Chapter Eight
I HALF STUMBLED, HALF RAN over to fix things. Oh my god, oh my god, what have I done! The former contents of my drink were now dripping off the top of his hat and down his cheek and into his shirt. He’d stood up and was staring down at himself in shock.
“Holy shit, I am so sorry. Oh my god, what did I do?! Oh my god…” I grabbed a bunch of cocktail napkins off the table, nearly spilling other people’s drinks in my haste, using them to dab at his amazing, gorgeous, weather-lined face. He was even better-looking up close, which seconds ago I would have said would be impossible.
When he lifted his gaze to look at me, I nearly had a heart attack. I dropped the napkins with a plop onto his cowboy boots. It would have made Candice proud, the high register that I hit with my girly squeal. “Eeep!” Those eyes! They glowed out from under his hat a sky blue so bright they looked as if they were illuminated from inside his head.
“I’d say the drink is on me, but that would be way too corny and cliché,” he said, his voice almost lazy the way it came out. But I barely heard what he was saying because his glowing blue eyes were piercing my soul or something. I’d never seen anything like them in my life. I could look at him all day long and never get tired of it.
“Huh?”
I cringed inwardly as soon as the syllable slid past my lips. The oratory skills that served me so well in the courtroom had abandoned me entirely. I doubted at this point whether I’d be able to string a coherent sentence together. His beauty combined with his slow-talking cowboy sexiness had completely robbed me of any intelligence. The drinks probably weren’t helping.
“Never mind.” He took his hat from his head and shook it a little off to the side, droplets of my former drink flying off to land on the carpet. His hair was longish, the ends curling up at his neck, which really surprised me. I’d been expecting a crew cut or a big bald spot under that hat to spoil the effect, to make him seem more human and not so supernaturally gorgeous … but no such luck. He was that beautiful, managing to make every other man in the place look like dog meat. Every single one of them instantly ceased to exist for me, just like the memories of that guy I’d been dating for three years who’d broken up with me by text on my way out here. What was his name again? Puke, I think?
I looked down and noticed a wet spot on the front of the cowboy’s jeans and all down the front of his shirt, and suddenly felt the desperate need to help. I’d caused this problem. I’d ruined his night. And if the stacks of chips in front of him were any clue, he’d been doing pretty well.
I grabbed the pile of cocktail napkins that the dealer had put down at his place and dabbed the whole wad of them first on his shirt and then on the front of his pants.
“I am so sorry. I have no idea what my problem is. Well, that’s not true, I do know what my problem is.” I snorted in disgust. “I’m wearing these ridiculous heels, which I knew were a mistake the first time I saw them, but against my better judgment, I put them on anyway.” I was busy pounding away on his crotch, trying to soak up the alcohol, not really thinking about what I was doing, so wrapped up in my nightmare of a life. “I knew this was a mistake, I knew Vegas was going to be a problem. I don’t know why I let people talk me into things like this all the time.”
He grabbed my wrist and halted my movements. I stopped in mid stream-of-consciousness brain vomit and looked up at him.
“I think you’d better stop now.”
“What?” I was totally confused.
He looked down at his crotch, still holding onto my wrist.
I followed his gaze and nearly had another heart attack. There was a distinct bulge going down the leg of his pants that hadn’t been there before.