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His totem pole?
The third obvious issue here was that she must be having a mental breakdown. Maybe it was vacationing alone, or the split from Kyle, but this behavior had to be indicative of a complete lapse of sanity.
She was going to get shipped off to an asylum for the slutty when she got home, because there was no way anyone would be able to overlook her romp with a porn star.
They don’t need to know, she reminded herself.
Once she’d gotten dressed and run a brush through her hair, she met Ethan in the hotel lobby where he was investigating the costume Britney Spears wore in her “…Baby One More Time” video.
“Ready to go?” He gave her a cursory once-over and managed not to come across like a wolf sizing up the weakest sheep in the flock. “You look nice.”
Sam touched the hem of her skirt, a basic A-line she’d brought in case of a special event. She wasn’t sure what had possessed her to wear it now. “Thanks.”
Ethan offered her his elbow, and she hesitated, trying to determine if he was up to something. It was just an elbow. He couldn’t fuck her with it.
Her eyes went wide when she started wondering if he could.
Instead of making things any weirder than they already were, Sam looped her arm under his and smiled warily. “You planning to behave yourself?” she asked.
“I rarely do.”
His blue eyes twinkled, and with his dark curls, he reminded her of a once-golden angel who’d been doused a little too freely with sin. Oh yeah, she had to be nuts to think this evening was a good idea.
But what the hell?
Who went to Vegas to play things safe?
After catching a cab at the valet, Ethan took them to the tail end of the Strip, getting off in front of the Venetian. Sam wasn’t sure what he had in mind, but his childlike exuberance made him hard to resist.
“Come look at this,” he insisted, waving her over to an arced white bridge.
Sam was having a hell of a time finding one single thing to focus on. Between the fountain out front and the brightly lit Italian-styled balcony spread across the facade of the hotel, the sights were distracting to say the least.
Ethan was leaning against one of the big white railings on the bridge, peering over the edge. When Sam came up next to him, she followed his gaze to the water below. The faux canal had the blue-green water she’d only seen in pictures of Fiji or Lake Tahoe, and a half-dozen gondolas were lined up, their striped poles bobbing with the swaying influence of the wind.
The sole working gondolier pushed a smiling couple through the canal and under the bridge she and Ethan were standing on.
“Pretty cool, isn’t it?”
She didn’t want to admit it, especially not so soon, but he was right. Seeing an Italian gondolier sweep someone away on a romantic boat ride right in the middle of a kitschy tourist city was pretty nifty. Maybe she hadn’t given Vegas a fair shake.
“Okay. You got me, this is neat. But this is one thing. I’d hardly call it an amazing spectacle or anything.”
“You say that now, Ms. Grinch, but the night is young and we have the whole Strip waiting for us. I guarantee you by the time we’re through you’re going to be madly in love with this city. And hopefully you won’t still think your vacation was wasted in coming here.”
“Want to make a bet?”
“A bet?”
“Yeah, in the spirit of the whole thing, this being Vegas and all.”
“What are the terms?”
“If we get back to the hotel and I can honestly say I didn’t have fun, you have to use all your big porn earnings to upgrade me to a nicer room.”
Ethan snorted and rolled his eyes. “I think you overestimate how much money we make, but I’m pretty sure I can swing an upgrade.”
“All right.” Sam smiled in spite of herself. She’d wanted to keep her poker face in check so he wouldn’t realize she was already enjoying herself, but the grin still managed to slip out. Stupid traitorous face.
