“Doesn't look like she's outdoing you now, leaving her twenty-two year old sister to watch her kids. What a bitch.” The overprotective part of me wants to tell Zay not to talk about my sister like that, but the other part of me is happy to have someone on my side for once. I know my parents are disappointed in Ingrid, but I don't feel like they care enough. What she did, leaving like that, losing her house, starting the drugs, it's practically unforgivable and yet my parents talk about her like she's on an extended vacation.
“Fuck her,” I say and Zay raises his eyebrows. I take a nice, long lick of my ice cream and close my eyes against the sweet cream taste, the bitter notes of coffee pinging around on the back of my tongue. In the background, soft jazz music plays. It's not my usual thing, but it's pretty, relaxing. I could use a little bit of relaxing right now. I'm only on day two of my new job and I'm already wondering how I'm going to get everything done. How I'm going to do this without Zay. Because it's been one day and I can't figure out how to juggle it, who I'm going to get to watch the kids, clean the house, take care of the dog. I wish for a second there that he really was a nanny so I could hire him permanently. “I can't believe you're a body piercer. Do you actually make money off of that?”
“On the Strip? Are you kidding me? There's a constant stream of new customers fresh off of gambling.” Zay takes an erotic lick of sherbet, swirling his tongue around the rim of his cone and making my heart palpate. I hate how much I wish that was me under his hot mouth instead. “But, I sort of suck at managing my money. I still have the same crap car I packed all my shit into and moved to Vegas with, no savings or retirement money set aside. I do have a pretty kick ass condo though.”
I pause and set my cone into the little metal stand on the table, cleverly designed for this exact purpose, and reach down to unbutton my shirt. Zay watches me, his pupils clearly dilating in those sea glass green eyes of his. I shrug it off onto the back of my chair, leaving me in nothing but a tight white tank. I act like I don't notice him checking me out, gaze landing on the pale curves of my breasts, the tantalizing bit of white lace from my bra that's peeking out above the neckline.
“You flew up here as a favor to your brother then, like you said? Or was that a lie, too?” I try to smile a little when I say it although I'm still pretty pissed off. I really hate being lied to, even if it's just a joke. The man that I dated for three years, he was the ultimate liar, hiding behind a cloak of superiority and religion. I'll never date a man like that again.
“Nope. Cross my heart and hope to bleed, baby.” I pucker my lips at that and take a tentative lick of my ice cream. “But I didn't fly. My dick brother made me drive. Neither one of us had the money for a plane ticket. I blew all of mine on a collector's edition computer game and a crazy three day weekend with some pink haired chick named Kitty. We drank and ate ourselves to death. Oh, and fucked. There was plenty of that, too.”
“I really don't want to hear about you sleeping with other girls, but thanks for offering up the info.” Zayden laughs at me and his ice cream splats to the table, topples right off his cone and lands in a rainbow splotch.
“Oops,” he says and I wrinkle my nose as he scoops it up in his hand and plops it right back on top of the cone. “Three second rule.”
“That's disgusting,” I say, but I'm laughing because this guy is like a caricature of a human being, and I can't help myself. He's so … weird. But kind of cool, too. Like, he looks like every stereotypical bad boy ever, but he's sort of … nice? I always wondered how all those dickhead bad boys in books and movies got laid. Who wants to sleep with some piece of shit, like that big time rock star everyone's obsessed with right now. What's his name? Turner Campbell, from that band Indecency. Nobody in their right mind would actually date someone like that. But I get it now. Like Zay said, more flies with honey. He's got the look, and he's friendly and open. Can't beat that I suppose.
“It's only gross if you think about it,” he says as he whips his tongue through the sherbet and smiles at me. He smiles a lot. I like that. I could use more smiles in my life. Until he flies back to Vegas at the end of next week. Stop letting him charm your pants off and remember that.
Right.
Las Vegas.
“If you're for real, and you're actually helping me out because you have a—what did you call it—white knight complex? If that's what's really happening then … thank you.” I make myself sit up straight and take a deep breath. “Seriously. I would've been screwed without you.”
“No problem, Smarty-Pants. No thanks necessary. Remember, you don't owe people shit, okay?”
“Sure.” I lick my ice cream and listen to the jazz music simmering around me. I want to stay in here forever. The last thing I want to do tonight is head over to the Top Hat and take my clothes off. Long term, this could kill me. But I won't let it. I'm going to stay strong because I have to be. “So you'll be here for a little while? I mean, just so I can figure out who to get to watch the kids.”
“Sure thing. You've got me for eight more days, Brooke Overland.”
Eight days.
I didn't think that was nearly long enough to lose my heart.
Frankly, it was about six days too many.