Chapter One
Mia blew out a frustrated sigh and stared at the mess around her feet. Flyers and promotional posters littered the carpet in a three hundred and sixty degree radius. Crouching down, she assessed the chaos with frustrated bemusement.
“Could you be a dear and take some of this with you, Mia?” she mimicked in the deep voice of Kendal Huxton, owner and slave driver for Baron Gaming, Inc. “Idiot.”
“Excuse me?”
Mia glanced up from the squatting position, blew the stray hair out of her eyes while being mesmerized by what had to be the sexiest blue eyes pair she had ever seen. This was the kind of man she programmed into the games she created. This was the hero, the one everyone played to get the gold, kill the dragon, and if they were lucky, win the loot.
“Sorry, not you—I meant me. I’m the idiot.”
His deep laugh reverberated through her all the way down to her flip-flopped, purple-painted toes. “Here, let me help you with these.”
She nodded, not able to say much past the lump in her throat anyway. She watched the dark wool fabric of his pants pull tight over his thighs, and try as she might not to, her gaze followed the inseam of his pants to rest on his crotch. Her overactive imagination went into overdrive wondering what this man would look like minus his clothes. With her cheeks burning, she turned away knowing her face had to be the same color as the rose carpet under her feet. Swiping her hands over the pamphlets, she pulled them into a bigger pile before her.
“Here.” He handed her the glossy 8 x 10 posters for Fantasy Realms: Age of the Dragons. “With so many copies of these, you’re either a huge stalker-like fan of this game, or you’re one of the girls hired to turn on young boys at the gamers’ convention.”
She didn’t know how to take the comment—nothing about her screamed sex kitten hired to turn on anyone, and it had been a long time since she’d been thought of as a girl. Before she could answer, a beautiful woman—weren’t they all here in Vegas?—grabbed the sex god by the arm and tugged.
“You’ll be late if we don’t leave soon.”
He glanced at his watch and shrugged “She’s right. She usually is. I am going to be late for my date.” He pointed at the papers on the floor. “You got this?”
Disappointment engulfed Mia. “Yes, thank you for helping.”
“And thank you for not calling me an idiot. Can I take one of these? My son is a huge fan of the game. He says their designer, Miriam Callrous, is his hero and he wants to design games just like she does when he grows up.”
Fumbling through the pile, she grabbed a few posters and reached out to give them to him. “Sure, take as many as you like.”
“One should do it. He probably got one signed today, anyway. He has been at the convention all afternoon with one of his buddies.”
“Oh no, the autograph signing is tomorrow, if you want….”
“G , we’ve got to go.” The woman grew more insistent and annoying by the minute. Good lord, didn’t she know Mia wanted him for just one second more? That’s it, one second—is that too much to ask?
“Take a Valium, Sylvia.” “G” threw a frustrated look at the beautiful woman before standing up, causing Mia to strain her neck to see his face. He tapped the poster in his hand once. “Thanks again.”
Yes, it was too much to ask. She sat on the floor of the very expensive hotel, watching the man of her fantasies walk away with a beautiful woman, on his way to give something to his son before going on a date. Wow, even for her that seemed fucked up. And exactly why she preferred her small house in the middle of nowhere with her two dogs, three cats, half dozen chickens and her state of the art, every-gadget-you-could-think-of computer system.
She gathered up the remaining papers in a disorganized heap, hit the elevator up button with her elbow, and smiled a smile she didn’t feel when the elevator attendant asked her what floor. And while she watched the numbers move toward the thirty-fifth floor, she exhaled a second sigh of frustration.
Mia understood ROM, RAM, hard drives, html codes and anything that had to do with computers. Hell she could create larger-than-life animated characters for her games that people loved and wanted to become, or as the army of gamers refer to them as simply “toons”, But with all her knowledge of what made real men and women want her toons, she didn’t relate those same real people well at all. And that was why she had, at the urging of her ever nosy, always loving, and very pregnant-for-the-seventh-time sister, agreed to sign up for the dating site, 1NightStand.
1NightStand, the exclusive, high-end dating service for people with money who couldn't find a date on their own. The reviews for Madame Eve's services were spectacular and guaranteed an experience both discreet and without embarrassment. So tonight, she had a date, and though that didn't mean sex was in the cards, her odds were stacked higher for it tonight than they had been in years. And she was in Vegas, so if she couldn't take a gamble there, where else could she?
Her happily married sister thought her single sister needed to get laid by something that didn’t require batteries. And to be honest, it had been a very long time since a real man had touched her, let alone brought her any kind of pleasure. Hell, it had been a long time since a man showed any interest in her at all. She might be a teenage gaming boy’s wet dream, but she seemed to leave most grown men limp.
She exited the elevator and headed down the long hall to her suite, a suite that with any luck she wouldn’t be sleeping in tonight.