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He closed the distance between us and tugged gently on my robe, pulling me toward him.
“Don’t worry about Gwen’s father. I’ve spent a decade insulating him from our lives.” His hands tightened around me, his mouth found my neck, and he planted a soft kiss there. “In regards to your heart?”
He pulled away and looked down into my eyes. “I can’t protect that. And I can’t promise you anything. That’s a risk you’re going to have to decide whether to take.” He tugged on the end of my wet hair. “Come on. Let’s move to the dining room.”
Fifteen
I flipped over puzzle pieces quickly, getting them face up and keeping an eye out for edges. Dario stood across the teak table, doing the same. The puzzle had been found on our hunt for a fireplace remote, and I’d given him a thumbs-up when he’d held it up.
I was in a bathrobe, a fresh bottle of Moscato open, a full wine glass beside me, doing a puzzle with one of Vegas’s most elite. Talk about weird. Dario had answered the door a half hour ago, taken a duffel bag of items from Vince, and was now bare-chested, with workout pants hanging low on his hips. I thought the suit had been sexy. Half-dressed Dario was downright edible.
I found an edge piece and passed it to him. “Did you always work in casinos?”
“Pretty much.” He tossed a piece into the pile. “I started in security, worked my way up, moved into hosting, then up from there. But that was back in Biloxi. I ran a casino down there, the Beau Rivage.”
He glanced at me. “Ever been to Biloxi?”
I shook my head. “I haven’t been much of anywhere. But you probably already know that.”
“In fact…” I looked over at him. “What do you know about me?”
He shrugged and sat on the edge of the table. “I know you grew up about eighty miles south of here, in a town about the size of my cock.”
I laughed. “I’ve seen your cock. Mohave is a wee bit bigger.” I threw a puzzle piece toward his head, and he caught it mid-air. “But hey, I like the visual.”
He smirked, a cocky smile that curled past the expensive bathrobe and found its way to my inner core.
“What else do you know?”
“Hmmm…” He tapped a piece against the table, then connected it to another. “Your mom is a waitress. So were you, before Cheech and Chong brought you to Vegas.”
I nodded and thought of my mom. She always smells like the diner—fried food and cigarettes. When I was little, I would burrow into her body, and search for the scent of sugar. It was always there, hidden in the folds of her apron or the collar of her shirt.
“And your dad liked to drink.” He didn’t look at me when he said the words, yet I felt them sneak across the table and poke me.
“He did.”
Dad had been a drunk. Dario could say it as nicely as he wanted to, but that was the truth of the matter, and everyone in town knew it, had told me it every day of my life. The cops had called him it, that night, when he had brought me in to file a report. When they’d sneered at the story of my rape, Dad had all but deflated. He’d stumbled to the side, the alcohol still strong in his system, then sank against a dingy wall in that Mohave police substation. He’d looked at me as if he wanted to die.
“He did,” I repeated the words with more strength. “But he stopped.” I moved to the head of the table, where a corner piece caught my eye. “He stopped drinking a few years ago.”
“It’s nothing to be ashamed of,” Dario spoke quietly, as if I was a spooked horse he needed to soothe. “My dad was the same way. Only he didn’t stop. Not when he killed my mom with his driving, and not when his liver gave out two years later. He drank right up until the day he died, damn whatever the doctors said.”
He looked up, and there was a bitter sadness in his eyes. I put down the puzzle piece and moved around the corner of the table. Wrapping my arms around his waist, I pulled him to me, resting my head against his chest and squeezing him against me. “I’m sorry,” I whispered.
He ran his hand softly over the top of my head, following my hair down my back and tugging softly on the ends. “Nothing to be sorry about. It was a long time ago. And my mom knew what she was risking, getting in the car with him.” He pulled away from me enough to look down into my face. He ran his fingers over my cheekbones as if dusting them off, then leaned down and pressed his lips—for just the briefest of seconds—against mine. “But, thank you.”
