Page 27 of Wild Card

Chapter Seven

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She’d planned on taking a nice long bath and getting lost in the new book waiting on her e-reader. But the thought of being still, of staying in one place long enough for her thoughts to collide with her heart and sneak up on her, appealed as much as knives in her eyes.

She got up and changed into workout gear.

Confirming she was going certifiably insane.

Okay, so curiosity played a small part in the call. She’d heard about the Nyte’s fitness center: a complex so vast, it took up the entire tenth floor of the hotel. Level Ten had already been named by fitness magazines as one of the best gyms in the world, let alone as part of a hotel. It featured the standard Type A equipment, as well as a cross-training course, parkour run, Krav Maga studio, yoga sweat room, HIIT-specific course, basketball court, running track, and Olympic-length pool. Jen walked in, expecting to have the place to herself at this time of the night, but obviously, she wasn’t the only one who’d heard the buzz. After tucking her room key into her makeup tote then securing the little bag in a locker via thumbprint recognition, she turned on her headset, finding a channel with a driving EDM beat. Once the music blasted through her head, she climbed onto an elliptical machine, and went to work on sweating Sam Mackenna out of her system.

Sweat? Check.

Aerobic peak reached? Check again.

And Sam?

Parked in the hell where she’d left him. Occupying the stretch of her heart between desperate love and functional sanity. As she gulped half a bottle of water, he practically appeared before her, a towering hologram with a smoldering stare on his hewn face. And imagine that, he was fixated on the suction of her lips over the bottle.

Just like that, she envisioned it, too. Instead of the bottle, it was him in her mouth…the most illicit part of him. The slit there would leak sweet milk just before he groaned and buried himself inside her…

“Shit.”

She found a bench and lowered her shaking body onto it.

And wondered if the showers in the locker room had an “Ice Cold” setting.

A shrill ding sounded in her ears. Her wireless headphones were Bluetoothed to her phone, so the text notification came in loud and clear. She whooshed a relieved breath when seeing the message was from Tess, not Sam. He’d gone radio silent since she’d left the bar’s heavenly hidey hole; whether from anger or respect, she didn’t know—and shouldn’t care. But rather than trying to read his mind for the thousandth time, she focused on what Tess needed. It was probably just a giddy bride-to-be squee, and a list of things to bring to the Nyte’s beauty salon in the morning for her hair and makeup appointment. While Tess couldn’t be a bridezilla if her life depended on it, maybe the woman was feeling the pressure about marrying a guy as pedigreed as Dan.

She jolted to her feet when reading the text.

::I need to talk. Now. Meet me on the roof.::

The roof?

Maybe “pressure” had been an understatement.

“Oh my God.”

She hampered her towel, retrieved her tote, and raced out of the gym, not wasting any time for a response until she’d jumped into the elevator.

::On my way. Don’t do anything!::

Her own message was just as confusing as Tess’s plea, but it felt necessary. Desperate and scared, too.

She beat an impatient hand on the lift’s wall. The car couldn’t seem to climb fast enough. Finally, the overhead display glowed with a bright 60.

“What the hell?” She’d punched the 61 button. The lift itself filled in the answer to that, verbally prompting her to press her room key card against a specialized reader. While the explanation made sense—not every visitor to the Nyte could be allowed to just stroll around on the roof—she also questioned the hotel’s wisdom in allowing the access to even its paying guests.

Especially brides-to-be with drastic second thoughts.

The reader cleared her. The car lurched back to life then rested at the higher floor.

She walked out into a glass-enclosed lobby. Like everything about the Nyte, it was decorated sumptuously, but the décor couldn’t surpass the view. The entire valley sprawled before her, awesome even beyond the city’s parameters. To the left, the cliffs of Red Rock were dramatic against a thousand stars. Her head dropped back, following the twinkling carpet through the glass roof over her head. Up here, the light pollution was diminished to a dull roar, turning the stars into a light show in their own right.

A second of the awe was all she allowed herself, though. She had to get to Tess—

“Miss Thorne?”

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