“You’re still a size seven, I presume?”

  She nodded as she slipped off her black heels and tried on the new ones. “I can’t believe you got me shoes. I love shoes.”

  “I know you do.” I leaned across the table and lowered my voice. “The shoes looked sexy, and you’re sexy, and I’d love to see you in them.”

  She stretched out her leg across mine and modeled the new shoe, then spoke in a smoky whisper. “Do you like them?”

  I groaned as I answered, “You know I do.”

  “Do you want me to wear them on Saturday night? When you take me to Alvin Ailey?” Her tone was inviting, like a promise of what we might do this weekend.

  What I desperately wanted to do.

  “Yes.”

  She leaned across the table, dropping her voice more. “And do you want to fuck me on Saturday night?”

  I went up in flames. That was all I wanted. “Yes.”

  “I want that too.”

  All I could think about now was her in those shoes on Saturday, and what might happen later that night.

  I was picturing it all too perfectly.

  Too bad my phone rang and I had to think about Tanner when his name flashed across the screen. Perfect boner killer.

  “Let me grab this for one minute,” I said to Shannon, then answered the call. “Hey, Tanner. What’s up?”

  The man wasted no time with hellos. “Here’s the deal. You need to meet the leader of the neighborhood association. Let him know Mr. Vegas means business. That you won’t be bringing trouble to their block. Can you get to New York this weekend? I set up a meeting Sunday night.”

  I cursed silently. Saturday night was Alvin Ailey. No way was I backing out of that. But I could catch an early Sunday morning flight. “I’ll be there in time for a seven p.m. dinner.”

  “Fine. I’ll send you the details,” Tanner said in a gruff tone.

  Quickly, I circled back to my conversation with him the last time I saw him, catching him up to speed. “Hey, I put in a few calls to the parks department in the city. I made a donation to have some of the parks in the area revitalized, like you suggested.”

  “Good. Keep that shit up. You got a long row to hoe.”

  Thanks for the reminder.

  After I hung up, I gestured to the phone. “The neighborhood association in New York is being difficult about my plans to open a club there,” I said, telling her about the situation as I paid for lunch.

  “Why? What’s the issue?” Shannon asked as we walked out of the restaurant.

  “Hard as it may be to believe, I don’t think they like me.”

  She scoffed. “They clearly have no taste.”

  I smiled. “Obviously. But it sounds like I also need to do a dog and pony show so they see me as more than just some guy from Vegas bringing all the glitter and glitz of Sin City to New York.”

  She arched a brow. “Do you usually wear your Elvis sequined costume when you see them?”

  I smacked my forehead. “I knew that was it.”

  “See? Easy solution. Next time, tone down the bling and feathers, and you’ll be good to go.”

  I draped an arm around her, tugging her close. “You’re brilliant.”

  “Hmm.” She tapped her finger against her chin, like she was deep in thought.

  “Hmm, what? You coming up with a new Boy Scout outfit for me or something?”

  “Actually, I was thinking. Michael and Ryan do some business in New York with clubs and lounges there, handling security. I could ask them if they know anyone or have any suggestions on what might help? Maybe that’s a stretch though?”

  I raked my eyes up and down the woman at my side. This time, though, it was her heart I was admiring. Her willingness to go to bat for me. “That is sweet of you to offer, but wholly unnecessary. I need to sort this out on my own. And get to the bottom of what the real roadblock is.”

  “The offer stands if you need it.”

  I pressed a kiss to her cheek.

  As we left, I vowed once more to do whatever I had to in order to keep her in my life. Work had won my heart ten years ago. She was more important now.

  24

  Shannon

  A pink-and-purple illustration of an animal stared back at me.

  “I don’t even want to ask why you’re buying that,” my grandmother said with a laugh, pointing to my selection as the cashier at the party store rang up our purchase.

  “It’s a surprise for someone,” I answered with a wink, and snatched the little gift, tucking it into my purse. Brent had been showering me with gifts. I planned to do the same for him.

  “That’ll be fifty-seven twenty-one,” the cashier said, bagging up the balloons, streamers, cups, and party favors that Grandma had picked up for a party she was throwing.

  Before my grandma could stop me, I slid my credit card through the machine to pay.

  “You didn’t have to do that,” she said.

  I shot her a smile as I tucked my card back into my purse. “I know I didn’t have to. I wanted to.” I scooped up the bag and headed to my car.

  “And who are you surprising?” she asked as she slid into the passenger seat. “Might that someone be your old beau?”

  “‘Beau.’ ‘Boy.’ You’re so old-fashioned, Nana,” I said as I backed out of the lot and turned onto the main drag.

  “Well?” she asked pointedly. “Is it?”

  I shrugged, but my lips curved into a grin. “Maybe.”

  She patted my knee as we slowed to a stop at a red light a few blocks from her home. “Excellent. So what are we going to do about your brothers, then?”

  “What about them? The fact that all three are total pains in the ass?” I teased.

  “Not that. The fact that they’re all single. Maybe we need to set up a matchmaking service for those boys.”

  “Good luck getting those three cavemen married off,” I joked as the light changed and I turned left onto her street.

  My grandmother gestured grandly, as if she were putting their names in lights. “Matchmakers for the Paige Men.”

  I startled for a moment at hearing that name.

  “I meant the Sloan men,” my grandmother quickly corrected.

  Just like that, my mind latched onto another Paige man. The one who was long gone. Little things slammed me back in time. Like my old name. Like driving, of all things.

  My father’s final moments had been in a car, at his home. The one place where he should always have been safe from harm.

  I pressed my teeth into my bottom lip, holding my emotions in as I turned into my grandmother’s driveway.

  It was a mundane, ordinary patch of concrete. My grandmother didn’t even live anywhere near the home where my dad had been shot. But as I cut the engine and looked at my father’s mother, I knew without a shadow of a doubt she was thinking about the same thing. She, too, had been jolted out of a festive moment of party planning and pretend matchmaking and hurtled back in time to eighteen years ago. I saw it in her eyes—the same sadness I felt was reflected back at me.

  “Sometimes it’s hard just turning in the driveway,” I said softly. “Makes me think of Daddy.”

  She clasped my hand. “I know. Every day I think about him.”

  I looked down at our hands, a swell of sadness in my chest. “I miss him.”

  “I do too, sweetie.”

  I probably always would.

  After I walked her inside and said goodbye, I shut the door behind me, waiting till I heard her lock it. Then I scanned the surrounding area as I returned to my car. It was my habit. Something I always did. Looking for eyes on me. For anyone watching, scoping out the hood, as the shooter had done before he’d killed my father.

  But Jerry Stefano was behind bars, I reminded myself.

  He was locked up where he belonged.

  Surely the DA hadn’t been visiting him to talk about freeing him of the murder. The evidence against him was cold and hard.

  Whatever the DA had discussed with the gunman had to be about other crimes. He was a gang member. He was a career criminal.

  But still, I had to be smart. Had to be alert for anything amiss, listening for those footsteps crunching on the grass, seeking the shadow of someone who wasn’t supposed to be there.

  Stefano was in orange, but that didn’t make me feel entirely safe.

  Those bars that held in the shooter didn’t hold back his friends, his associates.

  Those bars didn’t mean he wouldn’t have people on the outside looking for vengeance.

  Wanting to settle the score for their friend who was locked up.

  My eyes roamed the sidewalk, the house, and the garage before I unlocked my car door, breathing again.

  No one was here. It was morning. I was safe, and my grandmother was fine, and I refused to live in fear. I had to kick the damn specter of hidden guns and gangs and shooters and plots for murder far out of my daily agenda.

  I took a deep breath, letting it spread through my body, coaxing it to ease away the stranglehold of the past. Good thing I was seeing Brent that afternoon. He was my antidote. He’d wash away the cruel memories.

  I could lean on him for that, as I always had. My sweet, sinful escape.

  Even so, as I drove, I called Ryan, asking if he’d heard anything more from his DA friend.

  “I’m working on it,” he said.

  But leaning on Brent to take away the sadness would be taking two steps back. And I was trying to develop new habits, not rely on my old ones. Brent had always been my magic bullet to extradite the pain. But to truly change, I needed to give instead of take.

  Over salad and pasta at an Italian restaurant inside Caesars, I zoomed in on him.

  Using that as a chance to learn more about the man he was now.

  I asked him more about work, peppering him with questions about his clubs, the expansion, and his vision for Edge, reminding myself the whole time not to be needy. I listened intently, because I wanted this lunch to be about him.

  Not about me.

  Not about me needing him to lean on.

  I knew he was all too happy to be my support. But I wanted to be that for him, even if he didn’t need it, even if he didn’t ask for it. Just listening, just talking—that was what I could do, what I wanted to do.

  “And Edge will keep on growing,” I said.

  “That’s the goal,” he said with a wide smile. He truly seemed happy with his new path. That was his special talent—he knew how to find the happiness in everything. Someone like him never seemed to need much, while I often felt I required far too much. That was exactly why I’d picked up the gift at the party store. He loved the little things in life.

  “Close your eyes,” I said, after the waiter cleared our plates and I joined him on his side of the table.

  “You gonna blindfold me? I’m game,” he joked as he followed my order.

  I reached into my purse, rolled up his shirtsleeve to his biceps, and dipped a cloth napkin in a water glass.

  “Go ahead. Undress me here. I don’t mind,” he continued.

  “I know you don’t, you dirty man.”

  “You wouldn’t have me any other way,” he growled.

  “You’re right,” I whispered as I positioned the square of paper on his arm. Then I pressed the wet napkin on top of it and counted to thirty. When I peeled the backing paper off, I told him to open his eyes.

  “Ta-da!” I showed him the mark I’d left on his arm, and his big, deep laugh rumbled across the restaurant.

  He nodded approvingly at the pink-and-purple temporary tattoo of a little horse I’d fixed to his biceps. “A pony. You got me a pony. It’s everything I’ve ever wanted.”

  I shimmied my shoulders, pleased that I’d made him so damn happy. “It’s not quite a badass flying Pegasus, but if you’re a good boy, I’ll get you a winged one next.”

  “Or a unicorn maybe?”

  “That could be arranged.”

  After we left the restaurant, we wandered past the shops of Caesars, when a flash of color caught my eye. In the midst of all the black and silver high-end items, I spotted an old-fashioned photo booth down a quiet hallway that led to the restrooms. Painted bright red and white, the booth boasted a sign advertising Four photos for $1.

  “That’s a bargain,” I said, then grabbed his hand and tugged him toward it. “Let’s get a picture to go with your cool new ink.”

  “We can even put on disguises,” he said, rubbing his hands together. “Please let there be a fake mustache. Please, pretty please.” He held up his hand and crossed his fingers.

  I swatted him and grinned. Today, I didn’t need him to blur the memories. This moment was about laughter, and talking, and me giving something to him. Something silly, but then again, I knew he liked those gifts best of all.

  I pulled him inside and yanked the curtain closed. “Damn,” I said, snapping my fingers when I saw the broken sign slung across the viewfinder. “No wonder no one was down this hallway.”

  “We can shoot selfies and make our own photo booth picture. You must have some props in your purse.”

  “Right. Of course. Let me just get out my purple wig. And the fake nose I keep in there,” I said, deadpan.

  “Now you’re talking.”

  Instead, I grabbed my sunglasses and slid them to the bridge of my nose, puckering my lips. He bared his teeth in an exaggerated grin and flexed his biceps, showing off his new pink-and-purple pony ink. I snapped a picture on my phone and showed it to him.

  “We are so sexy together,” he said, with over-the-top admiration. He patted his thighs. “Climb up. Take another picture.”

  “You’re just trying to get me to sit on your lap.”

  “Yes. I am.”

  I straddled him, the soft cotton of my black dress flaring across his jeans, then held out the phone. “Smile,” I instructed.

  But instead of smiling, he wrapped his arms around me, planting a soft wisp of a kiss on my neck.

  My eyes floated closed as my thumb slid aimlessly across the screen, capturing it. I didn’t stop to look this time, because he was brushing his lips along my neck, buzzing a path to my ear. I let the phone fall to the bench, along with my sunglasses, and turned to meet his lips. The goofiness vanished. The silliness evaporated as the moment folded and unfolded into something else, shifting from temporary tattoos and selfies to a hot, wet, deep kiss that swamped my body with desire.

  I moaned his name as if he was all I wanted—and he was. “Brent.”

  “It’s hard to take it slow,” he said, breaking the kiss for a moment. He ran his hand up my back over the fabric of my dress, and I arched into him, moving in time with his touch. I wanted him too. We’d discussed safe sex the other day, and since I was on the pill and we were both clean, we were physically ready. But I needed to be emotionally ready too.

  “It’s too damn hard,” he added, as he gently tugged my bottom lip through his teeth, making me moan. He flicked his tongue across my top lip in such a slow, sexy, seductive move that I thought I might reach the peak of climax if he kept it up.

  “Especially when you kiss me like that.”

  “I better do it again, then,” he said as he worked his way up my neck, kissing my throat, my jaw, my cheek, then my earlobe. My body practically vibrated from the tender and delicious way his mouth traveled across my skin. The kiss was driving him wild too, judging by the bulge in his jeans and the pressure from his fingers as he dug them into my hips with each lick, each sweep of his tongue.

  I could subsist on this moment. I could use it as the balm to my overactive brain, to all the harsh circumstances that rattled into my life from out of nowhere. Out of everywhere. I could keep taking more from him—more kisses, more touching, more contact.

  But I wanted to give too. To give to him as he’d done for me.

  “My turn,” I said, and I returned the favor. I worked my way up his neck, kissing his jaw, then his earlobe. He grasped me harder as I mapped his skin, loving his clean scent, his rough stubble, and his hard body.

  “You’re quite good at taking your turn,” he murmured.

  I nibbled on his earlobe, and he pumped his pelvis up into me with a muffled groan. A blast of heat tore through me, as taking and giving smashed together.

  “Ride me,” he said in a rough, husky voice. We were wanting all the same things. Wanting the give and the take as well. “Ride me hard. Like I know you want to.”

  His words ignited me. We’d been taking it slow, but I didn’t want to. I wanted him. I wanted my man.

  I followed his words to the letter, as we collided in a mad frenzy in the photo booth. Through our clothes, I was grinding against him in seconds, my white panties and his jeans the only barriers. We became a tangle of teeth and heat and madness, as I kissed him ruthlessly and slammed against him. He kissed back the same way, wild and untamed, his hands knotting through my hair, pulling hard. Grabbing. Biting. Tugging. Hands and fingers clawing everywhere. Our breaths turned loud. If anyone walked by on the way to the restroom, surely they’d hear my moans of desire.

  I didn’t care.

  Not with the way his lips consumed me, taking over these bruising, needy, dangerous kisses that felt like tipping over. Like I was losing what little control I had of my feelings for him. I was poised, teetering on the edge of something. This week had been so sweet, so delicious, so like a perfect courtship that it made me remember how deeply I’d been in love with him before. The way he’d treated me stirred up all those feelings I’d forced out of my mind and shoved into a box for the last ten years. They were resurfacing, breaking free of the past, and fighting their way up my body. Terrible, dangerous feelings that threatened to take over my mind.

  I moved faster, harder, kissed more deeply, my desire climbing higher.

  But then he placed his hands on my shoulders and gently but firmly pushed me away. Forcing me to look at him.