so accepting of any situation, Aaron never quite knew if it was admirable or annoying.
Jeremiah continued, “We’ve been in Vegas for ten minutes and you already found a girl, and she definitely won’t be the only beautiful lady you see this weekend. We’ll find some chicks that make her look like Mrs. Jessup in comparison, no matter how pretty she was.”
Aaron seriously doubted that, but he didn’t attempt to explain it. He vividly remembered Mrs. Jessup, their seventh grade teacher, and the woman in the airport would never look anything like that, no matter what supermodel she was standing next to.
He couldn’t describe how he felt to his friend, but it wasn’t just that the woman from the airport was attractive. She was, but that wasn’t all there was to this—this whatever it was. He’d seen plenty of beautiful women in his life, but none of them had struck him the way she did. None of them made his blood light on fire just by looking at him. There was something about the way she carried herself, something about the discerning look in her eyes.
There was no way to say any of that to Jeremiah, and it didn’t matter, anyway. She was gone, and there was nothing he could do to make her call him. She had run away so quickly after he gave her his number, and now the moment and the woman had disappeared. Normally he would’ve been more eloquent, more convincing, but she had made it hard to think straight.
He tried to shift his thinking to focus on the rodeo and the other women he’d meet. He even tried to picture Olivia, who he’d met up with every year and was expecting to see at the big team roping event on Saturday. She was an amazing blonde, voluptuous in all the right places and always willing to spend an evening at his side. But his thoughts kept straying back to the woman from the airport.
The car slid through the airport traffic, passing by the rodeo venue on its way to the hotel. The entire thing was covered in banners with pictures of horses and National Finals Rodeo written everywhere in huge letters. Jeremiah bounced in his seat. “Man, I love rodeo weekend!”
Aaron chuckled. “I know. You’ve said that about thirty times since we left this morning.”
“But it’s true! The NFR is awesome. Great events, Vegas, beautiful women everywhere and this year, my team is going to kill it. But mostly the women.”
They arrived at the hotel before the two men had even sunk fully into the plush leather seats. They were staying at the Hard Rock Hotel, a mile or so from the airport and within walking distance of the rodeo venue, making it the perfect location.
As taxis full of cowboys headed toward Las Vegas Boulevard, Jeremiah rolled his eyes. “Why does anyone stay on the Strip?”
When Aaron and Jeremiah went to the NFR years ago for the first time as single adults without supervision, they’d stayed in the Bellagio, a grandiose affair, thinking it would put them in the middle of the party. They’d realized quickly that it just put them in the middle of Las Vegas Boulevard traffic. The surroundings didn’t make up for the inconvenient distance they had to travel each day, which had to be driven through at a crawl.
They grabbed their bags and walked into the darkened casino.
Hard Rock, though off-Strip, was still iconic and interesting enough for Aaron’s taste, and he’d found the suites to be perfectly satisfying, to put it mildly. Walking the short distance with his arm wrapped around a woman’s waist and leading her into his room never went wrong.
He couldn’t help wondering, though, if the woman he’d seen would be in one of the big hotels on the Strip, and that maybe he should’ve gotten a room there instead. If she didn’t call, at least there would still be a possibility he could spot her again walking through one of the casinos.
Practically rolling his eyes at his own thoughts, he gave himself a mental shake. It was time to stop focusing on this one woman. If she called, she called. He couldn’t let something as little as a chance meeting of eyes disrupt his entire weekend, even if picturing her sent a strange new thrill through his chest...and elsewhere.
Aaron promised himself he wouldn’t think of her again for the rest of the weekend.
They entered the casino and dodged through tourists and gamblers until they stood in front of the reception desk, where a pretty, young hotel clerk waved them over. Jeremiah leaned in, whispering frantically before they got within earshot of her, “You already got a girl. This one’s mine.”
Aaron had absolutely no problem with that. Jeremiah was usually the one going for strange women he had zero chance with, not Aaron. Once in a day was enough for him.
Jeremiah rested his arms on the counter, taking up all the space available, leaving Aaron standing behind him, glad to have a good view of what he was sure would be quite the interaction. Jeremiah leaned in slightly toward the clerk, and Aaron could tell he was trying to read her name tag. “Hi, Lucy. How are you on this beautiful evening?”
The woman gave him a polite smile. “Fine, sir. What name is the reservation under?”
“Aaron Weathers,” Aaron called over Jeremiah’s shoulder.
As usual, he’d reserved both his and Jeremiah’s rooms, since his friend hated the idea of paying for a luxury suite and had tried a few times to get them some basic rooms to cut down on costs. Aaron’s ranch was working smoothly, his inheritance was well invested and dropping a couple grand on some hotel rooms was worth it if it could give them an amazing weekend.
As the woman typed in the information, Jeremiah tilted his head toward Aaron. “That’s my friend. I’m Jeremiah. We’re here for the rodeo. Have you ever been to the rodeo?”
“No, sir, I haven’t. Mr. Weathers, we have you two down for a suite, is that correct?”
Jeremiah jumped in quickly. “Suites, with an S. Two separate suites. We won’t be staying together.”
Aaron stepped up and slapped his friend on the back. “I think she gets it, Jeremiah,” he said as he handed the woman his ID and credit card.
As they left the counter with the key cards, Aaron studied the indomitable Jeremiah. He seemed just as happy as ever, despite being completely dismissed by the pretty clerk. Aaron wondered for the first time if Jeremiah purposely flirted with women he couldn’t possibly get.
It was an interesting thought, but he dismissed it. Jeremiah was just so unstoppably optimistic that he had to assume every girl wanted him, despite whatever evidence he was faced with.
They maneuvered through the casino to the elevators and made their way to the top floor. The suite was as spectacular as Aaron remembered, with a private bar area and separate rooms. The Las Vegas Strip shimmered from the huge windows. Jeremiah turned to him. “Okay, so we have about two hours before we need to leave for dinner. The girls are going to meet us there. Quick nap, and then we meet up? If things go according to plan, it’s going to be a long night.” Jeremiah seemed giddy at the prospect.
Aaron nodded, but couldn’t summon his usual enthusiasm, even with Jeremiah practically dancing with excitement. By the time he was in his room, he was so frustrated at his inability to focus his mind away from his airport mystery woman that he simply gave up; he fell asleep imagining her walking up to him, sliding her arm around his neck and pulling him in for a long, deep kiss.
* * *
JESSICA LEANED BACK in the limo as it slowly wound through the city. She had assumed they would be heading to the hotel and crashing for the night—after all, it was nearly ten and they’d just gotten off a long flight—but apparently she’d been wrong. They were stopping at the Palazzo, one of the glitzy casinos on the Strip, just long enough to drop off their bags and change, which for the rest of the girls seemed to mean slipping into shorter skirts and higher heels and throwing on some more makeup.
Jessica opened her small bag and looked at her two dresses folded next to her jeans and T-shirts. The jeans looked so comfortable, but she could just imagine Cindy’s reaction if she even tried to put them on and grabbed a dress instead. It was a purple lacy thing that went to her knees—she had purchased