Chapter 11

Greyson

As soon as the elevator doors opened, Meek was there. He was standing with his hands clasped in front of him, in his usual “Meek on the job” position, and he regarded me with a cool expression as I stepped off the elevator and began making my way down the brightly lit corridor toward my office.

“How was your dinner last night?” Meek asked, keeping up with my long strides with little effort.

“Pleasant,” I said over my shoulder. “Much more so than I expected. And you’d be surprised to know that no one tried to shank me in the middle of the restaurant.”

“Do people still say shank?” Meek asked. I could hear the humor in the undertones of his voice. “I thought that was more of a prison thing.”

I shrugged one shoulder in mild exasperation. “You’re missing the point. Forget it.”

“Oh, I didn’t miss the point. You’re trying to convince me that you don’t need me hanging around all the time, worrying for your safety.”

“Ah,” I said, grinning back at him. “You did understand. Well done, Meek. Well done.”

“I don’t appreciate the condescending tone,” Meek said with an arched eyebrow, but a lingering smile. “And for the record, I wouldn’t have to worry about you if you worried about yourself.”

I waved him off as I unlocked the door to my office. I turned to face him in the doorway and braced myself against it. “Will you be terribly annoyed, then, if I tell you to take today off?”

Meek crossed his arms. “I’m already here.”

“I’ll pay you for the day.”

“All right,” Meek said slowly. “What are you up to?”

“I’m not up to anything, but I’m not going to be here today, so I don’t see the need to force you to stick around. The security team has the floor. Go enjoy the day.”

“You should take someone with you,” Meek said.

I shook my head. “I can take care of myself. Go home. Or go do something fun for a change. Everything is okay.”

After Meek left, I made a few phone calls to let the managers of all the different departments in the casino know that I wasn’t going to be reachable for the day. They could contact me in case of an emergency, but I trusted them to make the right calls and handle any and all situations—to a point, of course.

Once everyone was filled in, I left my office and locked up. I made my way to the elevators, checked my wristwatch, and rode up to Skylar’s floor with four minutes to spare. I took to the blue carpet at a quick pace and arrived at her door. I knocked and heard her moving around on the other side.

“Just a second!” she called. Something fell with a clatter. She cursed, and I stood there alone, smiling like a fool.

When she opened the door, she was breathless. Her silky black hair was slicked back in a ponytail, and her cheeks were flushed.

“Morning,” she said with a cheery smile.

“Morning.” I nodded. “I hope you didn’t break something in there.”

She laughed. “No, I didn’t. I dropped my makeup bag all over the floor, though. Good thing I pack light. Only broke one bronzer. Which was cheap. So it’s—” She stopped talking and blushed the brightest shade of pink I had ever seen. “Not that you care at all about my makeup collection.”

She seemed much more nervous this morning than she had the precious evening. I gave her my best smile and stepped back to gesture down the hallway. “Shall we go?”

She bit her bottom lip and nodded. Since meeting her, she had never looked so beautiful. “Yes,” she said. “Where are you taking me?”

“You’ll see,” I said as she pulled the door closed behind her.

She flipped her ponytail over her shoulder as she fell into step beside me. “A surprise, huh?” she asked, looking up at me with a wry smile. “I’ll be honest, I don’t usually like surprises.”

“Well, don’t let your expectations get too high. It’s not a surprise, really. You’ll like it, I think.”

“You think?” she asked as we stepped into the elevator.

I punched the button for the ground floor. “I’m fairly confident.”

I saw Skylar’s smile in the reflection of the closed doors as we rode down. Once we hit the casino floor, we switched from the public elevators to the ones that would bring us down to the employee parking area. We walked straight to the back of the parking lot where I had parked my Aston Martin Vanquish. The charcoal gray paint shimmered despite the lack of light in the underground garage, and Skylar admired its sleek lines as I unlocked it.

“Nice car,” she said, sounding a bit unlike herself. “I wasn’t expecting something so… wow.”

I had parked in Tara’s usual spot, knowing she had the day off. I wasn’t going to park under the one near the entrance that read, “Owner, Mr. Kline” for fear of scaring Skylar off. The Vanquish was one of the least flashy cars in my garage, and I had chosen it with the hope that she wouldn’t know its worth and wouldn’t be intimidated.

Although when she saw where I was taking her, it would be clear that I had more money in my pocket than she would have ever expected. If I was being honest with myself, I was a little worried to see how she would react.

I opened her door for her, and she slipped inside. Her eyes roamed over the black interior, trimmed in gray stitching, as I walked around the car and got into the driver’s seat.

“What is this thing?” she asked, shooting me a look I couldn’t read.

“Aston Martin,” I said as casually as I could manage.

“I don’t think I’ve ever seen one in person,” she said. “It’s quite beautiful.”

“That she is,” I said, resisting an overwhelming urge to tell Skylar that she made the car look like a broken-down piece of junk. Clichés like that didn’t usually get a man very far.

I started the engine, and we pulled out of the underground. I took us out on to the Strip, where Skylar peered out the windows at the casinos and shops. I pointed out some of the attractions as we passed, and as we left the business of the city behind and hit the highway, Skylar admired the flat horizon in the distance.

A little jolt of nervousness hit me when we passed the signed that said “Welcome to Boulder City.”

I was even more nervous when I drove up my winding driveway. Skylar didn’t say anything as the dry desert soil was replaced with grass and lush greenery. We drove farther into my estate, and the house came into view; all windows and glass wrapping around the highest point of the property like a sleek, transparent snake.

I parked the car out front and got out. I opened her door for her, and she emerged from the car, one lean, sexy leg at a time. She stood in front of me and peered up at the house.

“What is this place?” she asked.

As I stood behind her, I tried my best not to take advantage of my position. I failed. Her ass in the tight jeans she was wearing was too hot. I swallowed, tore my gaze from the curve of her hips and her narrow waist under her black T-shirt, and looked back up at the house.

“This is my place,” I said.

She spun to face me. Her eyebrows were racing toward her hairline, and her mouth was hanging open. “You live here?”

“Yeah,” I said, scratching the back of my neck. “Got lucky. Came into a lot of money. Bought myself a little slice of paradise. Come on. I want to show you around.”

“A little slice?” she muttered as she followed me to the front door. “Your garage is bigger than my apartment back in Houston.”

I slid the key into the lock and tried to think of the best way to respond to that comment. “It gets kind of lonely having a place with this much space. It feels rather unnecessary. But there’s some cool stuff inside worth showing, and the view is unreal.”

We stepped into my home, and Skylar stopped in her tracks.

The place was open concept, as I had instructed when I had the contractors start building it. The entrance opened up into a living room, which was flanked by a dining room and the kitchen. Everything was bright, crisp, and white. The floor-to-ceiling windows provided natural daylight until dusk, when the place became even more magical than it was in the day.

Out the back windows, through the glass doors off the kitchen, was a sprawling patio littered in clusters of outdoor furniture. A pool and Jacuzzi were cut into the middle of the patio, and at night, the lights from beneath the water lit the kitchen with rippling reflections on the ceiling.

It was my slice of paradise, and I had never liked it more than I did as I watched Skylar walk in and admire it all. “I would never leave if I lived here,” she said.

“Like I said, sometimes it gets lonely.”

She went to the wall of windows in the living room. It overlooked the desert and Vegas in the distance, roughly twenty-five miles away.

“The view from the bedroom is better,” I said.

She turned back to me. “Is that a pick-up line?”

“No.” I chuckled. “But I would like you to see it nonetheless.”

She pursed her lips in thought. I could see why she was hesitant. A man had just invited her into his bedroom. A woman had to be careful. I was still a stranger to her. Although to me, she was far from a stranger. For some reason, it felt like I had known her for ages.

“Show me,” she said finally.

I took her hand and led her to the other side of the house down the only hallway it possessed. It broke off into the bathroom, a spare bedroom, and my bedroom. I walked her straight to the wall of windows. Her gaze wandered, naturally, over the gray walls and bedding, over the one wall comprised of organized closet doors and drawers filled with my suits and clothes, and over the covered patio outside hosting my workout equipment.

The wall at the end of the bed was the one that boasted the best view. We stood before it, gazing down at Lake Mead and part of the Hoover Dam.

Skylar’s hand was still in mine as she looked down the hill, over the grass, and over Boulder City and the lake. “This is something a person would never get tired of waking up to.”

“Never,” I said.

She looked up at me, eyes bright, cheeks pink, and full lips curved in a stunning smile. The girl had no idea what she was doing to me, and I was sure she was going to be the reason I had bad knees one day.

“I thought this might be more your pace,” I said. “I wanted to show you a part of Vegas that wasn’t just lights and slot machines and noise. A quiet place like this seemed more your scene.”

“It is,” she said. “It definitely is.”

We stood like that, hand in hand, staring out the windows until she let her hand fall to her side. I took her out of my room, not wanting to make her uncomfortable, and we went outside to sit on some of the lounge sofas by the pool. The reflection of the water on the side of her face made her look like a mythical creature as I asked her what some of her favorite things to do were. I wanted to know everything about this girl.

“Reading,” she said simply. “When I’m not working, I’m probably reading.”

“What do you like to read?”

“Anything and everything. Fiction, nonfiction. Fantasy is fun, sometimes, when work has been really crazy and I need to escape into another world.” She played with her ponytail and regarded me with curiosity. “What about you? Besides driving expensive cars around and entertaining at your mansion, what do you like to do?” There was a hint of teasing in her voice.

I chuckled and shrugged. “Ride my motorcycle, work, work some more. I’d like to travel, but I’m kind of tied down here with my job.”

“I know how that feels,” she said softly.