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Dragging her attention from the flex and play of taut muscles under gorgeous golden skin, she met his too-amused gaze and smirk.
“Whatever. It’s not like it’s something I haven’t seen before.” Not a lie. She’d seen those broad shoulders and wide chest—and probably had her tongue all over them—last night. She just couldn’t remember any of it. Still... Flicking a hand, she continued, “Can you stop preening and get dressed? We’re in deep shit here, and have—” she lifted the slim, gold Cartier watch from the nightstand, the one that had been a gift from her father on the first anniversary of Media Mavens’s opening “—an hour to figure out who knows about this and what we’re going to do.”
She’d scheduled an escape room outing followed by a lunch at the Peppermill for their last day in Vegas. God, she ground the heel of her palm over her right eyebrow where the headache began to throb again. And she doubted the cause could be attributed to the ungodly amount of liquor she’d drunk last night. No, it had much more to do with the possibility that her employees had been witnesses to, at best, her extreme unprofessionalism. At worst, her lack of control that ended up in this, this...husband situation.
“Oh God, I can’t believe this is happening to me.” She groaned, dropped her hand away from her face. “What the hell could I possibly have been thinking? Well, that’s just it, right? I obviously wasn’t thinking. If I was, I wouldn’t have made the biggest and mostridiculousmistake of my damn life,” she rambled more to herself than Patrick.
But when she glanced up and caught his face that could’ve been carved from stone, she quietly cursed.
“Patrick, I didn’t mean—”
“That I was a mistake?” A tight smile pulled at the corners of his sensual lips. It was full of mocking derision and completely void of humor. “We’re not just husband and wife, Brooklyn, we’re friends. There’s no need to pull your punches for me. This is a shitshow, but it’s a shitshow of our own making.”
“You think I don’t know that?” she snapped, sweeping a hand over the bun she’d corralled her hair into before her shower. “It’s bad enough we might have...” The words to describe exactly what they might’ve done in that bed stuck on her tongue like super glue. Instead, she settled for waving a hand back and forth between them. “But married? This was not on my bingo card for the year.” Inhaling a deep breath through her nose, she held it for several seconds then slowly released it. Nope. That coping mechanism was a total fail. Panic still clawed at her like a sadistic beast that wouldn’t be satisfied until she cracked under the anxiety and pressure. “How can I face everyone after my behavior last night? They’ll never look at me the same way again. Shit, forget that. How am I going to explain all of this to myparents? Not only did I go ahead and do the most cliché thing possible in Vegas, but I did it with my sister’s ex?” Her grated burst of laughter scraped her throat. “Obviously, my motto when it comes to fucking up is go big or go home. And I for damn sure can’t go home married to you. No offense.”
“None taken,” he drawled, a note of humor warming his voice.
But that amusement hadn’t thawed the ice in his eyes. A pang thumped in her chest, and she resisted the urge to rub the spot directly between her breasts. Still... He lied. He had taken offense, and she regretted being the cause of it. At the end of the day—or honeymoon, or...whatever—he was more than her employee. Patrick was her friend. Aside from Kat, her best friend. Tragedy tended to bring people closer.
The tragedy in question being his relationship with her sister.
“Patrick, I’m sorry.” She rubbed her forehead. “I keep putting my foot in my mouth when it comes to you. It’s not like there’s anything wrong with you. You’re my friend, you’re great. But this situation—”
“Stop.” The quiet order laced with an undertone of steel cut off her flow of words, sending a frisson of shock through her. She blinked. He’d never used that tone with her before. And she didn’t like it. Right? “I know what you’re saying, so either stop trying to explain or hand over the shovel so I can stop you from digging that hole deeper.”
Striding past her, he rounded the bed and spotting his pants, bent down and reached for them. The hand clutching the white bedcovers opened and the fluffy material fell...
“Shit!” She slammed her eyes shut. Even going so far as to slap a hand over her eyes.
But nothing could erase the image burned into her brain like the scar left behind by a branding iron. The deep vee just under his ridged abs and above his hips. A flash of the firm, muscular curve of his ass. A glimpse of the dark blond, nearly brown, thicket of hair just above his...
Spinning around, she gave him her back and blindly stared at the opposite wall and down the hall that led to the hotel room door. She deliberately kept her gaze from straying to the stripped-down bed and its tangled sheets.
“You could’ve given me some warning, dammit.”
Irritation, mortification and...nononono...lust swirled through her veins, heating her up like the bright red sign welcoming every tourist to Sin City. In an instant she’d become a freaking beacon of need, and it terrified her. She couldn’t want Patrick. She could randomly stop a car on Fremont Street and find someone less...burdensome than Patrick.
Not prettier. Not with a hotter body. Not funnier. Not...Patrick-ier.
But definitely less burdensome.
“You just told me it’s nothing you haven’t seen before, so what’s the problem?” he asked, lobbing her words back at her. “You can turn around now. I’m decent.”
“That’s up for debate,” she muttered, cautiously turning back around. Decent? He now wore pants, but they remained unbuttoned as did the shirt left open, granting her an unhindered view of his chest. They obviously had different definitions ofdecent. “Patrick,” she murmured, sinking to the bed and keeping her focus firmly on his face. “What’re we going to do? We can’t go home—” she dropped her gaze to the plastic ring still adorning his finger, and her mouth went dry “—together.”
She’d already saidmarriedonce; she couldn’t do it again.
That panic started to rise again, scratching at her, stealing the air from her lungs. Her breath rushed in her head like a wind tunnel, deafening her to everything but the soundtrack of her own anxiety.
“Hey.” Two big hands cupped her face, tilting it down. “Look at me, Brooklyn. Look me in my eyes.”
His touch penetrated the storm whipping inside her head. It burned through the fog like sun through an early-morning mist. His words reached her next, and though the panic still grasped and tore at her, she obeyed him, lifting her lids and meeting his beautiful gaze. She tumbled into it, grabbing on to the calm, reassuring raft he tossed her.
These episodes didn’t occur often; she hadn’t experienced one since her father had a health scare nearly two years ago. Another instance where the situation had been completely out of her control. When she couldn’t make things better.
“Brooklyn.”
The pads of his fingers pressed harder against her cheeks, and she battled against closing her eyes once more. This time to float in the strength and steadiness of his touch, of him. She prided herself on standing on her own, on being the rock everyone leaned on. But in this instant, she wanted to be the one taking that support, depending on it. And that sharp need had her lifting her head, angling away from his hands.
