CHAPTER FIVE

Brent couldn’t let her leave.

Now that she’d reappeared in his life and was within the same fifty-foot radius, he had to secure time alone with her. Without James. Without Colin.

A few moments outside the restroom weren’t enough.

On the return from the hallway encounter, he pressed his fingertips to his temple, weighing options.

Then he spotted a shimmer of silver on the floor under the table. A long shot, but it was his best opportunity so he grabbed the edge of the fabric as James and Colin were focused on business matters.

An hour later, the four of them held glasses and raised them high. The deal was done—all that was left was the signing of it.

“We’ll draw up the papers this week, and get this show on the road,” James said, then snapped his fingers. “Oh, and Shay, can I get your number, too?”

Brent reined in a grin. James didn’t even know he’d just become his wingman and secured the ten digits Brent had most wanted in the world. As Shannon rattled off her number, James tapped it into his phone, and Brent repeated it in his head. Then James looked at his watch. “And on that note, I have a wife and a two-year-old who likes for his daddy to say goodnight to him. And I believe our friend Colin has a date.”

Brent clapped his business partner on the back. “Get the hell out of here. I’ll see you tomorrow. I’m going to catch up with Miles over at the bar. And Colin, hope the rest of your night goes well, too.”

“Thank you,” Colin said, as he stood up. Shannon did the same.

“It was great chatting with you. I look forward to the partnership with Shay Productions,” Brent said, extending final handshakes to both.

“As do I,” she said, flashing that same, professional smile she’d given him earlier.

As she reached for her purse, his shoulders tensed. He hoped that she wouldn’t realize what she was missing. But she hadn’t noticed all through the meeting, so perhaps she wouldn’t notice now.

The three of them left.

Brent watched Shannon as she weaved her way through the tables to the exit. The black dress looked as if it had been painted onto her luscious body. Those red shoes, with the crazy, crisscross straps, were a beacon, guiding him home to where he wanted to be—between those absolutely, fucking perfect legs that he was dying to feel again. Her soft, smooth skin. Her toned muscles. Her curves. Most of all, the way she used to wrap her legs around him. His hips. His back. His shoulders. His face.

He scrubbed a hand across his jaw as his cock rose up.

Down boy.

Neither his dick nor his heart had forgotten Shannon Paige-Prince. They both worked overtime when she was near.

She turned the corner to the elevator banks. Out of sight. He leaned back in his chair, trying to catch one final look at her. No such luck.

He hated that he had to let her walk away, but if he was going to talk to her again—the way he wanted to—he had to play it smart. After three minutes, he figured she was down the elevator and walking across the lobby, but not yet gone. He texted her.

You left your scarf. Want me to bring it by your office tomorrow or do you want me to bring it down to you now?

He waited.

She might not respond. She might text him now or in the morning. She might simply send a messenger service to pick it up.

His phone buzzed. He slid open the message.

Hold onto it for me.

He stared at the screen for several seconds. What the hell was that? That answer was not in the multiple-choice rubric. He squinted as he reread it, as if that would translate her words into a clue what would happen next.

Ah hell. Maybe tonight wasn’t the best time to talk to her.

He stood up, pushed away from the table, and grabbed the scarf from under his leg. If she wanted him to hold onto it, that was what he’d do. He’d figure out how to meet her alone and talk to her without her brothers being around. Hell, he could probably benefit from some time to plan what he wanted to say to her. She was the last person he’d expected to see tonight, so he hadn’t scripted his lines. How do you apologize for the kind of idiocy he’d perpetrated when he was twenty-one? He’d been young and selfish—he’d wanted everything that was in front of him.

He went to the bar to close out his tab and plot his next steps. He should sit down with his good friend Mindy and ask for her advice. Mindy was as solid and straightforward as they came, but she was diplomatic, too. She’d guide him through this unexpected reunion.

But when he tucked his credit card into his wallet and turned around, he came face to face with his own lack of planning. Time to improvise.

Shannon held out her hand. “My wrap please,” she said, her tone even, her face unreadable. “It’s my favorite.”

“I didn’t think I’d see you again tonight.” He clutched the fabric, as if that would tether her to him for longer. It felt like a lifeline as his heart sped up just from being so close to her. The bar was filling up with patrons, the tables packed, the stools taken. But the hum of the busy Mandarin faded into the background with Shannon there again.

“I’d like the wrap,” she said crisply, the meaning clear. She only wanted the scarf.

“Have a drink with me, please,” he said, opting for honesty first. The last time he’d seen her, he’d played with words. He’d manipulated and twisted them. He’d lied, hoping the lie would win her for good. He’d lost her instead.

She sighed and shook her head. “Brent, I would like to go home. And I would like my scarf.”

“One drink.”

She licked her lips and exhaled but said nothing. In her silence, he sensed an opening. A chance to earn a laugh or two. With complete honesty.

He inched closer. They were less than a foot apart. He could smell her, and her scent was intoxicating—she smelled like honey and spice, completely different than how she’d smelled in college. This was more sultry than the jasmine lotion she wore then. It was heady. It made him high in seconds.

“Please.” It was all he had. “I held onto the scarf to see you again. I saw it on the floor, took it, and hid it. I’m a thief, I’ll admit it,” he said, holding his arms out wide, one hand still gripping the silvery fabric. He wasn’t letting go of the only thing he had that she wanted.

She furrowed her brow. “You took my wrap?”

He nodded. “Yes. You always left them behind when we were together,” he said, stopping briefly when she winced at those words—when we were together. “When I spotted it on the floor, I grabbed it when the guys weren’t looking, and I hid it. I sat on your scarf.” He kept his eyes fixed on her, admitting the full truth even if it made him look like a complete ass.

Her lips quirked almost imperceptibly, but it was enough for him to think that he was gaining ground. He tried to build on it. “It’s a nice scarf. Do you think I could pull it off for a meeting tomorrow with my real estate guys?” He tossed it around his neck and adopted a pouty stare.

She rolled her eyes, and he was ready to declare victory. “You’re the worst,” she said, laughing. “Stop it.”

“You don’t like the way it looks on me?” he continued, deadpan.

“It looks ridiculous on you, Brent,” she said, but she couldn’t stop smiling. “And by the way, it’s a wrap. It’s not a scarf.”

“So…you really like this…wrap?” he said, as he removed it from his neck.

“I do. I like it so much I came back for it.”

He raised an eyebrow. “Only for the wrap?”

“Only for the wrap,” she said, enunciating each word, but the hard edge had evaporated. In its place was something ... almost playful.

“What about a trade then? Wrap for a drink?” he asked, dangling it in the air, the metallic fabric shimmering under the lights in the bar. Vegas had coasted into nighttime, ushering in all the possibilities of the town, all its risks, all its opportunities. As he held the long scrap of material, his whole body felt poised on the edge of something. “You’ll notice I used the proper name this time. Wrap.”

He handed it over. Whatever she decided next had to come from her, not from him holding a piece of her wardrobe hostage.

Time slowed to a crawl as she held his gaze, her green eyes giving nothing away. The straight line of her lush red lips revealed no hints of her intent. Perhaps she was toying with him. Torturing him. He probably deserved it.

I definitely deserve it.

She raised a finger. “One drink.”

He could breathe again. He’d been granted a reprieve.

“One drink,” he echoed.

He guided her to a quiet table near the corner of the Mandarin, with the city spread out far below them. She sat first, and he was torn between trying not to stare, and watching every move she made. But he’d never been good at looking away from her, and now was not the time to learn new tricks. She crossed her legs, one bare-skinned calf sliding against the other. His breath hitched. Those legs. Those gorgeous, sexy legs. They were his downfall, his weakness, and his complete obsession. They were an altar he’d pray at. He’d spent countless hours caressing them, touching them, and tasting them. If he were an artist, he’d have drawn them over and over. He hadn’t been able to keep his hands off them when they were together. He hardly knew how to keep his hands to himself now.

“So,” he said, breaking the silence between them as he tore his gaze back to her eyes. “You’ve done well for yourself.”

He hated that they were talking like any other man and woman without a history, but he sensed she was something of a wary animal around him, who needed to be coaxed out of the corner.

She nodded. “Thank you. It’s been quite rewarding building the business.”

“It’s very impressive what you’ve done with your company.” He had half a mind to kick himself as soon as he said it. What he wouldn’t give to turn this conversation around to something that mattered. But he was going in cold, navigating without a road map and hoping he wouldn’t crash.

“Can I get you something?”

The waitress had materialized at their side, giving him some breathing room. “We have some fantastic cocktails,” she said, then waxed on about several concoctions. Shannon opted for the house martini and he ordered a whiskey. As the waitress walked away, Shannon folded her hands across her lap, shooting him another closed-mouth smile. “And you’re doing great, too. I’m so pleased that Edge is faring so well.”

Shit. This was not how he’d wanted to spend time with her. It was so fucking formal. So immensely fake. So not them.

“It is,” he said, but he didn’t know how to steer the conversation out of this pothole.

“How did you decide to switch to a whole new business?” she asked, and she sounded curious, so naturally interested that he was about to give her the full truth. The answer was he hadn’t wanted to wear out his welcome with comedy. He wanted to walk away when he was on top. So he had.

But he sensed that could be read wrong. Like, as a character assassination of how he’d left her since it might show he had a pattern of walking away. There was another reason too – it showed the work he gave her up for was no longer the center of his world.

“I was ready for a new challenge. I still moonlight, though. I do standup once or twice a month at some local clubs,” he said.

“How interesting,” she said, but she didn’t sound enthused. “And does that satisfy your comedic thirst?”

“Yes. That’s where I did the King Schmuck bit. I don’t know if you saw that one online,” he said, because it was better to get that out in the open.

“Hmm.” She looked up at the ceiling as if she were trying to recall, then shook her head. “Doesn’t ring a bell. I must have missed it. But I’ve been pretty busy, too, and I don’t spend much time on the Internet.”

Soon, the waitress returned with their drinks, and Shannon raised her glass in a toast. “To business.”

“To reunions.”

He knocked back half his drink, letting the burn fuel him.

Screw this small talk. He didn’t want to be polite with her. He wanted to know her. To understand why she’d never picked up the phone when he called in those first few weeks, why she’d been so hard to find, and why she’d changed her name. He scooted closer. “Shan, what’s going on? How is your family? How is your grandmother? Your grandfather? Are you really okay?”

She closed her eyes briefly, her fingers clutching her martini glass. When she opened them that hard veneer was gone, and she was the girl he’d spent his nights with in college, the one who’d relied on him for everything. “They’re great. They’ve always been great,” she whispered. She waved a hand in front of her face, as if it were a magic wand, erasing all her woes. “Enough about me. Tell me something happy. Your family was always the happy one. Mom and dad together, they actually liked each other, and still do, I presume. How’s your brother?”

He caught her up to speed with Clay, who’d been married for a few years, and had a baby daughter now.

“I can’t believe you’re an uncle,” Shannon said, shaking her head in wonder. It was crazy how she’d softened as soon as he addressed the issue of her family, the one thing she didn’t like to discuss. Except, she always had talked about them with him. Maybe all this time she’d been looking for someone to talk to, and he’d filled that gap.

“My niece is adorable.” He took out his phone, clicked open his galleries, and showed Shannon a photo of Carly Nichols, Clay and Julia’s little girl.

Shannon moved even closer, and a wide smile spread across her face. “She’s so cute.”

“She really is. Here are the three of them.”

“She’s beautiful, your brother’s wife.”

“They’re kind of insanely perfect for each other. They even have the world’s coolest dog. Here’s Ace.” He flipped to another picture and pointed to the Border Collie mix they’d adopted a few years ago.

“My brother Ryan has a dog like that. Named him Johnny Cash. Because he’s mostly black. The Man in Black and all.”

“Great name.”

“Ryan treats him like a king. I think he even cooks him steak on Sundays.”

“Lucky dog,” Brent said with a smile.

“Have you been back in Vegas for long?” she asked, as she ran her fingertip absently along the rim of her martini glass.

“A little over a year. I moved here for stand-up after Late Night Antics, then back to L.A. again for a few years when I got my own show, then I returned again last year to start the clubs,” he said, tilting his head back and forth. His life post-college had swung like a pendulum between the two cities. “I live over near downtown. Want to see?” he asked, gesturing to the window.

“Yes.”

He stood up and held out a hand. Not that he expected her to take it, and she didn’t, but he placed his palm softly, ever so softly, against the small of her back. He barely touched her; there was a millimeter of space between them, but her breath caught, and she trembled slightly before straightening her spine.

They stood by the glass, him behind her. All of Vegas shimmered below, the lights of the city like fireflies, the skyscrapers rising up through the night, as neon streaked to the horizon. He pointed north, past the lights of the Stratosphere. “That’s me over there.”

“I love that neighborhood.” She gestured beyond, and he was turned on simply by the way she raised her arm. Damn, he was easy. Anything she did, any move she made, bordered on sexual for him. She could have a baggy sweatshirt on and he’d still be ready to go. “And that’s me,” she said.

She was so damn near to him as they stood gazing out the window into the brightly lit night. His entire body buzzed like an exposed electrical line because of this woman—flesh and blood, curves and muscle, strength and beauty—mere inches from him.

“That’s nice,” he said, his voice raspy and hot, but there was nothing nice at all about this moment.

She turned to look at him, and neither one of them said a word. Her green eyes were dark and intense. Her lips were so close. The inches between them were swallowed whole by the connection that crackled between them. She seemed to sway closer, and he moved in, seizing the moment.

He lifted his hand to her hair, still sleek in its twist, different from the shade she’d had when he knew her, but beautiful just the same. A strand had fallen loose, chestnut brown and curled. He touched it, ran his finger across the single lock. Time melted away as he leaned into the familiar crook of her neck. The craving for her ran so damn deep it lived inside his bones.

He inhaled her, that honey scent, a new smell that in an instant marked her.

“Shan,” he whispered, rough and gravelly, filled with so much want for her, which had built over the years, grown higher, spread further, formed roots. Inhabited him. He was desperate to have her in his arms again, to smother her in kisses that erased all the years.

“Brent,” she whispered, his name sounding like sugar on her tongue.

He buried his face in her neck, layering kisses on her soft skin. “Where have you been?” he asked, though it was entirely rhetorical. She hadn’t been with him. He hadn’t been with her. That was the answer.

“Where were you?” she countered softly.

He lifted his face and looked her in the eyes as he brushed the back of his fingers along her cheek. “Thinking of you,” he said.

He didn’t know how he’d gone from breaking two glasses to finding her falling into his arms. But that was where they were. He cupped her cheeks in his hands. “You’re so fucking beautiful,” he rasped out, and then he crushed her mouth. He consumed her lips. He kissed her hard, and greedily, and the world around him turned black and small. It faded into a speck of nothingness because there was room for nothing else in his world but her. Nothing but the utter perfection of Shannon Paige-Prince wrapped around him where she belonged.

No time had passed.

No years had flown by.

No regrets had dug deep inside him.

They kissed like it was a first time, and a last time, and like it was all time. They kissed like two people who wanted to climb into each other’s skin, to smash into the other person. There were no doubts. No questions. She had to feel everything he felt. She had to want a second chance, too.

This was not only a kiss. It was crashing back into orbit. It was gravity reinstated. In the press of her lips, in the slide of her tongue, in the gasps she made, they hurtled back in time. All mistakes were erased in this moment.

He dropped a hand to her lower back, yanking her close. Kissing was not enough. Lips would only get them so far. He had to feel her, touch her, taste her. She was his, and even though they were kissing in front of the entire city, he was all alone with her.

He couldn’t get close enough to her. She pressed into him, a full body collision, grinding against him. He groaned as he reclaimed her mouth, his entire body consumed with a lust so powerful he didn’t know how he’d make it out of the bar and back to his house, to a room, to her place, wherever, anywhere, without fucking her along the way.

As she rubbed her body against him, he could feel the heat between her legs. It fried his brain and short-circuited his skull. The desire to touch her enveloped him. He wanted to watch her undress, to stare at that to-die-for body that he’d missed so terribly, to roam his eyes over her curves as she lowered herself onto him and rode him the way she liked.

Hell, the way she fused her body against his told him all he needed to know. She wanted the same things.

He kissed a line along her jaw to her ear as she breathed hard. “Come home with me tonight,” he said, skimming his hand along the outside of her thigh.

Her hand connected with his cheek, and his head snapped to the side.

His head rang. His skin burned from the sharpness—the unexpected sting from the slap that came out of nowhere.

“What the fuck is wrong with you?” she asked, pulling away.

“What the fuck is wrong with me?” he repeated, shock reverberating in his bones. He opened his mouth to say more, but no words came.

She leaned in close and whispered, “Let me give you a tip, Brent. When you haven’t seen a woman in ten years, maybe say you’re sorry for breaking her heart before you try to fuck her again.”

Frustration seared his nervous system. “Fuck,” he said in a low hiss. “I’m sorry, Shan.”

She narrowed her eyes and shot him an icy stare. “That would have been a lot more believable if it didn’t require a prompt.”

Without skipping a beat, he gave it right back to her, firing off a retort. “How was I supposed to say it when your mouth was on mine? Tell me that, Shan. Tell me that,” he said, jutting out his chin, waiting for her answer.

She grabbed her silver scarf from the chair and glared at him as she brandished it. “Next time you want to see me you’ll need a better excuse than sitting on my scarf.”

She stormed off, but when she was a few feet away, he called out, “It’s called a wrap. Don’t forget that. It’s a wrap.”

She stopped in her tracks. He swore red clouds billowed off her, and as she clenched her fists, he was willing to bet she was fighting every urge to give him the finger.

She resumed her pace.

As he watched her walk away, this time he was pissed off too. The woman wouldn’t cut him a fucking break. She’d avoided his phone calls those first few days. She’d ignored every attempt he’d made to contact her. And now, she was kissing him back, then getting pissed at him for wanting her.

What the hell?

He used to think he understood her. He used to think he was the only one for her.

But she gave new meaning to the word whiplash.