What Happens In Vegas...: His Wedding-Night Wager

“I think that in some ways much of our lives is like opera, how operas show the intense emotions that sometimes influence our decisions. Why?”

This was the man who’d convinced her to take a chance and marry him. This soft poet’s soul that she’d scarcely glimpsed since her return to Vegas.

“I thought maybe we were caught at the end of the second act. You know, where all seems doomed.”

“And that maybe it was time to move on to the third act?”

She couldn’t answer. In one of her favorite operas, Tristan und Isolde, the third act had them both dying. But for a love that was so true and right that it captured both of their souls, uniting them even in death. Maybe that was the trailer-park girl deep inside her, but she wanted a man to love her that much.

“What do you want from me?” he asked.

That was the million-dollar question. Alan wanted his son happy and expected her to fix whatever she’d broken when she left. Hayden wanted closure and revenge. But what did she want? Shelby had never really figured that out and it was time to. “I guess a chance to make this real.”

Hayden could tempt her into believing that if she showed him her soul he’d reward her with his heart. But she suspected if she did that, he’d take the revenge he so richly deserved. She felt the Sword of Damocles hanging over her. Knew that at any minute the hair might snap.

“How could it not be?” he asked in that deep voice of his.

He was right. There was nothing subtle about the man holding her and nothing tentative in him. He was going to pursue her for his own reasons and she had to decide what she was going to do. She knew with bone-deep certainty that she wasn’t going to resist him. He was her secret longing and she’d never forgotten him. So now she had to decide. Was she really going to meekly let him take charge of this? Or was she going to meet him on a level playing field?

“I want you, too, Hayden. And I have an offer for you.”

“I’m listening.” He traced the line of her spine up her back. His finger circled her neck and toyed with the strap of her camisole.

“Let’s make this real. Let’s say what this really is. I want a chance to get to know each other the way we never did before.”

He pulled the strap of her camisole toward her shoulder and then lowered his head, blowing on the exposed skin. As shivers moved down her arm and back, she undulated in his arms, holding more tightly to his waist.

“Okay,” he said.

“Okay?”

She couldn’t think when he was this close to her. When he surrounded her with his heat, his touch and his scent. She just wanted to close her eyes and pretend that they didn’t have the past between them. Close her eyes and imagine that Hayden MacKenzie really could want Shelby Paxton just for who she was.

“I’ll let you try to make me fall in love with you. But honestly, Shelby, I don’t have a heart.”

“Yes, you do. And I’m just the woman to find it.” She promised herself she would. There was no problem she couldn’t solve once she put her mind to it. She’d figure Hayden out—find out what made him tick—and slowly work her way into his heart, because she knew from hearing him speak of her betrayed that he still had one.

“You might be right. After all, you were the last one to see it.”

She shivered and this time it wasn’t from his touch. It was from the coolness beneath his words. She realized this time she may have risked more than she’d anticipated.

“Double or nothing,” she murmured, realizing that was exactly the bet she’d made. Both of their hearts united and at peace or once again broken.

“That’s the kind of gamble I make every day in business, but this…”

“I’m in if you are, Hayden,” she said, unable to keep the challenge from her voice.

“Oh, I’m in.”

Three

“The only way to do this is to live together,” Hayden said while they were eating dessert.

Shelby choked on a bite of her tiramisu. “What?”

He patted her back and handed her a glass of water. He liked the thought of it now. Her living in his home. Shelby there when he woke up and there when he went to sleep. She said she wanted a chance to know him, to seduce him this time. Living together made the most sense.

“You okay?” he asked.

“Yeah. No. I can’t think this late at night. I’ve had too much rich food.”

He smiled at the way she said it, but he knew the truth. She wasn’t ready to make a decision. Once she saw his home, though, she’d capitulate.

“Come up to my place and just see it.”

She shook her head.

He frowned. In the past, Shelby had never denied him anything. But of course, this wasn’t the past. And she was a different woman.

“Why not?”

“Because unlike you I need more than four hours of sleep every night. I need a solid eight and I’m tired.”

She had a point. His cell had been vibrating with new messages and he saw Raul, his general manager, hanging around the hostess stand waiting for him. Hayden’s reality involved work for almost a solid eighteen hours a day. But that didn’t mean he was letting this go. “Are you free for breakfast?”

“Just coffee. It takes a lot of work to open a store in three weeks, plus I have a conference call with Paige and the developers for our D.C. project at 9:00 a.m.”

He pulled his BlackBerry phone/PDA from his pocket and checked his calendar for tomorrow. He had an 8:00 a.m. meeting with the gaming commission. Followed by a meeting with his roulette-table staff. And he needed to talk to his head of security about the man who’d been sitting in the front row at each of Roxy’s performances for the last three weeks.

“What time?” he asked. He’d move some stuff around if he had to. But his schedule was already tight. Why was he doing this? He didn’t question his motives, only knew that if Shelby was willing to work toward something solid, hell, he was, too. It felt right, having her here with him.

She shook her head, her thick hair slipping over her shoulder and down her chest to curl over her breast. “I don’t know…seven?”

He remembered how her neck tasted, how soft her skin had felt under his touch, and everything in him went on alert. He wanted this woman. Wanted her naked in his bed. He could see her against his gray sheets. A splash of color in his black-and-white bedroom.

She stared at him.

“What is it? Seven isn’t good for coffee?”

He shook himself, but he couldn’t push away the image of her lying on his bed with a couple of pillows shoved under her hips. Those lush long legs open, inviting.

“No, that’s perfect. I’ll have a key card sent to your room. Just come up when you’re ready.” He was ready now. He didn’t know if he could wait. If he could let her set the pace for this reunion of theirs. He wanted to take the lead. Get her into bed and push away the past in the most elemental way. To reassert his dominance over her by making her his.

“Hayden…”

“Yes?” he said. He signed the check and slid out of the booth.

“I’m supposed to be seducing you,” she said, joining him.

“Do you think Tristan really waited for Isolde?” he asked, reminding her of the opera she loved, the one that he’d let her talk endlessly about when they’d dated long ago.

She smiled. It was all that was sexy and sweet. Much like the woman herself. “I’m sure he didn’t, but he was a warrior.”

“Maybe I am, too,” he said, putting his arm around her and leading her out of the restaurant. He’d learned some hard lessons when she’d left him. He’d become a different man because of her. He had realized he was no longer the golden boy who had everything handed to him. Instead, he knew, in his heart, he was a man who’d fight for what he wanted.

“I thought you were a gambler,” she said.

“Can’t a man be both?” he asked, leading her to the bank of elevators. He didn’t really want to dwell on his own shortcomings.

“You tell me,” she said.

“I already did.”

“Where are we going?”

“I’m escorting you back to your room.”

“That’s so sweet,” she said.

He bit the inside of his mouth to keep from smiling. “I’m a sweet guy.”

“Ha. Don’t think you can put the moves on me and I’ll invite you in.”

“Put the moves on you? Give me a break. I’m a little more suave than that.”

They got in the elevator car. There was another couple already in there who got off on the thirtieth floor. Shelby’s suite was on the thirty-fifth. She pulled her key card from her purse when the elevator stopped on her floor.

“Good night,” she said, stepping out.

He followed her into the hall. “Yes, it has been.”

“Don’t, Hayden. This isn’t easy for me.”

“I’m not pushing, baby. I’m just seeing you home. Something we never did before.”

She flushed a little bit. He wondered at the secrets she hid. Her background wasn’t like his, and he hadn’t pushed her to talk about it. Maybe that had been part of the problem. He’d easily accepted the personal boundaries she’d set because they’d allowed him to make her into what he wanted her to be.

“About that…”

“Don’t say anything more. This is double or nothing. The stakes are high, and as you said, you need some sleep. We’ll start again in the morning.”

He took her key card from her hand and unlocked her door for her, pushing it open. She paused in the entryway, the glow from a lamp backlighting her.

She looked ethereal, with her thick wavy hair falling around her shoulders. Her skin was soft and pink, and that little white top skimmed her curves.

He bent down to brush his lips to hers. Just a sweet salute to the agreement they’d made. But once his lips touched hers, all that fled and he needed more.

She parted her lips and he tasted her sweet mouth. He touched his tongue to hers as he braced one hand on the doorjamb and buried the other in her hair, holding her head still.

He lifted his head slowly. Her eyes were heavy lidded and he saw the first flush of desire on her face. If he pushed now he could have what he wanted tonight, but he knew that he’d lose ground when tomorrow morning came.

He rubbed his thumb over her lower lip before dropping his hand to his side. He passed her key back to her. “Now it’s a good night.”

He waited for her to step inside her room and close the door and then he walked away. He wasn’t really sure what was going to happen with Shelby. He didn’t believe in love. Which might be why he’d overlooked the fact that Shelby had obviously kept a lot of her life from him. But for the first time since he’d opened his casino, he felt really alive.

Shelby had set her alarm for six o’clock but didn’t need the buzzing to wake her up. Her sleep had been plagued by fevered dreams of Hayden. He’d always been her guilty, erotic, secret dream man. The one she visited late at night when no one else could know.

His kisses had refueled a fire that had never been extinguished. She was restless and edgy when the alarm finally rang. She hurried through her shower and dressed in record time.

Everything with Hayden was exactly the way she’d always dreamed it could be. But in the back of her mind the thought that Alan had sent her here weighed heavily. She didn’t know how to bring up Alan without alienating Hayden once more.

Anxious to see him again, she deliberately hesitated in her suite. She didn’t want him to know how much she craved him. She wanted to have a little of the control she’d ceded so easily to him last time, some sort of equality. But she wasn’t sure how to find it.

The key card for his penthouse apartment had been delivered to her last night, just twenty minutes after he’d left. She held it in her hand. It was the key to something she’d always wanted. Something she hadn’t believed in enough to stick around for the last time. But now…

The phone rang before she could complete the thought. She picked it up reluctantly. Only two people would call her here. Paige, her business partner, or Alan.

“This is Shelby.”

“How’s our plan going?”

Alan’s voice was deeper, scratchier than his son’s, thanks no doubt to years of smoking. She hated that he never identified himself. She suspected he did it to prove that everyone remembered him.

“You still there?”

“Yes, I’m here. I…it doesn’t feel right. I’m here but that’s got to be the end of it, Alan. I don’t want to be talking with you behind his back.”

“Do you really think that my son is going to accept your past? Do you really think that you can make him overlook the fact that we MacKenzies can trace our ancestors back to the first westward migration and you don’t even know who your father is?”

His words hurt and made a wave of shame roll over her. Yes, she did think that. Hayden was no snob, and it was more Shelby’s business image and sense of personal privacy that would suffer from the exposure. But she knew she had her work cut out for her in changing Hayden’s opinion of her anyway. “I’ll do whatever I have to.” With those words she hung up on him.

Her phone started ringing again but she didn’t answer it. The last time she’d listened to Alan, she’d ended up hurting Hayden. Not this time.

It was exactly seven o’clock when she stepped off the elevator and arrived at Hayden’s door. She hesitated a minute and knocked. Despite the key, she didn’t feel that she should just let herself in.

He opened the door a few seconds later. He wore a pair of dress pants, a blue shirt that highlighted his eyes and a discreetly colored tie and had a phone cradled between his neck and shoulder. He gestured for her to come in.

“Sounds good,” Hayden said into the phone. “Call my assistant and set up a meeting for tomorrow.”

He disconnected the call. “Right on time. I was hoping you’d come early.”

She didn’t know how to respond to that. She’d been so needy before that she was afraid to let him see how much she still needed from him. Still wanted from him.

“I had them set up a light breakfast out on the terrace. I’ll give you a tour later, if we have time.”

She followed him across the hardwood floors through the living room. There was no video equipment or expensive television, which seemed odd to her for a bachelor. The leather sofa and love seat were situated to face a seascape scene on the wall.

Floor-to-ceiling windows lined one wall and there was a bar along another wall and a small poker table set in front of it. The room was definitely masculine in its decor but so comfortable that she immediately felt at home.

“I like this,” she said, stopping to take it all in.

“Good. You can change anything you want when you move in except for my poker area. I host a quarterly poker weekend for some of my friends.”

“Tell me about them,” she said. She wanted to know more about Hayden. She’d been afraid to meet his friends when they’d been together before. Afraid that they’d make Hayden realize how different she was from his set, how she didn’t really belong with the golden boy he’d been.

“Well, I’ve mentioned Deacon. He’s a trusted friend as well as a business partner. Then there’s Max Williams—we went to the same prep school. And Scott Rivers—I met him when I was bumming around Europe.”

She raised her eyebrows. Former child star Scott Rivers was still an A-list celebrity. She hadn’t known he and Hayden were friends.

“When’d you do that?”

“After you left.”

“Why?” she asked. She remembered what he’d said about having paid the million dollars she’d taken from Alan. She’d never thought about how he’d earned the money.

“I was trying to make the old man give in and release my trust fund.”

“Did it work?” But she knew it hadn’t. Alan was a stubborn man and he’d been intent on teaching Hayden a lesson. Unfortunately it had worked better than Alan had anticipated.

“No. It didn’t. Finally I ended up on the Côte d’Azur—with no money. I stayed with Scott for a while and then one morning I woke up hungover and out of cash and realized that I couldn’t keep living that way. The old man wasn’t going to give in. So I went to the first casino I came to and asked for a job.”

“Why a casino?”

“I had this idea of showing the old man up.”

“Did it work?”

“I don’t know if I showed him up, but it gave me an understanding of where he was coming from and eventually it enabled us to have something to talk about.”

He led her outside to a wrought-iron table that was set with a carafe of coffee and two plates. “I remembered you liked croissants but I couldn’t remember anything else.”

“A croissant is fine,” she said when they were both seated.

There were also eggs, bacon, sausage and home fries. But she wasn’t hungry. She couldn’t think about food when Hayden was nearby. She just…wanted him.

“What do you think of the view?”

She glanced out at Vegas. This was the vantage point she’d always wanted to see it from. And knowing that, understanding that she was still that trailer-park girl wanting desperately to escape, she hesitated to say anything else. Because she didn’t really know if she wanted to say yes to Hayden because of the view or because of the man.

Hayden’s PDA beeped, reminding him he had to be downstairs in five minutes for his eight o’clock meeting. But he wasn’t ready to leave yet.

“What was that?” Shelby asked.

“I’ve got to go to a meeting in a few minutes,” he said. For the first time in recent memory he wasn’t ready to go to work. Shelby was more exciting than business.

She pushed to her feet, dropping the napkin on the table. “I need to get to work, too. Thanks for inviting me up for breakfast.”

He captured her wrist in his hand, holding her by his side. Her bones felt delicate under his big hand, but he knew that she held all the power. He wanted her. And he’d do whatever he had to do to have her. “I invited you to move in with me.”

“I know, but if I do that we’ll be in bed together and…I’m not ready yet. I don’t want to make the same mistakes we did last time.”

“What mistakes are those?” he asked. He’d always figured last time his only mistake was not showering her with presents. But he knew now he’d done other things wrong, too. Frankly, he wasn’t sure he’d do them right this time. He wanted Shelby—she was the only woman he’d never forgotten—but he wasn’t sure he had forever left in him. His world changed with the roll of the dice or the flip of a card.

“The mistake,” Shelby said, “was and would be letting great sex cloud the fact that we don’t know each other.”

Back then, they’d spent most of their time together naked. He knew he’d been Shelby’s first lover and to be honest it had seemed as if they’d been made for each other. He still got hard thinking of the chemistry between them in those days.

“Great sex?” he asked. Maybe he wouldn’t have to work so hard to convince her to move in with him after all.

She pulled away from him and wrapped her arms around her waist. That was the second time he’d seen her do that. Why did she? “Trust you to fixate on that.”

“It was the only good thing you said.” And it was. The sex between them had been great. It had been easy to let sex and lust take the place of friendship and genuine affection. This time he knew she wanted more—but he wasn’t exactly sure he would allow it.

“Are you free later on?” he asked.

“For what?”

“A flight over the desert. I recall you liked flying at sunset.” She’d never been in a plane before he’d taken her up in his little Cessna. Hayden loved to fly. His plane collection was more extensive now.

She bit her lower lip. “You remember a lot about me.”

“Too much sometimes,” he said, more to himself.

“I’m embarrassed to say I don’t remember the details like you do.”

“Why embarrassed?” he asked.

“Because…I was so shallow back then. I was…”

“What?” he asked.

“Fixated on not becoming my mother.” She said it so quietly he knew that she didn’t want to admit it.

“Are you still?” he asked.

“I think the fear is so deeply embedded in me that I’ll never escape it.”

He’d never really asked about her family. He’d known that she hadn’t had a lot of money—that had been part of her initial attraction for his younger, rebellious self—and that her family wasn’t very close, but beyond that he knew nothing.

“What do you like?” she asked at last.

“Pleasing you,” he said smoothly. He hoped she didn’t realize he was using the same lines and practiced moves on her that he did with all the women he dated. But he knew no other way.

“I don’t think so. If we’re going to do this…if I’m ever going to move in here, Hayden, we have to have honesty between us.”

He rubbed the back of his neck. He was unable to believe she’d called him on his behavior, especially since she had at least as many secrets as he did. “That works both ways.”

She swallowed and her face lost color. “Okay, what do you want to know?”

“What did my dad say to make you leave?”

She shivered. He saw her and almost reached for her, but he knew that he used sex as a substitute for real emotions and forced himself to keep his hands by his sides.

“I…um…”

“Just say it. Nothing is that bad. Was it about your mom?”

“Yes. My mom is a stripper.”

“Okay. What else?”

“Nothing, just that I don’t know who my father is. Mom isn’t even sure.”

He reached for her then, pulled her into his arms and just held her. She felt small and fragile, and Hayden wanted to take this burden from her. But he knew his dad made a huge issue of ancestry. “I don’t care.”

She tipped her head back, glancing up at him with those wide eyes of hers. “I do.”

He rubbed his hands down her back, not sure what to say. After a few minutes she pulled back.

“Now, what do you really like to do? I want tonight to be to you what flying at sunset used to be to me.”

He let her change the subject, lighten the mood because he sensed she needed some distance. “Anything I can gamble on—poker, basketball, skydiving, a fast ride on a desert highway on the back of my Harley, hot sex.”

She tipped her head to the side, studying him again. “Wow, that’s some list. Let me see what I can come up with. I should be finished in my shop by eight.”

Hayden didn’t want to relinquish control of her. He knew it was because he’d been burned the one time he’d trusted her. He knew he should let the past go but he couldn’t.

She framed his face with her cold hands. Leaning up, she kissed him. There was a lot of emotion, past and present, in her kiss. Her mouth moved over his in a way that was more enthusiastic than practiced. He slipped his arms around her waist and tugged her closer to him.

She lifted her mouth from his and looked into his eyes for a long moment. What was she looking for in his eyes?

“Let me do this. I want to know the man you’ve become and show you the woman I am today.”

He dropped his arms and turned away, taking two deep breaths to try to get the scent of her out of his nose. But he couldn’t. He was inundated with Shelby. Her taste was on his tongue, the feel of her soft skin under his fingers….

His phone rang and he cursed, pulling it out. “I have to go.”

“I won’t keep you, but what about tonight?”

“I…”

“Hayden, I know that I lost your trust, but let me do this. It’s important to me.”

He stared at her. “Okay.”

She smiled up at him and he felt like a hero. Something he hadn’t felt in a long time. But he also felt a little bad that such a simple thing could make her so happy.

“What should I plan for?”

“I’m not sure yet. I’ll call your assistant during the day and leave the details.”

She turned to leave and then stopped. “You won’t interfere, will you?”

“How?”

“By watching me on the security camera or monitoring the calls I make?”

He shrugged. “I can’t really monitor your calls.”