two men had reached the second floor, Carter helped put on her shirt. He watched her, his deep blue gaze intent and focused on her face as he straightened out the hem of her camisole. They were both breathing hard.
“You okay?” he asked, tucking a strand of hair behind her ear.
She nodded and the moment of awkward silence seemed to stretch out for minutes instead of the actual seconds it was.
“Well, that’s a first for our friendship,” she tried, giving a forced laugh.
He shook his head at her lame attempt at humor. “My place or yours?”
The question jolted her back to reality. Sleeping with Carter would be the biggest mistake of her life if she lost him afterward. Her love life track record wasn’t exactly filled with functional long-term relationships. For Christ’s sake, her nickname in Vegas was literally the Disposal, because that’s where all her men ended up, thrown away and emotionally mangled beyond recognition.
She also had serious doubts about whether or not she could be in a real relationship. Her parents’ deaths had turned the entire trajectory of her life around. One minute she’d been a carefree sixteen-year-old, and the next she was the girl who everybody pitied because her parents died. It had taken her years to feel like Alexa again and not just a pity case. It made her extremely hesitant to enter into a relationship where not only would she have to deal with someone leaving her again, but that it would be Carter. He was her last link to what she would always think of as the happiest time of her life.
He took her hand in his, giving it a squeeze. “Don’t chicken out now.”
“Sleeping together would hurt our friendship,” she entreated, catching his gaze.
He drew her back into his arms and heat again, and it felt natural and right. “You don’t know that.”
“Yes, I do,” she insisted. “I don’t like the way you fold your clothes in rolls. It would drive me nuts to be in a relationship with you.”
He laughed and shook his head. “I didn’t know your excuses could get any lamer. We’ll figure it out.”
“Maybe I could wear a wig or something.”
She felt his chest rumble against her as he chuckled. “What?”
“You know, like I’ll wear a wig and sneak into your house and have my way with you and then we’ll pretend I was a girl named Marci and never speak of it again. Then we’ll return to our regularly scheduled friendship.”
He nudged her chin up so she could see him. “Is this something you do with guys?”
“Yeah, it’s called role-playing and it happens, Carter.”
“Jesus, Alexa, you’re fucking killing me.” He took her mouth again, quick and rough.
Taking a deep breath, the familiar scent of his clean cologne hit her like a brick wall of need.
Then her phone rang. Pulling it out of her bag, she saw that it was Carter’s mom. The woman who’d, for all intents and purposes, filled in for her own mother after she died. Carter’s mom had been the one to buy Alexa the dress she’d worn for the funeral, the one who, along with her uncle, had held her hand during the service as the priest droned on and on about people he only barely knew. For an instant, Alexa thought about not answering, but it was the second call she’d missed from her today and she felt ashamed.
Carter saw who was calling and blew out an annoyed breath.
By the time the conversation was over and Carter’s mom had reminded her to bring her famous brownies to Sunday dinner, Alexa realized what a mistake she’d been about to make. Carter and his family were her family. If she and Carter didn’t work out—and all signs pointed to her not making an actual adult relationship work—she wouldn’t just be losing him.
She stepped out of his arms and out from under the stairwell.
Meeting his eyes, reading the disappointment already there, she said it anyway. “I’m sorry, Carter, but we can’t do this.”
ALEXA WOKE UP with a pounding headache, knowing she’d totally fucked up. She grabbed at her phone on the pillow beside her, cringing at the eleven missed calls and ten urgent text messages from her uncle.
After her parents died, Uncle John had raised her with unconditional love and support and all she ever wanted was to make him proud. She’d been an okay student, but as soon as Uncle John told her she’d only have the casinos one day if she applied herself, she’d gotten her shit together and graduated at the top of her business class in college. He’d given her a purpose at a time in her life where she’d felt rudderless, and it was absolutely killing her that she was basically crapping all over the opportunities he’d given her.
His first text was a link to the local paper, so she tapped it with enough trepidation that a pit of dread opened up in her gut. Glaring at her in bright white light on the homepage of the Las Vegas Gazette was an enormous picture of her and Carter in Elysium’s stairwell. Her legs were wrapped around him and they were basically sucking each other’s faces off. In that light, the rest of her uncle’s text messages, which were some variation of FIX IT, made much more sense.
She groaned, a sound from deep in the bottom of her chest. And she’d thought yesterday had been a shitty day.
Calling her uncle, she prepared herself for his disappointment and the reiteration of his earlier directive to clean up her image. It was exactly what he delivered.
“I’m calling Carter, too,” her uncle expounded, fuming. “The Carter Hayes I know has more respect for women than to put them in compromising positions like that. He should be ashamed of himself.”
“I think—” she started, in an attempt to explain that neither of them had been thinking straight, but her uncle wasn’t interested in excuses or equivocations.
“You need to fix this, Alexa, or we’re both out of a lot of money,” he grumbled.
“Understood,” she told him, her heart clenching with the thought of hurting the investment her uncle had worked his whole life to build. “I will take care of it.”
“Please do,” he instructed, some of the steam going out of his bluster. It wasn’t like her uncle to be mad, but seeing his niece semi-nude in his daily newspaper would probably put anyone in a less-than-gracious mood. “And Alexa, if anything else like this happens, the deal we had about Halcyon is out the window.”
Her heart squeezed at the thought of losing Halcyon, too. “I promise I’ll make it right,” she reiterated. “Please just enjoy the rest of your vacation.”
She expected her uncle to hang up, but he stayed on the line.
Finally, he spoke again. “You and Carter, of all people, know that there are cameras everywhere in a casino. What the hell were you thinking, dear?”
Alexa so did not want to have this conversation. Especially since the moment she’d walked into that stairwell she’d known there would be a camera. She just hadn’t given a shit.
“We got into a fight. It didn’t, um, end like I expected it to,” she explained lamely.
Uncle John chuckled softly and some of the panic in her chest subsided. Business or not, he was still her uncle.
“Well, seems like this is a problem you two could work on together.”
Alexa blew out a breath. Unfortunately, he was right. After that photo in the news, Carter was her only solution.
Running a hot shower and scarfing down some pain relievers, she tried desperately not to think about just what had happened last night. Carter knew everything about her, stayed up late with her after her parents