She snuggled close. She could be so soft when she wanted. He loved that, too.
A knock at the door pushed her to kiss him and then open it. ‘Hi.’
Kate stood on the other side, a hand over her eyes. ‘I’m just making sure nobody’s naked.’
Leah laughed. ‘No, it’s fine. Breakfast?’
Kate peeked through her fingers with a laugh, then took her hand away. ‘Do they call it breakfast if you eat it at lunch time?’
‘I don’t care what they call it,’ Leah said. ‘I’m starving.’
Brandon’s stomach rumbled again, even louder.
‘Uh oh,’ Kate said. ‘Better get some food in you, Band Boy, or else you might stop growing. C’mon, I’ve got some vouchers for the buffet downstairs and my contact hooked me up with tickets to the big party tonight, too. Not that we’d have any trouble finding something fun to do ourselves, but this thing looks schwanky. Black tie.’
She swept Brandon up and down with her look. ‘Did you bring your tux?’
Leah laughed as she followed Kate into the suite’s living room. ‘I didn’t exactly bring a gown, either. What are you going to wear?’
Brandon liked to look good but aside from that didn’t much care about clothes. He caught Dix’s eye, and the other man shrugged. It wasn’t likely he’d packed anything black tie, either.
‘We’ll go after breakfast,’ Leah was saying as she took his hand. Her fingers squeezed his. He hadn’t been paying attention, and she had to explain. ‘Shopping.’
He tried his best to shield the ‘I’d rather poke my eyes out with a burning stick’ expression, but Leah saw it anyway. She laughed and nudged against him.
‘It’ll be fun.’
He believed that like he believed in fairies.
Breakfast, on the other hand, he could get behind, especially from the hotel’s huge, extravagant buffet. The four of them shared a booth big enough for six. Within ten minutes, every inch of the table was covered by heaping plates of food, mugs of coffee and flatware.
‘Where do you put it?’ Dix asked him as Brandon came back with another plate of eggs, sausage and biscuits.
‘Inside my gigantic dick,’ Brandon said with a grin as he slathered butter on his biscuit.
Dix laughed and leant back with his arm across the back of the booth to toy with a strand of Kate’s hair. ‘Good one.’
Leah nudged Brandon in the side. ‘Gross.’
He raised a brow, mouth full of bread and butter. Her hand slid up his thigh to squeeze him gently while he couldn’t speak. She gave him an utterly wicked grin that had him stirring.
‘Hey, hey,’ Dix said. ‘Don’t get him started, he needs that thing to store dessert.’
Kate sat back, a hand on her stomach. ‘God, I’m stuffed.’
Dix leant to nuzzle at her neck. ‘Don’t worry, darling Kate, I’ll help you work it all off.’
Kate shooed him, laughing, but submitted to a kiss a second later. ‘Leah, get yours out of here and I’ll take mine. Boys, we need clothes for tonight. As much as I’m sure we’d both like to see you show up to the party naked, I think this place has rules against it.’
‘And no way am I missing the party.’ Leah tapped an advertising card set up on the table. ‘Champagne and caviar, a complimentary buffet … jeez, I hope there’s going to be dancing to counter all that.’
‘Three dance floors, baby.’ Kate pointed at the card. ‘Live big band music, a techno rave club, whatever the hell that means –’
‘Glow sticks,’ Brandon said.
Kate rolled her eyes, teasing. ‘Why am I not surprised you’d know that?’
‘And damn, I didn’t bring my whistle,’ Brandon said to poke her back.
‘And a classic rock cover band,’ Leah finished as she knuckled his side. ‘Behave, you.’
Dix waved at the server to bring their check. ‘Sounds like a helluva party.’
‘It’s New Year’s Eve in Las Vegas,’ Leah said. ‘How could it be anything less?’
‘I still can’t believe you stayed in that hotel.’ Leah curled her fingers through Brandon’s as they navigated a crowd of tourists ogling the hourly pirate-ship show in front of the Treasure Island Hotel. They’d stopped by the Penny Pincher to get Brandon’s luggage and she’d nearly thrown up at the smell in the elevator. Fortunately he’d only packed one small bag and it had been easy enough to transfer to the suite.
‘No reservations,’ Brandon said carelessly, also ogling the pirate wenches in their skimpy costumes until Leah tugged his hand. ‘I took what I could. Glad you let me stay with you, though.’
‘No doubt.’ It was his expression but felt right on her tongue. That happened a lot lately, this transference of pet phrases and habits. Hell, he even had her checking the NHL scores on her Google Reader, because hockey turned out to be the only sport she could stand to watch with him.
‘So. Where do you want to go?’
Leah considered. She and Kate had already plundered a lot of the shops and gone to the mall. She could find a dress and shoes in any of a couple dozen places, but she thought the easiest place to find a suit for him would probably be in the hotel where they were staying. She’d seen an ad for tux rentals there, and there was no sense in making him buy a tux to wear for only a few hours.
Not that she was going to let that stop her from getting a new dress, of course.
‘Let’s head back to the hotel. It’s that way.’ She pointed through the crowd that had started to disperse once the pirate show ended but now had swelled to enormous proportions in exactly the direction they wanted to go.
With Brandon leading, that wasn’t a problem. He held tight to her hand and wove them through the crowd, finding the gaps and leading her effortlessly into them so they were barely even jostled. It was because he was tall enough to see over everyone else’s heads, she thought fondly as he side-stepped a mother with a stroller, of all things – was the
