-padded place.” Or links that led to stuff like “Greatest Hockey Fights” or “Hockey Brawlers” or “Sam LeClaire vs. Domi or Brown or Parros or whoever.” It was ridiculous, and she tried her best to teach Conner that violence was never the answer. That it was much better to be nice to people.
She flipped open the event binder she’d put together for the Wil y Wonka party and reached for a pencil. She adjusted the catering cost and looked for some place to cut.
The last thing Autumn wanted was for Conner to grow up and be like his dad. It was up to her to make sure Conner treated people better than Sam did. Treated
Once she’d popped the top on her Coppertone sunscreen that day by the pool at Caesars, her life changed forever. Once she’d run her hands al over those washboard abs and hard chest muscles, she’d fal en head over heels in lust. He was a gorgeous man who’d thought she was an exotic destination. Looking back, she’d like to say she’d put up some resistance to the deep desire pul ing her under, but she hadn’t. Instead of grabbing her beach bag and backing away from that smorgasbord of sin laid out in front of her, she had knelt beside his chaise and squirted sunscreen into her palms. “Are you here alone?” she asked, and dropped the tube on the ground. Beneath the brim of her hat, she glanced at his ring finger. It was bare, but that didn’t mean he wasn’t married or had a girlfriend.
He shook his head and turned his face to the sun. “I’m here with a couple of buddies.”
That didn’t mean anything either, but this was the second time she’d seen him alone. She rubbed the lotion in her hands, then touched his abdomen. The heat from his skin warmed her palms and tingled the pulse at the base of her wrists.
“Are you here with friends?” he asked, his voice al calm and cool as if her hands on him had no effect. Like she was the only one getting al tingly.
“No. Just me. I asked a friend, but she didn’t want to come.”
He looked at her, the intense Nevada sun cut through the leafy palms overhead and bleached the corner of his mouth and a patch of his left cheek.
“Why?”
Autumn shrugged, and her thumbs brushed the trail of hair on his hard stomach as she slid her hands to his heavily defined chest. She wondered if he was in town for some muscleman competition. “She said she doesn’t like Vegas.” Which was the excuse that her friend had given, but Autumn suspected that the truth was she’d grown in a different direction than the friends she’d had before her mother’s il ness.
“But you came anyway,” he said matter-of-factly. Stil sounding unaffected, but the muscles beneath her fingers bunched and turned hard.
“Of course.” She’d had a rough few years. “I made a to-do list.”
“Real y?” One corner of his mouth lifted. “What’s on it?”
“Different things.” Good Lord was she real y rubbing lotion on a gorgeous stranger. “Some of them I’ve already done.” Apparently she was.
“Like?”
And having a good time doing it, too. “Like I watched the Bel agio fountains and bought a flamingo from the Flamingo.” She rubbed lotion onto his solid pecs. Beneath the brim of her hat, she stared at defined muscles and tan skin and swal owed the drool in the back of her throat. “And I went to Pure last night.”
“I remember.” Her thumbs brushed across his flat brown nipples, and he sucked in a breath. “What’s left?”
She smiled. “I real y want to see Cher’s Farewel Tour here at Caesars, but I can’t get tickets.”
“Cher? You have seriously got to be kidding me.”
She shook her head and slid her hands down to his bel y just above his board shorts. “Don’t you like Cher?”
“Hel no.” He let out his breath as her palms slid along the waistband. “Only gay guys like Cher.”
“That’s not true.” She tilted her head back and glanced up into his face. Her hat dipped over her left eye. His blue gaze stared back at her, kind of hot and smoldering. Heat shimmered across her skin. The kind of heat that had nothing to do with the Nevada sun.
“I can pretty much guaran-goddamn-tee it.”
She returned her attention to his corrugated bel y and fought a sudden urge to fal face-first onto his warm abdomen and kiss him there. To let her hands and mouth go on an exotic vacation and suck him up like an
“Maybe there are a few straight bastards that let themselves get dragged to a Cher concert.” He cleared his throat. “But I can also guaran-goddamntee that they’re only sitting there, listening to Half Breed and watching a shitty light show because they’re desperate to get laid.”
She sat back on her heels and laughed. “How do you feel about Celine Dion?”
“I’ve never been that desperate to get laid.” He sat up and grabbed her wrists. As he rose from the chaise, he pul ed her up with him. In the little shaded spot in a corner of Garden of the Gods, he ran his hands up her arms to her shoulders. “Am I on that list?”
Even if she’d thought to put: rub-lotion-on-random-hot-guy on her list, she could not have envisioned Sam. “No, but I could pencil you in.” She touched his sides and pecs, anywhere her hands could reach. “Right after: meet an Elvis impersonator.”
He touched her, too. Her arms and shoulders and the bare curves of her waist. His thumbs fanned her bare bel y, back and forth and pressed into her navel. She tore her gaze from the etched muscles of his chest and looked up into his eyes, the same hot, smoldering blue as the Nevada sky above his head. The fine hairs on her arms tingled and sent a shiver down her spine. Her nipples and bel y got al tight, and he slid his palms to the smal of her back. Slowly, he pul ed her against him until the tips of her breasts brushed his chest. He raised one hand and took her hat from her head. He tossed it on the chaise and stared into her eyes. “That hat has been driving me crazy. Teasing me with little glimpses of your pretty face.” His gaze slid down her cheeks and stopped at her mouth. “There’s something about you that makes me want to catch you in my hands and touch you al over.”
She knew the feeling and rose onto the bal s of her feet.
“It’s hot out here,” he whispered against her lips.
Yeah. Even in the shade, it was unbelievably hot and sweaty.
One of his palms slid down her arm to her hand. “Let’s go.”
“Where?” She liked Sam. She liked talking to him, and she real y liked touching him. She wanted to spend more time with him, she wasn’t so sure she wanted to spend that time in bed. Okay, she did want to, but she knew she shouldn’t.
“Someplace cooler.” He raised his face, and she dropped to her heels.
He turned and pul ed her across the hot concrete, past towering lions and columns, to the edge of the pool. He dropped her hand and eased himself into the waist-deep water. She sat on the side of the pool and dangled her legs over the side.
“Are you afraid to come in?” Sunlight turned strands of his hair gold while the water lapped his navel.
“No. I’m just not a very strong swimmer.” And she didn’t want to get her hair wet.
He slid his hands up the outsides of her thighs and stepped between her knees. “I won’t let you drown.” His fingers toyed with the gold-cord bows tying her bikini bottoms together at her hips. “I like you too much to let you drown.”
Which begged the question. “Why?” Why her out of al the women in Vegas?
“Why do I like you?” He raised his gaze from the ties at her waist, up her stomach and breasts to her face. “You’re pretty, and I like the way you dance. I like your hair.”
“It’s red.”
“Natural y?”
“Yes.”
“I’ve never been with a natural redhead.” He flashed her a smile and slid two fingers beneath the golden cord.
