole arched his eyebrow, smirking as if he along with Lucia had just caught Sunny in an obvious lie.
Sunny’s fingers came up to her temple and rubbed. “Lucia, I’m sorry you saw that. But I’d appreciate if you kept it to yourself. I don’t want the rest of the class to get distracted—”
Once again, Lucia interrupted her, this time by puckering up and making kissing noises as she wrapped her arms around her shoulders and pantomimed kissing.
Cole raised the other eyebrow. “And you chose this form of charitable work, because...?”
She was beginning to wonder that herself. She usually enjoyed teaching her students, especially the impish Lucia, whose wicked sense of humor occasionally derailed the class, but most often kept them laughing. However, the notion of Lucia telling everybody about the kiss she just witnessed had Sunny cringing.
“Please, Lucia...” Sunny said, only to be cut off when Lucia started making even louder kissing sounds.
Sunny opened her mouth to once again try reasoning with the little girl, but this time it was Cole who cut her off.
“I’ll give you ten bucks to keep your mouth shut, kid,” he told Lucia.
And before Sunny could chastise him for bribing a child, Lucia brought the kissing sounds to an abrupt stop and said, “Thirty. You look like you got money. You can afford it.”
Vegas, Baby Page 4
