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A year later, she’d given up a boring but lucrative teaching job at the dance institute to follow Mr. Perfect to Reno. A smart girl learned, after enough failures, to keep her vow and focus on the career.
Still, it wasn’t the vow that had her sagging in relief over the near miss.
What put the sexy hunk with the gorgeous dimples off-limits was one simple fact: he knew her brother.
And anyone who knew any member of her family wasn’t anyone she wanted to know. Even if he did have the good taste to admit that he’d deny a relationship with Phillip, too. That was guy talk, his way of trying to charm her.
“We’re here.”
Mulling and just a few breaths away from pouting, Lara grabbed her bag, glanced at the meter, then handed the driver the last of her cash and slid from the cab.
Phillip was a SEAL?
Lara blinked, trying to take that in. She’d known he was in the Navy. He’d been at Annapolis when she’d run away. No noncom status would suit a Banks, by God, nor would the heir apparent dare skip college. Two birds, one stone, that was Phillip.
A lot of people had been surprised that he’d joined the Navy. Phillip wasn’t exactly the fighting type, the let’s-serve-our-country type or the gung-ho-sailor type. But Lara had known better. Their grandfather, great-grandfather and a fistful more greats over the years had been naval officers for various countries, and he’d always been fascinated by the stories.
So the Navy didn’t surprise her at all.
But the SEALs? That was a straight-up shock.
She tried to imagine her brother doing heroic deeds, part of an elite team in the special forces. But the picture just wouldn’t jell in her mind.
Then she shook her head.
What did it matter? She hadn’t seen her brother in eight years. And even then, they’d been strangers.
One thing she did know, though, was that then or now, Phillip wanted nothing to do with her. So whatever his buddy was up to, her brother hadn’t instigated it.
The only thing worse than gorgeous, sexy guys wanting to lead her into temptation were gorgeous, sexy guys with their own secret agenda.
Lara settled into her classroom chair, ignoring the flirtatious wink from the guy at the station next to her and the glare from the woman on the other side. She smoothed a loving hand over the computer in front of her before sighing.
Nope.
She didn’t need men, no matter how gorgeous.
3
THREE HOURS LATER, Lara stepped off the bus, shifting her bag into the crook of one arm while she dug out her keys. She didn’t angle them like a weapon. Her neighborhood was run-down and on the cheap side, but it wasn’t sleazy like the alley behind the casino.
It was the best she could afford. A far cry from what she’d grown up with, but a major step up from where she’d lived three years ago when she’d landed in Reno.
That didn’t mean she was satisfied.
Soon she’d be making good money, she promised herself as she crossed the street. She might not be able to swing the snooty gated community of her childhood, but she’d own a home. Not here in Reno. She wanted a place in the country, where she could look for miles and not see another person.
Someday.
Someday soon.
Except that damned cab ride had cost her three days’ meals.
She gritted her teeth. Leave it to Phillip to cost her more than she could afford.
She’d stopped blaming the sexy hunk about an hour after she’d escaped.
Sitting under the bright fluorescent lights of the classroom, she’d decided that tall, built and gorgeous was only the messenger. Between taking notes and coding HTML, she’d changed her mind about Phillip sending his friend. Maybe big brother had finally decided to clue her in about their parents’ death. Not one to get his lily-white hands dirty, he’d probably asked his friend to pass on a message. Guys being guys, the dimpled hunk had probably agreed out of loyalty.
Phillip. Prince Perfect, as she’d called him growing up. She’d never have figured her uptight, upright brother to inspire that kind of devotion, but who knew. It’d been a lot of years since she’d seen him. Maybe he’d developed warmth, or oh, inspired miracle, even a little compassion in the last decade.
Or the gorgeous messenger was simply a card-carrying member of the penis brigade, loyal to any and all who sported the same equipment.
Men were funny that way.
Lara knew the only person worthy of her loyalty was herself. It hadn’t taken long to figure that out—all she’d needed was for every single other person in her life to let her down before she’d clued in.
Climbing the steps to her building, she felt the weight of the day pressing on her shoulders. She’d danced the matinee and the early show, escaped a gorgeous mountain, then attended both class and lab.
