PROLOGUE
COLT
Las Vegas
Seated at a bar, the lights of the casino flashing around me, used to be my happy place. I love watching all the people as they come and go, making my own personal bets about how much money they’ll win or lose as the night goes on.
I’m usually right.
Reading people is part of what I do for a living. How I make the deals that built my family’s fledgling lumber business into an empire in less than twenty years.
And I’m very good at what I do.
Tonight, however, the clanging machines and cheering people hold little appeal. For the first time, I find myself wishing I was home with my siblings and my adorable nieces, watching to see what kind of trouble they’re going to get themselves into. Lanie and Josie keep us all on our toes, and not a single one of us would have it any other way, no matter how much grumblingElias does when they get into the snacks he has “hidden” all over the kitchen.
I wonder if Axel and Bram have realized yet that he deliberately hides the goodies where the girls can find them.
A soft huff draws my attention to my right, where a woman in a cheap, too-tight dress has settled herself onto the stool beside me. “Whiskey sour,” she tells the bartender, with none of the breathless cheerfulness I’m used to hearing from women in casinos.
Intrigued, I shift to face her more fully. “Rough night?”
She snorts. “Rough fucking life.”
My palm positively itches to connect with her bottom, and I just manage to catch myself before lecturing her about using such crass language.
But then she turns her head, and I find myself staring down into a pair of eyes the same color as the whiskey the bartender is currently pouring for her.
And I know, then and there, I won’t be returning to Colorado alone.
CHAPTER 1
TABITHA
My head iskillingme.
Groaning, I bury my face in the too-soft pillow beneath me in an attempt to escape the light streaming through the windows. Apparently drunk me was too out of it to remember to close the blinds the night before.
Drunk me is an asshole.
A soft noise reaches me through the pounding in my skull and I freeze in place, ears perked, listening intently for the sound again while my heart threatens to beat right out of my chest.
Beside me, the mattress dips and bile rises in my throat. Someone is in the room with me.
“Hiding your face in that pillow isn’t going to help your hangover, little one. Sit up and drink some water.”
The someone in my room is definitely a man. A man with a voice like gravel on an old country road. Deep and rough and undeniably sexy.
Slowly turning my head, I pry one eyelid open to peek up at him. And find, to my growing horror, a face that matches the voice perfectly. Sexy, with laugh lines around his dark eyes thattell me he’s smiling even though his mouth is mostly obscured by his thick beard.
“There’s my pretty girl. Sit up, baby, and drink your water.”
Hispretty girl? Baby?
What on earth is going on?
Because I’m pretty sure I won’t be able to figure it out with my head pounding like the drumline in a marching band, I force myself to sit up and take the offered water. But just as I’m about to take a sip, I pause and narrow my eyes at the handsome stranger sitting on my bed. “How do I know you didn’t poison this?”
Those laugh lines around his eyes deepen with humor. “Clever little girl. I suppose you don’t. You’ll just have to trust me.”
