just jumped out of an airplane and realized she didn’t know how to pull the cord on her chute. A thousand questions were firing in her brain as she and her friends headed to her room. What had just happened? She had expected Wyatt to ask her to give him a play-by-play of her experience with Belinda. Instead he’d offered her a job and an obscene amount of money. She remembered that much. But mostly she remembered how every time Wyatt had looked at her, her entire body had reacted as if she’d just discovered, at age twenty-eight, the difference between men and women. And why some women got into hairpulling contests over a virile man or tattooed men’s names on their bodies.
Wyatt was going to be a problem. And not because of anything he would say or do. Oh, no.
It was all her. She was the problem. The man made her hands shake with awareness of her body. She’d practically had to sit on them to keep them still, and she couldn’t have that. Her relationships with men had always been awful, starting with her father’s and stepfather’s abandonment of her. She still remembered running after her stepfather’s car, begging him to stop. It had been the beginning of a life of over-achievement, of volunteering to help men with their problems, only to get her heart broken. But her last awful experience with Michael had been the worst. A child had been harmed by that relationship, so she was through. And since she loved being independent with no need of a man, her instant reaction to Wyatt should have been a blaring warning that she was in danger of making a major mistake. The only sensible thing to do in such a situation was—
“Run back to San Diego.” She muttered the words beneath her breath.
“What did you say?” Molly asked.
“I said that you don’t have to worry about me,” she told her friends as they entered the hotel room she was sharing with Jayne. The truth was that she could handle the worrying about herself part of things just fine.
“You can’t come to Las Vegas for a weekend and end up staying,” Jayne said. “Alex, that’s insane. You could get hurt.”
Alex shook her head. “No, I can’t. I have new rules for myself. Parameters. If I took this, it would be just a job.” One she’d have turned down instantly if Wyatt hadn’t made it difficult to say no. “I love your hair, by the way.”
Alex, Molly and Serena had pitched in to give Jayne a salon treatment, and she’d had her waist-length hair cut short. Alex knew it was because Jayne’s fickle fianc´e had loved her long hair.
“Thank you, but that won’t work,” Jayne said.
“What won’t?” As if Alex didn’t understand.
“She means that you can’t distract us,” Molly said, frowning. “Alex, we’re worried about you. We know running into Michael and his daughter hurt you last week. If you stay here alone…well, we don’t want you to stay here alone.”
Alex’s throat began to close up. Molly, Serena and Jayne had been there for her when Michael had broken her heart and her spirit. They’d had her back…always.
“Thank you, but don’t worry. I haven’t decided yet what I’m doing.”
“Decide no,” Serena said. “This is too big a change to make so quickly.”
“Yes, it is,” Alex agreed. “I totally agree.”
Jayne and Molly and Serena looked at each other.
“You’re going to do it, aren’t you?” Serena asked.
“I probably shouldn’t, but when he was whispering to me…”
Alex’s breath caught at the memory of Wyatt’s breath lifting her hair, tickling her ear.
Molly snapped her fingers in front of Alex’s face. “Come back, Alex.”
Alex blinked. “I wasn’t daydreaming. I was thinking.”
“About…?” Jayne prompted.
“She was thinking about Mr. McKendrick whispering in her ear. In that very sexy way,” Serena said.
Serena didn’t miss a trick. It was best not to let anyone focus too much on how irresistibly sexy Wyatt was.
“This has nothing to do with Mr. McKendrick’s hotness factor. The thing is…he offered me three times my current salary,” Alex said. “Then he upped it again.”
Jayne’s eyebrows rose. “I think we better sit down while you tell us what happened. You only stepped out to get a menu.”
“Talking about this is a great idea,” Molly agreed, sitting on the bed. “Talking you out of it would be even better.”
“Spill it, Lowell, and make it good,” Serena said.
Alex sighed. They had a point. Going through what had happened would clear her thoughts. As it was, the whole episode was a blur of excitement.
“Okay.” She sat down cross-legged on the bed. “It all began with the pregnant concierge going into labor…”
A smile lifted Serena’s lips. “You certainly know how to begin a story.”
But Jayne wasn’t smiling when the story ended. “Careful, sweetie. I smell heartbreak if you stay. Wyatt McKendrick looks like a man who’s run through a lot of women. Rich, sophisticated women.”
And Alex wasn’t either rich or sophisticated.
“But he’s offering you your dream, isn’t he?” Molly asked. “The chance to open your shop sooner. That’s the appeal, isn’t it?”
“Partly,” Alex said. “Without this chance I might never make enough money to open the shop. But it’s more than that. All my life I’ve ended up in situations where I had no power and no stable home. After my father and my stepfather left, my mother struggled to support us. Sometimes we got evicted. We never had a real home. Later, there were men. Always temporary. Robert, the athlete I tutored, who left me for the prom queen; Leo, the painfully shy guy I mentored and turned into a woman-magnet only to have him slip away with someone he’d known all his life. Then Michael…He was struggling to be a single father. I was helping him. I thought we were going to make a home together, but we’re not.”
“Alex,” Jayne said. “That’s what worries me. I read somewhere that McKendrick’s is competing for an award and…we know you so well. You’re too darn warm-hearted. You jump in to help and end up getting hurt by men who don’t appreciate what you’ve done for them.”
“Which is exactly why I’m safe this time,” Alex said. “Jayne, I’m aware of the mistakes I’ve made in the past. Those men I helped and fell in love with but who didn’t love me back—they were my training ground. The scars I picked up will protect me, because now I know that if I want a home—and I do, more than anything—I’ll have to make my own. From now on I’m declaring my independence from men who never offer forever or stability, anyway. I’m going after what I want, and when I get that shop I’m putting my whole heart in it. The money Wyatt is offering me could help speed up that process.”
“What about your Web site?” Molly asked.
“I can update that from anywhere.”
“You’ll probably be living at the hotel. That won’t be anything like a home. You know how you cling to that little apartment you’ve lived in for four years.”
“I know, but I won’t be here long.”
“So you’re staying?”
“I don’t know. It’s difficult. I’d miss all of you and…wow…this has happened so quickly that I’m not thinking straight. I do know that during those moments when I was manning the concierge desk it was exciting and…powerful. A little taste of what it’ll be like running my own place. It was totally crazy, but I liked it.”
“And then along came gorgeous Wyatt McKendrick, offering to let you have that power every single day,”