Chapter Nine

With a hand on her lower back, he guided her past the lines at the High Roller Ferris Wheel and straight to the head of the VIP queue. One of the highest Ferris wheels in the world, the ride circled to more than five hundred feet in the air and offered a majestic view of the skyline and bright neon lights of the city.

The attendant opened the door to one of the space agey, glass-encased pods. Ryan and Sophie weren’t alone in the spacious capsule with the panoramic view, but it wasn’t crowded either. They staked a claim at one end of the oval, and Ryan leaned his hip against the railing, facing his date.

His stunning, gorgeous, sexy, naughty, and sweet date.

Soon, the observation wheel began to move, slowly rising higher as each capsule filled with passengers on the first revolution. “Hope you didn’t mind too much that I sent you my bio. That, coupled with my dog’s name, means you know everything there is to know about me,” he joked.

“Absolutely. I can’t think of a single other thing that I’d be curious about.”

He wiped a hand across his brow as if to say whew. “Okay, so we’re done then with the résumé basics and we can move on to favorite TV shows and movies, then?”

She laughed, a bright and pretty sound that seemed to match her personality and her bold sense of style. Not that he was well versed in women’s fashion, but the way this woman dressed caught his eye and sparked his imagination. She had a va-va-voom look to her that was his kryptonite. She was all gorgeous, sexy, voluptuous woman, and knew how to show off her assets.

He couldn’t look away from her if he tried.

“Actually, I think someone’s favorite show can be quite telling. I wouldn’t mind knowing yours,” she said, then did that utterly sexy thing she’d done at the slot machine, where she ran her hand along his arm. Okay, it wasn’t like some signature move or anything. But the combination of her long nails, the glint in her blue eyes, along with the wild flirtatiousness in her tone, turned him on something fierce.

As she’d done from the second he met her.

“Top Gear,” he answered easily.

“You like fast cars.”

He nodded. “I do. And it’s just a kick-ass show.”

“I bet you’d like to drive my Aston Martin someday,” she said, brushing her fingertips over his bicep now.

He nodded eagerly. “I’d love to get behind the wheel of that baby. What about you?”

“My favorite show?”

He shrugged happily. This was a simple enough topic. “Sure. Tell me.”

“Mad Men for the fashion,” she said, counting off one finger. “Dancing competition shows because they’re gorgeous to watch. And Orange is the New Black because it reminds me to always be a good girl.”

He forced a laugh at the last one and decided not to touch it, even though he was tempted to make a dirty comment about being a good girl. But he couldn’t chance any conversation drifting into this territory—the behind bars territory. He returned to the middle choice. “My sister is a choreographer. She’s done some work on a reality dance show.”

Sophie arched an eyebrow. “Ooh! Which one?”

“Dance All Night,” he said, naming the show that Shannon had worked on.

Her eyes lit up. “Get out of here!” She slugged his arm.

He ran his hand over the spot where she’d hit him, pretending it hurt. “Ouch.”

“I’ll kiss it and make it better,” she said, planting a quick kiss on his arm. Damn, that felt good, even through the fabric of his shirt. She raised her face. “I absolutely adore Dance All Night. Tell her that her work is amazing. Please, please, please tell her that. There’s a one-night reunion show coming up, and I already have it marked on my calendar to make sure I don’t schedule anything else that night.”

Ryan’s grin spread, anticipating Sophie’s next reaction. “I know about the reunion. She’s choreographing that, too. My sister is Shay Sloan. She runs Shay Productions,” he said, using Shannon’s business name. Their capsule reached the midway point in its rise. More hotels and landmarks came into view, dotting the darkening sky with their blazing lights—the top of the Stratosphere, the Eiffel Tower on The Paris, and the pink neon edging The Flamingo.

Sophie grabbed his arm, wrapping her fingers around it and squeezing hard. “Are you kidding me? I love her shows. I’ve seen the live ones, too. I saw her show at the Wynn. Please tell her I’m a huge fangirl.”

“I will,” he said, and the words surprised him. He didn’t usually discuss his romantic life with his sister, or his two brothers, either. He didn’t usually date anyone long enough to mention her to the most important people in his life—his siblings. So it was odd that he’d easily entertained the thought of telling Shannon about Sophie’s adoration of her work. Odder still—talking about his family with Sophie didn’t make him want to run for the hills. Even when they’d landed on the topic of his father earlier, he hadn’t shut down as he normally would. Because Ryan didn’t share pieces of himself with women. He didn’t like to get close. He didn’t do relationships.

It was weird not to be breaking out in hives right now.

“I wish I knew how to dance,” Sophie said wistfully. “I have absolutely no skills in that arena whatsoever. I’m pretty sure I can’t even manage a basic foxtrot.”

He leaned in and whispered, “Confession: I don’t even know what a foxtrot is. Besides, I think you danced pretty damn fine with me the other night.”

“Dancing with you was easy. I just aimed to press my body as close as I could.”

“Good rule of thumb. Keep it up, because you feel spectacular pressed up against me,” he said.

“Imagine how spectacular I’d feel…” she began, then let her voice trail off as she danced her fingers down the front of his shirt and whispered, “…naked.”

He drew in a hiss and narrowed his eyes. “You are too tempting.” It was a warning, even though it was an invitation, too.

“I think you like being tempted by me,” she answered, licking her lips.

The pressure in his pants said he liked it far too much. He was so damn hard there was no breathing room for his dick. Especially when his eyes landed on her pouty red lips, which would look so good wrapped around him. Her red lips meeting his dick… He nearly groaned out loud. He wanted that so badly. Wanted it from her. He couldn’t imagine anything hotter than her gorgeous head bobbing up and down between his legs.

He shoved a hand through his hair, as if that would reroute his brain and discourage this inconvenient erection. “Talk about something else,” he instructed with a huff.

She nodded. “So you’ve got one sister, and you have a brother, too, your bio said. Three of you?”

Ah, nothing like family to make an erection vanish. He held up four fingers as the pod rose higher into the night, creating the illusion of floating above the brightly lit city and its landmark skyline. “Shay”—he used his sister’s public name—“and Colin are twins. There are four of us. Michael and I run the security firm. Shay is the choreographer, and Colin is a venture capitalist. He lives here, too.”

“You all have fascinating jobs. That’s so cool. And sounds like you’re close.”

He nodded. That was the understatement of a lifetime. In spite of his secrets, the four of them were as tight as any set of siblings could ever be. Their history, and their tragedy, had cemented their bond. The four of them had come to rely on each other, as well as the grandparents who had raised them after their mother was sent to prison.

“We’re very close,” he echoed, twisting his index finger around the middle one as if to show the connection between the Sloans.

“I’m close to my brother, too. Especially since it’s the two of us now. He’s here in Vegas as well.”

“Oh, is he?” Ryan asked, keeping his voice even and normal, as if he’d just learned this fact for the very first time.

“I basically adore him, even though I love to give him a hard time about his job and his co-workers.”

“Bet he enjoys that,” he said with a wink, feeling only the slightest bit weasely. But she’d offered up the brother details; he was merely making a safe remark that didn’t give himself away.

Sophie laughed. “Drives him crazy. He’s a detective with Metro so it’s all very macho and guy-centric at his office.”

Ryan drew on his best isn’t that interesting face. “That must be an intense job.”

“Intense definitely describes John. He’s a total workaholic. Honestly, he doesn’t even have to work as much as he does. He chooses to.”

“What do you mean? Doesn’t have to?”

“He was my primary investor. He funded my company with his savings account. Basically everything he’d ever had as a kid—from the jobs he worked, from his neighborhood lemonade stand, from money gifts from relatives on birthdays—everything. He put it into my company when I started it—he was the seed investor. So when I sold it, he profited, too. I joked that he could retire like me, but he said never. He has too much work to do putting criminals behind bars.”

A tight line of tension coiled through him. Ryan wasn’t a criminal, but he’d been born to a woman branded as one. “He sounds pretty driven,” he said, doing his best to refrain from prying. The less he said the better off he’d be if Sophie ever found out he’d had business with her brother. Not that she would. He didn’t date anyone long enough to meet her family.

She lowered her voice to the barest thread as they reached the top of the observation wheel. “John had a good friend who was an innocent bystander, shot in a drive-by gang shooting when we were younger.”

“That’s terrible,” Ryan said, a dose of rage coursing through him. He knew far too well what it felt like to lose someone to a bullet. “How old?”

“David was fourteen when it happened. Same as John,” she said, her voice breaking a bit. “He was a good friend of all of ours.”

Ryan gripped her hand tighter, and then instinct told him to drop a quick, comforting kiss on her forehead. Her skin was so soft. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “I was fourteen when—”

He cut himself off. Damn near kicked himself, too. What the hell? Ryan didn’t go around offering up bits and pieces of his family story. He didn’t run the motor mouth and say I was fourteen when my dad was killed by a gang gunman, too. He’d already shared more about his father than he ever did at this point. He couldn’t believe he’d been about to say more.

Something about this woman, maybe her willingness to share little details of her life, was working its way under his skin and tricking him into offering up more than he liked to.

Good thing Ryan had no intention of getting any closer to her, or to any woman. Closeness led to commitment, and commitment led to resentment, and resentment led to losing your parents when you were fourteen. And that led to your head and your heart being fucked forever by not knowing who to trust, or who to believe. To your mother telling you over and over that she didn’t do it even as the cops arrested her, and the jury sentenced her for murder for hire.

And worst of all, it meant your father became just faded photographs and memories that blurred around the edges. Ryan was left with only faint reminders of camping trips with his dad, and days spent traipsing around Vegas with him, checking out the new additions to the Strip.

“Fourteen when…?” she asked leadingly. “Oh, when your dad passed away?”

Sophie was giving him a way out, unknowingly providing a safe landing. Hell, he needed one, given the way his mind had been spiraling, turning his insides into a treacherous knot. He nodded. “And your brother lost his friend around that age?”

She clasped her hand over her mouth and squeezed her eyes shut. Uh-oh. He must have said something wrong. “Oh God. I’m so sorry,” she said when she opened her eyes. “I didn’t mean to imply David was killed. I should have been more clear. David’s paralyzed, though, which is still pretty sad.”

“Yeah. Definitely. And all because of a drive-by shooting,” he said, shaking his head in disgust. No faking emotion there.

“It was some kind of retaliation shooting over territory. That’s what really drove John to become a detective. Our dad was a fruit salesman, of all things,” she said with a laugh. “Fruit salesmen don’t usually have cops for sons. But then this happened to John’s best friend, and it led him to want to clean up the streets.”

Ryan couldn’t help but wonder if John had a personal stake in the investigation of his father’s murder, if the gang connection had caught his eye because of his own goal to rid the town of street gangs. If that was the case, John must be betting on his dad’s murder having deeper threads to the Royal Sinners.

Shit.

His gut churned, his emotions yanked in too many directions. Desire to know more warred with the need to backpedal from this discussion.

“That is some heavy stuff,” he said, staying vague. Even if he wasn’t poking and prodding, he should know better than to try to pry. Than to try to glean a little bit of intel about the detective.

But when your mom’s in prison, and your dad’s in the ground, and the men in charge think someone else might be involved, you don’t always do the right thing. Sometimes you poke. “I bet he has some stories about what he’s seen,” he said then wanted to zip his mouth closed for having led the witness.

“He hardly tells me anything. But when he does it’s usually laced with skepticism,” Sophie said, tucking a strand of hair that had fallen loose behind her ear. So strange to have this conversation there in the tourist attraction wheel circling the city, surrounded by people chattering and watching the night fly past the glass windows.

“Why’s that?”

“Detectives are naturally skeptical. It’s their job.”

“Ah. Of course,” he said, and a bead of guilt gathered in his veins as he let Sophie continue to talk freely.

“Think about it. They spend their days getting lied to. Lied to by suspects. By criminals. Even by family members. Almost all of the people they interact with hold back. No one ever offers a full truth to a detective. If someone rolls over, for instance, he’s only ever doing it to protect himself, because he has information that might lessen his own crime. Not for altruism.” She pinned him with a sharp gaze as she made her point, and the guilt inside him stirred. “Or take the case of the drive-by shooting. When detectives questioned the people who lived in the house that was the target, they said they knew nothing and heard nothing, even though there were bullet holes in their window. But the gang guys, they protect each other, and they fight their battles with each other, not with the cops. Even witnesses who have some key piece of information will usually only offer it up if it helps them. It happens all the time. Just the other night John mentioned he’d talked to someone who he was sure knew some key details, but the guy wouldn’t tell him.”

Was John talking about him? Giving Sophie details of the case? The possibility was so damn enticing. He was dying to know. But guilt knocked louder inside him, telling him to stop hurtling down this path of deception with Sophie. She hadn’t a clue that he was likely one of those witnesses her brother didn’t trust.

He needed to focus just on the woman, and forget this tenuous link between brother and sister, woman and cop. Besides, he had friends in the District Attorney’s office. His hockey buddy Marshall from high school was now an assistant D.A., and now that Marshall was back in town from his vacation, Ryan didn’t need to sniff around this gorgeous woman and take advantage of her open heart.

He stared off in the distance, the city turning blurry as his eyes went out of focus, and he shoved off the questions about Stefano, and people his mother associated with, and anyone else who might have been involved in the murder. He blinked, refocusing to the here and now. To the best second date he’d had in ages. To the only one in a long time that made him want to have a third date.

“Do you like it up here?” he asked.

“The view is amazing,” she said, as she gazed at the endless sea of neon and night.

“I fucking love Vegas,” he said as he wrapped his arms around her waist, and rested his chin on her shoulder, drinking in the aerial show.

“You do?”

He nodded. “Yeah. This city will chew you up and spit you out or it will embrace you and lift you up. Vegas always gives you the choice—to crawl in the gutter or soar in the sky.”

“I choose soaring in the sky,” she said softly.

“Me, too.”

They soared, high above the city they both called home, hovering in the summer night sky as stars winked on and skyscrapers raced to the heavens. He loved this city. He loved his home, with all its troubles, and problems, and crimes. Maybe he wasn’t that different from Sophie’s brother. He wanted Vegas to be all that it could be.

He did his best to make that happen, too.

She craned her neck to look up at him. “Would it be too bold to say I wanted you to kiss me again right now?”

“Kissing you is becoming a favorite habit of mine.”

And so he kissed her. A lingering, luxurious kiss as the capsule swooped down toward the ground. But soon the kiss climbed the heat scale, and by the time the observation wheel had completed its rotation, lust had camped out in his body, and desire was ruling the rest of the night.

Good thing he’d booked a limo simply to drive around town. He needed to get her in it, stat, and get her naked. Then, he’d regain some of the control he’d felt slipping away during all that talking.