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I supposed it made sense. He had never worked with someone like me before, and people were always a little freaked the first time they came into contact with someone of my profession. They had probably been told their whole lives to be scared of people like me, wary of us, but then they actually met us and found out we’re nowhere near as cold or hard or frightening as they’d been led to believe.
"I signed the papers to fund the rest of the development," I told him, pushing the pages across the desk towards him. "You can pass them on to your construction team. I can’t imagine the changes will take much more time, probably a couple of weeks at most."
"Yeah, probably not much more than that," he agreed. He tried to stay on the same side as me as much as he could, not wanting to disagree, like he thought I would whip out a gun and slap it down on the table if he dared. It was almost funny, but I never let him see how much it amused me.
"And then we can start talking about the official opening," I continued. "I’d like to plan a real event to make sure we get it on the map. The more people coming through, the more traffic in the hotel, and the easier it’s going to be for both of us to reach our goals. Right?"
"Right," he replied with a nod, but before he could say anything else, the door behind us opened, and in walked Thea.
God, she looked good. Dressed in a pair of jeans and a cropped tee should have been innocent enough, but the way it grazed the top of her pants and showed off just an inch or two of her belly had me shifting in my seat to find comfort. Maybe it was just because I hadn’t seen her since the night we had spent together, but I couldn’t take my eyes off her. She glanced over at me, and I saw a pink flush to her cheeks as though her mind had gone right back to our time tossed up in the covers of my bed.
"Hey, Mark, sorry," she told her brother, trying to keep her focus on him. "I—I just wanted to talk to you about Jerri, at the bar—she needs some time off to go see her daughter, but she won’t ask for it. Can I switch shifts with her and surprise her?"
"Sure," Mark replied. I could tell she wanted to look around and meet my gaze, but she was doing her very best to pretend I wasn’t in the room. Could her brother sense the chemistry between us? Surely, he couldn’t have ignored it. It felt as though the air between us could burst into flames at any moment with the sheer intensity of my attraction to her.
"Thanks," she replied, glancing over her shoulder at me. Her hair was pulled back into a simple ponytail, and she wasn’t wearing any makeup, but somehow, she looked even hotter than she had the first time we’d met. Something about seeing her like this, understated and off-guard, was going to throw me off for the rest of the meeting. I was sure about that.
She left the room, and I couldn’t help but follow her with my eyes.
"Sorry, that’s my sister," Mark told me, and I remembered I wasn’t meant to know who she was. "She’s normally not that rude. I don’t know what’s gotten into her."
"It’s fine," I assured him quickly, trying to contain the slight smirk on my face. If only he knew why she was really rushing out of there, he would have totally lost it—and I had to admit, some part of me kind of wanted to see that happen.
But I wouldn’t reveal her secret like that, not when I knew she was relying on me to keep my mouth shut. Besides, I had a meeting to get through, and I needed to make sure I didn’t let myself get distracted by the unfathomably hot woman who’d just walked into this office.
I made it through the rest of the meeting without giving anything away, though I was sure Mark could sense something was off about how I handled myself. I finished up with him, headed outside to the car, and found my mind still firmly stuck on the girl I should have known better than to let play on my mind.
I gripped the wheel, glancing over to the spot she had sat in when we had been driving around together before. God, the tension had been palpable just being with her like that and spending time with her. I could still remember how I felt to sit just a few inches from her, to feel her flirtation coming off her in waves, to know how much she wanted me. The anticipation had been enough to drive me crazy, even as I tried to contain myself.
It wasn’t often that women had that kind of effect on me. In fact, I prided myself on never being the guy who fell head over heels for someone and landed in trouble as a result. I knew there weren’t many people like me out there, men who had kept it in their pants long enough to actually succeed in this career. Before his death, my father had told me so many stories of other heirs to Mafia families who’d wound up running off with a stripper and getting their hearts broken—too pampered and convinced that life would go their way to consider that it might not.
But me? Yeah, I had never been that guy. I had never been the guy to let myself get involved with anyone if I could help it. I had worked underneath my father, handling as much of the business as he would let me and slowly working my way up the ranks until he was confident in me stepping up to run the show—handle all of his interests, from the drug runners bringing money into the city, to the loan sharks he used to collect money from some of the hapless gambling addicts in Vegas. Not exactly clean work, but he had done everything he could to build a solid foundation for me, his only son.
My mom had died years ago when I was a kid, and it had just been my father and me for a long time. The two of us had grown close, closer than most parents did with their kids, and I had seen everything he’d done to get to where he was now—all the hard work he’d put in, all the passion he had poured into his job to make sure he was at the forefront of everything that happened in Vegas. He would have been proud to see where I was now, how far I had come, and how far I was planning to take his legacy. I wouldn’t stop until I was sure I had honored him, and I wasn’t even halfway done yet. Working with people like Mark was a start—a way to spread our influence further—but it wasn’t the end of the job, by a long shot.
I knew that Mark and his sister had recently lost their parents; he had mentioned it in passing a couple of times, explaining how he came into ownership of the hotel. Maybe that was what had drawn me to Thea, made me feel some connection to her because I had seen some correlation between us. We had both just lost our families, the last of them we had left.
I felt a pang of sadness when I thought about how much she must have been suffering. I hoped I hadn’t added to that, complicating things with her brother, but I got the impression I had. She had ignored me earlier, but I could tell she had wanted to talk to me. No matter how she tried to play it, I could tell she still felt the draw between us, and she wanted to act on it, too.
I had never really met someone who made me feel like she did. Maybe just because she had broken things off so soon after our night together. I was used to getting what I wanted, but she had denied me, which had her stuck in my brain like a song on repeat.
I decided to head down to the gym and blow off some steam before going home. I turned off to head into the parking lot of the ultra-exclusive gym, and used the gold card they’d gifted me after five years’ membership to get into the locked building. Mostly, it was populated by low-level celebrities, but sometimes you saw an established name in there.
I made my way to the weight room, glad for a chance to burn off some of this excess energy that seemed to be getting the better of me. I passed by a couple leaning against the reception counter, the woman in tight workout gear that usually would have caught my eye, but there was only one woman on my mind right now, and it wasn’t her.
Maybe Thea was just looking for something I couldn’t give her. Or maybe she had decided someone like me would never be able to deliver what she needed. She had probably done some digging with her brother, found out what kind of person I was and what kind of business I was involved in, and decided she didn’t want to get involved. I couldn’t blame her; she seemed totally normal, totally outside the chaos and danger that came with this kind of life.
And yet...and yet, I found myself wanting to draw her into it.—wanting to see how she would handle all of it, everything that was thrown at her. She seemed as though she could handle herself, even though I’d had to step in and help her before—she hadn’t panicked or tried to run from those guys. She seemed more confused than anything else.
And then, she went home with me. She had clearly felt something there, even if she wasn’t sure what it was, even if she couldn’t have put it into words. And after, she claimed it was because of her brother, that he was the reason she wanted to put distance between us. But maybe that was just an excuse to make sure she didn’t fall back into bed with me when she knew what kind of man I was.
I had no idea. But I was curious. I focused on the burn of my muscles as I lifted the weights, sweat dripping from my brow and onto the floor mats. The music was blaring from the speakers, and I was glad it was up as loud as it was—I needed something to scrub out the memory of her from my mind, if just for a while.
Maybe if I didn’t have to run into her, I would have been okay, but knowing I had to see her again, knowing I would bump into her as a matter of course when I was working with Mark, it was going to make things far more complicated than they needed to be.
Or maybe a whole lot easier. Because I wasn’t done with her yet, not a chance in hell—and I knew from the chemistry that filled the air between us when she came into the office that she wasn’t done with me either, no matter what she might have wanted to tell herself.
No matter what story she had spun to keep me at arm’s length.
